Jeremiah 33: 20-21 “‘If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time, then my covenant with David my servant…can be broken.”
How sure can we be that God keeps his word? Do we believe promises like “I will never leave you or forsake you”? (Deut. 31:6) How about, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me….”? (John 14:3) And when life starts to squeeze in, do we question his pledge to work all things together for our good? (Rom. 8:28)
Hope…true hope…is hard to find in a world that shifts allegiances as abruptly as a click of the remote control. We’re a fickle people, aren’t we? And people just like us fill the institutions where we place our hope. Maybe we need some adjustment.
Jeremiah prophesied Jerusalem was going to be destroyed and its inhabitants taken captive. But he also predicted Jerusalem’s plight was temporary. Though the devastation would be great, the restoration would be greater. The exiles would return after 70 years and the throne of David would be re-established because God had made a covenant with David. A covenant that promised one of his descendants would always be on the throne (2 Sam. 7:4). How likely was it that God would renege on his word? As likely as it was that day and night would no longer exist. They could be sure restoration would happen because God said it would.
The foundation of our faith rests on knowing we can depend on God to keep his promises. When God swore to Abraham his descendants were going to be a great nation, then directed him to offer his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, it didn’t make sense. But Abraham knew he could be sure the God he served was a promise-keeping God. Hebrews 11:19 says, “He reasoned God could raise the dead.” His complete trust in God produced radical obedience.
We know if we have hope for this life only, we are to be most pitied (1Cor. 15:19). True hope reaches beyond the confines of the natural world. It assures us that nothing, nothing, nothing, can cause God to break his promises to us. In this unreliable world of vacillating people and broken promises, we can be completely sure of that one thing.