244. God Brings the Good He promises
Jeremiah 32:42 For thus saith the Lord; Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them.
God is good. All the time, God is good. This refrain is a constant in our lives for all believers in the Gospel. God promises good and He promises to bring His people all the good He promises. God promises thousands of good things, and He promises to get those good promises to us in real life. This promise is so solid we can build our lives on it; the promises of God are the very foundations of life. In fact, life itself could not be lived without promises. A good life could not be lived without promises of good. The good news: because of Christ we enjoy the promises.
The good promises of God can be divided into the physical and spiritual, the visible and invisible, the material and immaterial, and the temporal and the eternal. In some limited sense, the physical, visible, material and temporal promises are prominent in the Old Testament. All the temporal promises flow into and come out in the eternal promises of the New Testament. The NT emphasizes the spiritual, invisible, immaterial and eternal promises of God. The Father grants them, the Son earns them, and the Holy Spirit applies them personally. Since the entire Bible points to and leads us to Jesus Christ on every page, every promise of God ends up in Him for all things, and all these things are spiritual.
“We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal [2 Corinthians 4:18]” God may give temporal, physical and material blessings (the things we see as blessings, like health and wealth), but they are not unconditionally promised. These blessings are conditioned on keeping the Law of God. But when Jesus promises results from following Him He includes “persecutions” in the list of material promises. Physical life will not always be easy, comfortable and painless, but in the middle of suffering we have eternal things like peace, joy, hope, love, life and every spiritual blessing. These good things are guaranteed, no matter what temporal troubles we undergo. We can always know that God will bring all the good He promised.