Assurance of Faith: The Power of God's Promises

"This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope, but an infallible assurance of faith, founded upon," and here it comes, "the divine truth of the promises of salvation," that's what we're going to look at in this address, "the inward evidences of those graces into which these promises are made," that's what we're going to look at in the next address, "and the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which spirit is the earnest of our inheritance whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption." [00:00:32]

Thomas Brooks, the Puritan, said, "The promises of God are a Christian's Magna Carta, his chiefest evidences for heaven. Divine promises are God's deed of gift. They are the only assurance which the saints must show for their right and title to Christ, to His blood and to all the happiness and blessedness that comes by Him. The promises are not only the food of faith, but also the very life and soul of faith. They are a mine of rich treasures, a garden full of the choicest and sweetest flowers. In them are wrapped up all celestial contentments and delights." [00:04:30]

Anthony Burgess said, "It is a more noble and excellent way to find assurance of faith by relying upon God's promise in Christ outside of us than it is to come to assurance by being assured of the evidences of grace within us. I'll explain to you in the next lecture that both are needed. But the main one, is the promises of God." [00:05:14]

So, the same offers of grace and gospel promises that lead us to salvation in the first place are sufficient to lead us to assurance as well. So Paul tells us in the verses I read, 2 Corinthians 1:18 to 20, that gospel promises in Christ cannot fail, cannot fail, because God's character is true and faithful. "But as God is true our word toward you was not yea and nay, for the son of God, Jesus Christ, preached among you is not yea and nay, but in Him is yea for all the promises of God in Him are yea and in him Amen to the glory of God by us." [00:06:15]

And therefore, Jesus Christ is God's everlasting, sure, full, yea and Amen, it shall certainly be. While they were together in eternity when Christ took our frail flesh and lived among us, and now also in heaven at God's right hand, Christ has always been God's yea, God's yes. From eternity past to eternity future, He is God's yes; And God doesn't need your yes to make your salvation sure. He wins your heart. But the foundation is not your yes. The foundation is Christ's yes. [00:07:28]

So our assurance lies in the gospel, in the promises of God in Jesus Christ. For the Puritans, those three things were synonyms: gospel, Christ, promises, and they used all three interchangeably. That is our hope. So God tells us in the Bible that we are in trouble because of our sin, yes, big trouble. We're on our way to hell by nature, but He also tells us in the Bible that He is willing to rescue the greatest sinner who comes to him as a poor and needy sinner through Jesus Christ, that Jesus' death truly saves those who believe in Him alone for salvation. [00:09:20]

Number 2, as assurance grows, God's promises become increasingly real to the believer, personally and experientially. You see, the promises of God and my personal assurance of faith, they reinforce each other and that's, that's a beautiful thing, because when we have an experiential knowledge of God's promises, when these promises become sweet to us and precious and we rely on them, then our hearts echo the truth of those promises. [00:12:56]

So God's promises are the footpaths on which Christ meets our soul. "Because," said Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan, "if one promise belongs to thee my friend, then all do. For every promise conveys the whole Christ, in whom all the promises are made and who is the substance of them all." And that reminds me of one of my very favorite Puritan quotes about the promises of God. It's is by William Spurstowe. [00:14:55]

He wrote a whole book on the wells of salvation being opened, and he calls the wells of salvation the promises of God, and what he said is this, "The promises are instrumental in the coming of Christ and the soul together. They are the warrant by which faith is emboldened to come to Him and take hold of Him, but the union which faith makes is not between a believer and the promise, but between a believer and the Christ of the promise." [00:15:24]

And then Spurstowe goes on yet, you know, the Puritans are so good at illustrating things. He says, "God's gospel promises are like stars at night." When you first walk outside in the country late at night, you look up in the sky and "Oh, yeah there's a couple stars out, Oh, yeah, there's a few more," and your eyes get adjusted and, "Oh, I'm seeing dozens of them now. Oh, wow! There's hundreds of them up there." [00:17:03]

And he says, "So when a Christian takes time to meditate on God's promises, the number of promises and the light coming from those promises as he meditates may at first seem to be small and weak so as to be insufficient to quell my inner doubts, fears and dispel my darkness and my struggles with sin, but as we read the Bible further and we meditate further, and we begin to see thousands of promises coming out of Scripture everywhere, together with a bright light that shines upon them clearly and distinctly, our souls are ravished and filled with delight and assurance. God's Word is sure." [00:17:45]

The gospel promises of God in Christ are mightier than all the arsenals of Satan and his minions combined. Assurance of salvation does not result from the power of positive thinking; it flows from the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, the Puritans remind us that the subjective promise embraced by faith is infallible, because it is God's comprehensive and faithful covenant promise, and He is infallible. [00:24:03]