Dr. Ed Young - The Promise

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We begin the new year in just a few days. Some of us will go to the supermarket and as you’ll go out the supermarket, you’ll see there inevitably those newspaper, journals there and they’ll have predictions, remember? And they’ll have all the prognosticators, the futurists, the would-be prophets, the gurus, and they’ll be speaking and saying, «This is what’s gonna happen in the Middle East, in the stock market, in the various leaders of the country». And they’ll make all these predictions, right? We’ve seen this for years and years.

Now, those of us who’ve been around for a while, we get to be highly skeptical. Some of them are outrageous, some of them we can almost figure out for ourselves, but we get skeptical in saying, «You know I can’t buy in all that». I remember years ago a very prominent pastor in this area, stood up prior to the new year and said, «God has given me ten prophecies that will take place in the next 12 months». And he rattled off those ten prophecies that God had given to him with great ministerial prophetic unction. At the end of the year he stood up and he said, «You remember those prophecies that God gave me to me? Here they are, and seven of them came true».

Well, I told this dear friend if they were from God, ten would have come true. All the soothsayers that are running around with dreams and visions, you always have to sit down and measure them by the book, the book. Prediction, promises. The day before yesterday, I was in this Bible and I have a hundred Bibles, it seems like, that always are like this. I don’t have just one, and I have a bunch of them that are like this. And I happened to look in the back and I saw something I never seen before. There’s a whole list of prophecies in the New Testament that are available for you and for me and they’re over 70 of them.

Now, don’t be fooled by somebody who says, «Here’s this prophecy in the Bible. You claim it for yourself». A lot of the promises and prophecies are in that day and in that time for a specific purpose. All the promise in the Bible, not available for you and for me, understand that. I’ve written a little book on this subject. It’s got a rainbow on the front of it. But there are plenty of prophecies and promises here that we need to claim that have your name on them and have my name on them. And you read the promises in the Bible and they get wilder and wilder when you look at it in retrospect. Adam and Eve, kicked out of the garden. As they went out of the garden and the fire was set up and the angels to protect anyone going back in, a prophecy, a promise came and said, «I’m gonna send a man that’s gonna enable you to get back in the garden». And Adam and Eve said, «After what we’ve done? No way».

And then what happened Moses? Moses first 40 years of his life, he was God’s somebody. The next 40 years of his life, he was God’s nobody. And then we see as he is as estranged out there, guilty of murdering an Egyptian. He is wanted dead or alive. God appears to him in a burning bush. Remember the amazing thing about that bush? It burned and it was not consumed and a lot of people said, «Boy, that must be really an amazing bush». No, listen, when God’s in a bush, any old bush will do. Remember that. And God spoke to Moses out of that bush and said, «Moe, you’re the guy that’s to lead all the Israelites out of captivity as slaves in Egypt». And Moses said, «But, but, but, but, Lord, I, you know I don’t talk very well and my brother, Aaron, is so articulate and so, so, handsome. He may can do it but there’s a price on my head». God says, «No Moe, you’re the one I promised to lead my people out of the land of slavery».

Oh wow, a promise. Moses of all people, oh wow. And what about David? David was a nobody in his nation, a nobody in his tribe, a nobody in his family, and Samuel went ready to anoint a king and went through all the tall, strong, handsome brothers of David and he asked his father, «Man, don’t you have another son»? Said, «Oh, I got this little freckled faced guy out there that’s sort of the runt, the outcast of the family. He just looks after sheep». Remember, a sheepherder was the lowest vocation you could have. Lowest vocation, bottom of the line. Samuel says, «Let me see him,» and he laid hands on David and told David he would be the king and he would make a great Godly nation.

David must have thought, you know, Samuel must be losing it. So, now the theist said, «In the old prophet here, what kind of promise prediction is that»? Look at the Book of Isaiah, you want to read some wild stuff about the Messiah. Bruised our iniquities. By his stripes we’re healed. Suffering would be the plight of the promise anointed long anticipated Son of God entering into time, and space, and history. Man, that’s the craziest thing. «Isaiah, what’s wrong with you? You’ve been a godly man». Wow, you want to get a real wow promise? Here is innocent pure little Mary, a teenager in Bethlehem. She’s promised to a man espoused and this angel appears as pure innocent teenager and says, «You’re pregnant, not by a human being as you know but by the Holy Spirit because you are to be the mother of the promised living Emmanuel God with us».

Can you imagine? Way back in the backwoods of Bethlehem, this little innocent, pure, teenage girl hearing a promise like that? It was just outrageous. And what about Joseph? The soon-to-be husband of this little Mary, here his pure little bride-to-be is pregnant and he says, «What in the world»? And an angel come and says, «Joe, let me tell ya, you’re gonna be the surrogate father because Mary’s pregnant by the Holy Spirit, not by a human being, and you’re to be the surrogate father of the Son of the living God fulfilling hundreds of prophecies in the Bible». I mean, you see how wild all this is, folks? All these promises you’d read them and hear them and say, «Man, that’s the most outrageous, over-the-top, wildest, you know, impossible thing».

And what about Jesus himself? He said, «I’ll be crucified. I’ll come back from the dead». And so they said, «Let’s get this lunatic out of the way,» and they fulfilled his own prophecy by crucifying him and God raised him from the dead. Just think about that. Jesus, so we look back at all these promises, Adam and Eve back in the garden, promise kept, check. Moses, promise kept, check. David, promise yes, check. Isaiah yes, absolutely, check. Jesus, absolutely, check. So, if we read the Bible, and we say, you know, all these promises have been verified, we’ve checked them off. By the way, people say that’s biblical history, it is, but it’s also secular history. There has never been a historical statement written in this Bible that has been disproven by our archaeologist, by anthropologists, by historians, all through the many, many years. Think about that.

This also is true history, true revelation. And when you read all these promises, and they have been verified, they have been kept, you know, it would lead you to believe, if you think logically, that the promises that have not yet been fulfilled have not yet come to pass, they’re gonna come to pass. Wouldn’t you think that when you’ve got a perfect track record? And this Christmas, I have just one promise out of all of those wicked claim that I want it to be the promise you claim and the promise I claim, just one promise. It’s found in the Book of James. Somebody said the Book of James should be named In Your Face 'cause I see people whining around saying, «Lord, where’s the Lord of the Bible? I just can’t understand. It’s above me».

Read the Book of James. It is clear, plain, direct, unabridged, right over the middle of the plate. Read James. If you have any problem understanding that, you call me because you need to go back to the fourth grade and work on your reading skills. And in the Book of James, we find this promise that I want us to claim this Christmas. And it’s in the context of a tremendous study that James is giving us here. James is saying that we are guilty of being adulterous. We’re guilty of adultery. In other words, he said when you receive Jesus Christ and you receive the gift of God and his salvation, then we are married to Jesus who is the bridegroom, that is the metaphor used.

We are married to him and we’re married to his agenda and his kingdom, and we’re not married to the world. And James is saying, our problem is we’re facing both ways. We are in the world, but we’re not of the world. We want the world’s agenda and the world’s program as well as we think we can keep God’s agenda and God’s will and program. And he says, you’re facing both ways. There’s duplicity in you, and it would be someone who is a Christian schizophrenic. «Oh, I love God, his kingdom, his will, but boy I love this world and the agenda that it has». And he says you’re guilty of adultery because you have received Christ. He is our bridegroom, is he not? That’s the church. We were the bride of Christ, and it’s a beautiful figure involved. Then he talks about we’ve received grace.

The first stanza of grace is we confess sin, turn from sin, receive Jesus Christ as Savior, and the one that gets us is Lord. «Oh, I wanted to be my Savior,» but he says you have to be Savior and Lord. Lord means that he is commander and chief of your life. He runs it all. So, there’s this war going on that we have received amazing grace and then there in a couple of verses before the one we claimed this promise, James talks about you receive also, listen to this, a greater grace, a greater grace. What is that greater grace? It means that when you are despondent because you’re in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit is working in your life, he gives a greater grace. He says that when you have lost that which is most dear and precious to you, he comes and gives you a greater grace.

When you’re upset vocationally, he gives you a greater grace. In other words, grace is like water. You go to Niagara Falls, the water is flowing down, millions and millions of water it flows down. It goes to the lowest point, does it not? We receive Christ and then the lowest point in my life or in your life, grace comes and fills all those low points in our life. That’s that greater grace that’s available to us. And then we come to the promise I want us to claim. I want you to look at it in James chapter 4, verse 8. It says here it is, «Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your heart, you double minded».

Here’s the promise, draw near to God this Christmas, he’ll draw near to you. Just that simple. «Well, I don’t know». But he gives the qualifications, have to have clean hands and a pure heart. Clean hands is the outward part of your life, the outward part of my life. A pure heart is the inward part of your life, an inward part. And we draw near to God, we can’t draw to near God. He can’t draw near to us unless we have clean hands and pure hearts. Do something for me very simply, would you look at your hands just in your lap? Just look at your hands. I’m gonna pray a prayer, I hope it’s a prayer for all of us.

Dear heavenly Father, we here in this gathered family today pray that you will forgive us when our hands have not been clean. We come before you now asking your Holy Spirit to wash our hands all that is external to our lives, where we go, how we think, what we see, the duplicity that’s there, the dishonesty, the deception, Lord, wash the external part of our life. Wash our hands now. Oh Lord, thank you for cleansing me on the outside, forgiving me on the outside. Lord, thank you for making these hands clean.

And now would you take those hands that the Holy Spirit has cleansed and put them over your heart? Would you do that, just take your hands put them over your heart?

And this is our prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, purify our motives. Purify our agenda. Purify us inside so that we just naturally respond and make wise choices and decisions because there’s a passion in our life more than anything else to follow you and follow your will and your purpose. Oh Lord, purify this heart. Purify our hearts.

Now, I want you to look at me. Let me tell you something, if we prayed that prayer and asked for his cleansing, the grace of God had already been there in forgiveness and in salvation, now we pray that prayer, we ask for his cleansing, all has been forgiven on the outside. Then we prayed that prayer and asked for purity of heart, God begins to purify our motives on the inside and we’re not double minded. See, the rest of that verse. Now, we can draw near to God and he, because we have clean hands, he’s cleansed our hands. Because we have pure hearts, he’s purified our hearts. Now he’ll draw near to you and near to me. And at Christmas, there’s a tenderness there in all of us that makes us available, and susceptible, and open to being near to God and being thrilled as he comes near to us.

We’ve received that gift of Christmas. Let me get real, real, real, real practical. All of us, most of us, have given and received gift cards, have we not? I don’t want a show of hands, how many of us have gift cards. Don’t tell me. Then we say, «I don’t know what happened to them. I don’t know where they are. I didn’t cash them in myself». How about 43% of us, according to all studies. We have the gift of Jesus Christ. Most of us have received him, but we have a double agenda in the world and we haven’t cashed in the joy, the radiance, the purity, the feeling of being clean, of walking before him. We haven’t utilized ourself of all that’s available this Christmas. it’ll begin to happen when we keep our hands clean, our hearts pure, because this Christmas he’ll draw near to you as you draw near to him. And that will be a Christmas, that will be a Christmas that will change everything.