Garry spoke this morning from Genesis 47:28-31 on ‘living in the light of God’s promise.’ Jacob, Joseph’s father, shows us that the promise of God determined how he thought and lived; he lived his life in the expectation that God would fulfil His promises to him. If we live without God’s promises, our lives are full of dread and darkness, but with God, we are given discernment and the ability to judge situations (as the men of Issachar demonstrate, they understood the times and knew what Israel should do (1 Chron 12:32).
God gives us spiritual insight through His Spirit (see 1 Cor 2:16); we have ears that need to hear what the Spirit is saying (as Revelation 2 and 3 make plain.) We must, as Karl Barth said, read our newspapers in one hand with the Bible in the other, for it is God who interprets what is happening in our world.
It can be hard to know how to live in a world that ignores God or is even hostile to His ways (see Romans 13:1-8, Ex 1:15-17, Dan 6:6-10). The apostles made it plain that ‘we must obey God rather than human beings’ (Acts 5:29). Nowadays, so much of what governments approve is against God’s law; we must learn to live in the light of God’s promises, be they conditional or uncondtional. Where God’s promises rest on our obedience, we must strive to obey, but so many of His promises are unconditional and rely on His faithfulness alone. We should not fear what the world fears, but should rest in God’s sovereignty and let His promises direct our living and our hope, no matter what.
