Do you trust me?

I feel like everyday there is someone making me a promise they don't intend to keep. There's the diner down the street that promises me the best fried chicken on the planet. There's a coffee shop that promises me the "world's best cup of joe." There's the little green lizard on TV promising me that he can save me money on my car insurance. In reality, I think they might just be trying to sell me something. We live in a culture that has encouraged us to be skeptics by the very nature of these false promises. We've been burned so many times by other people that the simple act of trust is considered naive or downright stupid. Two lovers stand at an altar promising "till death do us part" only to get divorced 5 years later when things aren't going so well. A little boy stairs out the window waiting for his mother to pick him up for their weekend visit...but she never shows up. There are so many promises being thrown around that it is difficult to know what to believe anymore. If I make promises to a person, what reasonable assurance can I give them to believe me? It must be even harder for God. What could God possibly say or do that would get us to trust Him?

Now, let's not think for a second that our present skepticism is anything new. As Solomon said in Ecclesiastes..."there's nothing new under the sun." The Bible speaks of God's relationship with his chosen people Israel. Throughout their history, they were constantly skeptical of God's promises. Even after God rescued them from their Egyptian captivity, parted the red sea, and provided food for them from the sky, they quickly turned their back on God to worship a golden calf. When God provided the manna from the sky, they complained that they had no meat. When God promised to give them the land of Canaan, they were too scared to accept it (at first) because the people who lived their were "giants." God gave them every reasonable excuse to believe Him. Yet they continued to doubt.

As God continued to demonstrate His trustworthiness to His people, His people continued to doubt Him. As we read the Bible and these stories, it's easy for us to say, "what a bunch of idiots. If I were there, I would have never doubted God!" But in reality, we probably would have been right their with the Israelites, bowing to a golden calf. Eventually, God got so angry with His people that He had them deported into the land of the Babylonians. Most of them would never see their homeland again. But God never forgot His promies. People called prophets came and they told the people of God's judgment of them for their unbelief. But these prophets also promised that God would one day restore His people. The prophets promised that God would fulfill all of His promises. And every single one of those prophets assured the people that God was trustworthy by pointing to what God had already done. They pointed to the deliverance of God's people from the land of Egypt. They pointed to His parting of the red sea. They pointed to His giving the land of Canaan to His people. Their assurance that God would be faithful was based on the fact that God had always been faithful. They just weren't watching.

So today, as we ponder whether or not God is trustworthy, we look to those same stories. Because they weren't just meant to assure those people...they were meant to assure us as well. The Bible is made up of books written by men over the span of about 1,500 years. It all says the same thing...God is faithful. From Genesis to Revelation God has promised that He would redeem His people. From Genesis through Malachi, God promised that He would send a savior...The Messiah. The New Testament tells us that this Messiah was Jesus Christ, who was crucified on a cross and as a result of His sacrifice, the penalty for our sins has been paid for. The redemption of His people was a redemption from sin. Various books of the New Testament tell us that Jesus is coming back again to finally destroy evil and usher in an eternity with Him. But we are over 2,000 years in waiting. What reasonable assurance can we have that He will come back. Well, we need only look at what He's already done. You see, I've been to that diner...their fried chicken really isn't that good. That coffee shop's coffee taste's like burnt motor oil. And I got a better deal on my car insurance from another agency. But God has never let His people down. He promised that He would redeem us. And He did...at the cross. So why do I trust that God will keep His promises? Because He always has.