PROMISE: The Same Yesterday, Today & Forever

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A place where meaningful conversations around living by faith, being known by love, and becoming a voice of hope are shared with the world every week. We hope that you enjoy this podcast and will join us live on Sundays at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, online or at the Historic Fox Theater in beautiful downtown Pomona. We also host humanity groups that meet all throughout the city and online to continue the conversation and support you in your ongoing spiritual journey.

Find one near you by visiting humanitychurch.com. If you would like to financially support this podcast or the ongoing work at Humanity Church, you can text any donation amount to 84321. Give directly from your phone. Now, here's this week's podcast. We're going to jump into our final conversation in this summer series. And I have loved this summer series. Every summer, we as a communication team come up with some series that we get to do collectively with two speakers.

And we've done everything from, I think last year we did zoo theology where we went through animals and we've done Proverbs and we've done all kinds of different themes. But this year we really wanted to create a space where we could stand on something firm. And the promises of God are so powerful in that. I just wanna remind you of some of the talks that we've had over the last few weeks when it comes to the promises of God.

We've talked about that your past has been wiped clean, that God will sustain you, that you will have trouble, but he has overcome the world. That you will have life and you will have life to the fullest. That you are loved with an everlasting love. That if you put your trust in him, he will make your paths straight. That he will be with you so there is no need to fear. That his spirit will be with you wherever you go. That his power is made perfect in your weakness.

That it is by grace that you have been saved by faith and that nothing that you've done on your own. that God will fight for you. These are promises that we can rely on over and over. And they're just a small fraction of the promises that you and I have been given. They're not owed us, by the way. They're bestowed to us by God saying, this is what you can count on me for. And here's why I think this conversation around promises is so critical for us.

Not just for those of us who are followers of Jesus, but even for those of you who are exploring this faith conversation is the reality is I am firmly convinced that the universe is actually held together by promise, that God speaks truth and things begin to form and create. And you even think about at a relational level, every single relationship begins and forms and ends based on how we hold our word.

Marriages, friendships, families, community, community geese, they all begin with some sort of promise, whether it's explicit, like, Hey, I'm speaking out this promise to honor and cherish and obey, or that's just built into the cake when it comes to being a part of a community and how we hold our word in those relationships, in those spaces will determine the future that we step into.

You are absolutely reliant on someone else's promise, whether you are aware of it or not to hold your world together. In fact, you can measure the health of an individual, of a relationship, an organization based on how they hold their word, based on how they keep their promises. Do they do what they say? Do we actually engage the things that we say we're going to be about or do we not? Because here's the thing is that we live in a world where promises are made and broken regularly.

I mean, that's just kind of like a given. They're given and then they're released almost just as quickly sometimes. Well, whether it's a promise to stay or to love or to pay or to be loyal or to get things done when they say that we're going to get done or for people to show up or a promise to nurture or protect or honor. And when these promises are made and then broken, worlds begin to unravel, relationships unravel, communities unravel, networks unravel,

and things begin to fall apart when promises are not held together. other. Now, look, there's not just promises that we make to other people and from other people. We also have promises to ourselves, do we not? How many promises do we make to ourselves that we break on a regular basis? How we're going to treat our bodies, the goals that we have that we're going to do, the ways that we're going to invest our time, the plans that we have even for tomorrow.

We make promises and then at times we break them to ourselves and then we wonder why why we don't trust ourselves to create futures that we say we want. In fact, I've kind of found it interesting that when people actually keep their word to themselves, people are shocked. Like, like it's always interesting when, when someone comes up to someone and they're like, you've lost weight. How have you done that? They're like, well, I've been on a diet. How long? Like six weeks, six weeks, right?

You kept a promise to yourself for six whole weeks. That's crazy talk, right? We're shocked when we actually keep promises to ourselves and promises are kept to us. Hey, even that, even that card that you filled out today with your intention, it's a promise that you made to yourself and to God. And that card that you have in your hand, it's actually not just a card. You know what it is? It's an invitation to a future.

That's what it is. You have invited yourself and God into a specific future this month if you are willing to keep your promise. God's up for keeping his. The question is, are you wanting to step into that? When it's kept, beauty is released. And when it's not, our default future just happens. In other words, wherever you're at today, you're just going to have more of that. And it's all reliant on how we relate to this thing called promise.

And so I want to end with two promises that I believe we must hold onto if we're going to hold onto the rest of the promises. These two promises hold all of these promises together and they keep them intact. The first one is found in Hebrews 13, 8, and it says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. And in Matthew 24, 35, from Jesus's lips himself, heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Now, look, I'm a guy who loves options and I love change.

One of my favorite restaurants is called True Foods in Pasadena. And what I love about the restaurant, it's a seasonal menu. Do you ever have of restaurants that you go to that has a seasonal menu. What I love about True Foods is every quarter you can go back to the restaurant and it's a brand new menu. And they're like, this fall we have everything's butternut squash. And this summer everything's grass-fed beef.

And this spring everything's strawberries, whatever it is. So every time you go, there's a new menu. You never know what you're going to get. There's all kinds of new options. I love that because there's new, fresh, exciting things every single time. Now this is great when it comes to a restaurant. restaurant, it's less exciting when it comes to a relationship. Do you have people in your life that when you're with them, the back of your

head says, I wonder what version am I getting today? You know what I'm talking about? Like how many of you have coworkers that you show up to the office and you're like, oh, let's see who we got today. We got the grumpy one today, right? We got the manic one today. We got the one who's super excited. We got the one who drank way too many Starbucks on the way here. You know, you just never know who you're gonna get. It's so unpredictable, isn't it?

Wondering what version of this person am I gonna get? For some of you, that might be your spouse and you just wake up in the morning, you go, let's see who's over here today. This is exciting, right? And you wonder, what version am I getting in this moment? But it keeps you on edge, constantly wondering, how do I react? How do I engage? What can I count on? What can I actually rely on? But Jesus's declaration is so powerful when he says, I am the same yesterday, today, and forever.

I am not like a seasonal menu guy. Let's see what's coming up. Let's see how I feel today. Let's see what mood I'm in today. He is just reliant. You never ever have to guess or wonder what you're getting when you're connecting to Jesus. See, I know for some of you, you think that he is in constant flux. I know for some of you, you relate to God thinking, man, am I getting the angry one today?

Am I getting the God who is so frustrated with me and so put up with me and that he has just done with me today? For some of you, you wake up and you think, man, I must be connected to the ambivalent God who seems to not care or seems to not worry about these things that I'm worried about or seems to not be preoccupied with the things that I'm preoccupied.

For some of you, you wake up and you are connected to the God who shames and who points his finger at your face and wags it in front of you and says, how dare you? You should have known better. You're such a screw up. For some of you, you find yourself with the manic God who's just constantly like, where am I? What am I up to? What are we gonna do today? But the beautiful thing is that we can know none of that is actually true. That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. ever.

So in a world that is in constant flux, I don't know if you've noticed this, but our news cycle changes by the hour right now. I mean, I get done with a Sunday gathering and I check CNN and then I check Fox news and I check everything because I just see everything. And I'm like, wow, our world has dramatically changed in the last hour. Someone did something stupid. Someone did something crazy. Some politicians said this, the economy did this.

And so we are in a world In a world of economic flux, in a world of political unrest, in a world of wars and rumors of wars, in a world of complete relational breakdown at times, in a world filled with anxiety and hopelessness and depression, in a world of one million answered questions that will probably never be answered before we die, Jesus stands here before us and he declares, I never change. I don't care what's going on out there. I will never actually move.

The God who provided and loved and cared for you yesterday is saying, that's who I will be for you today, and that's who I will be for you tomorrow. And so we can look at a book that is sometimes 2,000 years old and say, God made a promise 2,000 years ago to me, and I know that it is going to hold true today, and I also know that it is going to hold true tomorrow and the next month and the next year. No matter what's in flux, it will hold. They do not change.

No matter what you do or don't do, no matter what other people do or don't do, it remains consistency. God's consistency is not dependent on your consistency or inconsistency. He is not dependent on you. He is just saying, I have kept my word. I have spoken it into the universe. I have threaded it into the fabric of the cosmos. And so there's nothing that you can do to actually transform this. I am the same. And this is why this series is so important.

Important and my hope is that this would not just be a nice summer series but that this would be a way of life that we would find ourselves literally building a foundation of our lives on the promises of god that are immutable that never change see when life gets unstable when things get in flux and you find yourself not knowing which way is up or down or where to go or or what you're supposed supposed to do,

the best thing that you can do in those moments is to go back to what is concrete and universal. The best thing in those moments is you can, you can go, okay, the world seems like it's spinning around me. Everything seems like it's falling apart. But right now in this moment, I need to pause and I need to ask myself, what is the thing that I can count on? What is the thing about everything else that I know that I know that I know will actually be true?

See, See, when your health is in flux, when you find yourself, man, I have all kinds of crazy things going on with my body, the best thing that you can do is actually just go back to the basics. All right, I need to eat healthy. I need to move my body. I need to drink water. Let's try that out and see what happens. When your finances are crazy, when you get to the end of the month and you have no money in your bank account, the best thing that you can do is go back to Economics 101.

Let's put a budget together and stick by it and see what happens, right? See, the same thing actually happens for your spirit. When your spirit is in flux, when things are moving around you, when things seem chaotic, the best thing that you can actually do is go back to the promises that you know are concrete and stable and immutable and unchanging and say, great, we're going to go there. I'm going to go back to the fact that God is with me right now.

I'm going to go back to the fact that he wants abundant life for me right now. I'm going to go back to the concrete reality that I should not fear or be dismayed because he is with me right now. And I can count on that. I don't know what else I can count on, but I can count on that. And I can hold on to that. And that will move you through whatever circumstances or situations that you find yourself in. And this is the beautiful invitation that God invites us to.

We are entering into a season as a country that's gonna be a little chaotic over the next few months. I guarantee it. It's already happened. Have you noticed that? It seems like our politics are in flux, the economy's in flux, and everything is a little crazy.

And so we are actually going to transition from this series into a new series next week that we are calling the Kingdom Manifesto. And we are looking at this talk that Jesus gives on a mountain known as a mount. And he gives this, we'll just call it a sermon on a mount. And he essentially gives us this manifesto for what it looks like to live in a world of flux, to live in a world where everything is changing and transforming and everything is moving all around us.

It's this playbook for living with the foundation of God's promises at our core. And there's something so powerful when we do that. When we moved out of our loft space on Thomas Street that we were in for several years, some of you may know, some of you may not know that in there we had a prayer closet that was under the stairs that people could use whenever they wanted.

And we painted the walls gray and we put hundreds of Sharpie markers in there and And people could go write promises on the walls, prayers on the walls, verses on the walls. And it was cool moving out of there because there were all these promises and prayers and things that people had asked for from God that were all over the walls. But I remember the season when, those of you who are with us, when we lost the castle.

If you don't know what that is, there was a big building that we had that was a big momentum builder for us. And it was a really safe space during COVID that we got to step into. And when we lost the castle and we had no idea where we were going, I spent hours in that closet. I mean, I think there were like...

Fingernail marks on the wall in that closet. But as we were moving out, it was so amazing to look at the walls in my own handwriting of the promises of God that I had written in times where I thought, I don't know where we're going, and I don't know how we're going to survive as a community. And we have looked everywhere, and there are no possibilities. And we have tried, and every door is getting shut on us.

And even the option that we had was okay. It wasn't amazing, but it worked for the time being. And as we were moving out of that building into this space, it was a reminder that his promises stand, that he are immutable, and that even in times of chaos, when we just go back to the concrete, to the universal, to the reliable of God, it allows us to keep moving forward.

And so as we transition from this series of talking about promises, we're going to to transition into this conversation around the kingdom manifesto of God, of what it looks like to be citizens of the kingdom of God and live life in a way that we know how to move forward in a way that brings hope and life and freedom.

See, because there's a big difference between knowing a promise of God and knowing how to live in the kingdom and knowing the promises of God and knowing how to live in the kingdom. I know people all day long that say affirmations in the mirror until they are blue in the face and then they walk out of their bathroom with the same anxiety and hopelessness and despair.

I know people who give all kinds of constant reminders to themselves about how God is generous and how he is constantly pouring out resource and that we will never be left without and then walk away and miss the opportunity to receive that resource, and then to be generous in turn. Watch people as they say, yeah, yeah, I know I'm supposed to forgive. And then they walk away and allow the bitterness to eat them at their core.

I know people who say, yeah, I know I ought to invest my time in places where we gather together like on a Sunday or in a humanity group, and then other things get in the way. See, there's a big difference between knowing and knowing. And this is the invitation that Jesus invites us into. He He says, look, I'll never change.

So I'm inviting you to transform from knowing to knowing that it lives in your bones so that you can move forward with a level of confidence and power that he has given you in this kingdom.

So I want you to join us over the next nine weeks. I actually think this conversation that we're gonna be stepping into, this Kingdom Manifesto conversation, may be one of the most important conversations that we have all year, to discuss what it looks like to fully step into being citizens of the kingdom of God, before we are Republicans or Democrats or any other philosophical idea in between. And so join us for this over the next nine weeks. is bring people into this

conversation. There are people looking for answers, looking for hope, looking for freedom. Next week, we're gonna be baptizing people, which is so awesome. If you haven't been, yeah, which is awesome. If you haven't been baptized, if you have not been baptized and you're like, I wanna get baptized, just scan that QR code in front of you and we will put you on the list or just come next week, we'll have clothes for you.

But we're gonna enter into a season declaring the manifesto of the kingdom of God together.

So here's what I want you to do in our final discussion for the summer. Get with two or three people at the most. and I'd like for you to discuss this. What would change in your life if you knew, not just knew, but if you knew, you walked around with the confidence that Jesus was the same yesterday, today, and forever, what would change? If you just knew, man, these promises are mine, I am a recipient of them, nothing changes them. What would change in your life if you knew that? Music.