You know – God is full of promises. Amazing promises. But so often – it’s hard to see how those promises fit into the reality of our lives – here and now.

Promises, Promises, Promises

Well, I am really excited because we’re starting a new series this week called, "It’s Time to Take the Promised Land". What sort of a series title is that? "It’s Time to Take the Promised Land".

Well, here’s my hunch. We live in a world that promises so much: A world of brands and products and experiences and travel and luxury – a world that promises so much. Marketers talk about the brand promise.

For example, here’s my favourite. On TV, the advertisements for margarine or breakfast cereal or low-fat milk. Right? Have you ever noticed them?

Here’s what they look like. Here’s the setting. It’s a kind of trendy, today kind of kitchen and the sun’s always streaming in through the windows. It’s never raining; it’s always sunny. Mum’s smiling as she prepares breakfast. She’s slim and happy and well-adjusted, and this well-adjusted teenager bounds in smiling and spreads margarine on their bread or pours the milk on their cereal or whatever, and then ... Then this cool-looking forty-something dad strolls in, and he is good-looking, and then he grabs a piece of toast and kisses his wife before he reads the newspaper.

This is the sort of family and breakfast that most people would like to have, but the reality ... Well, the reality’s a bit different to that ad. I mean, the reality is that there are millions of people watching that ad who don’t know where their next meal’s coming from. The reality is that a lot of the people watching that ad, their families and marriages are falling apart. The reality is, even if they aren’t, they’re bringing up teenagers and that’s tough and there’s dysfunction. The reality is, most people’s families and kitchens and lives look nothing like those glossy images on the ad.

Images selling margarine or cereal or milk, making a brand promise that if you buy this product ... well ... this is what your life will look like. You look at that in the cold, hard light of day, and it’s absolutely nuts. Right? I mean, it’s crazy to try to link a margarine to a well-adjusted family.

New car ads are the same. They’re always out on the open road; there’s only ever that one car on the road, and the brand promise is if you buy me, you’ll have the freedom to roam. Isn’t it funny how the car ads never have someone stuck in peak-hour traffic, ever?

See, there are so many things in this world that hold out a promise that they can’t deliver. On the one hand, we want to live out those images of success the marketers kind of dangle under our noses. On the other, we so often ... well ... we never do. We never quite get there. It never quite works the way that the advert says it will, and that’s the psychology of marketing.

You create an image that creates desire, and the person sees the gap between the image and their reality, and so they spend money to buy that thing to buy the brand promise, and they discover it doesn’t work, and so the marketers dish up the next image, and round and round and round we go, on this treadmill of broken promises. It makes our consumer economies go round, and here you and I are with this treadmill of broken promises, brands that never really deliver their brand promise, and God comes along with a promise.

God makes lots of promises. "I’ll be your God, and you will be My people, and I’ll walk among you. I’ll bless you and keep you and comfort you and guide you" ... Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life in all of its abundance."

It’s almost like God’s painting this picture of a promised land – a land that’s almost too good to be true – a land ... a life ... well, to you and me, it seems a bit like the kitchen and that family in the margarine ad. In the reality of our lives, the promises of God can be hard to swallow, especially when we’re still on that treadmill of broken promises, going round and round and round ...

In this day and age, God’s promises are harder to accept than ever. Now ... now we’re getting close to the heart of this new series, "It’s Time to Take the Promised Land", because God is a God of promise, and brand Jesus is the one brand that actually delivers. God’s plan is to lead you and me into His promised land – a land flowing with milk and honey, a land of blessing, but (here’s the but) He involves us in that process and we have a part to play.

The first step that we’re going to talk about today in this whole thing of walking into God’s promised land is accepting His promise in the first place; letting Him write that promise on our hearts, and believing it with all that we are; believing it with every fibre of our beings, with our very lives. You see, we can’t have the promised land (we can’t go there, we can’t settle) unless first we believe it in our hearts. God is a God that calls us to faith, and faith means believing before we see it.

Now we’re going to talk about that very thing today because if we’re going to talk about accepting the promises of God, you can’t go there without talking about it: Faith. It’s when we place our faith in Him. When we place our faith in His promises, then ... then He calls us on to cross over into that land, and to take the land.

Now that’s a shock and a surprise to me. We’re going to be looking at that a bit over the coming weeks. It’s really important that we understand the journey. God’s promised land isn’t like pizza delivery. You know, He doesn’t ring the doorbell and deliver the promised land; God actually calls us out of the front door, to take a step of faith, and it can be a tough journey with battles all along the way.

We’re going to be looking through the book of Joshua over the coming few weeks in the Old Testament, because the book of Joshua is about the time that Israel crossed over into the promised land. They’d been in slavery in Egypt and then on the exodus for forty years, and the book of Joshua begins right on the threshold of the promised land, and they have an upfront decision to make. Do I really want God’s promised land, really? And if I do, am I going to let Him write His promise on my heart, and carry it round with me through thick and thin – the bright sunny days, and the cold wet days?

Well, today’s programme is all about letting Him write His promise on our hearts, His plan for us to dwell in His promised land. As we’re going round and round and round on that treadmill of broken promises, where many people have this empty unfulfilled life, we have a decision today to make. We can decide that it’s time to step off that treadmill and to take the promised land.

One Man’s Promise

So where does this term, "The promised land" come from? Well, it all begins when God promises some land to Abraham. Now God first engages with His people, Israel ultimately, through Abraham – the father of Israel. Abraham was living very comfortably indeed. He was quite wealthy, in a place called Ur, which is near Babylon or around modern-day Bagdad, and God calls him out of that place. If you have a Bible, grab it, and open it up at Genesis chapter 12. God calls him out of this place. This is what happens:

Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your family and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

Incredible promise for Abram and Sarai, who were old. I mean, they were well into their seventies; they were childless, and there is a two-part blessing here, two-part promise: Land and children, but there in the comfort and the wealth, they believe God, so they step out. They up and leave all of that. They take their possessions and servants and animals, and they hit the road and head westward to a land called Canaan.

Now, what happened when they got there? Well, we read about that in Genesis 12:6-8:

When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So Abram built an altar to the LORD who had appeared to him.

Now just think about God’s promise to this old man. Firstly, your descendants. The guy is seventy years old, and he and his wife have not been able to have children, but God promises him descendants. Not only descendants, but God says, "I will make you a great nation". Really? And, "I will give this land to your descendants".

Imagine Abram. "But God, I’m in my seventies. I don’t have any children. This land is occupied by the Canaanites". It was a pretty impossible promise, but right here, right in the middle of all this impossibility, the promised land is born.

God promised it to Abram, yet Abram believed this promise with his life. How do we know that? Because he actually left his comfortable existence in Ur, and followed down the dusty trail of God’s promise, over hill and dale, and he gets to this land of God’s impossible promise – a land filled with Canaanites, who weren’t about to say, "Well, yeah, sure, Abram. Take our land! We don’t mind", and the childless Abram ... what does he do? He builds an altar to God. He honours God.

He bows down and says, "Well, God, you know, even though this doesn’t make a whole bunch of sense, I’m going to believe You", and God knows what’s going on in Abram’s heart. He takes him up a hill and makes the promise again. You can read it. Flick over to Genesis 13:14:

The LORD said to Abram after Lot had separated from...