If you live long enough chances are two things will happen in your life. First, someone will break a promise to you. Plenty of children know this all too well, because mom or dad promises to do something with them “later”, but later never comes. Second, you will break a promise to someone. We will always defend ourselves by saying, “but I didn’t mean to.” However, that won’t change the fact that we did break a promise. These two truths make it all the more obvious of how God is different than us. What God decrees, God does! God has never and will never break a promise. This is what God was reassuring Jeremiah of as He was speaking with him. Jeremiah 31:36 says, “If those ordinances depart from before Me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever.”
God is speaking to Jeremiah, and assuring Jeremiah that everything He has said will happen is going to happen. That was good news and bad news. It was bad news, because God had said that the Babylonians were going to take Judah captive for 70 years. It was good news, because God promised that He would restore the nation of Israel, and that they would return to their land. To let Jeremiah know of how certain these things were to happen, God goes all the way back to creation, when He created the sun, the moon, and the stars. He created the sun to rule over the day, and the moon and the stars to rule over the night. God says in our text, if that ever stops, then you don’t have to believe anything else I say, because it is obvious that I’m not powerful enough to do it. This was meant to encourage Jeremiah, because for the approximate 3,500 years before Jeremiah came on the scene, God created everything and it was still functioning. It’s one thing to do something once or twice. But when you have done something everyday for the past 3,000+ years, I’m pretty sure you can bet on it happening again the next day, and the day after, and the day after, and so on. The eternal God who created everything, and sustains it, is the same God who makes unbreakable promises. Let that encourage you today. What God decrees, God does! But also let it serve as a warning for those who are still rejecting the Gospel. Just as God has promised and will bring to pass the good He has promised to His children; He will also bring the judgment to pass on those who reject Him. The good news is, God is giving you time right now, to turn from your sin and turn in faith to Him. While we may not be able to keep every promise we make, God has and God will. Praise Him for His faithfulness and His precious promises to His children.
By His grace and for His glory,
Pastor Justin