May it please Almighty God to
bless us together this evening as we meditate in his word. Let
us turn to the book of Joshua, chapter 21, and read in the last
verse, verse 45. The book of Joshua, chapter 21,
and reading verse 45. There fails not ought of any
good thing which the Lord has spoken unto the house of Israel. All came to pass. We should be very thankful that
the word of God contains such wonderful words of encouragement. And of course, these words were
written when Israel had come out of Egypt and across Jordan
and they'd entered into Canaan and they had been blessed with
wonderful prosperity in fighting many battles. And the Lord had
kept his promise and granted that many cities had been obtained
and therefore in this chapter, which we haven't read, because
it really just gives the breakdown of the areas to the various tribes,
and also in previous chapters. But the great truth is, not only
with regard to that, but with regard to everything, everything
that God has spoken, we can rest assured that what God has spoken
will come to pass. Sometimes we may be tempted that
it was just of our own flesh and that the words which we perhaps
are relying upon, but nonetheless, the word of God standeth sure,
having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his. And my friends,
God doesn't speak words to his people, which do not come to
pass. And that's why we have such a
statement as this. There failed not ought, that
means nothing failed, not the smallest item perhaps in a word
that God has spoken, fails. There failed not ought of any
good thing, anything the Lord speaks is a good thing, whatever
that may be, sometimes we might anticipate the Lord's going to
speak very favourably. Sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes the Lord rejects the
things, perhaps, that you and I have asked for and told us,
that we shall not have such things. But nonetheless, we should rest
assured that what God speaks to us as part of the house of
Israel will come to pass. It's very positive, isn't it?
All came to pass. We have a God who does not falter. We have a God who does not go
back on his promises. We have a God who says and it
comes to pass. Perhaps after a long time, the
Word of God says, your time is always But my time is not yet. You think of the cases in the
word of God, especially concerning Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and
the children of Israel, how the Lord gave them words to rely
upon. And yet the fulfillment of those
words took a long time, a long time, but in the end, They came
to pass. You think of Joseph and those
amazing dreams. No doubt expected them to be
fulfilled soon. But Joseph had to go through
many difficulties, trials, oppositions. But in the end, they came to
pass. And of course, the end was so
different, no doubt, to what Joseph would have imagined in
his mind. We're not told what he thought. We are told the word of God tried
him. And therefore, we shouldn't be
surprised in our lives. Therefore, if we have a promise
from God, it doesn't seem to be being fulfilled. Well, we
shouldn't be disappointed. We should wait on the Lord. because
the Lord has a right time and a perfect time. And as David
said, who also knew the problems and difficulties of having to
wait, as for God, his way is perfect. Sometimes we seem to
forget that our little lives are just a very small part of
the great plan of Almighty God. And what is fulfilling in our
little lives fits into his great plan for his church worldwide. And therefore we might think,
well, why hasn't this come to pass? The word of God says, all came
to pass in God's way and in God's time. See, God has his timetable. His timetable often doesn't correlate
with our timetable. But we can be sure that God's
timetable is best. So as we trace out, and you can
trace out, I'm not going to do it tonight, go through the Word
of God and see and pray over and examine how there were many,
many things that God said would come to pass. And you will know
that when the Lord has spoken, you'll always be able to read
this and it came to pass. And it came to pass. It's a wonderful blessing, isn't
it? To realise that we have a God
who doesn't tell us lies and doesn't speak unadvisedly and
doesn't speak those things which he has promised and will then
turn around and change his mind. He is of one mind. That's a great
blessing. We have a God who is one God. I am the Lord, as we read in
Malachi, I change not. Therefore, ye sons of Jacob are
not consumed. Well, tonight, maybe rest and
rely upon the promises of God. Don't throw them away. Don't
think they've got old and are out of date. My friend, God speaks,
and God therefore brings it to pass. You see, in this case here
of Israel coming into Canaan and capturing all those cities,
it didn't just happen overnight. And of course, we know that having
come into Canaan and Jericho, having fallen, and of course,
thought they would carry on in their victory but of course there
was that man Achan who disobeyed the word of God and took that
which he was told not to take because he fancied it because
he liked what he saw you see his nature took control and he
disobeyed God And as a result, he and all his family and all
his possessions were eaten up by the earth and the earth opened
up and consumed him and everything. What a demonstration of God's
power. And what it tells us is this.
We must never trifle with God. We must never think that what
he says can be ignored. We can never think, well, I don't
think that's a suitable word for me, so therefore I'm not
going to follow it. I'm not going to go in that path. My friends, we have a mighty
God, and a just God, and a God knows what is good for us, and
above all things, what will bring honour and glory to his holy
name. And you know, we cannot sin lightly.
We cannot turn our back upon God lightly. We read that chapter
in Numbers. So part of it is very
familiar. And that's what we refer to as
the brazen serpent. What happened there? Israel disobeyed
God. Israel turned their back upon
God. And they were bitten by these
serpents. The Lord brought these serpents. He brought them so that they
would bite them with this venomous poison. And so many died so quickly. But then Moses pleaded with God. And God told him what to do.
To make a brazen serpent and put it on a rod, on a pole. Hold
it up. And tell the Israelites who were
bitten to look to that serpent and live. Many did, but not all. We have a gracious word of instruction.
We are to look to our great and glorious Saviour. We may perhaps
feel, to be putting it in that same terms, serpent bitten. We may feel that we have been
attacked and that we have a poisonous bite upon us. And we feel perhaps
that we are under the sentence of death, spiritual death, because
of our sins. We may wonder, well, what shall
we do? Well, we have a gracious, comforting
word, really, in that account. not to look to a brazen serpent,
but to look to the Lord Jesus Christ, to look and live. So what a favour tonight, if
perhaps we feel serpent bitten, we feel under the condemnation
of Almighty God, because we have sinned against him. Perhaps sometimes
we feel we've sinned against light and knowledge. We turn
our back upon God. Well, my friends, blessed be
God, there is mercy with God. God is a merciful God. He is
a prayer hearing and a prayer answering God. May we hear His
Word, which speaks to us to look and to live, to look unto Him,
the great and glorious Saviour. Confessing our sins. My friends,
it's not always easy to confess sin. As theory, it's very simple. In practice, it's not so easy. Because our hearts, by nature,
are hard-hearted, our hearts, by nature, are rebellious, and
by nature, we don't like to admit, we don't like to confess that
we've done wrong, that we've turned our back upon God, and
we've pleased ourselves rather than God. You see, the Lord is
just and righteous, And he brings us sometimes into those conditions
where we realise we are just a poor, unworthy sinner. And we have to confess with the
Apostle Paul when he said, in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth
no good thing. Well, the Apostle knew where
to go. The Apostle knew where to look. And my friends, the reality is
that you and I today, in our flesh, do us no good thing. We can bless God if the Lord
has given us that spiritual life. And we are amongst those who,
as the Apostle says, and you hath he quickened, who were dead
in trespasses and sins, wherein in time past you walked according
to the course of this world where it's very easy to walk opposite
to our God. What a blessing it is that we
have a God who is gracious and a God who has promised to forgive. A God who has promised to hear
and answer prayer so we should not be, therefore, discouraged. And remember then this wonderful
word. It's very interesting how the
Lord graciously organizes the Word of God. There's a long list
in that chapter and previous chapters of how the land was
divided very carefully and very accurately. But then we're told
there fail not ought of any good thing which the Lord has spoken
unto the house of Israel all came to pass. It must be surely
to a true believer an encouraging word, a word that you and I can
rest upon. We live in a world, a dark world,
a world with many things to cast us down. But here we have a great
and glorious truth. There fell not out of any good
things the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel, all came
to pass. And as we think of the Old Testament,
we have throughout it, as you well know, from Genesis right
through to Malachi, wonderful prophecies with reference to
the coming of the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, no doubt,
Israel, spiritual Israel, would therefore have rested on the
many promises which it contains. And remember, of course, up until
the time of Moses, there was no written word of God. There
was no written word. It was just word of mouth, which
was passed down but no doubt the promises of God were passed
down. And we can imagine, can't we,
when one and another spoke about the things of God, and one and
another perhaps encouraged each other. One may have confessed
their position, their doubts, their fears, and to have another
encourage that person by speaking and quoting the truth of God,
that which had been passed down, the promises of God, which the
Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel. We can imagine, can't
we, that the ancient church was encouraged by such words. Now we today, of course, are
blessed with the Bible, the Word of God, speak of and to encourage
one another. But it is surely right still
today to encourage one another verbally with regards to the
Word of God. Then those that fear the Lord
speak often one to another. It's good, isn't it, when by
God's grace we do speak often one to another. What does it
do? First of all, it should. honour and glorify our God. Because when I speak along those
lines, I don't mean that we just spend our time on the things
of this world, but we speak about the things touching the King,
the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and perhaps testify in our lives
of the things that God has spoken to us and encouraged us. And you see these things can
be very encouraging to others. We should never fail to remember
that great statement, and those that fear the Lord spoke often
one to another, not just perhaps occasionally. But the Word tells
us often, and I'm sure I don't need to explain what that means,
it means what it says. And if we are of the Church of
God, then really our greatest joy and our greatest comfort
should be to speak of the things of God and to be able to confirm
these words in our lives. There it felt not ought of any
good thing. Sometimes we don't analyze good
things. Sometimes we fail to appreciate
what good things are. Sometimes they may seem to us
bad things. But you see, God brings things
into our lives to direct us to himself and sometimes those may
appear to be bad things but in reality they are good things
because anything really that directs us to the Saviour must
be good in whatever way that may be and so we have this statement
here they are failed not ought of any good thing which the Lord
has spoken unto the house of Israel, all came to pass. And then reverting to what I
was saying about the word of God and the wonderful accounts
it has with regards to the saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. We can
trace out the many promises, which of course are written.
We spoke about those who would have to verbalise it initially,
but then Under the providence of God, Moses was able to write
those first five books and how many promises there are there.
And then many others contributed to the Old Testament. And they were directed by the
Spirit to write things which perhaps seemed very strange.
Perhaps they didn't understand really what the Spirit was directing
them to write. But what it was, was directing
them to write those things which led to the Saviour, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And to therefore ponder such
things, to think then that the Messiah would come. Israel realised
the necessity of the Saviour of sinners coming into this world. When it would be, they didn't
know. How it would be, they knew partly,
because they knew where the Lord would come. They knew where he
would be born. And therefore, they waited and
they watched. Not all waited and watched, but
there were some that were waiting and watching for the birth of
the Saviour. And of course, when it did come,
it was a wonderfully good thing. But it wasn't really in the way
they anticipated. People thought the Saviour would
come as a glorious, natural king. He did come as a king. In fact, he came as the King
of Kings. But he came in a very humble way. We might say the
most humble way, so that he could be aligned with the poorest person. It's wonderful, isn't it, to
meditate on that. And we see there a great and
glorious love of God that come right down to the poorest, lowest
person. What submission there was in
the great God to submit himself to such a humble birth. Well, surely that glorifies the
name of our God. And it's good not to only think
upon the birth of the Lord Jesus, of what we term Christmastime.
There's a tendency to concentrate at Christmas, nothing wrong in
that, but to almost forget throughout the rest of the year the wonder
of the birth of the Saviour. And this wonderful truth coming
to pass, that fell not out of any good thing which the Lord
has spoken unto the house of Israel, all came to pass. and the birth of the Saviour
came to pass. We rejoice, I hope we do, in
reading of the birth of the Saviour. And especially perhaps reading
of that wonderful account when the shepherds were looking after
their sheep and the heavenly host appeared to give them that
good news and direct them to Bethlehem to go and see the child
Jesus. And again we see there the love
of God in so clearly giving us the information, the confirmation
that this was indeed the Saviour of the world. And again confirmed
in the Old Testament in so many ways. So may we be strengthened
and encouraged to know therefore that those glorious prophecies
came to pass, all came to pass. As we are able to search out
and find these great truths, how comforting it should be to
us today in our little lives, to realise that the Lord is mindful
of each of his people. We're not cast off, we're not
forgotten, but we're loved of our God. how humbling that is
to realise we as unworthy sinners of the earth are loved by Almighty
God. And so to think this is so true,
the Lord Jesus came into this sinful world and was born in
Bethlehem and put in that manger and lived indeed that life up
to, he was 30 years of age, really hidden away, just apart from
that one occasion when he was in the temple speaking to the
elders when he was 12 years of age. Otherwise he lived a quiet
and a silent life, but that didn't diminish from the fact that this
world, this word is true, that fell not ought of any good thing
which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel, all came
to pass. And therefore in due time, the
Lord Jesus was revealed. And again, what a wonderful occurrence
that was. When John the Baptist was blessed
with that living faith to preach and to say, behold, the Lamb
of God that taketh away the sin of the world. What was it? Sure,
it was revelation by the Holy Spirit, revelation that here
indeed was the Son of God and he come to be baptized of John. And John, of course, said, I
have need to be baptized of thee. The Lord told him, suffer it
to be so now. So the Lord Jesus was baptized
in Jordan and again sets before us a wonderful example. And as we often refer to, a wonderful
depth in that simple and yet important demonstration of God's
love in pointing us to see that Christ went down into the water
and was submerged in the water. Indeed, he was submerged by the
sins of his church. He carried them. But he didn't
stay there. He rose up from the water. He
rose up a conqueror. And as we know, that's the evidence
of believer's baptism. It's not something haphazard.
It's something ordained by Almighty God, ordained to prove to us
the glorious truth of the Gospel. Again, let's pass over it as
something which is irrelevant from a spiritual perspective. But meditate upon it and see
the wonderful depth that is contained in it. Because what does it do? What did it do? It brought honour
and glory to Almighty God. The Lord God, the Father said,
this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. My friends,
you and I today are privileged to be able to take up our cross
and to follow our blessed Saviour who was despised and rejected
of men. But of course, that was really
the beginning of His revealed life on this earth. For those
three years, He went about doing good. He went about preaching
the Gospel so clearly and so powerfully. There was no way
that people could not recognise that here was the Son of God. But in reality, how few. How
few were blessed with that heart to believe, to believe all came
to pass. Well, my friends, tonight, what
a blessing for us if God has given us faith to believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ, to believe that he did come into this world. He was born in those humble circumstances. He didn't live that perfect life.
He was revealed as the Son of God and acknowledged by His Father. He was baptized and He did His
Father's will for those three years. He went about doing good
until the appointed time. The appointed time had come when
He was to be offered up. Offered up. not as all those
sacrifices which have been offered up all through the years. And
they all typified the Lord Jesus Christ dying and giving his life. And then there came that great
and solemn, glorious day that it was when Christ himself submitted
himself to die that death upon that cross at Calvary. What a death it was. And again,
not an easy death. The most painful death. So again,
no one can say, well of course, he didn't suffer very much, he
had an easy death. The very opposite. He did suffer. The hymn writer has it right.
All incarnate God could bear with strength enough and none
to spare. Ponder that, think about it.
It's great truth in that. None to spare. He suffered. All incarnate God could bear. But he did. Blessed be God, he
did. All came to pass. all came to pass. That which
had been spoken of throughout the Old Testament. If you only
have to perhaps, if you want absolute proof, you only have
to read one chapter. There's many, many chapters.
But you can look at the 53rd chapter of Isaiah and how beautifully
Isaiah was blessed with that view to write those things about
the Lord Jesus Christ. in some quite specific detail. And what a glory it is to think
the Lord Jesus Christ walked that path willingly, willingly. Again, never think it was otherwise. He did say, Father, if it be
possible, let this cup pass from me. But then he said, nevertheless,
not my will. but thine be done. Submission
to his Father. And that's a blessing for us
today, in our little lives, to be granted submission to the
will of God our Father. So that we can enter in to these
words, perhaps in not the kind of way that we might have thought
or anticipated, but nonetheless it's true, that fail not ought
of any good thing, which the Lord has spoken unto the house
of Israel, that means unto you and me, all came to pass. Because what it does is this,
it directs us to the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now you see, as the apostle said,
if we suffer with him, we should also reign with him. The other
is, of course, also true. If we don't suffer, then we won't
reign. So we shouldn't be surprised,
therefore, if we do suffer. And, of course, we have the case
of the Apostle Paul when he knew the value of this. Often we don't
seem to appreciate the value of it, but the Apostle knew the
value of it. And he tells us when he wrote
to the church at Philippi, and when he says, but what things
were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless,
and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge
of Christ Jesus my Lord. That's a very simple statement,
isn't it? It's a very powerful statement.
Yea, doubtless, I count all things, Not just the odd thing, all things,
but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus,
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do
countenance but done that I may win Christ and be found in him. That was his great desire, and
that should be our desire, should it not to be found in him? If we're found in him, we shall
reign with him eternally. Not having mine own righteousness,
which is of the Lord, but that which is through the faith of
Christ. Bless God if he gives us faith, faith of Christ. The righteousness which is of
God by faith that I may know him and the power of his resurrection
and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his
death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection
of the dead. In a very few simple words, he
directs us to the wonderful blessing of being with Christ. naturally on this earth, enjoying
that fellowship with the Saviour, and then eternally in glory,
as he says, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. There fell not ought of any good
thing which the Lord has spoken unto the house of Israel. All
came to pass. Well today, what a blessing if
we can praise God He's brought us in some perhaps small way
to know the truth of those gracious words, glorious words they are. Because of course Christ died
upon that cross at Calvary and rose again. Rose again, rose
from the dead, a conqueror. And what a blessing that is for
us. We shall live through him. we shall be united to him. One day, through his mercy and
love toward us, we shall be with Christ, which is far better. What does that mean? All came
to pass. The promises of God fulfilled. His blessings toward us fulfilled. Again, not perhaps in a way that
you and I anticipated, but in that way which brings honour
and glory to Him. You and I won't be able to glory
in our flesh. We won't be able to pat ourselves
on the back and say, well of course, I did that. But we shall
desire to truly lift up the Saviour and to honour and glorify Him
for what He's done in redeeming our soul. and giving us that
good hope through grace that one day we shall be in glory
with the whole Church of God and the Saviour. What a wonderful
prospect that is, to be there and to view then the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit. My friends, may we be blessed
with a little anticipation of what it must be to be there. Because that is that good thing
which the Lord has promised. That failed not ought of any
good thing which the Lord had spoken unto the house of Israel
all came to pass. And so may you and I be able
to look forward to that time when we shall be by the grace
of God with Christ eternally. No more sin, no more sorrow,
no more sadness, but eternal happiness and unity. Nothing to spoil that scene of
bliss and to think that we as unworthy sinners are there because
we are saved by grace. To the glory of God. Amen.