Promises of God

Imagine the thrill of opening your mailbox and finding a crisp, white envelope waiting for you. The anticipation builds as you tear it open, as you discover a check nestled inside. It's more than just a piece of paper; it's a tangible promise that money is waiting you when you cash it. The check might be from an employer, a tax refund, or an unexpected birthday gift from a grandparent.

While writing checks may be less popular than it used to be, 54% of Americans still wrote a check in the past year. In fact, according to a recent survey by GOBankingRates, 17% of Americans are still writing checks on a monthly basis — and 23% of Gen X Americans are still sending checks on a monthly basis. In 2021 the Federal Reserve reported $27.23 trillion in checks were written.

Now suppose in the busyness of life you forgot about the check or misplaced it, only to find it months later. You begin to wonder, is this thing still any good? If grandma had sent cash, there would be no question, since cash is always valuable. But, how long is a check good for? The check was a promise of cash, but is the promise still any good?

Most old checks aren't valid forever. A personal check is generally good for at least six months. If you don't deposit a check right away, you may not receive the money even if your bank agrees to accept the check. That's because the account the check was drawn on may have been closed or not have insufficient funds to back the check.

The bottom line is that cashing a check promptly ensures that you can access the funds without issues, such as the check bouncing or having it go stale.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This would make a good introduction to a sermon on the enduring promises of God which never go out of date, or cannot be redeemed because of insufficient funds or the account being closed. God will never refuse to honor his promises (Rom. 9:6-8, 2 Cor. 1:20). But it is a good idea to claim God’s promises promptly to begin enjoying his gift to you.

Kenyon Wilson, a professor at the University of Tennessee, wanted to test whether any of his students fully read the syllabus for his music seminar. Of the more than 70 students enrolled in the class, none apparently did. Wilson said he knows this because on the second page of the three-page syllabus he included the location and combination to a locker, inside of which was a $50 cash prize. But when the semester ended on December 8, students went home and the cash was unclaimed. Wilson wrote on Facebook “My semester-long experiment has come to an end. Today I retrieved the unclaimed treasure.”

Wilson said he wanted to include the hidden clues to brighten up the semester during the pandemic. “Teaching in a pandemic, I’m trying to do creative things and, you know, make it interesting. The syllabus is a really dry document, but I thought if my students are reading it, I might as well reward them.”

Tanner Swoyer, a senior studying instrumental music education, said that he felt “pretty dumb, pretty stupid” when he saw the professor’s post about the money in the locker.

Wilson said he was not disappointed with his students. When he was a student, he most likely would have also missed the clues, he said. “We read the parts that we deem important. You know, what’s the attendance policy? What are the things I need to do to pass this class? And then there’s other stuff. On the first day of the semester I pointed out: ‘Hey, there are some new things in the syllabus. Make sure you, you know, make sure you catch them,’ and then no one did.”

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Alertness; Bible reading; Scripture – Believers need to read the Word of God with careful attention because there are many hidden riches to be discovered; 2) Prayer; Promises of God – God has given us very great and precious promises in his Word which we can claim by faith through prayer (2 Pet. 1:4).

A tourist in Las Vegas hit the jackpot on a slot machine, but he was never informed due to a malfunction in the machine, according to gaming officials. Now after an exhaustive search, the Nevada Gaming Control Board says they have identified the winner of the nearly $230,000 prize.

A man, later identified by officials as Robert Taylor, played a slot machine at Treasure Island Hotel and Casino. Due to a communications error, according to gaming officials, the slot machine malfunctioned and didn't notify Taylor or casino personnel that he was a winner. By the time the error was noticed, casino personnel were unable to identify the man, who was from out of state. The gaming board took on an exhaustive search to make sure the man would be awarded his prize.

To identify the winner, gaming officials combed through hours of surveillance videos from several casinos, interviewed witnesses, sifted through electronic purchase records, and even analyzed ride share data provided by the Nevada Transportation Authority and a rideshare company. The jackpot winner was determined to be Taylor, a tourist from Arizona.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We too are the inheritors of a great wealth, the Kingdom of God, but we go through life living unaware. How would it change the way we live today if we truly understand the vast riches of tomorrow?

Life on Earth requires a lot of “fine tuning.” Our planet is just the right distance from the Sun to allow freezing and melting, and the planetary axis tilted just so for seasons. There is a moon for tides to circulate and cleanse shores and oceans, an atmosphere to distribute heat (otherwise the sun-side would cook as the night-side froze), and a magnetic field that contributes to our protection from harmful solar radiation.

That all these needs were met (and many more) is all a big (coincidence) for evolutionists – we just lucked out and got just what we needed.

But we didn’t need rainbows. And yet, as astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez recently noted, we’re on the only planet in the Solar System to get them. What’s needed for a rainbow is:

Suspended water droplets in the atmosphere and the direct sunlight that results from the sun being between the horizon and 42 degrees altitude. This typically occurs just after a thunderstorm has passed and small droplets are still in the atmosphere, and the sky is clearing in front of the sun. Seems like a simple setup. This must be a common phenomenon in the cosmos, right?

But it isn’t so simple. Our moon doesn’t have the atmosphere. Mars doesn’t have the moisture. Venus has too thick an atmosphere and as we head further out, the other planets don’t have liquid water. So, the only planet to have rainbows is the only one with people on it to see them. To evolutionists that’s just one more (coincidence). To God’s people, just another example of his love and care. It’s as if someone has been trying to get our attention with a pretty shiny object writ large across the sky, saying, “Look here. ... This is important!” “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Gen. 9:13).

“Don’t worry, be happy,” is more than just a song lyric. A growing body of evidence supports an association between optimism and healthy aging. A new study has found that being more optimistic appears to promote emotional well-being.

Studies have increasingly supported the idea of optimism as a resource that may promote good health and longevity. An 11-year study measured the optimism and pessimism of 2,267 men and women over 52 as they aged and found that those who died from coronary heart disease were more pessimistic than average. A Harvard study looking at nearly 7,000 older adults counted the most optimistic people as having a 73% reduced risk of heart failure over the follow-up period.

One researcher said, “Stress is known to have a negative impact on our health. So, by looking at whether optimistic people handle day-to-day stressors differently, our findings add to how optimism may promote good health.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God tells us that we will have negative, sometimes devastating, experiences in life (John 16:33). However, Scripture also promises that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38), that trouble is not random but refines us spiritually (2 Cor. 7:10; 1 Pet. 1:7), and that the peace of God can guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:4).

To illustrate that God’s people are a trusting people, pastor John Onwuchekwa tells about watching the 2021 NCAA Men’s basketball championship game, between Baylor and Gonzaga:

I was watching the game intently, texting my friends as I watched. There came a time when [Baylor] took out one of its star players. And Gonzaga started to make this run. And I was infuriated. I was in the group chat saying, “I can’t believe that they did that. Things are gonna turn out bad.” And my friend said, “What are you talking about? He’s back in.” And I realized there was a lag in my internet connection.

As the game went on, the lag started to get worse. The announcer’s voice would say, “And he made the shot.” (But on my screen) the guy would be dribbling. And then he would shoot it and the shot went in. And I realized, oh, there’s a lag in my connection. I was so anxious about really wanting us to win that when I discovered there was a lag in my connection, I didn’t log on to fix it, I just let it stay there.

Do you know why? Because I trusted the announcer’s voice. I didn’t think that he was going to lie. I know that his word proceeded, what would happen. So, I let him speak. And I waited. I didn’t worry. I celebrated when he spoke, not when I saw what took place.

Possible Preaching Angle:

I want you to know that because of the broken world that we live in there is a lag in your connection. We’re going to have to wait. But we mustn’t worry. You can trust God’s Word. He lets us know what is going to happen before it happens. He’s never let us down. And he never will.

NASA’s Perseverance rover was launched on July 30, 2020 and landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Its mission was to seek for signs of ancient life and collect samples of rock for a possible return to Earth.

It’s only reasonable to think that all the components of NASA’s Perseverance rover are new. After all, it is the successor to the Curiosity rover, and it was only launched in 2020. And so, it would be a surprise to find out that the Perseverance’s brain is a piece of technology from the late 90s. That’s right. A processor released by IBM and Motorola over two decades ago, in 1997, serves as the brain of the Perseverance rover. The question is, why?

The craft's developers were more interested in reliability than sheer power. Their solution was a G3 processor used in Apple's Macintosh starting in 1998. Apple veterans remember the G3 fondly. It smoked older Macs with a processor operating speed that topped out at a screaming 266 megahertz (MHz). Or so we thought at the time. Today's processors leave the G3 in the dust. For example, the processor in an Apple iPhone 12 runs at 3 GigaHertz (GHz).

Possible Preaching Angle:

What is old is not necessarily outdated and it can be more reliable than what is newer. This is certainly true of the Word of God. "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away" (Matt 24:35). "Your word, O LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the heavens" (Ps. 119:89).

Stefan Thomas, a programmer in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth about $220 million. The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin.

The problem is that years ago Mr. Thomas lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations—to no avail. Thomas said, “I would just lay in bed and think about it. Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”

Bitcoin has made a lot of its holders very rich in a short time. But the cryptocurrency’s unusual nature has also meant that many people are locked out of their Bitcoin fortunes as a result of lost or forgotten keys. They have been forced to watch, helpless, as the price has risen and fallen sharply, unable to cash in on their digital wealth.

Of the existing 18.5 million Bitcoin, around 20 percent—currently worth around $140 billion—appear to be in lost or stranded wallets. Brad Yasar has put his hard drives, containing millions of dollars in Bitcoin, in vacuum-sealed bags out of sight. He said, “I don’t want to be reminded every day … of what I lost.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This sad story is in sharp contrast with the security of our inheritance that is guaranteed in heaven. “An inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved in heaven for you” (1 Pet. 1:4).

During the hardest moments of a particularly difficult year, Bible searches soared online, and a record number of people turned to Scripture for passages addressing fear, healing, and justice. The popular YouVersion Bible App saw searches increase by 80 percent in 2020, totaling nearly 600 million worldwide.

Isaiah’s assurance to “do not fear,” was the Bible App’s top verse globally this year, also ranked as the No. 1 verse in the US, India, South Africa, the Netherlands, and the Philippines. In Ghana, the top verse was Philippians 4:8 (“Do not be anxious …”), and in Kenya, Romans 8:28 (“in all things, God works for the good …”).

YouVersion founder Bobby Gruenewald said, “Through every hardship, people continue to seek God and turn to the Bible for strength, peace, and hope. While 2020 is a year so many say they’d like to forget, we see it as a year to remember how God used the Bible App to help so many people who are searching for answers.”

Overall, the app tracked 43.6 billion chapters of the Bible read in 2020, with half a billion verses shared, its highest on record.

Like many of her generation in the early nineties, Stella Wedell once made a mixtape to take with her on vacation to Spain. And like many 12-year-olds, Stella lost track of the cassette during her various adventures in the beaches of Mallorca and Costa Brava. Thus, Wedell was shocked and amazed to find it --more than two decades later--in a Stockholm art exhibit.

The tape had been recovered by UK-based artist Mandy Barker after it was found washed up on Fuertaventura, a different Spanish beach island. Barker let it dry in a windowsill for more than a year, then eventually took it to an audio restoration specialist, who reported listening to several of the songs.

Barker’s exhibition, “Sea of Artefacts,” is part of her broader work exploring plastic pollutants in oceans and seas, of which the mixtape was one notable example. Barker said, “The songs at the start were damaged. But further in the songs were as clear as they would be today. It shows how long plastic can exist in the sea.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God's Word never fades or expires, no matter how long it's been. Some may not have opened God’s Word for years, but we can always turn to God's Word for what we need.

Be sure to read the fine print. We’ve all heard it, but how many people do it? At least one and it just netted her an easy $10,000. St. Petersburg-based company Squaremouth hid the instructions for claiming the prize in the document for every travel insurance policy it sold.

The company planned to run the contest for an entire year. They thought it unlikely that anyone would notice the section titled “pays to read” on page seven of the nearly 4,000-word document. But they didn’t count on high school teacher Donelan Andrews. The self-described “nerd” who said she always reads the terms, whether it’s a digital software user agreement, or a travel insurance policy.

Andrews printed out her policy and sat down to read it right away. Soon she came across a section that said, “(This is) a contest that rewards the individual who reads their policy information from start to finish. If you are … the first to contact us, you may be awarded the Pays to Read contest Grand Prize of ten thousand dollars.”

Andrews wrote to the company immediately. She got a call back the next day to let her know she’d won the $10,000. The contest was only 23 hours into its yearlong run. “The main reason I always do it is that (in college) I majored in consumer economics,” she said. “So, it’s always been a passion of mine to be consumer aware.”

The company estimates only about 1 percent of its customers read their policies. Andrews, who is soon to retire, said she plans to use the prize money to fund a trip to Scotland for her 35th wedding anniversary.

Possible Preaching Angles: 1) Alertness; Bible reading; Scripture – Believers need to read the Word of God with the same careful attention because there are many hidden riches to be discovered; 2) Prayer; Promises of God – God has given us very great and precious promises which we can claim by faith through prayer (2 Peter 1:4).

Clark Cothern, in a sermon titled “Joyfully Rescued,” talks about the inheritance promised by God to his children:

Mom kept saying, “After I’m gone, keep your eyes out for the gold.” My sister and I chalked this admonition up to a little memory loss. But, just in case, we kept our eyes open. As we sorted through Mom’s things shortly after she went to heaven. We looked under drawers, behind cabinets; anywhere we thought she might have hidden some gold, but we didn’t really expect to find any.

Then I went to Mom’s bank to get the life insurance policy from her safety deposit box. In a tiny privacy room, all by myself, I opened the long narrow metal box. Under the life insurance policy was a brown paper lunch bag. There was a rubber band wrapped around it which crumbled into tiny pieces because it was so old. I opened the crinkly paper sack. There were two, 3-inch long rolls of gold coins. I laughed out loud.

As you can imagine the contents of that lunch bag were extremely valuable. My sister and I used that money to help us prepare Mom’s house for market. That gold was still just as shiny as the day Mom had purchased it over 40 years earlier. And it was a lot more valuable than the day it had been purchased. It had been kept safe for my sister and me, as part of our inheritance. We hadn’t done anything to earn it and yet it now belonged to us.

Peter tells us in 1 Peter 1:4 that our spiritual inheritance, worth far more than gold, will one day be ours. Our inheritance will never decay or fade. It is growing more valuable the older we get. Jesus Christ did all the work for it and then banked it in heaven where he is keeping it safe.

A devastating fire ravaged the building housing Freedom Ministries Church in West Virginia. It was intense enough to justify a joint response from several nearby fire departments. It was so hot that at one point it caused firefighters to back out from the blaze. But after the fire was extinguished, what they found inside shocked them even more.

A post on the department’s Facebook page explains: “In your mind, everything should be burned, ashes. [But] not a single Bible was burned and not a single cross was harmed!! Not a single firefighter was hurt!” Photo evidence showed several compelling photos of Bibles unscathed amidst plenty of charred remains.

"Though the odds were against us, God was not," the firefighters added.

Potential Preaching Angles: God’s Word is the truth, and truth can withstand the attacks against it. Even when it seems like all else will fail, God’s Word remains.