God wants us to take Him at His Word. He wants us to hold Him to His promises. As sure as Jesus hung on the cross, so surely God means what He’s said in the Scriptures. And yet, as fallen human beings, trust doesn’t come easy for us. We’re used to people breaking promises. We realize not everyone and everything deserves our confidence, let alone the benefit of the doubt.
In many ways the Bible, and especially the Old Testament, is one big commentary on our human proclivity to want to help God’s promises along and how poorly that inevitably ends. We get nervous clinging to God’s promise. We’re tempted to turn to our works for just a little extra certainty, to give God just a little help bringing his promises to fruition and keeping His Word. This flows not from faith, though, but from unbelief. The inheritance can only come in one way, by law or the promise.
We have God’s promise. He loves when we catch Him in His words, when we hold Him to His promises. Word is bond, and Christ is the Word, who put flesh on all that God had promised His people would happen, who kept His promise all the way to death on the cross and made it absolutely sure and certain by His resurrection. And that’s where our trust belongs. And that needs no help.
You are God’s offspring, the baptized. You have been buried with Christ and raised. You are justified. You are a saint. You have an inheritance. You are and have all this in Him and by His promise and in no other way, because no other way could be certain, could stand the test of time and honest scrutiny. Give thanks that this is how God deals with us and find peace in knowing that whatever God promises is as good as done, always, no matter what, like it or not, believe it or not, although through the preaching of His promise in Word and Sacrament God sees to it that you do believe.