When you hear the word promise versus the word guarantee, do you hear something different? Promise versus guarantee. Do they have, do they carry a different connotation with you? Just think about that for a moment. And I think you'll come to the conclusion that guarantee seems to have a little more thrust to it, a little more oomph to it. It seems to be a little more guaranteed. Well, what makes something a promise? What makes something a guarantee? That's what we're gonna talk about today, because with Jesus, when he makes a promise, or even just a statement, it's a guarantee. But we don't take it that way. What if we were to learn that everything that Jesus said to us is a guarantee? Everything our Heavenly Father says to us is a guarantee. Imagine how that might change your life. That's what we're gonna talk about today. Hi, I'm Sam Hunter. This is 721 Loud, the media arm of 721 Ministries. I'm glad you're with us. Thank you for joining us. And by the way, if you'll hit that subscribe button, you'll get these as soon as they come out on our various media platforms, videos, and podcasts. So hit that subscribe button, and it'll get to you as soon as they come out. 721 ministries, we started it 20 years ago. And what I wanted to show men, it's a men's ministry, were things in the Bible that I didn't think they knew were in there. And over all these years, we've taught the Bible and we've always said, do you realize that Jesus said this? Or do you realize that God said this along the way? And show people things that they may not have even realized were in the scriptures. Or they've seen it, but they've read through it so quickly they never really understood it. They never gave it any time to really understand how it would impact their lives. And so we came up along the way, just sort of organically, with these 721isms. And for instance, we never want anyone to read, believe when they read the scripture. We want you to see trust and surrender because it's not about believing a set of facts. It's not about a mental belief. It's about trusting and surrendering. So every time you read, believe in the scriptures, read, trust and surrender. All right. Well, another one that follows that is desperate and surrender because you won't surrender Until you're desperate again. That doesn't mean you're desperate in the gutter of life. It means your soul is desperate for more. You realize you're spiritually bankrupt without something and you eventually turn to Jesus and you surrender. All right, then the other ones that come along, changed and grateful. That describes someone who has had the Holy Spirit come to live inside and Jesus has become their Savior and then more and more their best friend, changed and grateful. We talk about living in a world of get to versus got to. Get to versus got to. A world where you live with joy power, Over willpower not we always have to have some willpower, but joy power over willpower We talk about it's not about rules. It's about relationship. We talk about it You know, it's not the it's not the Torah meaning the law when you read law in the scripture They were that word is really the Torah and that meant God's teachings and way of life. It's not some wooden restrictive rule It's his way of living We talk about facts over feelings. There's so many things that we have tried to to use, again, they just came along organically, we figured it out as we went, that help us get a framework. When you pray, think of yourself as a child. I don't care how old you are. We're all little children inside. Men are all little boys inside. Women are all little girls inside. You know that, I know that. Just go to your heavenly father like a loving father and sit in his lap. Change the way you pray. Just think in terms of these bigger frameworks. And one other thing about praying is it's more a conversational walk through life with him, talking with him about what we're doing together. That's a Dallas Willard statement. So we came up with these frameworks somewhat by accident, but they work, they help. And over the summer, three words kept ping ponging around in my head. And I said, let's start the fall with looking at these words. The first one is guarantee. The first one is guarantee. And one of the men said to me today, he said, I've read the Bible more than once. I never knew the guarantee was even a word in the scriptures. But there are several places where we are guaranteed something. So guarantee is the first one. Loyalty is the next one. And we'll talk about that next week. Loyalty. As opposed to just strictly serving someone or being obedient to your heavenly father, but doing out of love, but also doing it out of loyalty. And then the third one, which we'll get to in a couple of weeks, is partnership. You see, your heavenly father did not design, he doesn't want this relationship to be a master and a slave. He doesn't want it to be a principal and an employee, the boss. He wants us to be working and living in partnership with him, working together. That may come as a surprise to you, but the scripture supports that. The narrative from Jesus and God both support that, that that's what they want. So let's talk for a minute about that whole idea of guarantee versus promise. Do you hear a difference? And when I kicked that question around with the men's groups, I got responses like, well, you know, when you think about it, a promise sounds like something that you're gonna try to do. A guarantee sounds like something that you, it's done. It's no question. And so I asked him, man, have you ever promised somebody something and not done it? And of course, everyone nodded and yes, everyone raised their hand. I said, have you ever promised someone knowing you weren't gonna do it? Even maybe just in the back of your mind. And everyone, just about everyone said, yeah, surely I've done that one sometime. So what takes, what turns a promise into a guarantee? Who, what about a person, when they make a promise, they can say, I guarantee it. Think about that for a moment. You might say, well, they have the ability to follow through. Okay, that'd be one element. They have the power to follow through. Okay, that'd be another element. Maybe a better word is they have the authority. So when you think about people in this world in which we live, who has the authority to guarantee you something? Would you say the President of the United States, whoever he is, whether you like him or not, does he have the authority? And if you really break it down, you say, yeah, not really. Not really. He or she or whoever cannot guarantee it. What about judges? You see, I did a renovation job for a judge years ago. This was before I got doing this men's ministry. He was a really nice fellow, and we were putting an addition on his house. We weren't really inside the house. So one Friday, I said, Judge, The electrician said he might come over tomorrow and do some work out here in the addition. He won't be inside. Is that okay with you? I didn't want to surprise you. He said, no, I'll be fine. At 10 o'clock the next morning on Saturday morning, I get a call from the judge. He says, your electrician's not here. I said, well, he said he might come. This happened a couple of more times and finally I realized and I said, Judge, I understand now what's going on. When you tell somebody to be somewhere at nine o'clock, they gotta be there or they're going to jail. It's not like that in the construction business. And he got a big laugh out of it. So, you know, really a judge cannot get, the bottom line is no one on this planet in this world can guarantee you anything. They can promise that they'll try and they can be very sincere, but they cannot guarantee it. You think about these ads. Money back guarantee. We guarantee our product, and if it doesn't work, we'll fix it or replace it. Well, then they're not guaranteeing it. If you're guaranteeing something, then you're saying it's not going to break. So guarantee, but now we move over to Jesus. And Jesus makes a lot of statements in the scripture that just appear to be statements. He makes a lot of promises in the scripture. Are they guarantees? I ask you that question. Are they guarantees? And I think if you think about it, yes, they are guarantees, but we don't take them that way. We take them as his promises or his statements, but a guarantee from Jesus God Almighty. Think about how that would change your life. If you started to take everything he said as a guarantee, it would change everything. So let's just, let's look at a couple of scripture about guarantees. There's many more I could have chosen from, but I'm going to start with a scripture in Romans. Romans 4, 16, therefore the promise comes by faith, trust, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring, not only to those who are of the law, that'd be the Jews, but also to those who have the trust, the faith of Abraham, that'd be the Gentiles. But let's go back to this. So that it, therefore the promise comes by faith, so that it may be grace and may be guaranteed. So think about that for a minute. What is it about grace that guarantees it? What is it about grace that guarantees it? Because see, if it's about performance, grace is unmerited favor. It's something you cannot earn. You don't deserve it. It's unmerited favor. It's a gift. If there's any part of it that has to do with your performance, then it can't be guaranteed. you sure are surely cannot guarantee you that i'm going to perform at any level not even though the the most casual of things certainly not that i'm never gonna send them to do everything the right way even with my own family the people i love i'm not gonna i cannot guarantee anything it's it it's a guarantee because it's great it's his gift to us otherwise it cannot be guaranteed but here we have it it is guaranteed The next passage comes from Ephesians 1. When I was first born again, I went through a 12-week, turned out to be a 16-week, one-on-one discipleship, and I had a scripture passage to memorize every week. Then James Orders, who was taking me through it, said, I want you to memorize the entire first chapter of Ephesians, which was a bear. But it always stuck with me, this one statement in here, which I want us to see now. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, when you believed, when you trusted and surrendered, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. Now, let me just stop for a minute and talk about the word seal. That's not just a word he throws in there. It's not just some word picture. A seal in that context and that culture was something that was put on a document. It was put on a physical element. You remember when Jesus was put in the tomb and the Jews went to Pilate and said, we think his disciples are going to try to steal. And so when they rolled the stone over, they put a seal on it. If the emperor sent out a decree and it had his seal on it, or he sent it to another governor somewhere in his empire, you better not break that seal unless you're the one who is supposed to open it. So when he puts this word seal in, he's not just throwing in a word, he's saying something that is unbreakable from someone who has ultimate authority. Marked in here with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession to the praise of His glory. Guaranteeing the Holy Spirit is a seal a deposit a guarantee for what's coming next The Holy Spirit dwelling in you is really God's way of saying you're sealed. You're mine It's a done deal. I guarantee it now All of us have had in all likelihood have had some real estate transactions in our lives where you submit a contract and you put an earnest money deposit down and Now that owner's money deposit is typically contingent on getting financing, maybe selling your own house, getting an inspection, but there's typically contingencies, and if the deal doesn't go through, you get the money back. Now, I did a lot of real estate in my life. I did some really smart things. I did some really dumb things. Most of it was just dumb luck or the Lord looking after me when I didn't even know him as my real Lord. But what I learned is there is price and there's terms. There's price and there's terms. So if I'm going to submit a contract and I feel like I can do it, I'm getting ready to explain, I give them the contract and I say that deposit goes hard the moment we sign this contract. In other words, it's yours. There's no contingencies. I'm so confident that I'm ready to buy this house. I don't need to worry about financing. I don't need to worry about getting any inspection because I used to be in the inspection business. I used to be in the construction business. I've looked at it. I'm giving you a guarantee. The earnest money is not earnest money. It's a deposit guaranteeing that I intend to do this. Now, if you receive a contract like that, wouldn't that influence you? to look favorably on the price. Maybe the price isn't what you wanted, but this person is giving you a hard deposit. He's giving you money and he's saying there are no contingencies. That's the kind of contract you would say, oh, I might take a little less with those terms. Well, that's a real life thing that I've dealt with many times over my career, but imagine your Heavenly Father. He's giving you a hard money deposit. It's the Holy Spirit. He's active and immediately in your heart, and it's sealed, and there are no contingencies. And even better, there are no inspections. He's not coming along and saying, well, I'm taking my money back because you didn't perform. I inspected you, and you failed the inspection. There's none of that. It's guaranteed. Just think about that for a moment, this whole idea of guaranteeing something. In sports, and I did this with the men's groups. Is there a sports figure who's ever guaranteed anything? And everyone, every man raised his hand and said, Joe Namath. Back in the old days, Joe Namath guaranteed that his team, the New York Jets, would beat the Baltimore Colts. And they did. But that was just a prank. I mean, he just guaranteed it. He couldn't guarantee that game. But we all think about these terms of guaranteeing. I want you to settle in on this idea of what does it mean if it's a guarantee? Because when Jesus says something, And we take it as a guarantee. Let me read from Matthew 28. And I'm just going to read from my own Bible here. And this is very familiar. And you will, of course, know what I'm getting ready to read from. But I want you to listen to the words very closely. Then Jesus came to them and said, all authority. Remember, we used that word earlier. Who can guarantee something? Someone with the authority to do it. And the power, but the authority. All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit and Teaching them to obey everything. I've commanded you and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age Surely I am with you always Even to the very end of the age Does that sound like a promise? Or does that sound like a guarantee? I'm going with the guarantee side. And I have decided, and I'm already starting to try to implement this in my own life. I'm learning this just as we're talking about it, to look at His words as a guarantee. When we read in Romans 8, 28, God is going to bring good out of every situation for those of us who are His children and are seeking to live with Him and bringing Him into the equations. If you're doing it on your own, you're on your own. But if you're bringing him into it and you're working with him and you're seeking him, he is guaranteeing you that he's going to bring good. It may not be what you think. But I can promise you, I can guarantee you, as a matter of fact, you'll always look back and say it was the best resolution. It was the best solution for any situation. I'm thanking you now, because I know that sooner or later I will be thanking you, because you guaranteed me that you'll bring good out of it. Just think about those words, how it's gonna change the way you live, with a guarantee. I wanna read another scripture from John, and I'll read it again out of my own Bibles. John 14, and Jesus says, Verse 15, if you love me, you will obey what I command, and I will ask the Father, and He will give you another counselor to be with you forever. Now that really sounds like a guarantee. You know, in the Older Testament, the Holy Spirit was given and taken back from God to provide some purpose that He had. He wanted to accomplish something, so He would give the Holy Spirit, and He would take the Holy Spirit back. So no one would have thought that forever, guaranteed, The counselor who will be with you forever, the spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you will know him. And here's verse 20. On that day, which is your born again day, the day you're saved, you will realize that I am in my father, and you are in me, and I am in you. You will know absolutely. that I'm in the Father, the Father's in me, and I'm in you. And that's how the guarantee can be a guarantee. He's not just with us. See, remember when Jesus walked with his disciples for three years, and on his last night, he said, now I'm gonna send the Holy Spirit, and you're better off with the Holy Spirit. You're better off with the Holy Spirit, because he's gonna be in you, not just with you. With you, kinda falls on the promise side. In you, falls on the guarantee side. And we came up with a poster that illustrates this. And if you're just listening to this on a podcast, I'm going to explain it to you. If you're watching this visually, we have the Trinity. The Trinity is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Initially, in the first phase of this whole interaction with mankind, God the Father leads the Trinity to come to the tabernacle first in the wilderness, and then to the temple, and the temple is where heaven and earth meet, and man goes to the temple to be with God. Man goes to the temple to be with God. But to do that, there had to be a sacrifice. That's why you had this elaborate sacrificial system. So man goes to the temple to be with God through a sacrifice. Then we have this back to the Trinity. We've got God the Father, God the Son. Jesus leaves the Trinity. He comes out of the temple to be with man. So now it's God to be with man. There had to be a sacrifice, and Jesus was the sacrifice. But then, the dispensation which we live now, the Holy Spirit has left the Trinity, God to be in man, God to be in man, not with man, God to be in man, that's the seal, that's the guarantee that we can have, but there still had to be a death. There had to be a sacrifice, and the sacrifice is us. The sacrifice is self. So it's the guarantee, it's a seal, it's a deposit, guaranteeing our inheritance because the Holy Spirit's in us. Now I wanna just move this along a little bit more before we finish. The three big words that we see in Paul's writings, the ones that you hear in most every wedding, 1 Corinthians 13, 13, and now these three remain. Faith, hope, and love, and love being the greatest. You remember that? Faith, hope, and love. Well, that's not by accident. Those three words pop up in several different places in Scripture, and I want to take just a moment to kind of put a little extra on those, a little color commentary. When you see faith, which I think is an ambiguous term, I want you to think in terms of trust. They may be the same thing in your mind, but trust seems to me to have more traction. When you see hope, hope in the biblical language is confident expectation. That's what it means. It's not wishful thinking. It's not, gosh, maybe this will happen or maybe it won't. Hope means confident expectation. And then love, I want you to think more in terms of loyalty. Replacing love but love and loyalty and we see these three words in first Thessalonians chapter 1 verse 3 And I want you to pay attention to this because it's really an a great passage to To give us exactly what these three words mean we remember before our God and father your work produced by faith trust and Your labor prompted by love and loyalty and your endurance inspired by hope, confident expectation in our Lord Jesus Christ. Your work prompted by faith, by trust. Your labor, excuse me, produced by faith, trust. Your labor prompted by love and loyalty. Do you hear a difference between work and labor? Because we've got two different uses here. Work produced by trust. Your labor prompted by love and loyalty. Work seems to be just what you do. Labor is something that's harder. I have to labor at something. That just sounds like it takes more effort, more dedication, more endurance, more confidence, more confident expectation to labor. I guess that's where the term labor of love came from. It's a labor of love. And we do it because we have love and we have loyalty. And then, your endurance inspired by confident expectation in our Lord Jesus Christ. You know, when you read Revelation, the letters at the beginning of Revelation to the seven churches, each one of them, I'm pretty sure each one of them says, now to him who overcomes. To him who overcomes will be these blessings that are outlined. To him who overcomes, over and over. And we see the word endurance, we see the word perseverance over and over in the scriptures. And I started thinking, why is that? Why are we emphasizing overcome, overcome, overcome so much? And I finally realized, because it's so hard to do. It's so hard to stay the course, to endure, to persevere, to overcome. This world, our fleshly selves, it's so hard to do it. But it's not as hard if you think in terms of get to versus got to, or joy power versus willpower, changed and grateful, trust and surrender. Yes, it's very hard if you're trying to do it all yourself, if you're not living in the grace that guarantees your inheritance. So overcoming and persevering and enduring comes from having that confident expectation in our Lord Jesus. You may have heard of Brother Lawrence. He wrote a little book, or a little book was written, put together about him, called Practicing the Presence of God. It's a famous little thing. He was a monk way back in the Middle Ages. But he, in this little book, he makes this observation, and it's so rich that I just want to share it with you, that all things are possible to him who believes, that they are less difficult to him who hopes, And they are more easy for him who loves, and still more easy for him who perseveres in the practice of the above three virtues. Let me read it again. That all things are possible for him who believes, that they are less difficult to him who hopes, they are more easy for him who loves, and still more easy for him who perseveres in the practice of the above three virtues. So now let's add our own words in here. That all things are possible to him who trusts, that they are less difficult to him who has confident expectation, they are more easy for him who loves with loyalty, and still more easy for him who perseveres, who endures, who overcomes, perseveres in the practice of the above three virtues. Isn't that beautiful? It captures exactly what we're talking about. Brother Lawrence gets this, faith, hope, love, trust, confident expectation, love and loyalty. These words matter. And if we'll start to think in terms of guarantee, guarantee gives me confident expectation, confidence, more than just confidence, confident expectation. When you hear the word confident, Or you hear the word confident expectation. Here I'm asking the same question again. Do you hear something different? Confidence versus confident expectation. And I think you'll come to the conclusion that confidence is something that you have, that you have confidence in someone, but confident expectation takes it to another level. I expect that person to respond. I expect that person to do what they say they're going to do. I expect a guarantee when I have confident expectation. And I have been with men in the last two or three years who had big meetings coming up where it might alter the course of their professional lives. Big meetings, big conversations, whatever, they're getting ready to come up, and I said, well, let's pray about it, and let's ask the Holy Spirit. And let's tell the Holy Spirit we expect Him to show up. We're not asking, we expect Him to show up. Because we have confident expectation. We're not saying we expect him to do anything in any particular way, because we don't know what the best way is. We think we do. We know what we want it to happen. But we're going to say we expect you to show up, to move in my heart, to move in his heart, to move in the situation, to show us with energy, clarity, and creativity what it is, the best solution, the best path forward. We expect you to show up, Holy Spirit. That's not being arrogant. That's following the scripture. When I was first cutting my teeth on scripture and learning after I was born again at 38, Charles Stanley, older guy down in Charleston, excuse me, in Atlanta, wonderful old preacher, Andy Stanley's father. I remember him saying one time, you call God on his promises. He's a big guy. Tell him you expect him to come through with his promises. Again, not specifically what we want, but you expect him to. Confident expectation. Hope is not wishful thinking. Guarantees lead to confident expectation. And there's one passage that I love so much because it just captures this. It's Romans 15, 13. And I want to share it with you. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Let's read this our way. May the God of confident expectation, think about that, isn't that beautiful? May the God of confident expectation fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, because if you don't trust in him, you will not be filled with joy and peace, so that you may overflow with confident expectation by the power of the Holy Spirit. Think about that for a moment. May the God of confident expectation, that's the God we serve, that's the Heavenly Father we serve, He guarantees what He's saying. May the God who guarantees so that we may have confident expectation fill you with all joy and peace. Now, you know, oftentimes when we talk about God fulfilling his promises, someone will say, well, it might not be in this life that you see it. You know, these are eternal promises. It might not be in this life, but we'll always see it later. And I say, well, that's true. That's an accurate statement. But it's been my experience that we always do see it, especially when we have eyes to see. And we will always come back and say, you moved in just the right way. And if in any situation you're in, and you may be in a ditch right now, you may be upside down in life, and then nothing's changed, and it's hurting. If you were to learn to live with such joy and peace because of your confident expectation and His guarantees, You were filled to the point of joy, so much so of joy and peace, that you overflowed with everyone in your life and everyone around you. Would that be an answer to prayer? Because if you've ever lived with joy and peace, full on joy and peace, You know, there's no other way to live. There's nothing in this world that comes close to being filled with joy and peace, especially to the point of overflowing. There's nothing. And when you lose it, because you lost it, you turned aside and stopped trusting, you lost your confident expectation, you forgot the fact that he guarantees these promises, then you know you've lost something invaluable. So if you get joy and peace and you're overflowing with it, there's no promise better. What I have wanted to do today was just talk about Guarantee to get you thinking in terms of guarantee. It's a guarantee everything you read in the scriptures a guarantee It's a promise that becomes a guarantee because the the person who gave you that your Heavenly Father Jesus has the authority to make that because he is in you now and He has sealed you with a deposit, and it's hard money right away, and there are no inspections, and there are no contingencies. He sealed you with a promise, with a guarantee. And now I'll just finish with this passage in Hebrew, where we see that we now, because we have a priest who's gone through all the temptations and the sufferings that we have, we have a priest who enables us to approach the throne of grace with confidence. Hebrews 4. Approach the throne of grace with confidence. That is guaranteeing you that you can walk right up to the throne of God Almighty. El Shaddai, creator of the world. You can walk up to that throne with confidence. Read about that throne in Revelation 4 and 5. There's more fireworks going on than you can possibly imagine. And you can walk up to that throne with confidence because it is a throne of grace, guaranteed, not a throne of performance. I encourage you, as we finish, to think in terms of a guarantee and confident expectation. And that will lead us to next week when we talk about the love and the loyalty that is engendered because of the guarantees and the confident expectation. There's more. You know it. Deep inside, you know it. Come and find it with Jesus.