2 - Yours And Mine Series

When was the last time you made a promise? Did you keep it? Perhaps when you were married?

A wife took her husband to counseling and in tears the woman tells the counselor that her husband doesn’t tell her he loves her. The counselor asked the husband, if that is true, and he said, “I told her I loved her on our wedding day and if anything should change I would let her know.” That’s one way to keep your word I suppose.

Did you know our God is a promise keeping God? But before you can be a promise-keeper you have to be a promise-maker.

And there are signs and phrases we use as humans to strengthen the seriousness of what we say, and we have learned those phrases even as children. Do you mean it? Do you …promise? I swear it is true! Do you promise, no, do you pinky promise? All of these are ways of making our normal word, YES, stronger and more solid. We still take oaths and still make vows today –in courts before a judge and in wedding ceremonies in churches.

Our God is a promise keeping God?

1 Cor 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For WE ARE the temple of the living God. As God has said: (1) “I will live with them and walk among them, and

(2) I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and (3) I will receive you.” And, (4) “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”” - ??2 Corinthians? ?6?:?16?-?18? ?NIV??

Our God IS A promise keeping God.

In this 2nd promise, Paul highlights that God made is,

(2) “I will be THEIR God, and THEY will be MY people.”

The “THEIR” is a specific group of people, one selected as opposed to any other group. THEY were God’s CHOSEN people, the Israelites.

God spoke of this promise through the prophet Jeremiah and in 7:23 where God says to Jeremiah - I gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you.

The prophet Ezekiel echoes this in 37:27 where God says - My “dwelling place” (homemaker) will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.

When I was growing up, every Thanksgiving we would drive the country mile around our east corner of our harvested corn field to my Aunt Marie’s and Uncle’s Howard’s home and in their large basement set up for a big family meal together. My dad was #9 of 10 kids, and four of those brothers and sisters were within walking distance from our farm.

But that basement was a place of getting to know extended family, cousins, sometimes your beautiful cousins, and eating great food, playing some card games, exploring the farm and the barn and the haymow, feeding the horses, cows and pigs. We might even go shooting or hunting.

It was a place of belonging. A familiar place. A group of people you knew who you were with. You looked forward to being together. You knew your place and everyone else’s too.

And woe to you if you didn’t come to Thanksgiving dinner. And if your same aged cousins didn’t come, you really missed them. And so it was another year until you might see them again.

Being together as a family is an act of your will–You must chose to be together. You choose to show up. You choose to be at family gatherings. That’s what a family does. It chooses one another over and over again.

Last Sunday’s promise was about God making a home within us both individually and together as a church. This promise is about God making all of us into a family. GOD does this by CHOICE.

But every Thanksgiving Thursday had its Black Friday so it always came to an end. Night would come, we’d give our hugs and say goodbyes and when I was very young my dad would carry me half-asleep to the car or pickup to drive a mile back to our house. Where we’d wait another year to meet again. *Heavy Sigh.

Question. If God was choosing HIS team, would you want to be on it?