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?
Perhaps you have a bad memory from your school days of dividing into teams to play Dodgeball. And perhaps you, like me, watched as every boy would get chosen, then every girl would get chosen all the way down to you and one other skinny, pimply, unwanted kid.
I want you to know –there will never be that feeling of being picked last given to you by Him. He has chosen you already. He has looked at you and said, “THAT one right there. That one. I want them. I want her in my family. I want him on my team. I want to spend all of eternity with you.”
The early church made this a big deal and a matter of great importance. They didn’t want anyone to feel left out–but more than that–they had a deep desire to meet together and never call the day over. The word the NT used to describe this was “devoted.”
In Acts 2:40 where they devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching, and to meeting together for fellowship. It reminds me of the 1978 song sung by Aussie Olivia Newton-John, “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”
So members of the early church in Acts and after, had church everyday and reminded one another saying, “Hey, on THAT Day when we go to be with Jesus, THAT Day never ends. There won’t be a departing time. There won’t be a night that reminds us we need to separate and go home. There will be no more good-byes! That first hello when you cross over to those shores will be our only memory.
It is THE Day that lasts forever.
But that’s not how this promise from God came.
THE ISRAELITE PEOPLE WERE DOING HORRIBLE THINGS
They not only forgot God and His Word, but they just didn’t care anymore. So much so they were doing things they thought were right but were so wrong, so wrong in fact God speaks to them like this Jeremiah 19:5-6: “Say, ‘Listen to GOD’s Word, you kings of Judah and people of Jerusalem! This is the Message from the GOD-of-the- Angel-Armies, the God of Israel. I’m about to bring doom crashing down on this place. Oh, and will ears ever ring! Doom—because they’ve walked off and left me, and made this place strange by worshiping strange gods, gods never heard of by them, their parents, or the old kings of Judah. Doom—because they have massacred innocent people. Doom—because they’ve built altars to that no-god Baal, and burned their own children alive in the fire as offerings to Baal, an atrocity I never ordered, never so much as hinted at!
The NIV states it this way: They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.
And then God announces, I’m canceling all the good plans Judah and Jerusalem had for this place, and I’ll have them killed by their enemies, stack their dead bodies to be eaten by carrion crows and wild dogs and worse, the people here will turn into cannibals –they’ll be forced to eat their own children. Yes, they’ll eat one another, family and friends alike.’
God repeats this promise four times to his people through Jeremiah - in 32:38: They will be my people and I will be their God. In Jer 24:7 - I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord . They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
Jer 31:33 - “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord . “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
But in Jer 7:23 is the original offer of the promise:
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.
Are the PROMISEs OF GOD TRUE? BEING his people is NOT a light thing, NOT something you can expect will ALWAYS be good –not if you choose to do what is SINFUL!
Did your children always want you to be their parent? To be a good and consistent parent with them? Sometimes they wanted you to bend the rules. Or maybe ALL the time.
GOD is a good, good Father –he will be consistent and punish you compassionately to teach you things are bad, wrong, hurtful, harmful, and defile you. HE WANTS YOU TO BE healed, and whole, and pure!
But the promise is made good, why–Because you deserve it?
NO. Because a holy and righteous God made it.
Israel’s loyalty to God was ONLY made possible by God’s loyalty to them. This is the first and most important “good” that the LORD can do for them. To keep His promise. It really was the only thing they have going for them.
AND it is the only thing we have going for us as well.
Covenants are relational agreements between two parties who make promises to each other and work together to achieve a common goal. In the ancient Near East, entering into covenants was a significant part of life.
God introduced Himself as a promise keeping God to five people.
FIVE KEY STORIES ABOUT OUR COVENANT MAKING AND PROMISE KEEPING GOD. Can you think of one of them?
God chose Noah and after the flood promised to never wipe out the earth with a flood again. God used an ark to save his people. And he gives a sign of his promise by placing his bow in the sky. And God has kept his promise.
God then established his covenant with a man named Abram whose name was changed to Abraham. GOD promised to make him into a great nation that he would use to bless all other nations. Abraham believes God and that faith is the seed of all his descendants. God uses the covenant sign of circumcision as the outward sign of this covenant for Abraham and all his future sons, and God would keep his end of the covenant to keep his descendants alive, in the land, and a blessing to all. And God continues to keep his promise.
Noah. Abraham. And yes, Abraham’s people do become a nation in the land of Egypt, and God raises up Moses to deliver them from bondage. Moses heads up into the mountain to hear from God the conditions of the covenant God now continues with his people through the 10 Commandments as their law, but especially keeping a day of worship each week for the rest of their lives. In this way they will be priests to the rest of the world and a blessing to the other nations by being a light for them. And God yet again keeps his promise.
God does deliver his people out of the slavery of Egypt and into the promised land, but a day comes when being priests is not enough. They want a king. The first king was a disaster, but God chooses David who delivers God’s people out of the hands of their enemies, brings peace to the nation, and seeks to build a Temple as the center of their lives. God covenants with David, promising to make his name great and raise up a descendant from David’s line, whose throne and kingdom will last forever. David and his descendants must remain faithful to God, following the covenantal laws, but David sons’ fail. But God keeps his side of the covenant..
Over and over again, with each failure, there is this super-promise God weaves into His Story with the Israelites. The Super promise was about ONE who is to come to make everything right.
He is spoken about all the way back in Eden to the serpent in the garden when God says, YOU will strike him at his heel, but HE will crush your head.
He will be like Noah and save his people, but greater; Like Abraham through whom all the nations would be blessed, but greater. Like Moses, a prophet and teacher and priest for his people, but greater.
He will be like David, a king and leader, but greater.
This super promise weaves its way all through the OT and into the NT - the One who is to come was called The Messiah. For thousands of years He is spoken of, and for hundreds of years he was looked for from the close of the prophet Malachi in the OT until the opening lines of Matthew in the NT. **Another word for testament is covenant. **
God was going to do something NEW, so He established a NEW covenant through Jesus the one who was super promised. He is the Messiah. - Didn’t I tell you, our God is a promise keeping God!
Noah, then Abraham, Isaac & Jacob and Joseph, and Moses, and Joshua, and David, and Solomon, and Daniel, and Shad/Me/Abed, and all of the prophets, and always with his chosen people of Israel, all the way down to Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, and through His Son, Jesus, and the new Israel beginning with his 12 disciples, and then their disciples, and then their disciples, then their disciples, and then their disciples, all the way to YOU and ME today.
That’s our covenant-making, promise-keeping God! God cannot forget his promise, and he cannot forget YOU.
In Isaiah God says it like this, “See I have engraved you on the palm of my hands.” I cannot forget you. And that promise in Isaiah is fulfilled in the Messiah when he stretched out his hands and took the nails and now has those marks for eternity engraved and etched into the palms of his hands as a reminder of the promise, of the covenant He has made with you.
That is the promise, “I will be their God and they will be my people” or “I am yours and you are mine.”
This is marriage language. And we have a symbol of this that we at Hillsdale practice every month in communion.
Paul says in 1 Cor 11 about the Lord’s Supper, that at the end of the supper Jesus took the cup and said, THIS cup is God’s new covenant sealed with my blood. As often as you do this, do it in remembrance of me.” For Moses, it was the practice of the Sabbath that made his people separate from the world as a part of the Old Covenant.
The practice of Communion is still setting apart the people of God as being a part of the NEW covenant. But there is something in that after the supper cup I want to look at with you.
During the Passover meal, there were FOUR CUPS observed in the Seder with each drinking representing four different promises of God during the meal. And drinking from each cup was a mandatory part of the ceremony. The first cup was called The Sanctification Cup, and traditionally went something like this.
Around 6pm, the beginning of the new Jewish day, dad would come in and get washed up and recline at the table to celebrate the freedom God brought to his people in the deliverance from Egypt. It was at sunset, so there with candles on the table, where the preparations would be laid out for all to see, much like a Thanksgiving table in my aunt and uncle’s basement. The father takes the first cup and mixes wine and water and formally blesses the cup and all sip. The food is then brought out: unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and roasted lamb known as “the body” and some appetizers as well, but the actual meal had not yet started. The focus was on God’s promise, “I will bring you OUT from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”
The 2nd cup is the Cup of Proclamation of Deliverance- The father mixed this cup, did not drink it yet, but would dialog with his son at the table. He would “proclaim” what the Lord did for Israel in Egypt. And the son asks the question–Why is this night different from other nights? The father would answer by quoting from Deuteronomy 26.
This exchange between the father and the son displays how the Passover meal looks back to the Exodus and redemption the Israelites received by God in Egypt and his promise, “I will rescue you from their bondage.”
The central part of the meal was the father explaining the parts of the meal – unleavened bread, bitter herbs, and the lamb and their significance. All would express their thanksgiving to God by singing the Hallel (“praise”) Psalms 113 and 114.
The third cup, The Cup of the Blessing of Redemption, would be mixed and supper officially begins. The family would finally eat the lamb and the unleavened bread after a blessing. Once the meal was completed, the father recited another blessing over the third cup and it was consumed in remembrance of the promise. “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm.” Outstretched arms??
The 4th Cup, the Cup of Praise, was raised to the promise, “I will take you as my people.” Psalms (115-118) are known as the Great Hallel and well known to Jesus and his disciples since they would sing them each year for the Passover. The Hallel Psalms were a “script” for the one offering the “sacrifice of thanksgiving” (Psalm 116). Once Psalm 118 was sung, the fourth cup was drunk. At this point, the meal was finished.
In Luke 22, listen to what Jesus says, When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God.” After taking the cup, he gave thanks and said, “Take this and divide it among you. For I tell you I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.” And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you…”
So did you hear it? Which cup does Jesus drink from and then NOT drink from?
When did Jesus drink from the 4th cup of wine? Some say it was when he was on the cross. While he hung there as the lamb and as the deliverance of God and with outstretched arms, He said, I am thirsty, and a sponge on a pole was dipped into some wine-vinegar and lifted up for him to drink. He sipped, and then he stated, “It is finished.” The Passover meal was officially over. Finished. IF this is the 4th cup for Jesus, it signaled his death, it signaled the Passover was now over and fulfilled in his blood, and it signaled a new covenant and the new kingdom, because he said, he would not drink it again, until the kingdom of God comes! It was the cup of his suffering.
When we take from the Lords Table and receive the elements presented there, it is a remembrance of the promises of God. He is yours and you are his. And when we take, we do it in remembrance of the Messiah. And Paul adds, For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
After the resurrection of Jesus, it is believed the Passover meal was still observed by Christians, but it had new meaning. The 4th cup had its name changed to The Wedding Cup, and became the reminder that Jesus will celebrate with the Church at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
“Let us rejoice and exalt and give Him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure – for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the true words of God.'” AMEN!
