There is a play entitled, THE REAL THING, in which there is a conversation between a husband and a wife. It is one of those trecherous marital conversations and in this particular case, the husband is trying to discover if his wife has been faithful to him.
"Have you ever taken a lover," he asks.
"It doesn’t matter," says the wife.
"Well if it doesn’t matter, why don’t you go ahead and tell me? How many?"
She pauses an electric second and finally turns and says, "Nine."
"Nine?"
"Do you feel betrayed?" she asks.
"Well, I thought we had a commitment."
"There are no commitments," she says, "only bargains."
Interesting statement. We make lots of commitments in life, and we make lots of bargains. And sometimes the commitments we make and the bargains we make get confused, and we are unable to understand what is a bargain and what is a commitment. And for some, we are like the wife of the play, "The Real Thing," believing that there are no commitments, only bargains.
When we make a bargain, it’s something like, "You fix my transmission, and I’ll pay you $200. If I don’t keep my end of the bargain, and you fix my transmission, then you can sue me, because we have made a bargain."
A commitment however is based not on a contract, but on trust.
"I promise to take you as my loving and faithful husband, to have and to hold, from this day forth, until death us do part."
The only thing you have is a promise.
Now that is a difficult thing to deal with, because there are no contracts. There is just a promise.
On a bargain, we know where we stand. We have signed the dotted line, the other party has signed the dotted line, and in a bargain, we know what will happen if one of us fails to comply with the signed document.
But in a commitment, in a promise, all there is to support the promise, is simply the promise.
God makes a number of promises to us. In fact, some years ago, someone gave
me a little paperback book with the title, "The Jesus Pocket Promise Book."
The entire text was simply Scripture after Scripture after Scripture of things that God had promised.
In our lives, we often find that we are like the husband of the play, "The Real Thing." There are times when we want to tell people, "Hey wait a minute, I thought we had a commitment." When in fact all we had was simply a bargain.
We take our car in to be repaired, and it comes out and nothing has been done. I thought we had a commitment. I thought you were committed to helping me. No -- we just had a bargain.
You make arrangements for someone to help you in your Boy Scout Troop, but they don’t show up. I thought we had a commitment, I thought you’d show up. No-- I decided not to, after all, it wasn’t a commitment, just a bargain."
You vote for someone who has promised not to raise taxes, but they do. I thought we had a commitment. No—that was just campaign bargaining.
You come to the throne of God Almighty, and after living out a life in which the automobile repairman, the painter, the volunteer helper, the doctor, the wife, the next door neighbor, the teacher, the politician – after everyone in the world has made wishy
washy bargains with you. There have been no commitments, only bargains, and now when you come to God, you hear Him give you promise after promise. So many promises, in fact, that they can fill a paperback book entitled the Jesus Pocket
Promise Book.
Now why, after all of our experiences, should we believe God?
Jesus said, "I come that they might have life, and have it abundantly." But how do we know. How can we believe. Is this just campaign rhetoric. Is this just bargaining. What is this?
Jesus said, "In my father’s house are many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you." But how can we believe this?
In Romans, 4:21, the Scripture says, "God has the power to do what he promised." But how do we know?
In II Corinthians 1:"20 we are told, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ’Yes’ in Christ." But how can we be sure of this?
In I John 2:25 we are told, "And this is what he promised us – even eternal life." But where is the evidence?
How can we believe that God is telling us the truth, or that he is able to carry out these promises?
It all boils down to this one thing: and that is that the only thing that backs up the promise is the trustworthiness of the promise maker.
In our Old Testament lesson, God makes a promise to Abram, who is soon to be called by a new name, Abraham.
God promises to be Abram’s shield and reward. To which Abram responds by saying, "What are you going to give me? I’m childless. The fellow who inherits my wealth is Eliezer of Damascus. You’ve given me no children. What will you give me?"
To which God responds with yet another promise. "you will have more children than ..."
You see, Abram wants a bargain. "You promise to be my God," says Abram. "Fine, what do I get out of it?"
But God is not striking a bargain, he is making a covenant, a commitment.
And in a commitment, the only thing that backs up the person’s promise to be faithful, is often nothing more than another promise to be faithful.
Back in my college, Erskine College, there was an annual event called Christian Emphasis Week. Which may strike some as a strange thing to have in a Christian College, after all, shouldn’t Christianity be emphasized every week?
But once a year, we gave it a special emphasis.
During that week, the campus would invite a leading preacher from somewhere across this nation to come to the little college town and preach. The first sermon was manditory. Every student had to go.
The second sermon, held that evening, was usually attended by only the faithful students of the Christian fellowship group, and a few little old ladies from the Presbyterian and Baptist churches.
Well, one year, the speaker was a well known minister from Chicago. The preacher took his place behind the pulpit.
The students yawned.
He opened the Bible.
The students shuffled their books,
wrote letters to friends,
and looked at their watches.
The preacher read from a passage of the Bible.
The students tuned him out.
The preacher took the Bible and slammed it shut and threw the Bible out, off stage where it went out the side door.
There was a silence in the chapel,
but every eye was focused on the preacher, and finally the preacher said,
"There goes your God."
After that particular service, the chapel filled up that night with people who normally did not attend voluntary worship services. Everyone wanted to hear what this fellow had to say.
One of the groups of people who attended was the Wylie Home crowd. Now Wylie Home was an old dormatory, small dormorotry, that was a sort of Animal House of the little school. They were a wild bunch, and in fact the Wylie Home dorm had been closed down the year before, but its former residents still wore Wylie Home shirts and formed a sort of wild gang. One of them stood up during the question answer period after the sermon. "You know, I heard you talk about forgiveness in your sermon, but I got a question about all that stuff. What I want to know is this -- ’How do you really know that you are forgiven."
The preacher looked at him and said,
"Because I tell you, ’In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven."
"Yeah right, but what I want to know is How do you really know that you are forgiven."
The preacher looked at him and said,
"Because I tell you, ’In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven."
"Right, but How do you really know that you are forgiven."
The preacher looked at him and said,
"Because I tell you, ’In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven."
Then some how, it dawned on this wild student, and he realized that he knew he was forgiven.
In the covenant relationship, the promise is given, and sometimes the only thing that backs up the covenant, the commitment, the promise, is another promise, and the trustworthiness of the promise maker.
The problem is that we never really buy into this. We never really believe that God is able to pull off his promises.
In our Old Testament lesson for this morning, God tells Abraham, who is still called Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.
Our New Testament lesson from Romans quotes chapter 15 of Genesis when it says that Abram believed God.
What is interesting about this is that in the very next chapter of Genesis, we learn that Abram’s wife did not quite believe that God is able to pull off his promises by himself.
In chapter 16, this is what the Scripture says,
"Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram,’ The Lord has kept me from having children. Go sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."
Abram goes along with the idea. He makes love with Hagar, and she becomes pregnant. That is what Sarai wanted, but it makes Sarai angry and she causes all sorts of problems. But to make a long story short, Hagar gives birth to a son, Ishmael. But that is not the son that God has promised to Abram.
Ishmael is born when Abraham is 86.
Thirteen years later, God repeats his promise to Abraham that he will be a father of many nations. Abraham mentions his son, Ishmael, but God informs him that he will have another son, Isaac.
Years pass. No Isaac is born. But God sends three angels to Abraham and the promise is repeated. Sarah overhears the promise and laughs at God, to which God asks, "Why did Sarah laugh...Is anything too hard for God? I will return next year and Sarah will have a son."
And sure enough, next year when Abraham and Sarah are entering their 100th year of life, Isaac is born. The promise is fulfilled. And what was the sign of the promise? Only more promises.
God kept coming back year after year after year, repeating the promise, until finally the promise was fulfilled.
Sometimes God backs his promises up with various signs and wonders -- a star in the heavens, an angel appearing, but most of the time, the promises we have from God are supported simply by other promises. And the only way we can come to believe in the promises of God, is to simply believe in the trustworthiness of the promise maker.
Jesus said, "I come that they might have life, and have it abundantly."
But how do we know?
We know because we can believe the promises of God,
and we can trust in his trustworthiness.
Jesus said, "In my father’s house are many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you."
But how can we believe this?
We can believe,
because of the trustworthiness of the promise-maker.
In I John 2:25 we are told, "And this is what he promised us – even eternal life."
But where is the evidence?
How can we believe that God is telling us the truth,
or that he is able to carry out these promises?
It all boils down to this one thing:
and that is that the only thing that backs up the promise
is the trustworthiness of the promise maker.
God, is trustworthy.
