Featuring God's Promises

We are the children of the promise.

Walter B. T. Douglas, Ph.D., is assistant professor of church history at the SDA Theological Seminary, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

 

THE APOSTLE PAUL once reminded the Galatians that as Christians they were children of promise like Isaac. "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise" (Gal. 4:28). God plans a great future for each of us.

In writing to the believers at Ephesus, Paul declared that, as Christians who had accepted the Lordship of Christ, they had come into a wholly new relationship with God. "Ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the house hold of God" (Eph. 2:19), he told them. This intriguing passage of Scripture ex presses the oneness of God's love for all who claim it and are willing to participate in it. We can rejoice that, in addition to being fellow citizens with all other Christians, we are "no more strangers" in another significant way. Before becoming Christians, Paul says, we were "strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world" (Eph. 2:12). Now, as Christians, we are no longer strangers from the covenant, but have a God-given right to claim His promises.

Have you thought lately about the promises of God? Do they still have meaning for you, or have you come to repeat them routinely, without feeling or depth? Do they play a vital role in your life?

Consider God's promises. They are like the provisions of a will left by Christ, making bequests for us. They meant so much to Paul that he called those to whom he wrote, "the children of promise" (Gal. 4:28).

"He is faithful that promised," says the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. 10:23). God keeps His word, and we are invited to put our trust in Him. God's promises are an integral part of His Word, the Scriptures. What He commands is done; what He promises, He fulfills. He carries out His agreement. Shouldn't we therefore take His Word seriously? Shouldn't we study the Bible more earnestly, searching out the promises? Unless we do so, we and those to whom we minister may never know what His promises are. When we find the promises and learn to trust them our faith in His Word will increase.

Our hymnbooks are full of expressions of trust in God's promises. For example, one reads, "Praise the Lord, for He is glorious, never shall His promises fail." Another one says, "The Lord is King! Who then shall dare ... to doubt His royal promises?" One hymn which the Puritans liked to sing was: "Firm as His throne His promise stands. .. . His children's children ever find Thy words of promise sure."

God's Covenants Rooted in His Promises

God's covenants are rooted in His promises; they are almost another name for them. The Old and New Testaments take their names from His promises; both are books of promises. Long before God assured Abraham that He would bring blessings to Abraham's son Isaac and to all his descendants, God made a promise to Adam and Eve that still carries meaning for us. God told the great opponent of mankind in the Garden of Eden, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (Gen. 3:15). This gave hope to fallen man. Years later God promised Noah that the seasons would be regular and consistent. We can take assurance from this, that in the very stuff of God's universe there is reliability; we can trust it be cause we trust Him who is the Creator.

Because all of nature is His creation, we can learn from it. What we may at first think of as disorder, like the whirl wind, the Hebrews saw as an expression of the free spirit of God. In some apparently "unmoral" parts like the rain, which seemingly reward both the good and the bad, Jesus saw an expression of God's abundant love. These assurances from our Creator we can indeed trust.

Deep in the Old Testament is God's covenant with His people to redeem them. As their Creator He blesses them, and when they get into trouble He rescues and redeems them. He will not give them up; He heals their diseases and forgives their iniquities and their sins. He has mercy on them with a loving kindness that is eternal.

Our God is still saying to us today, "I give you My word; you do not have to carry your guilt, for I have redeemed you. I have blotted out your transgression as a black cloud, and your sins will I not remember. Come unto Me, and I will be a Father to you and will supply all your needs." All through the Old Testament the prophets looked forward to God's promises of a Redeemer who was to come. The apostle Paul registered the fact that these promises were fulfilled in the coming of Jesus.

In his second letter to the Corinthians Paul emphasized this fact. He assured them that God is faithful and steadfast, and that there was no wavering of his convictions about Christ's fulfillment of God's promises. "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen" (2 Cor. 1:20). Christ's coming validated God's promises and put the seal of authenticity on them. That is the good news for all of us who, though once strangers to Him, by God's mercy have inherited the promises and now know His redeeming love. All the assurances that Christ gave us are the promises of God and are as sure of fulfillment as were those other promises that have been so abundantly kept in the past.

The Holy Spirit was also the subject of a promise. One description of the Spirit is, "The promise of the Father" (Acts 1:4). In some illuminating passages about the new covenant in Jeremiah 31, God says, "I am a Father to Israel" (verse 9), "and I will remember their sin no more" (verse 34). He also says, "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts" (verse 33). This is without doubt accomplished through the promised Holy Spirit, who brings about a changed nature in us.

This promised gift of the Holy Spirit has been known by Christians as a very personal inward experience. It is partly corporate and partly individual; it is given to us especially when we are at worship together, and we also receive it when we read the Bible in private devotion and gratitude.

"The Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the truth to light;

Precepts and promises afford a sanctifying light."

All of us, I believe, know something of this in our own experience. I judge, however, that we do not read our Bibles in this way as much as our forefathers did. To do so is both a special privilege and a special responsibility. We can best give others a living message if it is living in us through the power of the Spirit.

One old seventeenth-century Puritan says that part of the work of the Holy Spirit is to bring "to our remembrance savory and suitable phrases and pas sages of Holy Writ, especially the precious Promises. . . . Promises and Prayers," he adds "are like figures of 6 and 9; the very same figures, only the Promises, like the figure 9, do bend downward, and Prayers, like the figure 6, do bend upward."

At the Heart of Our Worship

The promises of God ought to be at the heart of our worship, but this will be possible only if we take the Bible seriously and read it thankfully. "As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee" (Joshua 1:5). "I will guide thee with mine eye" (Ps. 32:8). How many Christians have read these words and taken the promises literally and directly as some thing they could trust, and have been immeasurably blessed as they experienced the promised companionship and guidance.

"Prove me now herewith," God invites us (Mal. 3:10). We need to take Him at His word for ourselves and then help our congregations to learn to know Him better and trust Him further.


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Walter B. T. Douglas, Ph.D., is assistant professor of church history at the SDA Theological Seminary, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan.

September 1977

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