Christ Is the Cleft, the Keep
This is the shelter of all God's promises: God not only keeps His promises but He longs to keep us in them. As it was in those castles long ago, made of rock and stone, the very center tower was called the "keep" and provided shelter, a place of habitation, an operating station from which defense, under siege, was centered. Usually a well was built at the center of the keep so those sustained there could not only endure but thrive.
This is the shelter of all God's promises: God not only keeps His promises, but He longs to keep us in them.
In God's kingdom, there is a keep, too, and it is Christ. How beautiful that God designed a way to provide such strength for us through the Person we crushed through our sin. How fitting that the rebellion of the Israelites, which brought about the destruction of God's tablets, is a ref lection of the wounding we would cause to His Son. But light-years beyond these failures, our loving and promisekeeping Father would find a way to keep us, to say yes to us when we asked for forgiveness, protection, and a glimpse of His glory. That eternal Yes, that Shelter of the promise, is Christ.
In the face of some disappointments and discouragements, the apostle Paul reminded the Corinthians of this:
For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes"
in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the
glory of God. Now it is God who makes both us and you stand
firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and
put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to
come. (2 Corinthians 1:20-22)
Just rest for a moment in the beauty that comes with the phrase "He set his seal of ownership on us." God claimed us through Christ—He has made an eternity-long commitment to us that He cannot break. But He didn't just put a seal on us and set us aside like a near-empty jar stuffed way back in the cupboard. No, God has made many promises to His people, and they all come back to Christ. Here's how another Bible commentator explains it:
These promises are all "in" Christ; with and in whom could they
be but in him, since he only existed when they were made, which
was from everlasting? with and in whom should they be of right,
but in him with whom the covenant, which contains these promises,
were made, and who undertook the accomplishment of them?
where could they be safe and secure but in him, in whose hands
are the persons, grace, and glory of his people? not in Adam, nor
in angels, nor in themselves, only in him . . . by whose blood, the
covenant, and all the promises of it, are ratified and confirmed, and
in whom, who is the truth of them, they are all fulfilled.2
But why would God do this? Why, when we break so many promises to Him? We build our own golden calves and break our word to God, our vows, our promises. We say we trust Him and believe in His promises when we need them or want something. But when things don't work out the way we think they should, or something bad happens, a storm comes, or we're left waiting for answers like an Israelite in the wilderness, we can be so unfaithful. Sometimes in our pain or in our panic we forget God, we forget His promises.
Why would God want to keep us and His promises to us when we mess up so badly?
The Bible reminds us of a truth we too often forget, a truth that shines as clear as daylight: because God cannot help Himself. The force of His righteousness and mercy, which were from everlasting and formed the covenant with us, are the unchanging foundation upon which His promises are built. God does not change, nor do the glories of His person and the salvation He engineered for us. God's promises are as dependable as He is. Because they are Him.
God's promises are as dependable as He is. Because they are Him.
God's Promises Are Not Like Ours
There is a story in the Old Testament of a prophet named Balaam whose donkey talks back to him (Numbers 22:22-35). Balaam may be a prophet, but he is a heathen one and not looking after the interests of God, not counting on God's promises or commending them.
He's only after his own purposes and gain. Even Balaam's donkey sees he's in trouble, so when Balaam sets off on a road for his own agenda, the donkey stops, turns into a field, presses Balaam's foot against a wall in a narrow place, and even lies down, refusing to go forward.
Balaam, enraged, beats his donkey, who talks back: Haven't you ridden me all your life and have I ever done this before? Why can't you take another look and see what's going on here?
Such wise words: take another look and see what's really going on here.
What Balaam will learn, and eventually tell the people, is what's really going on: "God is not man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind" (Numbers 23:19). This is not so much a statement of faith from Balaam, as even to the end he puts stock more in the promises of men and their riches than the promises of God. But Balaam cannot help but recognize what is true: God cannot lie. And this from a man who, we're told, has no love for God or any desire to change his own self-serving ways. I love the fact that we are given those words not from a devout follower of our Father but rather from an outsider who recognizes the truth of who God is and that He does what He says He will do without exception.
As I studied the word promise in the Old Testament, I came across a very interesting fact. The two Hebrew words we translate into English as "promise" are the words dabar, meaning "to say," and omer, meaning "to speak." In other words, when God says something, when God speaks, that is as good as it gets. He means what He says, and He says what He means. It would appear as if we, humankind, had to invent the word promise because what we say or speak cannot always be trusted, so we upped the ante with a new word. But when God speaks, He cannot lie.
That's the foundation stone of this book. When God makes us a promise, He can never break it. If a heathen prophet can live by this understanding, how much more so can we whom God has restored?
The Struggle to Count On Him
When I was visiting Scotland in the summer of 2009 to celebrate my mother's eightieth birthday, I saw again that there is an innate hope in our hearts that we can count on the promises we are given, whether we are five years old or eighty. My mom is a very careful—or canny, as we call it in Scotland—housewife. She has lived on a modest, fixed income for many years and knows how to balance a budget, but she had been taken in by several mail marketing schemes simply because they promised generous returns on purchases made through their catalogs. So her kitchen was piled high with foot cream from Holland and macaroons from Belgium. I tried to reason with my mom that I had seen television news reports exposing these scams.
Yet this kind of suspicion was outside my mom's personal integrity to grasp. How could anyone make such bold claims without any intention of remaining true to their word?
"How could they print something like that in black and white if it's not true?" she asked.
This is the primal struggle we have to deal with here on earth before we are able to move on to receive God's promises. We have to separate promises that may never be kept from God's promises, which will never be broken. We have a lifetime of experiencing deception, corruption, and embellishment on one side of the scales and a simple, profound promise on the other: God cannot lie. Our human experience does not sync up with a heavenly truth.
I wonder if we have such a hard time believing this, resting in God's promises, because we have been lied to so many times, because so many earthly promises are broken. Think for a moment of the cultural climate in which we have grown up. We live in a day when those who want to sell us something easily access us through television, radio, the Internet, and even our cell phones. We are told: If you follow this diet, you will lose twenty pounds in two days. If you use this face cream, you will look twenty years younger in two weeks. If you use this shampoo, your hair will be full and f lowing as it sparkles and shimmers in the breeze.
The sensible part of us knows that such promises are nonsense, but isn't there another part of us that longs to believe miracles can actually happen? And don't we think at some level, Surely these kinds of promises wouldn't be made if they weren't true?
Culture has driven us to think of promises as personal fulfillment, when God's promises are not about us, but about Him and being saved by Him. God's promises are an expression of His holiness.
I remember watching television one night with my son, Christian, when he was almost five years old. It was getting close to Christmas, and we were facing the usual barrage of must-have toys. A commercial interrupted The Grinch to sell a new fishing rod for kids that guaranteed catching a fish within five minutes "or your money back."
Christian asked if he could have one.
I told him that his daddy and I would be glad to get him a fishing rod, but fishing is a learned skill, and no one can promise that you'll catch a fish in five minutes.
I'll never forget how Christian looked at me with his big brown eyes and said, "But they just said you can on television. They wouldn't lie, Mommy."
My heart ached for him as I realized that he was just beginning to taste what it's like to live in a culture that thrives on telling lies with no apologies. What a difference there is, however, between the promises made in sales pitches, among ourselves, and even the promises we make to ourselves, and the promises of God.
As I sat on the couch, while the people of Whoville and Little Cindy Lou Who all ate "roast beast," I thought about my love for Christian. How much Barry and I want to keep him safe and healthy, see him happy and living with purpose and passion. How much we love to look in his eyes and see a part of ourselves there, but something more too, something unique and beautiful and surprising. How much we want to enjoy him forever—a new capacity in our hearts that God gave us through parenthood, a ref lection of His love for us. Though we break God's heart at times, He loves us and says, You can shatter Me like My Word on the stone tablets. You can leave Me in pieces, and I will still love you. I will hold on to you. I will create a place, a cleft in the rock for you, to keep you and on which you can steady yourself and stand.
God keeps us not only to give us a future, but also to ref lect His glory. He keeps His promises to us because He cannot help Himself. He cannot lie, and He is full of love for His creation.
From the Cleft Back to the Garden
From the very beginning, God made a promise and had a plan. You can trace His promises back to the garden of Eden. When Eve disobeyed God, when she ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil and shared it with her husband, Adam, we lost our place in Paradise. Sin became our birthright. But God in His grace and mercy promised deliverance before He banished Adam and Eve, and us, from that perfect place of no pain, no worry, no storms. Genesis 3:14-15 captures the moment:
So the Lord God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,
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HalleluYAH, my God! We have truly forgotten about this teaching. OMG, this so much Confirmation to everything, that is for us today. Lord, we thank you for keeping your promises to us. We love you Abba Yohani
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HalleluYAH, my God! We have truly forgotten about this teaching. OMG, this so much Confirmation to everything, that is for us today. Lord, we thank you for keeping your promises to us. We love you Abba Yohani