21 March 2013 - being, promised

21 March 2013 - being, promised

I will maintain my covenant with you
and your descendants after you
throughout the ages as an everlasting pact,
to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.

God wants us to trust in his promises.  He promises a personal relationship to each one of us.  He will be our God and we will be his people.  This is an everlasting pact.  He never for a moment forgets it.  Yet, in the midst of circumstances we do.  Hardship comes and we remember none of the great promises on which our hope is based.  We can't see past the short term to imagine how it could even fit in with such a grandiose picture.  And yet in those moments God has not forgotten his covenant.  He wants us remember his promises especially in those times.  Indeed, they are to be our strength in such times.  When a trial comes let us think, 'LORD, I don't know why I have to face this but I believe in your promises.  I know you are with me.  I know you are working all things for my good.   I know that your desire for me is to live forever with you.  And I know it no matter what is happening right now.  This will pass.  Your promise remains.'

I will give to you
and to your descendants after you
the land in which you are now staying,
the whole land of Canaan, as a permanent possession;
and I will be their God.”

For Abraham, the circumstances don't look immediately great.  The land is in the possession of Canaanites and his marriage is unfruitful.  But God calls him to look not to these circumstances and instead to his eternal everlasting promise.

He remembers forever his covenant

But we forget.  So how can we do better?  We should call to mind and rejoice in his past fidelity.

Recall the wondrous deeds that he has wrought,
his portents, and the judgments he has uttered.

Dwelling in his word will let his eternal truth shape our worldview "so that we may no longer be infants, tossed by waves and swept along by every wind" (cf Eph 4:14)  of circumstance.  And he himself is the fulfillment of every promise.

For however many are the promises of God, their Yes is in him (cf. 2 Cor 1:20).

"Amen, amen, I say to you,
whoever keeps my word will never see death.” 

Death is the ultimate champion of the temporary and the circumstantial.  He comes as if to say, 'See, none of your effort matters in the least.  It is more temporary than a sandcastle trampled on the beach of time.'  But Jesus overcomes death for us.    Trusting in his word will "free those who through fear of death had been subject to slavery all their life" (cf Heb 2:15).

This is intimately intertwined with the truth of who he is.  He is permanent.  He is "imperishable seed" (cf 1 Pet 1:23) whom God freed from death "because it was impossible for him to be held by it" (cf Acts 2:24).  

“Amen, amen, I say to you,
before Abraham came to be, I AM.”

Knowing his identity will transform us to be like him.  His own life will be the strength that allows us to rise above our circumstances.  His promise will be the very life of our souls.  May he be ever praised!