The Promise and the Promise-Keeper

Our society has a weird relationship with the word “promise.”

I think we all define it roughly the same. A promise is a declaration by one person to another that something will or won’t be done, giving the person to whom the promise was made the right to expect that whatever’s been promised will actually take place.

But when it comes to actually KEEPING our promises, things sometimes begin to fall apart. I can remember when I was younger, trying to find loopholes in the keeping of promises.

Well, I SAID I’d be home by curfew, but I didn’t PROMISE to do so. Well, I PROMISED I would bear down and study and go to classes when I returned to the campus at Va. Tech, but I didn’t expect to have a class that started at 8 a.m. every day of the week. Well, I promised not to eat all the bacon, but gosh, it smells so GOOD, and doesn’t eating it all prove how much I appreciate my wife’s cooking?

What’s the most recent promise you’ve ever made? And don’t be like me when I was younger and try to loophole your way out of admitting that it was a promise.

Maybe you promised to call someone. Maybe you promised to have that big project finished by a certain date. Maybe you’ve made a new contractual promise with a credit card company or some other service provider.

Have you kept those promises?

For me, and for many of you, the biggest promise we made was when we got married.

I can remember standing on the beach in Nags Head, surrounded by friends and family, with Annette by my side, and promising her SOMETHING.

I have to confess, though, that I don’t recall all that I promised, which might say something about how I felt about promises during that part of my lost life.

Standing before a pastor there almost 23 years ago — our anniversary is three weeks from today, in fact — I know I promised to love and cherish her, and I’m sure there was more to my vows than that.

But the simple fact is that I’ve not always kept even THOSE parts of the promises I made there. And I know that I’m not alone in my failure.

I’d be willing to bet that every person here has failed to keep some promise or another — whether great or minor — at some point in our lives.

And our OWN failure to keep promises leads us to place little stock in the promises of OTHERS. We KNOW people are promise-breakers, and so we lower our expectations when it comes to the promises others make to us.

Today, as we continue our study in the Book of Galatians, we’re going to see the Apostle Paul continue his theological argument in favor of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

And in the passage we’re studying today, we’re going to see Paul appeal to God’s character as the lynchpin of his argument.

He presents God as a promise-keeper to show that being acceptable before God hinges on God’s grace working through faith, not on “works of the Law” or any other good things we might try to do to earn His favor.

What we’ll see in this passage today is that all who place their faith in Jesus as the only way to be saved from the punishment we deserve for our sins can have perfect assurance of their salvation, because God keeps all His promises.

We’re going to be reading verses 15-18 of chapter 3 today. Let’s read them together, and then let’s talk about what they tell us about the promise-keeping God who’s promised eternal life for all who turn to Jesus in faith.

Galatians 3:15–18 NASB95

15 Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations: even though it is only a man’s covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. 16 Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as referring to many, but rather to one, “And to your seed,” that is, Christ. 17 What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. 18 For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.

Now, remember that Paul is trying to address the false teachings of the Judaizers who’d come to the churches of Galatia after he and Barnabas had left those churches they’d planted during their first missionary journey.

The Judaizers were telling the new, mostly-Gentile, believers there that their faith in Jesus wasn’t enough to save them.

They needed to be circumcised and follow much of the rest of the Mosaic Law in order to be truly saved, the Judaizers had said. In other words, the Gentiles had to become Jews before they could become Christians.

And Paul understood that this teaching did great violence to the true gospel of grace. If we can EARN God’s favor, what’s the point of God’s grace? If we can DO something to save OURSELVES, then why did Jesus have to die on Calvary’s cross?

And, as he did in the passage we studied last week, Paul turns to the story of Abraham, the great Patriarch of Israel, to make his point.

Abraham had been the recipient of great promises from God. We looked at them last week, but let’s read the passage again.

Genesis 12:1–3 NASB95

1 Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; 2 And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

So, God promised that the childless Abraham would father a great nation, that he’d be blessed, that he’d have a great legacy, and that all the families of the earth would be blessed in him.

And then, in chapter 15, God expands on the promise that Abraham would father a nation, telling him he would produce an heir from his own body — that this old man would have a biological child — and that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.

And in verse 6 of that chapter, we encounter one of the key verses in all the Bible.

Genesis 15:6 NASB95

6 Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.

Abraham believed in God’s promise. He believed that God COULD do what He’d promised, and he believed that God WOULD do what He’d promised. He had faith in God as one who keeps His promises.

And so, the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. In other words, God justified Abraham — He declared Abraham to be acceptable to Him — based entirely on Abraham’s faith in God. Not based on anything Abraham had or would or even COULD do.

And it’s helpful to understand that God’s declaration of this Patriarch’s justification is part of HIs promise of blessing Abraham.

Justification before God by faith was at least PART of the blessing God had promised him back in chapter 12. And it’s also part of the blessing promised to all the families of the earth.

Now, look back at our Galatians passage for today.

Paul begins this part of his argument by giving an example from normal life. Whenever a contract is ratified, its stipulations are set in stone, so to speak. Nobody can change it or break it without suffering the consequences outlined in the contract.

And since the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant were unconditional, Abraham couldn’t break this covenant even if he’d tried.

God had bound HIMSELF in the Abrahamic Covenant. He’d bound Himself with the promise of descendants, a national identity, land, and blessing.

And it’s the promise of blessing, in particular, that Paul is concerned with in this passage.

And God gives more detail about this promise of blessing in Genesis, chapter 17, a passage that’s central to Paul’s argument in today’s Galatians passage.

Genesis 17:1–7 NASB95

1 Now when Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; Walk before Me, and be blameless. 2 “I will establish My covenant between Me and you, And I will multiply you exceedingly.” 3 Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, 4 “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you will be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 “No longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; For I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 “I have made you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. 7 “I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.

The key verse here, at least for Paul’s argument in Galatians, is verse 7, where God says this covenant is between Him and Abraham, as well as between God and the descendants of Abraham.

Actually, the Hebrew word translated as descendants here means “seed.” It’s what’s called a collective singular. It’s the same thing in English. Seed can refer to one seed, or it can refer to many.

And what Paul tells us in verse 16 is that Jesus is the seed of Abraham whom God was promising. He is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise of blessing for the nations.

But what about the Law? That’s the question the Judaizers were focused on. Didn’t things change when God gave the Law to Moses on Mt. Sinai?

Well, Paul has a ready answer for them. NO!

The people of Israel received the Mosaic Law 430 years after God had reaffirmed His promises to Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, just before Jacob left Canaan to live in Egypt with his family.

Since we’re so used to people trying to loophole their way out of promises, we might expect that a 430-year-old promise no longer applied.

But Paul says here that the very fact that the Abrahamic Covenant predates the Law gives the promise pre-eminence OVER the Law.

In other words, whatever God’s purpose was in giving the people of Israel the Law, He never intended it to take the place of the promise. The covenant ratified by God before Abraham has never been nullified.

The people of Israel had inherited the promises of Abraham — and especially the promise of the blessing of justification by faith — not through the Law, but through the promise of God Himself.

In other words, if our works — our own righteousness — are necessary for our salvation, then God has broken His promise to Abraham.

And this is one of the many things that makes God different from us. HE never breaks His promises. All his promises are “Yes and amen.”

One of the reasons we have the Old Testament is to remind us that God is a promise-keeper.

He kept His promise to miraculously provide Abraham and Sarah a son. He kept His promise to rescue the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. He kept His promise to go before them and protect them on their journey.

He kept His promise to David to establish David’s kingdom forever, a promise that’s fulfilled in King Jesus.

He kept His promise to the people of Israel to bless them when they were faithful and obedient to Him. And He kept His promise to chastise them when they were unfaithful and disobedient.

Indeed, the entire Old Testament provides testimony to God’s character as a promise-keeper.

And it’s because we know God keeps His promises that we can place our faith in Him through Jesus Christ. We can see the promise of eternal life for those who turn to Jesus in faith and know that God CAN and WILL keep that promise, because that’s what He DOES.

HE is faithful, even when we’re not. If He has said it, He will do it.

“I will never leave you nor forsake you,” He told Joshua and others in the Old Testament. That’s also a promise to YOU.

God didn’t promise to change Joshua’s circumstances. And He doesn’t promise to change yours or mine, either. What He promises is that as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, He is WITH us.

What He’s promised is that He’ll use whatever circumstances we face to make His people to be more like Jesus. He “causes all things to work together for GOOD to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

He’s promised that nothing — “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing” can separate us from His love, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

I know some of you are struggling with some hard things right now. I know some of you might even be wondering where to find hope in the midst of overwhelming and maybe even terrifying circumstances.

Let me encourage you to stand on the promises of God. Let me encourage you to find hope in Jesus and in His faithfulness as the promise-keeping God.

Let me encourage you, in the midst of your circumstances, to go to God and claim these promises as your own, confident in his very nature as one who keeps His promises.

Charles Spurgeon, a famous 19th-century preacher in England, wrote a popular devotional that I like to read sometimes, called “Morning and Evening.”

I’d like to read for you a passage from the “morning” devotional for Jan. 15:

“Faith lays hold upon the promise of pardon, and it does not delay, saying, ‘This is a precious promise, I wonder if it be true?’ But it goes straight to the throne with it, and pleads, ‘Lord, here is the promise, ‘Do as thou hast said.’” [C. H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening: Daily Readings (London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1896).]

King David had remembered God’s promise to establish David’s kingdom and throne forever, and David prayed, “Do as thou hast said.”

And what Spurgeon says in this devotional is that we say essentially the same thing when we turn to Jesus in faith.

We look to God and say, “Lord, I trust you. Now, forgive me, and redeem me through the precious blood of Jesus. Make me a new creature and give me eternal life — life the way it was always meant to be, in fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

But we who have been adopted into the family of God through faith in Jesus can do the same thing with God’s other promises to us, as well. And that’s what Spurgeon focuses on in the rest of the Jan. 15 devotional.

“Our heavenly Banker delights to cash his own notes. Never let the promise rust. Draw the word of promise out of its scabbard, and use it with holy violence. Think not that God will be troubled by your [urgently] reminding him of his promises. He loves to hear the loud outcries of needy souls. It is his delight to bestow favours. He is more ready to hear than you are to ask. The sun is not weary of shining, nor the fountain of flowing. It is God’s nature to keep his promises; therefore go at once to the throne with “Do as thou hast said.” [Ibid.]

Listen, the promise of salvation by grace through faith has never been nullified. Just as God declared Abraham righteous because of his faith, He still justifies followers of Jesus because of their faith. He has never broken that promise, and He never will.

Likewise, He won’t break His promise to be with you through whatever circumstances come your way. Nor will He break His promise to love those who’ve given their lives to Jesus as sons and daughters.

Look, I understand if you have a hard time trusting PEOPLE. People break their promises all the time. People are unfaithful all the time.

But God is faithful and good. Always. And you can trust His promises completely.

Whatever you’re going through now, let me encourage you to trust in God’s promises, to trust that He CAN keep them, to trust that He WILL keep them, and to pray those promises over yourself when you’re wondering where God is in the midst of your trials.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, then He is right there with you.

But if you’ve never followed Jesus in faith, then you’re in this alone, which you were never meant to be. You were MADE to be in fellowship with God.But our sins broke that fellowship.

And so, God sent Jesus to live on earth as a man. He lived a sinless life here to show us how perfect obedience to and fellowship with God would look.

And then, He gave Himself as a sacrifice at the cross, taking upon Himself your sins and mine — and their just punishment — so that all who turn to Him in faith that only He can reconcile us to God can be forgiven and saved.

This is God’s most important promise. And it’s available to all. Will you lay hold of that promise today? Will you trust in Jesus as the promise-keeping God? Will you give Him your life today?

As we pray in a moment, I’d like you to listen for a still, small voice speaking to your heart and calling you to faith in Jesus.

Please don’t ignore it. And if you hear it, please come and talk to me, either during the song or after the service. I’d love to tell you more about our faithful, promise-keeping Savior and Lord.