From The Desk of a Geek: Broken Promises

From The Desk of a Geek:

Broken Promises

 What you see here in the picture below is something rare, and that's being described as what happens when a rainbow falls apart, or a "broken rainbow"

It’s actually a rainbow being diffused by scattered raindrops which reflect off the clouds behind it. If the clouds were gone it would just be a regular rainbow.

Have you ever broken a commitment to someone? Was it easy to explain? Or did it leave the relationship tense and in jeopardy?

When someone breaks their promise, it hurts. Small promises that are broken we can easily forgive, but bigger promises, if broken, can destroy a relationship.

The Bible tells of how Abraham starts to have doubts about his calling. In response, God tells him to find a number of animals to be sacrificed and displayed in formation. This may seem like an odd command, but a little ancient history sheds light on this custom.

These days, when we formalise an agreement, or an important promise between two parties, we usually sign contracts. The contract might say that if one party fails to keep their agreement, they will be subject to a fine and/or the deal is off.

There are documents that have been found, from ancient cultures, in Abraham’s day, that describe the custom at the time for formalising covenants.

The two parties would sacrifice animals and cut them in half. They would then both walk between the animal carcasses. In doing so they were invoking a curse on themselves, effectively saying “if I break my promise, let me be dead like this animal.”

Abraham understood God wanted to formalise and confirm his promises, so he set to work, and what hard work it was. He cut the animals and lay them out, then chased away birds of prey till sunset.

A deep sleep falls on Abraham and God confirms his promises to him, explaining how and when they will come about. Then Abraham has a vision.

Abraham sees a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch pass between the pieces of cut animals.

In other passages in the Bible, it is evident that smoke and fire represent the very presence of God. For example, in Exodus 3:2-4, God appears to Moses in a burning bush. In Exodus 19:18, we read that when God appears to Moses on Mount Sinai, the whole mountain is enveloped in smoke and fire.

So it seems that God himself was stepping down into the blood soaked desert, between the animal carcasses, to assure Abraham of his promises.

But where was Abraham?

In normal covenant-making, both parties would walk between the pieces and invoke the curse on themselves. But, in Abraham’s vision, only God passes through the pieces.

God was doing something that no rational person ever would. He was saying, I will pay the price of death whether you or I break our promise.[

The promise depended only on God’s faithfulness, grace and power. Not on Abraham and his descendants’ ability to obey God.

In that moment, creator God committed himself to dying on the cross.

God never breaks a promise. Abraham had a son. His descendants grew into a large nation, and in the book of Joshua we read they were given the land that had been promised to them.

However, we read how Abraham lied about his wife, saying she was only his sister, allowing other men to try to take her for their own wife. Abraham was not able to keep his part of the covenant-promise, which was to be holy. And many of his descendants after him failed too.

The truth is none of us are able to keep all of our commitments to God. We have all said and done hurtful things; we have broken promises.

Our broken promises matter to God. They damage our relationship with him, just as our own relationships are affected, when we break promises to each other.

But God, in his grace and love, keeps his promises to us, regardless of our continual failures. His promises to us are secure because he has already shouldered the cost of our failures, by coming to us as a man, 

Jesus, and dying on the cross. All we need to do is look in faith to that cross and our relationship with God will be restored.

Lonnie