Cross my heart and hope to die

Since childhood everyone has been making promises to us from our neighborhood buddies to the ads on Saturday morning cartoons to the politicians in Washington. At last count, the average American receives over 3,500 advertising messages a day, all promising to make life better in some way. As part of our coping mechanism, we’ve all developed a healthy skepticism. The more outrageous the promise, the more we doubt its veracity. Life experience tells us that most of these promises are just too good to be true.

An outrageous promise from God

When it comes to making and keeping promises, God is different. “God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” (Numbers 23:19)

In Genesis 17:6, God came to Abram and said, “No longer will you be called Abram (means “exalted father"); your name will be Abraham (means “father of many), for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful.” God had first mentioned this promise of making him a nation about 24 years earlier. But nothing had happened. So, Abram and his wife decided to help make the promise come true on their own. Abram conceived a son through their maidservant, Hagar. At least he had become a father, although not very ‘exalted.’

But that wasn’t quite what God had in mind. When he reaffirmed his promise that Abram and Sarai would have a child, Abram’s response was to laugh. He said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” (Gen. 17:17) But, in spite of the physical impossibilities, his son was miraculously born and appropriately named “Isaac” which means, “he laughs.”

Many years later, the Apostle Paul writes about Abraham’s faith in Romans 4: 18-21. “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations. Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead--since he was about a hundred years old--and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”

How would you have handled this situation? Imagine sitting in your rocking chair at the rest home. You’ve just had your 100th birthday party. As you sit dozing in the afternoon sun, you hear the ‘still, small voice’ of God whispering in your inner ear, “You will have a child.” It isn’t hard to understand why this would make Abraham chuckle.

Later, in the book of Hebrews, Abraham is held up as a shining example of what God wants from His people. “By faith Abraham, even though he was past age--and Sarah herself was barren--was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.” (Heb. 11:11-12)

We’ve also been given an impossible promise

There is a promise in the New Testament that is as radical and laughable as the promise God made to Abraham. It was given by Jesus to us, his followers in John 14:12-14. “I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.”

What’s the big deal?

Just before Jesus made this outrageous promise about his followers doing greater miracles than he performed, he said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, `Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves.”

The secret to Jesus’ power and wisdom while here on earth was His relationship with His Father. He said that He was in the Father and the Father was in Him. So, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9) The Almighty God, creator of the universe, was speaking and acting through him. The “big deal” is this: Jesus has given us the opportunity to have the same kind of relationship with God.

Before you allow your skeptical reflex to kick in, look at John 17:20-23. Here Jesus prays for those who will believe in Him through his disciple’s message. That’s us. Jesus asks, “that all of them may be one, Father, just as You are in me and I am in You. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

We’ve all heard messages about how this passage is calling us to deeper Christian unity. I’m all for unity with other believers, but that’s not what Jesus was referring to here. He was praying for our unity with him and his Father. In the words of the Apostle Peter, “He has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature.” The radical promise is that Christ can be formed in you and me and empower us to speak Christ’s words and do his works today.