¹Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them. ²Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" ³"What did Moses command you?" he replied. ⁴They said, "Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away." ⁵"It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law," Jesus replied. ⁶"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.' ⁷'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, ⁸and the two will become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one. ⁹Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate." ¹⁰When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. ¹¹He answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. ¹²And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

Pharisees get a lot of bad press in the New Testament.  Jesus is constantly correcting them, showing up their lack of understanding and highlighting their false pride, and they all too often seem to fall into their own traps as they try in vain to outwit this new prophet.  In this passage we find them grilling Jesus on the issue of divorce, which is clearly an issue they’ve been dealing with already, and no doubt they’ve come to Jesus with their own ideas already firm in their minds and want to test whether Jesus agrees with them.

You see, the Pharisees are all about rules.  Their religious lives revolve around the synagogue and the teachings of the Old Testament.  They will have learnt the scripture off by heart, and with years of experience they’ll have worked out the best way of using the scripture to get more control over the people.  They didn’t want to break the rules, as such, but to bend them to their own profit.  The Pharisees knew all to well that Moses had permitted divorce, and that that runs contrary to teaching found elsewhere in the Old Testament.  The context that comes out of this passage is that they (and other influential people in the community, no doubt) wanted the freedom to do what they like, to twist the rules so that they could marry some other woman when they got bored of their own wife.

In a relatively rare example, Jesus actually gives them a straight answer, in exactly the sort of context they’re looking for.  They want a legalistic yes or no answer, and that’s precisely what Jesus gives them.  It’s a firm ‘no’, which probably isn’t what they wanted to hear.  However, the way Jesus phrases his answer shows that actually that legalistic question and its accompanying legalistic answer miss the point completely.

There is a difference Jesus wants to highlight between ‘love’ and ‘marriage’.  Yes they are related, and yes the two should ultimately go hand in hand, but the one does not equal the other.  Love is an emotion, marriage is a commitment.  Moses only allowed divorce because people had shut love out of their hearts, making the whole thing hollow and meaningless.

Out of this, I want to pose two questions.  Firstly, is love enough of a reason to get married?  My answer, in view of the stance Jesus takes on the issue, is no.  If love always resulted in marriage then teenagers across the world would be walking down the aisle several times a year.  Their love is undoubtedly real and true, but that does not mean it should flow into marriage.  Marriage is a commitment, a promise, to stay with the other person for the rest of your life, no matter what.  Love on its own won’t make that happen, and if you’re going into married life with only love to bind you together, you may be in for a miserable time ahead.

My second question is this: is falling out of love enough to get a divorce?  Again, going back to what Jesus said, I would have to say no.  Marriage has no escape clause that means that if you stop loving each other then the marriage no longer counts.  It’s a promise, for life, whether you carry on loving each other or not.  If the unimaginable does happen and you end up hating each other, well that’s just tough.  You’ve made a commitment to stay together, and God expects that promise to be kept.  That’s why Jesus so explicitly and bluntly says that divorcing your spouse and marrying someone else is wrong – as far as God is concerned, your original commitment to your original spouse lasts for as long as you promised it would – the whole of your life – hence the accusation of adultery.

Now, I mentioned earlier that Jesus was indicating that they were missing the point with their question, and I want to come back to that.  You see, there are situations where divorce can be the best solution.  Take abusive relationships as an example.  As much as you may have gone into the relationship with the best of intentions and a heart full of love, if serious damage is being done physically or mentally then separation may well be the best course of action.  It’s not for me to judge.  But I don’t believe for a minute that Jesus would be cruel enough to send an abused wife or husband back home and tell them that it’s their own fault and they have to live with it!  No, such situations cannot be approached purely legalistically, as the Pharisees wanted.  Love must come first.

The lesson I think Jesus is giving us generally is the importance of keeping our promises.  Jesus said a similar thing on the Sermon on the Mount, where in relation to oaths he told people not to swear on or by anything, but “Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No’”.  Marriage is a promise made for life, and shouldn’t be made lightly, because the implication is that you shouldn’t go back on that promise.  The same applies to other promises we make – if we commit to something, we should be prepared to follow through, whatever the cost.  Our ‘yes’ does not come with conditions.  Falling out of love with your wife or husband and falling in love with someone else is not justification enough for breaking a lifelong promise of commitment.

So here’s the challenge – be careful what you promise, and don’t try to weasel out of it later.

Jesus’ teaching in our passage today is all about being one of his followers. It is divided into three sections, so we’ll take them one at a time:

33-37

³³They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the road?” ³⁴But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest.

³⁵Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

³⁶He took a little child and had him stand among them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them, ³⁷“Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

When Jesus asked them the question, “What were you arguing about?” I’m sure he knew the answer. I’m also sure the disciples knew Jesus knew the answer – and that he wouldn’t approve! Their silence betrays their feelings on the matter.

The question ‘who is the greatest’ is surprisingly topical: these days we have all sorts of competitions to find out who is the best at something! Of course, there is a difference between the kind of status they were talking about and the kind of status we talk about today. That said, the idea of rank and precedence is as much a part of our society as it was part of theirs.

The disciples were keen to see themselves as important, as being great. They wanted status for themselves, they wanted other people to see them as important. As he does with so many other things, Jesus turns this idea on its head.

“If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all”. This is such a confounding of human expectation that even after reading it many times I find it still has something of a shock value for me. Surely Jesus can’t mean that our rank and status have no meaning at all? That if anyone wants to be truly great – he must be a servant?

In the previous chapter, Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me”. Jesus himself embodies this principle – the idea of the first being last. If we want to be truly great, we must follow the path of Jesus Christ and commit ourselves to serving others. That way lies true greatness in the Kingdom of God. (See also: Philippians 2:1-11)

38-41

³⁸“Teacher,” said John, “we saw a man driving out demons in your name and we told him to stop, because he was not one of us.”

³⁹“Do not stop him,” Jesus said. “No one who does a miracle in my name can in the next moment say anything bad about me, ⁴⁰for whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹I tell you the truth, anyone who gives you a cup of water in my name because you belong to Christ will certainly not lose his reward.

At this time, the disciples may well have thought of themselves as bona fide followers of Christ. After all, they were with him all the time, weren’t they? They literally followed him wherever he went! This much is true.

However, they weren’t the only followers of Christ around. In the passage previous to this one in our chapter, the disciples had unsuccessfully tried to drive a demon out of a man. Someone who was able to drive out demons in Jesus’ name was clearly a man of faith and, as Jesus puts it, “not against us”.

Jesus then extends this to say that anyone who even gives the disciples a cup of water “in my name because you belong to Christ” is operating out of obedience to Christ by faith. Works of service don’t have to be as dramatic as driving out demons – they can be as simple as giving a cup of water! If someone receives a messenger of Christ, then they also receive Christ.

We must take care not to oppose others who belong to Christ, or cause them to stumble.

42-50

⁴²“And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck. ⁴³If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go into hell, where the fire never goes out. ⁴⁵And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸where

” ‘their worm does not die,

and the fire is not quenched.’ ⁴⁹Everyone will be salted with fire.

⁵⁰“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”

Jesus continues the line of thought from the previous verses, talking about not causing those who believe in him to stumble. Then he goes on to talk more generally about our sin.

At various points In Mark’s gospel Jesus asks people to renounce their earthly lives (8:34-35), their possessions (10:21), and their families (10:24-28) – in other words, we are not to let anything come between us and God. We are not to let ourselves be distracted from being followers of Christ. (Note: I should point out that I’m not saying we should all, for example, renounce our families. But we mustn’t prioritise them above Christ).

The reference to ‘salt’ may at first be a little confusing. There are several explanations as to what Jesus might be referring to. My preferred explanation links to that of sacrifice: in the Old Testament, salt was often added to sacrifices as a sign of God’s covenant with the Israelites. For example, Leviticus 2:13: “Season all your grain offerings with salt. Do not leave the salt of the covenant of your God out of your grain offerings; add salt to all your offerings.”

In these days of the new covenant, our ‘saltiness’ involves our offering ourselves as living sacrifices. In order to do this, we must take sin seriously and strive to rid ourselves of it. Our distinctiveness in this world depends on us being holy and set apart for God – as Paul commands the Ephesians, “live a life worthy of the calling you have received” (Ephesians 4:1).

It’s not easy, but God has promised to help us. And we need to help one another. Let us encourage one another to “press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called [us] heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:14).

¹⁴When they came to the other disciples, they saw a large crowd around them and the teachers of the law arguing with them. ¹⁵As soon as all the people saw Jesus, they were overwhelmed with wonder and ran to greet him.

I agreed to write this article a few days before the deadline, before I had looked up the passage. Imagine my panic – I can’t write 1,000 words about convulsing, shrieking, foaming and exorcism! Luckily, the more I have read the passage, the less important the demon-possession seems to be. This is a story of faithlessness and hopelessness; of grace and a powerful saviour.

The boy in this story is in real need. He has an evil spirit that sends him headlong into fire. Aside from the obvious danger of the murderous spirit, the symptoms themselves are also deeply distressing: not least the loss of speech and of physical control. Jesus heals the boy – but why? The boy never directly communicates with him, and Jesus’ words to the disciples, the evil spirit and the boy’s father are clearly loaded with frustration and indignation rather than of love towards the helpless child.

Doubtless, Jesus cares for the spirit-ridden boy and wants to see him cured. But Mark uses this incident in Jesus’ ministry to teach a crucial part of his message about Jesus’ mission. Back in chapter 6 Jesus sent the disciples out “two by two and gave them authority over evil spirits”. We know that they exercised this authority, because we are told that as well as preaching a message of repentance, “they drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.” (Mark 6:7; 6:13). No wonder they are surprised when, in our present passage, they are suddenly unable to cure a boy with an evil spirit! The passage holds clues enough to work out what the trouble is.

The first clue is with the hopelessness of the child. The child with the spirit might have all of the colourful language, but most of the action is in the dialogue between the grown-ups. The boy’s father tells Jesus that the boy has been possessed from childhood – probably, then, neither the boy nor the father can remember a time before the horrific symptoms of this evil spirit. He also tells Jesus that the disciples were unable to heal the child of the spirit. Finally, he begs Jesus to take pity on him if he can do “anything” to help. This is a desperate man, who has reached his last hope. He turns to Jesus when every other avenue has come up short.

The second clue is with the faithlessness of the father – and the disciples. When Jesus hears about the failure of the disciples, he is quick to rebuke the “unbelieving”, or “faithless”, generation. He then rebukes the boy’s father of the same problem: when asked if he can offer any scrap of help he thunders in response, “‘If you can’?… Everything is possible for him who believes.” The father replies in faith, but, as we have seen so often in this series in Mark, the disciples do not understand why they could not drive it out. Jesus again explains that it was their faithlessness – manifested in a lack of prayer – that stood between them and doing God’s work.

So, we have seen a hopeless situation and a faithless people. Let’s pause here to ask the all-important question, how do I apply this passage to my life? What does it tell me about my relationship with God, and my service of him?

The question behind these questions, really, is, “which character in this passage is about me”? Are we to read ourselves as Jesus, powerful to save and fit to rebuke others for their failings? Or are we the disciples, who need to pray a bit harder before God will work through us? Or, perhaps, we are like the desperate father, and need to trust in the totality of Jesus’ power before we see a shred of it? Mark is a skilled writer, and there is much to learn from each of these characters. But I think his point – the message of his gospel account – is that we identify best with the boy with the evil spirit. We are in desperate need, and nobody but Jesus can help us. We are in grave danger, and at great risk, because of evil. We have nowhere to turn but towards Jesus, who alone is capable of curing our biggest and most devastating problem: the problem with our sin.

This passage is a reminder to us that we are in a helpless state and that faithless self-reliance will get us nowhere. Jesus alone can save us, so trusting in our own endeavours will not aid us in the slightest. I suspect that often, like the disciples here, we feel like we are all-powerful because we know Jesus. But whatever wonderful things we do in his name, we must remember that we do them in his name! Perhaps we have become accustomed to expecting much from Jesus but only trusting ourselves to achieve it? Or maybe we trust in the comforts of capable-looking friends and family, and forget to pray to our loving, personal, heavenly Father.

The final couple of verses in this passage demonstrate the point excellently. This is the second clear prediction of Jesus’ death in Mark’s gospel, and like the other two, the disciples respond with derision and confusion. Jesus knows he must die a violent death and then be raised to life, but the disciples are looking for a hero-messiah who will save them by the sword. They trust in military strength, but Jesus is not that kind of God. He chooses the way of grace to save his people. He offers grace on the Cross; grace because, like the boy in this passage, we are undeserving recipients of a total cure from evil.

This passage, then, looks forward to the Jesus’ ultimate saving work by providing a picture of it. Every Christian can join with the boy’s father and say, “I believe”. But it is only the work God’s spirit which will enable us to turn to Jesus for forgiveness: so we join, too, with the father’s appeal for a heart of faith as he says, literally, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

²After six days Jesus took Peter, James and John with him and led them up a high mountain, where they were all alone. There he was transfigured before them. ³His clothes became dazzling white, whiter than anyone in the world could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared before them Elijah and Moses, who were talking with Jesus.

Sometimes you think you know someone, but then you discover something about them that you never knew, which totally shakes the way you see them. It might be something truly astounding; you might discover that they have previously been a famous pop star or a published author. It might be something that they say – perhaps you always thought of them as polite and well-mannered, but then you see them transform into a swearing maniac behind the wheel of a car. Maybe it’s something to do with their background – maybe it transpires that one of your best friends is an orphan or was abused as a child and you never knew about it. All of these things can transform the way that we see someone. We might never see them in the same light again.

It’s interesting to pick up Mark’s Gospel once more at this point. The disciples, having spent some time with Jesus and observed his teaching and healing ministry, think that they have a fair idea of who Jesus is. But then, in Mark 8, they were challenged significantly about Jesus identity. Peter, one of Jesus’ best friends amongst the disciples, recognised Jesus as ‘the Christ’ but saw this in a purely human way; he thought that Jesus would be more of a military figure who would liberate the Jews from the Romans. Peter proceeded to rebuke Jesus when he was told that Jesus would suffer, be killed and then rise again.

Today’s the day, though, when the apostles’ view of Christ begins to change. Jesus takes them to the top of a mountain, and there he was “transfigured,” or transformed, right before their very eyes. His clothes glow whiter than white. For just a little while, Jesus’ inner purity and holiness shines out of him, and he is revealed for who he is – the good and blameless Christ. Jesus’ identity as the messiah is witnessed to by Moses and Elijah. To the Jews, Moses was the personification of the law, and Elijah of the prophets. Mark does not record the incident, but in Matthew 5 Jesus tells those listening to the sermon on the mount that he has not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them. Here then are the Law and the Prophets, bowing to Jesus’ superiority over them. They concede that Jesus is what they have been pointing towards. Jesus’ identity, therefore, as the messiah, is made clear to the apostles he was closest to – Peter, James and John – and through them, to us. What is very exciting that, seeing Jesus in all his sinless glory is perhaps a foresight of how we will appear in heaven, when our sins have been cleansed and we are restored to our pre-fall condition. Paul picks up on this in Romans 12, when we says that we should strive in the here and now to live a pure and blameless life. He says that we, too, should be “transfigured” (although most translations use the word “transformed”) by the renewing of our minds, and no longer conform to the ways of the world. In other words, we should aim to resemble Jesus in all that we do. Not only do we get a glimpse of Jesus as Son of God at the transfiguration, but we also gain a rare insight into what might lie beyond death for us – if we start that process now of living as if we are destined for heaven.

Interestingly, even though we see Jesus as he is in this incident, the apostles still fail to grasp the true significance of this; they see him as somehow similar to Moses and Elijah, wanting to build the three of them shelters on the mountain top. We have to feel some sympathy for the apostles, however, since they are clearly petrified at what they are seeing – as I would be too!

If there was any doubt about Jesus’ divinity, it is blown out of the water by what happens next. Suddenly that big, bombing voice that is the stereotypical view of God, sounds from the cloud, telling the apostles that Jesus is his son, and he loves him. There is no mistaking Jesus’ identity. He comes from God, he is his son, and he loves him. What follows is of great importance for the disciples; they are told that they must listen to Jesus. That’s not a hint that they might like to, but a direct order from God. Since we too are disciples of Christ, even if we are not apostles, this clear instruction comes down to us too. We must listen to Christ. We must study what he said by reading the gospels. We must be open to God speaking to us through the entirety of scripture. It is only through listening to Jesus that we understand who God is, and only by listening to Jesus that we can understand what is expected of us if we wish to enter God’s new creation after our deaths. This is a perfect reminder for us of the importance of listening to Jesus, just as we start our second Mark Marathon, studying the second half of Mark’s gospel.

As they begin to grasp Jesus’ true identity, Peter, James and John continue to have questions. They know that it is foretold that before the messiah arrives, Elijah will return to prepare the way. Apart from their recent fleeting glimpse of him, they have not seen Elijah. They certainly haven’t seen a full-scale return, in which Elijah declares the arrival of the Christ. They are taking things too literally, however. Jesus tells them that in actual fact Elijah HAS returned, and he was treated in the way that scripture foretold. For Jesus, John the Baptist is the embodiment of Elijah, having come in Elijah’s “spirit and power” (see Luke 1:17). Here, then, is a further indication that Jesus just might be the promised messiah that the Jewish world have been waiting for with bated breath.

In this episode, three of Jesus’ most trusted apostles, Peter, James and John, begin to see Jesus in a new light, as they begin to understand who he is. As we study the rest of Mark’s gospel we will see whether they grasp the significance of what they have seen on that mountain top. For us, though, with the benefit of hindsight, we see Jesus in all his glory, and gain an insight into what heaven may be like. We also begin to see the importance of living as if we are already in that reality, not living for the world today. And finally, we get that important order direct from God – listen to Jesus. Let’s strive to do that as we study the rest of Mark’s gospel!

The Second Mark Marathon series archive.

⁶⁸"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come and has redeemed his people.
⁶⁹He has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
⁷⁰(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
⁷¹salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
⁷²to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
⁷³the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
⁷⁴to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

Our reading today comes from the “Benedictus” in Luke’s gospel. That’s the Latin word of praise – meaning “blessed” – which is the first word of Zechariah’s song in Luke 1. The occasion of Zechariah’s song of praise was his the birth of his son, John the Baptist. But the reason for his jubilation – the reason God was to be praised – was that he had fulfilled his promise to save his people. Praise be to the Lord indeed!

We can learn several things about Jesus from this song. First, we learn that God has come to redeem his people. That’s great news for people like you and me who need saving! We also learn that Jesus has come from the royal line of David, from which the messiah was promised centuries before. And we learn that he has saved us from evil and evildoers.

But we also learn why Jesus has come. First, God has remembered his covenant with Israel out of mercy, and has come to fulfill his promise to save his people. Second, he has saved us so that we can serve him rightly, and without fear.

Zechariah was overjoyed that Jesus had come, and we should be too! Because God remembered his covenant with Abraham, he fulfilled it once and for all in Jesus, allowing us to know God and enabling us to serve him. All this week we have been looking at God remembering his covenants: with the whole earth; with Abraham; with the people of Israel; and with anyone who will trust in him. If you trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins, you can join with Zechariah today in praise of Jesus, because he is the fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation for us. And we can respond as Zechariah did – as God intends – in joyous service and holy and right living.

³¹ "The time is coming," declares the LORD,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.

This fourth reflection this week is slightly different to the others. We have been looking at places in the Bible where we are told that God remembers his covenant. We return to such a verse tomorrow. But to fill a crucially important link in the chain, today’s reading from Jeremiah sees God promise to make a brand new covenant. And, gloriously, it is the only covenant where he promises not to remember!

Ever since Genesis 3, the Bible story has been about God’s dealings with a rebellious people. In the past few readings we have looked at occasions where God has made promises to them: first, to the spare the whole world from destruction; second, to give his chosen people a land to inherit; and third, a renewal of that promise despite the people rebelling against him. Jeremiah was prophesying at a time when the people’s rebellion was great, and God punished them with exile from Jerusalem. But he makes the wonderful promise of this new covenant as a future hope for those who have faith in him.

This new covenant is new; it is better than the old one, for it has eternal reach. The old one was broken by the people’s rebellion, but this new covenant is made only with those who know God. Those who trust in him will be transformed by what God has written on their hearts. Ultimately, God promises not to remember their sin: they will be eternally forgiven!

The writer to the Hebrews quotes these verses and explains that it is won by the death of Jesus. He writes,

“For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.” (Hebrews 8:15)

This is the promise for Christians, then. Because of Jesus’ death we are set free from our sin so we can know God and take his eternal inheritance. The promised land of the old covenant was just a temporary picture, but the new covenant promise is an ever-lasting reality. Praise God for the new covenant, promised long ago and fulfilled in Christ. Thank him that you can know him today, and that he will never remember your sin. If you do not know the peace that comes from knowing God, why not ask God to forget your sins and invite him to transform your heart today?

" 'They will pay for their sins because they rejected my laws and abhorred my decrees. Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the LORD their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the LORD.' "

Yesterday’s Reading looked at the book of Exodus: God’s people had been enslaved in Egypt, but God remembered his promise to them and led them out of captivity. They were rescued in order to poses the Promised Land – promised to Abraham, centuries before!

The Israelites had been shown great mercy by God, as he began to fulfill his promises to them. But the people did not trust God. They disobeyed him and rebelled against him. Numbers 14 shows the rebellion at its worst: the people did not trust God to give them the Promised Land, and decided that life would be better back in Egypt, where they were slaves! God punished the wrongdoers, but relented from disinheriting the whole nation because Moses interceded for them.

Our verses today come with this backdrop. Israel had sinned, and God punished their sin. But he promises, once again, not to break his covenant. He remembers his promise to give them an inheritance, and he keeps to his promise because he is the LORD. As so many times before, God asserts his identity as a perfect God as he keeps his word. And although he punishes wrongdoing, he keeps his promises for those who trust him because of his very nature!

I hope you know the confidence this gives Christian believers!  It means that we can have full security in God’s word; that we can be sure he will forgive our sin as he promises; that we can trust him in the even the most difficult times; and that we can take full joy in his promises. These are the themes of one of my favourite hymns, which you might want to meditate on today:

From the breaking of the dawn
To the setting of the sun
I will stand on every promise of Your word
Words of power strong to save
That will never pass away
I will stand on every promise of Your word
For Your covenant is sure
And on this I am secure
I can stand on every promise of Your word

When I stumble and I sin
Condemnation pressing in
I will stand on every promise of Your word
You are faithful to forgive
That in freedom I might live
So I stand on every promise of Your word
Guilt to innocence restored;
You remember sins no more
So I’ll stand on every promise of Your word

When I’m faced with anguished choice
I will listen for Your voice
And I’ll stand on every promise of Your word
Through this dark and troubled land
You will guide me with your hand
As I stand on every promise of Your word
And you’ve promised to complete
Every work begun in me
So I’ll stand on every promise of Your word

Hope that lifts me from despair
Love that casts out every fear
As I stand on every promise of Your word
Not forsaken not alone
For the Comforter has come
And I stand on every promise of Your word
Grace sufficient grace for me
Grace for all who will believe
We will stand on every promise of Your word

Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2005 Thankyou Music

²³ During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. ²⁴ God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. ²⁵ So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

Do you ever get tired of waiting for something you are expecting to receive? When I order books on Amazon, I always use the free delivery service. Sometimes it is just as fast as the first-class option, but sometimes it feels as if they have deliberately kept my parcel on one side for three days before dropping it in the post. Before long it is the weekend, and then, knowing my luck, a bank holiday. But, usually a full week after I ordered the books, they finally get delivered. While I am waiting, it feels like they will never arrive.

The Israelites in Exodus 2 were not waiting for parcels, but for rescue from slavery! As the story of Exodus begins, they had been slaves to the Egyptians for over 400 years; they were poorly treated and living in a foreign land. Hundreds of years before, God had promised their ancestor Abraham a land for his people to live in. But within three generations Abraham’s descendants had been forced to flee to Egypt because of drought. Things got worse when they grew in number, as they become a threat to their host nation. They were forced into slavery, and remained in captivity for centuries. It may have looked as if the covenant God had made in Genesis 15 was just a vain hope, but God had promised Jacob that he would faithfully honour his covenant:

“I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” (Genesis 28:13-15)

God kept his promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He was not powerless to prevent Israel’s slavery, and was not powerless to save them for 400 years. He heard Israel at their greatest need, and responded by beginning to fulfill his promise to them. The story of Exodus is all about how God saved the people from slavery, leading them through the Red Sea towards the land he had promised Abraham for his people to inherit.

If you are a Christian, God has promised to save you, too. We, like the Israelites, have not yet reached our promised land – the new creation. But in the meantime we can have full confidence that God will save us as he has promised. Just as there is a gap between my Amazon parcels being dispatched and arriving, often, God does not fulfill his promises immediately. But we have a full guarantee that he knows best and that he will deliver. So take comfort today that God will complete every promise he has made, whether it feels like he will or not.

¹² And God said, "This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³ I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴ Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵ I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.

I remember vividly a Bible study at my school Christian Society some years ago. We were beginning a term of studies in Exodus; getting to Exodus 2:24 the study leader asked, “what does it mean when it says that God remembered his covenant? Had he forgotten it?” That study changed the way I thought about how God acted (well, to be honest, I probably had not thought about it enough to have my mind changed!). In this week’s readings, I want to take a look at occasions in the Bible where we are told that God “remember” his covenant. We’ll look at that verse from Exodus tomorrow. Today, though, we are in Genesis with Noah.

On 8th January 2010, a man named Paul Vasquez saw a double rainbow. He filmed it, and uploaded the video to YouTube. The video became a viral hit, and has been seen by millions of people around the world.  The video is a hit because Mr Vasquez’s reaction is extremely emotional, and seems as if it was stimulated by some pretty strong narcotics. You can watch the video on YouTube, although I will warn you that there is some strong language. Seeing a double rainbow clearly had an existential effect on Vasquez because he kept proclaiming, tearfully, “Oh my God!” and asking questions such as, “what does it mean?”

Genesis 9 tells us what rainbows mean, and however familiar the story of Noah is, the answer is still seems to come as a surprise. Rainbows are a reminder of God’s covenant with the whole earth. Moreover, rainbows are a reminder to God of his covenant with the earth.

At the end of the sixth day of creation, we are told that “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good”. Only five chapters of Genesis later, and things looked very different. Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit, and Cain had killed Abel. Genesis 6 tells of God’s response of judgment:

⁵ The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. ⁶ The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. ⁷ So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

The Bible could well end there. But verse 8 is a great message of hope: ”But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD”. God saved Noah’s family and promised never to curse the ground or destroy all the living creatures again. He made a covenant with the whole earth; the covenant that means we are not destroyed for our wrongdoing.

Praise God that he remembers that covenant today; that although the thoughts of our hearts are evil he has decided to save us from destruction.