Have you ever made a promise not fully sure if you would be able to keep your word? Its not that you didn’t have good intentions. You just weren’t sure you would be able to do what you were promising you were going to do. We do it as parents. We do it as friends. Sadly, we are probably even guilty of doing it with God.
What we are going to see in today’s text is the nation of Israel after a time of worship which included confession make a vow about their behavior going forward. Nehemiah 10:29 says, “These joined their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes.” This vow comes after the reading of their history as a nation. They had not been faithful to God in the past, but they were vowing this time would be different. Sound familiar? The vow and oath they are referencing is found in Deuteronomy 28. In Deuteronomy 28, God promised that Israel would be blessed if they obeyed, but He also warned them of the consequences of their disobedience to the Law. In fact, the 70 year captivity that the nation had come out of before this was the direct result of Israel’s disobedience. What this shows us is as W.A. Criswell said, “One of the strangest things about the human nature is that man has not been changed because of punishment. He may desist evil because he is afraid, but his heart is still evil. He would do evil if he could get by with it. A man is really changed only by the Gospel.”
We all have the best of intentions most of the time; however, we must come to understand that our intentions are not enough. If we are going to truly obey the Lord, we must depend on the Lord to work in us, to change us. It is also worth noting that our desire to obey God should not be that God will love us or save us. God already loves us, even while we are sinners Romans 5:8 tells us. And no amount of good works will merit our salvation. We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Instead, our obedience should be motivated by love and gratitude. Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord our God with “all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind” (Mt. 22:37). We should be grateful that God has saved us in spite of us. Therefore, we seek to obey and do good works as a way to show our love for God and our gratitude to God for who He is and what He has done for us. So before you go and make some rash promise that you know you stand a very slim chance of actually keeping; save the promise, learn to love God more. Because the more we love God the more we will desire to obey Him, and in the end that is what God wants.
By His grace and for His glory,
Pastor Justin