JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. Today, Tom and Jason consider the importance of promises in the Bible. As we’ll learn, we absolutely need promises. They are a gift from God for believers in this present age. This theme is of major importance, and we’ll be considering it for the next few weeks. Why do we have promises from God? What benefit do they bring to us? How did the New Testament authors apply promises spoken in the Old Testament to believers living under the New Covenant?

TK: Hey, Jason, are you ready to tackle a new topic? I’m looking at your book, Delighting in the Old Testament, and we’re going to talk about God’s promises today.

JD: Hoping well, Tom. I am looking forward to it.

TK: Alright, this fits well with what the theme of our podcast is, a podcast on biblical theology. Our definition of biblical theology is how the Bible progresses, integrates, and climaxes in Christ. So just kind of teeing things off, Jason, you would say, because I’ve read it in your book here, that we need to be able to think hard about how promises in the Old Testament. as New Testament believers, they get to us. Correct?

JD: Oh my, yes. I mean, it’s so practical, Tom. We’re talking about 75% of our scriptures loaded with promises—God speaking, the trustworthy God speaking a trustworthy word. And the question is: can we claim these promises? Are they really for us? And if they are for us, how do we claim them faithfully? Should we be thinking about the lens of Christ like we have been raising? And I’m going to urge us to do exactly that, that in Christ, every promise is yes, but only in Christ.

So we’re going to want to, over this series of podcasts, be thinking in larger categories. But the promises of God are so vital for helping believers grow in our pursuit of holiness, grow in sanctification, and helping us suffer with hope. I just have two texts in mind for framing. The psalmist in Psalm 119 says, “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promises give me life.” God’s promises in the midst of the winters of life give us hope for spring and for summer.

TK: Psalm 119:50 again.

JD: Yes, Psalm 119:50. When we’re living in the night, we truly have hope for light. It is coming. God has built it into the very nature of God’s character that he will gain victory for those that he has redeemed, and it gives us hope. So Psalm 119:50: “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promises give me life.”

But then the second verse that would stand out to me is 2 Peter 1:4, where we read, “God has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may partake of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption of the world because of sinful desire.” So how do we escape the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire? We escape it, and how is it that we become more like God, that we partake in the divine nature? It says it is through his precious and very great promises.

So God’s promises help us suffer with hope and help us grow in sanctification. We want to meditate on this vital reality that is just pervasive throughout all of Scripture and consider how all the promises of God indeed find their yes in Jesus.

TK: Jason, as a starter to this, I think even backing up further, how would you answer this question: How can we have confidence in God being the one who promises? How can God promise? Because we’re taking hope, it’s helping us. But just backing up that for, why should I listen to and receive from God’s promises? What does it say about him?

JD: Oh, it says that he is indeed the trustworthy one. I think about Abraham in Genesis 12. He is with his family in Mesopotamia. They are settled. They are confident. And yet God says, “Go to the land that I will show you so that I may make you into a great nation and make your name great, and so that you’ll be blessed.” And then he says, “And there be a blessing so that the one who blesses you, I may bless, and the one who curses you, I’ll curse. And so that with the ultimate result that through you all the nations or families of the earth will be blessed.”

Now, Abraham hears this. And yet his wife is barren. And yet what the promise he hears is, “You’re going to become a nation.” He has no property, and yet God says, “I’m going to give you a land.” In both accounts, it would take a miracle. What would cause Abraham to leave the land and leave the family that he knew so well?

Indeed, it even gets more complicated because Joshua tells us in Joshua 24 that Abraham’s family were idolaters, so they were worshippers of other gods. And now Yahweh shows up. I think it has to be what Stephen himself says in Acts 7, that the God of glory appeared to Abraham while he was in Mesopotamia. What I mean by this is that it’s not that the promises alone could be desirable. The desirability of those promises was not enough to make Abraham move from Ur of the Chaldeans.

TK: Right, right.

JD: The desirability had to be matched by the believability of the promise maker, and God showed up in a way that arrested Abraham, that compelled Abraham. It was the beauty and the glory and the truthfulness of God as he displayed himself to Abraham that moved Abraham to say, “This is a God I’m going to believe in,” and as I believe, it will overflow in obedience.

We believe in God—that is, we hope in his promises—because he has proven himself to be worth our trust. He is the God who upholds all things. And not only is he therefore able to do what he says he will do, he has entered into our world through the person of Christ to save us. And he who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

TK: I think that thought about who God is—ultimately, we need, if we’re going to trust in his promises, we need to know that he actually can deliver what he’s promised. And all of us make promises about certain things. I’ll drive here. I’ll do this. I’m going to go pick up some people at the airport today, that sort of thing. And you can say I’ll be there. But if we’re pushed hard enough, we’ll say, “But I have limitations, and actually something could happen that I wouldn’t be there.” But we’re trusting in a God who absolutely keeps his word, and he’s the one who has the capacity to promise something and absolutely deliver.

JD: That’s right, Tom. Our God works all things according to the counsel of his will. Ephesians 1:11—all things.

TK: That’s amazing.

JD: It’s amazing for Paul to say, “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Who has given a gift to him that he should be repaid?” Answer: No one, for from him and through him and to him are all things. That’s Romans 11:33-36. I think about Colossians 1:16—by Jesus, by the Son, all things exist, visible and invisible, thrones, dominions, rulers, and authorities. They were created through him and for him.

There is not anything in this world around us that was not spoken into existence by God. Indeed, God right now is speaking everything, upheld by the word of his power, such that if he stopped speaking, we would stop existing. He is able. I think of the Book of Job in the very final chapter. Job, after experiencing the vast greatness of God—“Were you there, Job, when I did this and when I created that? Are you out in the mountain peaks and down in the valleys upholding all things?” Job says, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).

TK: We have to know that.

JD: That’s right. Satan is real, but he cannot thwart God’s purposes. God has an ultimate will that Satan is not running alongside of—he is part of it. He is underneath the absolute sovereign God, and it is within that context that we live and move and have our being.

I think of Isaiah 45:7. God says, “I form light and create darkness. I make well-being and create calamity. I am Yahweh who does all these things. Who’s made man’s mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” God says to Moses in Exodus 4:11. We have a God who is orchestrating and upholding all things, working for the ultimate glory of his Son. And he has redeemed us.

And it’s this God in whom we hope—a God that, as Lewis said, cannot be tamed. He is not a tame lion, but he is good. And it’s that goodness of God who is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, the causer of all things, the very God who upholds everything, the only uncaused one—in whom we are putting our hope. So when he speaks words of promise, there are words that we should not push aside. They are words that we should hope in.

But we need to understand: What does it mean that those promises would be yes for us if they were given to different people, in a different time, and even under a different covenant? Are those promises too things that we say yes to? And that’s what we want to be considering over these podcasts.

TK: All right. Well, let’s start here, and Jason, can you give us just a simple definition of what you mean by a promise? So just a category that we can have. And then why would God—we already touched on it, but what is a promise? And why would we need promises? So real briefly, both of those. Then we can move into this.

JD: Well, to promise something is simply to assure that one will do a particular thing, or that a certain thing will happen. And as you’ve already noted, Tom, the substance of that promise, the validity of that promise, is fully in the trustworthiness of the promise maker.

TK: There’s something backing it up.

JD: That’s right. Is the one making this statement of assurance that one will do a particular thing, or that a certain thing will happen, is the one declaring that someone that we can trust? And ultimately, as you already said, every other promise, every promise that doesn’t come from God has qualification. Well, this is ultimately what I hope will happen. But if God is the great mover, the great doer, who’s orchestrating all things in reality, all things in space and time, if he declares something, then we can be confident it will happen. And that is what provides the bedrock support for sufferers.

When one who is in suffering hears a promise that everyone who believes in me will not perish but have eternal life, we have hope for life and for a future. When God says—when Jesus says, “Many of you they will kill, but not a hair of your head will perish,” all of a sudden the suffering ones, the persecuted, have hope even beyond the grave.

And what I would love to do is open up considering some examples of not only how such promises help us suffer well and give us that endurance—I think of Paul in Romans 15:4, how he says everything that was written in earlier days was written for our instruction. And then he says, “In order that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.” So here’s Paul saying Christians are to gain hope as we work through those Old Testament texts, the very prophets who promised the good news that is now ours, the good news concerning the Son—as we read their words, we are to see hope awakened in our souls.

But it’s not only to give hope to suffering saints, it’s also supposed to be the instrument through those precious and very great promises. New desires are awakened that actually battle the sinful desires that sin promises or sin creates. So sin tempts us by making promises. “Look at this, taste this, touch this,” and as it makes those commands, there’s a promise that’s innate to it: “It will satisfy you. You’ll delight in this,” and it makes us want it.

And yet what Peter says is God has given us his precious and very great promises so that through these promises, we might begin to look more like God, saying no to things of the world. So consider anxiety, the sin of anxiety. Jesus says that we turn from worry and heed his call to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness when we’re confident that all these things like food and clothing and shelter will be added unto you.

Paul says, “Pray with thanksgiving, not being anxious about anything, but with everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. And the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.” So we hear that promise. We long for peace to be guarding our heart. What does it do? We hear the promise, and it motivates us to turn from anxiety and to pray, and to pray with thanksgiving.

Think about the sin of covetousness. How is it that we nurture contentment, that we keep our lives free from the love of money? It works by recalling the promise of Hebrews 13:5.

TK: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”

JD: That’s right. “Don’t love money, for I will never leave you or forsake you.” Something about that promise is designed to say all that you need is already yours. I am with you. I will satisfy. I will sustain. Don’t love money. We battle the sin of covetousness through that promise.

TK: Even though at the moment you really are battling something that’s very real. Something’s in front of you saying, “I want that. I don’t have enough.” That’s right. And it’s the promise that is a gift from God at that moment.

JD: That’s right, it’s the very means of grace for helping us rest with contentment. I think about—I mean, just very tangibly—you’re a young man, and you’re walking through a Walmart, up at the cash register. And there’s all these magazines on the side, and they are objectifying women, displaying body parts that are out of place in such a context. It’s not one’s spouse, it’s not one’s marriage bed. And how do you battle? How do you battle for purity in that moment? “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God” (Matthew 5:8).

TK: Rather than—and certainly there’s a way to go after these sins and say it’s wrong, covetousness is wrong, going at it that direction, lust is wrong—but here you’re saying there’s a better promise out there for you. There’s something for you—you will see God. You need to be pure in heart.

JD: That’s right. What you—the way you just worded that, Tom, is so helpful—a better promise. So sin is making its promises. It’s not that God doesn’t want to satisfy us. It’s not that God doesn’t want to delight us. It’s that we settle too quickly on lesser delights when he’s declared in his presence, his fullness of joy, at his right hand are pleasures forevermore. We have a God who wants to please us. And so he kindly gives us promises, urging us, seeking to awaken greater desires.

And there’s that positive side of “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” But then there’s also the promises of dread. Like just a few verses later in Matthew 5: “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matthew 5:29-30).

So what we hope for or dread tomorrow changes who we are today. That’s the principle of ethics, and that’s how the promises relate to our present ethic. What we hope for and dread based on the promises that we believe changes who we are today. I want to be more holy today. I don’t want to give in to anxiety or covetousness or lust or bitterness or fear of man, or fear of condemnation, or fear of failure. And how do I battle these? I battle them one way by embracing a superior promise and seeing it inform and influence my present-day ethic.

So that’s the one side, Tom. We say we embrace God’s promises because they help us pursue holiness. But then we have the other side. We have the true reality of suffering, where the psalmist can say, “This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promises give me life.” So when we face suffering, it’s God’s promises in Scripture that supply one of the bulwarks of hope, because our God is trustworthy. We’re trusting that God will be faithful to his word and that in his good time he will act because he’s able.

TK: And in this moment, the greatest thing I need is his word. That is his promise. Because if I absolutely needed the delivery, the final delivery of that promise in that moment, he would give it to me. But what I need at this moment to make it in the suffering is his promise. That’s a gracious gift from him.

JD: That’s right. When our tears flow, we call to mind that he heals the brokenhearted,

He binds up their wounds, that the Lord lifts up the humble, he casts the wicked to the ground (Psalm 147). This is built into the very character of God. When the darkness lingers, we say, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Lord, let the light triumph over the night” (Lamentations 3:22-23). We say, “Sing praises to the Lord. Give thanks to his holy name, for his anger is but for a moment, his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” These are promises (Psalm 30:4-5).

TK: And this psalmist there is not speaking this as one who’s presently living in that perfect morning that they’re talking about. They’re almost reciting this living in that spot where weeping is afflicting me right now. But I see something, and I’m hoping in that.

JD: That’s right. God enters into the suffering, and he says, “Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed, I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand” (Isaiah 41:10). And oh, what comfort such words from the living God give. Or “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, and the flames will not consume you. Why? For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior” (Isaiah 43).

I mean, and how many of us haven’t just embraced, when death’s shadows draw near, “The Lord is my shepherd… Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:1,4). These are the promises of God, Tom, and we embrace them. We call them to mind, and they become life for our soul. This is my comfort in my affliction—Your promises give me life. But all these promises that I’ve just raised in relation to the suffering saint, all of them were Old Testament promises.

TK: So that leads to that question—I live in the new covenant age. So something we’re going to be bumping into this podcast and beyond is: can I apply those Old Testament promises to myself now that Christ has come, or has something changed?

JD: That’s exactly right, Tom. Our desire in these next several podcasts is to help equip Christians with a better understanding of how Jesus and the apostles thought about Old Testament promises and watch how they model the application of those promises in fresh biblical contexts. When we’re talking about the promises, we are talking about really a group of four major types of promises that begin in Genesis and then are pervasive all throughout the rest of Scripture.

Promise of offspring—that God will reconcile people to himself and create a new family, a new family of God. Promises of land—that he will do so creating this family in a context where there is geography and turf where…

TK: A real place.

JD: A real place where people can fellowship with the living God. We’re talking about blessing and curse, so where this people are able to enjoy the very presence of God, enjoy life where they have his favor, and that means those who are standing against them are being judged, where sin is recognized as serious and the Holy God is recognized as just. And we’re talking about the very presence of God, where God manifests himself to his people, where he comes and lets himself be known and savored and treasured.

These promises—offspring, land, blessing and curse, and divine presence—I guess I said five, I meant four different angles. All of those promises growing directly out of the Book of Genesis. And I think nearly every promise in Scripture is in some way related to those foundational concepts where God is entering in. I mean, if he says, “I will be with you, I will never leave you or forsake you,” he’s talking about divine presence. And if he says, “You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance,” when he declares that to the Son of God, his Messiah, that Son is declared to be the offspring of God, and the vision is that more offspring will be created among the nations.

Every promise in Scripture we can associate with these four basic promises: offspring, land, blessing or curse, and divine presence. And yet in that context, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy. I think of how Paul in Romans 12 simply says, “Don’t avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.'” Well, God makes a promise there: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” Paul is pulling that from Deuteronomy 32, and he just applies it directly to Christians.

TK: And so that’s again what we’re bumping into. Paul, can you do that? Moses was speaking that in Deuteronomy to the Israelites. We’re not under that covenant. So Paul did something. And the question is, how did he get there?

JD: That’s right. It even gets more complicated because in the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 13, we read this: “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ So we can confidently say, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?'” (Hebrews 13:5-6). When he quotes, “You don’t need—you can be content, you don’t need to give in to the temptation of loving money, you can be content because he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you,'” the challenge is this: that promise was made to Joshua in Joshua 1:5. It’s not even made to the whole covenant people. It’s only made to Joshua.

God says, “Joshua, as you’re going into the promised land, as you’re ready to lead these people in conquest, know this: Meditate on the law day and night. I will never leave you or forsake you.” Can we claim—I’m not Joshua, I’m not Joshua—but the writer of Hebrews somehow says the promise that was made to Joshua is relevant for every believer today. And the question is, how does he do that?

Because often, Tom, when I’m talking to people, I’ll hear them on the one hand—some people will just say, “Well, here’s a promise, and it’s mine.” And my question is, on what basis can you say that? It was given to a different person at a different time under a different covenant. But then I hear other people say, “Well, yeah, that’s given—that’s an old covenant promise. That doesn’t deal with us.” And all of a sudden we see the book of Hebrews, the author of Hebrews saying, “Christians, he has said, ‘I will never leave you, I will never forsake you.'” And Joshua 1:5 all of a sudden becomes Christian scripture, valid for you and for me.

And I hope over these podcasts we can consider the question: How does that happen? And I want to revisit this at a later podcast—that exact question, how does it become ours? Because I don’t think it comes directly to us because the direct promise was given to Joshua. So the question is, how does it come to us?

TK: You know, if you pushed it and you said can I take promises, for instance, to Joseph and him ruling over Egypt or something like that and just—I want to claim that in my life, maybe as a business person or something like that, can I do that? And obviously that happens all the time. People say, “Hey, this is my verse,” and you want to say, “How did that become your verse?” If you’re going to claim that promise spoken to somebody, how did that happen?

JD: That’s right. And so we want to consider how Christians should be thinking. What principles should be guiding our approach to Old Testament promises? And so I want to be able to lay out principles, but not just random ones—ones that I see growing directly out of Scripture. And then we want to be able to consider specifically the person and work of Jesus and ask ourselves: How do we appropriate these promises through Christ? What principles should we be thinking about? What ways does Jesus make every promise yes?

TK: Well, and that’s what Paul says, right? All the promises of God are yes and Amen. It’s not—that’s not the end of it. It’s in Christ.

JD: That’s right. It’s in Christ. So it’s intriguing.

TK: So what does he mean by that?

JD: That’s right. So it’s intriguing because the question becomes, well, all the promises of God find their yes in Jesus—maybe that’s just the New Testament promises. But what’s intriguing is that when we go to 2 Corinthians 1:20, when we go to 2 Corinthians 6:16-18, he gives a long list of Old Testament promises. And things like, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” “I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me.” These are all Old Testament promises.

And then Paul says in 2 Corinthians 7:1, “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.” So notice what he does—he says, “We have these promises,” and it should be influencing our ethic. He right there says the promises that are yes in Jesus are not just New Testament promises. It’s these Old Testament promises that are ours. We have these promises, and we should be using them therefore to motivate us to seek holiness.

TK: I think it reminds me of Ephesians 6. It says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother (this is the first commandment with a promise), that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land.” And then it’s going to go on. But this ties in with what we talked about in our previous podcast about our connection with the law. And we don’t have to unpack this today, but just making the point—Paul is speaking to new covenant people, but he’s using old covenant law to speak to them, and he’s using a promise there, but he’s applying it to new covenant believers, and he’s expecting that they will somehow understand what he’s getting at.

JD: That’s so good. Well, Tom, I think that we have whetted the appetite of our listeners. I hope that people will keep listening on future podcasts. We’re going to talk, we’re going to provide some specific principles that grow right out of the New Testament itself for thinking about Old Testament promises because it’s my desire that as people are doing their devotions, as they’re pursuing God, as they’re leading Bible studies, and as they’re preaching, that…

TK: Hmm.

JD: They’re able, like the writer of Hebrews, to rightly and faithfully, through Jesus, embrace an Old Testament promise that was given to Joshua and recognize what was true of Joshua is still true for us. That principle…

TK: Yeah.

JD: Growing out of the very character of God is true for all who are in him, and I want us to think about how does that work. And then I want us to elevate the very person of Jesus as the lens through which every promise becomes yes for us. And consider very tangibly some practical implications of the promises of God for Christians today.

TK: This will be a great help, Jason. I’m looking forward to it. I really am. All right, well, if you have not picked one up, I would encourage you to order the book we’re working through, “Delighting in the Old Testament,: Through Christ and for Christ.” The book has a lot, I think, that will help Christians, pastors, leaders, churches. This section we’re working through about Old Testament promises has been a real help and a blessing to me, so I’ll put a link to it in the show notes, and I encourage you to get it. But Jason’s looking forward to next time when we kind of press this conversation further.

JD: Absolutely, Tom.

TK: Thanks. All right.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Go to our show notes for a link to Jason DeRouchie’s book Delighting in the Old Testament. You’ll find a large number of resources, including lectures, outlines, articles, and sermons at jasonderouchie.com. You’ll find many resources for teaching and preaching in a number of languages at handstotheplow.org.