Promise Box

I first came across one some fifty years ago: a somewhat small, ornate box, complete with tweezers with which one pulled out a tiny card on which was printed a promise from the Bible. Sure enough, there were 365 cards, one for each day of the year. Some of these promises were taken out of context—promises made to specific individuals but not meant for everyone. But the idea was a good one, considering that the Bible contains many promises that are designed to help us in our pilgrimage through this world and into the next.

Consider Hebrews 13:5: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” It is a quotation from Deuteronomy 31:6, wherein Moses is preparing Joshua and the people of Israel for the conquest of Canaan. Given the specific historical setting, we might be tempted to think that this promise was exclusively for Joshua and the people of God encamped in Moab at the place where the Jordan enters the Dead Sea (Deut. 1:5). But the author of Hebrews picks it up as a promise that covers the entirety of God’s redemptive purposes, in the old covenant as well as the new. It is a promise for every Christian to cherish.

In Hebrews 13, the promise is made in the context of an exhortation to keep our lives “free from love of money” (v. 5). What appears initially as a statement of God’s omnipresence (He is always with us) becomes more of a statement about God’s faithfulness to provide for His people all that they need: His presence is reassurance of His care for us. He will provide us with all that we need rather than all that we want. In the covenant renewal recorded in Deuteronomy 29:1–31:13, the statement “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (31:8) is a testimony to God’s faithfulness to His covenant promise. He will keep His promise to give to His people the land of Canaan, just as He now continues that promise to bring us all the way home:

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Rom. 8:28–30)

The final stanza of the hymn “How Firm a Foundation” captures well the promise of Hebrews 13:5:

“The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
     I will not, I will not desert to his foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
     I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.”