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God keeps his promises - even promises conditioned on our failing promises.

When I read each day’s scripture I try to remember to pause and to pray.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the logic of God, that we miss the love of God.  We read St. Paul, Origen, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, C. S. Lewis, N. T. Wright and sometimes forget why it is we’re reading.  We should remember to read Jesus, Black Moses, Francis of Assisi, Henri Nouwen and lose ourselves in God’s embrace.  It’s not always about knowledge – though this website is about Sunday School – it is sometimes about Spirit.

Today’s lesson scripture is about God’s covenant – his promise.  A “covenant” pre-supposes a quid pro quo.  In today’s lesson scripture that “thing in exchange” is conditioned upon David’s descendants keeping God’s decrees.  When God made that promise, he knew the likelihood of David and his descendants (or us) keeping their end of the bargain.  But God made the promise nonetheless:

11 The Lord swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: “One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.
12 If your sons keep my covenant and my decrees that I shall teach them, their sons also, forevermore, shall sit on your throne.”
13 For the Lord has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation:
14 ”This is my resting place forever; here I will reside, for I have desired it.
15 I will abundantly bless its provisions; I will satisfy its poor with bread.
16 Its priests I will clothe with salvation, and its faithful will shout for joy.
17 There I will cause a horn to sprout up for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed one.
18 His enemies I will clothe with disgrace, but on him, his crown will gleam.”  Psalms 132:11-18 (NRSV)

God kept his promise and God kept our promise too.  This is the Good News – that God has acted on our behalf – that Jesus, a son of David, has kept God’s covenant and his decrees, and bound us back to God eternally.  As we approach this week’s lesson on the Ten Commandments, we need to keep this view in mind, and we need to recognize that God’s gift to us is that we are cleansed of sin and allowed to rejoice in the law and in obedience – even our imperfect understanding of the law and our failure to consistently obey.

As Otis commented the other day, “I will sing unto the Lord”.