The Seal Of The Promise.

Devotional | Shannon Miller.

“Then came the morning, that sealed the promise/ Your buried body began to breathe/ Out of the silence, the roaring Lion/ declared the grave has no hold on me!”  On Monday night at the Bethel worship concert, we were singing that stirring final verse of the song “Living Hope,” when the Holy Spirit spoke to me, that the morning of the resurrection sealed every promise.  I switched from singing to shouting in praise, at this reminder of the truth I know—“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God,” (2 Corinthians 1:20, NIV).

What does it mean that the promises are yes in Christ?  Jesus revealed the character of God so that we can trust all of His promises.  The Lord knew that reassuring words would not be enough to gain our trust, and that hard evidence would be required.  Alexander MacLaren wrote in his Biblical commentary, “God as Love is ‘our dearest faith, our ghastliest doubt,’ and the only way to make absolutely certain of the fact that His heart is full of mercy to us is to look upon Him as He stands revealed to us, not merely in the words of Christ, for, precious as they are, these are the smallest part of His revelation, but in the life and in the death which open for us the heart of God.”

Jesus proved to us the love of God, secured for us the forgiveness of God, and offers to us the grace of God to live for Him, all by a covenant sealed with His own blood.  He asked us to believe in resurrection life and then rose from the dead to show us that it is real.

And what does it mean for us to speak the Amen to the glory of God?  We can respond in faith, “Amen, let it be so,” to every word God speaks, by looking to Jesus.  We can let the case rest on the evidence put forth in Christ.  We can ask ourselves, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all–how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32, NIV).

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” (1 Peter 1:3, NIV).