Why Promise?

"'Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married,' says the LORD. 'Enlarge the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your habitation be stretched out; do no hold back; lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes. For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left, and your offspring will posses the nations and people the desolate cities.

'Fear not, for you will not be ashamed; be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced; for you will forget the shame of your youth, and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name; and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, the God of the whole earth he is called.'"

~Isaiah 54:1-5

God gives us blessings, but why does He also give us promises of blessings? Promises of restoration, of deliverance, of desires fulfilled, of goodness, of victory, of His presence, etc. If the blessing were the only point, the promise doesn't make much sense. So what else is wrapped up in a promise? What do we learn about God and about ourselves? How do we see His kindness in the promise sometimes more intensely than we do in the blessing alone? How do we grow in His character in the promise? 

Why promise?

Because God's character is to give us opportunity to believe Him. Because God wants to be known, and in stepping out in trust, we learn how trustworthy He truly is.

Like Sarah, Israel is barren, a desolate nation, but God commands them to increase their dwelling. To make room for the promise. To prepare. Not to hold back.

In Scripture God's promises often come with a command of action. Abraham was called to go. Here Israel is called to make room. Neither could see the evidence of what was to come in anything but God's words, but they are asked to live into the assurance of His word. To live into what He has promised rather than the circumstances they could find to support the likelihood of the promise. To believe God for His promises. 

We serve a God who looks to the desolate one and says "sing." Rejoice. Break forth into praise. Because it's coming. He's answering. Believe. Prepare. We will not be ashamed when we do. When we put our hope and confidence in the Lord. 

The promise does something inside of us that blessing alone does not. They're beautiful and yet different responses to a good and gracious Father. 

Our trust is grown in the promise. Our dependence is grown. We see God's faithfulness in a different way when we sit in the tension of waiting in the promise, of relying on His words instead of our world, and we see His faithfulness over a longer span of time as we wait. We see Him show up time and time again in the impossible, faithful to His words and His character, and His goodness is developed in our memory, empowering us to remember Him when times are hard. As we watch the promise unfold, we are tuned to a small piece of how much God had to overcome to bring forth His promises to us, and we are reminded not only of His power and might but also of His love. 

We are reminded that our God is bigger than our circumstances. And it is waiting on the promises of God that teaches us this reality. Whether the promise is something specific or the daily provision of His character. We see this circumstance defying pattern in Scripture time after time. Abraham steps out into an impossible promise of land and nation though his wife is barren, and his obedience leads him to a land of famine, greater impossibility. The Israelites believed God when He said He would deliver them from Egypt, and where does their belief get them? When we zoom out over the whole story, it gets them exactly what God promised: deliverance, but if we look more narrowly, Moses appeared before Pharaoh with the word of God, and the result was greater oppression for the Israelites. And how do the Israelites respond when their circumstances seem to deny the promise? Moses himself asks, "O Lord, why have you done this evil to this people?" in Exodus 5:22. And God in His grace tells Moses that He will deliver His people, but His plans are bigger than delivering His people. Things have gotten worse, but even that is actively a part of God's plan for deliverance and to display His glory. His plans are greater than human imagination, and even that which seems to contradict them are His very tool for glory.

But when Moses reaffirms the promise to the Israelites, Exodus 6:9 tells us, "they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery." Because they believed and were disappointed. Because they believed and things got worse. Because the cost of belief--the dejection they now felt on top of their oppression--was too great. Because when we step out in faith and trust and our circumstances create a harsher world, our temptation is to lose faith. 

The constant push of promise is to trust. Is to believe God will do what He said He will. In promise we see God's character and practice trust in Him when the story looks like it's going wrong, remembering that He is who He says He is. As He tells Sarah in the place of an impossible child of promise, "Is anything too hard for the LORD?" (Ex. 18:14).

In the promise we will not be put to shame because our Maker is our husband. He has chosen us. He has covenanted with us. That means His character is always with us and over us. The God of the universe, the One who made us, the designer of the whole world, is our husband. Our security, our leader, our safe place, our guide. Who could be more trustworthy? What greater evidence can we have for a promise than the character of the One who makes it? And what greater character and ability can exist than the Holy One of Israel, our Redeemer? 

We are called not to hold back. To trust the Promise-Maker. And who are we trusting? We are trusting a God who calls Himself husband. Who treasures us like a husband treasures a wife. Who meets our needs, who searches for our delight, who takes our shame, and who wants to be trusted. Who wants to be believed like any husband would. He's earned our trust, and His glory deserves it, but it's more than that. Imagine the pain of a husband who has faithfully and lovingly pursued his wife over and over, and yet he is still not believed by her. He still does not hold her trust, but rather, she meets his promises with doubt. And whether that doubt is out of deliberate rejection of his character, out of the magnitude of her doubt or fear, or out of a past trauma, which makes it hard to trust, how hard must that be on her husband? And even in gentle understanding, what grief must he feel? 

God has proven Himself to us, but His faithfulness never ends even as we struggle to believe Him in the way He deserves. Even as we stray and wander, engaging the pursuit of our fears or our skepticism rather than the pursuit of our groom. God knows His bride is fickle, and though it is our sin and uncleanness before His holiness that allows us to forget His trustworthiness, He continues to pursue our trust. He continues to make promises, which draw us into trust, that we may see Him more clearly. That we may see His delight, His pursuit, His power, His faithfulness, His trustworthiness. 

We stand in the tension of waiting for the fulfillment of those promises, but what is that tension? It is not merely our impatience but our distrust, our doubt, ultimately, our dependence. Our unwillingness to be all in on our marriage. To let ourselves fall on God instead of trying to protect ourselves from the safest place we could ever be.

How often have we dismissed God's gifts? Have we failed to notice His intentionality? Have we hidden from His pursuit? Have we preferred not to receive His fulfillment of our deep desires and His deep delight because they require trusting in Him, depending on Him, believing in Him when our circumstances or our fears tell us otherwise? How have we grieved our God by refusing to trust Him because the risk of doing so feels too great?

Sometimes I feel like a life on the altar in pursuit of God's glory is easier than trusting in Him for His promises. The cost is high, and yet it doesn't feel like it costs in the same way that hope does. I'm almost more willing in the hypothetical to lose my life in Him than I am to have my life--the intentions and purposes and desires with which He created me--fulfilled in Him and displayed in His goodness. I'd rather remove those as a barrier to Him than trust in Him for them, not understanding that I'm actually trying to run from, not to, His presence in doing so.

In Numbers 13 and 14 twelve spies are sent into Canaan, bolstered by the promise God had given to them all, but in the circumstances of the other nation's greatness, ten forget the promise and only two believe. Far too often, I am the ten, choosing my despair instead of trusting in God's goodness, character, and ability. 

This is what we do when we let our circumstances have more power than our God. We grieve His heart by running from intimacy with Him. By trusting our fear more than His voice. 

God's promises display His glory. They guide us and empower us with the tools we need to partner with Him in His story of redemption. But they also display His relational heart that cannot be separated from any of these other purposes.

Before the promise is even mentioned, God calls the people of Israel to rejoice. Sing--it is the first word of Isaiah 54. He wants to give us joy. Like Sarah, we cannot bear our own desires and restoration, but we are called to rejoice because God will bear it in promise. He wants to give us a jubilant cry that comes from our shame being turned into gladness by the work of His hands. By the hope we could never cling to becoming a promise from His lips. 

God loves the desolate one. He pursues the desolate one, who the world ridicules, and He brings His blessing and takes her shame. 

Do not hold back from that kind of love. Trust in that kind of promise because He who makes it is trustworthy. We are called to prepare, and the level of our preparations can be a measure of the extent of our trust. If we merely make adjustments, preparing in part and holding back out of fear, the magnitude of what God is calling us into will rip apart our tents. Even in His promise, He's preparing us to hold it. The waiting often feels like our burden, but it too is His blessing that we may sustain what He brings. The measure by which we increase our habitation is the measure by which we believe He will do as He says (and even the measure by which we believe He will communicate His will to and for us in a way we will understand).

If you notice the order of this passage, the command against fear doesn't come after the initial blessings or even after the command to receive it by making preparations but after the details are given. After the bounty of what He will do. What about that makes us inclined to fear? What about that draws us back into our shame? 

Israel's shame was not superficial. They lived in idolatry to God, and He brought judgement on them. We all have done the same, and sometimes in the power of God's gracious promises, we remember how undeserving we are. We draw back into our shame. We sit in the sorrow of it or we fear falling back into it. But in the increased details God gives, He calls the Israelites out of fear, shame, and disgrace. He reminds them of those old wounds they carry--the shame of their youth, the reproach of their widowhood--and promises that they will be no more. That they will find complete restoration in their Maker, their husband. 

In the promise God is restoring us from past wounds (even the ones we inflicted on ourselves). The very path of our past shame can be what God makes the source of our utter restoration. For our Maker is our husband, and He takes away our shame. The Lord of hosts, the God of the impossible, the God of forces stronger than all the earth, is our husband. He redeems us. The Holy One of Israel looks on His unholy, broken people and brings them the gift of restoration. 

And that's what promise works into our hearts.