[Shepherding the Sheep with One Heart] The Lord who Fulfills Promises

  • 2015.11.25 17:30

 

“Throw out idle chatter” means ‘throw away arrogant human opinions and be the person who speaks only the very words of God.’ The person who idly talks nonsense does not have authority in anything they say. When they have authority in speech, they demonstrate their strength and leadership. Therefore, before you talk, you should discern how important it is.

We, human beings, are fragile things who do not know about tomorrow. That is to say weak beings who cannot take responsibility for our own words. The Bible says do not swear an oath (Mat 5:33-36). In other words it means, do not do because men are incapable of keeping the oath.

In the Old Testament era, when swearing an oath, people performed a particular ceremony. They killed animals and scraped away the guts when swearing. It means if you do not keep your oath, make the animal alive again, and it showed the importance of keeping it.

However, even if we performed the ritual, we could not say that we can unconditionally keep the oath. If a man promised to meet someone tomorrow morning and died before the appointed time came, he could not keep the promise regardless of his will. It is because he did not have his life to keep his promise.

We should not promise in vain. Men cannot fulfill any promise for themselves. Only God can do. For God is eternal, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresent, He can keep any promise at any time. Therefore, we pray to God.

 

 

Pastor Seok-Jeon Yoon
Extracted from Yonsei Newspaper #457 (October 31, 2015)