Promises, Promises

"Praise be to the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle. He is my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge, who subdues peoples under me." (Psalm 144:1-2, NIV).

We looked at this Psalm yesterday, beginning with verse 3. This morning I want to back up and catch the first two verses of this Psalm.

This Psalm actually presents us with a good setting to teach an important Biblical principle. Perhaps you recall hearing as a child the little jingle, "Every promise in the book is mine. Every jot, every tittle, every line." (Jot and tittle referring to the two smallest marks in Hebrew writings)

Nice jingle but not true. Every promise in the book is not for you and this Psalm again provides us with the setting to remind us of this "not every promise is yours" truth. Some promises are people specific. In this case the loving God who "trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle" and "who subdues peoples under me" can only be uttered rightfully by David, God’s designated king.

To illustrate this further, I have heard of people taking the promises made to Joshua for instance in Joshua 1:3 and claiming it as their own–wishful but ridiculous thinking. I have heard these people brag that a certain piece of property was theirs because they claimed the promise and marched either the land or the facility. In one case, a church, coveting the building of another church, actually sent people to the facility, walked through the building making this claim! I re-emphasize not every promise in the Bible is for every person. The sooner we realize this the sooner we will stop making ridiculous and quite unbiblical claims! Claims, that when they don’t happen the way we think they should, causes us to begin to doubt our faith.
I can’t claim the training for war part of this passage rightly. Now, perhaps if I were a soldier that might be legitimate to ask God for His help and guidance in war and I can certainly pray that for our military personnel and even for our public safety officials. But I can’t claim it as a promise for me.

What I do know as universal in these two verses is the fact that God is "my loving God and my fortress, my stronghold and my deliverer, my shield, in whom I take refuge."

You may be wondering why I feel I can claim that part of the verse but not the other. How do we know that this portion is also not person specific? Glad you asked.

The second rule of good (and proper) Bible study is to remember that Scripture interprets Scripture. Over and over again we see the concept of God as a fortress and place of safety applied to all his people.

With all that said, let me encourage you this morning. I don’t know what personal battles you may be fighting today. It may be against some physical foe, or it may be the enemy of disease or depression; whatever it is, take heart in the knowledge that God is your strong deliverer and He can and will equip you with the tools you need to win your battle if you will let Him.