At my Baptism I knew that I wanted hymn 153 to be sung, and it was sung as the opening to my baptismal service. The hymn puts in contrast two things: the promise we make to Christ, in the first stanza — “Lord Jesus, I have promised/To serve thee to the end / Be thou for ever near me / My master and my friend.” And the promise Christ makes to us, in the last stanza — “Lord Jesus, thou hast promised / To all who follow thee, / That they shall share thy glory / Through all eternity.”
When you live in isolation, as I now do in Israel, and you sing hymns, you have no choice but to concentrate on the words. There is no piano music or other voices on which to focus. And recently as I sang this hymn the word “promise” jumped out at me. What has been promised to us, and what have we, in turn, promised to God?
The Hebrew for “promise”
The word promise is very distinct in English. It has a clear and defined meaning and I thought the Hebrew word translated “promise” would carry the same sense. So I was surprised when I searched for the word “promise” in the Old Testament, I discovered there is no exact Hebrew equivalent for “promise” in English. The ancient Hebrew word for promise is dabar. This is a word we still use in Israel today. Literally it is just the noun form of the verb “to speak.” Or simply the word means, “word.” For example, when we read in Psalm 105:42, “For he remembered his holy promise, and Abraham his servant.” The literal translation is “For he remembered his holy word, and his servant Abraham.”
As the hymn goes, Jesus has promised that all who follow him will share his glory. Or in the words of Genesis 22:16, 18: “By myself have I sworn, saith the LORD, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thy only son… In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou has obeyed my voice.” From here on in the inspired Bible, this is referred to as the “word” spoken to Abraham, or in our tongue, the “promise.” What else is important is that Abraham is given this promise because he first had done a “thing.” The word “thing” in the Hebrew is the same word translated word and promise — dabar. Because Abraham had trust in God and had made a “promise” to God to do His will (even to sacrifice his son), God in turn made a promise to Abraham, swearing by Himself, that through his seed all nations would be blessed. Of course, it is through this that we also receive our promise by becoming part of Abraham’s seed.
Allusions in Isaiah
To see how this concept is developed in scripture let us turn to Isaiah 45. At the end of verse 22 we read, “There is no God else beside me; a just God and a savior; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” Here God refers to Himself as a savior. And not only of the Jews, but also of us all; including the Gentiles —”the ends of the earth.”
To demonstrate how He will perform this salvation, God takes us back to His “word” spoken to Abraham. Verse 23 of Isaiah 45 reads, “I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto me every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear.” It is to be by God’s word to Abraham that those of the entire world are to be saved. If we have any doubt as to the context, look at the echo, “I have sworn by myself.” This is taken straight from Genesis 22:16.
Next let’s move to Isaiah 55, for a similar application of this concept. Here God talks about how much higher His thoughts and His ways are than those of man. The expression of these thoughts is His “word,” which upon falling like rain from heaven will give “seed to the sower and bread to the eater.” Vine’s Dictionary gives this definition for dabar (word) in the Hebrew, saying that it indicates God’s thoughts and words, and the meaning behind the words themselves. Another way of saying this is that dabar is the literal manifestation of God’s thoughts. Therefore, God says in verse 11, “So shall my word be that which goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it will prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”
The “word” here is meant to accomplish one thing — bring up a desirable seed to replace an undesirable one. Or in the words of verse 13, “Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree.” Not only that, but this new seed will be “for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off,” (Isa. 55:13.) So according to the “word” or “promise” given to Abraham, God’s promise will be the means by which the new Gentile seed, expressed in the fir and myrtle trees, will arise and be called by God’s name.
Dabar rendered logos
It’s important that when the word dabar is translated into the Septuagint Greek (the Greek translation of the Old Testament c. 200 B.C.), it is translated the vast majority of the time as the Greek word logos. It makes sense because, according to the Greek lexicon, the Greek “logos” (literally “word”) is similar to the Hebrew dabar. Logos is defined as “The word by which inward thought is expressed.”
We can imagine the Apostle John, preparing to write his gospel. He looks back through the Septuagint, and when he reads of the promises made to David and to Abraham, by which all the world will be blessed, he sees them expressed as logos. Isaiah 55:11 in the Greek would read, “So shall my logos be that which goeth forth out of my mouth.” In that word “logos” is embodied the entire hope of both Jews and Gentiles. And dipping his pen in ink, inspired by God, he writes, “In the beginning was the promise (logos) and the promise was with God, and the promise was God.” And what else is Christ but the physical manifestation of that promise, otherwise known as the word made flesh, the promise made flesh. He was the expression of the thought of salvation that God Himself had since the foundation of the world.
Our own promise is essential
That is what God has promised us. First He promised a seed. Then He promised that through it, all would be blessed. Next He promised that through the seed all would be called by His name. Then He gave us Christ. But let us not forget that Abraham only received the confirmation of the promise because of the “thing” (Hebrew dabar, word, promise) he did for God. It is told us in Genesis 22:16 that through the sacrifice of his son the promise was confirmed. So we, in order to receive the promise of God, like Abraham, must ourselves make a promise, just as alluded to in the beautiful hymn 153.
Paul in Galatians 3 picks up this principle, “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham” (Gal. 3:8,9). This is our “word,” brothers and sisters. That we believe with faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Upon that confession we put on Christ, being baptized into him. And “if we be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (Gal. 3:29). Our faith is our promise to God, and through that we become His seed. Taking on His name “for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off’ (Isa. 55:13).
This, my brothers and sisters is grace. Let us walk worthy of it. For we know as Daniel 9:26 says, Christ himself, in order “to make an end of sins,” was “cut off.” As we now draw to the bread and wine, let us keep both God’s promise fulfilled by his Son’s death, and our own promise of faith in our minds, realizing our utter dependence on his sacrifice.
“Lord Jesus, thou hast promised, / to all who follow thee, / That they shall share thy glory / Through all eternity; / And, Jesus, I have promised / To serve thee to the end; / O give me grace to follow / My master and my friend.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One