Bible Text: Isaiah 53:1-7; Romans 1:1-7 | Pastor: Pastor Jas, Pastor Jason Bryant | As I traveled through the days of this week, my mind pondered the role of promises is my life.  In either a direct or a roundabout way, I make many promises, receive a great many, too.  Sometimes, they’re obvious.  15 years ago, I stood in front of the pulpit at First Presbyterian Church of Mount Holly and I promised to have and hold my wife Natalie. 

Other promises aren’t fully articulated but are pledges in a way nevertheless.  For example, picking up the kids every day at the bus stop when they get done with school is a sort of promise I’ve made.  No matter what, I’m supposed to be there at 3:30pm every day.

Whether they’re stated or unstated, promises are the means by which we can successfully manage this world alongside others.

And, in our household, there’s one particular way that we “up the ante” so to speak on the depth of our pledges to one another.  It’s the “double pinky, double shake promise.”  It’s our way of added emphasis.  This is the means by which we signal that, come heck or high water, whatever we’re saying we’ll do, WILL BE DONE.

And I’d love to stand here and tell you that we fulfill every single one of those double pinky, double promises.  But the truth is far different, unfortunately.  It’s like that with all of our promises, both those we make and those made to us.  Most of the time we’re able to see them through to completion, but our track record is far from 100%.

And it’s not just double pinky, double promises, unfortunately.  My experience has been that, sometimes, even those unspoken pledges go unfulfilled.  This past Friday, I was so caught up in something I was writing, that I forgot to pick up the kids at the bus stop.  Just as I remembered, grabbed my keys and raced out the door, there was my daughter walking up the driveway.  Thankfully, our home is a short distance from the stop.  It was a minor thing, but made me feel rather terrible, nevertheless.

And as I reflect on the all the promises made and received in my life, I can say I’m not alone in my dereliction of duty Friday.  Sometimes, the failure to complete a promise is inadvertent, like it was Friday.  On other occasions though, the pledge is failed by design.  The fact of the matter is that we let people down, and are let down ourselves. 

Call it human nature, call is sin, call it whatever you will, broken promises are just a part of life on this side of eternity.  And when they’re broken, either by others or by ourselves, life gets just a bit darker.  Just a bit less tolerable.   

I’ve sat in rooms, counseling couples who’re dealing with the failure of living up to the promises made on their wedding day.  So too have I sat in rooms with parents, smarting over their children’s inability to live up to their promises.  When a promise is broken, it hurts both the one promised, and the one who hasn’t lived up to their words.  Think about that feeling we all get when we know we’ve let someone down because we haven’t lived up to our pledge?  Not too good, eh?

As we continue our study of Romans, Paul is going to talk about a promise.  Here now the Word of our Lord from Romans chapter 1, verses 1through 7:  “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including you who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”