Matthew 18:15-20

For the next three weeks, we are going to look at a new series, ‘Promises Worth Keeping’. When I saw this caption in an article, I was intrigued because this is not a generation that thinks about promises. We live in an era of change. The biggest change is in communication. Through email, cell phones, low price of long distance, and the internet, we simply communicate differently than we ever have before. I remember one morning when there was a need to change this service and I emailed the media team on the back balcony during the service. Communication has changed.

Life has changed economically with huge global shifts of labor. We do not feel that life is predictable. President Bush feels that we have gotten too rich off Social Security and it is time to make it less of a promise. It is just one more symptom of our time.

So promise is not a popular word. I promise you means that I will commit in the face of a future I do not know. How can we promise to anything in our generation? In this series, I want to focus our thoughts on five areas where it is good to give your word – promise to God, promise to church, promise to family, and promise to justice and mercy. The Bible assures us that some promises are based on faith in an unchanging God even in changing times.

This morning we are going to look at the wisdom of promises to God and to the church. There is a satisfaction in life that comes from the table of the Lord and the table of fellowship with other Christians. Our promise to sit at them will be tested. Sometimes our life circumstances make it difficult to pray. You may feel a barrier between you and the table behind me this morning. And we all know that the church is an imperfect version of the welcome table that we will experience in heaven. But we will look today at how to experience the delights of these tables when we say to God and to each other, I promise you ..

We are invited first of all to say to God, ‘I promise you..’ The whole focus of a Communion Sunday is commitment. We shrink from a promise to God because we’re not sure God remembers us and we don’t like God’s plan.

Does God remember you? Is there a chance that you can say to the Lord today, ‘I promise you..’ and then God will accidentally set you to one side? God’s word strongly tells us that God thinks of you all the time. [Mat 6:26] Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

And we do not know why God does not seem closer during crisis. A dear friend said to me this week, ‘I will not pray anymore. I have been anointed for healing and it did not work.’ I know that he was sincere and going thru deep waters. But I also read from the Scriptures that [1 John 4:10] God’s love is not that we loved God but that he loved us …

I see many people seek God in moments of crisis. They are not looking for a relationship, they are looking for deliverance. If our religion were magic like Harry Potter, the world would be Christians overnight. But God is not some genie in a bottle. God invites us to a covenant where the Lord wants our love and promises to care for us in return. Of course there are times of testing where we have to hold on and wait for God’s care to overwhelm our problem.

To the Lord, there is nothing odd that God expects us to say ‘I promise you’ in uncertain times. We know the character and intentions of God through the Bible, our experience, the witness of the Holy Spirit and our reason. And God has heaven waiting. This current time is where God is shaping our characters and perfecting our love and faith.

We also don’t say ‘I promise you’ because it means laying down our own schemes and plans. We all would rather run our own lives. How’s it working so far?

You may attend every Sunday, but I want to particularly speak to you if you only attend occasionally or perhaps you are new today. Your impulse to come to church today was a good one. Your heart is following the way that God created you. We humans are created to worship God and to say to the Lord ‘I promise you.’ I want you to come forward moments from now and say that at the communion table. I want you to go from here today with a new commitment to make God part of your life everyday, not just this day. You have known God for a moment of relief, now make that commitment richer and experience the joy of God after you say, ‘I promise you’

We also are invited to say ‘I promise you’ to brothers and sisters around the table of fellowship.

The passage in Matthew is instructions to keep the faithfulness of the fellowship table. Some sins ruin the life of the church and Matthew urges us to commit ourselves to the church as God has planned for it.

After being a pastor for 30 years, there are a few ways in which we all have to say ‘I promise’ in order to have a great church. We have to promise to stop gossip. We have to encourage tithing and generosity. We have to practice Titus "After a first and second admonition, have nothing more to do with anyone who causes divisions" (Titus 3:10).

Notice that the promises are not for your own gossip, tithing, or power. They are for your own interaction with other brothers and sisters that we may save each other from harm. Now we hate making this promise. Many Christians join a church under a misconception. They feel that they are making a promise to be godly themselves and to report the infractions of others to the pastor.

Dear pastor, that person is being mean. Make them stop. Don’t hurt their feelings. And don’t tell them that I told you. Friends, by the time the pastor has to apply church discipline, it usually means the loss of a family. And this whole passage is about fixing things with the hope of healing. We have to deal with our life together by being faithful to each other in honesty. I can help you plan your approach. But we can only have a great church if we all promise to help each other in godliness. If you have never actually joined this church, why not speak with me about this second sacred promise that is worth making?

And so we are at a talking table in the church. Someone said this weak that a church stays together when it eats together. That is true. I wish we could eat together every Sunday. Jesus says that every time two or three are gathered, he is in the midst. There is no common meal. They are all sacred moments for those who have said to the church ‘I promise you.’

Promise to God. Promise to church. Promises to keep. And promises worth making.