April 22, 2026 Devo

God keeps His promises. Way back in Genesis, God entered into a covenant with Abraham, who was the founding patriarch of the Jewish nation. In Genesis 15, Abraham is struggling to believe that God will keep His word and fulfill what He promised. So God has Abraham collect a lamb, a goat, a turtledove, and a pigeon. Abraham kills the animals, splits their carcasses, and then lines them up on two sides to create a path to walk between them. The big idea was that this was the ritual for a covenant agreement. Two parties would line up the animals and then walk between them, declaring, “May this happen to me if I don’t live up to this covenant.”
But in this case, Abraham didn’t pass between them. God caused a flaming torch to pass between them, representing His Presence. God, in His Wisdom, knew that neither Abraham nor any of his descendants would be able to keep the covenant they were making. So God was saying, “May this happen to Me if YOU don’t live up to the covenant.” From the beginning, God knew that He would have to pay the price for our sin. And He did.
Isaiah foretells the coming of Jesus with a reminder that God always keeps His Promises. The Lord says, “I will give you to my people, Israel, as a symbol of my covenant with them.” In other words, Jesus was sent to pay for the covenant that Israel could not live up to. Jesus was the Sacrificial Lamb. Jesus was the cost of our broken covenant. Jesus was the reminder that God keeps His Word even when we don’t keep ours. When Jesus cried out on the cross, “It is finished,” He was declaring that the covenant debt between God and man had been paid in full. Like the animals the flaming torch passed between, Jesus’ body was broken, and His blood was spilt. That’s why Revelation refers to Jesus as “the lamb who was slain before the creation of the world.” God knew the end of the deal before the deal was ever made.
Sit with that thought for a few moments. How much does God love you? Enough to enter into a covenant with you that He knows you can’t keep. Enough to not just cover His end of the bargain, but enough to cover your end, too. Enough to be faithful to you and keep His promises to you, even when you aren’t faithful to Him or keep your promises to Him. How much does God love you? Jesus spread out His arms on a cross and said, “This much.” That’s God’s Word for you today.