Your Keys to a Transformed Life

When we read the history of God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel, in the Bible, we discover that God made four significant promises to His children. At the time, the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. Many years before, they had migrated south from Canaan in order to survive a terrible famine that had devastated the land. As the Hebrew population increased, however, the Egyptians felt threatened and eventually forced the Jewish people to become slaves. But God was not about to leave His chosen people in bondage in a foreign land.

God raised up Moses to lead the people of Israel to a new home, a promised land. After a protracted negotiation with Pharaoh in which God revealed His power by unleashing a series of plagues on the Egyptians, Moses came to a stalemate with the stubborn leader who still refused to free the Israelites. As a final inducement, the Angel of Death was allowed to visit each household, Egyptian and Hebrew alike, and claim the life of every firstborn male.

However, the angel was instructed to “pass over” any home where the doorpost had been painted with the blood of a lamb, thereby allowing those children to live. At the time of this dreadful display of His power, God made it clear that not only would He spare His people, but He would also lead them to a life of freedom they could not even imagine.

So God made them four promises:

• “I will free you from your oppression.”
• “I will rescue you from your slavery in Egypt.”
• “I will redeem you with a powerful arm and great acts of judgment.”
• “I will claim you as my own people, and I will be your God.”

These four “I will” statements in Exodus 6:6-7 (NLT) laid the foundation for the nation of lsrael and became crucial elements of their annual celebration of God’s faithfulness, which they still observe today – known as Passover.

At this yearly event, four cups of wine are used to commemorate and celebrate God’s four promises. These four cups of promise, as they’re called, bridge ancient history with the yet-to-come future. For Jewish families, it’s like
celebrating Independence Day, a time to remember when God brought them out of slavery and into freedom, redemption, and fulfillment.

These four cups hold the same promise for those of us today who have surrendered our lives to God and been grafted into His family through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By placing our faith in Jesus, we have become recipients of these “offers with a guaranteed result,” which begin with God’s declaration of what He will do for us if we will let Him.

These promises are foundational to God’s desire to know and love His children. Though most Christians aren’t familiar with them, the details of the Passover celebration hold the key to what God wants to do in our lives right now. Each of the four cups reveals God’s presence in a distinct and dramatic way.

I’m convinced these four promises also reveal the process of interactive development – spiritual transformation – that continues to take place between God and us. Though we’re all on a spiritual journey, no one has arrived at perfection yet – nor will we in this lifetime. As Paul writes, “I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me” (Philippians 3:12 NLT).

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Taken from Four Cups: God’s Timeless Promises for a Life of Fulfillment by Chris Hodges, © 2014. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, a division of Tyndale House Ministries. All rights reserved.