Consider three texts:

• Psalm 125:1-2: Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, from this time forth and forevermore.
• Jude 24: [God] is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy
• Luke 22:32 (Jesus is speaking to Peter after prophesying his denial): “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.”

To whom do these texts refer? Who can count on such promises?

We 21^st-century Americans tend to see in these texts promises to ourselves and other individuals:

• “Since I trust in the Lord, He surrounds me and protects me.”
• “God will keep me from stumbling and present me blameless before Him.”
• “Jesus prays for me, strengthening and securing my faith.”

Praise God – these precious promises do indeed apply to us as individuals who trust in Jesus.

But Psalm 125:2 closes with the phrase, “from this time forth and forevermore.” When is “this time”? Well, the psalm was written more than 2500 years ago.

For all these years, God has been surrounding His people, advancing His purposes, building His church, keeping her from stumbling, seeing to it that the faith “once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) does not fail. We today stand at the end of a long line of faithful believers, all witnesses to God’s surrounding love. Through the dangers of persecution and the dangers of acceptance, despite indwelling sin and the enticements of the world, through times of renewal and times of apostasy, God has preserved, established, and spread His church century after century, continent after continent, culture after culture.

These promises apply not only to believers as individuals but also to God’s people as a whole.

Beth and I glimpsed this truth last month while in Turkey with Matthew and Kailie. We visited Cappadocia, a region of great importance in the history of the church. Three hundred years after the resurrection, theologians from this area known as the “Cappadocian Fathers” were instrumental in combatting heresy by clarifying the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. In subsequent centuries, believers created amazing churches and homes by digging through the volcanic rock. We were able to visit a number 1200-year-old cave-churches, some complete with frescoes of biblical characters. The most well-preserved of these churches are in the Goreme Open Air Museum. The Dark Church is particularly striking, with frescoes of Jesus and John the Baptist, among others.

But most stirring for us was a church far away from the tourists. We hiked down steep slopes into an ancient valley, past old grape vines and apple trees, approaching a rock face pocketed with holes – were they windows? We climbed through an opening, up some stairs carved into the rock – and came out into a massive interior space, with large columns from floor to ceiling.

No one else was there – just our family and the seeming presence of these believers from ages ago. I felt such a sense of oneness, of shared family with those who for the glory of the name of Jesus chipped away at the rock centuries ago, hour after hour, day after day, year after year.

There was a continued Christian presence in this area for centuries – until 1923 when many Christians were expelled from Turkey to Greece, and Muslims expelled from Greece to Turkey. So for the last century there has been no worship of Jesus in these rock churches.

Since our return home, I have learned more about the genuine faith of many in this era through reading The Reformation as Renewal by Matthew Barrett, who argues that the Reformation built on much of the theology and piety of the medieval church, including the writings of Anselm, Thomas, and Lombard – even when the Reformers themselves did not perceive their influence –  and that the Reformers’ arguments were focused much more against the positions taken by later Scholastics such as Ockham and Duns Scotus.

Be that as it may, as we celebrate twenty years of God’s faithfulness through Desiring God Community Church, let us also look back over twenty decades, over twenty centuries, and praise God that as empires rise and fall, as economies thrive and crash, as Christians are exiled and welcomed, God is always building His Church, spurring His people on to acts of devotion and witness, showing in Cappadocia and in Charlotte, in cave churches and in modern buildings, that Jesus is worthy of all our efforts and the source of all our joy. God’s Church is like Mt Zion – the Lord surrounds that Church, and He will present Her blameless before His presence with great joy – all of us, those who carved the Cave Churches, we who are part of Desiring God Community Church, followers of Jesus from every tribe and tongue and people and nation – and century.