The Lord Keeps His Promise

December 25, 2011


Background Scripture: Luke 1:26 – 2:7; Galatians 3:6 – 18
Lesson Passage: Luke 1:46 – 55, 2:1 – 7

Jesus informed a group of Jews one day that Abraham had seen the day that God’s promise of a deliverer would be fulfilled and had rejoiced because of it. This of course led to many of the Jews being offended at the notion of Jesus having such personal knowledge of Abraham who had been dead for hundreds of years and Jesus was not yet even fifty years of age. This apparent conflict between God’s promise and how man looks at time seems to be repeated many times over in our lives. God’s word is absolute. Whatever God says is so. There is no room for error or deviation from the word of God. One philosopher stated it this way: Prophesy is a mold that history is poured into. The Lord keeps His promise. This statement is so obvious to all but the woefully uninformed that it almost need not be said. Yet, there are those who still wrestle with the possibility of God not being as absolute as He has revealed to us. If it were possible for God to make a promise and not keep it then His words would only be mere sound. If God’s words could be reduced to only that then not only would our existence not be possible but all that comprise the material world as we know it could not exist. For all things are held together by the power of God’s word. All that exist was spoken into existence by God. God spoke and God saw what He had spoken until everything was created. That is absolute. Why then are we so surprised when what God has said comes to pass? Certainly we are constrained by time and not able to comprehend that which we call eternity. In eternity, time becomes inconsequential. So a thousand years can be as one day or a watch in the night for God. When God says that he is going to do something, whether it happens at that moment or two thousand years later is inconsequential within the scope of eternity. But thanks be to God that I don’t have to understand all there is to know about eternity to embrace the truth that God is a promise keeper. Abraham is my witness that through the eyes of faith that which is beyond the scope of one’s lifetime can be plainly seen. Therefore, Abraham was able to see Jesus’ day and rejoice. In today’s lesson, Mary is able to see that the message delivered to her by the angel Gabriel is a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. The baby that she would bear and the nature in which all of it will occur showed her clearly that this was without doubt an act of God. This would indeed be a very special child. She was instructed to name him Jesus (Jehovah saves) because he would save his people from their sin. God promised Abraham that He would send a deliverer and Mary learned that she was the vessel chosen by God for such a special task. She would be used by God to fulfill a promise not just to the Jews but to the whole world. Over the pass two thousand years, many have continued to live in expectation while others have rejoiced at that which has already occurred, but all can rest assured that the Lord keeps His promise.


Robert C. Hudson
December 19, 2011