January 11
Genesis 21-22
Psalm 7:9-17
Proverbs 1:32-33
Matthew 8:18-34
Faithful to His Promise
“Now Yahweh visited Sarah as He had said, and Yahweh did for Sarah as He had promised. So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the appointed time of which God had spoken to them.” Genesis 21:1-2 LSB
God is always faithful to keep His promises. For Abraham and Sarah it was many years between the time God told Abraham that he was going to be the father of many nations and the birth of his son Isaac. In Genesis 12:1-3, God made the first promise to Abram when he was 75 years old. He promised to make him into a great nation. In Genesis 15:4-5, God reiterated His promise to Abraham and gave him more details. “Then behold, the word of Yahweh came to him, saying, ‘This one will not be your heir; but one who will come forth from your own body, he shall be your heir.’ And He brought him outside and said, ‘Now look toward the heavens, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your seed be.’” LSB Then when Abram was 99 years old, God changed his name from Abram to Abraham and told him. “I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will go forth from you. And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your seed after you. And I will give to you and to your seed after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.’ But God said, ‘No, but Sarah your wife will bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; and I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his seed after him.” Genesis 17:6-8, 19 LSB
In our passage today we find the fulfillment of the promise that Sarah would bear a child to Abraham after 25 years of waiting. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. But during those long waiting years they had their doubts. They didn’t understand how this could possibly happen since Sarah was way past childbearing age. Sarah even took matters into their own hands and tried to help God by giving her maidservant to Abraham to bear him a son causing centuries of conflict that we still see today. But God was faithful all along. He had a plan and was carrying it out according to His timetable. In His perfect timing, Sarah bore a son and named him Isaac. God made Abraham into a great nation called Israel. Thousands of years later, we see that his descendants are as numerous as the stars in the sky. The last part of the promise, that the whole land of Canaan would be an everlasting possession to his descendants, is still being fulfilled. The nation of Israel is in her land, but they do not have possession of the entire land of Canaan yet. We can be confident that all of the land God gave them will indeed belong to them one day because God said that it would. He is faithful to all of His promises and He will accomplish everything He said He would do. He made a promise to Abraham and He won’t let him down.
God is faithful to keep the promises He makes to us as well. The fact that He kept all of His promises in the Bible gives us confidence that He will not let us down. He is faithful. It is part of His character. He knows the future so He knows that He will be able to keep the promise before He ever makes it. When we make a promise we are saying that it is our every intention to fulfill that promise and we will do everything in our power to make it happen. But we cannot see into the future so it is possible that unforeseen circumstances will keep us from doing what we said. We are not lying if we make a promise and something happens to keep us from fulfilling it if our intention was to fulfill it and then we were unable to. That would not be the case for God. If He made a promise (with His knowledge of the future) knowing He would not fulfill it, then He would be lying. God does not lie, ever. So we can be assured that if He makes a promise, He will fulfill it. He is always faithful to His word.
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