The Birth of Christ - The Promise Fulfilled

Earlier this month, I shared a post here titled “Enlarge Your Tent”. In that post, I shared about my trip to Missouri in October for the Feast of Tabernacles, also known as Sukkot. Tents are common during that Biblical holiday.

I also shared about a portion of Scripture that specifically mentions a tent. Isaiah 54. 

Isaiah used a tent as a metaphor in that chapter when speaking to the house of Israel about the tremendous growth (numerous offspring!) that would come from them because of a promise God made to their father, Abraham. 

I concluded that post by encouraging people to rejoice in and prepare for God’s promise. 

God has given His people promises in His Word. Those are things we can stand on and hold to. 

God also gives people personal promises sometimes. That can be so many different things. 

A new house, a new vehicle, a new job, moving somewhere, a spouse, children, healing, financial blessing. These are all things God might impress on or promise to people in personal ways. The list is endless. 

We have a very personal God who knows and cares about us, personally. I find comfort in that. 

After writing and sharing that post, I had friends wondering if I was trying to hint at something. 

To be honest, I had a friend in the back of my mind when writing that post. A dear friend of mine felt an impression from the Lord about something in her life. She has been an encouragement to me, and I desire to encourage her and anyone else I can with my blog. 

All of us wait on God for different things at different times of our lives. But when God gives you a promise, you can count on it. To prepare for a promise from God is acting in faith. 

It is like “enlarging a tent” as Isaiah put it. That was the heart of my post to anyone reading it. 

Me personally? 

I did have an impression regarding something this past summer while enjoying a lovely nature walk with August sunflowers in bloom. 

Was my impression from the Lord? 

I don’t know. 

Sometimes, our mind can come up with things, and it is not from the Lord. 

Other times though, the Lord truly does give an impression or a promise of something to come. 

How do you know if something is from the Lord or not? 

The Word of God is the will of God. That we can be certain of. God’s Word is our guide. 

But what about personal promises, like Abraham had? You can’t always look up a chapter and verse for those. 

Abraham could not look up a chapter and verse in the Bible when God was giving Him personal promises of things to come. 

We can read about those things in God’s Word, but Abraham could not. 

Abraham was human like we are, and after God gave him some incredible promises, Abraham asked God: 

“And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?”

Genesis 15:8 

Even Abraham asked God, how do I know this is from You? How do I know this will happen? Can you confirm this to me somehow? 

Asking God, like Abraham did, is a good thing. God has ways of confirming things to us. 

God answered Abraham. 

The proceeding verses in Genesis 15 talk about how God confirmed that promise to Abraham. 

How did God do that? 

God did that by entering a covenant with Abraham. A covenant is a solemn promise, but in Bible times, it went another step deeper. (literally) 

In the Bible, when someone made a covenant with someone else, it usually involved blood.

That is exactly how God confirmed the promise He made to Abraham.  

God told Abraham to get certain animals and to lay them a certain way after killing them. To be sure, blood was very much involved. 

Bible teacher, Ray Vanderlaan, explained something I had never heard before about how covenants were made in Biblical times. 

When people made a covenant with each other, as God did with Abraham, there was blood involved. 

You would promise something to each other, and then walk a blood path (from animals), just as God did with Abraham, as if to say: 

“If I break my word to you, you can do this to me.” 

“And if you break your word to me, I can do this to you.” 

It was very serious. 

Blood was involved simply to make a point. Breaking your word, your promise, to someone else, would result in death. 

This is something we don’t do today. But then, that is how promises or covenants were made. 

Bible teacher, Ray Vanderlaan, went on to explain that, when Abraham entered this blood covenant with God, he would have been terrified because he knew if he or his descendants broke God’s covenant, they were dead! Abraham knew he was not perfect; Abraham knew he and his descendants could fail God. 

The covenant that God made with Abraham can be read in Genesis 15. I understand this passage of Scripture so much better than I did before thanks to Bible teacher, Ray Vanderlaan. 

God walked that blood path with the animals Abraham cut up to confirm to Abraham… 

If I break my covenant, my promise to you, you can do this to Me. 

And if you, Abraham and your descendants, break my covenant… I will pay that price for you. 

Wow. This was not your typical covenant. God was promising that if Abraham or his descendants broke His covenant, God would pay that price? 

Yes. 

God promised Abraham that he would not only bless him with numerous offspring, more than he could count, but He also promised Abraham that if he or his descendants broke His Word (and they did!), God Himself would pay the price! 

In that moment, God was promising Himself to be a Redeemer to Abraham and his seed. 

That promise was fulfilled when God sent His only begotten Son into the world through the womb of a virgin girl named Mary. (Miriam in Hebrew) 

The Lord Jesus was not only God’s gift to all of mankind, He was also the promised Redeemer. 

The Lord Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) was God’s promised fulfilled to Abraham. 

Mary knew that her baby was a fulfillment of a promise from God which is reflected in part of Mary’s song in Luke 1.

“He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy;

As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.”

Luke 1:54-55

 

God not only fulfilled His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob of numerous offspring, God also fulfilled His promise to Abraham that He would be their Redeemer. 

God paid that price when His Son died on a cross and shed His blood for the sins of the world. 

God’s gift of salvation is free. All we have to do is come to Him in true repentance for our sin. 

When remembering the birth of Christ, we remember God’s promise fulfilled to Abraham.

God’s promises are faithful and true.