The Promises of God

Genesis 12: 1-9

Lent 2

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ amen.  The sermon text for the second Sunday in Lent is the Old Testament reading Genesis 12. We are all bombarded each day with advertisements on TV, the radio, and on internet, that make all sorts of promises. We are given the promise that the product being sold is the best.  We are given the promise that the company being advertised is the one who can be trusted. Even if some of these advertisements that we hear are accurate we know that the promises made will not be kept perfectly.  There will always be someone who has a bad experience with a product or finds dissatisfaction with the business that they are working with.  This should not surprise us at all.  We have all experienced what it is like to have a promise made that ends up being broken.  Maybe it was a promise from one of your parents that they would be at a performance that you had at school.  Maybe it was a spouse that did not keep their wedding vows.  Maybe it was a friend who backed out of a trip.  No matter what the promise is, it can be painful when it is broken.  But we must also admit that we don’t always keep our promises.  There have been times when we have made a promise that we failed to keep. 

We have broken our promises to God and to one another, but God has never broken a promise to us.  God always keeps His promises.  Our Lord will always do what He says.  We see a brilliant example of this in our Old Testament reading for today.  God told Abraham to leave his country and go to the land of Canaan.  God was calling him to leave his homeland and become a nomad in a different land.  God then made several promises.  He told Abraham that he would have a son, that he would have many descents who would live in the land, and that from his line would come a Savior who would bless the whole world.  He said this to a man who had no heir and was married to a wife who was too old for childbearing.  Yet Abraham believed God.  He trusted that the Lord would keep His promises.  God did keep His promises.  Twenty five years later Abraham’s son, Isaac, was born.  From Isaac would come many descendants who would eventually live in the land of Israel.  From his line came the Messiah who would be born two thousand years later.  He was the Savior who came to bless the entire world.

Jesus is the fulfillment of that last promise.  In our Gospel reading John records for us a conversation that Jesus had with Nicodemus.  In that conversation Jesus states the most famous verse in the Bible.  It is often referred to as the Gospel in a nutshell. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.  For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.”

Jesus was speaking about His crucifixion where He would be lifted up on a cross.  That did indeed happen.  Jesus did go to the cross and atoned for all our sins.  He then rose from the dead thus defeating death for us.  Our Lord made a promise that all who believe in Him will have eternal life.  The Lord has given each and every one of us the gift of life and salvation.  We receive these blessings through faith in Him. Our Lord has made promises to us that He will keep.  Remember what He said.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  The words of our Lord are certain and true.  The Lord has told us that only those born again can enter the kingdom of God. He is speaking about being washed in Holy Baptism by the water and the Word.  He has told us that our sins have been forgiven.  He has told us that He is interceding for us.  That He is with us.  That He will return to bring us into the full presence of God in the heavenly Kingdom for all eternity.  These are promises that the Lord has made to us.  This is of great importance because we know that the Lord always keeps His promises.

Yet doubt can creep into our minds.  The sacrament of Baptism seems so ordinary.  When we experience the guilt of our sins we sometimes wonder if we are truly forgiven.  Sometimes we think that we are alone in this world because the Lord seems so distant. We know that the Lord Jesus has died and rose all ready, but He has not yet visibly returned.  Doubt can certainly creep in our mind.  Yes, it’s true.  We can even doubt the promises of God.              

That is why taking a look at Abraham can be of great help.  Abraham was called by God to leave his homeland that at the time was a prosperous place to go to a land that he did not know. Can you imagine what kind of conversation Abraham had with his wife Sarah?  “Honey, let’s go and live somewhere else.”  “Where are we going?”  “I don’t really know.”  “Where will our home be?”  “I am not sure.”  “What will our home look like?”  “We haven’t got one yet.”   Yet Abraham trusted God and moved his family. Our Lord promised that Abraham would have many descendants.  God said this to a man who did not have any children.  He said this to a man who was old and who was married to a wife who was past childbearing age.  Yet, twenty-five years later Isaac was born to a very old Abraham and Sarah.  God said that Abraham’s descendants would live in the promised land.  Several centuries later his descendants, the Israelites, did indeed conquer the land. The greatest promise that God made to Abraham is that from his line would come the Savior who would bless the entire world.  That also happened when Jesus came into the world two thousand years later.  Abraham, like all the Old Testament believers, looked forward to the coming Savior.  He knew that God’s Word was true.  He knew that God always keeps His promises.

We have the same assurance about God’s promises.  But unlike Abraham we don’t have to wait.  We know that we have already been saved through faith in Jesus Christ.  We can look to our Baptism and be given the assurance that we are part of God’s eternal family right now.  We are receiving God’s grace right now knowing that our sins are forgiven through Christ Jesus.  God’s Word is always true.  We need not doubt that the Lord is with us, that He intercedes for us, and that He is blessing us right now.  

There is one promise that we are still waiting for and that is the visible return of Jesus.  But we know that the Lord will also keep that promise.  We do look forward to the time when the Lord will return and usher in the new heavens and the new earth.  It will be far greater than the land of Israel.  It will be in the heavenly Kingdom where the Lord will dwell with us for all eternity.  We look forward to that time when we will be in the full presence of God forever.   

People break promises all the time.  Not so with God.  The Lord has never broken a promise to us.  The Lord always keeps His promises.  The Lord will always do what He says.  Amen.