Promise Keeper
Notes
Transcript
When you are anticipating something exciting, counting the time as it passes is the worst thing you can do. There’s the kid who is waiting for the last ten minutes before school lets out. He sits and counts it down, but those ten minutes seem to last forever! Maybe you have counted down the days until a vacation, your own wedding, or another big event. A while back, there was a new video game console coming out and I had saved up the money for it. Nintendo announced the launch day, and I found out I could put a countdown timer on my phone’s home screen. I thought it was a great idea, but I thought wrong. It was months between the announcement and launch day. I saw it every day and it only made the anticipation worse! I had to delete the countdown timer so I wouldn’t focus on it.
Abraham and Sarah were given a one year window between the last time Isaac’s birth was promised to the time that it actually happened. That had to be the longest year of their lives, and they were old! They’ve lived a lot of years! They have been hanging on to this promise for a really long time! But the time had finally come. God’s promise had been fulfilled.
Let’s read the story together.
Then the Lord took note of Sarah as He had said, and the Lord 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 him.
Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac.
Then Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.
Now Abraham was one hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.”
And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
As I was studying this chapter this week, I couldn’t decide on what the scope of the sermon was going to be. I can see some common threads throughout the chapter, but preaching the whole chapter didn’t feel right. As I read it over and over again, I began to see at least three distinct sermons in there. Then I had trouble deciding which one I was going to preach. What did you need to hear on this particular day, and why? That’s the thought process going through my head every week. So, I landed on the scope of today’s sermon being the first seven verses.
What does God want us to know about the birth of Isaac that is still relevant today? As I continued to read, pray, and meditate, I got hung up on the first verse. “Then God took note of Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as He had promised.” Now, some translations take the words took note and use visited. This word means more than paying someone a simple visit like, “I stopped by Jane’s house for a quick visit.” This word in Hebrew means to take notice and show great care. There is an intimacy in this word. God cares deeply about his people.
The original promise was made in chapter 18. That was where God started the one year countdown that led to Isaac’s birth. God fulfilled that promise. Because God is revealed as being the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we can expect that because God was a promise keeper, then he still is a promise keeper. And because this is true, we can make the bridge from the Old Testament to the New, and understand what God has promised us, his covenant children today.
There are a multitude of promises given to us as Christians, but the overarching promise that anchors them all is salvation. We are going to take a look at salvation from a high altitude vantage point to understand what God has done, is doing, and will do as we await a future promise of Christ’s return.
Because God never changes, we can understand that salvation happens in three ways.
I know I am saved.
I know I am saved.
When we come to faith in Jesus, what we really mean is that we are transferring our trust in ourselves or in something else to save us from the trouble we are in. When we come to grips with our own sinfulness and the fact that we cannot save ourselves, we are ready for the good news. The good news is that Christ came and died in our place, was buried in a tomb, and raised from the dead three days later. The Bible tells us that if we will believe in the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, and the work that he has done on our behalf, we will be saved.
We don’t live with the hope that we will one day be saved (although I’ll get to that in a minute). We believe that we are already saved. Our salvation is both a right now and a not yet reality. The day you say yes to Jesus and transfer that trust to him and what he has done, the Holy Spirit of God comes upon you and seals you.
Let’s take a look at what the apostle Paul says in the book of Ephesians.
In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation—having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise,
He says again in chapter 4,
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
In the Roman empire, documents would be rolled up and wax would be dripped onto the point where the paper overlaps on itself. Then a person would take something like a signet ring that had a specific design on it and press it into the wax. This sealed the document and indicated the identity and authority of the one who sealed it. Today, you can use a device that will press a custom seal into the paper signifying where the document came from, its authenticity, and therefore its authority. Certain documents, without a proper seal, are regarded as forgeries and invalid in a legal sense.
The Holy Spirit is that seal for us. He sets us apart for salvation the moment we say yes to Christ. You are secure. You are set apart as God’s child. You are not becoming God’s child; you are God’s child. So, in that sense, you are saved.
But that is not the end of it.
I trust I am being saved.
I trust I am being saved.
That’s right. Salvation is an event as much as it is a process. When you got saved, there was an event. You were declared righteous. In God’s court room, you were declared not guilty. You were cleared of all charges. That happened in a moment. But God is not done with you. He is changing you through a process.
Theologians call this word sanctification, and they divide it into two aspects. The first is something called positional sanctification. It describes the moment you became a believer and were reconciled to God through Christ.
By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Jesus offered himself once for all, and you became saved in a moment. You are not waiting for the adoption to become final. It already is final. You are not stuck in your own sinfulness with the promise of being delivered one day. You are free from the power sin has over you already. You are not spiritually dead with the hope of being made spiritually alive one day. Your spiritual rebirth has already taken place if you are in Christ.
But then there is the second aspect theologians call progressive sanctification. This is the more common understanding of the word. It is the process that follows the event.
but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.
You don’t get an instant download of spiritual maturity the moment you get saved. We grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ a day at a time as we learn biblical principles and apply them to our lives. This is a process that occurs over our lifetime.
For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
We can be confident that the work that was begun on the day we accepted Christ will continue until Christ returns. God does not just save you to struggle with no purpose until you die. Rather, it is in the struggle that you apply biblical principles over time that lead to transformation.
This process is not automatic. It requires a giving up of ourselves and allowing Christ control of our affairs.
So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;
The working out of our salvation with fear and trembling is not that you do it terrified of God. It is that there are principles you can operate under that are life bringing, but difficult. Exercise is hard, but when you do it consistently over time, it yields incredible results.
All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
Sanctification is the process of being saved. You are being saved through the application of biblical principles in your life. It can seem unpleasant at the time, but later, it will yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
My hope is that I will be saved!
My hope is that I will be saved!
Everything that has a beginning has an end. So, your salvation has an end goal. There is a target we are aiming for. There is a finish line. The destiny of every believer in Christ is not to slowly be changed and wrestle with sin forever. It is actually to become like Christ himself.
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
Look at what he said. We are now children of God, but what we are to be has not yet appeared. We are in a process that leads to a conclusion. When Christ appears, we will be like him, and we will see him just as he is. In all of his perfection and glory, we will see our Savior for exactly who and what he is. We will no longer be what we are. We will be like him.
For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
We are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ. To conform means to behave according to a standard. God has established a standard of ethics that is based on his perfect righteousness. We are going to conform to that standard when all things are brought to their proper end.
Right now, I struggle with the sinful nature in me that just doesn’t want to die. I struggle with grappling with external forces of evil in the world. But my hope is that there is coming a day when my salvation will be complete! I have been saved from the penalty of sin. I am no longer guilty of treason in God’s court. I have been cleared of all charges. I am being saved from the power of sin in my life. No longer am I destined to pursue a pattern of self destructive behavior. The Holy Spirit of God in me has provided me the power to resist sin and choose righteousness. But even better, I cling to the hope that one day I will be saved from the very presence of sin. The struggle will be over and I will finally be like my Savior, cleansed from all unrighteousness, and there will be nothing standing between me and my God. I can’t wait for that day!
God is a promise keeping God. He has promised to save you today from the penalty of your sin if you will turn and place your trust in Jesus for salvation. He has promised to save you from the power of sin as you learn to walk in obedience to his commands. When you apply biblical principles to your life consistently over time, you will experience transformation. And God promises to save you from the very presence of sin one day when he delivers final defeat to the devil and his angels and separates evil from righteousness for all eternity. The days of struggling will come to an end.
Will you trust the promise keeping God to work in you what needs to be done to get you where you need to go?
