Sermon Tone Analysis

The Promise

As we celebrate Advent...

Advent means the Coming of someone special or important...

We are talking about the coming of Jesus Christ.

His first coming or first Advent.

We will be looking at 4 ways to see the Advent.

The Promise, The fulfillment, the realization of Advent, and a Celebration of Advent.

SO today we look at the Promise God made in the OT, in many different places yet we only have time to mention a handful.

When I say Promise, what do you think about?

As people we know a promise because we are too familiar with people making promises and not keeping them.

We are inundated with politicians making promises in campaigns and so we get jaded and learn not to put too much hope in promises.

A promise is a description of intent about a circumstance or action that someone is taking responsibility for.

When I was young my mother always taught me that life isn’t fair, things happen that can change our families plans, they will do their best to provide everything they can for, and she will be committed to never making a promise she thinks there is even a change she can’t keep to us kids.

I believe this is because of so many dashed hopes and broken promises in her own life… She was raised by a single mom with her younger brother, her father was the Milk man, and he left them when she was just 2 yrs old, and her step father ended up being someone committed unthinkable acts against all the young females in our family, and especially my sister and I.

Life is a broken messed up place, where the effects of Sin and the Fall in the Garden of Eden is still felt in painful ways to this day.

In fact while we gather here to worship together in our safe warm building, people are suffering and live with pain...

Parents who are supposed to provide love and help, commit horrible atrocities against their kids, people look out for themselves and don’t have the time or energy to help others who suffer around them.

Promises seem like the breeding ground of broken Hope, unmet expectations, and a source of pain that it is better to guard against...

we live in a world that rejects the idea that believing in someones promises is ever good thing, it can only lead to heartache...

Is it any wonder, that when saves people out of darkness into his marvelous Light, when he raises us from spiritual death unto spiritual life, and calls us into his family… that we struggle to believe his promises?

Why is all this important?

We know that the first Advent happened… Jesus already came and we are convinced of that, yet there is a promise of a second Advent that will give us hope in life… Jesus is coming back, and the NT is full of God’s promises for his children in the church, and if we struggle to believe him because of our past brokenness we will miss out on true joy and peace in this life.

My heart is not to just share with us biblical information about the promise that he already fulfilled, but to use that to give us hope for all the promises of God and see us live victoriously in life as we go into our world and preach Christ unashamedly and boldly!

So how can we believe that?

Listen a promise is only as good as the one makes it… Advent is about seeing God make and keep his promises!

If the Promise is made by God, then the Promise can’t be broken

We need to believe this!

Let’s look at the promise we heard read today, and so celebrate the true of this Season when the world has to acknowledge that this celebration is not like others.

We started this morning with reading , yet in order to understand this, we have to know what is happening in the greater story.

Let me give you a quick over view of the OT with just a couple stops along the way so we can understand our main text today.

God creates everything, including humanity, and we know that Adam and Eve the first humans rebelled against God and ate fruit from the tree they were commanded not to eat from.

But something significant is happening in this pre-fall condition of creation… God walked with his creation in the cool of the Day

His presence is with his people… yet sin entered in and broke that relationship…

In the beginning God was with us, but Sin separated us from God

Sin separates us From God, Because God is Holy… everything else in the Ot is a story about how God will once again restore his creation and redeem his people who have been destroyed by Sin.

God does this by making a Promise to Abram in in which there is a covenant ritual and God puts Abram asleep, because he knows that mankind will not be able to live up to their end of the covenant… explain briefly...

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What is so significant here is that we see before sin enters in, God almighty, his presence is with his creation.

In the beginning God was with us… This is the way God created it to be, and this is the goal of the promise and the fulfillment… this is the goal of Advent, and this is what makes our salvation so wonderful… Eternity with God as we were created to be!

… Please feel free to read at home...

so as the story continues we see that all of creation is running a muck and sin is causing everyone to want something else beside union with God.

So in the very beginning of just Genesis, the first book of the OT, we see a flood because of how sinful people are, and a reset happens with Noah and his family.

We see a tower being built for prideful.

sinful reason - and God confuses the languages to separate people.

We see many people spread out all over and live very sinful lives and yet God makes a promise to a man and woman who can’t have kids on their own… A promise comes to Abram and it is significant...

In there is an interaction between God and Abram… A promise comes to this barren couple...

gen15.5

So God promises something more than anyone could ever possible imagine.

A barren couple will have more kids than there are stars in heaven...

How Could he believe that?

Where would all these people live, since the world is full of sinful people who oppose God?

It was hard enough for Abram to have the land he has.

Gen15.

God tells him I am the one who will give the Land.

And yet Abram, like us would say, “How do I know it will happen?”

Back then the greatest act of assurance they could do was to make a covenant and to spill blood in a sacrifice, so watch what happens next...

gen15.

What you need to know is that this kind of a sacrifice may seem gross because they are splitting animals in half, but here is why… They would split animals in half and they would set half of the animal on one side and half on the other side, so as to leave an aisle in between to walk across.

The reason for this, is because this would symbolize that each party to the covenant will walk through the animals cut in half making the statement that the one who fails to keep the covenant being made will be destroyed just like these animals are.

That is a pretty serious condition of a promise… How many of us would want to enter into that contract?

gen15.

But something significant happens here that sets all the rest of the OT on a different course...

Why did God put Abram to sleep???

If he is asleep, he can’t walk through the sacrifices… EXACTLY!!! but wait that would mean he is entering a covenant but he isn’t sworn to keep it… EXACTLY!!! Watch what happens...

gen15.

Anyone remember the story of how Egypt puts God’s people into slavery?

Remember Moses???

These aren’t stories that just developed, but part of the promises of God in fulfilling a covenant promise to Abram...

gen15.14

Here we have a promise of the 10 plagues… And wealth from Egypt...

God even goes into detail about how old Abram will be, and then tells him he is waiting on sinful people to continue to reject him more before he allows them to be destroyed… God Knows everything and takes everything into account when making promises!

Now that he makes these promises to Abram, will he wake him up to walk through the sacrifices???

gen15.17

Remember I said that the pre-fall state of relations between God and humanity was his presence being with them?

Since the world is sinful, God doesn’t come down in any form that is recognized because he is holy, so we have a unique pictures of a smoking fire pot and torch that passes through the pieces, this represents God God making the covenant promise official… But Abram does not do it too??

Because God is swearing by himself that his promises will come to pass.

Why Did I take all this time during Advent to explain this?

Because we need to know that God makes promises based on his own eternal nature… When he promises something it will surely come to pass because he swears by himself, and if it didn’t happen then he would cease to be God!

This is a the groundwork that was laid for the rest of Scripture… God swears by himself that there will be a people he will obtain, they will children of Abraham...

The story goes on… suffice it to say God’s people find out what God desires from them in their daily lives, they get the Law from God after he delivers them from Egypt.

And this is because the nature of God is to Delver his people and then call them to Holy Living… it was then and it is now… We were dead and now we are alive… we were in darkness but we have been called out into his marvelous Light… and now we live according to his Holy standards because we are new… and just like that, in the OT he delivered his people and then gave them the Law...

Needless to say, they can keep the Law, they continue to Sin.

They desire to be like everyone else in the world, they want a king, and God eventually gives them a King… It doesn’t go well at First, then he gives them David as a King, and even though there are many broken sinful people constantly messing up good things that God is blessing his children with, more promises come...

While David was the Best king, the promise of one like him would come after him...

in God speaks through the prophet Samuel that he is establishing David’s throne, yet there there is more to this Promise...

2sam7.12-

Notice this promise to David, the King of Israel, when he is dead and gone, his kingdom and throne will remain… being established by someone in his Family line… this person will be the Son of God, and we know that though he never sinned, even this promise was fulfilled once our sin was taken up by him, and so he was disciplined with the rod of men… - he who knew no sin was made sin for us!!!

HIS kingdom and throne will be established forever...

So God not only creates us, he not only promised to have a people so great they couldn’t be numbered, he not only swore this as a covenant in which he himself will keep, he now even says that through his sinful people he will bring one to forever establish a kingdom and a throne...

who will this be???

well the story gets a little complex and for sake of time allow me to gives you the quick version… David’s kingdom gets divided into a nothern and southern kingdom after his death… Israel should be one but they are divided and now other nations will come and conquer them because of there disobedience to God...

How can the promise come is everything is such a mess?

Enter Isaiah the prophet… he is called by God to tell his people and the kings what that plan of God will be...

And just before the Text we started with there is a king called Ahaz… He is not a godly leader and yet Isaiah asks him to ask God for a sign of deliverance from the impending doom of the coming kingdoms who are marching against God’s people...

So God says ASK me, let it be as be as big of a sign as you want, so my people will know that I am with them… In the end this is all about God’s people knowing that God is with them.

If he is, then they will be OK, and if not, there is no Hope!

This guys acts holy but God knows he is not… He is wearying God and God’s people.

SO A promise is made… Watch!!!

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Now this is a Sign!