The Promise-Keeper

Christmas, I'm sure you'd agree, is a time jam packed with promise. It is full of promises. If you ever talk to someone who absolutely loves Christmas, and we all know those people, right? They're the ones that have the Christmas tree primed and ready November 30 for December 1.

They're the ones that buy the rainbow reindeer horns to put on the cars, those sort of people. Right? They love Christmas because of this promise. Promises of family time. The promise of presents, the promise of yummy food and fellowship.

It's these promises, these hopes that get us excited about Christmas time. But have you ever thought much about the concept of a promise? Perhaps it's not a question that we think about too much or too hard, but why do promises get made? Why do people make promises? Well, promises usually have a purpose.

They're working towards something. Promises have a goal in mind. You want to achieve something in the future and you set your heart or your mind to that task now. Well, we know that this is a noble sort of promise. You intend on doing something in the future, but because it's not the future now, it only remains a promise.

But promises, and I'm sure you've also experienced this, promises can be less noble as well. Promises can be used to relieve a bit of stress or tension. For example, as a youngster, it always seemed easier to say to my mum, yes, mum, I'll clean my room. And then I never did.

But mum stopped nagging me for a while at least. Maybe you've experienced something like this, guys. If I put it off long enough and make enough promises, my wife won't bug me anymore about fixing the tap that's dripping. Yes, honey, I'll get it done. If I ignore getting the car fixed long enough, then maybe hubby will take it to the mechanic for me instead.

What parent has never done this? Oh, you want a new iPhone for Christmas? I'll think about it, with no intention of ever thinking about it. Yeah, somehow hoping the miracle that they love the brick Nokia phone that they received from you when you got your iPhone.

These are promises also, but promises with no merit. Promises with very little integrity to them. Empty promises we call them. And they're all around us. I'm sure we've heard sermons about this or read articles about, you know, marketing in general and how these are promises that really don't have too much ground.

There's not a lot to these claims that marketers make. Well, we, as a human race, make promises that we not only can't keep, but sometimes don't even intend to try and keep. And we are so inundated with this understanding of these promises that every now and then, when someone actually keeps their promise, it's like a breath of fresh air. It's like, wow, this is pretty amazing.

This person said they would do something and they have. Now the story of Christmas is, of course, the ultimate example of a promise being kept. Yesterday, we looked at the promise that was made to, remember, Zechariah and Elizabeth, that they would have a son, a beautiful son who would be called gift, John, and that he would be a powerful man used by God. We saw that Zechariah, priest of God, is promised this, that he would be in line of the great prophet of the old testament. That God made promises of him in Isaiah 40 that there would be one who would prepare the way of the Lord.

We saw in Malachi, the last book of the old testament, that one would come who would turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the children to their fathers, and all of them together towards God. This was what John the Baptist would do. And here, lo and behold, an angel comes to Zechariah and says, your son will be this man. But then we find that Zechariah finds it difficult to believe this promise. It's too improbable for him.

It is too difficult to believe. But in order to have a visible sign that this was going to happen, that God is dependable, and also to probably mature Zechariah of his doubt, Zechariah becomes mute for nine months until the day of John's birth. So that's what we looked at yesterday. But then we go back a little bit further, and some of us have journeyed through the advent season as we've come to today with the servant songs of Isaiah. Remember Isaiah chapter 42?

Forty nine, fifty, and fifty three. These little poems that talked about a servant, a mysterious figure who would come in the future of Israel, that he would be what is called a light to the Gentiles. I don't know if you picked up what Simeon prayed that day. Also a light for the Gentiles. But that this man would be a light to the Gentiles and he would come and heal those who were sick, that he would come and free the prisoners from their dark prisons. That he would bring justice to the nations, it was said of him.

But that also in Isaiah 53, he would suffer to the point of death in order to accomplish this mission. And that primed us and that got us ready for today, but it was also full of promises. This was going to happen, God said. Theologians call today, or what we celebrate rather today, as the incarnation. The stepping of God into human space and time.

God knew what had to be done. God knew that there was a purpose for this, a rescue mission. Can you imagine what it was like though for the Son of God in eternity past? And perhaps it is too hard to comprehend, but in eternity past, the Son of God went to the Father and said, I will go for them when this mess happens. I will go.

What did the angels think when this mission plan was laid out to them? The Prince of Heaven emptying Himself of all divinity. But perhaps the most profound astonishment is not how God would enter the mess of human history to rescue us all. What's more profound is what He had promised and that this came true. That what is most profound for me about Christmas is it is Christmas.

A God who does what He says He will do. Friends, it is not enough to just hear the promise of Christmas. It is not enough for us to understand these wonderful prophecies of Jesus in the past. It is not enough to marvel at the consistency of the Bible, of redemption history, and how it all sits together from Genesis through to Revelation.

To see how magnificently unified it all is. It is not enough that we even believe these promises. Let me say that again. It is not even enough to believe these promises. What is of supreme importance is that the promises have come true.

The holy standard of who God is is that He cannot and will not lie. God keeps His word and He stands by His solemn vows. Our God is an oath keeper. And you know there's something about that which moves us incredibly deeply. It moves us when we think about it in those ways.

Something in us longs for integrity like that, for consistency like that. And this is an example of it. A few years ago, I read in the newspaper a story and it was probably just a little paragraph somewhere in the newspaper that said this. That a man, a British man, who had lent $11 to a cash strapped Australian backpacker travelling through Europe was repaid the loan, the $11, forty years later. This is how the story goes.

Jim Webb, who was aged 72 when I read the article, was in a Belgian coastal town of Ostend in April 1969 when he met a man called Gary Fenton who asked to borrow money to pay for a ferry journey back to Britain. Mister Fenton promised that he would repay Mister Webb and noted down his address when he arrived back in England. The article writes, last Sunday, Mister Webb returned to his home in Sheffield, England to find a hand delivered package with $439 in it. $11 for each year the loan had not been paid. And a note inside the package that read, "To Jim Webb, a good man.

From Gary Fenton, a tardy payer of debts." The British man spoke to the BBC about this. It got quite a bit of press coverage. He says this, "I was quite emotional when I read it." He said, "In this day and age, promises are made and promises are broken.

But this was a lovely gesture. Forty years is a long time. It must have been preying on his mind that he hadn't repaid this debt." He probably had forgotten completely about that $11. But what an amazing story.

What a great feel good story. Now we have to ask ourselves, why does this wind up in the newspaper? If it was flipped around, if Mister Webb wrote to the BBC and said, "There's a person that owes me $11 from forty years ago. He hasn't paid the debt." That would not make the news.

Right? But somehow, a promise being kept is huge. It is enough to end up in the newspapers. Now, we don't just remember a promise at Christmas. We don't remember simply a promise.

We revel in its fulfilment. We celebrate and we are thrilled with a promise that was kept. We are struck deep down in our souls with gratitude at a God who could be so faithful to see it through. And I just want to share a few of those promises this morning as we meditate on it. A few amazing promises made many years before Jesus came.

From Micah 5:2. Micah was an old testament prophet who lived five or six hundred years before Jesus. Micah talks about where Jesus would be born. "But you, Bethlehem, Ephrata, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times." Isaiah 7:14, another promise.

How Jesus would be born. "Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son and you will call Him Emmanuel." And then Jeremiah 23. Jeremiah 23:5 and 6.

The purpose of Jesus' birth. "The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will raise up to David a righteous branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In His days, Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which He will be called, the Lord our Righteousness." There is majesty.

There is mystery in these words. You can pick it up, but there is majesty. There is power. There is hope. There is something that is not human in these promises.

My friends, our God is a God who delivers. He spoke across different times, three different prophets, and that is a fraction of the prophecies. Right? Three different authors across three different contexts in different times. And what we celebrate today is that we have a God who is faithful.

A God who is dependable. A God who is worthy of our trust. And so therefore, as we come to Christmas, we also are moved to know that we can put our trust and our hope in Him. We know how often we want to take our future and our past and our health and our well-being into our own hands, but the fulfilment of Christmas, at the very least, shows us how powerful God is. It shows us that He is capable of handling our lives.

So we must trust Him with our heart. God promises that He is good and therefore we need to trust and believe Him with all our strength. God promises that He will not let us fall when we trust in Him completely. And so we cling. We cling to that promise even if it's hard to do so today.

Because if God was faithful in providing a Saviour for His people, if that Saviour achieved the impossible, rescuing a people from the certainty of hell, which they rightly, we rightly deserve. If God is powerful enough for such a monumental promise to be kept, can we not trust Him with our lives, with little old me and my issues? If I can trust Him with my eternity, can I not trust Him with the wobbly little life I have? And so we put our trust in Him for our uncertain futures and we trust Him to clean up our crooked past. It might not be our best practice to keep our promises, but it is God's.

And what He has shown you about Himself in His word, well, whether you doubt it, whatever doubts rather you may have, whether you struggle with the question whether He really loves you or not, Christmas promises this. God is unflinchingly faithful. God is ferociously dependable. That baby born on Christmas day was born to grow into a man, born in Bethlehem as we read, in the royal line of King David as we read, to a virgin as we read. But He would take on the responsibility of a King. And what do Kings do?

They rescue their kingdoms. The arrival of our King who would win back His kingdom with all courage and determination as fierce as the promise was. That is our courage. That is our hope. And so this morning, we celebrate the happy news that our King has arrived exactly, exactly as was promised.

Not a jot or a tittle different from what was predicted or prophesied. Exactly. How could we then doubt this God of ours? Of all the promises that He makes about our lives, His faithfulness to us, the surety of His work to grow us and mature us, and to remove what hinders us in our life. So put our hope, put your hope in Jesus Christ this Christmas time.

Let me pray for us. Father, we thank you for this wonderful news again, this wonderful concept, Lord, that what we see at Christmas is a promise kept. And, Father, we are so prone to empty promises. We make them ourselves all the time. We are recipients of these empty promises all the time.

But You are the God who has kept this promise faithfully, ferociously. And so we thank you Lord for it. We take great courage and great hope from it that if You are faithful to so much, to such a great duty, to such a miraculous work, then our unrepentant husband, our broken relationships in our families, our wavering faith and stinging doubt is nothing compared to Your power. And so Lord, we thank you for that reflection. We thank you for that word this morning.

And we pray, Lord, that we will be Christians that are emboldened and encouraged and strengthened to believe even when it is tough to do so. Thank you for the joy of Christmas. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.