“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us;
to show the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us
that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”
(Luke 1:68-75)
A God Who Gives Us His Word
One of the most remarkable things about the God of the Bible is that He’s a God who reveals himself in terms that people like us can truly understand. This is remarkable, because God doesn’t owe anything like this to us. It’s remarkable because God is infinite and ultimately incomprehensible in his fulness. And it’s remarkable because we’re contaminated with the pollution of self-obsession and ungodliness.
What’s even more remarkable, though, is that God has made promises. He has guaranteed that he will do something for the sake of humanity instead of leaving us to flounder about in our petty attempts at self-righteousness and religious speculation.
Though there are many promises God makes in Scripture, we see Him making an incredible promise to a man named Abraham in Genesis 12. God tells him that he’ll make him into a great nation and that “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” God even formalizes his promise by establishing a contract – a covenant – with Abraham and his descendants (cf. Genesis 15:7-21; 17:1-14).
Is It All Forgotten?
As you go further in the Old Testament, though, it may seem like the blessedness God promised to Abraham and his progeny has fallen on hard times. Abraham’s descendants are oppressed as slaves in Egypt. The nascent nation of Israel in Canaan is regularly overcome by local enemies until God raises up judges to bring temporary relief. And within a few hundred years, the “great nation” rising from Abraham is ultimately subdued by foreign powers and banished from the motherland. And in the days of Jesus, the descendants of Abraham are subjected to the domineering command of the Roman Empire.
Yet despite all these disasters, the descendants of Abraham aren’t abandoned. In the Luke 1 passage shown above, the Jewish priest Zechariah remarks as he’s filled with the Spirit of God, “Blessed be the God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people.” Zechariah recognizes that in his own day, God is doing a special work to intervene in human history – “…that we should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show the mercy promised to our father Abraham [emphasis added]…”
A God Who Keeps His Promises
So what is this work God is doing in Zechariah’s day? God is keeping his promise. He’s bringing salvation to his people through sending His divine Son to take on human flesh. God is blessing his people by sending Jesus Christ.
So notice here. Jesus isn’t God’s Plan B for helping human beings after blundering through multiple failed attempts to save His people in the Old Testament. Instead, Jesus himself is the grand fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham. Through this first coming of Jesus, we’re delivered from Satan, sin, and the fear of death. In Jesus we’re set apart as holy and clothed in his righteousness. In Jesus we receive the forgiveness of sins, we’re given light amidst our darkness, and our guided into the way of peace.
All this to say, in Jesus we see that God keeps His promises. And this is good news for us as we wait for the final installment of God’s promise-keeping. Christ will come again to reign in glory. The world will be judged in equity. Death and depravity will be banished. And God will bring about His new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells. As we see how God kept his promises at Christmas – and then at Good Friday and Easter – we can be confident that these events will really happen. God has given us His Word on it.