SPEAKER_00: We all know what it's like to wait and to wonder what the outcome will be.
SPEAKER_00: When you plant a seed, start a new diet, or invest your savings, there's always uncertainty.
SPEAKER_00: You hope it succeeds, but you can't guarantee it.
SPEAKER_00: Advent tells a very different story.
SPEAKER_00: God's people never wait with crossed fingers or fragile optimism.
SPEAKER_00: We wait with confidence because the God who makes promises is the God who keeps them.
SPEAKER_00: And that confidence rests on one simple truth.
SPEAKER_00: If the coming of Christ depended on humanity to succeed, the whole plan would have fallen apart before it ever got started.
SPEAKER_00: But it didn't depend on us, it depended on the one true God, who preserves his promises from generation to generation.
SPEAKER_00: And that brings us right into the heart of Advent.
SPEAKER_00: God's people have always been waiting people.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham waited.
SPEAKER_00: David waited.
SPEAKER_00: Israel waited.
SPEAKER_00: Century after century through famine and failure, through wandering and exile, God's people held on to promises they couldn't yet see, trusting the God who spoke him, spoke them.
SPEAKER_00: And just as we were reminded last week, Advent meets us in that same tension today.
SPEAKER_00: Between what God has already done and what we still long for him to do, between the joy of Christ's first coming and the ache for his return.
SPEAKER_00: For many of us, that tension sits close to home, the empty chair, the quiet house, the memories that bring joy and sorrow all at once.
SPEAKER_00: Advent reminds us that God has never abandoned his people in their waiting.
SPEAKER_00: He has always been faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at the first promise God made to bring redemption to his people, that from the very beginning God promised a Savior who would crush the power of sin and defeat the enemy.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is that promised one, the Savior who brings light into our darkness, peace with God and with one another, and hope to a broken world.
SPEAKER_00: This week, we look at the next step of that initial promise, one that would come just a little later in the book of Genesis, and God's commitment to preserve that promise.
SPEAKER_00: It's one thing for God to declare his plan.
SPEAKER_00: But what makes this grand story of redemption so remarkable is how God accomplished it through weak people, broken kingdoms, and the long shadows of history.
SPEAKER_00: As we look at the story of God's people, that's exactly what he did.
SPEAKER_00: He carried his promise through Abraham's fears, through David's failures, through Israel's rebellion, and through centuries of darkness, when it seemed like hope itself was flickering out.
SPEAKER_00: The promise should have died a thousand times, but it didn't, because God himself sustained it.
SPEAKER_00: And that is our Advent confidence.
SPEAKER_00: Christ came because God preserved his promise.
SPEAKER_00: Christ will come again because God continues to preserve his promise.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we will see God's faithfulness in Abraham, David, and Israel's history.
SPEAKER_00: The God who preserved his promise to bring Christ will faithfully keep every promise to you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's begin with God's promise to Abraham in Genesis twelve three.
SPEAKER_00: And Yahweh said to Abram, Go forth from your land, and from your kin, and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, and so you shall be a blessing, and I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.
SPEAKER_00: Tom and I love this passage, and it's easy to see why.
SPEAKER_00: Fresh off of God's promise to Adam and Eve in the garden, we already see the continuation of that promise in Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: God is not abandoning his plan, he is advancing it through one man and his family.
SPEAKER_00: Through Abraham, God promises to bless the nations, to make a people for himself, and to bring the blessing of salvation to the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: Now, humanly speaking, Abraham had no way to make this promise happen, but God's word is unfailing.
SPEAKER_00: We often think of Abraham as a spiritual giant, but he wasn't perfect.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's nothing remarkable about him.
SPEAKER_00: At the time, he was called Abram and lived as an ordinary man in Ur of the Chaldeans, a city far from the land God promised.
SPEAKER_00: He was an idolater, worshipping false gods like those around him, living in spiritual darkness.
SPEAKER_00: And yet God chose Abram to carry forward his plan of salvation, showing that God's promises rest on his own faithfulness, not on human perfection.
SPEAKER_00: Still, God's promises did not unfold all at once, and Abraham would wait many years before seeing them come to pass.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis twelve, one through three marks God's covenant with Abram to make him a great nation, to bless him, and to make his name great.
SPEAKER_00: This is the threefold Abrahamic promise: a people, a place, and a blessing, a blessing ultimately fulfilled in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning, God's plan points forward to the Savior who would come through Abraham's line.
SPEAKER_00: But it would be twenty-five long years before that promise began to take shape.
SPEAKER_00: In the birth of Isaac, the child of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: During that time, Abraham and Sarah doubted God's timing.
SPEAKER_00: They tried to fulfill the promise themselves by having Abraham's concubine Hagar bear a son, Ishmael.
SPEAKER_00: But Ishmael was not the child of the promise.
SPEAKER_00: Isaac was the child God had promised, and he would be born by God's miraculous power.
SPEAKER_00: When Abraham was one hundred and Sarah was ninety.
SPEAKER_00: In a profound way, God continued to show that he always keeps his promises, even through human doubt and failure.
SPEAKER_00: Even after Isaac's birth, it seemed as if God's promise might fail.
SPEAKER_00: God asked Abraham to offer the very child through whom the covenant would be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: Yet Abraham trusted God's faithfulness, confident that even if Isaac died, God could raise him from the dead to keep his promise.
SPEAKER_00: In the end, God spared Isaac and provided a ram as a substitute, a powerful foreshadowing of Christ, the Lamb of God, who would bear the punishment of his people in our place.
SPEAKER_00: Through these events, we see that God not only makes his promises, but preserves and protects them through generations, even when human weakness, doubt, and sin threaten to derail his plan.
SPEAKER_00: From Isaac's birth to the ram on the altar, God's faithfulness is shown to be powerful, sovereign, and fulfilled in the coming of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The faithfulness of God that we see in Abraham and Isaac doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_00: God not only preserves his promises across generations, he also raises up leaders and kings to carry forward his plan.
SPEAKER_00: Just as he kept his covenant through the line of Abraham, he would secure his promises through David, a king after his own heart.
SPEAKER_00: In 2 Samuel 7, twelve through sixteen, God makes a covenant with David, showing that his faithfulness continues to unfold.
SPEAKER_00: God declares in this promise to David, When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up one of your seed after you, who will come forth from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
SPEAKER_00: I will be a father to him, and he will be a son to me.
SPEAKER_00: When he commits iniquity I will reprove him with the rod of men and the strikes from the sons of men, but my loving kindness shall not be removed from him as I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you.
SPEAKER_00: And your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever, your throne shall be established forever.
SPEAKER_00: David was not a perfect man, far from it.
SPEAKER_00: He was the youngest son of Jesse, a shepherd boy from Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_00: No one expected him to become king, and yet God raised him up to defeat Goliath, to lead Israel in battle, and to shepherd God's people with courage and skill.
SPEAKER_00: David had moments of astonishing faith and devotion, but he also had moments of deep failure, adultery, deceit, even arranging the death of an innocent man.
SPEAKER_00: Like Abraham before him, David was chosen not because he was flawless, but because God is faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And through David, God continued to preserve the promise he had made generations earlier.
SPEAKER_00: When David became king, he wanted to build a house, a temple for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But because David was a man of war who had shed much blood, God told him that he would not be the one to build it.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, it would be one of his descendants.
SPEAKER_00: Even more, God promised to build David a house, not a building of stone, but a royal line, a dynasty established by God himself.
SPEAKER_00: He took David's desire and responded with something even better.
SPEAKER_00: His promise would be confirmed in David's son Solomon, but fulfilled completely in another son, who would come many generations later.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, the son of Adam.
SPEAKER_00: Second Samuel seven gives us a wonderful glimpse into God's plan to preserve his promise, even through flawed people like David and the kings who came after him.
SPEAKER_00: God wasn't simply blessing David, he was building a kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: And in this covenant, God promises an everlasting throne, an everlasting kingdom, and an everlasting son.
SPEAKER_00: No earthly king could ever fulfill those promises.
SPEAKER_00: Human kings rise and fall.
SPEAKER_00: Empires come and go.
SPEAKER_00: But God promised David a throne and a kingdom that would never end, something only God himself could sustain.
SPEAKER_00: And when we look at Israel's history, that becomes painfully clear.
SPEAKER_00: Solomon began with wisdom and glory, but his heart drifted.
SPEAKER_00: The northern kings plunged into idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: The southern kings wavered between faithfulness and rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom split, and eventually God's people were carried off into exile.
SPEAKER_00: It didn't look good.
SPEAKER_00: It looked like the covenant had collapsed, like the royal line had died, and God's promise had turned to dust.
SPEAKER_00: And yet Scripture tells us that in every generation God preserved a lamp for David.
SPEAKER_00: When the throne was empty, God preserved it.
SPEAKER_00: When the kingdom was in ruins, God preserved it.
SPEAKER_00: When the people were scattered, God preserved it.
SPEAKER_00: He always preserves a remnant.
SPEAKER_00: His promise never wavered.
SPEAKER_00: And after generations of human failure and long waiting in the small town of Bethlehem, David's own city, the true son of David was born.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ, the rightful heir to David's throne, came to fulfill everything the kings before him compromised and corrupted.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus reigns on an everlasting throne, ruling a kingdom with no end.
SPEAKER_00: His reign is righteous, wise, and unshakable.
SPEAKER_00: He never fails.
SPEAKER_00: The promise was preserved through flawed kings to bring us the one true king.
SPEAKER_00: And for us today, this is our hope.
SPEAKER_00: Our security isn't found in the political stability of our nation, our church size, or the culture around us.
SPEAKER_00: Our security rests in the sovereign reign of Jesus Christ, the King who sits on David's throne forever.
SPEAKER_00: The promise that began with Abraham and was secured through David becomes even more clear in the prophets, especially in Isaiah 9, 2 through 7.
SPEAKER_00: The people who walk in darkness will see a great light.
SPEAKER_00: Those who live in the land of the shadow of death, the light will shine on them.
SPEAKER_00: You shall multiply the nation, you shall make great their gladness, they will be glad in your presence as with the gladness of harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
SPEAKER_00: For you shall shatter the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, the rod of their taskmaster, as at the battle of Midian.
SPEAKER_00: For every boot of the booted warrior in the rumbling of battle and cloak rolled in blood will be for burning, fuel for the fire, for a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders, and his name will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.
SPEAKER_00: The zeal of Yahweh of hosts will accomplish this.
SPEAKER_00: By the time Isaiah wrote this, the people of God have already squandered the blessings entrusted to them.
SPEAKER_00: The nation has split, idolatry has spread, injustice fills the land, and foreign armies press in from every side.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah writes into a world filled with darkness, gloom, and rebellion.
SPEAKER_00: A world that looks in many ways like God's promises have failed.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, this is where Advent shines brightest.
SPEAKER_00: God often begins his greatest works when everything around us feels dark, when hope seems thin, when the kingdom seems lost, when the line of David appears to be a dying stump, that's when God brings life out of that stump and light out of the darkness.
SPEAKER_00: Into that darkness, Isaiah proclaims a stunning word of hope.
SPEAKER_00: The people who walked in darkness will see a great light, for a child will be born to us, a son will be given.
SPEAKER_00: This child is the true son of David, the only one who can be called, wonderful counselor, the perfectly wise king, mighty God, the divine king, the everlasting Father, the faithful covenant keeping King, the Prince of Peace, the King whose rule brings blessing to the entire world.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, the coming King is God Himself, Emmanuel, God with us.
SPEAKER_00: The promise is preserved.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the Lord of glory who took on flesh to sit on David's.
SPEAKER_00: Throne.
SPEAKER_00: And Isaiah tells us what his reign will be like.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace.
SPEAKER_00: Not just a kingdom that lasts forever, but a kingdom that grows forever, a kingdom that advances, a kingdom that spreads light in the places where darkness once ruled, a kingdom that cannot be lost, because the Lord of hosts is driving history toward the triumph of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: This is Advent hope.
SPEAKER_00: The promise started in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: It was carried through Abraham, secured in David, and proclaimed by the prophets, and now it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, the child born, the Son given, God with us.
SPEAKER_00: As we've seen this morning, God's story is not random.
SPEAKER_00: From Abraham to David to Christ, there is one straight line of divine providence.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel was never a reaction to human failure.
SPEAKER_00: It was always plan A.
SPEAKER_00: God's plan for redemption was established before Eve even took a bite from the forbidden fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And as we see throughout history, the success of this redemptive plan was always in God's hands.
SPEAKER_00: Abraham believed, but he faltered.
SPEAKER_00: David ruled, but he sinned.
SPEAKER_00: Israel was chosen, yet they rebelled again and again.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, through it all, God's promises were preserved.
SPEAKER_00: In the darkest point of history, the promised one came, the faithful Son, the perfect Savior, Jesus is the one who stands eternally victorious, where all others have failed?
SPEAKER_00: If God could preserve his promise across generations, through barren wombs, corrupt kings, in the exile of a nation, how much more will he preserve his promises to you today?
SPEAKER_00: The same faithful God who keeps his covenant is keeping you now.
SPEAKER_00: So as we await the coming of Christ this advent, let us be reminded that God's timing is always perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Even when his work seems slow, his purposes are never in doubt.
SPEAKER_00: Our waiting is not in vain, it's anchored in the unbreakable faithfulness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we give you our worship this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You are a God who is unfailing.
SPEAKER_00: Not only do you make promises, but you keep them.
SPEAKER_00: You preserve them.
SPEAKER_00: Even when we are unfaithful, you are always faithful.
SPEAKER_00: Let us be reminded and encouraged by that this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.