Now you, brothers and sisters, like Isaac, are children of promise. Galatians 4:28 (NIV).
I love the plainspoken mystery of this verse. If you take it out of context, or you don’t know the history of Isaac and Ishmael, you would either reject or accept it at face value. Now, dig deeper. Do that, then you see how the promise of eternal redemption ties my very contemporary faith in Jesus directly to God’s covenant with Abraham over four thousand years ago. The same God who guided Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob guides me every day. He called them to follow, repent, and believe. He calls me to do the same things. It’s a deeply beautiful, moving knowledge of an ancient promise being kept in my modern life.
Going all the way back to Eden, before God even expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden, He promised to deliver them from their sins. He told the serpent that He would put enmity between him and mankind, identifying to us who our enemy was. And God then immediately told the devil that He (God) would crush him even if the devil hurt Him back. So let it be written, so let it be done. And it was done, at Calvary.
Centuries later, after Cain and Abel, after the flood, after Babel, after people were falling away from Him, God called Abram, who would later be re-named Abraham, and told him that He, God, would build a nation through Abram and would bless the world through him. It took decades for Abram to see how God did that, yet, on the day that old Abraham held his infant son, Isaac, in his arms, he held the fulfillment of that promise and knew every word God spoke was true.
Fast forward. See Jesus. Promise fully kept.
Once again, remember this: the same God who clothed Adam and Eve, who spoke with Noah, who guided Abraham, who kept His promise through Isaac, who was and is and is to come in His Son Jesus is the same God who calls you and me, individually and together, to follow Him, to turn away from our sins and begin again, to put all our faith and belief in Him because He always keeps His promises and always provides a way forward for us. He is with the barren woman who has no child of her own. He is with the lottery winner who finds himself immensely wealthy. He is along the front-lines of war, under the overpasses with the homeless, and in church every Sunday or wherever two or more gather in His name. He hears our prayers; He feels our feels; He is God, the only God. It’s an ancient but beautiful thing.
For further reading: Genesis 3:15, Genesis 12:2-3, Genesis 21:9, Galatians 4:29
Lord, only You are God. You are the Lord, my Savior, my Father, my Spirit guiding my life.
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