Christmas: The Fulfillment of God's Promise

Good morning.

Welcome to you this morning.

If you're visiting here at Gateway, you're here for the weekend being with uh family or maybe came with some friends.

We want to welcome you.

We're really glad you're here.

I'm Pastor Tom Lane.

I'm the executive senior pastor here at Gateway.

I uh I'm responsible on a daily basis to work with the pastoral team and uh and staff to execute the uh the ministry on a day-in, day-out basis on behalf of Pastor Robert and the elders.

And so we're really glad that you're here.

Pastor Robert's gonna be back next weekend.

We were talking last night, my my daughter's a sophomore at Baylor, and she has brought a boyfriend twice to the services and never heard Pastor Robert.

And uh if you're visiting, been here a couple of times and yet to hear him, will you come next weekend, uh New Year's weekend, and you'll hear uh his message.

He's gonna begin a new series called Breakthrough.

And uh he he really was sharing with me this morning, the Lord's given him two keys to breakthrough in any area of life.

And so if you're needing a breakthrough in 2005, will you come and be a part of that series that he'll begin next weekend?

I want to uh talk to you this morning around the Christmas story about God's desire, his intention, what is revealed in the Christmas story to fulfill a promise.

The Christmas story is a reminder that God is a promise-keeping, promise-giving God, and he fulfills his promises.

Maybe you're here and you've been sitting on a promise for a long time, something that God told you would happen, and you've been waiting for it to unfold in your life.

I think there's encouragement for you today as we remember what God did in fulfilling his promise to send a savior, to send a redeemer for mankind.

And uh the birth of Christ was the fulfillment of that promise.

Maybe you didn't know that God has promises or makes promises today, and there's an encouragement in this message for you that God gives, He speaks, He delivers, He gives promises today, and He fulfills those promises.

Maybe you just need hope or you've been waiting for a long time.

You need to be renewed and refreshed in that.

There's hope for you as well.

And so I want to invite you to do something as we start this message, and that is, would you just ask the Lord to speak to you?

The Holy Spirit can personalize what you need out of this message, and let's just invite him to do that right now.

I'll lead it, but you just invite the Lord to speak to you in just the way that he can.

Father, I depend on you, Holy Spirit, to take the words of my mouth and personally tailor them to every person in this sanctuary this morning.

Lord, touch their life, touch all of our lives with a reminder, God, that you are a promise-giving God, and you have promises for each one of us.

And God, fulfill them.

God, give us encouragement and blessing today in Jesus' name.

Amen.

If you brought your Bible, turn to Luke chapter 1.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

I'm gonna guess that most of us, I feel confident, most of us know the essential elements of the Christmas story.

So we're just gonna read a passage to kind of get us up to speed, remind us of what we have been celebrating, what we celebrated yesterday as we celebrated Christ's birth, beginning in verse 26, Luke 1.

Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin, betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David.

The virgin's name was Mary, and having come in, the angel said to her, Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you.

Blessed are you among women.

But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was.

Then the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest.

The Lord God gave him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

When we read the story of Christmas, we're reading the fulfillment of a long series of promised events beginning in Genesis.

I've listed them for you there in your outline if you want to look them up.

Throughout the Old Testament, God declared his promise, revealed his promise, affirmed his promise that he was sending his son.

He would send a redeemer for mankind.

It was not his will that any should perish, but that all should come to know him, and his son, the Messiah, would be the fulfillment of that promise.

But here's something I want you to realize about a promise.

It's true of the promise of his son.

And that is this a promise, a fulfilled promise is not the end.

A fulfilled promise reminds us that God is present in our circumstances.

He's aware of what has taken place.

God was aware that you and I needed a redeemer, that we could not be good enough, and he injected himself into the circumstances of humanity and fulfilled his promise to send his son.

A fulfilled promise is a progress step in God's master plan.

I want you to think just a minute about a promise that God might have given you.

If that promise is yet to be fulfilled, it's coming.

God keeps his promises.

I want to tell you today, don't be discouraged, don't lose heart.

God gives promises and fulfills promises.

But I also want to tell you this.

If you have been given a promise, and that promise has been fulfilled, there's steps that have to be taken following that promise.

What the promise does is mark an event in the timeline of our life that says, okay, God did this, but now there's some more further thing that God is unfolding in my life.

When the promise was fulfilled and God sent his son, it still requires you and I to act on the reality of the promise and receive Christ as our personal Savior.

So a promise given isn't the end, it's a mark in the progressive line of the plan of God, the master plan of his work in our life.

I want to tell you today, God makes promises and fulfills promises.

It was not the end in the Christmas story.

God is a promise-keeping God, and he makes promises in our life.

2 Corinthians 1.20 says this for as many as are the promises of God, in him they are yes, and therefore also through him is our amen to the glory of God through us.

God makes promises, he will make promises to you today.

And this is one of the things I want to say.

You know, when we look at the Christmas story and we say, hey, great.

It was an event, we're pleased, we're blessed because of the event, but what effect does it have?

What can I take out of the Christmas story today and apply it tomorrow in my workplace?

I'll tell you what you can take.

God is alive and at work, and he will inject himself into your situation, and he will make a promise to you about some issue in your life if he hasn't already that he will fulfill.

We have four children.

We stagger them boy girl, boy, girl, and our oldest daughter, Lisa, uh, was in college.

She was in her second year of college and she was away, and she was dating a young man that we were not all that certain that God was God's best for her.

Do you know what I'm saying?

But you can't tell them that directly as parents, if you have upper teenage kids, you know how that works.

As soon as you tell them they can't, then they think they have to.

So one day I was praying for her, and I was praying about the young man and that she was dating and the relationship that they had, and the Lord interrupted as I was I was writing in my journal, uh, writing my prayer for her.

God, just bless her, lead her, show her what you have for her.

And just that quick, God interrupted me with a thought, and and he said to me, not in audible voice, but in my heart, he said, Tell Lisa, if she won't compromise, that I will, I am preparing for her the man of her dreams.

I thought, that's a cool word.

That's a great promise for my daughter.

And so I don't know if it was that afternoon or the next day.

I was talking to her by phone, and I said, Hey, honey, I need to tell you, I was praying for you, and the Lord gave me a word for you.

And she said, He did?

What did he say?

And I said, The Lord told me to tell you that if you will not compromise, that God is preparing the husband of your dreams.

Now, I I wanted to project and say, and it's not the guy you're dating.

But that isn't what God told me.

What God said is, if you will not compromise, He is preparing the husband of your dreams.

And it could have been, I thought, this young man, maybe God's doing a work, and what Lisa needed to be strengthened in and encouraged in was the fact that if she won't compromise, that God will do a work in this young man to make him who he needs to be for her.

I didn't know.

But I gave her the word, and about within a month, she broke up with the young man.

And for the next two and a half years, she went through her college experience, uh, dating some, not really anyone seriously, but occasionally she would say to me, Dad, remind me of what the Lord told you.

And I said, Honey, the Lord said, if you will not compromise, he's preparing the husband of your dreams.

And so it was about five years ago, or so, six, I can't remember what anniversary it is this year, that she was home at Christmas time, and there was a bunch of young adults at the house for uh an evening party, and uh she connected with this young guy that she thought was kind of handsome, and just so happened, you know, Jan's our our party animal, uh she's the party side of the two of us.

And uh so she stayed up and and had fun playing games with all the kids, and she was matched up with this young man that uh Lisa had taken note of, and uh the Lord spoke to her that night, this is the man that I've been preparing for your daughter.

Well, you could imagine she was playing cards with this guy, and she'd kind of you know check him out.

Is this is this really the guy?

So she she didn't tell me about this, and a couple of days later it was we were in in services.

I was sitting up on the platform, and Lisa and this young man walked in.

They'd had a date uh uh on maybe Saturday night, and so they decided to come to church together on Sunday.

And when they walked in, the Lord spoke to me and said, This is the young man that I've been preparing for your daughter.

So after service, I couldn't wait to tell Jan.

I said, Jan, you won't believe what God spoke to me today.

God told me that uh the the man that Lisa was with today, uh-huh, well, he's the guy that uh that the Lord's been preparing for.

And she goes, No way.

And I said, Yes, way.

And and she said, No way.

And I said, Yes, way.

That's what God told me.

And and she said, I said, why?

What's the what's the deal?

And she said, well, the other night when he was over, the kids were over at the house, yeah, uh, we I was teamed up with him playing a card game, and the Lord spoke to me and said, He's the guy that I've been preparing.

I said, Why didn't you tell me this?

And she said, Well, I forgot.

I said, You forgot?

This is something kind of important.

She said, Well, I'm sorry, I forgot.

So for the next five months, we held this promise in our heart, watching a relationship unfold between my daughter and this young man.

When you get a promise, you can't always share the promise with everybody that's involved.

Do you know what I'm saying?

You hear what I'm saying?

I was in the position of being shared a secret that became a promise that was I was in the process of watching unfold right before my eyes.

And I had the great joy, just not many six or seven months later, when this young man said, Um, could I could I talk to you?

And I said, Sure.

And so we went and had a coke, and he said, Well, um, I really love your daughter.

And I said, Yeah?

And he said, Well, um, I'd like to I'd like to know if if uh we could get married.

Then I had the joy of telling him what God had spoken, not only to me, but to my wife, and that he was the fulfillment of that promise.

You see, God does speak promises today.

I don't know what he might have spoken to you.

I don't know what he put in your heart, I don't know how long it's been, but I can tell you Scripture is full of promises.

Not just the promise of his son coming to redeem the world, but promises to the children of Israel that he would take them into a promised land, that he would deliver them from their enemies, that he would make provision for them.

That Paul repeats in 2 Corinthians.

The promises of God are yes and amen to the glory of his name.

He, if he's given you a promise, it's for a purpose of revealing that he is alive, he is real, and he has an invested plan for your life.

Now, it's not just enough that there's these promises and God makes promises, but he works and fulfills the promises through real people, through you and me, and that's part of what the Christmas story reveals.

There's three things.

I want to talk to you in just a minute about how you can impart, accept, uh, mobilize, you can activate, whatever you want to call it, the promise of God in your life today.

There's three things that are a part of this.

First, you need to accept the promise.

Maybe you just never believe that God actually would make promises today.

Maybe you you have said, well, he does make generalized promises, but a promise like that, no, he doesn't make that.

I can tell you, he does make promises today.

Do you need a promise of health in the new year?

Do you need a promise of provision in the new year?

Do you need a promise of direction or fulfillment or some personalized something that God would drop right into your heart and say, This is from God to me, and he's promised that it'll take place.

I can tell you, he does that.

You've got to accept, you gotta believe, and then you've got to wait for the promise.

And so let's look at each one of these.

Let me just start with accept.

And this is the story of Mary in Luke 1.38.

It just gives this little snippet.

The angel has appeared to Mary.

He's promised her that what is going to take place in her body is of God, that she's going to conceive, and the child will be of God.

And she doesn't understand it.

She says, How can this be?

I've never been with a man.

And the angel gives a brief explanation, which I believe she truly didn't understand.

It's beyond mental comprehension.

And then she makes this statement, Luke 138, behold, the maidservant of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word.

And the angel departed from her.

Accepting is appropriating God's promise for me.

You see, if you believe that God makes promises today, then the next step, and it's a little step, but it can be a huge step, is believing that God will actually have a promise for you.

It might be a simple thing, a simple appropriation.

When I was in college, I counseled at a camp.

And I have been so looking forward to getting up to this camp and to interchanging with the youth that were going to be a part of this camp.

And the day I arrived at the camp, I got sick.

Chills, nausea.

I mean, I it was all I could do to unload my stuff and climb into a bunk in the place that I was supposed to be the cabin leader of, and all these youth about to show up.

And I'm thinking, God, you didn't put this in my heart to come all of this way to counsel at this camp to be sick or to maybe pass on a sickness to one of the campers.

Lord, I believe that salvation means total well-being, total wholeness.

I believe, God, that you provided through the atonement of Christ for my healing.

And God, I just accept your healing right now.

I need it, God.

I need your work to be done in my life.

I accept your work.

It wasn't literally a matter of an hour or two, a short nap, actually, and the chills were gone.

The nausea was gone.

I woke up and I spent the next two weeks in ministry to the kids.

Why?

Because God touched my life, because I accepted a promise of His.

I've watched people over the years in pastoral ministry, and let me tell you what I've noticed when people don't accept a promise, the reason that they don't accept a promise is because they make the focus about themselves, about their own worthiness, their own failure, their own performance, or their own unworthiness.

They rely on their logic to figure out how God is going to accomplish something that He's put in their heart to do.

And they conclude, I can't figure it out, I don't know how God would do it, and because I don't know how God would do it, I really can't accept the fact that he might just want to provide it beyond what my mind can comprehend.

Or by worrying, I even if I could believe, I worry what others might think.

It may look a little weird, it may make me look a little weird.

And so I step away from the promise that God has given, not accepting it.

If God's given you a promise, I can just tell you today, there will be some people who do not understand.

There'll be some people you can't tell about the promise until it's actually been fulfilled.

You have to be careful about what is said.

I don't think Mary took out an advertisement in the Galilee Gazette or something like that, declaring what God had done in her life.

But she accepted.

And she made the statement before God be it unto me, according to your word.

The second thing is to believe.

But she comes and tells him, I'm pregnant, and I'm pregnant by God.

That'll tweak your paradigm.

So Joseph, it says, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.

But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived of her is of the Holy Spirit, and she will bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, and he will save his people from their sins.

I just imagined that there was a part of Joseph in this that he's he rubs his eyes, he goes, Whoa, man, I've been working too hard.

You know.

First Mary comes and tells me that she's pregnant by God, and then I see this vision, dream, and God tells me this thing.

You see, when when a work is being done, not only if you're the one receiving it, must you accept, but then there's a part of this in which you're gonna have to believe.

Maybe you're gonna have to believe what someone else has been experiencing.

I'll just tell you an example of something that happened to me.

When I was 16, the first year of driving, I had four accidents.

I lost my insurance twice during that year and cost my dad a lot of money getting the cars fixed.

And I I mean, if I told you the accidents, you just wouldn't believe it.

It was a it was a series of catastrophic events totally out of my control.

What?

You don't believe that?

When during that year, though, I got saved.

And after my fourth accident, I was kind of bemoaning the fact, God, why is this happening to me again?

And uh every one of my accidents, uh, my wife uh and I were dating at the time, and she was with me in three of the four accidents, and literally inches from being Huge, you know, either she being dan hurt, me being hurt, somebody in uh another car being hurt.

Uh I I hit a kid on a minibike, just to give you an example.

Hit it hit a kid on a mini bike.

And when I hit, he swerved out in front of me.

When I hit my brakes, the bumper of my my front bumper came down on his back tire and shot him over the front of the mini-bike, and he landed sitting on the street.

Bit his tongue, and that was it.

Got up, walked away.

Uh, we replaced his mini-bike.

I mean, it was it was stuff like that.

So I'm bemoaning the fact that, God, why me?

And God said, I have been wanting to demonstrate how great I am and how much I have uh the issues of your life in control.

And because I I was thinking, you know, God, you've you you you've been gracious to make these things work.

It's there's no serious damage, but God, is this going to carry on forever?

And he said, No.

No, I tell you, I've been wanting you to realize how great I am in your life.

And because you now realize this, you won't have another accident.

I went, Yeah, all right.

Now, if you were my dad, wouldn't you think that would be exciting?

I mean, here's four accidents in one year, several thousand dollars of repair bill, and so I go to my dad and I say, Dad, guess what?

God spoke to me about the whole issue of my driving and my accidents and all that kind of stuff, and what he has revealed to me is he's great and he knows everything about my circumstances.

His hand has been directing my life so that there's been no serious accident, no serious injury to the accidents that have taken place.

And God, and God said that I'm not gonna have another accident.

My dad went, All right.

It just so happened I was telling him this promise when I was trying to convince him to let me use the car to take a little trip.

Dad, I'm telling you the truth.

This is what God said.

It took a number of years without an accident, and by the way, in my 17th birthday, I got my own car, and I think he was convinced for a number of years that it was the result of me having my own car and not driving his rather than the fulfillment of the promise.

He struggled a little bit to believe.

See, Joseph, when this situation came, Joseph had to make a decision.

Will I believe?

Will I believe that God is involved in the circumstances of my life?

Will I believe that God has a plan and a purpose beyond what my mind can comprehend?

Will I, even to the point that the angel brings revelation to him about the circumstance, he still has to make a choice to believe?

Maybe the promise wasn't given directly to you.

Maybe it was given to your spouse.

Or maybe you are adjoined to a promise that you believe is real, that you are you you're holding on to, but you're faced with the difficult or the struggle to believe.

Is this really God?

Will it really happen?

Is God really saying this?

I can't quite figure it out.

If you're gonna see the promise of God revealed in your life, you're gonna have to believe.

The third is is this whole issue of waiting.

Before I go there, let me let me say one thing.

How do you act upon what God has revealed?

See, when God speaks, when God spoke to me about this not having another accident, I had doubt.

If I make this declaration about what God is saying, about what God has said, and make it to my dad, I'm gonna look foolish.

And so the whole process that begins to rob me even of my believing is doubt and unbelief.

And there's something recorded in Romans that is a powerful statement.

Romans 4.20, it talks about Abraham.

Remember Abraham?

Abraham was uh was given a promise that through his seed uh his seed would populate or be the promise of God would flow through his seed, and that it would be as the sand of the seashore, and he has no children at a very old age.

And and so Isaac comes along, and then God tells him to kill Isaac.

The promise was he was caught in this dilemma between the promise that had been given and what God was saying to him, and this is what Romans 4, 20 and 21 says.

Abraham did not waver at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God and being fully convinced that what he had promised, he was able to perform, even if it was meant raising him from the dead.

You know, God is able, if he's given a promise and it looks hopeless, he's able to create miraculous circumstances in order to produce the promise that he has given you.

Will you believe?

The third is waiting.

And waiting is this a word that really means anxious anticipation.

In some versions, uh uh waiting, uh, well, let's let's look at this, Luke 2, 25 and 26.

It talks about Simeon.

Simeon was a man, a devout man.

It says, well, let's just read, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, Luke 2, 25, whose name was Simeon, and this man was just and devout, waiting, or your translation might be, might say looking for, waiting for the consolation of Israel.

And the Holy Spirit was upon him.

And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

So he came by the Spirit into the temple, and when the parents, that's Mary and Joseph, brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he, Simeon, took him up in his arms and blessed God.

Sometimes in the working of the fulfillment of God's promise, it takes time.

It takes waiting, it takes an anticipation of God's work.

Now, I don't know about you, but I'm not a good waiter.

When God has promised something, I expect for it to take place.

I'm anticipating and I'm looking at every point, and it's difficult to wait.

Our oldest son is 30 now, but when he was eight, one Saturday morning I had duty.

I had child's duty, and uh so mom could sleep, and uh Todd came in to me and in the kitchen, and he'd been watching cartoons, and he said, Dad, can I have some toast?

And I said, Sure, I'll fix you some toast.

And so he just spun around and headed back into the living room to watch cartoons again.

And uh so I went over to the cabinet, pulled out the bread, you know, undid the little twisty thing from the bread, uh, got the toaster out, and that's about as far as I'd gotten, and he came back in and he goes, Dad, where's my toast?

And I said, Todd, I'm working on it.

Just give me a second here.

Go watch cartoons, I'll call you when it's ready.

So he spins around, goes back there.

I get the toast out of the bread out of the sack, into the toaster.

Uh, I've got the butter ready, the knife in hand, and he comes back in, hands on his hips.

Dad, where's my toast?

And I said, get back in the other room and don't come in here until I tell you it's ready.

I'm telling you, I'll I'll let you know.

And I was upset at him, obviously.

And as he turns back around to leave, the Lord said to me, That's just the way you are.

I went, oh man.

It takes a process.

This is what the Lord said to me.

It takes a process, Tom.

When you ask me for things, it takes a process.

And I immediately set out to bring those things about on your behalf to set things in motion for that to take place.

And before even the first step in the process is complete, you're you're saying, Where is it, God?

What's the matter?

Why isn't it coming?

When's it going to get here?

God, what's the what's the deal?

He said, It's just the way you are.

So I look at Simeon and I think, here's a man who had been waiting for the consolation of Israel.

Then he's been waiting for the promised Messiah.

It's interesting to me.

There's a little word here that I caught.

It says, so he came by the Spirit into the temple.

You know what I believe?

I believe that it wasn't Simeon's day to actually be serving in the temple that day.

I believe he was out running errands and doing some other things, and the Holy Spirit prompted him and said, Hey, by the way, stop by the temple today.

Well, it's not my day.

Why do I need to go by the temple today?

It's not my day to serve.

Just go by the temple.

Just go by the temple today.

So he stops in, and when he does, it's a divine encounter with Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, and God said, Here's the promise you've been waiting for.

Don't give up.

If you've been waiting a long time, don't give up.

God's in process to fulfill your promise.

You wait.

Wait on God, anticipate his work and be sensitive to the nudging of the Holy Spirit.

Last but not least, and I'm going to close with this the promises of God become or spring from a fountain of hope in our life.

Maybe you've been discouraged.

Maybe you've been disappointed.

Maybe uh cynicism has stepped into your life, and it's sin and you become cynical because you've been waiting a long time, but it just hasn't happened.

Can I tell you today, God fulfills his promise, his promises.

And Luke 2, 36, Anna was a prophetess, the daughter of Penul of the tribe of Asher.

She had been serving in the temple, it says, uh, for a long time.

She was a widow and served God with fasting and prayers night and day.

And coming in that instance, she gave thanks to the Lord and spoke of him to all those who look for redemption in Jerusalem.

Sometimes we need the encouragement of somebody else.

If you've been waiting a long time and you've been discouraged, you need to borrow somebody's hope.

We've got hope today for you.

Maybe you thought you're just not qualified.

The promises of God don't apply in your life.

I can tell you they do.

And the hope of God is for you.

Maybe you need to borrow some of our hope today.

As we close off the service, we're going to have people to be able to pray for you.

If you've never met Christ as your Savior, you can do that today.

If you've been discouraged in a promise that God has for you, you can see the fulfillment of the promise if you'll just wait.

And if you need hope today, we're going to supply you some of our hope.

Even as Anna did, so that she could be the encouragement of those who had become discouraged and thought the hope had been lost.

Would you bow your head with me?

Just want to ask the Holy Spirit to speak to you right now about some area of your life and his work that hope, promise, acceptance, believing, whatever it is that you need today, that the Holy Spirit could do that work.

Father, I pray that you would touch our life today with an anticipation of your work.

And for those that have a promise that has been long awaited.

God, I pray that you would renew hope today.

I pray for those that who need to believe, to grab a hold and accept the things that you've said.

Lord, I pray a divine encounter with you, that your work could be accomplished.

And God, we thank you for the reminder that you are a promise giving and promise fulfilling God in our life.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.