Shall I not bring it to pass?
If he speaks, it's already done. We just don't know it yet sometimes. He visited Sarah just like he
said, and he did what he said he would do, as he had spoken.
For Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age,
at the set time of which God had spoken to him. And Abraham
called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah
bare to him, Isaac. And if you remember, they didn't,
you know, they didn't look through one of those books of baby names
that we all probably looked through at one time. Some of us who have
children have looked through it one time or another. God said,
you'll call his name Isaac. That's what his name's gonna
be. And when we see this, miraculous birth. Think of God's purpose
of grace towards sinners in general terms here. God has determined
from before the foundation of the world to have a people, a
unique, peculiar, separate people that will live in this world,
but they'll be different from the rest of the world. They'll
be separated by God, sanctified, set apart unto the glory of God. Among the millions of inhabitants
of this sin-cursed, reprobate world will wander a peculiar
people identified as God's own. He said, you're mine. His sheep, they're called, and
his elect, his spiritual children, As far as this world is concerned,
they're born just like everybody else, no different. And they
live like everybody else. With this distinction, they've
been born again. They weren't just born once,
they've been born twice. Born from above, born of the
Spirit, made partakers of the Divine Spirit. And God calls
them In Galatians chapter 3, verses 26 through 29, he calls
them sons of Abraham. Paul there says, if you have
the faith that Abraham had, if you believe on Christ, you're
Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. God made promise
to Abraham, you'll have a son. I'll visit Sarah and you'll have
a son and his name will be called, you'll name him Isaac. And through
him, I'll make of thee a great nation. This is that people. Not natural sons of Abraham as
Isaac here is, but Abraham, the father of the natural Jews, yes,
he is the father of the earthly nation of Israel. But Abraham
and his earthly seed are a typical picture throughout the scriptures
of spiritual Israel. The heirs according to the promise. And let's consider this again,
having come here in this chapter 21 of Genesis 2, this new image
in that picture. The nation of Israel all through
is a picture of God's spiritual Israel. And we have here something
that teaches us quite a bit about that. First of all, when God
began the process in time of calling out a people, he went
to a country notorious for one thing. We really don't know much
about Ur of the Chaldees except that they were idolaters. They
were a nation of idolaters. And God chose and called Abraham,
who was an idolater, and the son of an idolater. And he said,
I'm going to make of you a great nation. I'm going to bless you.
And this, of course, is a picture of of our salvation of spiritual
Israel when he would have this peculiar elect spiritual people. Where is he going to find them?
Same place he found Abraham. Steeped in idolatry and superstition. Having no quality within us that
would recommend us to God. There was nothing in Abraham
that made him attractive to God. God just chose him and called
him. and said, I'm going to bless you. And it doesn't matter what
our testimony is. People in religion talk about
their testimony, you know, whatever it is, you've always worshiped
somebody. And it wasn't God until he found
you and opened your eyes to see him and opened your heart to
embrace him. and revealed himself to you.
And he did it because he loved us. He chose and called Abraham
because he loved him, not because Abraham had done anything for
him, or ever would for that matter. Ephesians 2.11, this is my testimony,
and it's exactly the same as Abraham's was. Wherefore remember
that you, being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are
called uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision
in the flesh made by hands, that at that time you were without
Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers
from the covenants of promise, having no hope. That's where
Abraham was. He was a godless idolater described
in Romans chapter one as having some light from God but not glorifying
him as God. And God gives over this reprobate
world to a reprobate mind and heart. And they die in their
sins with those exceptions, those elect ones that he chooses out
and says, I'm going to bless you. Strangers from the covenants
of promise having no hope and without God in the world. That's
where he found us. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were at
one time far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. Far off
from God. And yet now made nigh. And then
what did he say to Abraham? He said, come out of your country,
come out of the idolatry and come and worship and serve
me. And our experience of saving grace is exactly the same. It's
commitment to Christ, isn't it? It's come out from among them,
and be ye separate. He calls us out of our idolatry,
out of self and sin, and into his grace and love and service. God said to Abraham, leave your
father, your mother, your family, and follow me. And he said to me, and all of
us in Matthew 10, 37, he that loveth father or mother more
than me is not worthy of me. And he that loveth son or daughter
more than me is not worthy of me. Abraham had to choose between
family and God. And every believer has to do
that also. It doesn't mean that we despise our family. It doesn't
mean that we have to part from our family. It doesn't mean we
have to fuss and fight with them. It just means we love God more
than them. And if it comes right down to it, if they need to know
who we love more, they're fixed to find out, aren't they? They're
just going to have to find out. Just going to have to find out.
Doesn't mean we don't love them. We'd do anything for them that
we could except dishonor God, except in thy Christ. And then how was Abraham able
to obey God? How does anybody, how do these
men in Hebrews 11, how do they do in these women? How do they
do what they do? By faith. Every step of the way
we saw those words, by faith he did this, by faith she did
that. And by faith, Abraham was able to get up and
leave and obey God and do what God said. By faith, Paul said,
Abraham believed God. And it was counted to him for
righteousness when Paul would teach us in the book of Romans
concerning this great gift that God gives to his peculiar people.
He uses this simple example of Abraham as an illustration in
Romans 4, 3. What saith the scripture? Abraham
believed God and it was counted unto him for righteousness. And what does God do when he
saves us? It's by grace through faith that we, spiritual sons
of Abraham, are counted righteous before God. It's not of works. It's by faith. You're justified
by faith, Paul said. We conclude that a man is justified
by faith without the deeds of the law. We're counted righteous before
God. By grace, through faith, God
so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life by
faith. First John 5.10, he that believeth
on the Son of God hath the witness in himself He that believeth
not God hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the
record that God gave of his Son. God has given a record of his
Son. That's what this book is. It's
not a love letter to mankind or all the little sentimental
stuff that religion likes to talk about. It's a revelation
of God's Son. It's the record that God hath
given of his Son. And this is the record, John
said, 1 John 5, 11. This is the record that God hath
given unto us eternal life. Isn't that what it is? It's not
God has offered to people, to everybody eternal life. The record
is that God has given somebody eternal life. And this life is
in His Son. Isn't that what this record says?
It doesn't say anything about God trying or offering or making
available anything. This is the revelation that God's
revealing to me right here that He gave me eternal life, and
He did it when He gave me Christ. This life's in His Son. That's
what this book is. Galatians 3 7 know ye therefore
that they which are of faith The same are the children of
Abraham. So you see how we're pictured here in Isaac and in
Abraham and in God's Covenant that he made with Abraham and
he would make a great nation of him that Abraham's children
would be blessed in the seed which is Christ Paul said and
That seed is Christ. We're blessed in Christ. We're
children of Abraham in Christ by faith in him. If we have the
faith that God gave Abraham, if he gave it to us too, that
reveals who we are. We're sons of Abraham. And so
we're pictured and called by his grace out of an idolatrous,
idolaters living in a land of idolatry. He called us by his
grace and he gave us faith in his son. And then in our experience,
just as in Abraham's, our faith is tried. We see that all through
the scripture. We've talked about that quite
a bit lately, so I won't dwell on it much tonight. But faith,
as we saw, must choose between family and God. Get out of Ur of the Chaldees.
And Abraham didn't completely obey God, did he? He brought
his father and brought his nephew with him. And his father died
soon after, and his nephew was nothing but trouble for him. Faith must choose between personal
prosperity and God. When he got to the land that
God told him to go to, there was a famine. We gotta eat, don't
we? No, what we gotta do is obey
God and he'll feed us. Isn't that what he said? Seek
ye first the kingdom of God and these things will be added to
you. Don't seek these things. That's what Abraham would do.
I gotta go get these things and forget about what God said. No,
seek him, obey him, serve him, worship him, and he'll add all
this to you. He can give you food. He'll bring
a bird with something for you to eat if that's what he wants
to do. He'll call a ravenous bird from the east to feed you. He'll have something in his mouth
for you to eat. He'll rain bread from heaven. in order to feed
you. You see, he doesn't depend on
this earth like we do. Faith must choose between personal
feelings and our rights, you know, and God. We got to choose between us and
God. There was a dispute, you remember, and Abraham could have
said, I got just as much right to be here as you do. But no,
He knew that that would dishonor the God that had given him everything
he had anyway and so he said, why don't you take whatever you
want and I'll take what's left. Will we worship and serve God
as long as we don't get our feelings heard or as long as our rights
aren't infringed upon or will we just flat serve God? That's
the question there. And then faith must choose between
that which is most dear to our hearts and God. Offer thy son Isaac, thy only
son Isaac, whom thou lovest." For 25 years they had waited
for that son. Waited anxiously. And God said, kill him for me. Can you look back at your life,
believers, and see where God has caused you to choose between
yourself and Him in all these various ways? And He'll yet do
so if you're His. And here in our
text, we see a beautiful reminder of how God fulfills His gracious
purpose to have a people. I've said so many times, and
someday maybe I'll know what I'm talking about when I say
it, God has a universe because he has a people. All of this
is for his people, for the glory of his son, and his son is glorified
in the saving of a people. He deliberately condemns and
defeats man's efforts to fulfill this purpose. God's purpose of
grace is to have a people. And we see that in earthly terms
in Abraham and through Isaac. He said, it's Isaac that'll be
your heir. And through him, I'll make a
great nation. And the nation of Israel, physically speaking,
was born that way and became a nation before God. Great in
that God blessed them. Great in that God chose them.
and use them for his glory. And we see in that, and how that
Abraham and Sarah, they just flat gave up on God. They waited
25 years, and after 15 years or so, they just said, God's
just not gonna get this done. We're gonna have to figure something
out. But God does this in such a way, he deliberately defeats
man's efforts to fulfill this purpose of him having a people.
And he does the same thing, spiritually speaking. He defeated their purpose
in Hagar and Ishmael. They said, we'll just make our
own heir. We'll work this thing out. No,
no you won't. God's not going to bless that.
He's not going to honor that. That's not what he said. And
like they did, religion leans on the arm of the flesh. And
when I say religion, I'm talking about what's in all of us by
nature. We're going to do something for God. You know, He said He'd
do something for us, but here we are, you know, and we're just
going to have to do something for Him. No, you're not. It's going to be a miracle of
His grace or there won't be any salvation. There won't be any
life. We're not going to get anything done. We're not going
to fulfill this purpose of God having a people, an elect, chosen,
peculiar people in the strength of the flesh. It's not going
to happen that way. It's going to happen exactly
the way he promised it would, by his miraculous grace and power. And we see that, don't we, in
Isaac, so beautifully. John 1.13, which we're born not
of blood, That wasn't going to happen that way in the case of
Abraham and Sarah, wasn't it? Most people were just born of
blood, through bloodlines of natural birth. No, not going
to happen that way. Sarah's womb is dead and Abraham
is dead in that sense. No way it's going to happen that
way. Can't possibly produce a child, not of blood. Not going to work. Nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man. They gave that a shot too, didn't
they? That didn't work either. It's not going to happen that
way either. Ishmael shall not be thine heir. Isaac will be
your heir. Not of blood, not of the will
of man, but of God. God's going to have to do a miracle
if there's going to be a birth. If there's going to be life.
If this purpose of His grace, this eternal purpose of grace,
In making a great nation and blessing them in the seed, Christ
is going to be fulfilled. It's not going to happen in the
strength of the flesh, nor by the will of the flesh. It's going
to happen by a miracle of God's almighty grace. And what a picture
we have of that in Abraham and Isaac. A miracle of God. And God, you
know, he doesn't get in a hurry like we do. Religion likes to see immediate
results. And again, it's not them, it's
religious man, which is us by nature. We like immediate, we
have a revival meeting and we expect to see people get saved,
don't we? That's what religion's doing. If people aren't going down the
aisles, we'll get them down the aisles. I don't know if you've
heard much about what goes on at these big meetings like, like these fools have where there's
thousands of people, but if not enough, if they feel like not
enough people are going down there, they've got people planted in
the crowd to say, that'll go over and say, I'll walk with
you. I'll go down there with you and get them by the arm.
You know, let's get some people down the aisle. Let's produce
something. I used to be in this type of
religion for a little while. I was born and real early in
my life when I was, I guess, around between seven and maybe
eight or nine years old. I heard the truth and was very
young and didn't really hear much at the end. And then, and
then, uh, The church we were in just went away, just split
up. Hard feelings, bad feelings,
split up and just dissolved, basically. And we just kind of,
we went somewhere that we ought not have been going, I suppose,
for a while. And my dad would sit down with
me when we got home and tell me everything wrong that the
preacher had said. You remember when he said this?
Yeah, that's not right. And he'd open the Bible. And he'd show me the truth. But
I was in religion for a while there. And when I was told once by the
pastor of a church when I was very young, a young teenager,
that the fellowship, they were part of the World Baptist Fellowship. It's basically just like the
Southern Baptist Convention or whatever they call theirs. He
said that they sent financial aid, you know, to all the churches
and the one I was in included, but only if you could document
decisions that had been made during that week. Either people
deciding to get saved or deciding to rededicate their lives to
Christ or making some kind of, if somebody makes some kind of
decision and you can document it, then based on that, we'll
send you financial aid. I knew when I heard that I had
to get out. I'd rather do nothing and go nowhere than hear that
or be involved in something like that. And then one day my dad and I
were in a bookstore where they published Spurgeon's sermons
and had some good books there and we shopped there sometimes
and we saw a little paper on the wall that said Henry Mayhem
was going to be in town in Houston. And we drove a little ways out
to hear him preach. And when we were there, he told
us about Jack Shanks. And that's how we found out there
was a church at all anywhere near us. It was it was a little
over an hour from where we live. And so but from that from that
day that we found out about that that night when we heard Henry
and he told us about Jack Shanks in New Caney, a little over an
hour from where we live. From that time until the day
my dad died, I bet he didn't miss five worship services in
those, I don't know how many years it was. And I'd go with him and we heard
the gospel. And the first time I ever heard
Jack preach, he preached from Revelation, let him that is a
thirst come. and take the water of life freely."
And he entitled the message, Are You Thirsty? And several
times throughout the message he asked us that, Are You Thirsty?
And by God's grace, I was. But God, over a lifetime, He
works. And He causes, and He teaches,
and He moves. For 25 years, they waited somewhere along the way they
gave up on God. And he just kept repeating the
same promise over and over to Abraham, didn't he? And they
waited some more. And then in God's good time,
he gave life. He gave them what he promised
them, a son. We can't do anything anyway.
We just as well wait on God. But don't do it just because
of that. Do it because He's worthy. Wait
on Him. Trust Him. Don't try to produce
anything by the power of the flesh. God is almighty when the circumstances
seem the very least conducive, as often when He brings to pass
His purposes of grace. And God is faithful. God will
do what he said he would do. And that's what faith is. It's
believing that what God had promised, he's able also to perform. He
always does what he says he'll do. And he always does exactly
what he said he'd do. And then notice in verse two
there that God has a set time. for the accomplishment of his
purposes. At the set time that he had told him, that's when
he did it. A year before he had told Abraham,
this time, a year from now, you'll have your son. And exactly when
he said, there are no contingencies, there are no chance happenings,
there's no luck, there's no probabilities and the law of averages and things
like that, You know, people calculate the laws of averages. If something,
you know, if the dice come up or roll this many times, it'll
come up this number this many times, and that number this many
times. That doesn't mean anything. Scripture says the lot is cast
into the lap, and the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord. It'll
come up what God said it'll come up. Isn't that right? The minute,
unimportant things like that are under his perfect, sovereign
control. Everything happens exactly as
he has ordained and exactly when he has ordained it. We don't
always know when it is. We don't always even know what
it is. But it always happens the way he ordained it and when
he ordained it. In Galatians 4.4 it says, but
when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth his son. Pretty sure Eve thought she had
him way back, how many thousands of years, when God promised him
the woman's seed would bruise the serpent's head, crush the
serpent's head. And then when, when one of the
sons was born, she said, I've gotten I've gotten the man from
the Lord. That's what she said. She thought
he was the Messiah right there. No, no. It wasn't time yet. It wasn't time. And thousands
of years went by. When was he born? When the fullness
of time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman, made
under the law to redeem them when they were under the law,
that we might receive the adoption of sons. When is he going to
come back? Ephesians 1 9 having made known
unto us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure
When at which he has purposed in himself that in the dispensation
of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things
in Christ He's gonna gather us from the east west north and
south. He's gonna say give up Give up
my people and he's gonna gather all things in one in Christ both
which are in heaven and and which are on earth even in him, in
whom also we have obtained an inheritance being predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise
of his glory who first trusted in Christ." When is he going
to do all that? In the dispensation of the fullness
of times, on everything that he has purposed. shall happen
before that shall have happened then he'll wrap this thing up
at the set time that he has ordained and then again seeing this picture
of the new birth in the birth of isaac we're told in hebrews
11 11 that by faith sarah received strength to conceive We talked
about that quite a bit when we were going through Hebrews. By
faiths you received. That's what faith is, it's the
receiving grace. In salvation, when the Lord has
mercy on a sinner and regenerates a sinner and gives life to one
who's spiritually dead, we can't produce that which fulfills in
us the promise of his grace. But we receive strength to do
so. Lazarus couldn't come forth from
his grave, but he received strength to do that. He received strength. At the powerful call of Christ's
grace, he received strength to come forth. Man is impotent and
dead, just like Sarah's womb. And the question comes to us,
as it did to Ezekiel, can these bones live? dead and exceeding
dry, it said there. And we answer with Ezekiel, thou
knowest, Lord. If you're pleased to make them
live, they'll live. If not, they'll lay there bleached in the sun
and just get drier and drier. The only one that can answer
the question, can these bones live, is the one who's able to
give them life. And so we say, thou knowest.
So we see in Isaac's birth, don't we, a clear picture of our spiritual
birth, from start to finish. And also, it's a picture of the
birth of the one who birthed us. It's a picture of Christ's
birth. Five things, and I'll be through. Number one, Christ's birth, like
Isaac's, was promised long beforehand. This wasn't just a contingency,
just something that happened. This was God revealing what he
had purposed and then bringing it to pass. He was promised the
promised seed. And then secondly, like Isaac's
birth, the birth of the Lord Jesus came to pass a long time
after it was promised. And they were looking for it
for a long time. He was promised, unto us a son
is born, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
government will be on his shoulders, and his name shall be called
Isaiah, prophesied of him. And all of God's people who believed
God, they were looking for that, for that birth, weren't they?
They anticipated it with great anxiety and joy. But it came to pass a long time
after it was promised, and yet, exactly on time, as we saw there
in Genesis 21-2, at the set time that God had purposed, and in
Galatians 4-4, where we read, in the fullness of time, God
sent forth His Son. And then thirdly, when God made
promise of Isaac, He told Abraham originally, and
then, In Genesis chapter 18, he made the promise to Abraham
and Sarah was there with him. And Sarah said in chapter 18
verse 13, shall I of a surety bear a child which am old? And
the Lord answered that question, didn't he? You remember what
he said? Is anything too hard for God? That's a good question, isn't
it? And then Mary, When the angel
of the Lord appeared unto her and told her she would conceive
and bear a child, what did she say? In Luke 1.34, you remember,
don't you? How shall this thing be, seeing
I know not a man? And you know what God said to
her through that angel? Make no mistake, there was an
angel there, a messenger of God, this is God speaking. He sends
his spokesman, it's God speaking. And God said in verse 37 of Luke
1, with God, nothing shall be impossible. It's just like, it's
just the same, isn't it? We see the birth of our Lord
Jesus Christ pictured so beautifully in the birth of Isaac. Both births were miraculous acts
of God's power and grace. Number four, in Genesis 17, 19,
God said, you'll call his name Isaac. And in Matthew 1, 21,
thou shall call his name Jesus. And then number five, Isaac's
name means laughter or he laughs. That's a great name for him.
You know why? He's not named after Sarah's laughter of unbelief
in Genesis chapter 18. Sarah laughed in a mocking way,
in a scornful way, in unbelief. But somebody else laughed when
Isaac was promised. In Genesis 17, 15, listen to
this, God said unto Abraham, and this is, he was 75 when God called him
and he was 90, I believe, when this happened. So 15 years after
God made these promises to Abraham to bless him and give him a child
and make of him a great nation, he said unto Abraham there and
renewed the covenant, reminded him of the covenant. He said in Genesis 17, 15, as
for Sarah, thy wife, thou shalt not call her Sarai. And I've
always just said Sarah, because it's the way we know her. But
her name was Sarai, S-A-R-A-I. And he said, you don't call her
Sarai anymore, but Sarah, S-A-R-A-H. God changes our name, doesn't
he, when he comes. he said as for her i will bless
her and give thee a son also of her yea i will bless her and
she shall be a mother of nations kings of people shall be of her
now this is 15 years after god had appeared and made this covenant
with abraham and abraham had been through a lot of trials
and we won't go through them all again but you remember them
don't you And then God renews this promise to him, reminds
him what he's going to do for him. And it says in verse 17,
then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed. Have you ever just been thinking
about the gospel? And it's just, it's just so overwhelming
that God would undertake for us in such
a fashion that God would be merciful to such worms as us. And in your heart, at least,
you follow in your faith and laugh. There's nothing, we were talking
about this a little bit this morning, there's nothing more
enjoyable more refreshing, more fulfilling
to a believer than hearing the promise again, than hearing the
gospel again. And I don't want to sound spiritual, because it's
not always this way, but sometimes it's hard to contain it. When
God reminded him, Abraham, of what he was going to do for him,
he fell on his face and laughed. And God said, name that son. He laughed. Laughter. You remember when those wise
men from the East would come to Bethlehem, they sought the
promised child. Just like Isaac was the promised
child, the Lord Jesus was the promised child, the miracle child. And it says, when they left Herod,
it says in Matthew 2, 9, and lo, the star which they saw in
the east went before them till it came and stood over where
the young child was. And when they saw the star, they
rejoiced with exceeding great joy. How many times in your life have
you done that? Think about it now. We go through
this life and it's a drudgery most of the time, isn't it? Let's
be honest about it. I'm talking about just being
in this world and the things of this world. We get down, don't
we? We get discouraged. We get wrapped
up in the things of this world. We take our eyes off of Christ,
the promised miracle of God, the blessing of God. And every
once in a while, and I can remember in my life some times of real
joy, and we're talking about earthly things right now because
that illustrates the spiritual. But my wedding day, I was happy
that day. I remember that. Don't you? You who are married. and the day that my children
were born. I remember those days. I couldn't tell you when they
were. Vicki probably could right now. I have to always say, what's
their birthday again? Or what's Eric's birthday? But
especially the years, I remember their birthdays, but not the
year that they were born so much. We got to check with Vicki on
that. But you know what I'm talking about there. Life just kind of
goes by and there's a lot, it seems like there's a lot more
just toil and struggle and drudgery, then there is real joy. And I'm
not an unhappy person, you know that. But I think you know what
I'm talking about. We're talking about exceeding
great joy. Does the gospel do that for you?
When you see the star, when you see God's light from
heaven, When you see God's promise fulfilled, when you see God's
purpose of grace, his purpose of having a peculiar, elect,
chosen, blessed people fulfilled in Christ, does it cause what
it did for these fellows? Exceeding great joy. There's
no other joy in this world like that. It's wonderful, the earthly
things that God blesses us with are wonderful. The type of things
that I mentioned. But there's no other joy like
that, because it's a joy that never really completely departs,
even when we're down, even when we're hurting. We can rejoice
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Can you imagine the joy of Sarah
and Abraham when Isaac was finally born? You see, this was more than just
the blessing of bearing a child, which is a great blessing. Having
a baby, that's a great blessing. But this was more than that.
This was the favor and faithfulness of God that they held in their
hands. When they kissed that little
baby, they were kissing the faithfulness of God in their life. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
was born, The prophecy came true unto us, a child is born. Yeah,
there was a baby born that day, just like any other baby, a human
baby, in a sense, just like all others. But more than that, there's
more to the prophecy than that. Not only was a child born to
us, but a son was given to us. It was more than just the joyful
event of a baby being born into this world. It was the faithfulness
and blessing and favor of God that came. That's why Simeon,
when he looked into the face of that little baby, he said,
I'm ready to die now. I've seen God's salvation. The Son of God was given to us
to save us from our sins, to redeem us from the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us. On the night he was born, it
was like this. Let's read it and we'll be through in Luke
chapter 2. Think about the joy. I'm sure
that Abraham and Sarah rejoiced together
and probably had some family and friends over and celebrated
the birth of Isaac. Don't you imagine? When our Lord
Jesus Christ was born, it was on this wise. Luke 2 and verse
8, there were shepherds in the same country, shepherds abiding
in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord
came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about
them. And they were sore afraid. You know, in a sense, that's
what happens when the Gospels pray, the glory of the Lord shines
about us. And it causes a fear, doesn't
it? It causes an awe of God. To see who he is in his book,
and to see what he's done for sinners. But the angel said unto
them, fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,
which shall be to all people. Because you see this, this peculiar
people that God has purposed to have, they're out of every
nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue under heaven. From all over the
earth, all people are gonna hear these good tidings of great joy.
For unto you is born this day. They waited so long, didn't they? 25 years, how long did God's
people wait for this promise to be fulfilled? lived and died
without ever having seen the face that Simeon saw. But this
day, the angel said, this day in the
city of David, there is born unto you a savior, which is Christ
the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto
you, you shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes.
lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the
angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill toward
men. When that baby Isaac was born,
it wasn't just, they weren't just rejoicing because they had
a baby. That's something to rejoice about.
That's a blessing from God, but it was more than that. It was
the blessing of God, the promise of God fulfilled. It was God's
faithfulness. It was the omnipotence of God
because it was a miracle that baby was born. They held in their
hands an example of God's omnipotence and His almighty grace, His almighty sovereign purpose to bless a
people. And when the Lord Jesus Christ was born, that's the fulfillment
of that promise, the true fulfillment of it. Because he's that seed
that the Lord talked about when he spoke to Abraham. In thy seed
shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. All people,
unto all people, good tidings of great joy. It was such a glorious
occasion be in the fulfillment of God's promise of mercy and
grace to his people that even the angels burst out in song
and praise unto him. Glory to God in the highest and
on earth peace.