“Will the Promise Come?” – FBC Morning Light (1/12/2024)

Well, good Friday morning to you. We're about to end the second week of January of this year already, and looking forward to the weekend as we gather together with God's people on the Lord's Day. I hope you have that as your intention and your plan.

I hope your goal for the coming year, for this year, is to be in God's house every Lord's Day and multiple opportunities are there for gathering with God's people to take advantage of those opportunities.

In our church we have a Bible study at 9 .30 for all ages, 10 .30 is a morning worship service. During the winter months we're having an afternoon service at one o 'clock, and then Wednesday night we alternate between prayer meeting times and men's meetings and ladies meetings on Wednesdays.

So there's a lot of opportunities for us to gather with God's people. I hope you're taking advantage of those opportunities that are before you. Well anyway, today in our Bible reading we're primarily in Genesis chapters 36 through 38, and we have a couple of places where we're going into 1 Chronicles again, looking at some of the genealogies.

The Contrast Between Esau’s Descendants and Jacob’s Family

But what I want to point out is, kind of elaborate on something we saw earlier this week, with a contrast between the descendants of Ishmael and the descendants of Isaac. Ishmael had all these sons, Isaac had Isaac, it was just Isaac, he had none, until the Lord opened Rebekah's womb.

And then he just had two, Jacob and Esau. Well now, in Genesis 36 we're seeing a contrast between the descendants of Esau and the descendants of Jacob. What I'm getting at here is, in chapter 35, yesterday's reading, the end of yesterday's reading, there's just a couple of verses that says these are the sons of Jacob, the sons of Jacob were 12.

Jacob had 12 sons, and they list the sons of Jacob. And then you come to chapter 36, it says now this is the genealogy of Esau, who is Edom, and it goes through this genealogy of Edom, and lists all of these sons, all of these descendants of Edom, the sons of Edom, and then in verses 15 through 19, it recounts all the chiefs of Edom, or Esau, the chiefs of the sons of Esau.

And there's numerous chiefs. Now, if you think about that, Jacob has 12 sons. None of them are described as chiefs. In fact, they're all a bunch of shepherds. And Esau has all these sons, and a number of them are chiefs, like tribal chiefs, if you will.

And just a number of them. This is quite a contrast. And I point this out because remember, God had made the promise to Jacob, and we saw this yesterday in our reading, that he was going to make his descendants inherit the land, and they were going to be numerous as the stars in the sky, just as he had promised to Abraham.

Well, that promise certainly doesn't look like it's being fulfilled, does it? Well, what I get from this, and I want to encourage us in this, this emphasis in the genealogy and the list of Edomite kings, it seems to be that we can't judge the reliability of God's promise, the certainty that it will be fulfilled by what we see now, or what we see before us.

The certainty of its fulfillment is in the future, in God's timing, and in God's plan. Esau's descendants, they're numerous, and they have produced numerous kings, in contrast to Jacob's limited and, as soon will be evident, a very divided and displaced family, with no, no royal leadership whatsoever.

Christ’s Kingdom and the Timing of God’s Promises

Now, I want us to think about that in relationship to the promise that Christ has made, that his church will reign with him, that the gates of hell will not prevail against his church, and we look at our world and our culture and our society, our nation, and the attitude toward biblical Christianity, and how that attitude has soured in the last generation or two, and it doesn't seem like the church is going to reign over anything, but we can't look at the promises of God and how they are being worked out right now.

We must remember that God operates and fulfills his promises in his timetable and in his way. Now, you see, we have the advantage with the Old Testament of being able to look back and see how that promise, even though it didn't look like it was going anywhere in Jacob's time, how that promise ended up being fulfilled in Jacob's time, and is still in the process of fulfillment.

We can see that, but we can't see necessarily how all the promises that God has made to us as New Testament believers in Christ are going to be fulfilled. But because God has fulfilled his promises in the past, we can be confident in his faithfulness in the present and in the future.

Let's be confident in him. So our Father and our God, we're thankful that we don't have to walk by sight, and that our faith is not determined by what we see here and now. Our faith centers on and relies upon the trustworthiness, the reliability, the faithfulness, integrity of our God.

We thank you for who you are. We pray that you would encourage us with these truths today, and encourage us to trust. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. All right, well, listen, have a good rest of your Friday.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. The Lord will bless you in it. Good day with God's people on Sunday. Take care.