Advent, Day 3: God Made A Big Promise

For Kids:

Remember what we read about yesterday?  The people God created disobeyed God.  

They didn’t trust that God was truth and love, and instead they believed God’s enemy, and as a result they “Sinned” against God.  

Sin is a problem for all of us.  

We all sin, in many different ways.  

Sometimes we’re selfish and we don’t want to listen but instead we want our own way.

This was the problem God kept seeing as family after family came upon the earth.  All of the people who came from the first man and woman were bothered by the same problem – Sin.  Things on the earth kept getting worse and worse.

Many years passed and then one day, God made a decision about how he was going to solve the problem of Sin.  He told a man – his name was Abraham – to take his wife and his family and move to a place that he would show them, and God made Abraham a promise:

Genesis 12:1-2
¹  GOD told Abram: "Leave your country, your family, and your father's home for a land that I will show you.
²  I'll make you a great nation and bless you. I'll make you famous; you'll be a blessing.

A blessing?  What did God mean?  

He was going to make from Abraham a great nation of people.  

How many?  

Genesis 15:5
⁵  Then the LORD took Abraham outside and said to him, “Look up into the sky and count the stars if you can. That’s how many descendants you will have!”

Think about it…can you count the stars?  One, Two, Three…wait a minute there’s way too many to count them all.  

That’s the point about God’s promise.  He was going to do something that was impossible to know how. 

Now, WHY?  

Why did God say to Abraham that he was going to do this?  

Because God had a plan.  Through Abraham’s descendants God was going to take care of the problem of Sin that was ruining the Creation.  Years later Abraham and his wife would have a Son and then God repeated the promise to Abraham.

Genesis 22:18
¹⁸ And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed...”

All of the people of the world would be blessed because of what was going to come from Abraham’s family.  

One day, many, many years later, God would send his Son into the world, and he would make sure that the problem of Sin was taken care of once and for all.  

That is God’s promise from Abraham all the way to today:

John 3:16
¹⁶  “For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Let’s remember as Christmas gets closer, and we celebrate Jesus’ birth, that all of it began when God gave Abraham this promise to bless the earth through his family.

Let’s remember too that God has blessed us in sending Jesus to take away our sin.  

When we receive what Jesus has done for us, we are blessed, and then we can be a blessing to others.

Let’s do something…On the following page is a picture you can color, but would you also think about some way you can be a blessing and do something good to someone else?

To Parents and Other “Not Kids”: 

This lesson relates back to the Jesus Story Book Bible’s chapter “Son of Laughter”.

Advent is a season for celebrating God’s Promises.  And God always keeps his promises.  

There are so many and we’ll be looking at a few of them in the remainder of this week. 

We all make promises, and when we do, we should keep them.  

I promised my wife on our wedding day that I would love, honor, protect and stay with her no matter what the hardships we’d face – as long as both will live.  It’s all still good 44 years later.  I promised my bank that if they loaned me money for our house, I would pay them back – so far so good.  Then again, I stopped promising my dentist that I would floss…I’m sorry to say, I am poor in keeping that up. 

What is it about promises?  We all make them; yet we all know that a promise is only as good as the one who makes it.  

Promises are always about the Character and truthfulness of the one who makes it. 

There’s some interesting verses in the book of Hebrews that relate to this idea of promises:

Hebrews 6:13-20
¹³  When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, ¹⁴  saying, "I will surely bless you and give you many descendants."
¹⁵  And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.
¹⁶  Men [people] swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument.   

Think about this.  God made a promise to Abraham solely on his own word, because there was no other source of greater truth.  

Our word is often not enough, and we swear by something greater.  

For example, we put our hands on a bible in a courtroom and swear to tell the truth, and we sign our names on a loan, or a contract, to guarantee in writing we’ll fulfill our word.  

God swore by his own word alone.

The writer of Hebrews then goes on:

Hebrews 6:17-20
¹⁷  Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath.
¹⁸  God did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged.  ¹⁹  We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, ²⁰  where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf...   

Advent reminds that the fulfillment of God’s promises to us has as it’s foundation, a covenant of grace based on Jesus.  Jesus, so to speak, is the guarantee of our promises.  It's like taking out a loan, being in debt, and then having someone come in and make all of the payments!

Hebrews 7:22-26
²²  Because of this oath, Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant.
²³  Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; ²⁴  but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood.  ²⁵  Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.  ²⁶  Such a high priest meets our need--one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens. 

The ultimate promise is the promise of eternal life.  The ultimate promise is that:  Our Sin is great, but Jesus' life, death, and ascension as our intercessor is greater.

Advent reminds us that God made a big promise and he's come through.

Peace