Promise Involves Ongoing Levels of Fulfillment

Promise Involves Ongoing Levels of Fulfillment

When the Scriptures deal with God’s Promises we see the fulfillment of those Promises to be dynamic and not static. Whereas in a prediction the fulfillment of the prediction either comes true or doesn’t come true w/ God’s covenant promises you have fulfillment that come true but often in a way different than anticipated when looking at the original Promise.

Ill. – Promise of Engagement / Fulfillment of Engagement promise leading to Wedding Promises leading to fulfillment of Wedding Promises.

The Promise made my two 20 year old in getting engaged are fulfilled on their Wedding day but those promises are fulfilled by the act of other Promises exchanged on the Wedding day so that the original engagement promises are extended and intensified. In turn those wedding day Promises are fulfilled over the course of a married life in a myriad of ways — ways that are dictated by the ebb and flow of the relationship. 65 years later could either of the two young people who originally made promises of engagement have had any idea how that original engagement promise would have ended up being fully fulfilled?

God’s Promises in the Old Covenant are like this except God’s fulfilled promises cover millennium and not mere decades. They are Promises made and Promises kept but they are made and kept in ways that might not have been expected when the Promise was originally made. There is a great deal of this keeping of promises that results in extending and intensifying the original promise.

Ill. – Father Promising 5 year old son all the books in his magnificent library when he turns 18 but between 5 and 18 the Kindle is invented and so at 18 the Father gives the son a Kindle w/ all his library books downloaded instead of the library itself. Has the Father kept the Promise? Would the Son accuse the Father of going back on the promise?

This is the way much of the OT Promises work. God’s relationship w/ Israel was founded on the promises to Abraham in Genesis 12. But even in the OT itself the Promise God made to Abraham is fulfilled in unanticipated ways only to see the promise extended and intensified so that it is fulfilled over and over again in unexpected ways.

For example in one sense God’s promise to Abraham of “seed” is fulfilled with the Birth of Isaac. But of course we all know that the Promise once fulfilled was extended and intensified. A major theme of Genesis is how from one man the posterity of Abraham grows to a community of 70 people — a number that communicates that God is building His own Nation and People to rival the 70 nations mentioned in the Table of Nations. (Gen. 10-11)

Yet the promise fulfillment doesn’t stop there. In Ex 1:7 suddenly we see a people who are ‘exceedingly numerous.’ God’s Promise fulfillment to Abraham to have a seed continues past the OT as we see Jesus as being the singular seed that God had in mind when He made the promise of seed to Abraham. (Gal. 3:16, 19)

Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, “And to seeds,” as of many, but as of one, “And to your Seed,”[i]who is Christ.

What purpose then does the law serve? It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was appointed through angels by the hand of a mediator.

But even when the original Promise is fully fulfilled in an ultimate sense there are ripple fulfillments to the original promise that wash up on the shores of history. God’s promise to Abraham is also fulfilled in God’s bringing in of believing Gentiles into the covenant so that Father Abraham really does have many sons…. ‘I am one of them, and so are you …”

Here we see a pattern that we find throughout Scripture when it comes to God’s covenant Promises. God fulfills promises in ways that we might not expect (like the Father w/ a Kindle instead of a Library) and then extending and intensifying that promise so that it is fulfilled many times over in more and more glorious fashions.

Consider Abraham again and God’s Promise to make his name great.

Over and over again we find this Promise fulfilled, extended and intensified. When Abraham becomes wealthy in the land his name becomes great as God promised to Abraham in Genesis 12, but God is not finished yet. Abraham’s people go into the Exodus and eventually are brought into bondage. Their name is hardly great and yet God leads them out and once again He fulfills the promise to give Abraham a great name. This promise fulfillment ebbs and flows. As Israel is disobedient their name is brought low. As they are obedient God lifts them up and gives them a great name again. However, we all know that the ultimate fulfillment of this original promise to Abraham is fulfilled in Christ. Christ is the one who is given such a great name that at his name every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. However, once again, there are ripple effects to the ultimate fulfillment of giving Abraham a great name. Now, God conspires to give His Church a great name that His Church might glorify Him.

We could do the same with God’s promise to Abraham of the Land in Genesis 12. Once Israel occupies the land through Joshua God fulfills his promise and yet that promise finds its ultimate promise fulfilled in the Lord Christ who was the great Son of Abraham with the greatest of great names who has occupied for His people the Heavenly Canaan land. However, from the that full fulfillment of the original promise there ripples other fulfillments out from that fulfillment. Today God’s people are told they will inherit not just a piece of real estate in the Middle East but the whole earth (Mt. 5:5).

The repeated extending and intensifying of the original promise prepares us for the expectation that the final fulfillment will not be in terms of the literal details of the original promise like the Kindle analogy.

And here we have rubbed up against the problem of much “literal” readings hermeneutics employed by dispensationalists and others. There are those who don’t understand the idea of extending and intensifying of the promise and so they are still looking for the whole library when the Kindle is staring them clearly in the face.

The clearest example of this is the idea that National Israel still has a future as God’s uniquely covenant people. The promises to Israel were fulfilled completely in the Church. The Church is the Kindle and yet many people still read the Scriptures looking for the whole library that is in their minds National Israel to make some kind of comeback.

However, the Church upon reflecting on God’s Promises in light of Jesus resurrection came to understand as Paul put it, ‘that all the Promises of God are ‘Yes’ and Amen in Christ Jesus.’ The Church, following Scripture has understood that the Old covenant promises only make sense in light of how they have been extended, intensified and fulfilled in Christ. He was the singular seed of Abraham. He was the seed promised to David.

12 “When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his Father, and he shall be My son.

The Lord Jesus is the one in whom all nations of the earth would be blessed. To be in Christ was to be a child of Abraham and therefore to share in the inheritance of God’s people. He is the Passover lamb protecting God’s people from the wrath of God. His death and resurrection has achieved the ultimate Exodus and so is our Moses leading us out of the bondage of our sin and the tyranny of the Devil. Returning to Christ is the ultimate return from Babylonian Exile. In him the Church has been given the inheritance of both the whole earth and the Heavenly Promised Land as fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham to give him a land. (This is why we aren’t consumed w/ what happens in the Middle East.)
Christ is the mediator of a new covenant. The sacrificial death and risen life of the Lord Jesus has fulfilled and surpassed all that was signified in the Tabernacle, the sacrifices and the priesthood. He was the temple not made with hands, indeed He was Mt. Zion itself – the one where the focus of the name and presence of God rests.

So what we see in all this is that Promises made by God in the Old Covenant are of such a nature that by the time they are fulfilled the fulfillment looks different then the way the original hearers of the Promises might have anticipated. The promises were made in terms of the way the original recipients could understand but the fulfillment as it comes ultimately in Christ is at a different level of reality, though a level of reality that still legitimately corresponds to the original promise.

Throughout the centuries all of this has been misunderstood from time to time.

Ill. – Book of Hebrews

Ill – Dispensationalists who look for a rebuilt temple, reconstitution of the Israel Priesthood and sacrificial system or a battle between biblically identified enemies or a revival of the throne of David.

All of this is to seriously misconstrue the Christian faith and if pursued intently enough it is to pursue a different religion.