God kept His promise.
When God first appeared to Moses, he was at Mount Sinai, also called Mount “Horeb, the mountain of God” (Exodus 3:1). At the Burning Bush, God promised, “I will certainly be with you, and this will be the sign to you that I am the one who sent you: when you bring the people out of Egypt, you will all worship God at this mountain” (Exodus 3:12). Later, when the Children of Israel made their camp in the shadow of Mount Sinai, Moses, the eighty-year-old shepherd, must have whispered a prayer of thanksgiving. “Thank you, Lord, for keeping Your promise! Thank you for bringing us to worship You ‘at this mountain!’ ”
God always keeps His promises!
While they were still slaves in Egypt, God instructed Moses to “tell the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6). At Sinai, the Twelve Tribes could look back on the recent events and, with certainty, see God’s miraculous hand of protection. A few of them probably whispered a prayer of thanksgiving. “Thank you, Lord, for keeping Your promise!”
Before the tenth terrible plague, God instructed the Israelites to kill an innocent lamb and mark their houses with its blood. “The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you; when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will be among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt” (Exodus 12:13). God kept His promise!
Centuries later, God declared, “The Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). Think about that. In 700 BC, if you heard Isaiah’s prophetic statement, you might have thought, “He’s crazy! That can’t happen! Virgins don’t have babies! Never! Ever!” But what happened? A virgin named Mary gave birth to a child named Jesus! (Luke 2).
After the Virgin-born Messiah, Jesus, had nearly completed His thirty-three-year mission on earth, “he took the Twelve aside and told them, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem. Everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. For he will be handed over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked, insulted, spit on; and after they flog him, they will kill him, and he will rise on the third day’ ” (Luke 18:31–33). Flogged? Killed? Buried? Then three days later, alive? Yep! It happened just like Jesus foretold. Jesus kept His promise!
“The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the archangel’s voice, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are still alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). Bank on it! It will happen just like God promised!
Thank you, Lord, for keeping Your promise!
