I’m at kids’ camp this week outside of Cookson (yea, I know, gone again). We have about 110 kids on the grounds. Tuesday night I was doing an evening devotion with the kids. I asked them is anyone had ever broken a promise to them. The responses were quite varied and some comical.

Then I went to Matthew 1. I told them I believed this was one of the greatest chapters in the New Testament. I believed it was more powerful than John 3:16! In case you were wondering, Matthew 1 is the begat chapter. You know, Abraham begat Isaac. Isaac begat Jacob. Jacob begat the 12 tribes of Israel. Yeah, I know… Yawn…BORING. The look on their faces told it all. How can this possibly be more important than John 3:16? Well, let me explain. The previous night we looked at Genesis 12, where God made a promise to Abraham that He would make him a great nation (stars in Heaven, sand on seashore). He further promised that He would bless all nations of the world through Abraham’s descendants. But, Abraham was old and so was Sarah (then-Abram and Sarai, 75 and 65 years old). Abraham believed God and took Him at His word.

Fast forward ten years, Abraham is a father at 100, and Sarah is a mother at 90! God kept His promise. But that seems a long way from descendants as numerous as sand on the seashore and stars in the sky, let alone a great nation. Fast forward two generations and Jacob had 12 sons (12 tribes of Israel). Seventy of those descendants went down to Egypt for over 400 years and grew to a million and a half (possibly more). Moses led them out of Egypt to the Promised Land. Joshua led them into the Promised Land and its conquest.

After a 70 year stint in captivity/exile in Babylon, the Israelites returned to Promised Land, settled and became the people we know today as the Jewish nation. Matthew 1 traces ancestry from Abraham to David, David to Babylonian exile, and the Babylonian exile to birth of Jesus! And we know that with the birth of Jesus, we have the opportunity for forgiveness of sins eternal life and a relationship with Jesus.

This is not just for the Jews but for everyone! All people, all nations, all races, all… everyone! See, God kept His promise to Abraham through the birth of Jesus. Jesus is in the ancestry of Abraham. Matthew 1 records it through Joseph’s ancestry, Luke 3 through Mary’s ancestry. God kept His promise. God always keeps His promises. When you look at the Bible you will see that God ALWAYS keeps His promises…every one of them. Matthew 1 tells us that Jesus is our Savior, the one promised to Abraham and a blessing to all nations of the Earth. We have the privilege of eternal life through that promise. It is literally a preface to John 3:16. How cool is that? But, if God keeps all His promises, what about the promise of judgement, Jesus’ return and the end of all things? Won’t He keep His promise on that too? Jesus said for us to be ready, behold I come quickly, I go to prepare a place for you and no man will know the date, time or hour? Will those promises not be kept, also?

I think the bottom line is Matthew 1 is a reminder that God does keep His promises and is not “…slack concerning His promise, as some men consider slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9) He will fulfill His promise to send Jesus back someday to gather all believers.

In our world we live in today, a promise may not mean much. It seems that promises are only made to be broken. But know for sure, God has never broken a promise, and I’m pretty sure God is not going to start breaking promises now.