EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
3/20/2026 5:30 PM
My
Worship
Time Focus: “The Promise of the Abrahamic
Covenant”
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: Luke 1:72b-73
Message
of the verses: “and to remember
His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham our father,”
This evening I will continue to look at Zacharias said after he had his
voice return to him, which he had lost because of not believing the angel
Gabriel when Gabriel told him that he and his wife were going to have a baby, to
which Zacharias stated that he and his wife were too old to have children. Of course he and his wife would not be the
first couple to have children when they were past childbearing age, as Abraham
and Sarah had Isaac when they too were past childbearing age. Now if one reads the earlier chapters in the
book of Genesis that happened before the flood that took place they would see
that people lived a lot longer than they do now and thus could have children
when they were hundreds of years old.
However this is different now and I believe it is because once the flood
happened all the waters that were above the earth were protecting the earth
from the sun’s rays. Ok it is time to
begin looking at some of the things that John MacArthur has in his commentary
on these verses, and this is a fairly long section from his commentary.
Let us
begin by again looking at the “holy covenant, the oath which He swore to
Abraham our father,” through first mentioned in Genesis 12, would not
actually be ratified until the 15th chapter of Genesis as we will see
more of it later. Now having called
Abraham to leave his home for another land which He would show him, seen in
Genesis 12:1, God promised to make of his descendants a great nation, protect
and bless them, through them bless the world as seen in 12:2-3, and give them
that particular land (v.7). The Lord’s
promise to make a great nation from Abraham was humanly impossible, since his
wife Sarah who was then known by Sarai, were barren as seen in Genesis
11:30). Now the beginning of the
fulfillment of that promise would be a conception miracle and the birth of
Isaac (Gen. 18:9-15; 21:1-8).
(Gen.
18:9-15; 21:1-8)
9 ¶
They said to him, "Where is Sarah your wife?" And he said,
"She is in the tent." 10 The
LORD said, "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah
your wife shall have a son." And Sarah was listening at the tent door
behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah
were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.
12 So Sarah laughed to herself, saying,
"After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?"
13 The LORD said to Abraham, "Why
did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’
14 Is anything too hard for the LORD? At
the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah
shall have a son." 15 But Sarah
denied it, saying, "I did not laugh," for she was afraid. He said,
"No, but you did laugh.’”
“1 ¶
The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he
had promised. 2 And Sarah conceived and
bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.
3 Abraham called the name of his son who
was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac. 4
And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God
had commanded him. 5 Abraham was a
hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 And Sarah said, "God has made laughter
for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me." 7 And she said, "Who would have said to
Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old
age." 8 And the child grew and was
weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned.”
MacArthur
writes “God’s promise to make Abraham a ‘great nation’ (Gen. 12:2) has
indeed come to pass. The Jewish people
have made profound contributions in such fields as medicine, the arts,
education, literature, science, and finance.
But more significantly, through the nation of Israel ‘all the families
of the earth [would] be blessed’ (v. 3) spiritually. The Jewish people ‘were entrusted with
the oracles of God’ (Rom. 9:4); that is, Israel was sovereignly called by
God to be His special witness nation and to receive ‘the glory and the
covenants and the giving of the Law and the temple service and the promises (v.
4). Most important of all ‘from
[Israel] is the Christ according to the flesh’ (v. 5; cf. Rom. 1:3). All the blessings of salvation came
through the Jewish people, leading Jesus to declare that ‘salvation is from
the Jews (John 4:22).
“But while Israel has been the channel through which God’s revelation and
blessing have flowed to the world, the nation has rarely shared in those
blessings. Disobedience; idolatry; empty, ritualistic, outward worship; and,
most heinous of all, rejecting the Messiah, have led to chastening from God
instead of blessing. But despite their
rebellion and resulting punishment, God has protected the Jewish people. They have survived exile to Babylon, the attempt
by Antiochus Epiphanes during the intertestamental period to eradicate their
religion and culture, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, being dispersed
from Palestine and forced to live in Gentile lands, and centuries of pogroms
and persecution, culminating in the twentieth century with the madness of the
Holocaust. Yet Israel still exists as a nation, occupying part of the land God
promised to Abraham. And in the future
God will continue to preserve the Jewish people, sealing 144,000 evangelists,
12,000 from each tribe (Rev. 7:4-8, during the tribulation, rescuing the nation
from Antichrist’s furious attempt to annihilate it (Rev. 12:13-17), and
redeeming the believing remnant at the end of the tribulation (Rom. 11:25-27). But the Jews as a nation have yet to
experience the complete fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham.”
On my blogs I have my studies from
the book of Revelation, on the main blog, and on the second blog I am putting
my Spiritual Diaries which were written beginning
in January of 2015 onto my second blog.
I know that both blogs are named 2Twokens.blogspot.com but that was
actually a mistake when I began my blogs back in 2012 and two blogs got started
at that time, but I believe that the Lord is using both of these blogsites to
bring glory to His Son, my Savior, Jesus Christ which is the goal of my blogs.
Now like I said earlier this section
is kind of a long one and so I hope to finish this section in tomorrow’s SD as
I will do some in the morning and then try to finish it up in the evening SD. I am thankful and blessed by all those who
are reading my Spiritual Diaries and pray about it each day, that God will use
them to bring glory to the Lord.
3/21/2026
6:16 PM
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