Will you be making any New Year resolutions this week? I gave up making resolutions a long time ago because I never seemed to actually follow through on them. I might do well for a week or two, maybe even the month of January, but then by February I had forgotten them and then felt bad for not following through.
In many ways a New Year resolution is a promise we make to ourselves. I promise to eat better and get healthy. I promise to exercise more and get healthy. I promise to read my Bible and get spiritually healthy. Maybe you are better at keeping these kinds of promises than I am. What I do know is that God is great at keeping His promises. In fact, God keeps all of His promises and in Jesus we celebrate the simple promise of God.
What we have been celebrating these last few days, weeks really, is that in Jesus, God kept His simple promise to love us. For God so loved the world that gave His one and only son. Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s love for us, but He is also the fulfillment of the promise God made generations earlier to send the Messiah. God promised that the Messiah would come from the line of David, and Jesus did. God promised he would be born in Bethlehem, and He was. God said the Messiah would suffer for our sins, which Jesus did, and that by His death we would be healed, which is what the cross and the resurrection of Jesus are all about. In Jesus, God kept His promise to send a Savior.
In Jesus we see that God keeps His promises. God keeps His promise to love us, to be with us, and to redeem us. That is what we celebrate in the Christmas story, but if we read on in Luke’s gospel, we hear about God keeping His promise to one person, a man named Simeon.
We don’t know much about Simeon other than he was a righteous man who was promised by God that he would not die before he saw the Messiah in person. Simeon spent much of his time in the Temple looking for the Messiah so he was there the day that Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the Temple.
It was 40 days after the birth of Jesus and according to the law, women had to go through a ritual of purification because childbirth involved blood. Mary and Joseph came with their offering and after they gave it, they were approached by Simeon.
Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was on him. It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying: “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” Luke 2:25-32
God made a simple promise to Simeon; you will not die until you see for yourself the Messiah. Simeon was going to see the consolation, or the hope and peace and restoration of Israel. While he might not see the fulfillment of this, he would at least see the one who would redeem God’s people. God loved Simeon so much that He made him this promise, and then God kept it. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, Simeon knew the child in the Temple was the Messiah..
What Jesus was for the world, the gift of God’s love, the assurance of God’s presence, and the hope of salvation, was what Jesus was for Simeon personally. As Simeon holds Jesus, he knows God is with him, he knows God loves him and he knows that this child is the Messiah. He knows that God has kept His promise to him. Jesus wasn’t just the fulfillment of God’s promise to a people, or a nation, or the world, He was the fulfillment of God’s promise to one man, Simeon.
Simeon’s story tells us that God keeps His promises to us personally. In Jesus, God keeps three simple promises:
● A promise to love us.
● A promise to be with us.
● A promise to redeem us.
Which of these three simple promises do you need to hold on to as we move into a new year? Instead of making a promise in a New Year's resolution, let’s hold on to one, or more, of God’s promises.
Which promise do you need to hold on to in your life? Is it God’s promise to love us? Many of us really struggle to understand God’s unconditional love. We think we have to earn God’s love. We tell ourselves God will love us when we start doing this, or stop doing that. But God can’t love us anymore than He does right now.
When Jesus reached out to accept those who were rejected by others, and heal those who thought their situations would never improve, and forgive those who committed serious sin, He was reaching out in love to us. When we feel unwelcome and unwanted, Jesus says, I want you and I’m here for you. Every time we read about Jesus loving people during His life we need to see ourselves in those stories and know that He came to love us. God keeps that simple promise to love us at all times, and in all places.
In 2022 hold on to the promise that God loves you, and remember God’s promise to be with us. This is one of the enduring promises of God we see throughout scripture. God told Abraham that He would be with him and make him into a great family and nation - and God did. God told Moses that He would go with him to lead the people out of Egypt - and God did. God told the people of Israel that He would be with them through the wilderness and that they would be able to see His presence in a pillar of fire at night, and a cloud during the day - and God did. God kept His promise to be with them then, and God still keeps this promise today.
On Christmas Eve, I mentioned two psalms that talk about this promise of God. Psalms 23 tells us that when we walk through green valleys or by calm waters - God is there, but it also says that when we walk through difficult days and dark valleys, even the valley of the shadow of death, God is there. Through it all, God is there.
Maybe the promise we need to hold on to in 2022 is that God is still with us and always will be. In the frustration of our life, in the hopelessness of our job or finances or relationships, in the darkness of our world, God is there for us. Romans 8:35, 37-39 says, What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God and if God IS love, then nothing can separate us from God. God is always with us and God will keep this promise. How can knowing that the light and love and power of God is with us each and every day change our attitude and actions in the New Year? Can knowing that we walk with God give us peace? Joy? Or Confidence? God keeps His promise to be with us always, even to the end of the age and that can make all the difference in our lives.
God promises to love us. God promises to be with us. And God promises to redeem us. Is this the promise you need to hold on to in the New Year? This promise means that God forgives us and that this forgiveness is the key to eternal life. While our sin often separates us from God, God’s love redeems us, it draws us back into a relationship with God by grace.
Maybe what you need to hear going into this New Year is this simple promise; you are forgiven. A savior has been born for you. The Messiah has come to redeem you and this opens up for you the door to a new life.
When we know that we are forgiven and redeemed by Jesus, we can leave the old life behind and step into the new life God has for us. Our sin no longer has to define us. Our failures no longer have to dictate our future. We are made new in Jesus and that new life is ours for the living of this day and every day. When Simeon held Jesus in his arms and knew that the Messiah had come for all of Israel, he also knew that his life had been redeemed. He was holding his salvation and that gave him freedom and joy. His life was now complete and he knew there was a new life coming.
God has a new life for each and every one of us. Maybe the resolution we need to make, the promise to God and ourselves we need to make is to leave the sin and brokenness of our past in the past. Let’s lay aside our sin and take up the salvation that is ours in Jesus. We can make this new year the best year yet if we will hold on to the simple promise that God loves us, and God is with us, and God has redeemed us and forgiven us and is ready to give us a new life.
If you want to experience the fulfillment of any of these simple promises of God, all you have to do is what Simeon did. And what did Simeon do? He kept showing up. Every day Simeon just showed up in the Temple courts to worship and pray. He went to the Temple with the expectation that God would keep His promises and show up. While for many days and years it didn’t happen, Simeon kept showing up. To experience God’s love and presence and salvation we need to just keep showing up.
This doesn’t mean we just show up in worship, although this is a great place to meet God and experience His love and power, but we also need to keep showing up in daily prayer and praise and thanks. We need to show up and meet God in His word. We need to show up and meet God in the world as we behold the wonder and beauty and power of nature, and as we serve people in communities. We need to keep showing up on the days our faith is strong and the days our hearts are full of doubt. We need to keep showing up when we can see God’s hand at work in everything around us and when nothing seems to be going well. We need to keep showing up.
If we will simply keep showing up like Simeon did, we will experience for ourselves the fulfillment of God’s simple promise to love us, to be with us, and to forgive and redeem us. God keeps His promise to us, so let's just keep showing up to worship Him.
Next Steps
The Simple Promise of God
What New Year’s Resolutions (promises to yourself) will you make this year?
God keeps all His promises. Three simple promises we celebrate in Jesus:
● God loves us - see John 3:16
● God is with us - see Matthew 1:22-23
● God redeems us - see Luke 2:10-11
God not only keeps His promise to the world, He keeps it to individual people as well. Read Luke 2:22-38
● How does God keep His promise to Simeon and Anna?
● How do they experience these three promises of God?
● What helped them experience these promises when others in the Temple courts didn’t?
Which of these three promises do you need to hold on to as we begin a new year? How can these promises shape and change your life and your future?
Simeon and Anna experienced God’s love and presence because they kept showing up. What might it look like for you to “keep showing up” in 2022?
A prayer for the new year:
Faithful God, we thank You for keeping all of Your promises. In this new year, help us to hold fast to Your promise to love us, to be with us, and to forgive and redeem us. May our faith in Your faithfulness to these promises fill us with peace and power in this new year. For we ask these things in the name of the promised one, Jesus the Christ. AMEN
