The Promise and the Season 

And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season. 

Luke 1:20.

Twice in this message of the angel to Zacharias the priest, the angel makes it clear that receiving a promise is not the same thing as the fulfilment of it, even when the promise is as authentic as one from God and as credible as one delivered by no less an angel than Gabriel who stands in the very “presence of God,” the unapproachable presence of Light (Luke 1:19).  First, the angel states that the promise would be “until the day” of performance.  So, there was an “until” and a marked “day” for fulfilment.  It didn’t matter how much in a hurry the priest was.  He had to wait for “the day”; wait “until …”; and waiting can be tough, if you have ever been there.  Next, the angel reiterated that the good promise had a “season” about it.  In other words, it had a clearing date.  The point was thus made in two quick and consecutive times in the same sentence, and the beneficiary was not to miss it. 

Seasons are not wished.  Seasons cannot be hurried – like Christmas, or winter, or spring, or the harmattan.  You prepare for them, and wait.

Sometimes, confusing reception with fulfilment, we grow weary in our souls, and even charge God for not keeping a promise whereas it was we who had missed its maturity date.  We caught a promise but missed the “season.”  According to the angel, the promise of a child was sure, but even then, it was subject to the laws of times and seasons.  Some promises are like that.   We might be unable to say of them as of some of the interventions of God of which it is said, “And immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew 8:3); “and immediately their eyes received sight” (Matthew 20:34); “and immediately her issue of blood stanched” (Luke 8:44).  Of these others, it may be said, as of one the visions of Daniel, that “the thing was true, but the time appointed was long” (Daniel 10:1).  The same angel Gabriel who took the pregnant promise to Zacharias was the one who brought to Daniel a true promise but whose appointed time was “long.”  Angelic encounters do not shorten times of fulfilment.

That opens a fresh page.  Firstly, that a promise is true does not mean that the time appointed for it would be “immediately.”  Secondly, that the time appointed for a word is “long” does not mean that it is not true.  The incubation time of a promise has little to do with its validity.  That one promise is more ‘immediate’ than another does not make it more spiritual or more authentic than the other.  We save ourselves some worries when we are able to distinguish promise from fulfilment, conception from delivery, truth from times.

Just before His ascension, the disciples of Jesus, apparently unable to hold it any longer, spoke out.  They told Him that they believed the promise of the prophets that the land would be restored, but were concerned about the time.  They said, “Lord, wilt thou AT THIS TIME restore again the kingdom to Israel?”  They were not questioning the promise; they wanted to be clear about the time.  What did Jesus say?  He told them that there were certain “times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power,” and they were not to bother themselves about those (Acts 1:6-7).  In other words, there are promises, some of them with seasons attached.  Knowing the details of this category of promises is the prerogative of the Father in heaven.

Sometimes crises come not from not receiving a promise, but from not confirming the season.  Joseph received the promise that he would be a ruler, and he promptly announced it without caution as to the time appointed and the mode of fulfilment.  It took him more than a decade to learn his lesson.  The promise had to be processed through time.  It waited “until the time” – not just any time but THE time – “God’s time” – “the time that his word came.”  In the space between “his word” (which means the promise) and “the time” (which means fulfilment), “God tested his patience” (Psalm 105:19, KJV, The Living Bible).  Waiting was tough, with his feet being “hurt with fetters” and he “laid in iron” chains in prison (Psalm 105:18).  Two years before it was time, he lobbied a contact in the Presidential Palace to get him by any means out of his unjust jail.  God made sure that the contact forgot such an important message, until “the time” (Genesis 40:23; 41:1, 9-12).  If Joseph had been got out of prison by the bottler before Pharaoh’s encounter, he might have ended cheaply as the bottler’s servant rather than as prime minister in Egypt.

The calendar of humans does not define the seasons of God.  When we miss that, it is possible to worry in December that time has been lost, because a promise we had supposed should have been seen in March still lingers towards a long ‘time appointed,’ times and seasons “which the Father hath put in his own power”; times of which we seem helplessly unaware.  “The thing was true, but the time appointed was long” (Daniel 10:1).

Faith is a great asset to inheriting a promise, but faith works with time.  According to the scriptures, faith, as great as it is, is not sufficient alone to inheriting a promise.  Hebrews 6:12 speaks of those who “through faith and patience inherit the promise.”  In 2 Thessalonians 1:4, we read also of those who overcame “persecutions and tribulations” through a combination of “patience and faith.”  Faith is the promise; patience is the space between the promise and fulfilment.  It can be a very trying space.  That was the space within which Abram birthed Ishmael, after waiting for what must have seemed like an unbearably ‘long’ time.  He did not doubt the promise, but he had issues with the time, which pushed him to make the eternally damnable move. Ishmael has not given the world peace since then (Genesis 16:12).

That we call Him Lord does not always mean that we trust His timings.  Matthew 24:48 gives a classic case.  A servant said, “My lord delayeth his coming.”  He still called his master “Lord,” but he could not stand the time.  He goofed tragically.  “Neverthelesswhen the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth” as we await sure promises, but which “shall be fulfilled in their season”? (Luke 1:20; 18:8).

From The Preacher’s diary,
December 27, 2023