Thank you, Dan, for your ministry tonight. I certainly agree with your comments about
the songs that glorify the attributes of God. I sure wish a lot more of them were being
written than are, but we have seen several of them tonight. This evening we're talking
about another of the attributes of God, namely the faithfulness of God. If I were to ask
you the greatest sin or the most common sin that you would observe around you and in your
own life, I wonder what you might say. There are some sins that are very obvious. I think
underlying a lot of the shortcomings of which all of us are guilty is the sin of unfaithfulness.
We see that a lot in our world today. People are not faithful to the promises they make.
How many companies are having problems because there are those who have agreed to pay for
certain goods or services and who then fail to pay for those goods or services? They use
a little plastic thing called a credit card and sign their name knowing perhaps full well
that they will never pay for what they have just purchased. It's easy to fail to keep
promises that we make to individuals as well. I remember when we were trying to sell our
home in Edina before coming over here that there were a number of people who called us
and indicated, well, we'll be there tomorrow at so and so o'clock. We would wait around
and at that time nobody would show. Time after time that would happen. You've had that experience,
haven't you? People who are not faithful to their word. It's easy to do that in an organization
too. Sometimes, especially in a volunteer organization, like a church, it gets very
frustrating for people who are in leadership when people volunteer to do something and
then don't do it and don't even call to indicate that they're going to have a problem keeping
their word. Unfaithfulness to promises is a big problem in our society. Unfaithfulness
to partners is another problem. People not faithful to the marriage vows and unfaithfulness
to God, of course, is the greatest. How many excuses all of us have invented? Only God
knows to try to cover up our unfaithfulness to Him. Unfaithfulness is a serious sin. It's
something that we're all guilty of to some degree and it's one that we need to try to
avoid and with God's help to seek to put out of our lives. But tonight we want to major
not on the negative but on the positive and the fact that though that is the human characteristic
to fail, it is God's characteristic never to fail. And that's what we talk about when
we speak of His faithfulness. For our jumping off place tonight, let's turn to two or three
passages in the Bible where God speaks about His faithfulness. First in Deuteronomy chapter
7. Deuteronomy chapter 7 verse 9. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God. He is the faithful
God keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love Him and keep
His commands. Turn over a few more pages to Deuteronomy chapter 32 and verse 4. Moses
here composes a song and in it certainly talks about the attributes of God. In verse 4 of
Deuteronomy 32 he says, He is the Rock. His works are perfect and all His ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He. And then in Psalm 89 we have
some more words about the faithfulness of God. Psalm 89 reflects God's faithfulness
to His covenant with David. It was written by a man named Ethan the Ezraite. Psalm 89
speaks over and over again about God's faithfulness to His promises. We'll look at several verses.
Verse 1, I will sing of the Lord's great love forever. With my mouth I will make known your
faithfulness through all generations. Now the King James Version says, I will sing of
the mercies of the Lord forever, and with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness
to all generations. Have you ever sung a chorus like that? Let's sing that together. I will
sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing. I will sing. I will sing of the
mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. With my mouth will
I make known thy faithfulness, thy faithfulness. With my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness
to all generations. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing. I will sing.
I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. Well,
there's a chorus that was written praising God for this attribute based on this verse.
Again in verse 2 it says, I will declare that your love stands firm forever, that you established
your faithfulness in heaven itself. You think about that for a moment, about the creation
of God and how its perfect harmony, its orderliness, its dependability, all reflect the faithfulness
of God. I think it was yesterday there was a young man on the network news who had been
lost at sea in a six foot raft for 76 days and it told how he managed to survive and
the homemade navigational system that he devised to know where he was. And part of that navigational
system depended upon the North Star, that it would stay right where God has kept it
all these years as we view it from planet Earth. Well you see that's the faithfulness
of God seen in the heavens established there. Verse 5, the heavens praise your wonders,
O Lord, your faithfulness too in the assembly of the holy ones. Verse 24, my faithful love,
God says, will be with him. That's with David and actually his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
My faithful love will be with him and through my name his horn will be exalted. The horn
symbolizes his strength. And then in verse 33, we'll back up a verse to get the thought,
I will punish their sin with the rod, their iniquity with flogging, but I will not take
my love from him nor will I ever betray my faithfulness. Now let's go into the New Testament
to 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 13. There are times when all of us are deeply troubled
by our lack of faithfulness to the Lord and we wonder how that's going to affect God's
faithfulness to us. Is God's faithfulness to us dependent upon our faithfulness to him?
Look what he says here in the middle of verse 12, if we disown him, he will also disown
us. But lest we think that that means ultimately disown us, he goes on to say, if we are faithfulness,
he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself. He cannot deny himself in what he
is. God will not allow our unfaithfulness to change his ultimate faithfulness to us.
Why? Because he is faithful. And if God failed once to be faithful, he would cease to be
God and the whole universe would respond by destroying itself, because the universe is
built upon the deity and the power of God. If he were not faithful, then he would not
be God and the universe would no longer exist. The faithfulness of God, how would we define
this particular idea of God's faithfulness? I think it's very simple to define. It simply
means the absolute trustworthiness of God. God will fulfill his promises. God cannot
fail.
The Hebrew idea behind this word faithful or faithfulness, as we saw it in the Old Testament,
is the idea of stability. It means a stay, a prop, or a support to hold something up.
Go back to Exodus 17 for a moment, and I'll show you the first time that this particular
Hebrew word for faithfulness is used. Exodus 17. We have recorded here the battle between
the Amalekites and the Israelites. It says in verse 10, So Joshua fought the Amalekites
as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron, and Her went to the top of the hill. As long as
Moses held up his hands, that is, in the position of intercession on their behalf, the Israelites
were winning. But whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning. When Moses'
hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and
Her held his hands up, one on one side, one on the other, so that his hands remained steady
until sunset. That last verb there is the verb for faithfulness. His hands remained
faithful until sunset. That is, they were steady, stable, supported, propped up.
The idea is that even though you and I may and indeed will falter from time to time in
our walk with God, God will not leave us. He will continue to support us, to stay with
us, to stabilize our lives. The heart of the Hebrew idea in faithfulness is that of certainty,
sureness, absoluteness, something that can be depended upon. It carries with it the idea
of the strong arms of a parent who holds his helpless infant. There are few things in the
world more helpless than a baby. A baby is so absolutely dependent upon the parent. It
gives a parent such a feeling of intimacy with the child and love for the child, to
sense that child's warmth against him, to hold that child in his arms, and to sense
that child is his and to support that child with his arms, evidencing faithfulness to
it. We are like helpless infants, as it were, within the arms of God, arms that he describes
as everlasting arms. We need never worry about God dropping us. God holds us, as it were,
close to his bosom. He senses that oneness with us because we are one with him in Christ.
He is intimate with us, and he holds us dear to himself. He proves that dearness by his
faithfulness to us in so very many ways.
I'd like for us just to look at several New Testament passages that speak about God's
faithfulness. We are simply going to cite these scriptures with very little comment,
but they are worthy for your future meditation as you think about the faithfulness of God.
First, let's look in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 9. The apostle remarks about how grateful
he is for the Corinthians before he takes them to the woodshed. He tells them that God
is going to keep them strong and establish them. In verse 9, he says, God, who has called
you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. What gave Paul such
confidence in the Corinthians? It certainly wasn't their activity. The church was divided
and had all kinds of moral and spiritual problems. They had drinking problems in the church.
Tough things. But the thing that gave him confidence about the Corinthian church was
that he knew that God is faithful and that he had called these people into the fellowship
of Jesus Christ and that God was not going to let them go. He was going to be faithful
to them. So he cites God's faithfulness as he begins this epistle.
Turn over now to chapter 10, verse 13. In this chapter of warning that we will probably
refer to later in the message, he says in verse 13, no temptation has seized you except
what is common to men. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you
can bear. When you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up
under it. Notice that his promise here of deliverance is based upon the fact that God
is faithful.
Now in 1 Thessalonians 5, verse 24, we have another verse referring to the faithfulness
of God. In the context, he is speaking about the sureness, the certainty of God's consummation
of his salvation. That is the fact that we are going to be kept in spirit, soul, and
body until the rapture. Then in verse 24 he says, the one who calls you is faithful, and
he will do it.
Then in 2 Thessalonians 3, verse 3, he speaks in the context here of persecution, which
they were experiencing and he was experiencing. But he says in verse 3, the Lord is faithful,
and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one.
We have cited but a few scriptures which deal with this magnificent theme of the faithfulness
of God.
Let's think for a few moments about how this attribute of God is manifested. It is manifested
in several ways. First, in the fact that God keeps his promises. May I simply remind you
of the last part of Hebrews 10, verse 23, which says, He is faithful that promised.
God's word can be depended upon. What God has said will come to pass. God has proven
that in history. He will continue to prove it until every jot and every tittle of his
word be fulfilled. It is true that heaven and earth may pass away, but his word will
never pass away. He is faithful that promised.
Now let's look at one example of this and look back in Joshua chapter 21 at the words
here of this great man of God, Joshua, who led the people into the promised land where
they had victory over their enemies.
In Joshua chapter 21, verse 43, we have these words,
So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give their forefathers, and they
took possession of it and settled there. The Lord gave them rest on every side, just as
he had sworn to their forefathers. Not one of their enemies withstood them. The Lord
handed all their enemies over to them. Not one of all the Lord's good promises to the
house of Israel failed. Every one was fulfilled.
Then in chapter 3, verse 14, we have the words of Joshua as he says,
Now I am about to go the way of all the earth. He says,
You know with all your heart and soul that not one of all the good promises the Lord
your God gave you has failed. Every promise has been fulfilled. Not one has failed.
What a great testimony that was of Joshua. That God is faithful to his promises.
And again, we can cite other scriptures that undergird this thought that God is faithful
to what he says he will do.
God's faithfulness is also manifested in the fact that he preserves his people.
One of the great hymns, the one with which we will close tonight, great is thy faithfulness,
is based upon a verse in what Old Testament book? Can anybody tell me? Lamentations, a
book you would not expect it to be in. Do you know where Lamentations is? That's right,
it used to be right after Jeremiah if I ever get there. Here we are.
Lamentations, what is Lamentations all about? Well, it's a book of poetry. That is not as
clear in the English translation as it would be in the Hebrew. But it is a book of poetry
written undoubtedly by the prophet Jeremiah. In this book he laments for Jerusalem's destruction.
He grieves over the fact that the city has been sacked and its people taken away in bondage.
It is really a depressing book. But in chapter 3 there is part of this chapter which completely
changes in tone. In the midst of all this lamentation and woe, in verse 22 he says,
Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.
Here is a guy who is a prophet at a time when it is tough to be a prophet. He is a preacher
at a time when the country has gone down the tubes. Everything that had ever been secure
in Israel is now washed out. The people are taken away in captivity. The city is destroyed.
It is smoking from the fires that burned it. He says in the middle of this chapter, Great
is your faithfulness. And indeed God is faithful to his people Israel. He restored them from
that captivity and someday will give them the ultimate restoration to their land. Even
the Sinai desert which they gave up today to Egypt will someday belong to them as they
are spiritually converted and restored to the Lord their God. God is faithful to his
covenant people. He preserves his people. And that is not just true of Israel. It is
true of you and me as well. Let's look at an example of that in 1 Peter
4.19. There are times when all of us go through persecution. It may not be the kind that is
physical, although some of our brothers and sisters in the world are undergoing that tonight.
But we go through persecution of mockery or prejudice. I think that we in this nation
right now are gearing up for a good time of a certain kind of persecution of God's people.
In fact, it could go either way, but I think it will probably go toward persecution. How
are we to feel in that time? Well, in chapter 4 of 1 Peter 19, he says, So then those who
suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue
to do good. Why? God preserves his people through tribulation, through persecution.
If we do in fact go into a time of difficulty in this land, God has not forsaken us and
we must remember that. God is still with us. We should continue to do good and just commit
our souls to our faithful Creator, knowing that he has a purpose in all of this, that
it is the will of God. God is faithful. He will preserve us through persecution. But
then he will preserve us in the ultimate sense too. Back up a few pages to 2 Timothy 4, verse
18. Again, the context here is that of persecution.
Paul is writing the last few words that he ever wrote by the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. It was not long after this that he was taken out and beheaded for the cause of
Christ. According at least to tradition, he was beheaded. He speaks about the fact that
the Lord gave him strength and in verse 18 of 2 Timothy 4 he says, The Lord will rescue
me from every evil attack, or something more wonderful than that, and will bring me to
his heavenly kingdom safely. Isn't that a great word? Wake up everybody. We arranged
for that door to slam just then. He will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom, to him
be glory forever and ever. Amen.
Folks, let me tell you something. Your salvation does not rest upon what you do to keep it.
Your salvation rests upon what God has already done to give it to you and he secured it to
you. You are going to be preserved to his heavenly kingdom, no ifs, ands, or buts about
that. It is sure. He manifests his faithfulness by preserving his elect, his chosen people.
Then God manifests his faithfulness in another way, and that is through his chastisement.
In Psalm 119 verse 75 the psalmist says, Thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. When God
sends us to the woodshed, as we said a while ago, and disciplines us, it is evidence of
God's faithfulness to us. A parent who does not discipline his child is showing his child
that he is unfaithful to him as a parent, because disciplining our children is part
of the responsibility God has given to us. If we are going to be faithful to God and
faithful to our children, we must learn to discipline them. God is the same way. In faithfulness
he afflicts us.
Hebrews chapter 12 is a lengthy portion about this matter of God's discipline. It says
in chapter 12 and verse 5, you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses
you as sons, says the writer. Then he quotes from Proverbs, My son, do not make light of
the Lord's discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines
those he loves, and he punishes every one he accepts as a son. He says here that if
a person never knows discipline in his life when he gets out of step with God, it is evidence
of the fact that he is not saved. Because when a child of God gets out of line, God in faithfulness
will afflict him. God will bring him back.
Later on in the chapter verse 10, he says, Our fathers disciplined us for a little while
as they thought best, but God disciplines us for our good that we may share in his holiness.
That is why God chastises us. He is teaching us of his holiness. He says no discipline
seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness
and peace for those who have been trained by it.
So remember, when God spanks you, it is a manifestation of his faithfulness to you as
his child. There is a fourth way in which his faithfulness is manifested, and that is
in his cleansing us from our sins and our unrighteousness.
First John 1, verse 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful, he is faithful and just to
forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. When you confess your
sins to God, you just take his word for it that he has forgiven you. There are times
when we hang on to our sins that we have committed and we hang on to them in our memory and we
have a hard time forgiving ourselves. When we do that, we are saying that we have a higher
standard than God because if we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us. We ought
to be faithful to forgive ourselves when we fail.
You see, faithfulness is evidence of God's character. Unfaithfulness is evidence of our
character. When we are willing to confess that, we are simply admitting, confessing,
owning up to agreeing with what God says about our activity. God says, then I forgive you.
I have never failed to do that. I am faithful to do that. I will cleanse you from all unrighteousness.
We need to claim that forgiveness. The devil does not like us to claim that forgiveness.
That is why he will bring up our past deeds and whip us. He will make a scourge out of
them and strike us across our minds. Every time we try to take a step forward, he will
try to push us back, telling us, well, you remember what you did when he dragged that
old sin up and put a right square in front of our face. We do not have to put up with
that, folks, because God is faithful and he has forgiven us. Satan has no right to bring
that sin up. God has forgiven it. He is faithful to cleanse us.
And then a fifth way in which he manifests his faithfulness is by answering prayer. Psalm
143 verse 1, hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications. In thy faithfulness,
answer me. God answers prayer according to his faithfulness. He does not always answer
the way we ask him to. He is too faithful to do that, and too wise to do that, and we
are too unwise in the way we ask too often. But God is always faithful in answering prayer.
We can count on that.
Now let's talk about some application and we'll be on our way. The first application
is this. We need not fear or worry over our failures because God is faithful to us. Now
it's not that we should delight in our failures. It's not that we should simply excuse them
but we ought not to fear our failures and worry over them. When we are unfaithful, still
God is faithful to us. He cannot deny his essential nature. As we read in 2 Thessalonians,
the Lord is faithful who shall establish you. He shall do what? He will establish you. And
even though there are times when I seem to take two steps forward and fall back three,
I have the promise of God's faithfulness that he will establish me. Therefore, though
I fail and I need to confess my failures and my sins, I need not fear them or worry over
them because God is faithful. Secondly, considering God's faithfulness, I should be kept from
murmuring against him. There has been no people in the history of the world that has known
God's faithfulness any more than Israel. Time and again God proved himself to that people
in delivering them from Egypt and in supplying and providing for them in the wilderness.
Psalm 106 talks about this. How God was faithful over and over again to his people but the
tragedy is that time and time again Israel murmured against God and failed him. Ultimately,
they lost out, that generation of Israelites lost out on the blessings God intended for
them to enjoy. Dear people, the same thing can happen to us.
We are in Hebrews. If you have been with me, turn to Hebrews 3. Just look at the words
here that begin in verse 7 of Hebrews 3. He says,
So as the Holy Spirit says, Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you
did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, when your fathers tested and
tried me, and for forty years saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation
and I said, Their hearts are always going astray and they have not known my ways. So
I declared on oath in my anger, they shall never enter my rest. And of that generation
only two died, didn't they? Joshua and Caleb entered into the rest of Canaan. By the way,
that is not a picture in biblical typology of going to heaven. On Jordan's stormy banks
I stand and cast a wishful eye to Canaan's fair and happy land where my possessions lie.
Now if we look at that as heaven, we have missed the whole point of that whole story
in Scripture. Entering into the promised land is not going to heaven. It is a picture of
our entering into the rest that God has provided us as his children in this life. It is a picture
of our entering into the victory and the fullness of blessing that he wants us to know here
in this world, not in heaven. That is the warning here. The warning is that we should
in unbelief not walk with God and fail to enter into the full blessings that he wants
us to know in this life. So he goes on to say in verse 12, See to it, brothers, that
none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage
one another daily as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened
by sin's deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if we hold firmly till the
end, the confidence we had at first. He goes on to talk about that in verse 19. He says,
So we see that they, the Israelites, were not able to enter because of their unbelief.
And it is the sin of unbelief or unfaithfulness which gets us into a lot of trouble spiritually.
Sin is so deceitful. It hardens our heart against God. Sin was deceitful in the garden.
It hardened the heart of Eve and then Adam against the Lord. Satan holds out the pleasure
and the enticements and he says, Well, this will be worth it. This is the shortcut you
have been looking for. This is the way to get the thing you have been after. And inevitably
when Satan says that, it is the wrong way to get it. Sin is deceitful and it is easy
for us to be led astray. And when we are, it begins to harden our heart against God
and that is dangerous. That is why he commands us again in 1 Corinthians 10, Neither murmur
ye as some of them also murmured and were destroyed by the destroyer. We need to be
careful folks of murmuring and complaining against God. We need to be careful of allowing
a heart of unbelief to develop in us so that we don't trust God as perhaps we once did.
What we need to do is go on and grow up and mature in our faith and walk with God. That
is what the book of Hebrews is all about. So the wonder of God's faithfulness should
encourage me to be the same, that is faithful. And finally by way of application, let me
say this, we should magnify God's faithfulness to all. I will sing of the mercies of the
Lord forever with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations. The psalmist
says in Psalm 40 verse 10, I have not hidden thy righteousness within my heart. I have
declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation. We have ample opportunities to do that. If
we just listen to the conversation around us, we will find opportunities to talk about
God's faithfulness. There are people who are worrying about their jobs, worrying about
the economy, worrying about war, worrying about a nuclear accident, worrying about this,
worrying about that. When we hear that kind of worry being expressed, we can immediately
interject a word of confidence in God's faithfulness. We say, well those things don't bother me
because I trust in God and God is faithful to his word. He has promised to deliver us.
He has promised to keep us, or whatever you may want to say to point to God's specific
promise in that instance. So we need to declare God's faithfulness to all around us.
We have touched very briefly and lightly tonight upon this marvelous attribute of God. I hope
maybe it will prick your spirit to do some more meditation in this area. I like these
words written by someone. I cannot do great things for him who did so much for me, but
I should like to show my love, dear Jesus, unto thee, faithful in very little things,
no Savior may I be. Jesus said, he that is faithful in that which is least is faithful
in that which is much. God does not ask us to be great in ability, but he does ask us
to be faithful. Faithful doing what he has called us to do. Time and time again when
God tapped the shoulder of a person to do a great work, that person was simply being
faithful in what he was supposed to be doing. Elisha was out there plowing. He was just
a plain old dirt farmer in the Jordan Valley. Elijah came down out of the mountains and
threw that mantle on him, and Elisha was then called as a prophet of God. Moses was busy
with the sheep, just a plain old shepherd, being faithful, doing what he was supposed
to do at that time, and God chose him to shepherd his people. Peter was fishing. Matthew was
collecting taxes. And on and on it goes. It is the faithful person that God chooses to
do the greater work. God rewards faithfulness, and so may God find us faithful. Even in the
little things, the hidden things, may God find us faithful. In the big things, may God
find us faithful. As we are faithful, it extols his faithfulness. His faithfulness is our
great example.
Well, let's turn together to the hymn that we talked about, number 54, Great is Thy Faithfulness.
It's so easy for us to sing a familiar hymn and not pay attention to the words. Let's
not do that tonight. Let's pay attention to the words of this hymn written by Thomas O.
Chisholm, Great is Thy Faithfulness. We will sing the first and third stanzas together
as we close our service and praise God for his faithfulness. Let's stand as we sing.