The Faithfulness of God - Holy One of Israel Part 4

Hey, you know, we're in a series here entitled The Holy One of Israel, and what we're doing is we're studying the attributes, the essential nature and characteristics of who God is.

So far, we've looked at three of these wonderful attributes. In part one, we saw that God is eternal. In part two, that God is holy. And in part three, that God is omnipotent.

And if you missed any of these, I urge you to pick up the tape or the CD in the bookstore, or to go online and podcast them. I really want you to keep up with us as we go through this series, because it all builds on itself. Today, we're going to talk about part four, the faithfulness of God, the fact that God is faithful. Now, what does that really mean when we say that someone is faithful? Well, to be faithful literally means to be dependable, to be trustworthy, to be reliable. To be faithful means that we are true to our word at all costs. To be faithful means that we committed ourselves to someone or something.

And by George, nothing is going to keep us from fulfilling that commitment. Now, the Bible boldly declares that this characteristic is true of God. The Bible says, 1 Corinthians 1, 9, God is faithful.

And notice what the Bible means here. It doesn't mean that faithful is something God does. It means that faithful is something God is.

It is part of his intrinsic nature and being. I love what David said, Psalm 36 5. He said, God's faithfulness reaches to the skies.

And in Romans 3, the Apostle Paul says, verse 4, God will remain faithful even if every man in the world turns out to be a liar. Now, in saying this, what is the Bible really telling us? Well, friends, it's telling us that we can always count on God. It's telling us that everything God has promised us, God will do.

It's telling us that when everyone else in the world lets us down or fails us, God will still be there for us, unfailing as ever. Now, I believe in order for this truth, the fact that God is faithful, in order for this to have maximum impact on our lives, it's critical for us to understand where God's faithfulness comes from. God's faithfulness comes from God's character. Let me repeat that. God's faithfulness comes from God's character.

And let me explain what I mean. You see, some people are unfaithful, number one, because they simply lie. But God in his character is holy. He is incapable of lying or deceiving. Verse 2319 says, God is not a man that he should lie. Titus chapter 1 verse 2 says that we have a God who cannot lie. When God makes you and me a promise, my friends, heaven and earth may pass away, but God will fulfill his promise because if he failed to do so, he would betray his character and he would forfeit his right to be God, and that's never going to happen.

Number two, some people are unfaithful because they make commitments impulsively and then later they change their mind. But you see, in his character, God is immutable. This means that God is not subject to change of any kind. Hebrews 13 8 says Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Malachi chapter 3 verse 6, God says, I am the Lord, I do not change. And because God is immutable, it means he never makes knee-jerk promises, he never makes impulsive decisions, and then later changes his mind. When God promises something, my friends, it is settled in eternity forever.

He's already thought it through and he's not changing his mind. Finally, number three, some people are unfaithful. Even though their heart is right and even though their commitment is sincere, they're unfaithful because they lack the power to fulfill what they promised. Ah, but in his character, God is omnipotent. Matthew 19, Jesus said, the things that are impossible with men, those things are possible with God. And because God's power knows no limit, that means that God's heart will never make you and me a promise that God's power cannot back up. And so I want to repeat, God's faithfulness comes from God's character because God is holy, because God is immutable, because God is omnipotent, therefore God is and God must be faithful. He cannot be any other way, and this is what makes the faithfulness of God so impeccably dependable.

Human beings may blow hot and cold, my friends, but God's faithfulness is from everlasting to everlasting because it is rooted in the very character and being of who God is. Now, that's as far as we want to go in our passage for today theologically, because now we want to ask our most important question and you know what that is. So, here we go. Ready? I'm glad you're ready. Anybody else ready? Alright, here we go.

One, two, three. So what? Yeah, you say, Lon, so what?

You know, you say, you're really a sweet person up there and I know you're trying hard, but listen, Lon, I've got to tell you, I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I mean, I have trusted people who swore to me, you know, they would never let me down, they would never fail me, they would always be there for me, I could count on them, and I've been knifed in the back more times than you can count. So, Lon, here you are now asking me to believe God when he gives me the very same line, I'm sorry, I don't want to seem nasty, but before I let my guard down again, I want some proof. I want some proof that God's not going to hurt me like my father did, that he's not going to betray me like my ex-girlfriend did, that he's not going to desert me like my ex-husband did, and that he's not going to turn on me like my ex-so-called friend at work did.

I mean, how do I know that if I trust God like you're asking me to, that he's not going to turn on me like all these people did? Fair question. Let's give it an answer.

You deserve an answer. As exhibit A that I would present to you that proves the faithfulness of God, that he's telling you to mean the truth, exhibit A that I would offer you is the nation of Israel. 4,000 years ago, God made some unconditional promises to a fellow named Abraham. He promised Abraham that he would multiply his descendants, that he would give them the land of Palestine as their eternal possession, that he would preserve them as a people forever, and God repeated these promises to Moses and David and Solomon and Isaiah and Daniel. Now there have been a lot of Gentiles down through the years who have dedicated themselves to nullifying this promise of God. I mean, there was King Nebuchadnezzar who sacked and burned Jerusalem, and there was Haman in the book of Esther who tried to exterminate the Jewish people, and then there was the Romans who in 70 A.D. burned and sacked the city again and scattered the Jewish people to the four winds, and then there was Adolf Hitler who proposed the final solution to the Jewish problem, as he called it, and we work all the way up to our modern day Islamic nations who have predicted that they will exterminate the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, and yet in the face of all of this and more, God has miraculously preserved the Jewish people through the centuries, and now, even in the lifetime of some of us here today, he's given them back their homeland that they were out of for 19 centuries. Folks, no other people in world history has ever been dispersed to the four winds and still survived as a people for 1900 years except the Jewish people. No other people in world history have ever lost their homeland and ever gotten their homeland back after 1900 years except the Jewish people.

No other language in world history has ever died out as a living, spoken language and then been revived again as a living, spoken language except Hebrew. And how do we explain all these amazing historical anomalies? Well, I'll tell you how we explain them.

We explain them this way. A faithful God made some promises to a man named Abraham 4,000 years ago, and that God has determined that he's going to keep his promise even if he's got to jack the whole world around to do it. Amen?

You bet. And I want to tell you that every time I go to Israel, and Lord willing, I'm about to leave in a couple weeks with a tour group, every time I stand on the Mount of Olives and look out at the city of Jerusalem, every time I walk through the narrow streets of Jerusalem and I hear little boys and girls speaking Hebrew, every time I go to the Wailing Wall and I see Jewish men and women there praying back after 1900 years in safety, I am gripped again and again and again to tears, and I mean that literally, with the inescapable truth that God is faithful. And listen, if God's been faithful to the Jewish people for 4,000 years and refuses to break his promise to them, believe me, God is not going to break his promise to you as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's not going to happen. Now, what are some of these promises that God has made to us as followers of Christ that he says he's going to be faithful to? Well, let me give you a few of them. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 8. God is faithful.

There you go. There's our word. And he will present each of us blameless before him in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a promise that if you're a follower of Christ, God is going to make sure you won't miss heaven. And it's amazing to me that he wrote this promise to the church at Corinth because these were the most carnal Christians in the entire early church. I mean, if there were any Christians anywhere in that early church that were in danger of losing their place in heaven because of bad spiritual performance, it was these guys, but thank God that as followers of Christ, our place in heaven is not based on our spiritual performance. It is based on the fact that a faithful God made us a promise.

What's that promise? John 5, 24, Jesus said, The person who believes in me has eternal life, and they will never come into condemnation, for they have passed forever from death into eternal life. Praise God. All our defects, all our shortcomings, all our sins put together cannot and will not invalidate the promise of a faithful God. Now, if you're here and you've never trusted Christ as your real and personal Savior, this is important information for you to know. It's important for you to understand that you can't work your way into heaven anyway no matter how much spiritual performance you do.

But the alternative is that God has offered you a way to get in that's not based on your performance, my friend. It's based on his faithfulness and his promise. And he wants to activate this promise. John 5, 24, he wants to activate this in your life, but the way it gets activated is when we trust what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross, shedding his blood to pay for our sin, activates this promise. My friends, I urge you, if you've never activated this promise, you need to do so.

It's the only way this thing works called going to heaven, something to think about. Well, here's another promise. 1 Corinthians 10, 13, God is faithful, there's our word, who will not allow you to be tested beyond what you are able, but with the test will make a way of escape that you might be able to bear it. God promises here to inspect every detail that comes into our life and to make sure that no detail will ever go beyond our capacity to handle it. And I'll tell you what, there have been many a time in my life as a Christian where I've said, God, you know what, I'm not sure I can handle this, I'm not sure I can do this, but you think I can because you've promised me that you faithfully have inspected this and Lord, if you think I can do it, then with the help of the Holy Spirit, I'm going to believe I can do it. What a wonderful promise. Hey, Romans 8, 28, God will work all things together for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Here God promises to take everything in our life, the good, the bad, the ugly, and mix it all together so that the result, the blend that comes out is beneficial and good for us.

What an incredible promise. 1 John 1-9, if we confess our sins, God is faithful. There's our word. And just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, God promises here to be the God of the second chance and the third chance and the fourth chance and the 50th chance. He promises that he, every time we mess up and every time we fall short, he will be faithful to forgive us, to wipe the slate clean and to help us by the power of the Holy Spirit to do better the next time. Philippians 4-19, my God will supply all your needs according to his glorious riches in Messiah Jesus. Here God promises to meet the material needs of every follower of Christ, housing market slum or no housing market slum, subprime mortgage crisis or above prime. I don't know what the opposite is, but whatever the opposite is, God says it doesn't matter to him. He's going to meet the needs of his people. I love what David said, Psalm 37, I've been young and now I'm old, yet I have never seen God's people forsaken or their descendants begging bread.

And friends, I could go on. God promises to comfort us, to guide us, to protect us from the enemy, to give us wisdom in the situations of life, to answer our prayers. In short, we have the promises of a faithful God that he will, Romans 8-32, graciously give us all things that we need. How incredible is that? Now, you say, well, Lon, that's great.

God bless you, that's great. But here's my question, it's great that God's going to be faithful to me. What if I have been unfaithful to God? I mean, what if I've done some things that have let him down?

I mean, then what happens? Well, folks, let me start by saying we're all unfaithful to God every single day. I hope you understand that. You and I may be sensitive to the big ones that we do, but if we could see our life from God's perspective, you and I let God down multiple times every single day. We all do, but the Bible's got some great news for us. The Bible says, 2 Timothy 2-13, even if we are faithless, look at this, God remains faithful.

Why? Because he cannot deny himself, who he is. Hey, what a fabulous truth. No matter how much you and I may fail, no matter how much you and I may fall short, no matter how much you and I may disappoint God with our performance, it doesn't matter. God will never fail us.

He cannot deny his character and his very being. Is that cool or what? I think it's cool because I let God down every day and I know it, and it's so great to know that God's faithfulness to me is not riding on my faithfulness to him.

Now, in light of all this, what's the final so what I'm trying to get to today? Well, I'm going to let God give it to you. Because the so what for all of this right in the Bible, Hebrews 10-23. He says, let us hold unswervingly.

I love the New American Standard translation. Let us hold without wavering to the confession of our faith. Watch now, why? For he who promised is faithful. Folks, if God is the holy God of the universe the way he says he is, and he is, if God is the immutable God of the universe the way he says he is, and he is, if God is the omnipotent God of the universe that he says he is, and he is, if he is the faithful God of the universe that he says he is, and he is, then friends, in light of that, we as followers of Jesus can be unwavering. No matter what life throws at us, because if Almighty God is going to be true and faithful to all these promises we just went over, then what do we have to fret about, folks?

What do we have to get discouraged about? Now you say, well, Lon, let me ask you one last question. And that is, okay, I hear everything you're saying, but I just want to know, just tell me the truth. Does this mean that you never fret? Does this mean you never get discouraged? Does this mean you never get down, you never have a bad day? I mean, are you up there preaching? Does this mean you're unwavering every day?

Well, friends, I can't honestly tell you that. I'm sorry, I wish I could, but I can't. I mean, there have been many times in my life as a follower of Christ where I've gotten discouraged. I still sometimes can get discouraged.

I still sometimes can fret. But let me tell you what I've learned. I've learned in these dark days when I do this, I've learned that whenever I do get down, and whenever I do get discouraged, I can always trace it back to the same cause. I can always trace it back to some area of my life where I am doubting God, some area of my life where I am doubting that God's going to be faithful and that he's going to keep his promises to me. And the solution every time I do this is the same, and that is I need to take my eyes off my problems, off my struggles, off my fears, and I need to put my eyes on the character of God and the promises of God and the faithfulness of God.

And you know what happens when I do that? Philippians 4-7, the peace of God that passes all understanding suddenly comes into my life and guards my heart and my life. Now I know there's a lot of you here who are going through tough times. And maybe a lot of you here who are dealing with discouragement and fear and anxiety in your life. And if I were able to sit down and write every one of you a personal note, I would tell you in every note the exact same thing, that the solution to your discouragement is the same as the solution to my discouragement. What you need to do is what I need to do. You need to take your eyes off your problems, off your struggles, off your disappointments, off your tragedies, and off your challenges, and put your eyes on the immutable, omnipotent, holy, faithful God of the universe and stand on his promises.

Stand on them. And I love as the song says, standing on the promises, I cannot fail. As the doubts and the fears assail, by the living Word of God, I shall prevail. Why?

Because a faithful God made those promises. And so let me challenge you here today, my friends. Life's tough. Job said man is short-lived and full of trouble.

And he was right. But you know what? It's not the trouble that gets us. Listen here, and with this I'm done. It's our focus that gets us. When our focus is on our trouble, that's when we're in big trouble.

You followed that, right? When our focus is on Christ and who he is in his character and his beauty and his faithfulness, friends, our problems look completely different then. And so that's the whole point of this series that we're doing this fall, is to challenge us to understand who God is and then to challenge us to walk through this life with our eyes not on our problems, not on the issues of life, but with our eyes on the living Christ and who he is. So I hope you'll do that. I'm telling you, the problems won't go away, but the peace of God will replace them in your life and in your heart. And I hope you'll do that. May God help you.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, as Job said, man is short-lived and full of trouble. Yeah, it's true, Lord. And you know that when we have trouble, it is so easy for us, God, to take our eyes, just like Peter did when he was walking on the water, to take our eyes off of you and start looking at the winds and the waves, Lord.

And what happens? Just like Peter, we start to sink. Lord Jesus, forgive us. We should know better than doing that, but we're just human, Lord.

Forgive us. And remind us today that your character and your attributes are where our focus needs to be each and every day. And that, Lord Jesus, just like Peter, when he was looking directly at you, the winds and the waves were still there, but he walked above them, Lord. Remind us that when we have our focus squarely on you, your character, your nature, your being, your attributes, your promises, we can walk on top of those waves, too, Lord.

They're still there, but we're not sinking. So, God, change our life because we were here today. Change the way that we live because we were here today. Refocus and attune our hearts and fortify our souls that we might focus on Christ, remembering that the Bible says, looking unto Jesus, not looking unto our problems, looking unto Jesus. Lord, help us do that and thank you that you are faithful. May the great promise you made, you will keep, even though we may not understand how. Thank you, Lord Jesus. And may we find great comfort in this truth. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. And God's people said... Amen. Amen.