God's Faithfulness

Have you ever been so overwhelmed with something in your life? A problem, discouragement, a sin you're trying to work with, a job issue or family issue, that you just think, God's abandoned me. He's had to. Or you feel like, you know, there's no way God even wants me anymore. Why would he want me? Because I just can't make it. In fact, we even tell ourselves sometimes, why even try? I'm going to fail. Why even try? I'm going to fail. I will never... and then you fill in the blank, you know. I will never be able to do this, or I'll never learn this, or I'll never overcome this, or I'll never make this work. And we talk about being faithful to God, not just having faith in God, but being faithful to God. Now, we... okay, I believe God exists. I believe He's there. I worship Him. But can we remain faithful day by day? We struggle with that. It's not sometimes the belief in God that we struggle with, it's the faithfulness that I have to be faithful. You know, a husband, a wife, to spend their whole lives being faithful to each other. You know, they never commit adultery. And we admire that, because that's a wonderful thing, and God wants us to be that way. We are faithful. So, you know, being faithful isn't, well, I was faithful this week. Being faithful is a daily... is being faithful daily. But it's so hard for us with God. We all know we're not completely faithful to God, because we fail. And so we get discouraged. Well, I'm not going to talk about being faithful to God today. You know, well, he's introduced that. Now, I'm going to talk about something else. Have you ever thought about God's faithfulness to you?

Is God faithful? You know, God makes a lot of promises in the Bible. Can we really believe that God will be faithful? Many times, that faithfulness is in spite of us. Let me show you an example of God's faithfulness. Now, we're going to talk about some of the promises that God has actually made to you. We look at Abraham. Abraham is one of the greatest examples of a man who remained faithful to God, to the point he was willing to sacrifice his own son. We also see there are times where he failed. There's two recorded cases where he lied and got himself in trouble. So we see his failures, but we also see a man whose life, when you put his whole life together, he was faithful to God. But what about God's faithfulness to him? Let's go to Deuteronomy 7. Interesting little comment here that God makes.

Deuteronomy 7 to the Israelites. Here's Israel. They've been brought out of Egypt. You know, what we've just commemorated by going through the days of the love and bread, or the Passover. And this was mentioned in the Sermonette, which pictures our coming out of sin. And here God tells them who they are. Verse 6 says, For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples of the face of the earth. Wow! You're special, so special that God, you know, this is what God is telling those ancient Israelites. You're so special, God has chosen you. You're more special than anybody else. That's an amazing thing to be told by God, isn't it? That's what God told them. The Lord did not set his love on you or choose you because you were more numbered than any other people. And he says, oh, let me explain to you something. Why have I chosen you? He says to them. Because what, you had, you were the strongest people, the smartest people, the best warriors, the, I mean, why, why did I choose you? You were the most cultured people? I didn't choose you because you were the greatest people, but because you were the least of all peoples. But because the Lord loves you, and because, now listen to this, he's telling him, I want you to understand why you are chosen. That's what he told these people. But because the word Lord loves you, and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. He says, yeah, there was over 400 years ago, I promised I would do this. You have to understand, I'm doing this because I promised it, not because you were so good.

He promised Abraham that his descendants would become a great people. And when you read the Old Testament, most of the story of the Old Testament is God trying to take this people that he promised to make a great people and keep making them great in spite of themselves.

Because he said, I made a promise. Let's go look at the promise. Back in Genesis 12.

Genesis 12.

It is amazing when you go through the Bible how many promises God makes.

God has even made promises to you. Because you entered into a new covenant. So much of what we face is, do we believe God is faithful?

We obey him because we believe he's faithful. We trust him because we believe he's faithful. So we struggle with our own faith and our own faithfulness towards God. When it really comes down to, do we believe he is faithful?

Genesis 12, verse 1. Now the Lord said to Abram, Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house, to a land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse those who curses you, and you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Years later, he brings the Israelites out of Egypt, and he says, I didn't do this because you were like just so much better than the Egyptians. I did this because I made a promise to your fathers. Now walk like your fathers. Be like your fathers. And they would fail. Why didn't God throw Israel away when you read the Scripture, story after story, when they failed, and they failed, and they failed? It's because he had made a promise.

And he kept holding up his end of the bargain, even when the others, the people, did not keep their end of the bargain. Now what's the result of that? You see this promise. All peoples, all peoples will be blessed through you when you look through the Old Testament. The thread through the Old Testament, prophetic thread, is that this is fulfilled through the Messiah. And there's a very interesting Scripture in Luke chapter 1. Luke chapter 1.

This is what Mary said after she finds out, you know, she's pregnant, and she is going to give birth to the Messiah. I can't imagine what that is like to be a young woman, and an angel talks to you, and you're going to fulfill it. You're the one that all these prophecies, she learned all her life. It's through you that the Messiah comes. I imagine she didn't sleep well at night. I can't even imagine what goes in your head. What do you even think? How do you deal with that?

Here's what she said. And Mary said, verse 46 of Luke 1, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit is rejoiced in God my Savior, for he has regarded the lowly state of his maidservant. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is all those who fear him from generation to generation. He shows strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He picked the loneliest person to do this, to bring down all of all the governments of the world, because the kingdom, the Messiah will reign over the kingdom. He said he picked the loneliest person, me! He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has set away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, and remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever. She looked back at Genesis 12 and said, this is the promise. She didn't say, I'm so great! The exact opposite. Mary said, this is amazing that he's taking me. I'm just a girl. She's probably a teenager, you know, 17-18 years old, they married early. God is fulfilling a promise to Abraham through a nobody like me.

Do we believe in the faithfulness of God?

We can fail. We can fail God. We can turn against God, and fail completely in our lives. But God never fails.

The variable in this equation is you and me. He never fails. So if he tells you he's going to do something, the only reason that won't happen in your life is if you don't believe it.

You don't follow it. What I want to do today is give you five promises God's made to you. There's many, many, many promises. There are scores of promises in the Bible that God makes that applies directly to you and me, including promises he made to Abraham.

But there are some very specific promises he makes to those who are members of the church, who are part of the new covenant, who have been called by him to receive his Spirit. And let's just look at five of them. The first one is in Philippians chapter 1. A simple statement made here. Philippians chapter 1.

This is where we struggle a lot. We struggle with, I can't do this. We struggle with our own issues of anger, lack of self-control, bitterness, hatred, and all the things that we deal with. And we say, I can't do this. I can't make it.

And then we have to remember this. Verse 6, Philippians 1.

Break it. It's the middle of the sentence, but the whole thing is summed up here. Being confident of this very thing. Paul says, you can hang your hat on this one. This one's true. You can have confidence. You can have security in this. Oh, wow. Good. I need some confidence, right? Life just sort of drags you down. You have no confidence. You can be confident of this, that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

He's going to finish the work if we just let him. He won't take our free will. That's the problem. I mean, God can make us do whatever he wants to. He doesn't. But he says, he will finish the work. All we have to do is follow.

He's faithful to do that. And he says, until the day of Jesus Christ. You know what that means? It's something like Mr. Kemp was saying. We're not finished until we're resurrected. So we're going to struggle every day until we're resurrected. Because we're not finished. But the promise is from God, I will finish this work. We forget when it's our work, we fail. When it's his work, he never fails. We forget whose work it is. We forget who it is we're to submit to. We forget the promise. The promise is you won't fail if you stay with him. He might fall down. He might do some really stupid stuff. And you really will struggle. Paul says, you can have this confidence in life. Today, God will work with me, in spite of what I did yesterday. Now, you may pay some penalties for what you did yesterday. We all do that. You can't escape the penalties, it's not going to be the physical penalties of sin. But, we get up the next day and he says, we got more work to do, kid.

See, we can only truly remain faithful. And it took me a long time to figure this out. When we're absolutely zeroed in on God's faithfulness, because all you and I will do is fail.

He doesn't. So, we submit to it. Now, there's the way we want to submit. Okay, there's the problem. But God doesn't fail. Now, you can't go before God and demand things. But when you're in your issues of your difficulties of life, the difficulties of a relationship, your loneliness, your despondency, your, you know, your failures, the things you're dealing with, you can't go to God and you can't say, Father, I'm a mess. But you promise to complete the work you started in. You promise, so please do so. Because I can't. It's then when God does His work. It's when we go and say, I can't do it.

But you promise. And if you don't do it, I can't get there.

Now, we've talked so much about getting sent out of our lives the last couple of weeks, and we should. We're supposed to be working at that. But sometimes that could make us very discreet. I had a whole different sermon prepared for today. And I kept telling Kim, I don't know. I want to give this sermon. I just don't feel good about it. And last night, I started, I mean late last night, I threw the other sermon out, said, I'll give it some other time and said, you know, I think we need to get centered on something. Not just, okay, we're going to do all this work getting sent out, but we forget it is God who does it in us. And we forget to stay focused, or we'll just get discouraged.

The way we remain faithful to God is to trust His faithfulness.

That He will do what He says. Can't demand it, but we can go say, you promised.

Please, now in spite of me, carry out your promise. Look at 1 Corinthians 1.

We're going to look through a lot of, we'll look through some other writers today, but we're going to be with Paul quite a bit, because Paul really stressed this idea. 1 Corinthians 1.

He makes some very personal comments here to the Corinthian church that he cared about very much.

He says in verse 4, so we get the whole context here, he says, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you by Christ Jesus, that you were enriched in everything by Him in all utterance and all knowledge. Now, these people didn't know Jesus. I mean, these Corinthian ascidian in central Greece, it is predominantly a Greek church. There's very few Jews there, we know that. They would have known Jesus personally, but he says you were taught Jesus Christ, you accepted Him as the Messiah. He became part of this group of people called out once called the church, and he says He's given you everything you've been enriched with what you need. God is giving you what you need. Even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you, so that you come short in no gift. He says God's going to give you everything, the fruits of His Spirit, the gifts of His Spirit, what we need for Him to complete this work in us. He's going to give to us.

So once again, we're back to, if He's going to give us everything, where do our failures come from?

We lose track of His faithfulness, of what He's doing. Verse 7, so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. He gets back to, now remember, the work's not done yet. It's done in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. But you are confirmed. In other words, this means you could be secure in this. In other words, you could have confidence. Now, you can have some security.

You don't have to live every day only zeroing in on your failures. We can live every day zeroing in on God as faithful. God is faithful to do this work. I have to submit. Today, we do better. God does His work in me. Verse 9, God is... what's it say? God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. We know this could be done because God says, He'll do it. We know this could be done. We know that He can complete this work. And you can have security because He said He would.

Now, you run away from God, you're in real trouble because then you're trying to do it yourself. And you and I know by ourselves, we fail. So, when we are overwhelmed, and we're overwhelmed with our own... whether it's our own shortcomings and failures or just life itself or the confusion and the chaos we live in all the time, what we have to get back to is a very simple concept.

God is faithful and God promised me. I can go to God and say, God, you promised me. And if you don't fulfill your promises, there's a hope for anything. Life is absolutely meaningless. He has promised to fulfill the work He's begun in you. Number two. Number two is the 1st Corinthians 10. Let's go to 1st Corinthians 10. Just a few chapters up. Now, this scripture is read quite often. You hear this scripture in sermons and it's in sermons all the time. Exactly what does it mean?

There was this sermon that was given in Lebanon by Mr. J. Ledbetter with the teenage problem we had last Saturday night after the Sabbath. Of course, we had services that there were about 150, over 150 people there. It was an incredible sermon on how temptation works. I mean, he got down into the nitty-gritty how this works. And of course, everybody's thinking, yeah, that is how that works. And he mentioned this scripture. He says, verse 13, 1st Corinthians 10, No temptation has overtaken you, except such as common and man. But God is what? See, that's the little thing we miss here.

God is faithful. In other words, God will do this and you have to believe He will do it. If you don't believe He will do it, He'll do it, you'll miss it. There's nothing He will do it. You'll just miss it. You won't even see Him do it. We have to trust, you know, that's the problem when we think faith is only belief. We have to trust that God will do it. He is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.

So when we are tempted with sin, when we're tempted to do wrong, when we're pulled towards wrong attitudes, where there is always a moment we can escape. Usually we just run right past it. There's the problem. God's faithful. If you ever analyze when you've done something wrong and you go back through it, there is always a moment of escape.

God's faithful. He always gives it to you. He doesn't make you escape because you're the one being tempted. But the moment is there. We have to become sensitive to those moments because He's faithful to do it. The mind is overwhelmed with temptation. There was a moment you could have run away. Now it says escape. Escape is running. It's not like hanging around. Here's what we usually do when it comes to temptation.

Or like the man who said that he was going to lose weight, but he had a problem. That is, every day going to work, there was this bakery that had the best, I mean, doughnuts and sticky buns, you know, all those stuff. Anyways, I mean, you could smell it in the car as you drove by. And so he stopped there every day. And so he decided in order to fight temptation, he would have to create a way of escape. So he plotted out, even though it was 10 minutes longer, a different way to go to work.

And for a few weeks, he went a different way to work and never stopped. He had his way of escape. One day he came home and he said he was really discouraged. He said, he's like, why? He says, well, I uh, I ate a whole box of doughnuts today.

She said, well, what happened? He said, I was listening to radio, wasn't paying attention, and I took my old road to work. And he says, I saw the bakery, and in my mind I thought, wow, I don't even want to go over there. I have finally beat this temptation. This is wonderful. And he says, so I said a prayer, God, thank you for helping me beat the temptation. And now I want you to prove to me how you've given me this way of escape. He says, so I'm going to drive around the block, and if you're giving me a way of escape, there'll be no parking spaces open in front. And he said, the eighth time around there was a parking space.

You keep driving around temptation long enough, a parking space opens up. There was a way of escape there. Yeah, the first seven times there was no parking space, right?

But that's what we do. He is faithful. There is always a moment in any temptation. He gives it to us. He is faithful to do. We can walk away. It's just we buzz right by it. Or we drive around, drive around, drive around until finally the way of escape is closed. It just closes in on us. But I just find that interesting. What we miss there is he is faithful. He's always going to give it to you. It's always going to be there. We just got to find it. We just have to find it. We have to look for that avenue of escape. The third promise is of 1 Peter 4. It's 1 Peter 4. Sometimes it takes a lot of prayer time. Sometimes you're on your knees saying, but God, this is your promise. How are you going to fulfill your promise? Because I can't do it. How are you going to fulfill this? I have to believe. You say you're faithful. You're going to do it. I don't know how you're going to do it. I don't know when you're going to do it. This is when the difficulty comes into being faithful to God in suffering. Because there are moments when we're suffering, we believe God has abandoned us. Because the suffering won't stop. There's certain suffering that just won't stop. It's there. It just won't go away. God must have abandoned me.

God doesn't promise to take away all of our suffering. That's another one it took me a long time to figure out. For God, I'm not supposed to suffer. I'm a special people. The people called into the church, you know, like, and it's like, no, I didn't make you my special people because you were better than anybody else's because I made promises. And I'm fulfilling those promises. And I made some promises to you. And I never promised. I never promised you would not suffer. What he does promise is that there'll be comfort in meaning in suffering. That's what he promises. There'll be comfort in meaning in suffering. Look at 1 Peter 4.

1 Peter 4. Let's start in verse 12.

He says, blubbin', and he's talking to the, you know, Peter wrote to the church at large. So the church must have been going through some persecution because there's many people that are suffering here. He says, blubbin', do not think it's strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you. So they were going to suffer probably some pretty serious persecution. As though some strange thing happened to you. But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that what his glory has revealed you may be glad with exceeding joy. Oh! So he's starting his writing here, this little discussion with, so would you suffer because you're a Christian? Be happy about that! Because you're just suffering the way Christ suffered for you.

And he's tying this into Christ's faithfulness. He did not have to suffer, but he said he would.

He didn't have to die, but he said he would. He didn't have to come down and become like us, but he said he would. So he did. Now that's faithful. That's a faithfulness you and I don't have. He says, if you were reproach for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory of God rests upon you. Their party is blasphemed, but your party is glorified. He says, you're a blessed person when you suffer in any way the way Christ suffered.

He was faithful to you, and now you're suffering because of his faithfulness.

We suffer because of his faithfulness, because that's the only way out of this Mass, is through his faithfulness. He did what he said he was going to do. He says, none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evil doer, a busybody, and other people's matters. So wait a minute. I'd say, if you suffer because you've committed a sin, well okay, that's the way it goes. It's the law of unintended consequences, right? When you sin, you never think of the bad things that are going to happen. They just do. He says, so don't suffer because if you suffer because of that, it's your fault. It's my fault. He says, yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, let him glorify God in this matter. Then he gets very serious about how serious we must be on this, about this. For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. And if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? Now that sounds real negative. Wow! It begins with us, and then the whole world's going to be judged. Now if the righteous one is scarcely saved, where will the God in the center appear? He says, so where if we're scarcely saved? Now that seems like, oh my, why should I even try? You know, a few people are going to just barely make it, and everybody else doesn't make it.

But verse 19, therefore, let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to him in doing good as a faithful creator.

God has promised to make you into his sons and daughters.

He has promised that, and suffering will be his way of creating in us what we need to be, to be sons and daughters forever.

He doesn't promise to keep us from suffering. He promises to give us meaning and comfort in suffering as a creator, so that we are created into his children. You and I can find meaning and suffering that will seem strange to anybody else.

Actual meaning in it, actual comfort in suffering, because we know that God is a faithful creator. Now, he could have just written, Peter could have said, he's just, he's the creator. He's working in you. But he didn't just say creator. The word faithful is very important. He said he would do it, so when it's tough, remember, he's going to do it.

He's going to do it. He's going to create in you what he wants in you for eternity. Boy, if we could stay locked in all that.

You know, whatever's happening in life, it is out of your control, bad things are happening, why am I? God's a faithful creator, and I'm being created. Now, being created is not always fun. Being created is sometimes painful. Being created is awkward. You know, things are being changed and rearranged. You know, we're being created.

There's growing pains in this creation, and we can find comfort in meaning and knowing. God says, I'm faithfulness. I've created you in eternity. I will create in you what you need for eternity.

That can give us a focus that we don't have at all when we're suffering. There's a lot of promises made in the Bible about suffering, and that's it. That'd be an interesting study for you to do, but what you will find is he never promised that we would not suffer. He only promised meaning and comfort and purpose, that in the end, he's a faithful creator. So we have to lock in on faithful. His faithfulness. Because there are times where saying, God, I give up. God, you can't care. Not let this happen to me. You can't care. And he keeps saying, no, just watch me. We have to believe it.

We have to believe there's times he's saying, just watch me. Look what I can do. I'm a faithful creator.

The fourth one is a concept that centers around the work of Jesus Christ, which we just went through a time period where we celebrated and commemorated his death and resurrection and working in us. We will commemorate here coming up at Pentecost when God, because of Christ's death and resurrection, will pour out his Spirit upon mankind. Jesus Christ now, as we know from the Feast of Trumpets, especially from the Day of Atonement, is the High Priest.

He is in at the throne of God, performing the duties of High Priest. Now, what we find interesting when you read through the priesthood of ancient Israel, they weren't always very faithful. We're going through 1 Samuel, and Eli's sons weren't faithful. Samuel's sons weren't faithful. Aaron's sons weren't faithful. Lots of priests weren't faithful. Chosen by God, ordained by God, given enormous responsibilities in his service. And it's amazing how many weren't faithful. Some were. And we have a High Priest who is faithful.

This High Priest will never stop doing his duties, and his duties are to reconcile us to God. That's what the High Priest did. Reconciled the people to God. Made this relationship possible. Jesus Christ is never going to stop or fail in his job of reconciling you to his Father. And you have to believe that. It's hard to do, maybe, when you've just sinned.

Right? Just go to Hebrews chapter 10.

We fail.

If you and I end up in the lake of fire, it will not be because God did not fulfill every promise that he made. It's because we will not believe in those promises, and we will not allow them to happen in our life. It won't be because he did do his promises.

Hebrews 10 verse 19.

Therefore, brother, in having boldest to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus. Here he's talking about the very throne of God, the holy of holies, which was the part of the temple that symbolized the throne of God. By a new and living way which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh, that veil that separated the people from being able to go into the holy of holies. Only high priests can go there once a year during the day of atonement. Let us draw near... oh, I'm sorry, veil that is his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God. That's Jesus Christ today. Let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. So he says, okay, our faith is because this high priest is going to do his job. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

Yeah, there's another statement about not our faithfulness, but God's. Jesus Christ promised, and he is faithful. The Father promised, and he is faithful.

There is never going to be a day where Jesus takes the day off, as his Father, no one's coming to you today because I'm not going to be... I'm taking a vacation. Now we go to God through Christ. He's not going to say, Father, nobody's talking to you today. I'm going to go fishing, you know. That's not going to happen. He is faithful to take you to the Father. That's why we pray in his name. We go right to the Father. We get there because he takes us. He is the high priest. That's the job of the high priest. It is to reconcile people to God, and he's faithful to do that.

We have to believe that. He is faithful to say, My sacrifice is enough for this child.

We don't believe that sometimes. No, that sacrifice isn't enough for me. He's not going to spit in the face of Christ. His sacrifice was enough for me. I'm too bad. I'm too evil. Then you won't get the promise. We have to have faith. We have to believe that promise, because that promise that motivates us to do what we're supposed to do. His faithfulness and His faithfulness as the high priest gives us this privilege of continuing to come before God as flawed human beings. Look what John says in 1 John. 1 John chapter 1. 1 John chapter 2.

Verse 8.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

It is God's faithfulness that forgives us of sins, not because we're somehow, oh well, today you only sin once, so it's easy to forgive you. That's, you know, that's not the issue here. The issue is He's faithful to forgive us, and as He says here, we have to go confess those sins. The great danger is, we, in this case, is we take this faithfulness of God for granted so much that we abuse it, and we use His forgiveness as a license to sin. That's a great danger. But we actually use a promise as a license to sin, because guess what? Then the promise doesn't apply to us anymore.

It doesn't apply to us anymore. I can do whatever I want because God will forgive me. Remember that argument was in the New Testament church. Shall we? Remember Paul saying, am I saying that we should sin so grace may abound? He says, God forbid.

We can... so it's good that we sin because that shows God's forgiveness. That's bizarre. That's taking a promise from God and twisting and inverting it into living in rebellion against Him. Can't do that. We lose the promise. As long as we're repenting, as long as we're confessing, He forgives because He promises to do it.

Because at the death of Jesus Christ, He said, okay, I will forgive you. And Jesus Christ brings us, as that resurrected Passover lamb, and a high priest, He brings us to the Father and says, my sacrifice is enough.

He would not live in that promise. Without that promise, how do we ever get to God? Without the work of Jesus Christ being faithful as the high priest, how do we ever get there? We can't get there. How do you go before the perfect God and say, let's have coffee? It doesn't work that way.

That promise is there. It's His faithfulness.

And you can only experience true forgiveness when you absolutely believe in that promise. When you believe in what we just read in Hebrews and 1st Job, you believe He is faithful to forgive you.

That's what it happens. As long as we keep trying to earn that forgiveness, we have a problem because you can't do it. You can't dance fast enough.

You can't make this work so that God has to forgive you. It doesn't work that way. He either promises to do it or He doesn't. And we can go before God and say, I sinned. I confess. I did not do what I was supposed to do today. And it may be a sin of all mission. I had a chance to do good and I didn't do it.

I was mean to my children today. I was mean to my parents today. Whatever. And we go and we say, I want to be forgiven. Please, I come before you. And you have to believe that that promise is being carried out. And He says, Oh, I forgive you. By the way, you know, your dad's going to be really mad at you tomorrow because the way you treated him, you don't have to work that out. But I forgive you. No, you didn't take away those consequences. So we're allowed to go talk to Him.

We're allowed to go talk to God. That's because of the faithfulness of Jesus Christ, as I priest. And we have to acknowledge that every time we pray and we say, in Jesus' name, we pray. Because He's the one who got us here. So we can be before the Father.

Our fifth reason is that 1 Thessalonians 5.

We do a study on the promises of God. I mean, if we can wrap our mind around just these five, the motivation behind this is enormous. Ah, God's going to get me through this.

God's going to carry me. God's going to help me. Sometimes you still think, isn't it time for you to get involved? I've been doing this now for a couple of years. Isn't it time for you to be involved? Yes, I am. Just wait and watch.

I'm a faithful Creator. What you come out of the other end of this is going to be amazing.

I am faithful to forgive. I am faithful to complete the work I started in you. And then there's this other promise. 1 Thessalonians 5.

Verse 23. 1 Paul ends this letter with, Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you, make you holy, make you holy completely, and make you completely holy. May the God of peace himself make you completely holy, and may your whole spirit's soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Wow! May that happen, right? I did notice the next sentence.

He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.

I can't make it. No, I can't make it either. God can. And he is faithful to do it.

God will carry us, knock us down, spank us. He'll do whatever it takes to drag us there. Now we say, No, I'm not going. Then he'll let go. Okay, then you don't get the promises.

Otherwise, he's going to get us there. He's going to get us there, because he promised to get us there. It's those promises we forget, and we get the idea we're doing this all on our own.

And we're not. You can't. We have our part to play.

You know, I always threw that little caveat in there. We have our part to play. You know, you could lose the promises, because I don't want to be guilty of taking the grace of God or the promises of God and turning him into a license to sin. But sometimes we've done the other. We've erased the promises of God like he's not involved. It's us doing this.

It's us submitting. It's not us doing it.

I mean, look at this statement again. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.

He's going to give us the kingdom. He'll get us there.

He promises it. Do you believe that or not? If you don't believe it, you won't get the promise.

You won't grab hold of the promise. If you believe it, then you'll be going to God all the time and saying, God, you promised. Help me today. Help me to understand the kingdom, to see the kingdom, to see eternal life, to see what you're trying to give me. Help me to understand it. Help me to want it. Give me the desire for it. And give it to me, please. And you'll beg for it.

If you understand the promise. And because he doesn't lie.

In the words of Bob Dylan, God don't make promises he don't keep.

Have you ever heard that song? God don't. It's one of his albums. It wasn't a hit.

God don't make promises he don't. He could quote Bob Dylan in a sermon. It just popped. It's not on my notes. Okay, guys? It tells you. Be careful about doing things that just pop in your head.

That are in your notes. Let's conclude by going to Psalm 89.

I'm just going to read this because it's such a powerful psalm.

Psalm 89. We'll just read part of it. Verse 1.

I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever.

I'm going to write a song. And I'm going to sing about God's mercy. And how we're not worthy of what God's doing. With my mouth I will make known what? Your faithfulness to all generations. This is in the Bible and it's written down for us to read and to sing and to study about God's faithfulness. And many times what God does is absolutely in spite of the people he's working with. For I have said, mercy shall be built up forever.

Your faithfulness you shall establish it in the very heavens.

I have made a covenant with my chosen. And God has made a covenant with every one of you.

You were called chosen and you have to remain faithful. That's what it says in Revelation.

You were called by God, you were chosen by God, you will remain faithful as long as you hold on to God's faithfulness. We hold on to God's faithfulness. And that's how we become faithful.

I have made a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn to my servant David, your seed I will establish forever and build up your throne to all generations. And of course, Jesus Christ came through the lineage of David. And the heavens will praise your wonders, O Lord. Your faithfulness also in the assembly of the saints. God's faithfulness is here today. You are proof of God's faithfulness. Every one of us here today is proof that God is faithful.

Or why would we be here? Because we decided to be here.

We are proof. God was faithful. He's been faithful to us. He's been faithful throughout history to always have a group of people he's working with. Sometimes it's bigger, sometimes it's smaller, but it's always a group of people. He says, For who in the heavens can compare to the Lord? Who among the sons of the mighty can be like unto the Lord? God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be held in reverence by all those around him.

O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty like you, O Lord? Your faithfulness also surrounds you.

It emanates from God. It is at the core of his being. If God cannot be trusted, he is not God.

Eternity will be hell if God cannot be trusted. But he can be. He is faithful.

He carries out his promises, and he has made promises to you.

And your and my faithfulness to God is linked to and driven by understanding and holding on to his faithfulness.