God's Faithfulness

I'm going to pick up where Mr. Pereman left off. It's easy to trust God when things are going good. Right? It's always easy to trust God when things are going good. But, of course, in life, whatever you're going through, good times, bad times, you always know this too shall pass. You know, bad times are going to come, or hard times are going to come. You're going to have health issues, or job issues, or relationship issues, or church issues, or family issues. I mean, it's all going to happen. There's always going to be something that comes along that causes you to have anxiety and fear. And once we get enmeshed in our own anxiety and fear, we get overcome by our own anxiety and fear. Once that happens, it becomes more and more difficult to respond to God's peace. And we become engrossed in it so much that we just—anxiety and fear is what drives us. Once our decision-making, even our Christian decision-making, is based on anxiety and fear, we're not going to be following God. So what do we do? What do we do when we're enmeshed in it? When we're in the midst of anxiety and fear? And like Mr. Parriman said, if you have no fear, there's actually something mentally wrong with you. We're wired to have fear so that we don't jump into a cage of lions, right? So fear is a natural thing. A certain amount of anxiety is a natural thing. But what happens is there are times in life we just get lost in anxiety. We get lost in fear. And once that happens, we end up not responding to God. So I can say that, but then you think, how in the world do you deal with that? You know, if you wake up in the middle of the night and you're having some kind of anxiety, and you say, okay, well, it's nice to say God can fix it, but what am I supposed to do? I don't feel that way. I feel lost. I feel hurt. I feel worried.

I'm going to talk about one thing we can do. There's a lot of things that we can do when we're dealing with these kinds of problems and issues and tragedies of life. But there's one thing I want you to do first. You go and pray to God, and then you go to the Scripture because God has made promises to you. Now, I want you to think about that a minute. We talk about our faith in God, and then we talk about our faithfulness. Faith is trust in God. Faithfulness is just sticking with God no matter what, and you're holding on to God no matter what. But have you thought about God's faithfulness to you?

God says He is faithful to us. No, He doesn't have faith in us. That's a... He knows we're going to mess up. That's not what He's talking about. That word, faithfulness, is I will stick by you no matter what. I am faithful to do what I said, so you can trust me because I am faithful to do it. There's lots of promises God makes to us. I'm going to look at a few of them today. Let's go to Philippians 1.6.

And there's lots of these things. I'm just going to pick a few of them.

And this is a simple statement. We're breaking into the middle of a thought, where Paul is one of his long sentences. Well, in English it's a long sentence. Basically, the entire letter was one sentence. Philippians 1 verse 6. So breaking into the middle of a sentence, being confident of this very thing, okay, you can have confidence in this. The only thing that can keep certain things from happening is when we are not faithful towards God. Well, we don't believe Him anymore, and we don't follow Him anymore, and we give up on Him. Now, what I find interesting here, we'll see when you have moments like that, He's still faithful. He's not faithful when we reject Him and turn against Him and hate Him. Okay, that's different. But we have in our moments when we are weak, He's still faithful. It's a quality about Him that we need to understand. So we can be confident, he says, of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Now, there's a lot in this sentence, but I'm just pulling something out of a sentence. I hate to do that with Paul because it's so complex, but this part of the sentence is so perfect. What He says is, you can be confident that as long as you hold on to God, He will do this in you. You can be confident that He is going to do the work in you that He started. So, when we look at this, we have to learn to expect His involvement. We have to learn to expect we're waiting in expectation. What is He going to do? Now, what He does may not be what we want. Or if I just have enough faith, God will do what I want. If I just have enough faith, God will heal me every time. That's not how this works, does it? And yet, we've all seen healing, and we've all seen people with great faith and not receive a healing. And I've seen people with little faith receive a healing. Now, faith is needed. I'm not saying faith is, you know, He expects us to have faith, but the bottom line is this relationship with God is based on His faithfulness. And it starts with, He's doing something in you that has an eternal consequence. And He will do it if we just let Him do it. Because He wants to do it. He started a good work in you, and He will complete it. I read this sometimes at a funeral with someone who has died of Alzheimer's. Because people say, well, that person turned into a totally different person. Their brain was damaged, and, you know, they weren't even a Christian anymore. I said, no, before the brain damage got so bad that they became this person, God had completed His spiritual work in them. How can God hold someone responsible for brain damage? He completed the work, and then He allowed that long death to happen, which is very sad. And there's a reason for that. It's not for that person, it's for the other people around them. What this assures me is no one dies in the faith unless they're completed. God doesn't say, ah, three more weeks and I'd have had them. It doesn't work that way. So this is a promise. You can go to God and say, I'm not there yet. I'm not perfect yet. I don't have faith. I still struggle with this sin. I have this problem. And you can go and say, don't give up on me. And Paul says, no, he'll finish it if you just let him. He gives us free more agency. I mean, we have free will. But if you just let him, what do I do, God? And you know, a lot of times the answer is, just step aside.

Let me do it.

1 Corinthians 1.

And you know that may be the hardest thing we have to do in life, is step aside and let him do it. Because we can't live with the anxiety. We can't live with the fear. We can't live with the anger that comes from anxiety. So we have to do something.

1 Corinthians 1.4. Once again, breaking into the middle of what he's talking about. He says, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God, which was given to you by Christ Jesus. So he's talking to the church there in Corinth. And this is a really nice introduction to his letter. He says, because he's thanking God, verse 5, that you were enriched in everything by him in all utterance and all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you. So that you came 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. Confirm you that you will be blameless when he returns. And confirm, I think probably a better translation would be establish you. I will make you this way. And we say, he can't do that with me. And here is the next verse tells us what we have to understand. Because the next verse says, God is faithful. So we don't think, well, God doesn't have faith in you. That's what it's saying. He's faithful. He will carry out what he says, by whom you were recalled into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. God is faithful to complete the work he started in us. And here Paul says, he's faithful to fulfill his calling to you. You have to give it up for it not to happen. You have to give it up for it not to happen. Now you can do that. I don't want to downplay the fact that we have free will. But the point Paul is making here, you can't stop God from doing it if you just let him do it. And what we do is we try to decide, God can't do this in me, because that means we believe God is weak and God can't be faithful. And God can. That's that first promise. Because you see, our faithfulness to God only endures what we trust in his faithfulness to us. Do you understand what I just said? Our faithfulness, our ability to stay loyal to God, only endures if we believe he stays loyal to us. If we don't believe God will be faithful to us, you might as well give up. God is faithful to us. He says, I'll do it, child. Just let me do it. I'll do it. That's a promise. So that's one promise when you think, I don't know what to do next. I'm lost. There's one promise. Now, God is faithful to do in your life what he says he will. You just have to believe it enough to be faithful to him. A second promise is in 1 Corinthians 10.

1 Corinthians 10.

And verse 13. Once again, just a verse. I know usually I'm reading long passages to try to get context, but these are just such pithy statements that really zero in on a truth, a biblical truth.

1 Corinthians 10 and verse 13.

No temptation has overtaken you except such as common demand. In other words, whatever temptation we have to sin, somebody else has shared in that same temptation.

But God is faithful. Now, isn't this interesting? In a discussion about us being tempted to sin, he doesn't say, first of all, have more faith in God, which is part of what he's going to say in this passage. What he starts with, remember the promise. God is faithful. He called you, he's chosen you, he's given you his spirit, and he is going to do what he's going to do as long as you let him. He won't make you.

So God is faithful. The promises of God are a starting point to dealing with anxiety and fear and worry. It's the starting point. That he's going to be faithful to you, even in the worst situation. He says, who will not allow, so this is what, here's a promise, he's faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you're able, but what the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.

Now, I've had people read this and say, well yeah, but I had a child die. He gave me more I could bear. That's not what he's talking about in this passage. This passage is talking about temptation to sin. And he says that God will give you a way out. He doesn't say he'll take away the temptation.

He doesn't say that he's going to suddenly come into you and you'll have such strength, it doesn't matter. He says, I'll give you a way out. And whenever we're into temptation, we have to look what is the way out that God has given me. Because it's a promise. He's faithful to do this. He'll give you a way out, a thought, do this, a motivation to do something else. He'll give that to you. Now you can resist it and you give him a temptation, which means that you're not being faithful to God.

But he was faithful to you to give you a way out. I know I told this. Like Mr. Perryman said, he was telling a story he told before. I probably told this story before. I try to keep track, but I know I've told this story before. It's about the man that had to lose weight and he just, there was this donut shop. And every day going into work, he'd buy half a dozen donuts and eat them. And of course, it was destroying his health.

And the doctor told him, you can't do it anymore. So what he did was that he forced himself that he would actually take a different route to work. So he couldn't drive by the bakery. And one day he came home to his wife and he said, I just gave in the temptation. Today, after all these months, I stopped and got half a dozen donuts and ate them. She said, what happened? He said, I was so absent-minded, I'm driving to work and I forgot to take the route that I've been taking.

I took the old route and I was driving by and I saw the bakery. And of course, you can smell it. I mean, it just comes out and it's there and I'm looking at the bakery. And he said, I drove by it. She said, well, what happened? Well, I don't know. I kept fighting temptation. So I just drove around it six times to fight temptation. And then all of a sudden there was a parking space open and I gave in the temptation. Okay. He's resisting temptation. He has the temptation. In his mind, move on. You're past it. Move on. Oh, look, I resisted it. I'll resist it again. So he put himself back into it until he's just waiting for someone to leave him a parking spot.

So he now has an excuse to do it. That's what we do. We find an excuse to go back into the temptation. God says, I'll give you a way out. Just be aware of it. Be looking for it. A third one is in 1 Peter 4. These are very broad subjects. But I want you to find these kinds of promises from God. Remember, God is faithful. He is going to do this in your life. 1 Peter 4, verse 12.

He's talking about trials that people were going through. And there was serious persecution on the church in some places. Peter writes a general epistle to different churches all over the Roman Empire. But there were places where there was being persecution. He says, Beloved, do not think it's strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to you. But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's suffering, that when his glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. He goes on and he says, so you may suffer like Christ suffered. People may make fun of you. People actually may beat you up. People may kill you, or members of your family. So he's going through and saying, you know, don't get discouraged by this. Don't be overwhelmed with fear. Don't be overwhelmed with anxiety. Now, anxiety and fear would be normal in this. He's not saying don't have it. He's saying not be overwhelmed by it. And so this whole passage is how to face persecution. And then he sums it up in verse 19. Therefore, let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to him, doing good as to a faithful creator. He's faithful. You are a new creation, the Bible says. A new man, the temple of God. There's all kinds of things said about what it is to be a Christian, to receive God's Spirit. And he's creating children, right? He's creating children so that he can have children in his family, in his kingdom forever. When we think about, you know, when you're a couple finds out they're pregnant and they want a child and they're so excited and they plan and they plan and they plan to have that child, that's designed in human beings because it mirrors a little bit, just a little bit of what God feels, I say feels. He doesn't have chemical emotions, but he has emotions. I would guess they're a whole lot more intense than ours. He says, I have a child on the way. That's you. And he's a faithful creator. And sometimes we go look at things and say, why would you do this? And he says, oh, look at the work I can do. Look what I will make you into. Now, once that child's born, you start working with that child and you try to create them into functional human beings and you find out, I thought this would be easy. Who would have thought a two-year-old could have such a will that they don't want to be a functional human being? I think my child wants to be a criminal.

And you work with them and you work with them to try to help them and you can't take away your free will. All you can do is guide them. God won't take away our free will, but every child is a joy to him. Every one of us is a joy to him. He is creating us into what he wants us to be.

And there's a promise there. He's a faithful creator in your life, even if you're being persecuted. 4. This simple sermon. I knew I wouldn't have a lot of time, so I didn't make it. We're just a few minutes over, but we won't go too much over. Hebrews 10. Verse 19.

Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus. I want you to understand that. That promise has already been given to you when you pray because it's the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You go before God. No matter when and where you are, the moment you pray in your mind, on your knees, standing up, driving your car, when you pray, you are before the throne of God. He said that would happen, and that's happened to your life, in your lives. 5. By a new and living way by which he consecrated for us through the veil that is his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God. 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. And let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. God is going to do what He said, and you are justified, so you're able to come before God. And you go before God and say, I messed up again, and He says, I know, child. We get some work on you. We've got to do on you. I know, Joe. You think I don't know this?

And so we go before Him, and we know that He forgives us. But remember, you can only experience the freedom of your past sins when you accept He's faithful, He actually forgave you.

You can only be free from your past sins when you've accepted. Christ sacrificed this for you, and He's forgiven you. That past sin doesn't matter to God anymore. It doesn't matter what it... Sometimes there's consequences in life from sin. Oh, there are always some consequences. And sometimes other people won't forget, but God doesn't care anymore because the blood of Jesus Christ washed away your sin. That's what He just said, and He's faithful to do that. So we go before God thinking He's holding against us, something we did 10 years ago, and He is not. He is faithful. He forgave, because that's who He is. That's who He is, and He forgave. Sometimes we are not experiencing the promised relationship with God because we simply won't accept His forgiveness as He promised He would give. I don't understand it, right? It takes me 10 minutes to forgive the guy that cut me off in traffic, and I don't even know the guy. I don't understand that kind of forgiveness. It's who He is, and He's faithful, it says, that He has done that. And when you go before Him now and say, I have sinned again, He might be upset with you, and sometimes God punishes us, or He allows bad things to happen as just a natural result of sin. But it doesn't mean He doesn't forgive. He's a faithful creator. We already read that, so that means He can't just say, oh, I forgive everything and there's no consequences. He can't do that because He can't create righteousness then. We would just use His grace as a license to sin. That's all we do. So we have to suffer from it. That doesn't mean He hasn't forgiven us. It's a promise. He is faithful. And then the last point is 1 Thessalonians 5. He is faithful. Why does He say this over and over again? Because God was inspiring through those men, these writers, New Testament writers, to tell us that I will do what I say I will do. I know you're not used to that because you don't do what you say you're going to do and your neighbor doesn't do what he's going to say he'll do. And no human being fulfills everything they say they'll do because we can't. We fail too much. And He keeps saying, but I don't do that. You think I'm like you. God says, you think I'm like you that I have all these limitations and I don't. And I will do what I say. Except I won't take away your free will, so you make certain decisions those are yours, but I will do this. If you stay with me, I will do this. 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 23.

Now may the God of peace, and it's interesting, He makes peace. He creates peace. He can put peace inside of us. May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved, blameless, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.

We have to believe that. We have to believe that God, the God of peace, who is making peace with us, we're the wayward ones, we're the enemies of God. He's making peace with us through the work of Jesus Christ. And now we're coming into this relationship with God as Father and His peace is being made. And we say, well, but He can't make that with me. And His answer is, no, He'll do it. If you just will have the faith in Him, He is faithful to you. You know, that's a hard thing to think. Like, God is faithful to me? Yes. To you personally, to me personally, God is faithful. He's going to do in your life what He says He will. Or He's not God. He's not God. Or He is God. If He's God, He's going to do these things because He says, I am faithful.

We have to go here more often. We have to go here to God more often and say, you promised, so I will follow. You promised, and I don't even know what that means, but I will follow. You promised, so I do what you say. You promised, so I come and ask again for forgiveness because you're a faithful Creator. And because I know Christ paid a horrible price for me. And so I come asking you to fulfill that promise, even though I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy of this, but you gave it. See, we go on our worth, and you can't go on your worth, or I can't go to God on my worth and be accepted. We can go on His worth. We can go on the worth of Jesus Christ and be accepted. You understand that? That's the only way that works because we have nothing to come and bargain with. Because what do you bring? A million dollars? I'll give you my house. I'm such a good guy, you just have to take me. What do we have to bargain with? It's His faithfulness, and that's what we have to center on. And anxiety and worry. I mean, you know, we live in a crazy world, right? I don't know. Every day it's more and more insane. And we can get caught up in that and forget it's the worthiness of God. It's His faithfulness that gets us through this. It's His faithfulness that we will be there when Christ returns, because He'll do it. But we have to say, yes, Lord, I give up. I give up, and I will follow you.

So I encourage all of you, when you're in those times of life, when it just seems like God's abandoned me because of my sins or because of my problems with my mate or because of my work or becomes some issue in the church. And we're just now in this panic. Go to God, read the promises that said, just tell Him, you promised. It's okay to go say, you promised, because I can't do it. You promised. Please apply your promises to me. And when we do, He is faithful. He is faithful to apply those promises to each and every one of us.