Turn with me, if you would, to
1 Corinthians 1. First Corinthians one, let's
read verse nine together. It says, God is faithful. By whom you were called unto
the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. God is faithful. God is faithful. Verse four says,
I thank my God always on your behalf for the grace of God,
which is given you by Jesus Christ. I thank God for his grace, which
is given to you by Jesus Christ, the grace of God. Verse five
says that in everything you are enriched by him. Though he was
rich for your sake, he made himself to be poor that you through his
poverty might be rich. You are enriched. In everything,
you are enriched by him. In all utterance and in all knowledge. Even as the testimony of Christ
was confirmed in you, our God has given a testimony of his
son. And the Holy Spirit has confirmed
that testimony in you. Verse seven says so that you
come behind in no gift waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Who shall also confirm you unto
the end. that you may be blameless in
the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. What a statement to make who
will confirm you all the way to the end. That you may be blameless
in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what I want to
be so badly. I want to be blameless in my
flesh. I'm not. And I know it. And it grieves
me and I wish it wasn't so. And this is what I long to be.
Just like him. Blameless, I want to be blameless. In the day of our Lord Jesus
Christ, verse 9 says God is faithful. What a message. God is faithful
by whom you were called unto the fellowship of his son, Jesus
Christ, our Lord. God is faithful. I was talking
to a brother this week and we were talking about our lack. That's what we were talking about.
Talking about our insufficiency, talking about our inability to
be what we want to be as followers of Christ. God's people, we're
supposed to be God's people. I look at this old sinful, wicked
flesh sometimes and I think you're supposed to be a child of God. And we were talking about just
how pitiful our efforts are so pitiful. And just how shameful
our efforts are and just how shameful we are. And then this
brother said, thank God he is faithful. And I said, amen. That's right. That's right. Thank
God He is faithful. Thank God He's faithful. Verse
9 says, God is faithful by whom you were called unto the fellowship
of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The Bible dictionary, there
is a Bible dictionary and a concordance and a regular dictionary. The
Bible dictionary says that the word faithful means worthy of
trust. One that can be relied on, God
is worthy of trust. God is one that can be relied
on. The concordance says it means
sure. True. God is sure. God is true. Webster's dictionary says that
it means steadfast in affection or allegiance. Faithful. Steadfast in affection. It means firm in adherence to
promises. Faithful. What it means is if
he loves, he will keep on loving. If he promises, he'll do it. I wish that I and all of us could
get a hold of the fact that when we see him say something, consider
it done. It's done. No ifs, ands, or buts
about it. You know, we read this and we
think, oh, I hope he does that. If he says he'll do it, he'll
do it. He said in Isaiah 46, I have
spoken it. I will also bring it to pass.
I have purposed it. I will also do it. God is faithful. Thank God. He's faithful. God is faithful to his word.
He's faithful to his promise. He's faithful to his people.
He's faithful. Now I want to take a minute this
morning to see what he has promised to be faithful in. In his word,
what has he promised to his people to be faithful in? Let's read
a few scriptures here. The first one is Deuteronomy
7. Turn with me if you would to Deuteronomy chapter 7. Deuteronomy 7, this is a wonderful
verse right here. Look at verse 9. It says, Know
therefore that the Lord thy God, He is God, the faithful God,
which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep
his commandments to a thousand generations. How can a sinner
keep the commandments of God? People read that and they think,
OK, as long as I'll keep his commandments, he'll love me.
Has a sinner ever kept the commandments of God? No. No. All have sinned. and come short
of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no not
one. All of our righteousnesses are
filthy rags. How can a sinner keep the commandments
of God? Here's the answer. Only in Christ. He kept the commandments of God. Outside of Christ, every soul
has transgressed. Every soul. All have sinned and
broken his commandments. So here's the good news of the
gospel. This is what we tell to sinners who know I have not
kept the commandments of God. The Lord God made a covenant. He made a promise. The father
promised to choose a people. And the son promised to die for
those people. He promised to pay the price
of redemption for them. And the spirit promised to call
those people. It was a promise, a covenant
of mercy, a covenant of mercy. Mercy is for sinners who don't
deserve mercy. That's who it's for. If they
deserved it, it wouldn't be mercy. If they earned it, it wouldn't
be mercy. But it's for sinners who did
not earn it, do not deserve it. That's who God's mercy is for.
He made a covenant of mercy, a covenant of redemption for
sin, redemption from condemnation. Condemnation is coming. And God
promised to redeem his people through the blood of Christ,
through the blood of the Lamb. It was a promise of salvation
for chosen sinners. And he said, I will keep my promise. Have you ever heard people say,
now you better be careful, better watch what you do or you'll lose
your salvation. You ever heard people say that?
That's not so. Not if Christ saved us. Not if
God the Father promised that He would save us. And not if
God the Son promised that He would save us. And not if God
the Spirit promised that He would save us. It's not so. We are
kept by the power of God. And He has promised, I'll keep
my covenant. And I won't do it because of
you, I'll do it because of me. I'll do it because of me. is the best news I've ever heard.
We don't look to this flesh and say, well, will he keep his covenant
to me based on what I see right here? He said, I'll keep my covenant
because of me, because of myself, because I'm faithful. Look right
here in Deuteronomy 7 at verse 1. It says, when the Lord thy
God shall bring thee into the land, whither thou goest to possess
it, and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites, and
the Girgashites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and the Perizzites,
and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier
than thou. And when the Lord thy God shall
deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly
destroy them. Thou shalt make no covenant with
them, nor show mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriages
with them, thy daughter shalt thou not give unto his son, nor
his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son, for they will turn
away thy son from following me. that they may serve other gods.
So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you and destroy
these suddenly. But thus shall you deal with
them. You shall destroy their altars
and break down their images and cut down their groves and burn
their graven images with fire." Verse 11, he said, Thou shalt
therefore keep the commandments and the statutes and the judgments
which I command thee this day to do them. Now, here's the question.
If you know anything about what the children of Israel did, I
won't take the time to go into it. But did they keep his commandments? He said, don't intermarry with
them. Did they keep? No, they did not. No, they did
not. They broke all of his commandments.
But look at verse six. This is what he said in verse
six. Thou art an holy people. That means a set apart, a sanctified
holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen
thee to be a special people unto Himself above all people that
are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love
upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than
any people for you were the fewest of all people. Truly nothing
in you. Verse eight, but because the
Lord loved you. And because he would keep the
oath which he had sworn unto your fathers. Hath the Lord brought
you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house
of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Know therefore
that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which
keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his
commandments to a thousand generations. He said, know that the Lord your
God, he is God. I am God. And if I said I'll
do it, I'll keep my promise to do it. That's just amazing. He made a covenant concerning
us. And that covenant was not dependent on us. It wasn't conditioned
on us. It was in spite of us. That's
why He made the covenant. It was a covenant of mercy. It
was a covenant to love us. It was a covenant to redeem us.
And He'll do it. He will love us. And he will
redeem us. And he'll do it because he's
faithful. One of my favorite verses is Hebrews 6. It says,
because he could swear by no greater, he swore by himself. He swore to himself. Nothing
causes me to cringe more than hearing somebody say, I swear
to God, don't do that. Only one man could do that, and
he did. In all of his holiness and all
of his righteousness, in all of his power, in all of his ability,
he said, I swear to God, I'll keep my covenant. I love him. I'll redeem him. He's not going
to break it. He will not break it. He's faithful.
Turn with me over to 1 Thessalonians 5. 1 Thessalonians 5 verse 24. It says faithful is he that calleth
you who also will do it. He made a promise to have mercy
on his people and he will show it. He made a promise to call
his people and he will call them. He will call them. Call him to
what? What will he call his people
to? Look at verse 23. It says the very God of peace. Sanctify you holy. That's such
an amazing statement to me. God is angry with the wicked
every day. The Lord is a man of war. That's
what the scripture says. But in the blood of Jesus Christ,
he is peace, peace with his people. The very God of peace sanctify
you holy. And I pray God, your whole spirit
and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of
our Lord Jesus Christ. Like we just read, He will call
His people to purity. He'll call His people to holiness. He will call His people to spiritual
innocence. And another way of saying that
is He'll call them to Christ. He will call them to the Lord
Jesus Christ. He will sanctify His people wholly,
completely. That means He will take His people
and set them apart in the Lord Jesus Christ. And He will preserve
every single one of them, blameless, until the day of His coming.
He faithfully will do that for all of His people. Look at 2
Thessalonians chapter 3. Turn the page here to 2 Thessalonians
3. Verse three says, but the Lord
is faithful who shall establish you and keep you from evil. He will establish you and keep
you. He shall have mercy on you. He
will wash you, he'll sanctify you, preserve you blameless,
and he'll keep you. He shall, he shall, he shall. Look at 2nd Timothy with me chapter
2. A few pages over to 2nd Timothy
chapter 2. 2nd Timothy 2 verse 13 it says. If we believe not. Yet he abideth
faithful. He cannot deny himself. We believed not. That's how we
entered this world. That's how we would be, except
for the fact that he abides faithful. Without faith, it is impossible
to please God and faith is not of ourselves. It is not of ourselves. We don't naturally have it. We
do not naturally produce it, but Christ does. It is the faith
of the Lord Jesus Christ, and He gives it to us, and thank
God He keeps on giving it to us. We lose it. He puts it in
our hands, and it falls, it slips right through our fingers. We
lose it, and He gives us more. And then we lose that, and then
He gives us more. We'll come into here, into this
building right here, and He'll give us some. And then we'll
walk right out of those doors and lose it. And then we'll come
back and he'll give us some more. And then we'll go lose it and
he'll give us more. He kept saying to his disciples,
are you yet without faith? He would tell them something,
they'd say, no, Lord, don't do that. And he'd say, are you still
without faith? You still are not holding the
faith I've given to you. He just keeps giving it. He keeps
giving it. That's us. We lose it. He gives us more. This is what
happens. We look away from him and this
is what his faith does. He turns our eyes back to him
and then we look away from him and he turns our eyes back to
him and then we look away from him and he turns our eyes back
to him and then we look away from him and he turned. He's
faithful. He's faithful. He's full of faith
and he's faithful to give it to his people. Turn to 1 John
1. 1 John 1, verse 9, it says, If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness daily. We need this daily. What he has done for us eternally,
he does for us daily. Verse seven right here says,
if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth
us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin,
we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess
our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Every time that we confess our
sins to Him, He is faithful and just to remind us that the blood
of Jesus Christ has cleansed us from all sin. we confess to
him. Sin will pop back into our minds
and it just strikes absolute guilt into us. It just slays
us and we cry out to him, we confess to him, I did it. And
every time his spirit reminds us the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ has cleansed you from all of your sin. I've told you
this recently, but this is my favorite story to tell right
now. And I'm just resolved to tell the same old stories over
and over again. This is from a message by Charles Spurgeon
and. Anyway, you'll you'll recognize
it. He said during this last week. I have been with Brother
Offord. Every time I read this, I think
I look forward to meeting Brother Offord, whoever that is. But
he said, I've been with Brother Offord conducting prayer meetings.
And he told one evening a tale which I made him tell every evening
afterwards, for I thought it so good. He said there was a
poor man living on Dartmoor who had been employed during the
summer in looking after horses and cows and so on that were
turned out on the moor. He was a perfect heathen. And never went to a place of
worship. perhaps since he was a child. For him, there was no
Sabbath. After a time, he grew very ill.
He was over 60 years of age, and having nothing to live upon,
he went into the workhouse. While he was there, it pleased
the mysterious spirit to make him uneasy as to his soul. He felt that he must die, And
the old man had just enough light to let him see that if he did
die, all was wrong with regard to a future state. He saw my
soul is not right with God, as people put it. He had a little
granddaughter who lived in a neighboring town, Plymouth, I think it was.
And he asked leave for his grandchild to come in every day to see him.
As he was very ill and near death, that was allowed. She came in
and he said to her, read the Bible to me, dear. She complied,
and the more she read, the more wretched the old man grew. Some will understand that you
read the Bible looking for help. And the more you read, the more
your eyes are open to just how sinful you truly are and how
much of this word you have broken. The more that was read to him,
the more wretched he grew. Read it again, said he. The more
she read, the more dark his mind seemed to be with a sense of
guilt. At last, one day, she came to
that passage in the first epistle of John. You know it. The blood
of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. Is that there,
he asked. Yes, grandfather, replied the
little girl, that is there. Is that there? Oh yes, Grandfather,
it is there. Then read it again. Read it again. She again read, the blood of
Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. My dear, are you sure it is just
like that? Yes, Grandfather. Then read it
again, dear. The blood of Jesus Christ, his
son, cleanseth us from all sin. Then he said, take my finger
and put it on that verse. Is it on that text, child? Is
my finger on that blessed text? Yes, grandfather. Then said he,
tell them, alluding to his friends, that I die in the faith of that."
And he closed his eyes and doubtless entered into eternal rest. Spurgeon said, and I will die
in the faith of that truth by the grace of God. And so will
you. I trust, brethren and sisters,
die with your finger on that text. The blood of Jesus Christ,
his son, cleanseth us from all sin. I'm a sinner. This is what
he was saying. I'm a sinner. And he has promised
in his word that his blood is able and already has washed me
from all of my sin. And I believe it. I believe Him. I believe on Him. I die in the
faith of that. I die in the faith of Him. I
die in the faith of the one who alone is able to cleanse me from
all of my sin. Is that not what we're dying
in? One by one, we're going to leave this world and that's what
we're dying in. We're dying in the faith of the
blood of the Son of God. So, I was going to have you turn
back. I'm going to close, but I'm going
to close with this. God is faithful. Hope in it. God is faithful.
The very one who called you to the fellowship of His Son, He's
faithful. Everything He said He would do
for you, He'll do it. Alright, you're dismissed.