Would you open your Bibles to
Deuteronomy chapter 7? Deuteronomy chapter 7. I've been reading through a book
by Arthur W. Pink called, Gleanings in the
Godhead. And this past week I got into the
chapter entitled, The Faithfulness of God. And it was a great blessing
to me to think about our faithful God. Because our natural tendency
is to focus on our own faithfulness and try to determine our spiritual
condition and our spiritual prospects according to how faithful we
are. And yet the scriptures continually
point us to the faithfulness of our God while it encourages
us to be faithful, exhorts us to be faithful. When it comes
to our security and our assurance of things to come, it always
points us to the faithfulness of our God. Beginning in verse
7 of Deuteronomy 7, we read, the Lord did not set his affection
on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other
people, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because
the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers,
that he brought you out with mighty hand and redeemed you
from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh, king of
Egypt. Know therefore that Jehovah your
God is God. He is the faithful God, keeping
his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love
him and keep his commands. Now we admire people who are
faithful, and well we should. And we have little regard for
those who prove unreliable. In fact, this characteristic
of faithfulness, we even find it to be very affecting when
we find it in other creatures. For instance, people talk about
having a faithful dog. And dogs, for the most part,
can't do a whole lot. Our little dog Ziggy, it seems
his major talent is taking naps. But whatever else could be said
about our little dog, he's a faithful dog. He waits for us, he finds
satisfaction in us. He is always the same from one
day to the next. Well, we certainly appreciate
that in people. On the most basic level, faithfulness
is demonstrated in keeping one's word, fulfilling one's promises. to do what one says he will do. Now that's the most basic form
of faithfulness. A person makes a promise and he fulfills that promise. A person makes a vow and he is faithful to the vow. Our words should always find
a match in our actions. Now sometimes we fail in this
regard, not because of what we might call a moral defect, not
because we were careless or simply broke our word, but simply because
of our weakness. Sometimes we promise more than
we can deliver. be so desirous of doing good
to another person, doing something great and wonderful for them,
we make a promise and it turns out we just can't keep it. And
while we may not consider that a moral defect, it's still a
disappointment to the one to whom we've made the promise.
And in time to come, it may put a little question mark on any
other promises we make. But when our words are always
matched by our actions, we gain the right judgment of being a
faithful person. On the second level, faithfulness
is shown in a consistency of character. That is, they are
the same person, faithful people, they are the same person every
time you meet them. I've said of some people, that
I've had to deal with, I says, you never know who you're going
to meet at the door. At one time, they may be very kind and receiving. Another time, for no discernible
reason that you can figure out, they're angry and belligerent.
I worked for a couple of people like that in my time. And I was
rather young at the time and didn't know how to figure this
out. But eventually, I got it figured out that their praise
and their denunciations had little to do with my performance. It
depended on what mood they were in. If they were in a good mood,
I could do no wrong. If they were in a bad mood, I
could do no good. And such people are hard to work
for, and actually they don't make good leaders, because people
eventually give up trying. Because what's the use? Your
performance has nothing to do with how you're treated. But
a faithful person, He's steady. What he is on Monday, he'll be
on Tuesday, and so forth. Furthermore, faithfulness is
magnified when these qualities manifest themselves even in times
of trouble, when it becomes difficult to fulfill one's word, when it
becomes difficult to put on that same face. I've known people
like that, and I highly regard them. Even when they're under
a great burden of their own, still, they do all they can to
keep their word, to present a positive face and fulfill their obligations. But even more so, another level
of faithfulness is when you find those who are faithful even when
others have been unfaithful to them. A man who will keep his
promises while others break their promises to him, why that most
certainly is a faithful man. Now in all of these ideas of
faithfulness, The, I don't know what word to put
here, but the principle you find in every one of them is this,
is sameness. Now, nobody younger than my generation
is going to understand what I'm going to say, but I'll try to
explain it. Back in the days before stereos,
and you might not even know what stereos are, back when they had,
music was on these round things called albums. course they had
stereos but before then they had what was called a hi-fi.
And a hi-fi, that word is a contraction of the words high fidelity. Now fidelity is just a Latin
version of the word faithful. To be one who has fidelity is
the person who is faithful. And what they meant by these
hi-fi music machines was that what came out of the speakers had a very close resemblance
to what was heard in the studio when it was recorded. Now, the
record players and such that came before that, you know, you
could kind of tell what it sounded like in the studio, but a lot
of it was really scratchy, and a lot of them had little tiny
speakers, and so anything in the lower frequencies didn't
even come through. You could tell what song it was, you could
kind of follow along, but when those hi-fis came out, it sounded
like you were standing right there when it was recorded. What
came out of the speakers was the same as what was heard in
the studio when it was recorded. Now that's what faithfulness
means. To have this sameness. Now in Deuteronomy chapter 7
verse 9, Jehovah God is described as a faithful God. The gods of
pagans are like the people who create them. Now God made man
in his image. But whenever men make gods, they
make gods in their own image. And the gods of the pagans Just like the men who created
them, they have all the faults of the men who create them. Oftentimes,
they're grotesque. Even their appearance is grotesque.
They are angry. They are untrustworthy. If they're in a mad fit, you
just better get out of their way. If it's a good day, you
might get what you want. But you can't count on them because
they change from day to day. But Jehovah does not bear any
of the defects of man-created gods. He is faithful, and it
is his faithfulness that secures our eternal blessing. God is
faithful, and that is why you and I, unfaithful as we often
are, are nonetheless secure in that salvation which God has
promised through Jesus Christ. If we look at ourselves, and
we often do, don't we? If we look at ourselves, we may
rightly wonder whether or not in the end we shall be saved. For who of us here can claim
any level of faithfulness which should be rewarded with eternal
blessing? I don't know anybody that can't.
I certainly can't. And maybe that's why reading
Brother Pink's essay on God's faithfulness was such a comfort
to me. Because it brought me back to that reality. My faithfulness
is not what's at issue here. His faithfulness is. And unless and until we can grasp
this unaltering faithfulness of God to His promises and to
the beginnings of His work, we will waver and doubt about
how things shall end up. But if God gives us grace to
see Him as the unchanging and unswervingly faithful God, we
can read His promises and we can cast our soul upon them with
absolute confidence that they shall come to pass. Now the faithfulness of God is
seen primarily in this, that all that he has determined to
save, he will indeed save. He is faithful to his own word,
And he's faithful to the purpose of his grace. Look here in verse
7 now of Deuteronomy chapter 9, excuse me, Deuteronomy chapter
7 verse 7. Now Moses is talking to the Jews
as they are about to enter the promised land. Now it had been
40 years since he brought them out of Egypt. And they'd come
to the edge of the promised land at one point. But all of them
had proven faithless, and I don't mean simply faithless in the
idea that they hadn't been perfect. They utterly rejected the promise
of God. Therefore, God swore an oath,
and he said, you will by no means enter my rest. And so they wandered
around the desert until everyone 20 years and up fell dead in
the desert. So now a whole new generation
has grown up, and I guess you'd have to assume there's nobody
over 60 years old in Israel at this point, except for Moses,
and he would die shortly before going into the land, and then
Joshua and Caleb. They were the only ones over
60 in Israel on that day. But they're about to go over
And Moses is giving them his final words of exhortation about
what they should do and about how things will go for them.
And he said to them, the Lord did not set his affection on
you and choose you because you were more numerous than other
peoples. Now notice that the Jews' salvation
here and the Jews' realization of the promise of possessing
the promised land did not begin with their desire for it. It
was not as though they were in Egypt and they got out some brochures
of various geographical sites and said, this one looks good,
let's start praying to God, see if he'll give us this strip of
land here on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean. No. God chose Israel when the whole
nation of Israel was just one man. And He didn't even know
it. Abraham in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abraham was not a believer. He
was not seeking the Lord. He was worshipping whatever gods
were present there in Ur of the Chaldeans. And God spoke to him. God chose Abraham and He chose
all those that would come from Abraham. And he chose them for
particular blessings. And among those blessings, he
said to Abraham, took him to a place where he could view a
lot of the land, and he says, just look here, and all of this
I will give to you and to your seed. And he said, now look up
at the stars in the sky, and if you can count them, you'll
be able to count your descendants. So God did not find a powerful
nation. He did not say, you know, Egypt,
they've got riches, they've got armies. Why, a nation like Egypt
could be really glorious or really glorifying to the God who rules
over them. Why, with their pyramids? You
know, I could take credit for their pyramids and all that.
No, He chose someone who was nothing, had nothing, and didn't
even hope for anything. And he chose Abraham, and he
spoke to Abraham, and he said, Abraham, leave your country,
leave your family, and you go to a land that I will afterwards
show you. And he says, well, if you don't
show me now, how am I going to know the way to go? He says, you just
leave. I'll tell you what you need to know when you need to
know it. And so Abraham left, and God eventually brought him
to the land of Canaan. where the Canaanites lived and
several other groups of people. Now, Abraham
never did possess all that land, nor did Isaac, nor did Jacob,
nor any of his sons. Because in promising this land
to Abraham, God had said to Abraham, now for 400 years your seed will
serve as slaves in a foreign land. But then I will bring them
out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and I will
settle them in this land. And that's what's happening right
here. You see, God is faithful even if it takes a long time
to fulfill his promise. The Lord Jesus Christ made a
promise that he would come back. And some 30, 40 years after he
had made that promise, there were already people saying, where
is the promise of his coming? I guess Jesus isn't as faithful
as we gave him credit for. He hasn't shown up yet, and 40
years is a long time. And the Apostle Peter said, now
wait a minute, 40 years may be a long time to you, but it's
nothing to God. A thousand years is just like a day to him. It
doesn't matter. He will come. And he says he's
not slack concerning his promise. His promise to return. His promise
to defeat his enemies and the church's enemies. And his promise
to bring full deliverance to all his people. He's not slack
concerning that promise. He's not being unfaithful. Rather,
he's being patient. He's being patient with the world.
enduring with great longsuffering all the wickedness of those who
raise their hand in defiance to them, because he's not willing
that the least of his chosen people, his sons, should perish. And not all of them have been
called in yet. And he will not come until the very last sheep
has been called within his fold. So it was not his lack of faithfulness
that caused the Lord Jesus not to return immediately. It was
actually the fulfillment of his faithfulness to bring to salvation
all whom had been chosen and given to him. He wasn't going
to come back until they're all brought in. And you know why
the Lord Jesus Christ hadn't come yet? There's more sheep
out there to gather in. Until our Lord comes back, we
can be assured of this, there are more elect to be found. Lord Jesus said, I've come to
seek and to save that which is lost. And when he's done seeking
and saving, he'll come back. He's faithful. But God's purpose
of grace revealed in the election of a people unto salvation He
will be faithful to it, and in the end, the roll call of heaven's
citizenry will be a perfect match to the list of God's elect. God
is faithful. Not one of them shall fail to
have eternal life. It was not any glorious characteristic
of the Jews that moved God to choose them in the first place.
Abraham was nothing, an old man, an idolater, but God said that
he and his seed would inherit the land. But you know God proved
even faithful or to be faithful even beyond his promise. And I want you to notice this
because this will give you some encouragement in the face of
your own failures. Notice here he says in Deuteronomy
chapter 7, he says, Verse 9 know therefore that the
Lord your God is God He is a faithful God keeping his covenant of love
to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his
commands But to those who hate him he will repay their face
by destruction He will not be slow to repay them for their
to their face for those who hate him now Here we are we claim to be believers
and I have no reason to believe that you're not I But I know
that no one would raise their hand if I were to say, all right,
everybody raise your hand that's been perfectly faithful to the
Lord. Everybody who has kept the demands
of the covenant, raise your hand. Everybody who has acted in love
towards the Lord at all times, raise your hand. Now our Lord
made this promise that he would be faithful to those who were
faithful to him but thanks be to the name of God his faithfulness
goes beyond his promise because he continues to be faithful even
to those who are not faithful to him. Now there's a reason
for it there's a reason his faithfulness extends beyond their faithfulness
and that is this The faithfulness he looked for was to be found
in one single person. Now the Jews themselves, the
natural descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if there's
anything they proved, they proved they were unfaithful. At every
turn, the more I read of the Old Testament, The more I am
disabused of that old idea I had in my mind that the Jews were
composed primarily of those who believed God and they lived their
lives in decency and uprightness, I start reading about them and
they were a corrupt, awful people. Now I'm not just putting off
on Jews, this isn't anti-Semitism, because everybody else in the
world was the same way. But sometimes we get the idea that the Jews
were faithful worshippers of Jehovah from the time that God
called them out of Egypt until the Lord Jesus Christ came. And
the fact is, with but very few and brief exceptions, they were
idolaters. That message I preached here
a couple of weeks ago about gold shields and brass shields. Remember
how it says that they had begun worshiping exactly like all the
nations around them did. I was doing some reading and
there are those who like to discount the worship of Jehovah. Remember
one of them saying to me in a rather mocking tone says, oh Jehovah
was originally Baal. You know, he's just another name
tagged on to Baal. And he was a thunder god and
a storm god and then he got married to Asherah and all this. And I remember being rather offended
by what he was saying, because, you know, he was just trying
to act like Jehovah was just another one of the idolatrous
gods. But you know what? If you define our God by how
the greater portion of Israel treated him, that man was right.
And as I was reading an article about it, actually in Wikipedia,
that is, as they go back and look in the archeology of Israel
during Old Testament times, do you know what they find out?
They find out that for the most part, Israel believed that Jehovah
was another manifestation of Baal and he was married to Asherah. They call it the folk religion
of the Israelites. Now, that's not what you find
in scripture. But can you see how corrupt people can come,
even with all these advantages? I mean, they had the temple right
there. God setting himself forward as the only God, and God setting
himself forward in a covenant relation with that nation, oh,
how he blessed them. And once in a while, like under
David and under Solomon, and a few of the kings of the southern
part of Israel later on. There was some brief moments
when the people were devoted to the worship of Jehovah, but
you know what they eventually ended up doing? They actually
set up an Asherah Pole right by the altar of God in the temple. They were unfaithful. But you
know, for all of this, the Lord did not cast them off completely. And He stayed with them. And
though He disciplined them and purified them, that the remnant
according to the election of grace might be revealed, yet
He brought them back to the land. And despite all of their abuses
of His goodness, He fulfilled His promise because in reality
all the promises He gave to Israel were centered upon one person,
Jesus Christ. Paul says the promises were made
to Abraham and to his seed, not seeds meaning many, but seed
meaning one. And God promised a Messiah to
Israel and he brought them one. Despite the fact that they had
treated him with, well just horribly, just horribly, but he brought
the Lord Jesus Christ to them. and Jesus Christ and came and
did for them everything that God said he would do for them.
Now they utterly rejected him. I say utterly, there were a few.
Once again, a remnant according to the election of grace believed
Jesus Christ. The rest God eventually did destroy
them. He scattered the Jewish nation
to the far corners of the earth. And I don't know, the scriptures
are not clear about whether the Lord God will ever reunite the
various natural descendants of Israel. It's not necessary, that's
for sure. Because the purpose of the Jews,
at least as was stated under the Old Covenant, has been fulfilled.
It says the Old Covenant was given until such time as the
seed could come. And once that seed, Jesus Christ,
showed up, the Old Covenant, by which Israel was made a nation,
that Old Covenant ceased to exist. But God is faithful far beyond
our faithfulness, far beyond even his promises. God promised Noah that he would never again send a worldwide
flood, but that the seasons would continue to run their course
all the way to the end of the world. And every year we get
a testimony that God is faithful. I was sitting on my back porch
the other morning. And now that that hedge is gone,
I can see way out there over the field. And I was looking
at how much the corn had grown just since I left for that trip
to Oregon. And it's such a rich green. And
I'll tell you, the property behind my house, that field, is pretty
lousy dirt. It's really sandy stuff. And
yet the corn's coming out of the ground just like it's in
the finest mulch. Beautiful to behold. He said
there'll be seed time, there'll be harvest, there'll be summer,
there'll be winter. Now this winter, when you're
frustrated that you gotta go out in the snow, just remember
that winter is a testimony of God's faithful. So I wish he'd
have just said there's gonna be summer. I wish he'd have left
out the winter. He said there'll be summer, seed
time, harvest, winter. And we see that yearly cycle
and it's a yearly testimony. God is faithful. He promised
Abraham a land saying that his seed would be enslaved in that
foreign land and that he would bring them out. And that's exactly
what he did in the garden of Eden. God made a promise of someone
who would come and destroy the devil. And 4,000 years later,
it happened. And can we not testify of his
faithfulness? Boy, I can. And I can testify
of his faithfulness in the face of some of the most remarkable
unfaithfulness on my part. And I'm not just trying to sound
humble here. I'm really taken back by me. I seriously, regularly put a
big question mark on whether or not I know God. How could
somebody that knows God act like I act? Think the things I think,
desire the things I desire. Much less, how could I be a preacher?
How could I be one called to minister of the gospel, being
such a person as I am? And yet in all of this, God has
never ceased to be faithful. Even though I have not very often
asked him to supply my needs, he supplies them all the time.
Though I am not very good at forgiving, yet He forgives me
much better than I forgive others. And has He not acted in a similar
way to you? We're starting our 31st year
here. Been together 30 years. And in all that time, God has
met the needs of this congregation. He has been with us as a congregation
to preserve us, to protect us from many of the troubles that
I hear of that arise in other churches that you and I have
never had to put up with. I find it remarkable that while there
have been some who have come and gone, to this date, we have
never suffered a serious split in this congregation. And I'll
tell you, to go 30 years in a church, without a big huff, that's remarkable. That's the faithfulness of God.
In all of this time, he has supplied the needs of this congregation
that we might continue its ministry even though we are few in number.
God has been faithful. And one of us, individually,
Everybody here has suffered some trials of some form or another,
some of them very serious. Some, humanly speaking, I've
watched you and I think how can anybody humanly bear what they
are going through? Trials so serious you think certainly
they will buckle under this, certainly this is going to frustrate
them to the point that they just give up. And not only that, sometimes
these very serious trials come upon them. And they last for
a long time. As for me, and I'm not making
a boast here, I'm just trying to observe the way it seems like
I am. A severe but short trial is a lot easier to bear than
maybe even a moderate one that just goes on and on and on and
on. Chronic illness. You just can't
get over it. You're in pain. And it doesn't
go away. You know, a lot of people, they
suffer silently. And I give them credit for their
stamina. Though sometimes I wish it didn't
take me two years to find out that somebody was suffering,
that we might pray for them. Boy, their body is in pain, weary,
their mind suffers its trouble, and it's just there all the time.
Why do they endure? Why do they keep worshiping?
Why do they stick with it? Because they're faithful? Well,
yes, but why are they faithful? They're faithful because God
is faithful. People go through trials that
bring such a level of brokenheartedness. It seems like their world just
fell down around them. And everything they thought was
there is just lying in a heap. And yet, they don't run off to
some form of religion that'll make them feel better. They don't
run off to the do-gooders who promise to be able to patch up
their life. They just stay with the gospel. Here we are, through
30 years of human living, Why? God is faithful. That's why. And, you know, I don't spend
much time in anxiety about this congregation and what shall become
of it. I'm approaching what would Most
people would consider retirement age. I have no plans to retire
anytime soon, but the day will come when I'll either retire
or die. You know, I can't be pastor here
forever. What shall happen when I'm gone?
I don't know. But you know what? This church
does not survive because I am faithful. It survives because
God is faithful and he's not going to quit being faithful.
And if he continues, if his plan is to continue this work beyond
the one or two generations, then he'll raise up someone else.
I got a kick out of what one of the more famous preachers
of our day said, at least it was reported he said. He goes,
what does God say when one of the mighty defenders of the faith
dies? Next. Oh, it is a blessed thing to
realize that we are not important. God may use us to do important
things, but if He can use a donkey to declare His Word to a false
prophet, He can use me to preach the Gospel, He can use anybody
He wants to. God is faithful, and on that,
We hang our hopes. God is faithful in every aspect
of His being. The Father is faithful to do
everything He has promised. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter
1. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 8, He will keep you strong to the
end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus.
Now, as I said, None of us would make
a great claim to faithfulness. We would not say, in myself,
I am blameless. Yet it is written here that God
will keep us strong to the end. Now notice this. He didn't say,
stay strong to the end. This is not a command, this is
not an exhortation, this is a promise. He, God, will keep you strong
to the end. so that you will be blameless
on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, when Christ comes,
there will be two kinds of people. There will be the blameless,
and there will be those who are completely blameworthy. God does
not grade on a curve. God doesn't even just do a pass-fail
thing. With God, it's perfection. or
destruction, one or the other. He will not tolerate the least
infraction. That's why it says blameless,
not pretty good, not better than others, not almost perfect, blameless. How in the world am I going to
be kept blameless? How can I keep myself blameless?
I can't do it. So look what it goes on to say.
God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord, is faithful. Notice he hadn't mentioned our
faithfulness here. God is faithful. And notice His faithfulness,
or the way He describes God. He's called us into the fellowship
with His Son. That word, fellowship, means
to have in common. And that's why we'll find ourselves
blameless. It's not talking about He's called
us into fellowship in the sense that you and I think of fellowship
as when we get together and have a party. You know, we say, well,
we're going to have a fellowship dinner. What we mean by that
is we're going to get together and eat dinner together and talk
to each other and have a nice time. But that's not really what
this kind of fellowship means. It means to have in common. And
what do we have in common with the Lord Jesus Christ? Everything. Is He blameless? Then we're blameless. Is He accepted? Then we're accepted. Is He loved by the Father? Then
we're loved by the Father. Is He blessed with all spiritual
blessings? Then we're blessed with all spiritual
blessings in Him. God is faithful. He's faithful
to His Son to give to Him everything He has promised to Him. And He
is faithful to all whose trust is in the Son, to bless them
with all spiritual blessings in the heavenly places in Christ.
All who trust Him, whether it be with weak faith or strong
faith, God is faithful. The psalmist said, I will sing
of the mercies of the Lord forever. With my mouth will I make known
thy faithfulness to all generations. His faithfulness is the foundation
of our security in 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 24 it says he is faithful
he will do it. Now if there's anything I would
like someone to say about me be something like that If something
had been entrusted to me to accomplish, and I were to go on my way to
get it done, and maybe somebody looks at another fellow and says,
I don't know, what do you think? Will it happen? And it'd be nice
if that other person said, oh, he's faithful. He'll do it. Well,
I try to do that as much as I can, but I don't always get it done.
But of God, you can be sure of this, he is faithful, he will
do it. He will present you without fault,
blameless and full of joy in his presence. Why? Because he
said he would. And he has the power and authority
to get it done. The forgiveness of our sins is
an act of his faithfulness. It says if we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. He's faithful to
the sacrifice of his sons, his son, to forgive it. After all,
he entrusted us to the son. And he says, you do this for
them, they will be free. And he's good to that. But also
he's faithful to us, for he has promised that those whose trust
in Christ shall have their sins forgiven. He is faithful when we are not.
Look at 2 Timothy chapter 2. We've already touched on this,
but I want to point it out here again and just show you this
scripture. 2 Timothy chapter 2 verse 13. Now in verse 11, Paul starts
quoting something which was either just a common recitation or maybe
even part of a hymn that was well known among the churches.
In verse 13, it says, if we are faithless, that is unfaithful,
he will remain faithful. He cannot deny himself. You see, for God to be unfaithful
would be for God to cease to be God. It would be for him to
lay aside his essential attributes. I don't want to be unfaithful,
but as much as I don't want to be, I've got to face reality.
I often am in the things I do. What shall I do in the face of
my unfaithfulness? Take comfort in this, God cannot
disown, deny himself. He will prove faithful even when
I am not. Brethren, isn't there some rest
in that? Isn't there some relaxation from all that worry of trying
to be perfect, thinking that somehow or another we're going
to get something wrong, we won't get an I dotted or a T crossed
just like it should be, and in the end we will have thought
that we were saved but really aren't? If your hope is in this
God, your hope is as secure as God is faithful. The Son was
and is faithful to all that he has said. In the book of Revelation
chapter 19 verse 11 it says, And I saw heaven open, and behold,
a white horse, and he that sat upon it was called Faithful and
True. Our Lord Jesus Christ, oh, he's
faithful. Look at how his disciples treated
him. He came into the world, he did everything for him. He
taught him and everything. The day of his trouble comes
and what do they do? Well, one of them betrayed him
and brought about his trouble. The other 11, it says of them,
and all his disciples forsook him and fled. Not very much faithfulness
on their part, was there? But did that stop him? Did he
say, all right, if this is the way you guys are gonna act, forget
it, I'm going back to heaven. No, he continued with all the
work that was given him to do, faithful to his father, faithful
to his people. And he bore within himself the
sins of his people and bore all the punishment that was due them.
And ever since then, he's been faithful to intercede in their
behalf. It is written, if any man sin,
any of God's people sin, we have an advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous. And our advocate, our defense
attorney, never hangs out a sign that says, out to lunch, come
back later. He never says, I'm closing business,
I've had enough of this. He will intercede in behalf of
his people until every last one of them is in the presence of
God with no accusation laid against them. And the Spirit of God is
likewise faithful. He is faithful to take the things
of Christ and make them known to us. Why do you know anything
about Christ? Why do you understand him when
others don't? Why do you love this gospel?
founded entirely upon the work of Christ, while others seem
intent to have a gospel, a so-called gospel, that involves their works. And you shake your head and say,
why is that? Why would they want something that costs what they
cannot provide, when they can have something that's freely
given to them? And you shake your head, I don't
understand that. Well, what you ought not understand,
or what should be a surprise, is that you want it. And the
reason you want it is because God began a work in you and he's
going to perform it. He's going to perfect it until
the day of Christ. And God is faithful at all times
and in all circumstances. It used to be so easy for me
in my youth to rely upon the faithfulness of God. I remember
saying things in times of trouble, well we'll trust God. You know
what I've noticed? The older I get, the harder that
is to do. And I think it's very simply
for this reason. The older you get, the closer you draw to that
moment when God's faithfulness is absolutely essential. It is one thing in the strength
of your youth, when you really think you could probably go out
there and make your own way anyway, to say, I believe God's faithful.
But when weakness starts to overtake you, and you start to realize
you don't have the capacity to care for yourself like you once
did, when maybe you see others around you falling dead. You know, I've been 44 years
out of high school now. And there's a substantial list
of my classmates that are already gone. Who can keep his soul alive? I look forward to, what if I
did live? What if God gives me another 30 years? What if I live
to be 92? Do I have enough to take care of me? Can I say, as
I look at my more feeble years when there's really no way for
me to make a substantial living, can I then say, God is faithful,
he'll take care of me. It's a little harder on this
end of life to make a boast like that. But brethren, as the old hymn writer says,
even down to old age, his people shall prove his sovereign, omnipotent,
unchangeable love. And even when grain hairs their
temples adorn, still like lambs in his arms, they shall be born. And what of that final step? One of these days we're going
to take it. Unless the Lord returns, every one of us, before very
long, will come to the end of this natural life. Is the Lord faithful then? One of the most blessed statements
in scripture from Psalm 23, even though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with
me. And I pointed out to someone
here not long ago, he did not say, I will be with you then.
David didn't say, I'll not worry about it because when I die,
he'll come to meet me. He said, I'm not worried about
it because he's already with me and he's going to stay with
me. And the only thing that death is going to do is open my eyes
so that I can see he's been with me all along. People say, oh, I hope God meets
me at Jordan. Brethren, my hope is that God
takes me to Jordan. that every step between here
and the passage into glory, that by my side walks my faithful
God, who said I will never leave you nor forsake me. And when
I drop this body, when this flesh is gone, all it's going to do
is open my eyes to the reality. There he is. He's never been
an inch away. He has surrounded me. As the
scriptures say, he goes before, he watches behind, he's on my
right, he's on my left. How can anything bad happen to
me? I'm surrounded by God and he is faithful.