2 Thessalonians chapter three. And let's look at the first line
of verse three. It says, but the Lord is faithful. And that's the gospel, isn't
it? That is the good news of the
gospel. But God, but the Lord is faithful. This word declares the absolute
horror of the truth concerning you and concerning me. This word tells it like it is. This word doesn't pull any punches.
It tells the horrible, horrible truth about you and about me. And then this word declares,
but the Lord is faithful. This is what it has to say about
you. This is what it has to say about me. And then it says, but
the Lord is faithful. This word says concerning us,
me included, it says, you will not come to Christ that you might
have life. You know, everybody's out there
begging people, you know, come on, won't you just come to Jesus
now? Won't you just come to Christ? You will not come to Christ that
you might have life. This word says, you by wicked
hands crucified and slayed the Lord of glory. How many people
have you heard say, if I was alive back then, I would have
put a stop to that. You did it. You did it. This word says, you despised
him. You rejected him and you hid
your face from him. It says, you have done nothing
but sin and rebel against him all the days of your life. That's
all, that's all. It says, but the Lord is faithful,
still faithful. That's just wonderful to me.
That's wonderful. Turn with me, if you would, to
Deuteronomy chapter seven. Deuteronomy seven, verse nine. It says, know therefore that
the Lord thy God, He is God. Know that first. Know that first, just like Rahab
the harlot. Don't you love that story when
she hid the spies? They came into Jericho and she
hid the spies. And the reason she did is because
she said, we have heard of your God. Terror has struck this place. We've heard what your God has
done. And she said, I'll tell you this, the Lord, your God,
he is God. In heaven above and in earth
beneath. We cannot glory. We cannot rejoice
in anything concerning our God until we understand the fact
that he is God. He is God. because it means he's able to
do whatever he has purposed to do. Whatever he says he will
do, he's able to do it, he's God. Whatever he says must come
to pass, must come to pass, he's God, he's God. All right, now
entering into that, listen to what the Word declares in the
Bible. Verse nine right here 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. The faithful God, the Lord is
faithful because he's the faithful God. He is faithful in all things. He's faithful in all things,
starting with the punishment of sin. He said He is going to
punish sin, all sin. Every single sin that has ever
been committed is going to be punished. He said the wages of
sin is death, and He's going to be faithful to His Word. He's
going to be. Look at verse 10 right here.
He said, he repayeth them that hate him to their face to destroy
them. He will not be slack to him that
hateth him. He will repay him to his face. Vengeance is his, he will repay. He will, that's a promise to
every sinner against him. He will be faithful. to His promise. Verse 11 says, thou shalt therefore
keep the commandments and the statutes and the judgments which
I command thee this day to do them. Now, can we say that we've
ever kept His commandments? No, not one. Not to the perfection He demands,
not one. All right, then what's our hope?
What is our hope? If we haven't kept one of His
commandments, and if He says all sin is going to be punished,
vengeance is His, what is our peace and our hope of salvation?
Look at verse six. For thou art an 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. 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. That's our hope. That's our hope. Our hope is
in the fact that he is faithful to the promise of his word. That's
our hope. He's faithful to what he promised.
Turn back a few pages to Numbers 14. Numbers 14 verse 18. It says, the Lord is long-suffering
and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgressions,
and by no means clearing the guilty. All right, let me read
that again. The Lord is long-suffering and
of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression. and by no
means clearing the guilty. All right, now, how did he forgive our iniquity
and transgressions? He by no means cleared the guilty. That's how he did it. He by no
means cleared the guilty. The Lord our God, the Lord our
Savior, Jesus Christ, He faithfully took upon Himself the sin and
the sins, the cause and the effect. Isn't that wonderful? The cause
and the effect. He didn't put a Band-Aid on anything. the iniquity and the transgressions
of all of his people, all the people that the father gave to
him. He made himself to be guilty. He literally, actually made himself
to be guilty. That is something that, you know,
many people say, well, he just died for the, you know, the act
of sin in general, or he died for, no, he made himself to be
guilty. He became guilty. He stood there guilty in His
humiliation. Can you imagine standing before
the throne of God in the humiliation of our sin? When all the books
are open and everything is revealed and announced out loud for everybody
to hear. How would you like to have all
of your sin announced out loud for everybody to hear? Can you
imagine the humiliation? There He stood. Isn't that what
Acts 8 says? In His humiliation. His judgment
was taken away from him. He made himself to be guilty
and then he by no means cleared the guilty. By no means. He punished that iniquity and
he punished those transgressions in his own body. He punished
them all the way to the grave. And with that punishment being
satisfied, every soul in Christ is set free. Just completely
set free. That's what he did in his faithfulness. I love John 11, the story of
Lazarus. I love that chapter. And I love
it when our Lord said, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead
came forth bound hand and foot with grave clothes. And our Lord
said, loose him and let him go. Loose him and let him go. That
is the hope that he's given to us in and through and by his
faithfulness. His faithfulness. Look with me
at Numbers 23. Numbers 23 verse 19 says, God is not a man that he should
lie, neither the son of man that he should repent. Hath he said,
and shall he not do it? Or hath he spoken, and shall
he not make it good? Behold, I have received commandment
to bless, and he hath blessed, and I cannot reverse it." He
hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness
in Israel. The Lord his God is with him,
and the shout of a king is among them. God brought them out of
Egypt. He hath, as it were, the strength
of a unicorn. Surely there is no enchantment
against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel.
According to this time, it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel,
what hath God wrought? Exclamation point. Behold His
faithfulness. That's what every soul in glory
is going to be crying. Behold His faithfulness. He said He
would do it, and He did it. That's what we're going to be
saying. He said He would do this, and He did it. Now let's just read a few scriptures
on our way back to our text, alright? Go with me to Lamentations
chapter 3. Lamentations 3 verse 21 says, This I recall to my mind, therefore
have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that
we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Great, this is why I have hope.
Great, great is thy faithfulness. That's all that we have to say
about our standing before Him. The condition and the security
of our salvation, this is all we have to say about it. Great
is His faithfulness. Great is His faithfulness to
me. Turn with me over to 1 Corinthians 1. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 1 says, Paul
called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ through the will of God
and Sosthenes our brother. Paul is the one speaking, this
is who he's speaking to. Verse 2, unto the church of God
which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ
Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call
upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord both theirs and ours."
That's who he's writing to. This is what he has to say to
them. Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from
the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always on your
behalf for the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ
that in everything you are enriched by Him in all utterance and in
all knowledge, even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you,
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. God is faithful by whom you were
called unto the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord."
That's God's message to his people. He was faithful to punish our
sin. By His grace, He was faithful
to keep His covenant of mercy toward us. And He's faithful
to call every one of His people to the fellowship of His Son.
The Apostle John wrote, That which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you, that you also may have fellowship with
us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His
Son, Jesus Christ." And how glorious that fellowship is. How sweet
that fellowship is. Just needful, desperately needful.
Our comfort, our safety, our peace, our rest, is in that fellowship. Our life is in that fellowship,
that fellowship with Christ. Look with me at 1 Corinthians
10. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 13. There
hath no temptation taken you, but such as is common to man,
But God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted
above that you are able, but will with the temptation also
make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it." What
is that way of escape? It's Him. It's Him. He is the way. He is our escape. In every trial, in every temptation,
and God's people find this to be so, they find this to be so. You know it's so. If you've ever
been through anything, and you have, you know it's so. He is our escape. He's our escape. Even though the burden may be
so heavy, We can always run to Him and lay it on Him. Didn't
He say, cast it all, cast your burden on Me? You know what a
relief that is whenever the Spirit finally reminds us, cast it on
Him. Because we're carrying it, carrying
it. Cast it on Him. And when we do, oh, what an escape. He is faithful to receive us
every time we come to Him. He will in no wise cast us out. So back in our text, look with
me again at 2 Thessalonians 3. Verse three says, but the Lord
is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you from evil. He said, the Lord is faithful
to establish you. He will establish you. Establish
you in what? Well, he said in chapter 2 verse
16, Now our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God even our Father,
which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation
and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts, and establish
you in every good word and work." He will establish you in the
Word of Christ. And He will establish you in
the work of Christ, not man's word and not man's work. Those works are not good. He
said every good word. in every good work. God's people
are established in Christ. He will establish you in Christ. You can just listen to Romans
16. This is Romans 16, verses 25 to 27. He said, Now to him that is of power to
establish you according to my gospel, in the preaching of Jesus
Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept
secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, and
by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment
of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the
obedience of faith, to God only wise, be glory through Jesus
Christ forever. Amen. forever. He is and He will always be faithful
to establish us in the truth of what He's done. He will establish
His people in the truth of what Christ has done. And thank God,
our text said, He is able and He's faithful to keep us from
all evil. He is faithful to keep us from the evil one. He will
not give us over to His evil ways. He will not. He will not
give us over to this evil world. And He will not give us over
to our own wicked flesh. Aren't you so glad for that? In John 17, 15, our Lord said
to His Father, I pray not that thou shouldest take them out
of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. And
if that's what He asked for, that's what He's going to get.
That's what He asked for. The effectual, fervent prayer
of the righteous man always avails whatever He asked for. If that's
what He asked for, then He will receive it. I want to tell you
a story that I recently heard. I love this. This is a perfect
example of how faithful our Lord is to us at all times, even when
we have no idea that He's being faithful to us. He is so faithful
and so good, He's able to establish us, He's able to keep us, He's
able to protect us from the evil, from the evil one, from this
world, from ourselves. He's faithful. He's always so
faithful. You may have heard this, but
I just heard this. You know George Whitefield. It
was 1700s or early 1800s or something. But anyway, he was riding to
another town, riding on a horse to another town one night to
preach. It was a good distance. And you
know, his horse was just walking along. And he said that it was pouring
rain on him the whole time. just flat pouring rain, just
pouring, pouring, pouring. And he said he just had such
a bad attitude riding down the path, riding down the road. He
said he was carrying the burden of having to preach. When you're traveling somewhere
having to preach, it's a burden. You carry the burden the whole
way. And he was cold, he was wet,
just miserable. And he said, I was just murmuring
and complaining and thinking, why am I doing this? And I was
asking the Lord, why all this rain? I'm going to preach your
gospel, I'm going to preach your word, why such misery? Why does it have to be so miserable? And he said, I was just in absolute
misery because of all this rain. He said, I rounded a corner,
and a robber jumped out with a flint pistol and fired it. And the flint wouldn't go off.
It was too wet. And he said, he hightailed it
out of the air, crying, thank you for the rain, Lord. Thank
you. God is faithful, always, always. We may see it to be rain. But what it is, is His faithfulness
to us. He's always faithful. Always, always faithful. Well, Peter said we're kept by
the power of God. Kept by the power of the faithful
God. So if your hope is in Christ,
I mean truly in Christ, I mean truly in Christ. If this man
is everything you have, I mean if it's literally all on a man, if it's all in His Word, everything
that He says in this Word, every promise He makes, every work
that He has finished, If that is your all, if your hope is
only in His Word and in His work, because you see the utter lack
of your own faithfulness. And I see the utter lack of my
own faithfulness. You know why I'm here? He is
faithful. Not because I am. It's because
He is. If He is your all, I mean really
your all, all you have, then find some comfort and some rest
in the fact that He will faithfully accomplish and sustain and do
everything that needs to be done concerning your salvation and
everything from here to here. I mean everything. Let me give
you this little poem that I read sometimes in Kingsport. It says, the title is Christ
my all and in all. It says, there is a holy God
that I cannot please, but Christ did. The Father said, this is my beloved
Son in whom I'm well-placed. There is a holy law that I can't
keep, but Christ did. He said, I finished the work
which thou gavest me to do. There is a perfect righteousness
that I can't earn, but Christ did. He is the end of the law
for righteousness. There is a convicting record
of sin that I cannot erase, but Christ did. He made Him to be
sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness
of God in Him. There is a great judgment that
I cannot endure, but Christ did. He said, my God, my God, why
hast Thou forsaken me? And there is an eternal death
that I cannot rise from, but Christ did. And if He has been
made to be my all and in all, He'll raise me up with Him at
the last day. He will. But the Lord is faithful,
who shall establish you and keep you from all evil.