God's Faithfulness Series

INTRODUCTION

 I hope that you have been enjoying learning about the different attributes of our awesome God the past few weeks.

 We cannot see or touch God so we have to learn about Him though His attributes.

 The last couple of weeks we looked at the attributes of creativity and God’s love.

 The attributes that we have and will be looking at are the things that make up God’s character. These attributes are things that we would use to describe our Great God.

 We do the same thing as we think about people, we describe them by their attributes. We will describe them by their physical attributes or by their character features. We will say that so and so is trustworthy, or that they are a loving father.

 Today I want us to look at another attribute that is central to God’s character.

 A college man walked into a photography studio with a framed picture of his girlfriend. He wanted the picture duplicated. This involved removing it from the frame. In doing this, the studio owner noticed the inscription on the back of the photograph: "My dearest Tom, I love you with all my heart. I love you more and more each day. I will love you forever and ever. I am yours for all eternity." It was signed "Diane," and it contained a P.S.: "If we ever break up, I want this picture back."

 We are going to see that God is faithful. I hope that we see that with God there are no p.s.’

 I believe that faithfulness is an attribute that the whole world would be better if we had a little more of it. The world really needs something that they can count on.

 You can look from the very heights of leadership to the very bottom of society and see that faithfulness is something that we need to work on.

 Today we are going to see what it means to be faithful, then I will make the case that God is faithful and finally that God expects us to be faithful.

SERMON

I. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FAITHFUL?

A. Define faithful

 When we think about being faithful what comes to your mind?

 FAITHFUL Steadfast, dedicated, dependable, and worthy of trust.

 The word It is derived from the Hebrew root having the basic meaning “to trust (a person),” or “to believe (a statement).”

 This is the same root that gives us the word “amen.” The derived meaning is that the one so described is trustworthy, dependable, trusting, or loyal. Moses was faithful in all God’s household (Num. 12:7). “Faithful” is used to describe the relation of God and Israel (Deut. 7:9). The faithful God keeps His covenant, and the faithful people keep His commandments.

 In the New Testament the adjective “faithful” has the same fundamental meaning as the Old Testament word. The meaning is that the one so described is trustworthy and loyal. The root idea is that one has loyalty toward another person or toward God.

 The faithful person is steadfast, unchanging, and thoroughly grounded in relation to the other. This sort of fidelity, or faithfulness, is used in both the Old Testament and the New Testament to describe God’s relation to the world and to describe the quality of relationship that Israel and Christians are called upon to have with God and with one another.

B. Examples of Faithfulness

 For example, in 1 Corinthians 7:25 Paul tells the Corinthians church that by the mercy of God could be counted as one who is “faithful” (KJV) or “trustworthy” (NASB).

 In Revelation 2:10 the church in Smyrna and subsequent readers are commanded “be faithful unto death.” and, in Ephesians 1:1 Paul addressed the letter “to the faithful in Christ Jesus.” In other cases, however, “faithful” describes God’s mode of relation toward persons or toward God’s creation.

 If you went to cash you paycheck at the bank and the teller gave you the right amount of money 90% of the time, would you consider that teller to be faithful?

 A faithful person is one who will finish the race;

 Max DePree, in an article in Leadership magazine stated, “A friend of mine described a colleague as great at running the "ninety-five-yard dash." That is a distinction I can do without. Lacking the last five yards makes the first ninety-five pointless.”

 A faithful person is one who you can count on to keep their word. They will keep the promises that they make even if it costs them something to do it.

 I am sure that some of you who have been married for many years have had to make some personal sacrifices in order to remain a faithful spouse.