Our Faithful God
In the country of Armenia, in 1988, Samuel and Danielle sent their young son, Armand, off to school. Samuel squatted before his son and looked him in the eye. “Have a good day at school, and remember, no matter what, I’ll always be there for you.” They hugged and the boy ran off to school.
Hours later, a powerful earthquake rocked the area. In the midst of the pandemonium, Samuel and Danielle tried to discover what happened to their son but they couldn’t get any information. The radio announced that there were thousands of casualties.
Samuel then grabbed his coat and headed for the schoolyard. When he reached the area, what he saw brought tears to his eyes. Armand’s school was a pile of debris. Other parents were standing around crying.
Samuel found the place where Armand’s classroom used to be and began pulling a broken beam off the pile of rubble. He then grabbed a rock and put it to the side, and then grabbed another one.
One of the parents looking on asked, “What are you doing?” “Digging for my son,” Samuel answered. The man then said, “You’re just going to make things worse! The building is unstable,” and tried to pull Samuel away from his work.
Samuel set his jaw and kept working. As time wore on, one by one, the other parents left. Then a firefighter tried to pull Samuel away from the rubble. Samuel looked at him and said, “Won’t you help me?” The firefighter left and Samuel kept digging.
All through the night and into the next day, Samuel continued digging. Parents placed flowers and pictures of their children on the ruins. But, Samuel just kept working. He picked up a beam and pushed it out of the way when he heard a faint cry. “Help! Help!” Samuel listened but didn’t hear anything again. Then he heard a muffled voice, “Papa?”
Samuel began to dig furiously. Finally he could see his son. “Come on out, son!” he said with relief. “No,” Armand said. “Let the other kids come out first because I know you’ll get me.” Child after child emerged until, finally, little Armand appeared. Samuel took him in his arms and Armand said, “I told the other kids not to worry because you told me that you’d always be there for me!”
Fourteen children were saved that day because one father was faithful.
Friends, how much more faithful is our heavenly Father! Whether trapped by fallen debris or ensnared by life’s hardships and struggles, we are never cut off from God’s faithfulness. He is true to His character. He is reliable and trustworthy and can be counted on always.
Here’s a simple definition: “God’s faithfulness means that everything He says and does is certain.” He is 100% reliable, 100% of the time. He does not fail, forget, falter, change, or disappoint. He says what He means and means what He says and therefore does everything He says He will do.
Key Passages on God’s Faithfulness
Let’s look at some of the key passages on God’s Faithfulness.
Exodus 34:6: “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”
Deuteronomy 7:9: “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; He is the faithful God, keeping His covenant of love to a thousand generations…”
Deuteronomy 32:4: “He is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He.”
Joshua 21:45: “Not one of all the Lord’s good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled.”
Psalm 25:10: “All the ways of the Lord are loving and faithful.”
And, as Psalm 89:8 reminds us, “O Lord God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you.”
These verses, when taken together, establish that God’s faithfulness is not some minor or secondary part of His character. To say that God is faithful goes to the very core of who He really is. If He didn’t keep His Word, He wouldn’t be God.
Faithfulness Like an Engine
Bill Bright, President of Campus Crusade for Christ, compares the attributes of God to an automobile engine. Pistons, fan belts, water pumps, and thousands of moving parts all whirl around within a small space, making power for us to drive our car. The parts all work together harmoniously as components of the whole engine.
That’s the way God’s attributes function too. If you took away love, God’s character would be incomplete. God’s love works with all the other attributes, like His justice, to produce the right kind of results. We can compare God’s faithfulness to the oil in the engine that keeps the internal parts running smoothly. God’s faithfulness means that each attribute in His character is working at full capacity at all times. When does God’s love fail? Never, because He is faithful. When is God less than holy? Never, because His character is pure and He is always faithful to who He is and to what He says.
A.W. Tozer puts it this way: “All of God’s acts are consistent with all of His attributes. No attribute contradicts any other, but all harmonize and blend into each other in the infinite abyss of the Godhead.”
God’s faithfulness is at the core of His very nature. He is knowable, holy, the creator, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, just, sovereign, unchanging, and loving because He is faithful to His own character. He never changes any of His attributes. Paul drew on this truth when he wrote to the Thessalonians, “the one who calls you is faithful and He will do it.” (1 Thessalonians 5:24)
A Song of Lament
Last week, as we focused on God’s power, we camped in the book of Jeremiah. You’ll recall that Jeremiah was not very popular because He was urging His people to surrender to the King of Babylon. Now, we come to the book of Lamentations, which is really a collection of sad songs, or laments. It’s a mournful postscript to the Book of Jeremiah.
Through the use of five dirges, or funeral laments that correspond to the five chapters, Jeremiah reminds us that sin, in spite of all its allurement and excitement, carries with it heavy weights of sorrow, grief, misery, barrenness and pain.
The title of the book is taken from the first word in verse 1, “How.” It could also be translated, “alas!” which was a characteristic cry of lament or exclamation. Jeremiah is wondering how all this happened everything was going so well and then this. Jerusalem has now been destroyed and Jeremiah, who is known as the “weeping prophet,” is in the dumps.
As we come to Lamentations, chapter 3, we see that Jeremiah bares his heart, not holding back the depths of his despair. No prophet ever pleaded with a people in a more impassioned manner. And no one, except Jesus, was treated with more contempt than he was.
9 Laments
In the first 20 verses, the weeping prophet lets it all hang out. His language is real and raw. Let me summarize his 9 complaints:
God is angry. Jeremiah has seen trouble and he knows it’s because God is upset with His people: “I am the man who has seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.” (3:1).
Jeremiah is in the dark. Instead of seeing things clearly, Jeremiah feels the loneliness of darkness: “He has driven me away and made me walk in darkness rather than light…He has made me dwell in darkness like those long dead.” (3:2, 6)
Feels like God is against Him. Because of God’s judgment, Jeremiah feels like God “has turned his hand against him again and again, all day long.” (3:3). In verse 10, Jeremiah compares God to a bear lying in wait, or like a lion ready to pounce on his prey. Verses 12-13 are very graphic: “He drew His bow and made me the target for His arrows. He pierced my heart with arrows from his quiver.”
He is tormented mentally and physically. Jeremiah’s pain is both acute and chronic. He feels his pain intensely and he can’t find a remedy for it. Look at verse 4: “He has made my skin and my flesh grow old and has broken my bones.” In verses 15-16, he describes how his life is filled with bitterness, how his teeth have been broken, and how he has been trampled in the dust.
He can’t find release. Jeremiah can’t figure out how to escape the pain and anguish he feels. He is “besieged and surrounded with bitterness and hardship” in verse 5. Verse 7 says, “He has walled me in so I cannot escape; He has weighed me down with chains.” He feels like a man trapped in a maze.
His prayers are unanswered. Notice verse 8: “Even when I call out or cry for help, He shuts out my prayer.”
People make fun of him. People tell jokes about Jeremiah and make fun of him all the time. We see this in verse 14: “I became the laughingstock of all my people; they mock me in song all day long.”
He is ready to give up. After all that he has been through, he just wants to bag it, to throw in the towel, and to hang it up. We see his honest cry of despair in verse 17, “I have been deprived of peace; I have forgotten what prosperity is.”
His hope is gone. He can’t forget his troubles because they ambush him at every turn. In verse 18, he says, “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped from the Lord.” As much as he tries to minimize his problems he can’t help but think about his affliction and his wandering, and the bitterness that floods through his life in verse 19. When he remembers all that he has gone through he understandably gets bummed out in verse 20: “I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.”
While Jeremiah experienced a lot of pain and agony, my guess is that some of you have the words to his song already memorized. Perhaps you are experiencing many of these same things and secretly wonder if God is really faithful:
You feel like God is mad at you.
You feel like you’re in the dark.
You feel like God is against you.
You have mental and physical pain.
You can’t find release.
Your prayers are not being answered.
People don’t understand you.
You are ready to give up.
Your hope is gone
Yet This I Call to Mind
Friends, while it’s OK to be honest with God and express your real feelings like Jeremiah did, it’s not OK to stay there. Jeremiah had every reason to sing the blues and just pitch his faith, but he didn’t. He forced himself to think about God’s character in particular he grabbed onto His faithfulness.
Some of you may think that you can’t help what you’re feeling. I don’t mean for this to sound harsh but you don’t have to allow what you’ve gone through to keep you emotionally entangled and spiritually sidetracked forever. Jeremiah understands your pain. Let’s look now at what Jeremiah latched on to when his world was falling apart.
Verse 21 is really the “hinge” on which the book, and Jeremiah’s life turns: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:” While his outward affliction and inward turmoil pushed him toward despair, Jeremiah forces himself to bring truth to the forefront of his mind. Like a computer that “defaults” to certain settings, each of us have a “despair default.” If we don’t reconfigure our minds, we will slide down the slippery slope of discouragement and lament.
Here’s how it works. If Jeremiah just focused on those things that were filling his mind, he was going to be bummed out. Look again at verses 19 and 20: “I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.”
In order to break out of this pattern and cycle of despair, Jeremiah needed to be vigilant about what he allowed himself to think about. He brought other things to mind He called them up from his hard drive and made himself think about what was true in verse 21: “Yet this I call to mind…”
Friends, what Jeremiah did was something we need to do as well. We need to engage our will, and purposely and deliberately focus on things other than our problems. Force yourself to remember truth. Recall a verse. Remember a time when God demonstrated his grace and mercy to you. Push God’s faithfulness to the front of your mind, even when you don’t feel like doing it. When you do, God will begin to restore hope to your life by crowding out the hopelessness that threatens to shipwreck your life.
What to Call to Mind
Now, what did Jeremiah call to mind? What did he focus on while he was hurting? What did he lock onto when he was trapped by all the rubble in his life?
Verses 22 and 23 contain four phrases. Each one raises and answers an important question that we need to consider.
1. Why doesn’t God destroy me? This is not a theoretical question. We all walk closer to the edge than we think. There is a thin line between disaster and prosperity, joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, life and death.
Here is Jeremiah’s answer: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed” (3:22a). Why doesn’t God destroy us? He could and He should. He could because He is God and He should because we are sinners. Our sins would consume us if it were not for His great love.
The Hebrew word for “love” is hesed, a word rich with meaning. It has within it the idea of “loyal love,” of love that will not let go because it does not depend on emotion but on an act of the will. God was sticking by the people He had chosen. God loves us because He promised to love us and nothing can cause Him to break His promise.
My pastor friend Ray Pritchard makes the following point: “As bad as things are, if it weren’t for God, things would be much worse.” That seems obvious, and perhaps it is, but we need to hear it again. If it weren’t for God, and for God’s love, no matter how bad things are in your life right now, they would be much worse without the Lord.
2. How do I know God will keep on loving me? The second half of verse 22 gives the answer to this question: “for his compassions never fail.” I want you to notice the word compassions is plural. That’s very unusual in English in fact; my grammar checker didn’t like the word because it had an “s” on it. But, God’s compassions are plural because his mercy is intense and limitless. It comes in rolling waves from the very presence of God. The rivers of mercy run fully and constantly, and never run dry.
The word compassion comes from the Hebrew word “womb” and shows us the gentle feeling of concern and care that God has for us. The word literally means, “to be moved in the heart out of love for another.” God’s compassion emanates from deep within Him and floods our lives. He is moved in his heart when He thinks about you.
3. When will God give me what I need? Verse 23a gives a word of hope for each of us to latch onto: “They are new every morning.” What if you woke up every morning to find your purse full of money, your car full of gas, your refrigerator full of food, and your youth and vitality fully restored? That’s the way it is with God’s compassions and mercies. You can never use them up.
Do you remember the story of God providing manna for His people when they were in the wilderness? God sent it every day (except on the Sabbath). The people were instructed to gather as much as they wanted because it would never run out. However, they weren’t allowed to store it (except on the day before the Sabbath). In order to drive home his point, God told them that if they tried to save it, the maggots would come and spoil the manna. They were to gather just enough for each day, eat it that day, and then gather more the next day. This is how God taught His people to trust Him day by day to meet their daily needs.
This means at least two things:
- We never have to live on yesterdays’ blessings. They are “new” every morning.
- God’s blessings are never early but they aren’t late either. They are “new” every morning.
Brothers and sisters, let’s learn this lesson God’s mercies come day by day. They come when we need them not earlier and not later. God gives us what we need today. If we needed more, he would give us more. When we need something else, He will give us that as well. Nothing we truly need will ever be withheld from us.
4. What is my hope for living? This question is answered in the last part of verse 23: “Great is your faithfulness.” Jeremiah was rocked by the limitless supply of God’s grace offered to him. Whatever hard things we go through, we must never doubt God’s faithfulness. We are to celebrate His great faithfulness every day!
God’s Faithfulness Fleshed Out
Before we wrap up this morning, I want to give you 3 practical ways that you can experience God’s great faithfulness in your life:
1. When you struggle. All of us experience hard times in our lives. Some of you are struggling with sickness, financial pressure, grief, or even depression. Friends, do what Jeremiah did when your mind is flooded with difficulties. Choose to focus on God’s love, mercy and faithfulness. He does not promise to prevent problems from coming into our lives, but He does promise to go through them with us. Can you do that right now? Call to mind what you know to be true. God is faithful He will always be there for you.
2. When you are tempted. Some of you are faced with some incredible temptations on a daily basis. Did you know that because God is faithful, He will always provide a way out for you so that you do not have to give in to them? 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”
What tempts you? What’s your fatal flaw? In what ways are you drawn to do something that you know is not right? Remember this: God’s faithfulness will give you a way out! You do not have to give in He knows exactly the limits of what we can bear. God’s faithfulness is tied directly to providing us a way to say “no” to sin. When we give in to sin it’s because our focus is on the attractiveness of the temptation, rather than on God’s faithfulness to deliver us from that situation.
3. When you mess up. Would you be ashamed for others to know everything you’ve said, done and thought in the last 7 days? Or the last three months? Or the last 5 years? If you know yourself at all, you know how much you mess up and how desperately you need God’s mercy.
This past Thursday morning, I took Emily and Lydia to the bus stop. As we were driving, I reached over and tickled Lydia’s knee. When she jumped, the seatbelt snagged her earring and pulled it out. That might not seem too bad, but she had just had her ears pierced on Saturday and they were still sore. The earrings were supposed to stay in for 6 weeks until everything healed. We looked everywhere for the fallen earring and eventually had to drive back down to Bloomington that morning to get a new one and have her ear re-pierced.
I felt terrible. What kind of dad am I? When I got home from looking for the earring, Lydia came up to me, wrapped her arms around me and said, “Dad. I love you and forgive you. Don’t be mad at yourself. Accidents happen.” She then told me that she had just memorized Ephesians 4:32 for AWANA and quoted it for me: “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”
Lydia gave me a gift Thursday morning the gift of forgiveness. That’s the same thing God gives to us when we sin and confess it before Him. Because He is faithful, He never tires of extending forgiveness to us. I love 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
God’s Faithfulness Illustrated
To say that God is faithful is to say that God is committed to you. He is steadfastly devoted to you and is looking to pull you out from under the rubble of your life. Because He is faithful, He protects you as well.
The story is told of a young man who was an atheist and was training to be an Olympic diver. The only spiritual influence in his life came from a Christian friend who tried to share the gospel with him whenever he could. The diver wasn’t very interested in spiritual matters and made that known loud and clear.
One night the diver went to the indoor pool at the college he attended. The lights were all off, but the moon was bright, so there was plenty of light to practice his dives. The young man climbed up to the highest diving board and as he turned his back to the pool on the edge of the board and extended his arms out, he saw his shadow on the wall. The shadow was in the shape of a cross. Instead of diving, he knelt down and finally asked Jesus to come into his life.
As the man stood up on the diving board, a maintenance man walked in and turned the lights on. The diver gasped in horror the pool had been drained for repairs!
Friends, God has been faithful to us in so many ways even when we don’t see it. Some of you are standing on a diving board today. You’re headed for trouble unless you turn your focus to the Cross where God’s faithfulness is fully demonstrated.
Let’s pray. (In our moments of fear, through our tears we can see that you are faithful. You’ve always been faithful to us).
