So Faithful

“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;” (De 7:9 AV)

What an encouraging verse.  The faithfulness of God cannot be adequately described, but we will try!  When we read of the history of Israel we are amazed at the patience and mercy of God.  I am starting the book of Judges tomorrow.  This book of the history of Israel in their younger years is the record of a nation that repeatedly fled the help and provision of God.  They went after the false gods of their neighbors.  Time and again, the LORD brought them back with mercy and compassion.  Reading of the forty years wondering, we are struck with how patient God was with this nation.  Then we read of the history of the kings and it strikes us that throughout hundreds of years of unfaithfulness, God still brought them back to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall and the temple. We know they rejected Jesus, but the God of faithfulness sent His Son the second time to a welcoming and believing Jewish nation.  Time and again, the LORD keeps mercy on those who share a covenant with Him.  Much like Israel, the New Testament saint also shares a covenant with God.  We are His children by the blood of Jesus Christ.  We have the covenant of adoption.  We have the covenant of eternal life and glorification.  We have this covenant founded upon God’s grace and not on our merit.  Therefore, the faithful God of the Old Testament is the same faithful God today.

Last week, the LORD spoke to us regarding strength.  We learned that He will strengthen us.  We learned He expects us to offer all our strength before He adds His own.  We learned the source of His strength is unlimited and granted by grace.  We learned there is nothing too hard for God.  We learned a lot about the strength of God.  The other side of the coin is His faithfulness.  God will not abandon us especially when we need Him the most.  What kind of God would do that?  We don’t do that with our own children, do we?  We don’t turn our backs on them when they are going through a hard time.  Self-inflicted or not, we take pity on them and try to ease their burden in any way that we can.  There are times when we must require them to go through hardships when we could take them away.  They need to do this so they can, one day, do the same for their children.  But we never expect them to endure something we know they cannot endure.  Even when they are not living as they should, they are still our children.  We still love them.  They can still call at any time for any reason and they know Mom and Dad will love them unconditionally.

A parent’s love is no comparison to the love and faithfulness of God.  There are many promises regarding the manifestation of God’s faithfulness that appear in the Bible.  Faithfulness must have an object.  That would be us.  Faithfulness must also have manifestation.  When two people pledge their lives to one another, one of the ways in which they promise this faithfulness is to hold one to the other.  They promise to refrain from any relationship that would compromise the one to which they are pledged.  But there are other ways faithfulness is manifested.  Showing up to do one’s duties, forgiving transgressions, or caring for the needs of others as one had promised to do.  When the Bible tells us God is faithful, we take that statement as absolute.  We should never doubt it.  We should assume it to be true and seek to see the ways in which God is faithful.  Our challenge is seeing God’s faithfulness and how He is working that out in the middle of our situation.