What is the most common sin found out there in the world as well as in the church of Jesus Christ? There could be a lot of possible answers, I suppose. I wonder if the sin of unfaithfulness may not be the greatest, the most common of sins. Because it is defined in so many different ways, it touches so many different areas of life. Failure to keep promises.
People go to the store and they put this pile of goods on the desk for the clerk to go through and she goes through and rings it up and hands the credit slip over to the person and the person signs it. How many times is that signing of the voucher, the credit slip, not fulfilled? People pile up debts, they don't pay their debts, they don't keep their promises. Those who buy cars look for a car sale by trying to get the best price they can.
They get the dealer to give them the very best price possible and sometimes don't follow through with the financial responsibility they're incurring. We see it often too in the marriage vows, don't we? People who make promises to one another and then do not keep them. Or people who are unmarried and are not faithful to their future marriage partner because of moral looseness. But certainly the greatest example of unfaithfulness has to be the unfaithfulness that all people show toward God.
All of us are guilty to some degree of unfaithfulness, but tonight we don't want to talk about our failures. We want to talk about the one who is faithful and that is God. As I said this morning, there may not be an area where the difference between us and God, at least ethically, is so clear as in this area. The faithfulness of God. I'd like to invite you to open your Bible, please, to the book of Deuteronomy chapter 7. Deuteronomy 7 and verse 9.
We're coming here into the middle of a context where the Lord is telling His people of His desire for them, their preciousness to Him, that they're a holy people. And then He says in verse 9, know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God. The faithful God who keeps His covenant and His loving kindness to a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments, but repays those who hate Him to their faces to destroy them. He will not delay with him who hates Him.
He will repay him to his face. Therefore you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments which I am commanding you today to do them. The Lord your God, He says, is a faithful God. He is faithful to His word, faithful to His promises. Then turn over to chapter 32 and verse 4 where the same thought is expressed again. Here Moses is speaking to the people of Israel before he leaves them and he is reminding them of God's great faithfulness to them as a people.
Verse 3 says, for I proclaim the name of the Lord, a scribe greatness to our God, the Rock. His work is perfect, for all His ways are just, a God of faithfulness. And without injustice, righteous and upright is He. He is a God of faithfulness. Well now to Psalm 89 where we'll spend a little more time. In Psalm 89 we have a psalm that elaborates for us the faithfulness of God. Its author is said to be Ethan the Ezraite. And he says, I will sing of the loving kindness of the Lord forever.
To all generations I will make known thy faithfulness with my mouth. For I have said loving kindness will be built up forever. In the heavens thou wilt establish thy faithfulness. I have made a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn to David my servant. I will establish your seed forever and build up your throne to all generations. Here we have a psalm about God's faithfulness. The term is used again in verse 5. It is used in verse 8, in verse 24, in verse 33. And then finally in verse 49.
So over and over again in the psalm the faithfulness of God is expounded. First the faithfulness of God to all generations in verse 1. The writer says, I will sing of your faithfulness to all generations. Generation after generation. As one is born and another leaves the earth, God is faithful through all generations. In verses 5-10 God is faithful to His people. His people Israel. In verses 11-13 we see God's faithfulness to His creation. The heavens are thine, it says.
The world all it contains, the north, south and so on. And then in verses 14-18 God is faithful among all the nations. When you hit verse 19 you come to the real illustration in psalm 89 of God's faithfulness. It is God's covenant with David and his descendants. Once thou did speak in vision to thy godly ones, and did say, I have given help to one who is mighty. I have exalted one chosen from the people. I have found David my servant.
With my holy oil I have anointed him, with whom my hand will be established. My arm also will strengthen him. The enemy will not deceive him, nor the son of wickedness afflict him, that I shall crush his adversaries before him and strike those who hate him. And my faithfulness and my loving kindness will be with him, and in my name his horn will be exalted.
And so beginning with verse 19 and through verse 37, the psalmist who is writing some generations after David, expresses to us the faithfulness of God to David and to all of his descendants. When we talk about the faithfulness of God, whether it be to Moses and the people of Israel on that day, or to David and his descendants, or to us today, what are we talking about? The word faithfulness in the Hebrew comes from a root word that means stability. It refers to a prop or to a support.
The idea is that God is our stay when we falter. Its first use in the New Testament is found in Exodus chapter 17 verse 12. You may recall in that chapter the people of Israel are fighting their enemies down in the valley. And there's Moses and his two helpers up on the mountaintop. They're holding up his hands. The first time that the word faithfulness is used is used in that context of them supporting his hands, providing the prop for him. God is our stay. God is our support.
God is our stability. He cannot fail. The word faithful or the idea of faithfulness is found from the book of Exodus all the way through the end of the New Testament. The manifestation of this attribute of God is found in numerous ways. We have touched upon the fact that God is one who keeps his promises. Hebrews 10 verse 23, the last part of the verse says, He is faithful that promised. And here in Psalm 89 we have an example of God's faithfulness to Israel and to David and his descendants.
However, Ethan who is writing this Psalm has a problem. Notice in verse 38, after talking about God's faithfulness, he immediately shows us another side of his heart. He says, but thou hast cast off and rejected, thou hast been full of wrath against thine anointed. Thou hast spurned the covenant of thy servant, thou hast profaned his crown in the dust. So as he writes here, he seems to be saying, God has not been faithful. He seems to be saying, we have not experienced God's faithfulness.
God promised all of these things to the creation, to the nations, and to David and his descendants. But look at what's happened. We don't know precisely the historical circumstances surrounding Ethan's writing of this hymn, this Psalm of God's faithfulness. But apparently there was one of David's descendants who had experienced some military defeat. And the enemies of Israel were laughing and scorning the people of God.
And Ethan is writing in the turmoil of that milieu with all of the doubt about God's faithfulness attacking his heart, and he expresses it very candidly in these verses. Verse 46 he says, how long, O Lord, wilt thou hide thyself forever? Of course we've never felt that way, have we? And of course we all have. We know the Bible teaches that God is faithful. It is seen over and over again, God has proclaimed himself a God of faithfulness.
And yet in the midst of our circumstances, like Ethan, we come to points where we say, God, where is your faithfulness? How long will it be, O Lord, that I must be in this situation? How long will my enemies attack me? How long will they succeed in their attacks against me? And he cries out in verse 49, where are thy former loving kindnesses, O Lord? He grants that they've happened in the past, but Lord, what about them now?
Those which thou didst swear to David in thy faithfulness, remember, O Lord, the reproach of thy servants, how I do bear in my bosom the reproach of all the many peoples with which thine enemies have reproached, O Lord, with which they have reproached the footsteps of thine anointed. And then verse 52, blessed be the Lord forever. Amen and amen. And so he basically writes this poem at a time when he's under tremendous pressure. When things are dark, it's gloomy and cloudy.
He doesn't see a lot of light. And then right at the very end of it, he injects this note of praise, blessed be God. And tonight you may be in the midst of a situation like Ethan, and you may feel you've been trampled on, you may feel like your life is in turmoil and mess and it's dark and gloomy. But there is an end to it. And God will again show himself faithful to you. And he concludes the psalm by saying, blessed be the Lord forever.
Even in the midst of the circumstances he could not understand, which did not seem to match what God had promised, he still says blessed be the Lord. A good example for us. Well, God keeps his promises to his people. He preserves his people as he did Israel. Perhaps the best known verse about God's faithfulness is the one found in the book of Lamentations. Who wrote the book of Lamentations? Jeremiah did. Jeremiah the laughing prophet? Jeremiah the prophet of tears, the weeping prophet.
He was the man that God assigned to prophesy to Israel when Israel went into bondage. He was there and saw Nebuchadnezzar and his armies take off the captives to take them away to Babylon. He saw them besiege the city. He saw the city destroyed. He lived through all of that. He wept because of it. And in the book of Lamentations he writes a poetic elegy, an expression of mournful feelings about what's happened. In the book of Lamentations, we can't see it in the English.
I wish that I knew Hebrew so I could appreciate this more. But in chapters 1, 2 and 4 there are 22 verses. There are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Each verse of those three chapters begins with a succeeding letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So the alphabet is repeated three times. In chapter 3 there are 66 verses. What he does in chapter 3 is to devote three verses to each letter. So they come in blocks of three. So you can see something of the poetic structure of the book.
In this book he writes about what he has seen in Israel. And he writes about his feelings, the terrible state of God's people in this city. And as he writes about his broken heart and he weeps out his crushed spirit, he breaks out in the middle of chapter 3 in that famous verse, great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. It is good for us to remember God preserves His people even when everything seems to be going wrong.
Even when there is a captivity and what we have thought we had gained has been destroyed as in the case with Jerusalem. We must still remember as did Jeremiah, great is thy faithfulness. His loving kindness, his faithfulness is new every morning. We as God's people are preserved today as well in the midst of our suffering. We have a New Testament verse about this, 1 Peter chapter 4 and verse 19. Peter is writing to saints who are suffering. He tells them not to be surprised at their suffering.
Faithfulness is appointed to God's people. Indeed, they are to rejoice in this period of suffering. It is God's work. And so he says in verse 19, therefore let those also who suffer according to the will of God entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right. Even when we suffer for doing what is right, we must entrust our souls to God because He is faithful. God is faithful to keep His promises and faithful to preserve His people.
There is another aspect of God's faithfulness that we don't think of quite as often and that is that God is faithful in chastising His people as well. The psalmist says in Psalm 119, Lord, thou in faithfulness hast afflicted me. God is faithful to chastises. Chastisement is not punishment, but it's training. It's putting us through certain experiences so that we learn lessons that are important for life.
Listen with me to Hebrews 12, which again is a New Testament expression of God's faithfulness in this way. Hebrews 12. Verse 5 says, You have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him. For those whom the Lord loves, He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives. It is for discipline that you endure.
God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there whom His Father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we have earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time, as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.
All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. And so He tells us here that God purposes to train us, to correct us, to bring us through experiences that will show us how God wants us to live. And He says God's purpose in this is that we might be righteous and thus know peace in our lives. It is for our good. God is faithful to chasten His people.
Another aspect of God's faithfulness to us is that God cleanses us. One of the best known verses of the New Testament, I suppose, that all of us have learned, 1 John 9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. God's faithfulness is seen in cleansing His people from their sins. Then God's faithfulness is seen in answer to prayer.
Hear my prayer, O Lord, says the psalmist, give ear to my supplications, in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness. God answers prayer. He is faithful in that respect. But there's one more way in which I think it's important for us to look at God's faithfulness before I go on to something else. That is found in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. In this chapter, He begins to lay out before us how important it is that we not fail the Lord, as did the people of Israel.
He reminds them of Israel's failure in the past despite their many spiritual privileges. But He says in verse 6, these things happened as examples for us that we should not crave evil things as they did, that we should not be idolaters as they were, that we should not be immoral as they were, that we should not try the Lord as some of them did or grumble as some of them did.
All of these things, He says, happened as an example and they are written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have come. For let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. No trial has overtaken you but such as is common to men. And God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted or tried beyond what you are able to bear. But with the temptation will provide the way of escape also that you may be able to endure it.
God in His faithfulness provides for us a way of escape. That doesn't mean an easy way out, by the way. It doesn't mean that God is going to put the pressure on us and then He is going to say, oh by the way if you want to escape from this situation here is a side door that will get you out of it real easy. But what He is saying is that God provides a way out of the trial that is pleasing to Him and which will help us.
And the promise here is that God will never allow so much to come upon us that we should be crushed by it. There is something called the Plymsol mark. Years ago the British Parliament passed a law that required a series of striping or marks to be painted on ships, the merchant ships. We still have these today. If you go to an area where there are ships you will notice that there are the lines painted on them and often the numbers corresponding to the depth of the ship.
And that is what it is about. The Plymsol mark is the top line in a merchant vessel or the load line. It is named after a man named Samuel Plymsol because he was the reformer in Parliament who pushed for this. There was a tendency on the part of some merchant marines to overload the ships. And so they calculated what the mark ought to be for the ship to be loaded without sinking it even in bad storms.
And that mark became the load mark or the Plymsol mark that was named after this member of Parliament. Likewise, God has a mark on my life and on yours, a load line. And he knows when the waters of trial reach that line and he will not surpass it. God is faithful to that. God is never going to put so much on us that it will sink us in the storm. Indeed God's faithfulness means stable and because of the load that is there, there is stability even in the waters of storm. God is faithful.
Now, when we have application of these thoughts that we have talked about in the manifestation of God's faithfulness, let's remind ourselves that when we fail, God is still faithful. I'm glad for that, aren't you? If we believe not, Paul writes to Timothy, if we believe not, yet he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. The Lord is faithful, writes the apostle, who shall establish you and keep you from the evil one. We can depend upon the Lord.
Some of you are familiar with Chalmers, who has done some writing, a Scottish churchman of another generation. He wrote these words, When I walk by the wayside, God is along with me. When I enter into company amid all my forgetfulness of him, he never forgets me. In the silent watches of the night when my eyelids are closed, my spirit has sunk into unconsciousness. The observant eye of him, who never slumbers, is upon me. I cannot flee from his presence.
Go where I will, he leads me and watches me and cares for me. The same being who is now at work in the remotest domains of nature and of providence is also at my hand to make more full every moment of my being and to uphold me in the exercise of all my feelings. Well, in the language of someone who lived several generations ago, he is simply reminding us that when we forget God, God doesn't forget us.
How easy it is for us to go through the experiences of a day and come to the end of the day and say, Oh my goodness, I haven't remembered God much today. But despite that, God has never taken his eye off of us. Despite the fact that we may forget him, he remembers us each moment. And then considering God's faithfulness, secondly, let me say, considering God's faithfulness, we should be kept from murmuring against God. Israel murmured against the Lord.
They complained against God. I'm not going to take the time to look up the several scriptures that deal with this, but you see it again and again that God would do something magnificent for Israel. Israel would acknowledge that at the moment, then quickly forget and go right back to her old ways. And over and over and over that cycle appeared. They murmured against God. They did not call God faithful. In fact, by their unbelief, they called God unfaithful.
An application of God's faithfulness is that we need to remember it and not murmur against God. Remember what the Lord has done for us. The writer of 1st Corinthians, Paul, says, Neither murmur ye as some of them murmured and were destroyed by the destroyer. Again in Hebrews 3, the apostle goes at length to talk about the danger of unbelief in the face of God's great faithfulness. The wonder of God's faithfulness really ought to encourage us to be the same.
The third note of application is this, that we ought not to judge God's faithfulness on the basis of how we feel for what we see. Ethan was tending to do that, wasn't he? He writes very transparently and I'm glad God allowed him to do that because it's encouragement to me to know that even a man like this was a man who had some of the same feelings I do. We tend to judge the faithfulness of God upon how we feel or what we see. We pray for a loved one to get better. We pray for healing.
We pray that God will answer a prayer to give new strength to that loved one and it doesn't happen. The disease continues. And we judge God's faithfulness on that. Or we pray that God will give us that job that we're desperately needing. We've been unemployed and we're saying, God, you know my situation. Where's the job? And week after week and month after month it goes by. And we tend to judge God's faithfulness based upon those things. In the midst of our trial it's easy to do that.
But let's remember, let's get beyond that point. Let's get to the end of the psalm and remember, blessed be the name of the Lord. Great is his faithfulness. Even when we don't feel like God's being faithful, even when we don't see God coming through, let's remember the faithfulness of God. And finally I want to say that we should magnify God's faithfulness to all. The psalm says in Psalm 40, I have not hidden thy righteousness within my heart. I have declared thy faithfulness and thy salvation.
We want to declare openly, publicly the faithfulness of God. Psalm 89, 1 again. Let's just go back there for the moment where we began. Psalm 89, 1 where the psalm says, I will sing of the loving kindness of the Lord forever. To all generations I will make known thy faithfulness with my mouth. Now Paul had his old chorus earlier this evening and I grant him it's a very old chorus. But I have one that's older than that and it's based upon this verse. Do you know it?
I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. Is it in our hymnal? Don't tell me our hymnal has it. I'd like for us to sing that because it reminds us that we ought to magnify God's faithfulness to all. It is in there. Amazing, isn't it? 457, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. Let's sing that together. A simple little chorus. If you don't know it, you'll catch on to it quick. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever.
I will sing, I will sing, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. With my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness, thy faithfulness. With my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing, I will sing, I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord. Let's pray together.
Father, this evening we sing from our hearts of your faithfulness, and yet all of us probably have struggles tonight with areas of our lives where we have not experienced as fully that faithfulness as we had hoped to. And we have not seen nor do we feel your faithfulness. We grant, however, that it is true you are faithful. And we turn from our own experience to bow in the light of revelation and to remind ourselves that you are the faithful God. You are faithful to keep and to preserve us.
You have promised to preserve us unto your heavenly kingdom. You are faithful in our trials so that they will not overcome us. You are faithful in chastising us and training us by the experiences of discipline in our lives. You are faithful to forgive us our sins as we open our hearts transparently to confess them. You are faithful in answering prayer. And in a thousand other ways you are faithful. And so we worship you because you keep your word.
We live in a culture that does not honor promises. And we acknowledge to you that that rubs off on us and we also sin by failing to keep our word. In too many ways we are unfaithful. But our prayer deep within our spirit tonight is that you would replace that, that you would transform us and make us faithful. So we might keep our word to others and to you and thus be like you as your sons.
We give thanks to you for this evening that we've been able to study your word together in Jesus' name, amen.