What is God like? - #4 - God is Faithful

God is Faithful

    Perhaps like many of us these days, you have had people make promises to you who then failed to make good on them. Unfortunately this is not uncommon in our day. Or maybe you have been someone who could not follow through on a promise you made to someone. The people on both sides of this equation are hurt and disappointed. For the many of us in this situation, we then are unable to trust others to any degree, and even feel that God has let us down somehow. God's faithfulness can change our minds and heal our disappointments.
    Have you ever noticed that the Bible is separated into two big chunks called "covenants?" There is one that's "old" and there's one that's "new." This idea of covenants is the big idea governing the structure and plan of the whole Bible, and even history as we know it. Let's just put it this way - God is serious about covenants. As I had previously mentioned, a covenant is an agreement between two parties for life or for death. It's not a contract, because there's no buy out or weasel out clause. There's no way out of this kind of an agreement. And it's made with an eternal being, so it is perpetual throughout time. The faithfulness of God is directly linked to the covenant nature of God. God made promises and kept them.
    When the great flood was coming and Noah had built the ark for God, and then saved the only living beings on the planet, God remembered His covenant and saved them. After Abraham had gone to the land that God showed him, God remembered His covenant and established it with Abraham. God then promised that he would make of Abraham a great nation, and He did. Later, God promised to bring Abraham's tribes up out of slavery to a land flowing with milk and honey, and He did. He promised to raise up a king with a heart for God and He blessed David and caused him to become the greatest King of Israel. God then promised, through David, to raise up a King that would be King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and He did, through Jesus Christ, who reigns from the right hand of God the Father. And through Jesus God instituted a New Covenant that brings into one all of the families and tribes of the Earth, which was a promise from the early times of the Genesis. And one day we all will stand before the Great Throne of God in His full kingdom, world without end.
   God is also faithful to particular individuals. He answers the prayers of the most unlikely characters, just because they ask in faith. Gideon was a young man that lived in a time when God's people were being harassed by a group of thugs that were continually raiding them, the Midianites. In response to the people's prayers for deliverance, God sent a prophet to announce that He would help them. Then an angel showed up in Gideon's winepress, where he was hiding from the thugs in order to thresh a little wheat. The angel greets Gideon, “The LORD is with you, you mighty man of valor!” Then Gideon responded by sniveling and complaining back, “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites.” Mighty man of valor indeed. At this point Gideon is more of a Chicken-Heart than a Brave-heart. The angel tells Gideon that he is God's man of power for the hour, and to go kick those Midianites out of town. And so what does Gideon do next? With the angel of God right there in front of him, he asks for more assurance! The angel asks for a feast to be prepared and placed on a rock. Then the angel stuck out his staff and the whole feast was consumed in fire. Poof! Just like that! Gone. Gideon's response was something just short of a heart attack. He responds, “Alas, O Lord GOD! For I have seen the Angel of the LORD face to face.” He realized that it was not just any angel but the Angel of The Lord, the very Presence of God Himself! After this Gideon did go out to deal the Midianites, but not after asking for several more assurances that God was with him. You might have heard of Gideon's fleeces and how he beat the great army of the Midianites with just three hundred men with trumpets and torches. You can read about that in Judges 6 and 7.
    Hezekiah was a king in Israel who had a great answer to prayer from God. he had become ill and the prophet Isaiah had come to give him the message, “Thus says the LORD: ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live.’ ” Hezekiah cried out to God in the anguish of his heart and God heard him, healed him of his illness and gave him another fifteen years of life. Certainly this shows that God is faithful to answer the prayers of someone that is a friend and faithful servant of God.
      But what if you are a no good, downright thief and criminal? What if you are the kind of person that gave your life to crime and were condemned to death by the laws of the land and the authorities of your nation? In Luke 23:42 the thief on the the cross, having heard the other man on the cross with Jesus mocking him and after rebuking him turned to Jesus and said, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom." Jesus promised him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
    God also promises to answer our prayers and watch over us, even when we stumble and fall, and are faithless. Psalm 145:14 says that, "The LORD upholds all who fall, and raises up all who are bowed down," and 2Timothy 2:13 further promises, "If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself." In Phillipians 1:6 there is the promise "that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." And in the Thessalonian letters Paul assures his readers of God's faithfulness: "Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.(1Th. 5:23-24) And in 2Th. 3:3,  "But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and guard you from the evil one." And last of all, in the very end of time Jesus will come back as the One named Faithful and True(Rev. 19:11).