John Gunter: This. Again, really, we we walk around with understandings in our mind about who God is, and that could be right, that could be wrong. I've heard people and and preachers say, if somebody doesn't believe in God, they'll ask, alright, well, what do you believe about God? I probably don't believe in that God either, because we walk around a lot of times with misconceptions about who God is. And so, this study has been really scripture focused on not just who we think God is, but who God reveals himself to be within the pages of scripture.
And so the last few weeks, we've talked about God is holy, God is just. Last week, we talked about God is merciful. And so this week, we're gonna ask a different question. When life is unstable, there's uncertainty in the air, can we trust God to remain who he says he is? How many of you love uncertainty?
Like, if things get too stable, I'm just nervous, I don't know what to do, I just love living in uncertainty. What about when promises get broken, or a plan falls apart, or something you counted on fails? What feeling do you get when that happens? You know, when that happens enough, we stop trusting. Right?
We start kind of planning for things to break down, things to go wrong, we even have names for some of that, Murphy's Law. Right? If it can go wrong, it will. That's a real positive message for you this morning. But this is not because we want to feel this way, it's because we've been conditioned to because life is kind of like that at times.
Faithfulness does matter to us when everything feels uncertain. When things go wrong at your job, you're probably pretty thankful for those people in your life who are still stable, and it feels like there's a there's a place I can go to feel certain again or to feel whole. And so we want that feeling, and we're gonna begin in in Lamentations again, we we talked about last week. We're gonna be a couple of verses before as we start this morning. So, Lamentations chapter three starting in verse 19.
Remember my affliction and my wanderings, the wormwood and the gall, and and that's another way of saying, like, bitterness. Remember this bitterness. My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. You ever been here? Just the bitterness, something's eating at you, a relationship has gone wrong, you lost a job, that friend you thought you had wasn't as good a friend as you thought they were.
And that is a that is a very physical feeling, and and it's hard to even forget. It says, remember this, my soul continually remembers it. It's hard to forget it because the feeling is so strong, the emotions are so strong in this. These are not words written in a comfortable situation, are they? This is telling God everything I I hoped for, all the the faith I had in things, the people I trusted, all of that is gone.
I remember affliction. I remember bitterness. I remember loss. This is deep, isn't it? This is the night where you take this to bed and you wake up at two, 3AM going wide awake, still thinking about that situation.
What do I do about it? How do I change it? I just wanna get past it. I don't wanna be thinking about it anymore, but that feeling, that emotion stays with you. Everything is falling apart.
But I wanna say this to you this morning, God's faithfulness, I don't think we see or recognize God's faithfulness as much when everything's going right. Now, God's faithfulness is what we question when things are going wrong, but I think it's when things go wrong that God is able to show he is faithful. How many of you have been in this situation? You've been in a pit, you've been in a valley, that's the only way you can describe it. You've been in the black hole, the rock bottom.
How many of you have been there, and now you know because you've come out of it, God is faithful? Yes. That is when God's faithfulness is proven. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. Psalm 23.
It doesn't say, I follow God and everything's rosy. It says, even though life happens, even though the valley of the shadow of death happens, I'm not gonna fear it because God is with me, God is faithful. Even in those moments when it feels like everything is going wrong, God is still there. He is still walking beside you. There are seasons, and I know you felt this, when prayers feel unanswered.
Yes? When your best plans, plans that you knew were God's will, you were certain about it, they fell through. They didn't work. There are times when life does not go the way at all that you expected. And the question in those moments is, can God still be trusted when none of this stuff makes sense anymore?
Because I was sure this is the way you wanted me to go, God, and now that's fallen through. Now, what is that feeling within me? Can I trust you, Lord? And to the scripture we talked about last week in verse 21, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. That's the part of the scripture we're gonna focus on today. Great is your faithfulness.
But I wanna call your attention back to verse 21. But this I call to mind. Nothing about this situation has changed, has it? The only thing that has changed, as the writer writes this is I am going to decide to remember this. This I call to mind.
This I bring back to memory, and therefore, because I think on that, I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercy has never come to an end. He is still in the pit. He is still experiencing loss, the destruction of Jerusalem has happened.
He's wondering what in the world is going on. But in the midst of this, he says, I'm gonna think about this. Steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. Mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning.
Great is your faithfulness. He's not reacting to his situation, he's choosing to remember. How often are we guided by the situation? If everything's good in life, I think God's faithful and everything's great. Something goes wrong, we question everything.
I don't know what to do, I feel uncertain, I just don't know where to go from here. And nobody likes that feeling, but you have a choice to remember, and that's why that's why I asked the question I asked earlier. How many of you have been there and come out of it? Because that's exactly what the writer would be doing in this moment, is thinking about, I have been here before, and God has been with me through that. Great is your faithfulness, Lord.
I don't know how I'm gonna get out of this, but I'm gonna quit reacting to the situation and just going with that, and I'm gonna focus back on God who is faithful, who is unmovable, who is there for me. Yes. That changes our mindset, doesn't it? Because if I'm going like this with every little situation that changes, my goodness, I'll be thrown and tossed around, won't you? And I don't like anything about that.
God's faithfulness is not based on our situation, our emotions, our understanding. God's faithfulness is based on who he is, his character, and that's what we need to focus on. In Numbers 23 and verse 19, God is not man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind. Has he said and will he not do it, or has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? I joke sometimes about us always having that Jeremiah twenty nine eleven verse on our walls.
We need to get rid of that because that's gonna take fifty years for God to fulfill. I have plans to prosper you, says the Lord. Context is fifty to seventy years later. We need to put this on our wall. God is not a man that he should lie or a son of man that he should change his mind.
Has he has he said and will he not do it? That's what you need to call to mind. Has God said something that he won't make come true? Has he spoken and will he not fulfill it? That's what needs to be on our mind when things aren't going exactly right.
Not, oh, woe is me, God, where are you? And and that happens. And by the way, God is okay with that. Go read Psalms. Psalmists are are like that all the time.
Oh, God, where are you? Turn your face back toward me. I don't know where you are. God knows who we are and how we how we do this, but God does not change. We do.
God is faithful. Let's be honest. We often evaluate God on what we see or what we feel or what what is happening in the moment. That's us. God is not changing, He's not walking away from us, He's not just upset and just all over the place kind of erratic like we can be.
God is faithful. God is who he is. This is about his character. When life feels unstable, God's not. When life seems all over the place, God's not.
God is still there. God is there for you in the worst of the worst. In verse 24, back in Lamentations chapter three, the Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.
Man, what a thing to kind of ponder in a moment of uncertainty and of darkness, and everything is going wrong. The Lord is my portion. The Lord is all I need. How many of you have ever had a bad day at work and you walked home to your family, everything got way better? Because you experienced love, you experienced a certain level of certainty, your people are there.
All of a sudden, priorities, your focus changed. Right? From that situation of what all is going on, all of a sudden, I'm okay because I'm I'm surrounded by people who love me and care for me. I might not have felt that way at work, but right now, I I feel that. And we do that same thing with God, or we should be.
All I need is to know that God is there for me. The Lord is my portion, says my soul. Therefore, I will hope in him. Because the the alternative, the thing we try to do a lot of times is to hope in our situation. Because if the situation's going well, if everything's going well in my job, in my life, I'm making enough money, then I have those positive feelings.
Then I have hope for the future. But as soon as that changes at all, we lose all of that. Therefore, I will hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, the soul who seeks him. And we've got to make this shift, I think, from observing God to trusting God.
From observing and trusting in our own situation to observing and trusting who God is, that he is not moving, he's not changing the circumstances, the outcomes, the instability, that's not God. God is who he is. In Deuteronomy seven verse nine, know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. That's just a bible way of saying a lot. How how long is a generation?
A thousand of those. God loves you that much. The scripture keeps trying to say it, for God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten son. Right? He wants to show God wants to show you that, a, he is faithful and he loves you.
That's why he is faithful, because he needs to pour out this love, and he keeps it. In Hebrews 10 verse 23, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is what church? You just need to say that out loud. That's why we said that this morning. For he who promised is Faithful.
Faithful. For he who promised is faithful. For he who promised is faithful. Maybe that's what you need to walk around with this week. That it feels overwhelming, and whatever your situation is, I need to be reminded.
He who promised is faithful. He who promised is faithful. Has he not said something that he won't fulfill? God is faithful. We may trust our plans, we may trust people, all of those things are gonna let us down at times.
Right? Because even if like myself, I don't ever want to let you down, I want to be there for you, but I'll tell you what, if it's not written on my calendar, we might not have had that conversation in my mind. Yeah? It's just because everything is going on, and we're just imperfect people. God doesn't have that limitation.
God God is not messed up by didn't put it on the calendar. God is faithful no matter what. God is not limited. In second Timothy two verse 11, the saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure, we all we will also reign with him.
If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. This is why there's some interesting things going on here. Because I grew up thinking and being taught that every time I messed up, I was separated. Messed up, maybe that's too nice for word.
When I sinned, let's just use the word. When I sinned, I was immediately separated from God. God wanted nothing to do with me. I was out. Again, that vision of God just hovering over the book of life ready to erase my name.
But notice what this says, if we have died with him, we will also, what? Live with him. If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will deny us. If you choose to deny him, he will deny you.
Not, did you stub your toe and say the wrong word. If you choose to deny him, he will deny you. Notice 13. 13, you may struggle with today depending on how you were taught. If we are faithless, he remains faithful.
God does not run away from you because you messed up or your faith is waning a little bit this week. Or maybe it's not waning, maybe it's it's down in the dumps. God remains faithful. And it says, for he cannot deny himself. Faithful is who he is.
That is his identity. Doesn't matter the kind of week you're having and the struggle you're having, God is still faithful. Now, you you shouldn't look at this and say, well, I'll live the way I wanna live then. I'll just go on sinning so the grace may abound, and the apostle Paul says, may that never be. No.
But this is who God is. He doesn't run away from you because you had a bad week or you you did something you said something you didn't wanna say, you didn't live out the your week the way you wanted to. God is still faithful. If we deny him, he will deny us. You choose to deny God and say, I want nothing to do with you, he'll say, okay.
That's your choice. But even when we are faithless, he remains faithful. We talked last week about the prodigal son and that God, even before the son returns as the son's returning, remember the son has this whole speech about how I'm gonna apologize, hopefully, I'll make it right, hopefully, he'll just take me back as a servant. And in that parable, as Jesus is telling it, the father is sprinting towards the son. He hadn't even heard this speech he's come up with yet.
God is already running back to you. All you have to turn and say, I wanna come back. And God's going, here we go. I'm ready. And that is a beautiful picture of God's love, of God's faithfulness.
God has not turned away from you just because something has gone wrong in your life. You know there are moments in our lives where we say we trust God, but we worry anyway. Yes? Come on. You can say it.
Yes? Now, you know the feeling too. Right? Because you get how many of you experienced peace when you actually gave that thing to God? Been there?
Cast your burden on him. Right? My yoke is easy, my burden is light. When you do that, it's a different feeling, but sometimes we just don't do that very well. God, I wanna trust you, but, oh, I've got a lot of worry.
This situation seems worth the worry. I need to worry about it. We say we will follow, we decide this morning, I'm gonna follow you, and then we kinda hesitate. Or we think we're all in in a moment, and then we're not. We say we believe, but then we act like we don't believe, unsure about what God's going to do.
And then there are times we're not just weak, we are unfaithful. We're not faithful to what he wants, we're not faithful to what God desires for our life. In scripture here in second Timothy, he says, even when you're unfaithful even if if we are faithless, he remains faithful. And think about it, those of you who are parents in here. I know my kids have never done anything wrong, but I imagine you all have.
Your kid does something wrong, you don't say, You're not my kid anymore, I want nothing to do with you, do you? Done with you, get out, Logan. You're nine, figure it out. He's not here saying that today. We don't do that, do we?
And we are imperfect people. Think about God as the perfect father. You didn't have a perfect father. I didn't either. But God is our perfect father.
He doesn't turn away and leave us just because we do something wrong, God is still faithful. We're used to this. If we are inconsistent towards other people, people kind of pull back from us. Yes? Or if people are inconsistent to you, you start pulling back from them.
Yes? If we fail or if they fail us, trust is broken, and you kind of okay. We assume God is going to act toward us the same way that we would act toward somebody who breaks that trust. And so we put on God this idea that, well, if it were me, this is how I would act. And so we end up building this barrier between us and God, thinking there's no way he could fix this.
Because we have memories that I can't let go of. Right? That trust is broken, I'm gonna remember that, I'm gonna relive some of those feelings, all of those things. And so we put that on God assuming that because we've done that to him, that's how he feels towards us. But it says, if we are even faithless, he remains faithful.
God does not change his nature because of our week or what we have done. From Psalm 89 verse 30, if his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. Well, how does this fit into this whole faithfulness thing, John? That sounds pretty rough. The second part of that is, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness.
How many of you know when you do things that are wrong, there are consequences? You may be able to restore a relationship, you may be able to fix some things, but there are consequences. That's what it's saying here. They violate my statutes, do not keep my commandments, and I will punish their transgression with a rod and their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness. So if anyone in here is carrying around this feeling of, I have done too much for God to forgive me, stop it.
God is not going to remove his steadfast love toward you, or it says, be false to my faithfulness. Change who I am. God still loves you. He is still faithful. And yet, we sit here and tell ourselves, I've done it too many times.
I've apologized too many times, I've been inconsistent. God, you know, the last time when I made a big deal of it and said, I'll never do it again, and I did it again anyway. Yeah. And we carry those things, and God says, I'm never going to remove my steadfast love. I'm never going to not be faithful because that's who he is.
So God's faithfulness means he does not stop being who he is just because of what you have done. God does not become unfaithful just because we are. Even though we would carry that around with us as we do with relationships, God is able to let that go. That his love is such that he can overlook those things and bring you back into the relationship, not holding those things over you, waiting for everything to be perfect. And so, this morning, God is holy, God is just, God is merciful, and church, God is faithful.
Everything in life is going to shift and change, and if we're chasing the perfect outcome every time to have peace or happiness or trust in God, that's a wild roller coaster I don't want to get on. But if we understand that God does not change, that he is there for us, he is ready for us to return, he is looking for us, that's a different feeling. He remains the same. The question this morning is not whether God will remain faithful, the question is whether you will trust him. The question is whether you will return to him.
Because as we've read week after week, he's waiting for you. There's not something you need to recite to convince God that he needs to let you back in. You don't need to come up with some eloquent speech, you don't need to promise that thing again, I'll never do it again. You think God doesn't know our weaknesses? We just read that in Hebrews.
We we we don't have this person who who is not able to to sympathize with our weakness. We we have this high priest that understands who we are. You understand who he is. That he is not going to take that steadfast love or that faithfulness away from you. So this morning, I wanna encourage you, turn back to God.
If this is your first time, turn to God, be baptized into his name, let's begin that walk with him. We wanna walk beside you, we wanna encourage you, we wanna get you involved, We wanna bring you into the fold. Some of our newest members are are are are the people just really really going after it. Starting things, really getting a fire lit under things. We we'd love to start that with you.
If if something's happened this week or or lately that has really tested your faith and and it's it's felt like that that pit, that shadow of the valley of death, let's pray about it together. Because it's not about you, God is faithful, he is ready. Are you?