God's Character (11)
God's Character • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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As we continue to explore God’s character, please turn to Exo. 34 and Psalm 115.
This morning we’ll look at God’s faithfulness.
Question: What could Penguins teach us about God’s faithfulness? I’m not going to answer just yet, but we’ll waddle our way through this sermon and get there. In the meantime, consider this – Theology is the study of God. Whenever we “study” God, one of the challenges is to connect theological truths with how we experience life. To put it another way, how does God’s reality, truth and character as revealed in Scripture apply to, interact with and affect our world and lives? For the most part, it’s not a difficult task. However, there are events and situations that don’t seem to fit neatly into our theology or might appear to conflict with some of our theological understandings. For instance, how do we navigate God’s love and sovereignty when there is so much abuse and chaos? Or how do we navigate God’s faithfulness when we might feel alone or abandoned or when we’ve been faithful to Him and everything falls apart? What do Penguins have to do with God’s faithfulness?
I’d like to consider three questions regarding God’s faithfulness.
1) What does faithfulness mean?
2) To what or whom is God faithful?
3) How should we respond to God’s faithfulness?
Let’s first look at Exodus 34. Remember the context here – God led Israel out of Egypt - in captivity for over 400 years. Moses is on Mt. Sinai speaking with God. This is the first time that Scripture records God revealing His character in detail. Furthermore, this is the most quoted passage in all Scripture – so there’s something to this.
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
1) What does faithfulness mean?
If each person here were to define faithfulness, we would end up with many different definitions. Why? Because we each have our own experiences (good and bad), expectations, and different lenses which influence our perception of God’s faithfulness. So the challenge here, as with any theological issue, is to filter our worldview through Scripture and discard what’s false and cling to what is truth.
So let’s define faithfulness the best we can from Scripture. Faithfulness, as with most Hebrew words, has a broad meaning, but not too broad.
Faithfulness (אֱמֶת,ʾeměṯ) encapsulates the following: Constant, Dependable, Reliable, Security, True and Trustworthy.
Those 6 words form the total core meaning of God’s faithfulness.
So let’s take that definition and answer
2) To what or whom is God faithful?
Out of necessity, I need to summarize the answer.
A) God is faithful to Himself.
Meaning
Everything God does is always consistent with all His attributes (i.e. character).
A.W. Tozer said this,
“God, being who He is, cannot cease to be what He is, and being what He is, He cannot act out of character with Himself.” ~ A.W. Tozer.
God cannot cease to be loving, compassionate, good, gracious, forgiving, just …. God cannot cease to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and immutable. Because God is faithful to be who He is at all times without changing, He is constant, dependable, reliable, trustworthy ….
If God is faithful to Himself, then
B) God is faithful to His promises and covenants.
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?
If God is faithful to Himself, and faithful to His promises and covenants, then
C) God is faithful to the redemption and restoration of humanity, which means He is faithful to us.
This is where we can feel some tension – tension between theological truths and life. Tension that says, “I get that God is faithful – in my head, but in my heart ….” This is something that I appreciate about the biblical authors - they do not hide or minimize this tension. So how do we navigate the tension – especially when bad things happen?
Understand that God’s faithfulness is not about our comfort, our wishes – not about life going the way we think it should. God is not our servant; He’s not a vending machine or our genie in a bottle.
Not only is God faithful to Himself, to His promises, and to us, but I suggest that
God is also God is faithful to the gift of life and freewill, which includes all the good, the bad, and the ugly in this world.
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
tells us that God created humanity and gave humanity dominion or authority over the earth.
The heavens are Yahweh’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of humankind.
God gave humanity authority over the earth with the implication and freedom to steward our world. It was and is our responsibility to subdue the earth, to create peace and order and to overcome chaos. In essence, God gave Adam and Eve the keys to the world, and that comes with great risk – including the propensity for evil. It’s like giving a teenager dominion over their bedroom – it comes with great risks.
God gave humanity dominion, responsibility, purpose to faithfully manage this world – and manage it well and with love. God also gave us the freedom to choose to do life His way or our way – to choose good or evil. This can be a hard pill to swallow, but
Our freewill, with all its risks, is a necessary component of God’s love and faithfulness.
It is my belief, that
God reveals His sovereignty, love, and faithfulness by not violating our freewill by refraining from absolute control over everything that happens.
Therefore,
Difficulties, hard times, challenges, tragedies do not negate God’s faithfulness.
Considering all that we’ve talked about this morning, let’s look at our final question -
3) How should we respond to God’s faithfulness?
Let’s talk about penguins for a moment. Recently I watched a documentary about penguins, narrated by none other than David Attenborough. The story began with two penguins, male and female struggling to climb up this rugged and rocky terrain to find a safe place to lay their eggs. The parents would guard these eggs until the chicks began to hatch. Once hatched, the parents would leave the chicks in search of food. The chicks would squawk, and cry and complain about being left alone. If we could translate the cries, I wonder if they were saying, “If you loved me, if you were a faithful parent, you would stay!” Question: What drove the parent penguins to leave their chicks, waddle a mile or two back to the ocean? Faithfulness. It was uncomfortable and frightening for the chicks, no doubt, but their parents were faithful.
This would go back and forth, and the chick would grow. This would continue until at some point, the parent returned to the chicks, but without food. The chicks would come unglued and demand food and squawk furiously! But the parent refused to feed the chick. Question: Were the penguin parents faithful even though the chicks did not get what they wanted?
Then something strange took place. The chicks became so desperate for food, they would chase the parents and the parents would flee. It appeared that the parents were fleeing for their lives – like these were psycho chicks and eat the mom and dad. But what was happening, without the chicks’ knowledge or understanding, was this – these parents knew that unless these chicks leave the nest and make their way down to the ocean, they will die. As these angry and hungry chicks chased their parents, they had to quickly learn how to navigate and work their way over and around rocks and ledges – had to learn how to jump, waddle, and scoot and fall and get back up – all the way down to the shore. As they were about to pounce on the parent penguins – for food – the parents would dive into the ocean. Question: Were the penguin parents faithful even though they had left the chicks alone on the shore?
These chicks had to make a decision – stay on the shore and die or follow mom and dad, and dive into the ocean, where yes, there is danger, but also their only source of food, freedom, and ultimately life.
So, through all the hardships, hunger, pain, feeling abandoned, danger – these parent penguins were loving and faithful, even though the chicks couldn’t understand it. All the parent penguins wanted from their chicks was trust.
“I know sometimes you're scared but trust me, I’m faithful. I know sometimes it’s lonely but trust me, I’m faithful. I know that sometimes the path is difficult and dangerous and you might feel like giving up but trust me, I am faithful. And I know you don't always know where I'm leading you but trust me, I'm faithful. Through it all I'm leading you where you need to go, for I am faithful.
So you decide how you should respond to God’s faithfulness.
1 John 1:9?
