Sunday, September 20, 2009

God Is Faithful - Psalm 105:7-11; 106:6-7,19-21,40-45

No human being, young or old, married or single, parent or child, can obtain and maintain a characteristic that is more important to them and their piers as their faithfulness to God, and each other. I will start this chain of thought with the relationship at the time of marriage. Two young people give themselves to each other with no reservations, expecting true faithfulness without having to watch and wonder each day if fidelity is always present. Then one slips and the other finds out and from that day forever there is always a shade of doubt in their minds. A beautiful relationship is damaged, never to be completely restored to the perfection it once had.

The couple has one or more children that are brought up in the nature and admonition of the Lord. The day comes when acquisitions are made against them by a fellow student or a teacher that just seem to be impossible. They must have been falsely accused…and there is no way you can accept it as being true. This hurts—and the pain is great. And then you find through your own knowledge, the undisputable fact that your child will actually commit the wrong for which they were accused; and that they very probably did already commit the wrong as they were accused. Your child has continually denied the accusation. Now you find that they have been unfaithful to you as parents; untruthful and untrustworthy for the future.

Life is loaded with examples like this that will result in the total destruction of you joy and happiness caused by the betrayal of a loved one. Sadly these loved ones range all the way from close friends to parents, and none…no not one…except God is Faithful. I regret that I must give one more example because it compares man to a dog. We know assuredly that God is Faithful! It appears at times that a man’s dog is more faithful to the man than man is to his God.

The writer of this Psalm has a good knowledge of the destruction caused when there is unfaithfulness present. It might be well for all of you who are Christians and reading and studying the results of being unfaithful would stop for a moment and remember your past. Have you fully trusted a person in your life to an extent that when you found there was some unfaithfulness involved in your relationship, you were totally devastated? Be thankful if you have not had this experience. If you have experienced the results of unfaithfulness in a love one, use that experience to help you develop a total acceptance of God’s Faithfulness to you in every phase of his dealings with you throughout your life. There is no relationship that can possibly be more important to man than to know that his one and only Savior is without fault and will forever be faithful to a sinful man saved by Jesus Christ.

When you read 105:7 and realize that He is the Lord our God; ant that His judgments are in charge of the whole earth…it chills ones heart to even think for on moment that He could be Unfaithful for even one moment about one tinny thing. You can not remove the divine providence of God and still retain the total perfection that is absolutely necessary for God’s system to work. In verse eight we are reminded that his covenant that he keeps faithfully is one that he ordained for a thousand generations—and this is just a way of saying for all eternity.

The scripture used today names several of the men of God like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to which God made decrees regarding their inheritance…the things he would and would not do for them. In verse eleven he gave the land of Canaan to them as their inherited portion. Would you just stop for a moment and try to realize what these men and their followers could have done if God had not been FAITHFUL in keeping his promises to them.

How well do you keep your commitments? What do you consider to be some of the most important commitments that you have ever made? I think we will have to consider at least three or four categories of commitments that w are involved in, and there may be others as important as these. First, we were born into a family to which we must have been committed. Secondly, we are married into a family that demands our faithfulness. Third, we are converted [born again] into the family of God and fourth, we are by nature created into the family of human nature that we continually remain a part of as long as we live.

All of the above commitments are important, but surely you need to think about prioritizing the right commitment at the appropriate time. What do you consider to be the most important commitment you have made to date? Have you ever made an important commitment that came to you without some sacrifice on your part? What are some of the prices you have paid in order to hold on to your commitments?

When we recall any sacrifice that has ever been ours to bear or make, we surely do not bring them to mind in any way to compare with the greatest ones made by our Father God. It is to recall the importance of sacrificial living. One thing that it does quickly is remind us that in comparison to what God has done for us we are inferior, tinny, and owe our all to Him who is the greatest of all.

Remember that the writers of the Psalms were continually singing songs of praise and writing poetry that expressed the heart of God to his people. It will always be time consuming to fully explore all the writings to see what each is referring to. However, there is one example I can mention at this time. If you will study all of the 105th Psalm and compare it verse to verse to the 106th Psalm, you will find that the 105th book explains the total faithfulness of God to man. And then chapter 106 reminds us of our unfaithfulness toward God. There is a comparison made here that actually shows that there is no comparison. We should study with a broken heart the comparison of the way God treats us and the way we repay Him.

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