GREAT IS GOD'S FAITHFULNESS

Introduction

-{Psalm 37}

-There are hundreds of various worldviews that are contrary to our Christian worldview. And even though their beliefs are not compatible with ours, sometimes Christians take on an aspect or attitude of the opposing worldview and live according to it. But when you do that, this hybrid you make moves you away from the truth and moves you away from God rather than bringing you closer.

~Take for example the view of Deism. Deism admits that there is a God. But what Deism says is that God created the universe, but then He brushed His hands off, admired His handiwork, and had nothing else to do with what He made. Their view of God is that He got the ball rolling, and then just kind of told creation: GOOD LUCK! I WISH YOU WELL! BUT, YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN.

~Some of a more extreme deists will take this to mean that God is an absentee father who abandoned us and is not interested in what’s going on. Some will turn this view into an excuse for an immoral lifestyle, believing that God wants nothing to do with us, and we want nothing to do with Him—so, since He doesn’t really care what’s going on in the earth we can live however we want and get away with it.

-That is Deism. No church-going, Bible-believing Christian would ever admit wanting to have anything to do with that worldview. And yet, how many church-going, Bible-believing Christians live this out in their daily thoughts and lives. What do I mean? They might not admit it, but they have similar feelings toward God as the Deist. They think that God is distant and cold and generally couldn’t care less about them or anything else. They think that God brought them into the world and then just abandoned them to go it alone. It’s as if God told them: OK, YOU’RE SAVED NOW! GO BE GOOD CHRISTIAN BOYS AND GIRLS AND TRY NOT TO GET INTO TROUBLE WHILE I’M AWAY. This is how we let deism creep into Christianity.

-And, whatever version of this Deism you might add to your faith, this is NOT how God revealed Himself. The Bible tells us about a God who wanted a relationship such that He sent His Son, and He does want to walk with you through this thing called Life. The Bible tells us that God won’t abandon us, but how many of us have abandoned Him with our faulty beliefs about Him.

-Today is a celebration of the fact that God does care. And what I want us to take away from today is that we can trust God to be faithful in walking with us down the path that He has set before us in Christ. So, cast off your faulty beliefs and trust in the God who is faithful.

Psalm 37:23–26 ESV

23 The steps of a man are established by the Lord, when he delights in his way; 24 though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong, for the Lord upholds his hand. 25 I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread. 26 He is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing.

-{pray}

-These verses tell us about a God who is faithful. We know the song GREAT IS THY FAITHFULNESS, and the song actually comes from the book of Lamentations which is a sad poem that Jeremiah wrote after the destruction of Jerusalem. All sorts of problems and disasters came down upon the Israelites as a people and Jeremiah personally. And yet, in the midst of it, Jeremiah says GREAT IS GOD’S FAITHFULNESS. And this Psalm that we read talks about some aspects of this faithfulness…the faithfulness that we celebrate on Purple Sunday. So, first, the psalmist says that...

1) God steadies our feet for the journey

-I grew up in Wisconsin, and you know that it’s cold and it snows a lot up there. And sometimes after a snow, the sun would come out, but what it would do is melt the snow a little bit, but not completely. So, if the snow hadn’t been ploughed or shoveled a layer of ice would form above the snow and/or under the snow, and if you hit a patch just right (either walking or driving), you’d go on a fun trip (or, not so fun trip)—even if you had good boots on and everything. Sometimes, your footing was unstable.

-But here is the truth that our psalmist tells us about our God in v. 23—our steps are established by the Lord. That word means firm or ready or prepared. God doesn’t just leave us to figure things out on our own, but He has a way ready for us. You could say that God has plowed ahead and prepared the path that He has for us. That doesn’t mean we see where the path is going, and it doesn’t mean that the road is easy and smooth. Sometimes there’s trials and tribulations in the road. But there is a path, and God sets us firmly in that path. And we would do well to remember who is in charge of our path, as well as remember who is walking with us in the path. Because, even with the trials and tribulations, we remember that even when we’re in the valley of the shadow of death He is with us. And so, we remember proverbs:

Proverbs 16:9 ESV

9 The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

-God has a journey for us and He sets us on solid footing. But we have to we look back at our passage and see that there is a bit of fine print here—something that we often overlook. The psalmist says that the steps of a man are established by the LORD, WHEN HE (the man) DELIGHTS IN HIS (God’s) WAY. We are on firm ground on the path when we delight in the ways of the Lord. Our steps are not established when we determine our own course and plow ahead with our own agenda. Because, what happens? When we do that, we get off the established road God set before us. We’re no longer going down the highway God made for us, instead we’re off-roading it in some mud pit, getting dirty and most likely going to get stuck. And then we have the audacity to say: I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENED. What happened is you delighted in your ways more than God’s and you lost your footing.

-So, let’s flesh this out, how do we delight ourselves in the Lord so that we are able to enjoy the established steps of the Lord? First, we have to place our trust in Jesus Christ for salvation—believing that He died for our sins and rose again. If you are not saved by Jesus, you are not God’s child and you will be ever in spiritual quicksand—stuck in sin and death and darkness. But God through Christ gives us light and life and we are now on the path. And then, even though I might not be able to see two feet in front of myself on this path, as long as my delight is in the Lord I will remain on this path and my steps will be on firm ground. And the ground is firm and my steps are firm because God is the one that prepared the path and God is the one walking with me as I take the journey. Without delighting in the Lord, I stumble. You see God is faithful, and we’re not. But even when we’re not, He still is, and He will establish our steps.

-I am not much of a boat person, so when I’m on a boat (not a cruise liner, but a regular boat) I have a hard time standing and walking and keeping my balance. As the saying goes, I don’t have my sea legs. Then when I get off the boat, I have what they call disembarkment syndrome, where once I’m on land I still feel like I’m in the boat, and I’m stumbling and bumbling still. My feet aren’t firm and established.

-The same in life—outside of Christ, my steps aren’t established. And if I’m delighting in myself and not God, my feet aren’t well established. But, nevertheless, our God is faithful in that He doesn’t just allow us to live like we’ve been thrown into the middle of a jungle blindfolded—alone and lost and not knowing where to go. Our God prepares our way and establishes our steps, and steadies our feet for the journey of life. But what happens if we do stumble and fall and get off the path, or what happens if a trial in life really knocks us for a loop?

2) God picks us up when we fall

-I remember a picture that my parents had of me. I was probably 1 1/2 or 2 years old. It was a studio picture that mom had set up an appointment to get made. And the picture is me in a cute 1970’s toddler outfit (if there is such a thing) with a bandaid right across my forehead. What happened was that right before we left the apartment to go get the picture made, I was toddling along in the apartment and tripped and hit my forehead on the corner of something. Every parent’s dream of having your kid’s picture taken professionally with a bandaid right smack dab in the middle of the forehead.

-So, I had been walking along a path and I tripped and fell flat on my face. And that is such a picture of life. Even when we have the established path of the Lord on which we journey, we trip and fall—a lot. We may fall because of our own choices. We may fall because of sin that we decide to pursue. We may fall under the pressures of various trials and troubles and tribulations. That’s part of the human journey—we fall.

-But listen to what v. 24 says. It first says that even when we fall (whether it’s our own fault or merely circumstances), we shall not be cast headlong. That sounds like a weird way of saying it, but the word literally means that we won’t be hurled headlong or cast away. Now, remember, this is talking about the child of God. The psalmist is telling us that when we fall, when we are down, when we are at our lowest, God doesn’t look at us in disdain and just chuck us in the trash. God doesn’t see us at our lowliest with a look of disgust and toss us to the side.

-The picture that came to my mind was old clothes. When some of our clothes get faded and worn and full of holes or maybe stained, what do we do with it? We toss them in the garbage and just go to the store and buy a new one, or go on Amazon to get one that is clean and colorful and fashionable. When things get worn down, we toss them.

-The psalmist goes out of the way to tell us that when we are in bad shape, when we trip and fall, when we’re worn out and at our lowest, God doesn’t throw us away thinking WELL, I’LL JUST CREATE A NEW ONE TO REPLACE HIM/HER. I CAN MAKE ALL THE HUMANS I WANT. I’LL JUST MAKE A BETTER ONE.

-And God doesn’t ridicule us when we fall. I think of when my kids were young and were first learning to walk maybe around 10 months or so. While they were learning to walk, I might be sitting on one side of the room and Trish was sitting on the other side of the room, and they’d walk between us. And as would be expected, they would fall. But when they fell, we didn’t start throwing insults at them. We didn’t say, “What’s wrong with you, you loser. Can’t you do one thing right?”

Of course we wouldn’t say that. But with the deism that has crept in, how many of us imagine God says those kinds of things. No! Every child of God is precious in His sight. So, instead of casting us headlong, what does it say that He does? It says that the Lord upholds his hand. The word means that we are given something to support us, to lean on.

-So, picture this…sometimes due to surgeries or health or whatever, we need to use crutches or a cane or a walker or a scooter to keep us up and help us walk. But sometimes these earthly supports fail.

-I remember back in 3rd grade I had broken my foot in a sledding accident. So, I was on crutches for several weeks. I was hobbling along in the classroom, but the floor was slick from melted snow. And both crutches slid out from under me and I fell flat on my face. Even my supports failed me and I fell.

-But here’s what the psalmist tells us—it is the Lord who upholds our hand. It is the Lord that is our support. God Himself will pick us up, dust us off, and be with us for us to lean on as we get back on the steps that He has established for us. But leaning on the Lord is the key. We fall and stumble in life, but then we look to ourselves or we look to others or we look to the world and they’re not able to lift us or sustain us. That’s when we stay down, and we’re like that old commercial I’VE FALLEN AND I CAN’T GET UP. Well, take the hand of the Lord and let Him lift you and let Him support you.

-How do we know that this is true? Because God has shown His faithfulness in the past to others, and if we’re honest, He’s constantly shown His faithfulness to us. Look at what the psalmist says:

Psalm 37:25 ESV

25 I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread.

-We may fall in various ways, but God has NEVER forsaken His children. One final lesson...

3) God shows His faithfulness through us

-Not only does God show His faithfulness TO us, but He also shows His faithfulness THROUGH us. Look at

Psalm 37:26 ESV

26 He is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing.

-The child of God receives the blessings of God’s faithfulness, but then that person becomes a blessing to those around them. You see, God can use other people to be tools of setting the steps of others and upholding the hand of others. After we have experienced God’s goodness in various ways, we then share that goodness with others.

-Why Harvest Baptist Church celebrates Purple Sunday is to take a day to remember the mercies of God. That doesn’t mean that everything is perfect or that everything will always be perfect. What it does mean is that we have to get outside our little bubble and remember God has shown us great mercies. Whether it is the mercy of salvation, or the mercy of healing, or the mercy of provision, or the mercy of drawing another breath. God has shown us great mercies. But, we haven’t been given these mercies just for ourselves. Jesus said...

Matthew 5:7 ESV

7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

-We take God’s mercies to us and we turn those around to be mercies toward others. We don’t hoard God’s faithfulness—we become a conduit of His faithfulness. We share God’s faithfulness.

-It makes me think of one of the blessings of being a pastor. Several of you are great cooks and bakers, and quite often you will gift me an amazing sweet treat. I may not give you enough thanks for those treats, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But then I am put in a bit of a conundrum…do I share those sweet treats with my family or do I horde them for myself. The struggle is real. And I’ll be honest, sometimes I share, and sometimes I don’t.

-That struggle might be fine when it comes to treats, but there shouldn’t be a struggle when it comes to God’s mercies and faithfulness—those are to be shared. You see, God has established your steps, and has carved a road for you, and has allowed you to go through the experiences you have, and has allowed you to fall, and then has lifted you and supported you in the ways that He has so that you can then turn around and be a His tool in someone else’s life who have gone through the same thing.

-You may ask, why has the journey gotten rough right now? And the answer is that so years down the road you can tell someone else who is going through those same things how God showed you mercy and faithfulness. God may want to use you to show someone that He hasn’t abandoned them—but you have to get our of your self-centeredness and comfort zone and allow God to use you.

Conclusion

-Far from the beliefs of Deism, our God is close and faithful. There are some here who needed a reminder of that. And maybe you need to come to the altar and pray that it really hits home in your heart. Everyone here could probably come to the altar and give thanks to God for some faithfulness and mercies that He has shown.

-And the greatest faithfulness and mercy is that He gave His Son to save us from the due penalty of our sin. Jesus died to save us, and if you believe in Him you have everlasting life. And there are some who have yet to believe...

-What a great God we have. You can’t help but join the saints of old in singing (join me):

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, there is no shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not, thy compassions, they fail not; as thou hast been, thou forever wilt be.

Great is thy faithfulness! Great is thy faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; all I have needed thy hand hath provided. Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

-{pray}