Great is Thy Faithfulness
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Great is Thy Faithfulness
Great is Thy Faithfulness
Good morning family
This morning,
I want to take a moment
to remember those that gave the ultimate sacrifice for us.
In a moment of silent prayer
let us pray for peace
and honor those who were willing to give up their lives
that we may gather here today freely.
Please take a moment in Silent prayer and reverence…
Amen
Over the past several weeks
we have been working our way through the book of Philippians
in our series titled
“The Reason We Live.”
We will return to Philippians in two weeks,
but this morning,
in remembrance of the suffering of our soldiers
and their loved ones
and in light of the hardships many of us are facing,
I want to share a message of hope
that is near and dear to my heart:
the faithfulness of God.
Sight and Sound Media share the following story,
“Charles Blondin
was one of the greatest tight rope walkers
in the history of the world.
One of his greatest feats
was walking the Niagara Falls on a tight rope.
Eleven Hundred feet long
160 feet above the water.
And this he accomplished several times
and always with different theatrical variations.
He did it Blind folded,
with a sack,
pushing a wheelbarrow,
on stilts,
carrying a man on his back,
and one time
he carried a stove and utensils on his back,
walked to the center of the cable,
started a fire
and cooked an omelet
and then ate it.
He was truly a gifted artist
One day after he had pushed a wheel barrow
across the falls and back again
he asked the question,
‘How many of you believe
that I could put a person in this wheel barrow
and safely push them across the tight rope?’
And everybody cheered and yelled,
and everybody believed.
And then ….
he asked for a volunteer.
And the crowed grew incredibly quiet….
Until one person
stepped out of the crowd
and got into the wheelbarrow.
(end quote)
There is a difference between the crowd
and the person in the wheelbarrow…
Regarding God, where are you?
As 2020 and 2021
draw out to be some of the oddest years in recent history,
I know so many people are facing significant hardships.
You know it is easy to trust in God
when things are going well,
when we are standing firmly on the shore.
It is another matter however
to trust in God when our world is falling apart,
when we are half way across the tight rope
and the raging waters
are roaring around us.
It can be hard to trust in God…
When love goes wrong,
when relationships fall apart,
when our finances fail,
when we lose our job and cannot find another,
when a dearly loved friend
moves on to the next chapter of their life,
when sickness overwhelms us
or worse
those we love,
or when we lose a loved one
and death surrounds us with it’s grief...
It is then that we might yell at God
and demand a reason why?
It is then
that His seeming lack of answers,
can leave us questioning our faith
and His faithfulness.
The truth however
is that God is always faithful.
He loves you absolutely.
He loves you passionately.
He loves you unconditionally.
Deuteronomy 7:9 (NLT)
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,
9 Understand, therefore, that the Lord your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands.
If you are like me, however,
when you face hardship
you want to know the reason why.
Why me,
why right now?
Well,
The Bible outlines five main causes
for hardships in our lives.
Let us take a moment to look at these causes.
The First Biblical cause for Hardship,
Is spiritual oppression.
The Apostle Paul explains in Ephesians 6:10–12,
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
The Second Biblical cause for Hardship
Is the sin of man: either our own sin or the sin of others towards us.
“Much of the suffering on our planet,”
says theologian and author Phillip Yancy,
“has come about
because of two principles that God built into creation:
a physical world that runs according to consistent natural laws,
and human freedom.
By committing himself to those two principles,
both good principles in themselves,
God allowed for the possibility
of their abuse.
Is God (therefore) responsible
for the suffering of this world?
In this indirect way yes.
But giving a child a pair of ice skates,
knowing that he may fall,
is a vastly different matter
from knocking him down on the ice.”
For many people,
the fact that there is pain and suffering in the world
causes them to doubt the existence
of a loving, all knowing, all powerful God.
They argue…
That an all-knowing God
would know that pain and evil exist.
That an all-loving God
would want to stop evil and pain.
That an all-powerful God
could stop evil and pain.
They argue that evil does exist
Therefore,
it is argued that God
is either not
All knowing
All loving
Or All powerful…
Or that He simply doesn’t care…
Now the Counterargument to that
is this,
American Philosopher,
Alvin Carl Plantinga
Purposed
that it is logically possible
for an all-knowing,
all-loving,
and all-powerful God
to create a world that contains evil.
He explains that…
1. A world containing creatures who are significantly free,
free to perform more good than evil actions,
is more valuable
than a world containing no free creatures
at all.
2. Without free will
to choose to do good over evil,
God would have created slaves
incapable of independent choice.
3. God could create free creatures,
but He can’t cause or determine them
to do only what is right.
For if He does so
than they aren’t significantly free after all;
they do not do what is right freely.
4. To create free creatures capable of moral good,
therefore,
He must create creatures
capable of moral evil.
5. He can’t, however,
give these creatures the freedom to perform evil
and at the same time
prevent them from doing so.
CS Lewis agrees, he says:
"We can, perhaps, conceive of a world
in which God corrected the results
of this abuse of free-will by His creatures
at every moment:
so that a wooden beam
became soft as grass when it was used as a weapon” (end quote)
Now imagine with me if you will
That you wanted to insult someone,
I mean
you really wanted to zing them with your words
but the air needed to send up the sound waves
refused
So that the other person
was unable to hear your jab at them.
Yikes there goes the 1st Amendment…
Plantinga therefore concluded
“As it turned out, sadly enough,
some of the free creatures God created
went wrong in the exercise of their freedom;
this is the source of moral evil.
The fact that free creatures
sometimes go wrong, however,
counts neither against God’s omnipotence
nor against His goodness;
for He could have forestalled
the occurrence of moral evil
only by removing the possibility
of moral good.” (end quote)
As a result of our freedom
we have introduced something new into the planet-
a rebellion against the original design-
And that is sin.
And sin has caused
immeasurable suffering.
And that leads us to
The Third Biblical cause for hardship: The fact that We live in a fallen world.
The world we live in
is no longer the perfect world
that God originally created.
When sin entered the world,
every aspect of creation
was affected
and creation has been groaning ever since.
Romans 8:19-22 reads
“For the creation waits in eager expectation
for the children of God to be revealed.
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
Church,
Ever since sin entered the world,
The Earth has been emitting
low frequency distress signals…
Tornados: something is wrong
Hurricanes: something is wrong
Earthquakes: something is wrong
Diseases: something is wrong
Milton in Paradise Lost
poetically states,
“Earth felt the wound,
and Nature from her seat,
sighing through all her works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.”
The truth is
that God is not pleased with the state of the World.
The story of the Bible
from “In the beginning,” of Genesis
to the final “Amen” of Revelation 22:21
Is the story of God’s plan to restore His creation
to its original state of perfection.
And Jesus
is God’s Plan of Redemption for the Fallen World.
God stooped down
and joined us in our pain,
and we see this
through the sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf
to redeem our fallen world.
The Fourth Biblical cause for hardship
is Reaping what you have sown.
It is a difficult one to consider,
since most of us do not want to accept
that sometimes the hardships we are facing,
are actually earthly consequences
for our previous choices.
The law of sowing and reaping, however,
is all around us.
If you drop a glass it will fall.
If you eat too many fatty and sugary foods, your health will be affected.
If you tell consistent lies, people will not trust you.
If you break the law, you may face imprisonment.
C.S. Lewis states,
“We can ignore even pleasure.
But pain insists upon being attended to.
God whispers to us in our pleasures,
speaks in our conscience,
but shouts in our pains:
it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” (end quote)
The Fifth Biblical cause for hardship is “the Cross.”
In this instance we are referring to the cross
as God’s ability
to take the darkest most difficult things
and use them to help shape our character.
To be clear
let me first explain what this is NOT.
It is NOT
God giving us bad things to teach us a lesson.
It is NOT
Divine discipline
as so often depicted in the Old Testament
between God and the Israelites.
It is, however,
God redeeming
what Satan meant for evil
and turning it for good in our lives.
In fact,
I will go as far as to say that
no matter what hardship you are facing,
God can use that experience
to help form and shape your character
as explained in Romans 8:28,
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
You see church,
It is out of God’s mercy and love for us
that the pain we experience in this life
is not pointless…
Rather
if we allow Him,
God will use our experience
to help form and shape us.
For God is more concerned with the quality of our character
than with our ‘comfort.’
The Apostle Paul addresses this
in 2 Corinthians 12:7
So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.
Paul states
that the ‘thorn’ he was experiencing
was ‘given’ to him
and was a messenger of Satan,
however,
God chose not to take it from Paul
but allowed him
to face the hardship
to help strengthen his character.
There are times however,
when we face hardships
and there are no apparent reasons,
and our questions of “why”
remain unanswered.
One of the greatest examples of this in scripture
is the story of Joseph.
Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob
and his elder brothers hated him for it.
Their resentment grew
until one day they threw him into a ditch,
intending to kill him.
But instead
they end up selling him into slavery
where he came into the service of Potiphar,
a great man in Egypt.
God was with Joseph
and blessed him
Soon
Joseph became an important servant
in the household of Potiphar
until Potiphar’s wife noticed him.
She found Joseph to be attractive
and made sexual advances towards him.
Joseph did the only sensible thing,
and ran from her,
and boys and girls, let me tell you something…
Don’t try to reason with temptation,
Don’t try to develop a thick skin
Don’t try to strengthen your ability to resist it
JUST RUN FROM IT
Back to Potiphar’s wife
Scorned people have a tendency
to exact revenge
at that is what she did
She accused Joseph of assaulting her.
Joseph was thrown in jail
and left to rot for many years,
until two of Pharaoh’s servants
shared his prison cell.
Joseph correctly interpreted these men’s dreams
and asked the cupbearer
who would return to Pharaoh’s service
to remember him.
The cupbearer forgot all about Joseph,
until one night,
Pharaoh was troubled by a prophetic dream.
Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream correctly
and was made Pharaoh’s second in command.
Joseph helped to spare Egypt
form a terrible 7-year drought,
and finally,
when his brother’s came to Pharaoh’s court
looking for food to save their starving families,
Joseph forgave his brother’s
and spared them from ruin.
In all of this,
God never told Joseph His master plan.
The day Joseph’s brothers threw him into a pit,
Joseph was unaware of God’s master plan.
In the Pit,
having been betrayed by his brothers
and fearing death,
Joseph had no way of knowing
that his suffering
would help make the way for the savior of all mankind.
In the Pit he could not see “WHY”.
In the Pit Joseph could not see
that without his brother’s betrayal
he would never be sold into slavery.
As a slave
Joseph could not see
that without his slavery
he could never be assaulted
by Potiphar’s wife,
wrongly accused,
and sent to rot in jail for years on end.
As a falsely accused prisoner,
Joseph could not see
that without his imprisonment,
he would not be able to interpret his fellow prisoner’s dreams.
Without Joseph’s suffering,
he would not have been in the right place
at the right time
to interpret Pharos’s dreams,
and save Egypt
from a seven year famine,
and ultimately
save his own family from starvation,
and the Jewish people from annihilation.
In fact,
God never showed Joseph the biggest picture.
What seemed like further suffering
was in fact,
God’s faithfulness to both Joseph
and all humankind.
Without Joseph’s suffering,
his family would have starved and died during that famine,
there would be no Moses,
no King David,
and no linage
leading to the birth of Jesus Christ.
Family,
During your hardship,
you may never know, ‘Why’,
but as God was faithful to Joseph-
giving him the strength he needed
to face each new trial,
so God will be faithful to you.
Lamentations 3:22-23 encourages us:
Because of the Lord’s faithful love
we do not perish,
for His mercies never end.
They are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness!
This message hits remarkably close to home for me and my family.
as the past few years have been difficult ones for us.
As some of you know,
In February of 2012
my Mother-in-law Beth was diagnosed with Leukemia.
The doctors gave her only three months to live
and only a 20% chance of surviving the treatments.
Five months later
my Mother-in-law was miraculously still with us
and cancer free.
We had two wonderful years with her,
until the Summer of 2014
|when the Leukemia returned.
My wife Kristin tells this story.
The evening was cool for late July,
and a light breeze drifted across the deck
as I sat in the dark.
My husband and kids were in bed,
so they weren't with me when my Dad stopped by.
“Oh, hey Dad,
your grandson has discovered knock-knock jokes.
At dinner, he asked, ‘Knock knock Mommy.’
I replied, ‘Whose there.’
He said, ‘milk’ and busted out laughing.”
“Sorry love, I don’t get it,”
my dad replied.
“I know.
We didn’t get it either.
None of his jokes make any sense
and yet, he finds them hilarious.
You know how infectious his laugh is.
We just can’t help laughing with him.”
We chuckled together for a while,
but the silence that followed our small talk
felt like a storm cloud settling on the horizon.
Not being able to take the tension any longer,
I asked,
“So, Dad here is the real question-
how is Mom?”
“The bone marrow biopsy showed the leukemia is worse.”
“What does that mean?
She’s going to keep fighting though right?”
He didn’t answer.
“I know the doctors said that more chemo is out of the question,
but there must be some other treatment.”
He sat across from me
but I could still hear him as he tried to calm his breathing.
Finally, he replied,
“A bone marrow transplant is off the table
until a matching donor can be found.
Her oncologist encourages us to start saying goodbye.”
“How long?
How long do they say she has?”
“Two weeks. Maybe, three.”
I swallowed hard and said,
“We’ll clear our schedule
and bring the kids up to spend time with her tomorrow.
I love you Dad.”
As he walked out the door
my sorrow and anger came alive.
I confess that I yelled at God.
I don't understand you, God!
Why my Mom?
She is the kindest, sweetest, most generous person.
I mean she is my best friend.
Please, God!
How can you take her?
Why! Why her!
Why can't you just give her cancer to some serial killer
who deserves to die instead?
You can't take her!
Finally, through my tears,
I asked God to show me that He still cared.
I waited.
Nothing replied except the crickets
singing in the midsummer grass.
A gentle wind brushed across my skin,
but I heard nothing from God.
I waited for hours.
Nothing!
So, I went to bed despondent with my faith shaken.
Ten minutes later
I heard the little patter of feet.
It was my then six-year-old son.
"Hey, buddy,
what are you doing up at 1 in the morning?
You should be asleep."
He replied,
"Jesus woke me up Mommy
and He told me to tell you
that He loves you."
With that,
he kissed me
and went back to bed
and didn't remember it in the morning.
As my mother’s favorite Bible verse states so beautifully,
“Because of the Lord’s faithful love we do not perish,
for His mercies never end.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness!”
Evangelist Billy Graham shares,
“God knows what you're going through --
and to be honest,
we don't always know why
He allows hard things to happen to us.
But remember,
God never promised
that our lives would be free from trouble or sickness,
even if we love and serve Him.
After all,
no one was closer to God than Jesus,
yet God permitted Him
to go through the worst possible suffering,
by dying a cruel death on a cross.
Nor was His suffering only physical;
it was also mental,
emotional and spiritual.
And yet Christ did not shrink back
from the path set before Him --
because He knew it was part of God's plan.
The Bible says,
"He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows,
and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:3).
Why do I mention this?
I mention it because it points us to an important truth:
No matter what we're going through,
Jesus has already been there,
and He knows what we're experiencing.
But Jesus' example reminds us also
of another important truth:
Even in our darkest moments
Christ is with us,
and we can trust our lives into His hands.” (End Quote)
Charles Blondin gave us a beautiful example
of what faith looks like when he asked for a volunteer
to trust him enough to get into the wheelbarrow.
Mr. Blondin had proven himself
time and time again as he crossed the tight rope safely
to be trustworthy,
but God has proven His faithfulness to us
a thousand times more.
I asked you a question earlier,
There is a difference between the crowd
and the man in the wheelbarrow.
Regarding God,
where are you?
In the crowd saying,
“I believe there is a God.
I believe Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world.
I believe…?
Or are you in the Wheelbarrow?
Do you trust God…?
It does not really make much of a difference,
when we are standing on the shore…
It makes a lot of difference,
halfway across the tight rope.
In our everyday experience, in our life,
in our choices, in our waking up,
going through our days, going back to bed,
we can play it safe,
we can stay on the shore,
we can maintain our comfort zones
Or
we can get in the wheelbarrow
and let Jesus push us across the raging waters of our life.
We can TRUST Him
even when we can’t see the WHY…
Even when it is scariest-
when we can’t see the shore at all
And the only thing we can hear
Is the raging waters
and the only thing we can see
Is the fall beneath us.
We can trust.
There is a difference between the crowd and the wheelbarrow.
Regarding God,
where are you?
Let us Pray