The Faithfulness of our Father

Introduction

No more important time in history for Father’s to step up and raise kids in a Godly home. We have seen so many areas in our society where the lack of fatherly leadership causes so many issues.

Thankful for my dad and his influence on our home.

Funny thing, but parents get smarter as you get older. Ever noticed that?!?

As I thought about what to preach on for this date - which by the way I’m grateful for - I was trying to think about a way to frame Father’s Day in such a way to show God’s faithfulness to you as a Father.

I want to take you to Romans 8 and show you how God is faithful as a Father. Romans 8 is probably my favorite chapter in all of the Bible. If I could only have with me one chapter of the Bible and nothing else - I’d chose Romans 8. And the reason Is because it covers so much as we will see today.

If you have been in my Sunday School class or during Wednesday night Bible Study - you know that I could take this chapter and spend several weeks here just in these 39 verses. But obviously Bill is just giving me one shot here LOL so I’m going to cram it all into 1 sermon!

Faithfulness as an attribute of God

Many of you have a favorite attribute of God. It may be his love, or his mercy, or his grace, or his providence, or a number of other things. But I want to point you in one specific direction this morning and that is God’s faithfulness. One of God’s attributes that we can be most thankful for is His faithfulness. Yes, we need His love, mercy, and grace - but when you think about it - His faithfulness underscores all of those other attributes. He is faithful to be loving, He is faithful to be merciful, and He is faithful to be gracious. Anyone can be loving at some point right? The same can be said for being gracious and merciful. But how about to be FAITHFUL to be all of those things, all of the time?

Maybe to put it better - God is faithful to Himself. He cannot deny his faithfulness.

You think as humanity we can deny our faithfulness? You bet we can! In more ways than we want to admit. But God cannot deny his faithfulness. Let that thought settle in for a moment. God is infinitely faithful.

What does this matter to us?

What does it matter if God is faithful?

Well - one of the reasons is because we often draw our images of God by our relationships with other people on this earth. So maybe growing up you had a dad or a mom that wasn’t faithful to their obligation to you as a child. Maybe you’ve had a relationship where someone wasn’t faithful. There are countless ways that we see this in our lives. Because in this life - there are times when we don’t know who we can count on. We don’t know who we can rely on. We don’t know who will come through and make good on their promises. And then we begin to relate to God in the same way. We begin to be skeptical that God is really faithful or trustworthy.

God is 100% faithful 100% of the time. Where else can you get a guarantee that good???

But don’t take my word for it - let’s look at Romans 8 to confirm what I’m telling you is true.

Very simple outline today. 3 points. God is faithful in our salvation, our suffering, and our security.

God is faithful in our salvation. (Romans 8:3-4)

God has a righteous requirement that must be fulfilled in order for us to be saved.

What the law could not do...

The law can’t save us. It can’t reform us and make us righteous enough to fulfill God’s requirement. The Pharisees tried this and were unsuccessful. We know that there isn’t one single person on this earth who can perfectly fulfill God’s law all the time.

What the law can do...

The law can point out very quickly that we all fall short. Anybody want to take a run at the 10 commandments and see how far they get? I think it’s pretty obvious that people are not inherently good.

The law can’t save us, and we know that we can’t meet the standards that the law requires.

b. We can’t fulfill that requirement in our own effort!

No amount of effort on our part can ever fulfill God’s requirement.

If we could have fulfilled the requirement in our own effort then why would Jesus have had to come?

c. Jesus came as our substitute to pay the penalty for our sin.

He paid the debt that I couldn’t pay.

God sent Jesus to this earth to be an “offering” for our sin. To fulfill the righteous requirement that we couldn’t fulfill.

God is faithful in our salvation.

Why should we remember that God is faithful in our salvation?

If God wasn’t faithful in our conversion, then the rest of what we are going to talk about doesn’t matter at all - it’s totally insignificant.

Do you remember who led you to Christ? Do you remember the circumstances surrounding your salvation? What might have seemed at the time like small, insignificant circumstances - or maybe huge circumstances - God brought those circumstances together to bring you to Christ.

God is faithful in our salvation.

2. God is faithful in our suffering. (Romans 8:18-28)

Suffering is a reality in the life of a believer.

The concept of a trouble-free life as a believer is a lie. If you are a believer - you will not have a trouble free life. In fact, the life you live now as a believer will almost inevitably be harder because you are swimming upstream. It takes much more effort to swim upstream against the world, the flesh, and the devil.

Don’t buy the lie that because you are a believer you will always “live long and prosper” according to the world’s standards. You may not live long or prosper in this world, but what I am trying to tell you is that God is faithful in his plans and purposes for your life - no matter how good or bad it may seem at the moment.

Conversion/Sanctification photo.

Life is sometimes hard, but God is always good.

Groaning is often the necessary response to our troubles.

When the lights go out - fly by the instruments.

Flying out of DFW with the kids when it was storming. One of them asks while we are taking off - “will we make it through the storm clouds?” See - they thought that because the storm clouds were all they could see - then that’s all that was. But what they didn’t know that once we climbed and bumped through the turbulence of those storm clouds - the sun was shining above those clouds and it was calm and peaceful.

Now, I’m not saying that we can always “sit back, relax, and enjoy the flight” no matter what is happening - no - sometimes it isn’t enjoyable and we can’t relax. Sometimes we have to go right through the storm and it lasts a long time. But the point I’m making here is that even in the darkest storm clouds - the sun is still shining above them. God is still faithful and still in control.

The Holy Spirit intercedes for us in our suffering.

There are times in our lives when we don’t know what to pray for or even how to get the words out. It is in these times that we just cry “Father! Father!”

It is in these times that God hears your voice as His own child (as I do with my own kids).

Don’t miss this - this is God the Holy Spirit praying for YOU!

I don’t know if you get a warm fuzzy feeling when someone tells you they are praying for you - but I’m telling you that is a big deal for me for someone to tell me that they are praying for me. That’s the biggest honor they can give me is to pray for me!

God uses ALL things in the life of the believer for our good.

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. I have a lot of favorites though, so you can’t pin me down to one or two lol.

What does ALL mean?

all I have needed thy hand has provided.

Depends on the child I’m talking to lol. One or two of my kids take “ALL” to mean “some” or “most”. When I say “pickup all of your toys in the living room” - for some reason they hear - “pick up the toys in the living room that are convenient for you and don’t cause you any trouble”

Romans 3. Living in the Spirit (8:1–39)

God who is at work in the circumstances of life. God directs the affairs of life in such a way that, for those who love him, the outcome is always beneficial. The “good” of which Paul spoke is not necessarily what we think is best, but as the following verse implies, the good is conformity to the likeness of Christ. With this in mind it is easier to see how our difficulties are part of God’s total plan for changing us from what we are by nature to what he intends us to be. Moral advance utilizes hardship more often than not.

I don’t know if you’ve had this happen to you - but I can look back on some things that were really, really painful. Things that hurt and were tough to go through. But - I’ve seen God work in those painful situations and bring good out of it that I never thought possible. The experience itself wasn’t good, but God used it for my good.

God is totally sovereign in our suffering.

This is a big word and I don’t use it just to impress you, but it’s a word that you need to know. It means that God rules over all of the circumstances in our lives with a watchful eye and a careful hand.

New American Standard Bible Chapter 8

God causes all things to work together for good

The New International Version Chapter 8

in all things God works for the good

Personally, I think the ESV gets it wrong here. I think the NIV and the NAS get it right. God works and God causes seem to me to express what Paul is trying to say here. But they didn’t ask me for my opinion.

How do we resolve the fact that God is Good and Life is Hard? How do we see past the clouds of the storms of our lives?

Warren Wiersbe once said “When you are in the furnace of affliction - God always has His eye on the thermometer and His hand on the thermostat”

Think about a couple of examples in Job and Joseph. Both of those guys had some tough stuff that they couldn’t give a clear answer to the question of “why” - and they didn’t know how the story ended either! But they had to trust God in spite of the fact that they couldn’t explain why they were suffering like they were.

The fact that God is sovereign over all of the circumstances in our lives should bring us great comfort to know that even as flawed and messed up as we are - He still has a plan to use those things for our good and His glory.

God uses suffering to make you more like Christ.

God will use your suffering to refine the impurity out of your life. Suffering in the life of the believer many times drives them close to the heart of God. And that is inevitably where God wants us anyhow. God will use whatever means necessary to make you more like Christ. You may ask yourself - why did that happen? Well - if nothing else - it taught you once again to depend on God and not yourself.

Psalm 119:67 “67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, But now I keep Your word.”

Hear me clearly - when I say God is faithful in our suffering - I don’t mean that He will solve all of your troubles immediately or in the way that you want them to be solved. But He will solve them according to your ultimate good and to His glory!

God is faithful in our suffering.

3. God is faithful in our security. (Romans 8:31-39)

This is big. Many people have doubts about their salvation or have trouble with the assurance that they are saved. God is faithful in your eternal security.

Doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.

If he’s done the “greater thing” in saving us, don’t you think that he will do the “lesser thing” in keeping us saved?

The grip that my 4 year old has on my hand while walking is not what makes him secure. It’s my grip on him. Friend - that makes a BIG, BIG difference.

God is for us!

One little word can make all the difference. God is FOR me. God is FOR you. Say it with me to vocalize it - “God is FOR me.”

Now you have to believe it by faith and on the authority of the Word.

Nothing can separate us from His love!

Nothing means the same thing as ALL, but only in reverse!

God’s love for us is unconditional. How do we know that? Well, for one the Bible tells us that it is. Romans 5:8 “8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” That isn’t conditional right? That’s not a conditional “well, I’ll love you if you love me back kind of love”. No, God loved us before the foundation of the world Ephesians 1 tells us. And His love for us isn’t because of some response or some future quality we would have.

Deuteronomy 7:7-8 “7 “The Lord did not make you His beloved nor choose you because you were greater in number than any of the peoples, since you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

God is faithful in our security. He will never leave us or let us go. He will never abandon us or forsake us. No matter what our feelings tell us, we can count on God to be 100% reliable, 100% of the time.

Conclusion

I’ve been trying to show you that God is faithful to His children. He’s faithful in our salvation, faithful in our suffering, and faithful in our security.

But if all of these didn’t convince you yet - I want to try one more thing.

Hit the lights.

All lights off but the lights behind the cross.

If you don’t see God as faithful in any of those other areas we’ve been mentioning - then look right here.

Maybe you’ve been asking God for a sign that He still loves you in spite of all you’ve been through - well here’s your sign.

The cross is the ultimate symbol of God’s faithfulness to us. The cross shows us that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

The cross is God’s sign to humanity that He is faithful to His Word, faithful to His promises, faithful to us.

I wonder do you know God today as a faithful Father?

Listen friends - God is only faithful in these ways we’ve mentioned in Romans 8 here to HIS children. If you aren’t His child, these great promises of faithfulness are not for you. But they can be today if you are willing to repent of your sin and turn to the only One who is able to save you.

Deuteronomy 7:10 “but He repays those who hate Him to their faces, to eliminate them; He will not hesitate toward him who hates Him, He will repay him to his face.”

God is faithful to His Word. And that rings true whether we are talking about our salvation or those who reject Him. I can’t gloss over this. God is faithful to destroy those who hate and reject Him. You say - “well that’s pretty mean!” - no it’s actually what we all deserve. We (believers) are just getting grace that we don’t deserve.

We will bow the knee either way.