December 30, 2020
Author: Pastor Gordon Cook
December 30, 2020
God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
1 Corinthians 1:9
One of the dangers we have as Christians is we can become too familiar with our Bibles and with prayer. You have heard that saying, “Familiarity can breed contempt.” Familiarity can be one of the most dangerous things in the world, and that is true when it comes to reading our Bibles and when it comes to prayer. Most of us are very familiar with our Bibles and with prayer. We have to remind ourselves how amazing it is to have a Bible. As one of the Puritans called the Bible, “It is God’s love letter to us.” It is God speaking to us and an expression of His love and that is amazing when we think about it. The God who made us, the God who saved us is the God who continually talks to us. Someone has put it this way, “God is a talkative god or a communicative spirit.” You just have to open up the first page of your Bible, Genesis 1, and hear God speaking. He is a god who speaks. God didn’t have to speak to us, He could have made us like the animals. He doesn’t talk and communicate with the animals. He could have remained silent, He could have enjoyed His privacy, heard no sighs or groans from any of us. He could have continued in that three-person relationship (God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and been perfectly happy, but He has spoken to us and He never stops speaking. In every Bible based sermon God is speaking to us. Not only does He speak to us, but it is also amazing that He listens to us. That is why we come to a prayer meeting, because we believe that the God of the Bible is a god who listens to us.
Here is the question. How can you and I be sure He listens? How can you be sure that He answers our prayers? The one word that you can use to answer that question is found here in 1 Corinthians 1:9, “God is faithful.” That attribute of God is celebrated throughout the whole Bible: Deuteronomy 7, “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 commandment to a thousand generations; Psalm 36:5, “Your steadfast love, oh Lord, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the clouds;” Psalm 92:1, 2, “We are to declare His steadfast love in the morning and His faithfulness by night.” And where His faithfulness is manifested regularly, consistently, in your life, in my life, is by hearing and answering our prayers and by keeping His promises. That is where you see His faithfulness every day; experience it every day in your life. He is a promise keeping prayer answering God. If you and I could take a tally like the angels perhaps could in heaven; if we could count up all the answers to our prayers and all the promises that God has kept over this past year, 2020, it would be innumerable for every one of us. Your daily sustenance, food upon your table, money in your bank accounts, the car you drive, and the forgiving of our sins. When it comes to temptations and trials of life, He faithfully delivers us and sustains us. A.W. Pink, who has a book on the various attributes of God, has a chapter on faithfulness. He says, “1. God is faithful in preserving His people. 2. God is faithful in disciplining His people. (Even when God disciplines us that is a manifestation of His faithfulness.) 3. God is faithful in glorifying His people.” One day He will glorify us and make us perfect like His Son. So in the words of the hymnwriter, “Great is Thy faithfulness, my Father, there is no shadow of turning with Thee.” Where His faithfulness shows His greatest, most wonderful expression to all of us and to the world as a whole, is the sending of His Son, Jesus. We talked about that last Sunday. The two great redemptive events could be shaped by those two promises; the promise of His first coming and the promise of His second coming. God is faithful. He came once and He is coming back again. How can you be so sure? God is faithful.
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