S. God Is Faithful

GOD IS FAITHFUL

TEXT: But the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you, and keep you from evil. - 2 Thessalonians 3:3. A proposition introduced by the conjunction “but” implies opposition to or contrast with preceding matters: “But the Lord is faithful.” Hence I read the context to show you that a great many people in this world have not faith, that they have not faith because they receive not the love of the truth, and as they will not receive the truth they become the subjects of delusions, the easy prey to the crafty. If a man does not love the truth, let him beware of the snare of the fowler. He can walk in no safe place. He can promise himself no immunity from danger. He can build on no stable foundation. However promising the outset, he cannot expect in the outcome to win, to be saved, to be happy. He will not only, as a natural consequence that is, following inexorable law reap that which he has sown, but above natural law is the decree of God’s just judgment, that a man who turns away his ear from the hearing of the truth, and pulls away his shoulder from the restraining hand of admonition, the man who lends easy credence to whisperings of evil, comes under the judicial condemnation of God,’ and that condemnation is that he shall believe a lie. Now, over against that insecurity, that bad outcome, is the text, “But the Lord is faithful, who shall establish you, and keep you from evil,” or to give it a better rendering perhaps, “keep you from the evil one.” There are three thoughts in the text which I wish to elaborate somewhat in discussion. The first is the faithfulness of God in general: “But God is faithful.” The second is the faithfulness of God in this particular, to-wit: Establishing His people, and the third is the faithfulness of God in another particular, to-wit: Keeping His people from evil. The first thought, then, is “The Lord is faithful.” Four or five times in the book of Revelation we have this appellation applied to our Lord, “The faithful and true witness.” The fidelity of God! It is the ground of all of our hope. I hope to be able to make that plain to you. I want you to get close up to the thought, not only to be able to see it and feel it, but embrace it, and receive it into your inmost souls. The faithfulness of God! Let us consider first this expression, “This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” That presents the faithfulness of God in His tender of salvation to the lost, and in the adequateness of the provisions of that salvation. Some people allow their views concerning election and predestination, with kindred doctrines, to limit their conception of the fidelity of God, in their tender of salvation to all men. But God is faithful in the saying that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. There is no mental reservation in that statement. It is as broad as the term, “sinners.” Hence when He sends His preachers out He says, “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” He says, “Go make disciples of all nations.” He says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.” “As I live, saith the Lord, I prefer that they would turn and live.” Now, we must believe that God is faithful in that statement, for in going out to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if I distrust the fidelity of His offer of love and life to all men, if I circumscribe the scope of His offered mercy, if I narrow down to some cast-iron conception of my own the universality of His tender of salvation to fallen men, then I cannot preach right. And the church that, in its feelings, in its thoughts, in its plans and work, practically excludes from the domain of possible salvation any race of men, black or white, intellectual, stupid, civilized or barbaric, or any church that circumscribes the influence of salvation within certain social limits, dishonors God and doubts His faithfulness in the saying that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This is not only a faithful saying, but is worthy of all acceptation. I stand upon the fidelity of God in that statement. Let us notice further His general faithfulness. After you become a child of God and I quote a Scripture “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I plead for the acceptance of God’s faithfulness in that statement. There is infidelity in the heart of the backslider who stands aloof and distrusts God’s promise to forgive him if he will confess his sins. If we confess our sins God is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. A man may be a liar indeed, all men are liars but God is faithful, and when God says that if we confess our sins He will forgive our sins and cleanse us from unrighteousness, let no breath of distrust darken the clear crystal of promise through which shines the fidelity of God. He says that He will forgive you and that He will cleanse you and heal you of that backsliding if you will come to Him and confess it, and though mountains may crumble to a level with the plain, and great glaciers, that have been congealing since creation, may dissolve into the main, yet the Word of God abideth forever. Heaven and earth may fail, but not one jot or one tittle of God’s Word shall fail. When He tells you that if you will confess your sins He will forgive your sins and cleanse you from that unrighteousness, O, remember that God is faithful. Let us take up another instance. In the Letter to the Hebrews, the tenth chapter and the twenty-third verse, we have this language: “Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering, for He is faithful that promised.” The general faithfulness of God then with reference to His promises is expressed in the Scripture: “All the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ Jesus.” You see a Christian disposed to waver, to drop out of line, to lay aside his armor, to cease from doing good, to absent himself from the assembly of God’s people, to become discouraged and demoralized, ready to halt, ready to faint, ready to turn loose, to him like the clarion notes of a trumpet comes the exhortation of this context: “Hold fast the profession of your faith.” Why? Because God is faithful to His promise. In view of which declaration there is no reason in the world for you to turn loose. If, indeed, God has forgotten, if God is asleep, if the Lord said some precious things years ago that have escaped His recollection, if God in any sense is unfaithful, then you do well to turn loose, but I do maintain that as long as God, who promised, is faithful, there is no warrant for any Christian’s turning loose his profession of faith. Notice again, in 2 Timothy 2:13, we have this language: “If we believe not, yet He abideth faithful: He cannot deny Himself.” You may deny yourself, but God cannot deny Himself. That is the reason that the gifts and callings of God are without repentance, that is, without a change of mind. He says, “I am the Lord. I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.” You would have been consumed long ago if He had been as changeable as you are. You may not believe, but He abideth faithful, because He cannot deny Himself. “With Him is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” “Jesus Christ, yesterday, today and forever the same.” He cannot deny’ Himself. The fidelity of God, His faithfulness, is predicated upon His immutability. God can not lie. God can not change. God is not a man that He should repent, and His word is not dependent upon the ever shifting and fainting fears and hopes, and confidences and despairs of men. Again, in consummating His work He is faithful. Consummate means to make a finish, that is to say, He knew all about the case before He started that good work. Known unto God was the end as well as the beginning. He commenced that good work in you and He will finish it until the day of Jesus Christ. I want to read you two passages of Scripture bearing upon God’s faithfulness in consummating the work that He commences. In 1 Corinthians 1:8-9, we have this statement: “God shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom ye were called into fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” Yes, God, who calls you is faithful, and “whom He called, them He justified, them He glorified.” The Lord will finish His work, and His faithfulness is pledged to the absolute blamelessness of every job that He undertakes. It makes no difference from what pit you were digged. It makes no difference if a Syrian was your father. It makes no difference from what dregs of social outlawry you were rescued by His call to salvation. It makes no difference how feeble is your perception of truth, how slow you are to advance, nor how many thousand enemies obstruct you, nor how many hateful passions struggle in you to defeat the purposes of God, He will finish that work, and when He gets through with you there won’t be a spot in you. You will be as white as snow. You will be blameless and faultless before the throne of God. What He commenced in regeneration He will carry on through both departments of sanctification, to-wit: The purification of the spirit and the glorification of the body. Now, this other scripture, in 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 : “And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it.” Now that is a very precious scripture. The first part of our text then speaks of the faithfulness of God in general. And that faithfulness is the reason that the outcome of the Christian life is not so disastrous as the outcome of the infidel life. It explains the stability of the foundation resting on this Rock everlasting, and that Rock is Christ. And in Christ are the promises. And the guaranty of the promises is the faithfulness of God. More briefly let us consider the two particulars of God’s faithfulness cited in this text, quoting the text again: “But God is faithful, who shall establish you and keep you from evil.” “Who shall establish you.” A number of scriptures refer to the establishing of God’s people. Establishment assumes that when we enter the Christian life we are only babes in Christ, and need to have our faith increased, our Christian character built up. We need to attain to assurance of faith and hope. We need to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to so grow that we shall attain to the stature of a man or woman in Christ Jesus. In other words, there is a Bible doctrine of confirmation not what people teach, that confirmation is a rite, a ceremony, that at a certain time you come up for Episcopal hands to be laid upon you and thereby be confirmed. There is nothing in that figment, but it is a doctrine of God that His people shall be confirmed, that they shall be established, strengthened, rooted, grounded. That is true. The whole matter of it depends on the fact that God is faithful. You remember, some of you, the humorous turn that Bro. W. D. Powell once gave to the doctrine of establishment. A little boy who had been listening to a talk on establishment in Christian faith was asked to explain what he understood by it. “Well” he says, “I think it is like this: My father was going to town the other day, driving in his wagon. There had been a big rain and for a good deal of the way matters were not established. The wagon would move some, some this way and some that way, but finally it got stuck so deep and tight in the mud it was fixed, and dad stood off and said, ‘That wagon is established’.” Now, that was his idea of it; that is, you may be established in wrong as well as established in good. And I am sure there are some people who started out on the road, the wagon rumbling lightly along, singing jolly songs, full of shouting, who long since have stuck in the mud and have become established. But that is the establishment of the devil. If I had time, I would like to say a number of things on this, but I pass it to consider the last thought. “The Lord is faithful; He shall establish you and keep you from evil.” Whether you render this, “keep you from the evil one,” or “keep you from evil,” is immaterial to our argument. There is a power of comfort in it either way. My little girl recited to me the other night the Lord’s Player -what is called the Lord’s Prayer-it is our prayer; the Lord told us to pray that, and one of the things that He tells us to pray is, “Deliver us from evil,” or, as the Revised Version has it, “from the evil one.” She asked me what it meant. I read to her its correspondent in our Lord’s own prayer, recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John. He uses this expression: “Father, I pray not that they be taken out of the world, but that they be kept from evil,” or “the evil one.” He tells us to pray, “Deliver us from evil.” He Himself prayed, “Father, deliver them from evil.” Now, our text says, “The Lord is faithful, who will keep you from evil,” or “the evil one.” Then I called her attention to the fifth chapter of John’s first letter where he is discussing the outcome of faith and sin, where he says that all unrighteousness is sin-no matter who does it, if it is unrighteousness it is sin-and where he says that all sin is not unto death. “There is a sin which is unto death; I do not say that you should pray for it,” and then adds, “Whoever is born of God sinneth not.” Sinneth not how? “Unto death.” Why? “That evil one toucheth him not.” The Lord is faithful in that He will keep you from the evil one. Oh! many a time since you, heart-broken with sorrow, eloquent in sighs of contrition, turned your first gaze of pleading toward salvation, many a time since then, the devil has wanted to sift you as wheat. He has been near to you. He has walked all around you and considered your case, as he considered Judas Iscariot’s, and you would have been snatched from your place in the church down to the very depths of hell a thousand times if God had not been faithful. But doubtless God said to the evil one, in your case, after the manner of His reply to Satan concerning Job, “For purposes of my own I will let you touch his property, but touch not his life.” The devil shall never touch that eternal life which we find in Christ Jesus. God is faithful in that He will keep us from the evil one. In 1 Corinthians 10:1-33, speaking of the difficulties of the Christian life, the Apostle Paul uses this language, bearing directly upon the point under discussion: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able.” It is a mistake if you think that you are to be tempted above your ability. You would be if God were not faithful, but God is faithful and He will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will with the temptation also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it. Now, there is an evil that comes, we may say almost directly, if not directly, from the devil, that is called the final calamity of the wicked. I mean when God’s hedges of restraint are all cut down. I mean when God’s restraining Spirit is all withdrawn. I mean when the spirit to pray for those that are in danger is taken out of the hearts of God’s children, when all of the opposing forces that have stayed the coming of the awful calamity upon the lost souls are withdrawn, when all of the props that held up the trembling walls of the doomed house are knocked from under it, when all of the foundations under the fabric where the thoughtless one is sleeping are weakened by withdrawal of restraining grace, then indeed has Satan the power of death. That calamity is instant, final, overwhelming. Now from that death God is faithful to deliver His people. Suppose we look at the case presented in the second letter of Peter and in the second chapter, which is merely a sample: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptation and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished.” That is the general proposition. Then he cites as an instance of it, Sodom and Gomorrah, where He “delivered just Lot,” but He turned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes. He also refers to the case of Noah. He delivered Noah, but overwhelmed the wicked world. So God is faithful in that He will keep you from evil. God was faithful to Noah. Though the flood came; though all the skies were black; though shrouded in impenetrable gloom the whole heaven; though the only ray of light in that darkness is the leaping of the lightning; though the earth is quaking and’ yawning to engulf the wicked world; though the foundations of the great deep are surging up to ,meet the down-pouring of the floods from above, which have been kept apart since God separated the waters in the days of ancient chaos; and though millions perish, God is faithful not to let a single one, not one, of His children perish. He knows how to deliver Lot, though he be but one in Sodom and Gomorrah. He knows how to deliver Noah, though only eight of the world are to escape. He knows how to deliver David, the lad. He knows how to deliver Peter, down in chains and guarded by Roman soldiers. He knows how to deliver Paul and Silas when they sing and pray in the Philippian jail. He knows how to send the comfort of the Holy Ghost through the bars of the prison of. John Bunyan and flood that soul with the light of heaven, and fill that brain with the conception of the greatest book, except the Bible, that was ever printed upon the earth, and finally to throw open that prison gate and bring out that man, the tinker, and crown him, and have a statue erected to him by the descendants of his very enemies. He knows how to deliver. God is faithful. Disbelieve what else you will, discredit any statement of man, discount any promise of father or mother, or brother or sister, but remember, as you value the things that make for your peace, that God is faithful in every one of His promises. It is our sure hope. It is granite under trembling feet. It is the green shore of the long expected land to the storm-tossed mariner. It is the harbor of safety to the sinking ship. It is the heaven, that home of light, to the prisoners of hope here on this earth, who have been groaning and travailing in spirit. God is faithful. Tell it to the sick when fever burns them, or rigors chill them: “Sick one, God is faithful.” Tell it to the dying when earth’s shores recede: “Dying one, God is faithful.” Tell it to the lost, without God and without hope in the world: “Lost one, only believe it, God is faithful.” Dear Lord, help this church to stand on this declaration: “God is faithful, who shall establish you, and keep you from evil.” Let us pray.