today, as we continue our summer message series, we're actually finishing up this summer message series. We've been talking all summer long about the attributes of God, and many of you have been here throughout the entire thing. And if you've missed any of it, of course, you can always catch them on our YouTube channel or on our website, or you can listen to our Christ is life podcast, but but the idea behind this is that we would be learning the characteristics, the the things that constitute God's nature, what make him who he is, right? We're learning more about who God really is, not the things that we think God is like, not the things that somebody else told us what God is like, but the thing that God actually tells us about who he is, that's revealed to us in Scripture, something that he declared or inspired the writers of Scripture to reveal to us. And the more we know about him, the more we can relate to who he really is. And so if you've been here, you know that we talked about some of these things. We talked about his attributes of self, existence and eternality, that God, there's no beginning and no end to God, that no one created God, that He didn't create himself. He is life itself, and he has no beginning, and he has no end. We've talked about God's attribute of immutability, that he's immutable, that God does not change. He's the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. All of the attributes that we've been talking about all summer will forever and always be his attributes. You don't have to wake up one day or being worried and fear because you made some choice, then some way that is gonna, oh my gosh, all of a sudden, he's going to react to me in a different way. He's gonna be consistent all the way through. You know that we've talked about God's attribute of goodness. God is good. It's part of his nature. He can't be anything other than good. He can't act in any ways towards you that's not good. Now, that may not always align with your definition of good. May not always feel good, but we know that God is good, and he's acting in those ways whenever he's interacting with us. We've talked about his attribute of omnipresence, that God is everywhere present that you have access to all of God all of the time. Yes, hallelujah, you are never, ever alone. We talked about his attribute of omniscience, where God knows all things. He knows all things actual, and he knows all things possible. There is nothing that God does not know. But not only does he have all the information there is to know, he's also all wise. That's what Omni Sapiens means. He's all wise so knows how to take the knowledge and use them in the wisest possible ways to do the most possible good for the most possible people. We've talked about his attribute of omnipotence, and how he's all powerful to be able to carry these things out and his wise plan to be able to follow there's nothing that God can't do that is consistent within his nature. Nothing that God can't do that's consistent with his nature. We've talked about God's attribute of sovereignty, that Him, knowing all things and being all wise, can put together the best possible plan there is. And because he's all powerful, he can carry those plans out. And so he sits above all things and is interacting and moving and working within the choices that we make to move along a plan to lead us and this world in a certain direction, he is sovereign. And so even when it may not look like it to you and to me, from our perspective, we can trust that God is ruling and that he is reigning and working a good and wise plan. The next thing that we talked about was his attribute of holiness, that God has set apart. He's distinct. He's high and exalted and above infinite in majesty and glory. He's morally pure, and whenever we put our faith and trust in Him, He makes us holy so that we can enter into a relationship with Him. We talked about God's attribute of justice, how God is just. He is so right that he upholds all that is right and punishes everything that is wrong. He is the perfect judge. Being a just God, He rewards what is right and punishes what is wrong, and therefore God must judge sin, but because of this attribute of love and the love that He has for you, he allowed his one and only Son, out of his love for you and for me, to leave the glory and riches of heaven, to come here, so that he could pour out His wrath, His justice upon his son, so that he wouldn't have to do so upon you and. In me, and we could be recipients of his forgiveness and His mercy and His grace in his salvation, eternal life. And so these are the attributes of God that we've covered all summer long. And again, knowing these things is what allows us to experience him in the relationship that we were designed to have with Him as our Lord. And my hope has been that the more you've learned about him, the more you've been able to lean in and really experience the one true God, not the God that you thought he was, but the real God that He reveals of who himself is that Scripture declares to us. And so today, as we finish up this message series, we're talking about one last attribute, and that is God's attribute of faithfulness. Godis faithful.We've been singing about it all morning long. I love the way that Ray Pritchard writes about this. He says God's faithfulness means that, because he is the truth, everything he says and does is certain. That means he is 100% reliable, 100% of the time he does not fail, forget, falter, change or disappoint. He says what He means, and he means what he says, and therefore he does everything he says he willdo. Amen. Amen, Godis faithful.But how does God reveal this to us? And that's what Ray Pritchard says about him. But what does God say about this? What does His Word say about this? This is what we said we've been looking for. Is not what we think, but what God reveals to us. And so let me reveal a few places that Scripture declares this to Psalm 89 Verse eight says, Who is like You, Lord, God Almighty. You Lord, are mighty and your faithfulness surrounds you. Psalm 36 five, your unfailing love, O Lord is as vast as the heavens, Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Psalm 117, praise the Lord. All you nations extol him, all you peoples, for great is His love toward us and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. You don't have to worry about a time if God will not ever be faithful, because it's part of who he is, and it will endure for ever. That is good. Good news, my friends, Scripture declares this over and over to be true. He's faithful to himself, he's faithful to His attributes. He's faithful to you and to me. So let's look at some ways that God specifically is faithful and we can experience His faithfulness. The very first thing that I want to talk about is how God is faithful to His promises. Once again, this is what we were singing about much of the morning, the promises that God made in His faithfulness to fulfill the promises and through the covenants that he had made, we even see this going all the way back to the opening pages of Scripture. God creates the world and everything in it, and Adam and Eve and they're in the garden, and to disobey Him, they bring sin into the world. And in Genesis chapter three, God makes a promise, a promise of how, even though Satan was going to cripple mankind through sin and through death, that someone he was going to end up crushing his head, that he would destroy sin and death. It's this promise that he reveals right after human beings that he had created messed up were unfaithful to him. Now the problem is, is we don't see that he doesn't actually crush the serpent's head. He said he was going to do it, but he doesn't do it. What happens is more sin enters the world and more death enters the world, and then the had to send the flood right? And tried to start all over with those things. But after all of those things happen, we see God enters into a covenant with a man whose name was Abram, who later on became Abraham. Genesis, chapter 12, verses one through three, says the Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land. I will show you. Watch this. Promises, right? I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse and watch this. I promise that all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. This is a promise that God made. The only problem with this is that Abram and his wife were pretty old, and they were having and dealing with infertility issues and never been able to have children, and so they're going, Okay, this is weird that you'd make a promise like that, and whenever they least expected it, though God showed up and provided a child and eventually. Begin to grow the Israelite nation through them. And then along comes Moses, and he establishes the Mosaic covenant with them. And then there's all kinds of problems and blessings and curses that come because they're unfaithful and disobedient to the covenant. And then all of a sudden, God shows up on the scene again and declares this to David. King David, he says, this is the promise again, your house and your kingdom will endure forever. Before me, your throne will be established forever. And so there was this Abrahamic covenant, this promise that he would make to bless all people through him. And this, this, this Davidic Covenant, this promise that through David and King David, someone would sit on his throne and endure forever. But the problem with that is that Israel continued to be disobedient, and all of a sudden, Israel was split into two, and then they were sent into captivity, and they're suffering and they're oppressed. But even during that time, as God sent prophets to continue to communicate various things to him them, and how they would be faithful to them, even though they were being unfaithful to him. He even talked about in Jeremiah 31 how he would be establishing a new covenant, this new promise that was going to come one day. And things continued to get bad. They continued to suffer. They're impressed. There's some oppressed. There's some really dark days. It seems like God's not even talking to them for a period of like, 400 years. And people are wondering, Did God really say that these were promises? Is he really faithful? Did we misunderstand the character of God in some way, because he said these things were going to happen, and nothing's happening. Everything's gone dark. It's silent. He's not talking at all, and all of a sudden you turn the page from the Old Testament into the New Testament. You read this in the very opening line says, this is the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of David, the son of Abraham. Notice how he introduces Jesus Christ in the opening line as the son of David and the son of Abraham. He is connecting Jesus to this Abrahamic covenant, this promise that He had made to bless all people through him one day, that he's connecting him to this Davidic Covenant that someone would sit on the throne, and he would have his throne established through him for ever. And then we know that after Matthew talks all about how Jesus was born, and then his life, and then he talks about him going to the cross, and they're sitting together, sharing the last supper together, and he says that he's going to enter into a new covenant. This is the blood of the new covenant. He was going to shed his blood to begin to enter into this new covenant that was promised and faithful. And then all of a sudden, the next day, he's hanging on the cross, and He declares, what as he takes his final breath,It isfinished. What was finished all the work to secure those promises all the way back to Genesis three, when he said, even though you've been unfaithful to me and Satan is taking over and kind of ruining our world with sin and death, there was a promise that I would crush his head and defeat Sin and death forever one day. And then we read this in First Corinthians that Paul says about Jesus, the sting of death is sin, but thanks be to God, He gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ, it is finished the work of crushing Satan and destroying sin and death forever and setting the wills in motion for that have happened. He fulfilled his promise. He fulfilled his promise to Abraham to send someone to bless all people through him and that through His death and resurrection, that Jesus would sit at the right hand of God, ruling and reigning forever. Philippians, two tells us what God exalted Jesus to the highest place, gave him the name above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that what Jesus is Lord. He is sitting on his throne. He is ruling and reigning. And everyone will declare that one day, God is a faithful God, and He fulfills His promises. We see it all throughout scripture, and when you begin to see that God, the whole story of the Bible is God being faithful to His promises, then you can trust that when God makes a promise to you, you can count on it he will fulfill his promises, even to you today. So let's, let's look at that. Let's look at some of the specific promises to you. First of all, God is faithful to forgive. We can declare this because again, of his work, where he said, It is finished on the cross, Jesus took every one of our sins, past, present and future, and he paid the penalty for them, received the wrath of God, punished evil and sin, and now he gifts His forgiveness. This to us, and so no matter who you are, no matter where you've been, no matter what it is that you've done, God's forgiveness is available to you if you'll just receive it by putting your faith and trust in Him, He's faithful to forgive you if you'll just receive it based on Jesus' finished work on the cross. And if you've already said yes to Jesus, you've already put your faith and trust in Him, then that has happened. He's been faithful to forgive you. Paul declares in Colossians 213 and 14, when you were dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of our flesh, God made you alive with Christ. Watch this. He forgave us all our sins, not just the ones you had committed up to the point whenever you put your faith and trust in Jesus, He forgave all of them, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us. He has taken it away, taken it away, nailing it to the cross. If you've put your faith and trust in Jesus. He said that he was faithful to forgive you. And guess what happened? He has forgiven you. You can walk in His forgiveness. Many of us live our lives in such a way where we feel so much guilt, we feel so much shame after the sins that we've committed, that we feel like we've got to make up for them. We've got to feel like we've got to earn our way back into his good graces somehow, we've got to keep track of every sin, make sure that we confess every single one of them, to make sure that we're all forgiven. We don't have anything standing before us and God. But guys, God is faithful. If he says that he forgave you for all of your sins, guess what he's done. He's forgiven you for all of your sins. Walk in that freedom live in it you trying to do all of those things after you sin is much more about you than it is about God. You're trying to prove your faithfulness to him when he says, I am the one whose faithfulness you have to count on. Your faithfulness will do nothing. It's him rest in His forgiveness. He's faithful to forgive you if you haven't taken that step. He's forgiven you if he has the second thing I want you to see is that God is faithful in times of temptation, even though God has forgiven us. Satan knows that, but he doesn't want you to experience the life that you have. Jesus is the abundant life that He came to give. And he knows that if he can get you to walk in your flesh and step into not God's best for you sin, then you're not gonna experience Jesus in your life. You're trying to experience that thing as your life, which is a counterfeit life, and it will never, ever satisfy and so he's not gonna stop trying to tempt you. And sometimes that can feel really strong. I mean, like you, there is no way that you can avoid whatever it is that you're being tempted with. But we know that's not true. First, Corinthians, 1013, No temptation has overtaken you, except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. No matter how strong the urge is, no matter what the temptation that you face is, there is always a way out. God is faithful in times of temptation, and when you turn to Him and trust in his power to overcome what you're facing, he will show up and he will not fail you in that moment of temptation, you can experience victory over sin because your God is faithful. Next thing I want you to see about God's faithfulness is He is faithful to meet your needs. Jesus was teaching on this one time to his disciples and others, and telling them and telling us, don't worry, be anxious about the things that you need. God's gonna take care of you. He's like, I take care of the sparrows. I take care of the lilies of the field. You see how they're clothed in their splendor and that you're way more valuable. You're way more valuable to God than them. He will take care of you. And because of that, we could even see the Apostle Paul write this in Philippians, 419, he said, My God will meet all, not some, all your needs according to the riches of his glory. In Christ, Jesus, it is certainly no secret that the economy is struggling, that there's inflation, or there's at least, seems like there is. Prices are high. I'm paying a lot of money. You're paying a lot of money, and sometimes whenever that money is being drained out of my bank account, I start to worry. Anybody else become a little bit anxious. Is this ever going to get any better? Like we drown in that sometimes. And you forget, though, that God is faithful. I forget it sometimes too, but he says, Do not worry, because my God will meet all of your needs.He doesn't say he's going to provide everything you want.And. Everything I want, dang it,but everything we need. Yes,he will provide. He's faithful to do that because he says so, His word says so. So cling to that promise. When you feel that anxiety, you feel that worry and fear creeping in. The next thing I want you to see is that God is faithful to your spiritual growth the moment you said yes to Jesus, the moment you put your faith and trust in Him, not only were you forgiven, not only do you receive eternal life, but the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, came to dwell in you, and you entered into a spiritual union with Christ. There at the core of your being, you were regenerated. You were born again. You were made a new creation. Now, God is faithful to work from the inside out, growing you up on the outside into who you've already been made into. On the inside, he's already done that work on the inside. That's what it meant for you to be born again and regenerated and be made holy and and to be forgiven, to be made righteous. In Him, you have a new nature. You're like Christ, but now he's faithful to be working on your spiritual growth and growing you out. We see Apostle Paul write this in first Thessalonians, 523, and 24 he says, May the May the God of peace Himself, sanctify you entirely, and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete without blame at the coming of Christ. Faithful is He who calls you and He will also, or he also will bring it to pass? So he prays this. He's saying, May this be true about you, may you be sanctified entirely. But then right after saying, he goes, Oh, wait, Faithful is He who calls you, and He will also bring it to pass. God is faithful to do what I'm praying will happen for you. He's already done this work in your spirit, and now he's going to do it outwardly in your soul, this area of your mind, and through your thoughts and your emotions and through the choices that you make. And he's going to outwardly conform you and use your body to be acting like Christ, and His life being expressed through you and in tangible and practical ways. He's faithful to do that. As you keep your eyes on Christ and participate with him, and what it is that he's doing there, you will see him be faithful to conform you to the image of Christ, faithful to your spiritual growth. The last thing I want you to see here is that God is faithful, even when you are unfaithful, we've already talked about this to some degree, but you put Adam and Eve in the garden, you tell them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge and good and evil, and they are unfaithful, they eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And even though God's a just God, and he did enact his justice and kicked them out of the garden, dealt with their evil, and said he was going to send someone to ultimately deal with the evil that was going on now in the world. He's still faithful to them. He provides clothing for them when they felt naked and ashamed now and then, he continued to be faithful over and over to produce the people and the one that was going to come and provide, and so much so that the apostle Paul could even write this, get this Second Timothy, 213, if we are unfaithful, you paying attention, he remains faithful, For he cannot deny who he is. His faithfulness is so much a part of him that even when you are unfaithful, he remains faithful to you, even whenever you turn your back on Him, you run from Him, you hide from him, you get mad at him. You get angry at him. He's faithful, for he cannot deny Himself. Think prodigal son. Whole prodigal son story is about Running, hiding, getting angry, being prideful, turning your back on God, being unfaithful. And then whenever he turns back to him and comes the father, who represents God gets up and and runs unashamedly to him he's faithful to his son to bring him back into his graces and for him to experience what he was meant to experience. Now I do want to be clear here. This is for those of us whowho know Christ,right? I mean, if, if you haven't said yes to Jesus and received his forgiveness yet and entered into life with him, and you don't ever do so, then God is faithful to his attribute of justice. He cannot give. You eternal life with Him in Heaven, because you've rejected it, and so it cannot be applied to you there. But the good news is that because of his faithfulness to provide a way out of this for and through with Jesus, then you can receive His free gift of salvation and enter into that eternal life even today, before you walk out of this room. And so I think that's the first step. When we talk about our application today. I mean, if you've never received God's forgiveness, his faithfulness to you, he's offering it to you as a gift, forgiveness, eternal life, if you'll just receive it by putting your faith and trust in Him. And so if that's you, I would hate for you to walk out of here today and not apply that to your life. And I'll give you a chance to do so in a little while. If you put your faith and trust in Jesus, how does God being faithful impact my life today? Well, here's one practical way when you doubt your salvation, and I bet you have,the reason, I bet you have is because I have, and I'm a pastor,when you doubt your salvation, remember God's faithfulness. Remember God's faithfulness. There's a lot of time in our lives where we we just doubt, am I really saved? And a lot of times it may be because of recurring sin that we just can't seem to get over, or something we've said or done. Maybe it's something from a long time ago, I mean, way back in our past down here, but it's such a big deal that we can't believe. We just can't believe there's any way that God would really forgive that thing that we did. Maybe it's through certain behaviors, or we don't think that we're just being good enough and aren't acting in good enough ways. And we're trying to check for all these things, and we're going, I don't really know if I'm saved or not. Whatever it is that causes you to doubt. Remember, God's faithfulness. A lot of people are spending a lot of their time when they doubt their salvation, trying to rededicate their life, trying to maybe get re baptized, trying to recommit their life, trying to be more faithful to God. But again, guys, that is much more about you coming before God going look at my faithfulness to you. Look at how much I rededicated you, and how I'm committed to you in all of these ways. And that is not the gospel. It is not about your faithfulness to God. It is about his faithfulness to you. So we gotta stop all of this. Whenever we doubt our salvation, trying to do everything that we can do to prove to him and everybody else in ourselves that we're saved and just receive it and count on him as being faithful. That's the first thing I forgot to put it in here on the next slide, and I had coffee with the pastor between coffee with the pastor between but when you're tempted, next thing, when you're tempted, we talked about this already. Remember God's faithfulness. That's the second way of application you're gonna be tempted. So when you're tempted to step into sin and settle for less than God's best, remember his faithfulness to show up for you in that time. Be strong in his mighty power. Live in the victory you have in Christ over those things. The third thing, when you have made a mess of your life,anybody else ever been there,done that, in that place right now, when you've made, if you've made a mess of your life, remember God's faithfulness. Maybe you've been running from him. Maybe you've been hiding from him. You're you're angry, you're rebelling, you've just made a mess of it. Maybe Satan has even convinced you that you're worthless, that you're a screw up, and you always will be. See it, does you do it every time? But if that's you today, remember God's faithfulness. Remember his unfailing love. Remember the story of the prodigal son. Remember his promises to you. Turn to Him and you can trust him even when you've made a mess in your life,when you're discouraged, whenthe situations and the circumstances that you're in don't line up in your head with being good,doubting if God's really involved in I've been praying about this, all of these things. Just keep showing up. Why is my life like this? Why are these things happening? You said you're a good God feels like you're not doing anything about it. Remember God's faithfulness. I don't know if you remember the story of David and Goliath. I'm sure you remember the basic story of David and Goliath, right? But do you remember what David told King Saul? When King Saul asked him why he thought he could slay the giant? Maybe you remember it. Maybe you don't. If you don't. If you don't, here's what he said, The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. What's he doing? Pointing to God's faithfulness. God was faithful to deliver me from the paw of the lion in my past, he was faithful to deliver me from the paw of the bear and. Past, and so because he's been faithful to me in the past, I know he'll be faithful to me right now in the present. So when you become just get discouraged, you're fighting, you're wondering what God is up to. You remember his faithfulness. You look to his attribute of faithfulness. You look to all the things throughout Scripture that declare the fulfillment of His promises and his faithfulness to you and to me. And then you also think about the ways that he's specifically been faithful to you. My wife is so good at this. She's so good at writing things down and journaling and putting the prayers that she has, and then answered prayers for those things and keeping them. And she'll go back and look at them, or especially in times like this, when she's wondering about stuff, and then you go through and you you read all the ways, and you're reminded of, oh my gosh, like it feels like in these moments, like God's never shown up for me,right? Just never,just a mess all the time. Then you're reminded and remember all the things he's been so faithful into you, and all of a sudden you go, Oh my gosh, yes, he has been faithful, and so I'm going to trust that he's being faithful to me now to work for His glory and my good, even ifI don't see it.So when you doubt your salvation, remember God's faithfulness. When you're tempted to sin, remember God's faithfulness when you made a mess of your life. Remember God's faithfulness when you are discouraged. Remember God's faithfulness. Let's pray