 Turn in your Bibles to the book of Psalms Psalm 119 we're going to stand and read the entire Psalm Well at least you're listening We will read verses 89 through 96 and I will ask you to stand for that Psalm 119 verse 89 through verse 96 Forever, oh Lord your word is settled in heaven Your faithfulness endures to all generations You establish the earth and it abides They continue this day according to your ordinances For all are your servants Unless your law had been my delight. I would have perished in my affliction. I Will never forget your precepts for by them you have given me life. I Am yours saved me for I have sought your precepts The wicked wait for me to destroy me, but I will consider your testimonies. I Have seen the consummation of all perfection But your commandment is exceedingly broad. This is the word of God. Let us obey it. You may be seated We're going to talk tonight about that God is faithful So let me ask a rhetorical question of you is is God faithful anyone would say he's not Okay, you all affirm the God is faithful. So let me ask you this follow-up question. What does it mean that God is faithful? Be careful what you say yes to until you know what you're being asked I Remember years and years ago. I was teaching a Sunday school class in Southern, California And somebody came up and asked me this question. Do you agree with let go and let God? I'd never heard that phrase before but it sounded right. So I said, yeah, I guess I'm not responsible for anything. I say right after I teach My mind somewhere else Well, then I asked one of the pastors at the church. I Somebody asked me this question and Let go and let God and I said yes What is what is that and then he explained to me the Keswick Understanding of complete surrender. I don't do anything. God does it all he repents for me He obeys for me They say it this way. I'm just a suit of clothes that Jesus wears And then I tried like crazy to find that person again to say no no no no no you tricked me So when somebody asks you a question before you say yes ask them, what do you mean by that? Before you get Corraled so what does it mean that God is faithful? I mean you all said he is So what does it mean? The word in our text means dependable firm certain secure steadfast and trustworthy as well as simply faithful The root word for the Hebrew is a mom and I think you can sell that's a derivative of Amen Jesus himself used that often when he would say verily verily Now when we say something that we think is trustworthy we say amen at the end Which means let it be or it is true Jesus didn't wait till the end Jesus started off by saying this is true Like Beretta used to say take it to the bank the biblical idea of God's faithfulness is simply That believers can rest secure that God is totally reliable totally dependable and infinitely trustworthy Every day in a thousand ways we're confronted with this question Can I really trust God with my life? Actually, it'd be better and more accurately asked this way is God trustworthy. That's the question you're asking We almost choke when we say it like that if we're honest with ourselves. We have to admit. I really don't trust God. I Mean we can trust him to get us to heaven. We just can't trust him to get us through the end of the month financially But the reason we don't trust God is because we really don't know God Now that's been the recurring theme of my time with you these last few weeks Getting to know God as he has revealed himself in his word and that word is the final authority Not what you've always been taught Can't tell you how many times people have said to me. Well, I I don't understand what you said. He's yeah I've always been taught So Who cares? What you and I think about what God is like is irrelevant What God says about what he is like is eternally relevant You may have seen or heard somebody use this phrase. Well, God said it and I believe it and that settles it and You understand immediately that the middle part of that Can be tossed out There's only two parts necessary to that God said it that settles it and it doesn't really matter if you believe it or not Something is true if it's true whether you believe it or not There may be somebody in Russia who doesn't believe there's a Disney world There's still a Disney world. So I want us to look at the faithfulness of God under two headings God's declaration of his faithfulness and God's display of his faithfulness First let's look at what scripture says about the faithfulness of God I'll just give you these scripture texts. You can look them up Deuteronomy 7 9 Therefore know that the Lord your God He is God the faithful God Who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments Did you notice that that was restricted? He keeps mercy to a thousand generations to those people Now could it be any clearer or more explicit than that? God is the faithful God And our text from Psalm 119 told us that his faithfulness is to all generations But will you notice that the faithfulness of God in verse 90 is predicated upon the eternally settled word of God in verse 89 We don't know God his faithfulness primarily by our experience But primarily by divine revelation. We may know him some by experience But your experience is fallible and Your experience can't always be trusted and if you ever elevate your experience above scripture This is not the church for you I remember once when I was a single man Attending John MacArthur's church. We had so many single people in the church over 500 It was nice to have pickings But we had to hold our Friday night Bible studies in different locations. There were just too many people And in our particular study There were two wonderful people His name was Kelly her name was Helen and they started dating and we were all so excited Hey, maybe this will work and they got engaged And all we were just so had it couldn't have been nicer people Great for him We assume great for her and then after about a month she broke off the engagement And everybody was sad for them Broken-hearted. I know Kelly was And I sat down with her and I said Can I ask you about your decision? She says yes She was a school teacher at a private Christian school and I said I don't understand Is Kelly a Christian? Oh, yes, he also happened to be an elder at the church. I Said do you think he'd make a good spiritual leader? Oh, I can't imagine a better one You think he'd be a good father husband the best Does he have good character, yes Okay, I have to ask you one more question. What's the matter with you? What do you mean? You just affirmed everything a man should be in a intimate relationship like that and You don't want him Well My heart told me it wasn't right Your what your heart is Desperately wicked and more deceitful than anything. Why would you listen to that? The story was told of Donald Gray Barnhouse who preceded the late James Boyce at 10th Press in Philadelphia but after a sermon one young man came up to him and said dr. Barnhouse I just want you to know that I gave my heart to Jesus and dr. Barnhouse said what would he want with that dirty old thing God's word is settled forever in the heavens. That's what you trust You trust what this book says and you don't trust anybody or anything that disagrees with this book 2nd Peter 1 2 to 3 says that everything we desire is a byproduct of the knowledge of the true character of God He says grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord Seeing that his divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and Godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence. That's the new American standards rendering everything pertaining The word pertaining is the root word for pertinent, which means having anything to do with It's granted everything to us that has anything to do with physical life and spiritual life Everything now if everything pertaining to life and godliness has been granted to us through the true knowledge of him What is that presuppose? There's a false knowledge That grants us nothing at all So we can deduce that a false knowledge grants us nothing because the true knowledge grants us everything, right? That's just logical So trusting God is a byproduct of the knowledge of the true character of God and in my opinion That's the greatest need the church has today a theology proper the knowledge of God. What is God like? That's what we're doing here The Old Testament is the unfolding of the character of God It's in the Old Testament. We see God reveal himself turn back with me to Genesis chapter 15 in this chapter God promises Abram. He's not Abraham yet. He's Abram and exceeding great reward Follow along as I begin reading at verse 1 after these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying Do not be afraid a Abram. I am your shield. You're exceedingly great reward But Abram said Lord God, what will you give me seeing I go childless and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus Abram's response shows that he's a product of his culture Reward Talk to me about a reward. I don't even have a son now Abram at this point was over a hundred years old Sarah is over 90. I don't really even have to mention the bad thinking I on God's part. Do I I mean? Let's look at conjugal realities If grandpa's over a hundred and grandma's over 90 and they say we want to have children now Yeah, and that's what Sarah did God You seem to have forgotten physical realities. I'm over a hundred. She's over 90 We don't do that anymore, but you know what? When God wants to do something There are no obstacles At this point God told him to do something interesting He said verse 5 he brought him outside and said look towards heaven and count the stars if you're able to number them And he said so shall your descendants be What do you do when God says go out and count the stars you go out and count the stars One two three four five six seven eight nine ten one thousand five one thousand six one thousand two two million nineteen two million twenty three And then you lose count and you got to start all over again I put yourself in Abram shoes for a moment You don't even have one son much less millions. How are you supposed to respond to this? What are you supposed to do when God tells you to do something that you think is wacky? I mean for example take Jesus and Peter Peter said I haven't caught a fish all night. Throw your net on the other side No, you didn't hear me. I've been here all night If those fish were gonna get in the net they'd have done it on this side of the net just as easily on that side of the net It doesn't really work to argue with God He knows what he's doing Peter put your net over there All right You're a carpenter and you're telling me a fisherman how to fish whoa All of a sudden he can't pull them in there's so many When God tells you to do something you think is wacky you do something wacky Why because God said to what are the reason do you need and the very next verse verse 6 says Abram believed God Some translations say in the better translation simply say Abram believed God You know for you as a Christian the question is not do you believe in God? That's pretty apparent Do you believe God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness now? What form did Abram's belief take? obedience Abram could see the stars, but he couldn't see the future And to this point we must remember that the mercies of God are called sure mercies never swift mercies It's also The question for us you believe God Initially Abram's response was controlled by his finite understanding of the situation What he could see and experience not the reveal character and trustworthiness of God All he had to go on was the word of God and my friend sometimes that's all you and I have to go on Sometimes the word of God is all we have to support and sustain us remember Satan's attempt to Destroy Christ and Matthew 3 The Bible tells us that Jesus was baptized and As he came up out of the water a voice from heaven This is not like one of your baptisms over here in the lake It doesn't happen at your baptism But after Jesus's baptism a voice from heaven says this is my beloved son With whom I am well pleased Okay, I'd believe it if that happened If after my baptism a voice from heaven Not some ventriloquist somewhere, but an actual voice from heaven came out of the clouds and said he's mine and I'm happy with him And then it says Immediately Jesus was taken by the spirit Into the wilderness to be tempted. He's there 40 days 40 nights No food then Satan says then the tempter came to him How interesting he didn't come to him right after his baptism He didn't come to you right after you get back from church camp He waited till he was in the weakest possible position. I asked a medical doctor once what would happen to a man If he was by himself Isolated did not eat for a month and a half and didn't have any human contact He says he would be delirious He would be depressed He would have lost about one-third of his body weight and he would be struggling to stay alive and Then the tempter came there and said If you're the son of God Now what was the last thing Jesus heard before this the last words he heard were this is my beloved son and The next words he hears are If you're the son of God That's what he did with Adam and Eve Has God said The last words they heard from God were You can eat anything here except that one right there. Don't touch it No, he didn't say don't I don't eat from it Now when Satan comes he says really is that what God said and Eve distorted what God had said He said don't eat from it or touch it lest you die We have no record that God ever said don't touch it good idea I mean why play with fire But then she let her experience take over when she saw that the tree was desirable Look good her focus has gone now She's not focusing on God. She's focusing on the immediate situation in Christ's situation What did his circumstances tell him does he trust his senses his feelings his Experiences or does he trust what God said? How far are we supposed to take this? Write down these scripture texts and you can read them for yourself later tonight Psalm 46 verses 1 to 3 the psalmist basically says I don't care what I see Though the mountains quake and the oceans tremble and the mountains be pulled into the sea You know, how would it be if when I finally let you go here tonight? You walked outside and there's nothing there. I Don't mean different stuff. I mean it's black gone. Everything is gone Lord What's going on here The psalmist says I don't care what I see And in Psalm 77 he says I don't care what I feel verses 7 to 14 In Habakkuk chapter 3 verses 17 to 18. I don't care what I experience or In Job chapter 13. I don't care if God kills me. I'm still going to trust it Now how can these people come to these conclusions? Because my experience does not alter the revealed character of God and I dare not elevate my Experience over God's word for example Bible says my God shall supply all your needs through his riches in Christ Jesus But I'm in a terrible marriage and my needs are not being met. I thought you believed the word which just says My God shall supply all your needs You don't have a need you have a desire Well, I have a need to be happy You don't there's no command in the Bible to be happy You're not sinning by being unhappy. You might be sinning by complaining about it. You don't need a 55 inch TV You may desire one, but you don't need one In fact, you don't even need a TV at all. We'd all be better off without them But if my God says that he will supply all our needs through his riches in Christ Jesus And I say but I have a need which one of us is lying Okay, the Bible says that God will supply all my needs and I think I need something So I guess I don't Needs are what God meets and yet You know for a wife or a husband to go to their partner and say you're not meeting my wants That just doesn't sound quite as impactful. Yeah, so Well, I want something from you Yeah, so You're insensitive I'm a guy. So how can these people Affirm God when all of their senses and all of their circumstances scream otherwise It's the same question Abram asked what proof do I have? Isn't that what he said? He said, how shall I know? I mean wouldn't God have been justified in responding like this Excuse me. How shall you know? You know because I said that's the way it would be That's how you shall know listen if you can't trust me I'll find somebody else to bless. See ya Now if I was God, that's how it would have happened. That's how I know that scenario God would have been justified in doing that to Abrams unbelief. Fortunately It's not what God determined to do. God said you're going to have a son. What happened? They had a son Through the normal means that sons have always been begotten It's just amazing to me that when God wants to do something nothing's in the way I love the story about Lazarus, Mary and Martha Jesus is with his disciples quite a distance away And he gets word Somebody comes to him says you need to come to Mary and Martha's house Lazarus is sick. He's dying and Jesus says It's not time yet No, he's dying. It'll take us days to get there Not time yet Then the word comes that Lazarus has died and Jesus says all right, let's go If you'd been a disciple, can you imagine the looks you'd have given Jesus now it's time So he makes the trip they all walk to where Mary and Martha's house is Martha comes out and really gives Jesus the what for? You know, if you've been here this wouldn't have happened. Thanks for nothing Jesus says to You're worried about too many things You don't need to worry about this. There's only one thing is needful. That's that you be in a right relationship to God That's the only need you have when you start talking about needs. He says only one thing is needful That's the only need you have by the time they get to the house Lazarus has been dead three days He says to the disciples Time now Can you imagine the rolling of the eyes? Now it's time Yes, go roll away the stone. Okay Go in and make sure he's dead You know what he's doing If he does it Before a certain time Nobody will believe the miracle. They'll say you weren't even dead. He was just sleeping in there Why you would go into a grave and roll the stone behind you to sleep? I'm not sure So he sends a couple of disciples to go check on him and they come out and he says is he dead? And I think this is dripping with sarcasm He stinks Okay Now it's time Lazarus Come here and I heard one man say you know why he specified Lazarus Because the power that he had with him if he didn't say Lazarus every dead person in the country would have gotten out of the graves and walked forward Lazarus come here here comes Lazarus you rang when God wants to do something nothing is an obstacle The angel comes to Mary and says you're going to have a son. She says I've never known a man. It's too soon She had a son Mary and Martha's case it's too late Abram and Sarah were too old None of that Kept God from doing what he wanted to do in Hebrews 13. God commands us to be content turn with me to that passage, please Hebrews chapter 13 I Know it's a familiar one to you in verse 5 He says let your conduct be without covetousness be content with such things as you have Notice the next phrase for he himself has said I'll never leave you or forsake you in the English rendering. There are two negatives Never and nor but in the Hebrew there are five negatives This is the most emphatically negative statement in the Bible This is a quote by the way from the Old Testament. That's why I'm saying in the Hebrew If we rendered it literally it would read like this I will not leave you No, I will not forsake you under no circumstances. No, I most certainly will not Get the point and please don't miss why we're to be content in that verse for he has Said it's because of what God has said about himself were to be content not because it works out the way we wanted to We believe because that's what God said God said it and that settles it now in response to Abrams question back in Genesis about how he could know God's answer was this On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abrams saying to your descendants I've given this land you don't make a covenant by the way you cut a covenant Circumcision on a male child is a covenant. It's a cutting of the flesh literally God had Abram collect certain animals Now in that day when two people cut a covenant they use prescribed animals They would cut the animals in half from head to toe or beak to toe They would lay the halves of the animals side by side and the two parties would walk barefoot Through literally the blood of the covenant What's the significance of that The two parties were saying to each other If I fail to keep my part of this covenant you may do to me what we did to those animals Pretty great insight for a man to keep his word wasn't it if I don't keep my word I die Now what's the significance of the fact that God put Abram to sleep and pass through the pieces of the animals himself? Simply this God wasn't going to trust the success of this covenant to Abram and as Hebrews tells us since he could swear by no one greater He swore by himself And in doing so he virtually announced to the world if I ever fail to keep my word I will cease to exist You know that's better than cross my heart and hope to die stick a needle in my eye Back now that I think of it. That's exactly what God is saying cross my heart and I will die But the scripture tells us that God cannot cannot die Ergo He can't fail to keep his word. What's the outcome? Genesis 21 then the Lord took note of Sarah as he had said and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised and Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the appointed time When did Sarah have a son? at the appointed time It may not have been Sarah's time But it was the time that God had in mind God may or may not work on our time schedule In fact, he rarely does would you agree? But that's not important. What is important that you and I work on his time schedule We can trust God because of what he's said because of his character because of his trustworthiness Not because he has lived up to our expectations Again hymns are terrible places to get your theology Jesus Jesus how I trust him how I've proved him or and or In that song the basis for trusting God is that he's come through That's not the basis for trusting God Doesn't matter how many times you've proved him or and or that has no bearing on anything we can trust God because of Scripture truth your experience is not a greater standard than scripture truth Well, it didn't happen that way for me so Scripture must define and validate our experiences not the other way around And it's so important to remember here that based on the immutability of God The fact that God neither can nor will change we must remind ourselves if God is ever faithful He will always be faithful Since he cannot change if he's faithful once he must be eternally faithful what God is he always is Now go back to the Psalm 119 passage Because we can see that as well here God's word according to verse 89 is unchangeably fixed His faithfulness is to all generations. He has established the earth and it abides Now watch closely the next part they Continue to this day according to thy ordinances the word they is a plural word The word earth is a singular word So what does they refer to? It has to refer to something more than the earth. What does it refer to to God's faithfulness and The earth you see even God's faithfulness is dictated by his ordinances, which is his word We will have no more trust in God's faithfulness than we have in his word And we will trust in his word proportionately to the time spent studying it Notice also the illustration that God gives us of his faithfulness. It is the constancy of his creation You have established the earth and it abides. There's a constancy in the seasons You wouldn't know that living in Florida where it's 80 degrees in February But in the rest of the civilized world where they actually have seasons it is that way You have two seasons here in Florida unbelievably hot and not quite as hot That's it summer always follows spring which always follows winter Which always follows fall? Which always always follows summer it never changes. It's forever the same. It's always fixed They always follows night The sunrise comes every morning the evening comes every night forever the same Fire is always hot Ice is always cold the law of gravity never changes the tides are always subject to the moon Dogs always bark cats always purr cows always have cows they never have puppies and On and on it goes These things are fixed by a fixed deity They are unchanging because he is unchanging these are just illustrations of his character It's because nature is so fixed that we apprehend the God of nature to be so faithful God is faithful says the Scripture But his faithfulness is only an illustration of his unchanging nature the immutability of God is the foundation of his faithfulness He can't change He can't mess you up by doing it different He can't fail because he can't change and Something that is forever the same is by its very nature trustworthy because it's certain and sure He is as the Scripture tells us forever the same There's no variation or shadow of turning with him. That's what we sing If you don't believe that don't sing it. You don't praise God by lying to him The world passes away. We're told but the word of the Lord abides forever And if the faithfulness of God shows itself so clearly in this Temporary world how much more can we count on the faithfulness of God's word which has a vastly higher place in the councils and Fulfillments of eternity back to psalmist tells us God has exalted his word above his very name And his faithfulness is predicated upon that exalted word When we look at the matter of God's faithfulness, we have to realize that his faithfulness is first to himself And to his own purposes In other words God could no more fail to be faithful and he could fail to exist The assurance of our salvation is predicated upon God's faithfulness faithful is He who called you who will bring it to pass If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins Etc. And when God wants to distinguish his faithfulness for many lesser kind in numbers 23 He compares himself to man. God is not a man that he should lie and to show you what kind of lie He's incapable of it's that of not doing what he says he will do God said it That settled it. Let me ask you this. When is God shown himself to be untrustworthy? When is he failed to be faithful? I mean, isn't the question really this one? When is he failed to live up to my expectations and when did God promise he would do that? Nothing will kill a relationship like expectations. I did a little counseling for a Couple about to get married. So the first thing I want you to do is write down all your expectations And I said I said did you know any of those expectations? I had no idea So you think you could live up to that list? He was nobody could live up to that list. I Said the same thing to her Did you know that that's what he expected of you after marriage? No Can you live up to that I'm not even going to try Expectations will kill a relationship particularly the ones that aren't spoken Well, I just naturally assumed that you were going to and why would you assume that for a moment? Did I ever tell you I was going to do that? Well, no, I just assumed John Collings was a 17th century Puritan and he wrote a massive work on Providence He has an entire sermon where his point is that God rarely answers the expectations of his people He shows that God always fulfills his promises, but he's under no obligation or inclination to live up to our Expectations, which are largely self-centered So often we think that if we understand things we have control of them Christ continually checked the curiosity of his disciples and their questions They said when is it time to restore the kingdom to Israel? He says not something you need to know When Peter asked him, what shall this man do? Christ said him, what's that to you? How is that your business? We want to know everything and see it all up front and yet faith is the evidence of things what? not seen The scripture gives us two grounds for trusting God one is his word and the other is his track record and In the mind of God both of those are sufficient without any further proof Is there assurance of salvation what Jesus said of all those that the Father has given me? I've never lost one Good enough for me I'd hire a guy who base said that on his resume All of that was the first point Now we'll look at the second one more briefly. I promise The display of God's faithfulness Well, what I'm going to call God's track record the psalmist declares in Psalm 89 one I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever with my mouth Will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations and here again? We have the idea of telling ourselves and others the truth. There's a movie coming out around Christmas time Called unbroken It's about some of you older folks will know this name Lewis Zamparini Back in the first half of the last century. He was an Olympian Great track star and then he was a war hero excuse me, he was shot down over the ocean and rescued and put in a Japanese prisoner of war camp Where he was beaten regularly In 1949 by the way, he was converted at a Billy Graham crusade in Los Angeles Very anxious to see The father would puts that in the movie, but when he was training For in high school to run track He would as anybody else would Run out of gas He said to his dad who was training his dad to keep going. He's dead. It hurts Louis if you can take it you can make it and That's the same to him when he was getting beaten in prisoner of war camp And he said to the other guys if you can take it you can make it You know, there are so many things that come out of our mouths Here are two that would be more helpful to us than ninety nine point nine percent of them The mercies of God and the faithfulness of God. You want to do something interesting ask your parents if they're believers How'd you ever make it? Not only in marriage, but just my folks had five boys My dad called us his house apes as far back as I can remember when he became a California Highway patrolman His take-home pay was two hundred and fifty dollars a month and they took fifty dollars a month out of his check For his gun in his uniform So he took home 200 a month With five boys. I don't know how they did it I mean, I know we didn't have much Our lunch sack had to last the entire week lunch box please We had that French delicacy mustard sandwiches mustard between two slices of bread You know, we bought for 18 years that that actually was a French delicacy Because the mustard was French's brand and a handful of potato chips and an apple And I remember other kids opening their lunch box and seeing something called twinkies. I Want one You want to trade a mustard sandwich? Yeah, that'll work. Ask your parents. How did they make it? Let them tell you about God's faithfulness And yet when I watch clips the old home movies that they've had put on DVDs for us every Christmas There were Christmas presents under the tree bicycles Microscopes every birthday there was a cake. I don't know how they did it Well, I do know how they did it because I've become parents and said they sacrificed They did without so that we could have Let him tell you about that it will greatly increase your appreciation for them We should be reminding ourselves on the mercy of God We should be telling ourselves and our children and our grandchildren of God's faithfulness Talk to them about it Tell them about it The reason to study the Old Testament is to see the repeated faithfulness of God to his people and to his purposes And that's why we sing this hymn great is thy faithfulness When the psalmist declares I've never seen the righteous for sake and he gives us a good example He may have felt forsaken And you may have felt forsaken you've never been forsaken and There's a vast difference between feeling forsaken and being forsaken Christ was forsaken You're not and that perfect track record involves us as well One of my favorite passages of the scriptures in first Corinthians where Paul that makes this declaration God always leads us in his triumph and Manifests through us the sweet aroma of him in every place now. That's two universal statements in one sentence Here's the setting Paul had gone to Troas to preach the gospel and he says the door was wide open I mean that's like you going around doing door-to-door evangelism Hi, I don't know who you are But I've been wanting to find Jesus could you come in and tell me how I could do that That's that situation But Paul was unable to find Timothy upon whom he depended greatly for support in fellowship So he says so I left and moved on and I've heard people castigate Paul poor Paul He was so lonesome no fellowship But for whatever reason Paul didn't do that and here's how he assessed the situation God always leads us in his triumph What does that mean it means that since God can't fail I can't fail either Because God always leads us in his triumph and notice whose triumph it is God's triumph not yours God's and He always leads me in it. That's a perfect track record I'm in Christ and he never fails so I can't fail either But there's a second part to this that I love How many times have you and I in times of self-deprecation and over Self-condemnation felt that as a Christian we just stick the joint up Am I the only one? I saw all of you bail on me when I said that God, I'm so sorry for the way I live today. I just stick the joint up No, you don't He always leads us in triumph and Manifest through us the sweet aroma of himself in every place It's his triumph, but the aroma comes through us How many times have we let God down and ruin would seem like a perfect opportunity and yet We've got to tell ourselves the truth God always leads me in his triumph and manifest through me the sweet aroma of himself in every place He always does that he never does not do that So no matter how down on yourself you get You can't If God says otherwise It's our job to be faithful of this God's job to be successful and he never fails not at himself and not in you and not in me So the first way we learn about the faithfulness of God is through his revealed word. The second way is through our afflictions In Psalm 191 David declares if it hadn't been for God's law his word He would have perished in his afflictions and he said it is good for me that I was afflicted and The reason it was good is that drove him and forced him to the scriptures It is good for me that I was afflicted that I may learn your statutes We're studying the doctrine of the faithfulness of God, but it's through God's afflicting hand. We learn by experience what's taught in Scripture God said it and that settles it you better believe it One last thing Psalm 139 one tells us we're to sing of the mercies of the Lord forever And that with our mouth were to make known God's faithfulness to all generations. What a heritage to leave behind What a legacy to give our children our grandchildren our lifelong stories of the faithfulness of God That is what we are to tell them Let us make that our goal to instruct our posterity in the faithfulness of God Let's pray Heavenly Father, we thank you for your testimony about your faithfulness You said it and that settles it and now may we live according to the word in Jesus name. Amen