Our God Who is Faithful

I want to say what a great pleasure it is for me to join in worship with you this morning, and thank you, Greg, for inviting me; it's always a pleasure to be back here. I'd like to begin with a poem by the American author Robert Frost. After the heatwave we've experienced, I think you'll appreciate the temperature of this poem, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening":

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there's some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

A winter's day is nearly spent and darkness is coming on early this day, the shortest day of the year. The rider halts his horse in a wood whose branches hang low, heavy with snow. It's quiet—just the sighing of the light wind and the almost imperceptible sound of snow falling gently.

Beyond the woods, but unseen, there is a village in which stands the house of a friend. How tempting it would be to turn aside from the journey. The rider might picture the warm hearth, the crackling fire, and convivial conversation; he could spend the cold hours there in comfort and resume his journey in the morning. He could, but he has made promises—promises he must keep. The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, but he has miles to go before he sleeps. Snow clouds may obscure the stars, the night might become bitterly cold, and the snow might become a blizzard, but the rider has a prior commitment. A promise made will keep this rider in the saddle no matter how unpleasant the journey; he has given his word and he will keep it. Someone expects him, someone needs him, and someone has taken him at his word and now relies on him.

You agree with me how important are the promises we make and how important it is that we keep them. How great are the promises made to us by our creator God, and how much difference it makes when we believe and act on them. The writer to the Hebrews reminds us: our God is faithful who promised; He is a promise-keeping God.

The father of the Jewish people, the father of the faithful, was Abraham, 1,800 years before Jesus. This man lived in what archaeologists have described as a sophisticated city of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia. Identifiable history begins with Abraham, and he left his family to travel around the Fertile Crescent to a land that God promised him, yet he had no idea what it was like or where it was. He had heard the voice of God and the promises of God telling him to leave his comfort and go to the unknown, to a land that God would show him.

God said to Abraham, "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 all the peoples of the earth will be blessed because of you". What extraordinary promises they are, and what faith was needed to believe them. Remember that Abraham was promised a land, yet at his death, he possessed only a small plot of land that he had purchased so that his body might be buried there. He didn't live to see Israel become a great nation, and he never saw how one of his descendants, Jesus, would bring unimaginable blessing to the world; yet he believed God's promises.

Abraham's family did grow after his death, and in a time of dearth, ended up in Egypt where there was food. It was here that they reached one of the low points in their history, for the Egyptians, fearful of their rapidly growing numbers, enslaved these people. But God had neither forgotten them nor the promises He had made. He called a young runaway Jew—technically a murderer who had grown up in Pharaoh’s household—named Moses to lead these people to the land promised to Abraham. Moses’ task of achieving freedom was based on a belief in a promise. In the end, he led these people out of Egypt, remembering and trusting the promise of God.

Eventually, the successors of those slaves arrived in the Promised Land. Leadership was taken over by Joshua, and at the end of his life, Joshua saw that the people now lived in the land promised to their forefathers. The story of Joshua's life ends with this summary: "So the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to give to their forefathers... not one of the Lord's good promises to the house of Israel failed; everyone was fulfilled".

That is what's understood and underlined in the experience of Israel: God is faithful who promised. This doesn’t mean it is always easy; being faithful and believing God doesn't mean there won't be challenges or, in the case of people like Abraham, long delays.

The Gospel narrative is the story of our savior Jesus Christ and is full of references to the way His life fulfilled the promises of God in the Old Testament. We see this in the words of the aged Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, as he contemplated the birth of his son. His song of praise is about the promise-keeping God who remembers His holy covenant.

The writers of the New Testament came to see that in Jesus, all the promises of God were fulfilled. The apostle Paul put it this way: "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are 'Yes' in Christ". While the early promises to Abraham involved material things like a land and a nation, the letter to the Hebrews tells us that God had planned something better for us.

What does God promise you today?.

• He promises to give you new life and make you His children by adoption and grace.

• He promises that He will never leave you or forsake you.

• He promises that no matter how dark the valley you are passing through, He’ll be with you.

• He promises that His Holy Spirit will be with you to interpret His word and make clear how you should live.

• He promises us a home with Him forever—the end of sorrow and sickness and the beginning of a life unimaginable in its richness and completeness.

These are wonderful, life-changing promises. Do we believe them and take them to heart? Of all those who make promises to us, we can trust God, for He is faithful.

In one of H.G. Wells' novels, there's a story of a businessman in danger of a mental breakdown. His doctor told him the only thing that would save him was to find the peace that fellowship with God could give him. The man replied, "To think of that up there having fellowship with me? I should as soon think of cooling my throat with the Milky Way or shaking hands with the stars". The businessman had a right to question why the Creator should bother with us, but He did and He does. Mankind was born out of love and is loved by God. For God to keep His promises to redeem His people, it cost Him His Son. He who was rich, for love’s sake, became poor. He who made all things took upon Himself human flesh to live among us and submitted to cruelty so that we might know the tender mercy of our God and be restored to His family.

Let's think about some of the promises you might have made in church. At baptism, promises were made on your behalf. At confirmation, we made promises to God and prayed that Christ would live in our lives. If you were baptized as an adult, the promises were made by you. In marriage, many of us made promises of faithfulness and love. (As a parenthesis, if you are a Christian trusting Jesus and have not been baptized, you might consider the importance of that sacrament and making a public affirmation of your faith; talk to Greg about that).

As the traveler paused on his journey on a winter's evening, being faithful and keeping promises often comes at a personal cost. But the writer to the Hebrews wants us to hold unswervingly to the hope we profess. Hope in God and His promises gives us reason and purpose for our lives. To live as God's children and to grow like Him is enough, but to receive God's blessing and give blessing to others is what life is all about. Hope in God provides a perspective to our lives in which immediate problems become trivial. All our hope is wrapped up with what God has done for us in Christ and His promises to us. Hold unswervingly to this; you have every good reason, for He is faithful who promised. Thanks.

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