.JPG)
Chapter 15 – The Faithfulness of God
· Prayer - It is a good thing to give thanks to You and sing praises unto Your name, O Most High, to show forth Your loving-kindness in the morning and Your faithfulness every night. As Your Son while on earth was loyal to You, so now in heaven He is faithful to us, His earthly brethren; and in this knowledge we press on with every confident hope for all the years and centuries yet to come. Amen.
· God’s attributes
o Something that is true of God
o Not isolated traits or things in themselves, but part of the perfect wholeness of God.
o Must see them all as one, not separated.
· In studying any attribute, the essential oneness of all the attributes is apparent.
o If God is self-existent, then He must also be self-sufficient.
o If God has power, He being infinite, must have all power.
o If God possesses knowledge, His infinitude (limitlessness) assures us that He possesses all knowledge.
o If God is immutable (never differs from Himself), He cannot change, and thus He must remain faithful.
· Any failure within the divine character = imperfection, which is an impossibility with God.
· All of God’s acts are consistent with His attributes. No attribute contradicts the other, but harmonizes and blend into each other. Is God torn between His justice and His mercy? Does God incline toward one and then another, unsure and emotionally unstable? No. Any human notion of a God that is unstable just proves our limited human understanding of God.
· “God being who He is, cannot cease to be what He is, and being what He is, He cannot act out of character with Himself. He is at once faithful and immutable, so all His words and acts must be and remain faithful.”
· How do men become unfaithful? Desire, fear, weakness, loss of interest, strong influence from without. None of these things can affect God. He is His own reason for all He is and does. He cannot be compelled from without, but forever speaks and acts from within Himself by His own sovereign will.
· Deuteronomy 7:7-9, Psalm 111, Psalm 145:13, Isaiah 25:1, Rev. 19:11
· We rest our hope of future blessedness upon God’s faithfulness. Only as He is faithful will His promises be kept. Only as we trust that He is faithful may we live in peace.
o Knowledge of God’s faithfulness brings new hope to the tempted, anxious, fearful, and discouraged.
“There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.” – Martin Luther
Happy the man whose hopes rely
On Israel’s God; He made the sky,
And earth and seas, with all their train;
His truth forever stands secure;
He saves the oppressed, He feeds the poor,
And none shall find His promises vain.
--Isaac Watts
On Israel’s God; He made the sky,
And earth and seas, with all their train;
His truth forever stands secure;
He saves the oppressed, He feeds the poor,
And none shall find His promises vain.
--Isaac Watts
No comments:
Post a Comment