2.18.2026

“But God is faithful" are four of the most beautiful words in the Bible. 

The phrase comes from I Corinthians 10:13, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength,” but it’s a theme that resounds all throughout the Bible.  No matter what comes against us, God is faithful. 

We see God’s faithfulness from the very beginning: God loved his creation and was determined to carry out his original purposes for it. It’s the reason why God chose Abraham in Genesis 12.  Through Abraham’s descendants, God would spread his blessing to all the families of the world.  

God is faithful, but we are not! Over and over, Abraham’s descendants failed. They were faithless.

But God is faithful.

The faithfulness of God means that God keeps his promises. Even before they entered the Promised Land, Moses told the people that even though they would rebel against God, God would remain faithful to the promise made to Abraham:

"Because the Lord your God is a merciful God, he will neither abandon you nor destroy you; he will not forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them.” (Deuteronomy 4:31) 

In Romans 3, Paul writes that the Jews were “entrusted with the oracles of God” (3:2). Entrusted. They were like a mail carrier who feels he is important because he’s been given a bag of mail, yet he refuses to deliver it! They were unfaithful in the trust that God placed in them, but that doesn’t mean that God is unfaithful! Paul goes on: “What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?” And the answer? “By no means!”

What is God to do? Our failure doesn’t mean God’s going to give up! God will remain faithful to his original intention. II Timothy 2:13 says, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful.” But in order to continue with his original plan, what God needs, and what he by his own faithfulness will himself provide, is a faithful Israelite who will carry out the commission. . . but I’m getting ahead of the story! 

So what will God do? On one hand is the faithlessness of his people and on the other are the unfulfilled promises of God just dangling out there unfulfilled. And those promises can only come to pass by means of a faithful people . . . 

God will have to do a new thing. 

At their darkest moment, when it seemed that God had finally given up on his people, when it seemed as if the idols of the Babylonians had defeated God — when it seemed as if the faithlessness of God’s own people had defeated God — out of that hopeless darkness came this promise: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing ” (Isaiah 43:18-19).

But the faithfulness of God kept butting up against the age old problem of sin. It was the people’s sin that separated God from his creation. God’s desire from the beginning was to dwell with his people. The greatest form of blessing in the Old Testament is God’s presence (Leviticus 26:12), and in the prophets, God promises to return: “My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Ezekiel 37:27). 

But before he can, he has to deal with the sin that has separated us from God. What will God do about that? 

God has a plan, and in this plan God fulfills both the promise to dwell with his people and to take care of their sins. There will be a faithful Israelite, a son of Abraham, who will die for the sins of the people: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:5-6).

But what the people didn’t understand — the new thing that their faithful God was going to do — was to fulfill both of the promises at the same time; God would return to Zion and God, in the form of a faithful son of Abraham, and he would die for the sins of his people. 

The God whose heart is broken time and time again by the faithlessness of Israel will take matters into his own hands. So great is God’s love for his sinful creation. . .well, the  gospel of John says it best: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

The season of Lent is upon us! Tonight is Ash Wednesday, a service that marks the beginning of Lent. Tonight we begin a journey toward Good Friday and Easter, and throughout this journey we’ll look at these themes of God’s faithfulness and our failure more closely.

Sitting in the remains of a destroyed Jerusalem, gazing at the smoldering ruin that was once Solomon’s glorious temple, weeping among the wreckage brought on by faithless Israel, the prophet Jeremiah looked beyond the devastation and failure and sang: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).

God is faithful! 

Blessings, 
Pastor Terry