In this enlightening episode, we delve into the profound concept of God’s faithfulness. Through scriptures and insightful teachings, we uncover what it means to depend on a God whose promises never waver. Join us as we explore the attributes of a divine being who remains trustworthy even when the world falters, offering hope for today and confidence for tomorrow.
When you think of God’s faithfulness, you understand the basic meaning is, He will keep His word. Therefore, all the hope I have in the future, and in all that God promises to me, is based on His faithfulness. If God is not faithful, then how can I depend on His promise to me? I have great confidence about the future. So much so, people think I’m wacko in the present. But I really do have confidence about the future. I’m not at all worried about it whatsoever. Are we in a mess in our world? You bet. But I don’t worry about it at all. I know how it turns out. I’ve read the book.
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The world runs on broken, and I mean severely broken, promises. Men say what they cannot or will not keep. Leaders shift one side to the other and back and forth. Friends fail and nations tremble. Even our own hearts can waver. God, however, does not move. He does not forget what he’s spoken. He doesn’t abandon what he’s begun. And he doesn’t fail his people, his word, or his purposes. On this edition of Hope for Today, as we continue our series on the attributes of God, Bible teacher David Hawking begins a powerful message called The Faithfulness of God. Stay with us as we open the scriptures and behold the God who cannot lie, cannot change and cannot fail. We’ll begin in just a moment. First, I want to tell you quickly about the Hope for Today Media Center. You can think about the Media Center as a place to begin a journey through the Word of God. One study leads to another, and one series opens the door to the next. Step by step, the scriptures begin to come into focus with Bible teacher David Hawking. This is a video-on-demand platform where you can watch Bible teaching anytime right from the website. go through a study, watch an entire series, or share solid Bible teaching with somebody else. Just go to our website, again, DavidHawking.org. That’s David, H-O-C-K-I-N-G.org. Click on the Media tab, and you’ll open up the Hope for Today Media Center. Watch, study, share, and keep your heart anchored to the Word of God. Let’s join David now for day one of his message, The Faithfulness of God.
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Ephesians 1 is really an early Christian hymn as well as scripture. Christians immediately observed its rhythm, that it had three stanzas. At the end of the first stanza, which speaks of God the Father and His plan, it says in verse 6 of Ephesians 1, “…to the praise of the glory of His grace.” At the end of stanza 2, from verses 7 to 11, it speaks of what we have in Jesus Christ, and the focus is on God the Son. And again, it ends, “…to the praise of His glory.” And at the end of verse 14 of that first chapter of Ephesians, it speaks of God the Holy Spirit, and again ends with, “…to the praise of His glory.” Psalm 89, on the faithfulness of God, verse 1, “…I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever.” Verse 8. Verse 8. Verse 20, I found my servant David. With my holy oil I’ve anointed him. Verse 24, but my faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him. In my name his horn shall be exalted. Also I will set his hand over the sea, his right hand over the rivers. He shall cry to me, you are my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also I’ll make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth. My mercy I will keep for him forever, and my covenant shall stand firm with him. His seed also I will make to endure forever, and his throne as the days of heaven. If his sons forsake my law and do not walk in my judgments, if they break my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless, my loving kindness I will not utterly take from him, nor allow my faithfulness to fail. My covenant I will not break, nor alter the word that has gone out of my lips. Once I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His seed shall endure forever, his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established forever like the moon, even like the faithful witness in the sky.” Some people believe that faithful witness is simply the planetary bodies, whether it’s sun or moon or stars. Others believe it’s referring to the rainbow. God gave the rainbow as a sign of a covenant and a promise He made that He would never destroy the world again with a flood as He did long ago. Even like the faithful witness in the sky, you can count on one thing. God is surrounded, as the psalmist said, with faithfulness. You can depend on Him and you can count on Him. Let’s look to the Lord in prayer. Father, in this look at your word about faithfulness, help us to see that your character is behind all of the blessings of our life. Thank you that you’re a faithful God. When we see so much unfaithfulness in society today, thank you that you are the God who does not change. You are the same yesterday, today, and forever. Thank you. Help us to see, Lord, the impact upon our own lives of your faithfulness to us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Proverbs 20, verse 6, reminds us of the unfaithfulness of man when it says, Who can find a faithful man? In Proverbs 25, 19, it says, Confidence in an unfaithful man in a time of trouble is like a bad tooth or a foot out of joint. There’s one man in the Bible outside of the Lord who’s called faithful. Nehemiah 7.2, rather insignificant, his name is Hananiah. The Bible says he was a faithful man and feared God more than many in his generation. It’s Jesus Christ, though, that is emphasized in the Bible as being faithful. He’s called a merciful and faithful high priest in Hebrews 2.17. In Hebrews chapter 3, verse 2, it says he is faithful to him who appointed him as a priest. He’s called the faithful witness in Revelation 1.5. The faithful and true witness in chapter 3 of Revelation, verse 14. And when He comes again in power and great glory at the second coming of Christ, in Revelation 19, He has a name and it’s called faithful and true. Isaiah 11.5 says of the Messiah that faithfulness is the belt of His waist holding everything together. The Bible says His commandments are faithful in Psalm 119. In Psalm 36, 5, it says that God’s faithfulness reaches to the clouds. And in chapter 119, verse 90, it says that God’s faithfulness endures to all generations. I like to tell folks about the Hebrew word. The Hebrew word faithful is aman, from which we get amen. Amen is talking about faithful. And any time you want to say one, it would be okay by me. Aman. Amen. Faithful. You hear something from the Word of God and you know it’s reliable. And you say, Amen. I agree with that. That is faithful. That’s reliable. You can depend on it. I want to share with you on the faithfulness of God today. And to put it in a vernacular, we’re talking about how we can depend on Him. That you can count on God when you can’t count on anybody else. Have you ever had your kids say to you, You don’t trust me. Now parents, you know, there are different ways to handle that. You can spend a lot of emotional time just trying to explain how you do in a way. It would be better to say, you got that right. The Bible says, have no confidence in the flesh. Why? Because man is unfaithful. Our confidence is in the living God who is always faithful to us. You can depend on Him for the following seven things. Take your Bible and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 7. The most obvious one we would come up if we just tried to think about it ourselves. We can depend on God to keep His Word. When you talk about faithfulness in people, you’re talking about you can trust them to keep their word, to keep their promise. Deuteronomy chapter 7. You can count on God to keep His word. Concerning the nation of Israel. and why God chose them. Deuteronomy 7, verse 6 says, For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples. But because the Lord loves you, And because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Therefore, know that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant. You see, God keeps his word. You can rely on him. Turn to Hebrews chapter 6. The importance of keeping your word. Proverbs 14.55 says that a faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness will utter lies. There’s an example given in the book of Proverbs of somebody who has given you a secret or a confidence, and you wind up telling somebody when you shouldn’t. It says a tale-bearer, telling tales… A tale-bearer reveals secrets, but he who is of a faithful spirit conceals the matter. God will keep his word. In Hebrews 6, verse 13, look at these words. When God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself. saying, Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you. And so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Now God is simply recognizing here something that’s in society. If you go in a courtroom and they want you to swear that you’re telling the truth, there’s something Freudian about that I don’t like. Why do we have to say, I swear on a stack of Bibles that I’m telling you the truth? Does that mean when you don’t do that that we can’t trust you to tell the truth? The Bible says, swear not at all, James 5.12. Neither by heaven nor earth or as footstool. Don’t swear by anything. Let your yes be yes and your no, no. You should always tell the truth. Put your hand on the Bible. Hey, isn’t it amusing? The people who put their hand on the Bible and do that haven’t even read the Bible. If they knew what the Bible said, they wouldn’t be putting their hand on the Bible to swear by it. You say, well, you’re supposed to do it. You don’t have to do it. Just look at them straight in the eye and say, I promise you, I’m going to try and tell the truth. Best I can. What do you swear in the Bible? No, I wouldn’t want to offend God. Man’s unfaithful. God’s faithful. But I’m going to try to say the truth every time I speak. See, we’re to say, let our yes be yes and our no, no. We ought to count on you no matter what. Not when you bring God in. I swear by God, I’m telling you the truth. What does that mean? When you don’t swear by God, you’re not telling the truth. It’s interesting, isn’t it? So God here recognizes that for all of us, if you make an oath, that settles it. There’s satire here. My dear friends, oaths and covenants and agreements and contracts that have been made between corporations and people and nations have been broken continually. Now pick it up again, verse 17. Knowing this background and the satire of the passage, you’ll appreciate what God is saying, that He’s in great contrast to all of us. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability or the unchangeableness of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things, things that don’t change, namely God and His own Word, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation or encouragement, comfort, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus Christ. Having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. What the passage is saying is that you can count on what God said. When you think of God’s faithfulness, you understand the basic meaning is he will keep his word. Therefore, all the hope I have in the future and in all that God promises to me is based on his faithfulness. If God is not faithful, then how can I depend on his promise to me? I have great confidence about the future. So much so, people think I’m wacko in the present. But I really do have confidence about the future. I’m not at all worried about it whatsoever. I know how it turns out. I’ve read the book. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast. Do you feel anchored today? Do you feel steadfast and secure? It’s based on the faithfulness of God that He will keep His word. Look at chapter 10 of Hebrews, verse 23. It says, let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. Don’t doubt it. Why? For he who promised is what? What does it say? He’s faithful. You see, the faithfulness of God to keep his word causes me to realize that what I believe and what I hope in is actually going to take place. Look at chapter 11, verse 11. You talk about faithfulness. How about Sarah, who was barren all of her life. At age 89, she’s told she’s going to have a child. Verse 11, by faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed. And she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged him, what? Faithful who had promise. You see, the character of God, his faithfulness, is behind what he says. He keeps his word. Now turn to Lamentations, chapter 3. Lamentations, right before the book of Ezekiel. In a Hebrew Bible, Lamentations is with the book of Jeremiah. Lamentations deals with people crying in the nation of Israel over what happened to their city and their temple. It was destroyed by Babylon in 586 B.C. They’re now in captivity. They had 70 years of captivity in Babylon. And a lot of them began to wonder whether anything would ever change. In Lamentations chapter 3, we have these dear people crying out to God and appealing to His faithfulness. You can depend on God to keep His Word, number one, and number two, to extend His compassion to you when you don’t deserve it. Aren’t you glad of God’s compassion? Boy, is He merciful. God will extend His compassion to you when you don’t deserve it because He’s faithful. Look at Lamentations 3, verse 22. Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your what? faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore I hope in Him. The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Jump down to verse 31 to get the idea here. For the Lord will not cast off forever, though He causes grief. Yet He will show compassion according to the multitude of His mercies. For He does not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men. Look down at verse 40. Let us search out and examine our ways and turn back to the Lord. Let us lift our hearts and hands to God in heaven. Flip over to chapter 5 and look how it ends. Verse 19. They’re appealing to God’s faithful compassion. You, O Lord, remain forever. You’re a throne from generation to generation. That’s describing a faithful God. Why do you forget us forever, forsake us for so long a time? Turn us back to you, O Lord, and we will be restored. Renew our days as of old, unless you have utterly rejected us and are very angry with us. They’re putting two and two together. Hey, we’ve been here for a long time. Is this you, Lord, the one who promised us so many wonderful things? Lord, because your compassions fail not, because your faithfulness is great, you can’t keep doing this. And they were right. God extends his compassion when we don’t deserve it. Have you ever seen somebody that’s been so rotten that in your heart you say, Lord, do it to them? You know what I mean? Have you ever felt that way? I mean, in your carnal moments, you know. People in other states, you can appreciate. But you know, you sometimes conclude that somebody, you know, is being blessed too much. And in your heart you think, you know, why doesn’t God, you know, hit him a little bit? And then sometimes when you get hit, you think, well, what did I do to deserve this? And you really shouldn’t ask. Because if you got what you deserve, you’d be in hell. So it’s a miracle you’re alive. We have a misunderstanding of who we are and who God is, don’t we? God is a faithful God, and because of that, He will extend compassion to you even when you don’t deserve it. I like to say He gives you a long rope. Is there somebody in the audience here today who has never really made a commitment to Jesus Christ, but you’ve hung around enough to know something about it, or you were pressured by a friend to come? And God has been merciful to you. He’s been compassionate. You better not presume upon it too much. The Bible says in Psalm 19, keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins. Thank God for his mercy. And he has been very tolerant of a lot of gross people in this world. God is a God of mercy and he’s a God of compassion. But that doesn’t mean he won’t judge us. He will.
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Well, that’s Bible teacher David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David will be back in a bit to put the finishing touches on today’s study, so do stay with us. First of all, Matt’s here, and we have some resources that may just make your Bible study time more meaningful, more fulfilling than ever.
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Why did God choose to destroy the first civilization except Noah and his family in this global catastrophe of the Genesis flood? The Bible is clear that this was his purpose, but why?
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Find the answer inside David Hawking’s engaging study of Genesis 1-11 titled, The Beginning, From Creation to the Flood.
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Was there a history of earth that preceded the creation week? And why can we have confidence in the biblical teaching of divine authorship in creation versus the popular notions of evolution? Again, answers inside The Beginning, From Creation to the Flood by David Hawking. How about lessons from creation that will build our faith and encourage our walk with the Lord today? You’ll find them with supporting scriptures inside this book.
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Matt, our culture is incredibly, incredibly confused regarding values, ethics, and the meaning and purpose of life.
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And one reason is our failure to understand the origin of human life. And David tackles this concern inside the beginning, from creation to the flood. There’s so much inside this 156-page work by my dad. The chapters cover the creation week. Yeah, six days and a day of rest. Right, the Garden of Eden and the fall of mankind. And that’s an outstanding study that gives understanding to the temptations we face today. Sex, marriage, and human relationships, human depravity, and divine judgment. And, Matt, that really casts a light of understanding and comparison with our times today. And more. Matt, we cannot overstate the importance of Genesis 1 through 11. And our feature book for May, The Beginning from Creation to the Flood, takes you on a dramatic journey through it. And the cost is $15. And friend, your purchase or donation will help the Ministry of Hope for today.
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And please pray for hope for today. Well, and to get your copy of this wonderful resource, visit davidhawking.org. Or call us at 800-75-BIBLE. That’s in the U.S. Or in Canada, call 888-75-BIBLE. And Bible is 242- And just before David returns, you know, somewhere today, someone is turning on the radio, opening a website, or searching for truth in a world that’s run out of answers, run out of hope. And that is why Hope for Today matters. Your support helps keep this broadcast moving forward, reaching people with the Word of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and making solid Bible teaching available without compromise. So if you’d like to send a special donation or maybe become a regular monthly supporter, sending a donation as God might supply for you to do so, well, write to us in the U.S. at Hope for Today, Box 3927, Tustin, California, 92781. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO, Seven Oaks, Abbotsford, B.C., V2SHP1. You can also give online conveniently, securely, anytime at davidhawking.org. That’s David, H-O-C-K-I-N-G.org, or again by phone at 875-BIBLE in the U.S. or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. And thank you for standing with us, praying for us, and helping us keep God’s Word going out. Well, here’s David to bring our study to a close.
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One of the wonderful subjects that you can study about the attributes of God is His faithfulness. I know we like to talk about man’s faithfulness, but the Bible says a faithful man who can find. They’re very rare. But God is always faithful. Faithful means that he’s trustworthy. His word can be counted on. And all of his promises are going to come to pass exactly like he said. Why? Because he’s a faithful God. The Bible says the faithfulness of God will never fail. The Bible’s pretty clear about that. God’s faithfulness is behind the survival of Israel and the covenant of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is a faithful God. You can trust Him. You can depend upon Him. Now, some of you may have been listening so far in our series, but in your heart, there’s something missing. It’s easy to be religious, for instance, but not to be right with God. It’s easy to say to your friends that you’re a Christian, but you’ve never settled your relationship with God. We have a little booklet we’d like to send you if you’re not sure of your relationship to Him. The booklet’s entitled, What is Christianity? It tells you what a lot of people say that is simply not true. It’s in English as well as Spanish. We also have a Bible study by mail that you can do at home that strengthens you and helps you understand what it means to really know the Lord. All you have to do is call us at 1-800-75-BIBLE here in the U.S. or in Canada, 1-888-75-BIBLE, and we’ll be glad to send it to you. Take advantage of this. God bless you.
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Well, thank you, David. And friend, if you’re new to the faith or you’re not yet a Christian, but you’re curious, you’d like to know more about what the Bible says when it comes to being a follower of Jesus Christ. Well, we’d like to send you the free booklet, What is Christianity? And a Bible study by mail. Again, the numbers are 875-BIBLE. That’s in the U.S. 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. And again, Bible is 24253. Tomorrow, David continues with day two on the faithfulness of God. You know, when everything around us is unstable, God remains exactly, exactly who he said he is. His word holds, his promises stand, and his faithfulness does not crack under pressure. Never. Well, we’ll see you tomorrow again for day two on the faithfulness of God, right here on Hope for Today.
