Encounter the Truth

Jonathan Griffiths: God keeps His covenant of steadfast love to His people. He keeps His promises to save, and at the same time, He carries through on His promises to judge. Both are vitally important, both are absolutely integral to who God is and what He’s like.

Steve Hiller: Welcome to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths. I’m Steve Hiller, glad you’re with us as we continue our series, "Who is Like Our God?". Jonathan, you point out a couple of characteristics of God, the fact that He keeps His promises. He keeps His promises to love, and He keeps His promises to judge. For some of us, it may feel like those two things are in opposition to each other.

Jonathan Griffiths: At the end of the day, we need to understand and we need to believe that God is faithful to His promises, true to His word, and can be relied upon to do what He says He’s going to do. We encounter so often in our world those who do not carry through on what they commit to, and we often fail to do that ourselves.

God is uniquely faithful, but if we are going to trust Him, if we are going to take Him seriously, then we need to be utterly convinced that He will do what He has said He will do. In a sense, it begins with taking seriously His warning about judgment. If it’s not true that God is going to judge the world, then we don't need to worry too much about listening to Him, heeding His warnings, or seeking salvation.

But if we believe that He’s going to do that, then we need to look to Him for the solution to our very significant problem. As He promises to save those who come to Him in Jesus, we need to then believe that He will be faithful to save those who trust in Him. So, it is a package, and it’s tied to this idea that God is true to His word, faithful to His promises.

Steve Hiller: Well, let's look at that today as we begin a message entitled "The Faithful God". Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: The theme of the faithfulness of God runs right through the Scriptures and is a wonderful, consistent, resounding theme of the word of God. In his famous song before the assembly of Israel in Deuteronomy 32, Moses joyfully declares the faithfulness of God.

He says this: "The Rock—and what a wonderful name for the Lord that is—the Rock, His work is perfect, for all His ways are justice. A God of faithfulness and without iniquity, just and upright is He." The Psalmists rejoice again and again in the faithfulness of God. Psalm 89:8 says, "O Lord God of hosts, who is mighty as You are, O Lord, with Your faithfulness all around You?" Psalm 36:5 says, "Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, Your faithfulness to the clouds."

It is a wonderful theme to be considering together, and I think there is something deeply attractive to each one of us about the faithfulness of God. Faithfulness is something we value and something we long for, but it is something we so often fail to see in our society around us and in our own hearts and our own lives. Part of the ugly reality of sin in the world is that as fallen people, we're just not consistent beings.

We don't behave as we ought to behave; we don't even behave as we want to behave. We don't do what we say we will do. We often don't speak the truth in its fullness. Now, there’s nothing particularly new about that. That’s been the case in human society ever since the fall, ever since Eden. But it can feel as though standards of faithfulness have reached something of an all-time low in our society today.

Some here will remember a time in business where a person’s word was their bond, where a handshake would seal a deal. But rarely would anyone rely simply on the word of another person or on a good old-fashioned handshake for a contractual obligation anymore. Marriage vows were once taken literally, even if they were never perfectly kept in human society.

But now the assumption very widely is that huge numbers of marriages will simply dissolve and the oaths will be forgotten. The vows are seen by many more as a statement of intent or an expression of emotion and feeling on the day of a wedding. It’s seen as simple good sense to write up a careful prenuptial agreement before the wedding to figure out how to divide assets when and if a divorce should come.

I was struck to see this news article on CNBC the other day entitled "Why Everyone Should Get a Prenup." It says this: "While marriage is about love and about trust, it is also the merger of assets. It is a contractual agreement, and at no other point in your life would you be asked to sign a contract on blind faith alone. While a prenup might seem like an awkward subject to broach, it is a necessary one. It can make the divorce process run smoothly and minimize the heightened emotional reactions that are likely to accompany the dissolution of a marriage."

Built into that whole outlook is the assumption that the faithfulness of the person you are marrying cannot be relied upon. The vows simply cannot be trusted, and so a legal safety net is needed to protect your money. It is an extraordinary outlook. It's a heartbreaking outlook, but it is the world in which we live.

Lest you and I be tempted to wag our finger at the society out there, we need only to look within our own hearts and at our own lives to see how often we fail to keep our commitments to one another, how often we fail to be true to our own word, and how often we will say one thing and do another.

The hard reality is that our communities are full of people who are terribly wounded by the unfaithfulness of others, terribly broken, saddened, and let down. Many here in this room today will know the pain of that: a broken marriage, a broken family, a broken friendship, or a damaged professional relationship where trust has been destroyed. We see and experience unfaithfulness all around us every day, and we see it within our own hearts.

Against that bleak and rather heartbreaking backdrop, the Bible proclaims to us the refreshing and the wholesome truth that our God is entirely faithful, entirely true to His word, and thoroughly trustworthy. 1 Samuel 15:29 says, "The Glory of Israel—what another wonderful name for the Lord—the Glory of Israel will not lie or have regret, for He is not a man that He should have regret." Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it?"

As I reflect upon this theme, remembering the faithfulness of God is just what we need to do at this time of year. It is the medicine that our soul desperately needs. I don't know if you feel any of this, but at the start of a new academic year, the end of vacations, the return to work, for many the start of a new program or the start of a new job, it is a season where there can be a great deal of anxiety in the air.

There's so much change and a fair bit of uncertainty. It can be a kind of unsettling time; maybe you feel that just now. Speaking personally, setting my own mind and my own heart on the faithfulness of God in the run-up to this new season, this new term, it is actually the very thing that I've needed to do. I trust that you'll find the same as we think about it this morning.

To explore this theme together, what I’d like to do is to think about what we might call the two sides of the faithfulness of God: two complementary but rather distinctive sides of His faithfulness, which are His faithfulness to judge and His faithfulness to save. In Deuteronomy chapter 7, when the people of Israel have just received the Ten Commandments from the Lord, Moses tells them of these two sides of the faithfulness of God.

I'm going to read from Deuteronomy 7:6: "For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that He swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt."

"Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate Him by destroying them. He will not be slack with the one who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I commanded you today."

God keeps His covenant of steadfast love to His people. He keeps His promises to save, and at the same time, He carries through on His promises to judge. Both are vitally important, both are absolutely integral to who God is and what He's like.

Steve Hiller: You're listening to Encounter the Truth with Jonathan Griffiths and a message called "The Faithful God". It is part of our series "Who Is Like Our God?". We're going to pause here for a moment, but we'll get back to the message, so I hope you'll stay with us. If you want to find out more about Encounter the Truth, I want to encourage you to come check out our website. While you're there, you'll find links to social media, you can subscribe to our newsletter, and check out our weekly e-devotional as well as listen to broadcasts online and more. The website address is encounterthetruth.org. That's a great way to stay connected with and learn more about the ministry. Again, the website is encounterthetruth.org. Back to the message. Here is Jonathan.

Jonathan Griffiths: Consider first with me God's faithfulness to judge. One of the most common warnings in our house, threats if you like, is that if the children keep on doing whatever it is they are doing but shouldn't be doing—squabbling in the back seat of the car or whatever it is—if they keep it up, they will miss out on some promised and much-anticipated screen time.

If we’re in a long journey in the car, once we hit 3:00 or whatever it is, they can watch 20 minutes of something on the tablet. That's the deal. Now, the reality is that at a certain point, holding back screen time is actually more of a punishment for the parents than the children. Screen time for the kids, we all know, generally means peace and quiet for us. So, we quickly relent on the threat at the slightest hint of remorse, even if we know it's skin deep, even if the behavior hasn't really changed one little bit.

That's what happens. But the problem is that the kids get a little bit of a sense of when we’re not likely to carry through on our warnings. They develop a little bit of a radar for those empty threats, and it doesn't do much in the long run for our standing as disciplinarians when we don't actually carry through. It doesn't help the children to take us seriously.

Back in the Garden of Eden when the serpent was tempting Eve to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, a key line of attack that he employed was to sell the idea that God was never going to carry through on His promise to judge. God had said that on the day that the man and the woman eat of the fruit of the tree, should they eat of it, they would die. But what does the serpent say? Genesis 3:4: "But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'"

God won't judge you. He's not going to carry through. God's not going to punish you; He loves you too much for that. He doesn't mean it. Don't you worry. Now, the hard reality is that all the suffering in this world—all that is wrong and not right, all the pain, all the conflict, all the sadness, all the death—it all stems ultimately from the failure of Adam and Eve to take seriously the fact that God means it when He says He will judge sin. Had Adam and Eve really believed and really been convinced of the fact that God would be faithful to His word in judgment, the world would be an entirely different place.

We're accustomed, of course, to ignoring warnings of punishment in our society today. You look at a warning from the CRA of stiff penalties for failing to declare something like you should, and many people think they'd never catch me, and if they did, they wouldn't do anything about it. We look at those warning signs by the side of the 401 telling us how big a fine and how many points we'd get for going a certain speed, and we think there's no way they'd actually write me a ticket that big. Ain't going to happen.

We were recently traveling by plane, and it’s always kind of funny to look at how folk approach the whole issue of baggage and baggage limits. Bags need to be certain dimensions and within a certain weight, and there are big fees if you go over those rules. Of course, I'm there the night before we travel with my tape measure and trying to get the bags onto the bathroom scales to see if they're going to work out okay and avoid the fines. But then you arrive at check-in the next morning and you see people with these bulging bags, duct-taped shut, bags that must contain their entire wardrobe as well as a number of pieces of cherished furniture. They're kind of hobbling these things in, and you think there’s no way, and they just kind of get checked in and everything seems to work out fine for them.

On a more sober note, I was just seeing reports on this hurricane, Hurricane Dorian, bearing down on the Bahamas now—a Category 5, I understand. I was hearing reports of the concern that many people on some low-lying and some very vulnerable islands have chosen to ignore the evacuation orders. They haven't responded to the serious warnings, and now it's too late, and this is a life-threatening storm.

In all kinds of contexts and situations, we can be pretty quick to dismiss words of warning. But when it comes to the warnings of God's word, we need to believe and we need to understand, we need to be convinced of the fact that God is faithful to His word to judge. He has shown that particular faithfulness time and time again throughout the Scriptures and throughout history.

He showed that faithfulness to Adam and Eve, expelling them from the garden when they rebelled, placing the sentence of death upon them, which remains upon humanity even to this day. As we continue through the word of God, the Scriptures are filled with sobering examples of God promising judgment for sin and then delivering on that promise when there's no sign of repentance. We could think of Noah and his generation where God looked out on the ugliness of sin in human society and He promised a catastrophic judgment, and a judgment which duly came upon the earth.

Or we think about God's promise to judge the nation of Egypt for their sin against the people of Israel, holding them in slavery. Again and again, Moses is sent to Pharaoh to call upon him to let my people go, and again and again, Pharaoh refuses and ignores the warnings that come with the call. Ultimately, what does God do? He sends those ten dreadful plagues upon Egypt and then causes the Red Sea to sweep its soldiers away.

A few moments ago, we read from Deuteronomy chapter 7 of God's promise to be faithful to His people in salvation, but also to punish His enemies and those who do not love Him. By the time we reach Deuteronomy chapter 9, two chapters on, what's happening? By the time we reach Deuteronomy chapter 9, the people have set up a golden calf. They are worshipping an idol and failing to worship and honor and love the Lord their God. They're imagining that the Lord won't see it, and if He sees it, He won't do anything about it.

But as the story progresses, we discover that although God is patient and He's gracious and He offers opportunity after opportunity for repentance, ultimately He does judge that wayward generation. Ultimately, no adults from that generation are allowed to enter the promised land, but each one of them down to the last man and the last woman falls in the desert.

Later in the story of Israel, as the nation falls into idolatry and other sins generation after generation, God promises judgment—the judgment first of the nation of Assyria who sweep in and wipe out ten of the twelve tribes of Israel. Then comes the promise of exile for the remaining two tribes if they won't repent and if they won't be faithful. Sure enough, right on cue, right on time, the Babylonians come, and they take Jerusalem, and they carry off the people into exile. Of course, we could go on and on and on. The Bible makes it amply clear, abundantly clear, that God is faithful to His promises to deal with sin, even to judge sin.

But beyond all these acts of judgment in history, there is yet the promise of a greater judgment still to come. The Old Testament speaks of a coming Day of the Lord when God the judge will deal with all sin in human history. He will address all rebellion, all wrongdoing, and will bring about justice for the entire earth. He will call wrongdoers to account and He will punish the wicked.

Peter picks up on the Old Testament promises of a judgment to come, and he reminds us of the seriousness of that in his second letter. This is 2 Peter chapter 3. Peter’s aware that many do not take the promises of a judgment to come very seriously at all, and he wants the believers whom he's writing to to live in the light of this very serious promise.

2 Peter chapter 3 and verse 1: "This is now the second letter that I am writing to you, beloved. In both of them I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of reminder, that you should remember the predictions of the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles, knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, 'Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.'"

"For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished—thinking of Noah and his generation. But by the same word the heavens and the earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly. But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed."

Peter tells us, he urges us, not to imagine that God has forgotten about His promise to judge the world, not to imagine that He might somehow fail to carry through on His warning. No, God is faithful. And if God has said that He will do something, He will surely do it and without question.

Steve Hiller: We have to pause the message right there, but we'll continue next time here on Encounter the Truth. Our message is called "The Faithful God", part of our series "Who Is Like Our God?". If you've missed any of the broadcasts in our series or you want to go back and listen again, you can do that at our website, encounterthetruth.org. That's encounterthetruth.org. Encounter the Truth is listener-supported. It is your generous giving that keeps Jonathan's teaching on this station, so thank you for giving to and supporting this ministry. As you give a gift of any amount this month, we want to send you a book Jonathan has picked out. It’s called "Worthy: Living in Light of the Gospel." Jonathan, how is reading this book going to benefit us?

Jonathan Griffiths: I hope it's going to impact your heart and your life. I hope it's going to feed your soul. The purpose of this book is simply to encourage us who know Jesus to live faithfully as His people, to allow the gospel to transform our way of life. I just find I need those encouragements, I need those helps, and I find it especially helpful if the book is readable and not too long. This book, which is rich in content and thought, it's written by seasoned theologian Sinclair Ferguson, who’s always full of rich insight, but he’s made it accessible. It’s designed yes, to feed the mind, but to nourish the soul, and I believe it’ll do that for you if you read it. We’d love to get it to you.

Steve Hiller: Well, a gift of any amount and we're going to say thank you by sending you a copy of "Worthy: Living in Light of the Gospel." You can call, give your gift, and request a copy. Our number is 833-99-TRUTH. Or give online at encounterthetruth.org. That's 833-998-7884 or encounterthetruth.org. You can also write to us at Encounter the Truth, P.O. Box 5513, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3M1. Or in the U.S. at Encounter the Truth, 215 North Arlington Heights Road, Suite 102, Arlington Heights, Illinois, 60004. For Jonathan Griffiths, I'm Steve Hiller. Thanks for listening, and I hope you'll join us next time.