The Faithfulness of God 9/26/43

Scripture: Hebrews 10: 7-25

Text: Hebrews 10: 23 “Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)”

Through the ages, and today, countless people turn their attention to a Presence beyond themselves. Out of their limitations they appeal to omnipotence. Out of their sins and weaknesses, they appeal to Perfection. In a world of evil, they cry out for righteousness and fair dealing. In anxiety, they look for assurance.

Millions of folk like us, or perhaps differing from us in some respects and like us in others, gather together in the groups of their choice to worship God this morning. Through many forms of worship, in many creeds, as Christians, as Jews, or as seekers through certain other faiths, they strive to know the divine and the eternal.

Men in the jungles, in deserts, on ice fields, on ships at sea, at battle fronts - turn to God with simple, yet profound confidence. Fathers and mothers at home; brothers, sisters, sweethearts, wives, sons and daughters, pray to the same God and find communion in their searchings.

On what do they all rely? First of all on the faithfulness of God. In the stately King James translation of the Scriptures, someone writes to the Hebrews: “Let us hold fast to the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised;)” A more recent translation puts that part of the letter in these words: “Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without faltering, for he who promised is faithful.”

Before all the virtues of man; above all of his faithfulness, stands the unwearied and never sleeping faithfulness of God. When we are plagued by the suggestion that our faith may be little more than wishful, or wistful thinking, it is the conviction that God is faithful that saves us from the torment of the idea.

Faith is so native to our nature as to be instinctive. As a babe has faith in someone more mature and powerful and capable than himself, someone whom he learns to know as mother, so do we all have faith in something greater, nobler, more complete than ourselves. And if we have such a faith, there must be a reason for it at the very heart of the universe in which that faith is evoked and sustained.

Does not every man, indeed, bank on the integrity and trustworthiness of the universe? Is not this belief the background of every rewarding adventure in the mind of man?

The author of the letter from which we read this morning was writing to highly cultivated Christians of Hebrew origin. He was confronted by the spectacle of a considerable number of them showing signs of restlessness. Perhaps some disaffection or temporary disappointment had arisen. Perhaps they were looking backward whence they had come with a kind of nostalgia. Or possibly they were looking wistfully at what appeared to them to be greener pastures of other congregations. At any rate, the writer of the letter appeals to history and experience.

With his knowledge of the Bible, with literary skill and pastoral devotion, he seeks to persuade his readers to remain true to the faith at which they had arrived and in which they had been baptized, and to hold fast to the congregation of which they were members. He called the roll of many of the spiritual leaders of Hebrew history. He demonstrated in persuasive language how, in Christ, the values and virtues of the old religion are brought together in completion. And he said more than that. He maintained that Christ lives as the perfection of all true faith.

In another day of confusion and anxiety, he speaks to us in some of the same words: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without faltering, for he who promised is faithful.” God has spoken. God has acted. By his word and act he is known for what he is - a Father whose chief characteristic is holy love. Through believing ages, he has been found faithful. Human experience has found him trustworthy.

Such was the basis of human faith and commitment at the beginning of Christian history. Such it is, and must be, today. Whether a man reads the universe in terms of a holy and dependable God, and lives accordingly, matters a great deal.

There are many things that conspire against such faith in our day. For one thing, (1) there is a sheer thoughtlessness that takes the talk of a God for granted, without any conviction on the matter, until some calamity appears. Then having never laid hold on the resources of the Almighty, the victim of calamity hastily concludes there is no God - only to find himself yet more miserable.

(2) There is, further, a materialistic philosophy which conspires against our faith in a dependable God. When it is in vogue, materialism tends to put one’s trust in the things that can be seen, handled, manipulated, measured, otherwise sensed and known. Most of the priceless values of living suffer at its hands.

(3) There is a behavioristic psychology that conspires against our faith in God, as it does also against the basic idea of free intelligence and moral responsibility in man. The assumption that man is primarily a mechanical and chemical product of heredity and environment tends to excuse a man’s misconduct entirely, and to take all the quality from his good behavior.

Of course, among the truly first rate scientists of our day, who deal with matter and mind, materialism and behaviorism are out of style, and have been so for some time. But the news that they are out of style in such circles does not seem to have reached all of those who teach the youth of our land. And it must be remembered that there are multitudes of leaders now at their jobs who received their basic education when materialism and behaviorism were not out of style.

(4) Yet another challenge to our faith in God came from scientific humanism - an enthusiastic belief in the unaided genius of man; in man’s ability to save himself. If man is so self sufficient, then the very idea of God becomes superfluous. But so-called self sufficient man has gotten himself into such a wretched mess that he has ceased to trust entirely in himself. The peoples that had become drunken with faith in some all highest man are coming to grief. And the peoples who struggled on with a faith that would not accept defeat at the hands of ruthless man are now the ones who are inspired by a great hope.

(5) There is yet another subtle enemy of our faith in the rather widespread tendency to define God in terms of human ideals. More than one puzzled student has felt himself led, in some college or university class, to the position that God is simply the accumulated idealism of man. But if man can not place his ultimate faith in human beings alone, neither then can he place his ultimate faith in ideals that are merely human in origin. Men are sometimes cruelly betrayed by their own highest ideals. Demagogues know this and capitalize on it with fiendish effect.

Just now, in a time of turmoil, we find a faltering faith on the part of some in the faithfulness of God in the wartime setting. Out of the deadly wounds and dark days of global conflict, many more than one soul cries out the question, “If God is all good and all powerful, why does he permit this terrible war or the evil which makes it necessary?” The question is not new. It is the eternally old and persistent problem of evil with which great theologians and philosophers have wrestled for ages. It was known to our Lord when he cried out in appalling loneliness from the suffering of his cross. The drama of Job deals with it in personal fashion.

In multitudes of minds, the question haunts, and hurts, and stands unanswered. It may be that it is unanswerable. At any rate it hinders, in countless souls, their faith in the faithfulness of God. The church has a duty to deal with this problem as adequately as possible, because faith in a faithful God is foundation masonry beneath the kind of civilization we treasure and commend.

The devil does not come to men with cloven hooves and repellent appearance. Rather he comes with ensnaring pleasantness of civilization. But no matter how the devil comes, his message is always the same - doubt the faithfulness of God!

Now what are we to say to those who, distressed and oppressed by rampant evil, undeserved suffering, and war’s alarms, find it difficult to believe in a faithful God?

Here is one suggestion offered by numerous thinking men and women - I found it expressed recently by Hobart McKeehan, a Pennsylvania pastor. We say, in the stately expression of the Old Testament, that God created man in his own image. He created man a free moral agent - not wholly free, but free enough to be a person and not a slug, free enough to say “no” as well as “yes” - even to his Creator. In so doing, God ran the risk of human rebellion - something of which every thoughtful parent should have some inkling. And it is a sign of God’s faith in man!

But why doesn’t God stop the war? Why doesn’t he wipe out evil with one omnipotent, sweeping of command? Well, to do so would involve two things - both impossible to one who is Holy Love. First, it would mean that God had become a dictator, removing the power of choice from the reach of man. We should all have to accept good, whether we recognized it and liked it or not.

Second, it would mean that man had lost “the perilous dignity of spiritual freedom which makes him a man.” He would be a mere robot of the divine.

But God will not become a dictator. He will not destroy human freedom. When we believe in the faithfulness of God, it is because we elect to do so and have struggled to that faith ourselves, at his invitation - but not his compulsion. We believe in a God whose rule is in his “pleasure in the good” rather than in his own “good pleasure.” By his own self limitation in the manner in which he created us, his rule is hindered, or implemented by our faith.

Do you see how all important is our faith in Him? Do you see how vital it is that the sharing and spreading of that faith go on everywhere? Never was the personal expression of that faith and its evangelistic and missionary outreach to all the world more important or more deserving of all support than now. The Christian Church has no business “coasting” now, while the earth burns. The Christian man and woman must carry Christian faith right into the earth’s fire!

In 1870, Hudson Taylor wrote a letter to a friend. In the letter he told this story. He had been reading the New Testament in the original Greek. He was reading in the book of Mark when he came upon a brief sentence which arrested his attention. Turning to the English translation in the King James version, he read, “Have faith in God.” Looking back at the Greek again he found a thought there in the original which did not seem to be carried over in the translation. He read it like this: “Hold to the faithfulness of God.” And he said that the discovery lit up many of the dark places in his own thinking. And so it should. For the basis of true faith is to trust in the faithfulness of the eternal God. We can trust God because he is like Jesus Christ. We can trust him because he has proved himself trustworthy. Behind everything else of value stands the faithfulness of our Father who has kept, and will keep, his promises.

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Dates and places delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, September 26, 1943