Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro:

The inauguration of our 45th President (44th person to hold the office) took place just a couple days ago.

During our new president’s speech you may have heard promises—such as:

I will fight for you with every breath in my body -- and I will never, ever let you down.

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

We will bring back our jobs.

We will bring back our borders.

We will bring back our wealth.

And we will bring back our dreams.

--President Donald Trump

and

Together, We will make America strong again.

We will make wealthy again.

We will make America proud again.

We will make America safe again.

--President Donald Trump's Inauguration speech.

Wow!

What a promise!

With promises like these we have nothing to worry about.

After all, winning "like never before" sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it?

We are all aware that the past presidents of the United States were able to fulfill all their promises, right?

All one would need to do is look at Obama's promises--he was totally faithful to America in fulfilling his promises.

WRONG!!! Obama promised that he would "Allow Americans to buy their medicines from other developed countries if the drugs are safe and prices are lower outside the U.S." that he would enable legal importation of cheap prescription drugs.

He was unfaithful.

He promised in his campaign to offer a pre-filled-out tax form with the IRS to "give taxpayers the option of a pre-filled tax form to verify, sign and return to the IRS or online.

This was to eliminate the need to hire expensive tax preparers and to gather information that the federal government already has on file."

He was unfaithful.

Transition:

Now, it is easy to nit-pick on the past presidents, but the unfulfilled promises of any of the presidential campaigns exposes a fatal flaw of human nature and it is this: no matter if you are an "average Joe" or the president of the United States, you cannot always fulfill all of your promises--especially in a sin cursed world.

This is as true for me as it is for you--apart from Jesus, no matter who your lifelong hero might be, your hero will let you down eventually.

Our presidents let us down--President Trump will let us down.

And so we yearn for one who is absolutely faithful--especially at a time like this: a time of change.

So, let us be comforted in this: God is always faithful and we ought to place our trust in Him instead of our fears/worries/anxieties in a person or President.

I.

The character of His faithfulness

YHWH’s faithfulness is an integral part of his nature --it is an attribute.

YHWH can never be anything less than perfect in all of His attributes; He does not have the shortcomings of our nature--sin, finite, weak, and so forth.

In short, if He were not faithful, He would not be God.

YHWH is incapable of/unable to break a promise.

Num 23:19

Yahweh is faithful to his Name and character.

YHWH's own Name is at stake for His unconditional covenants--YHWH's reputation as God of the world, the universe, would be compromised if even one promise were not fulfilled completely.

God’s limitless power and steadfast love imply complete faithfulness which contrasts with human nature

This short verse here reveals the intense depth of the relationship between believers and Christ the Lord; when we fail at times, this means God will not reject us.

These words apply not only to faithless unbelievers, but to believers who at times fail the Lord.

We, by our very nature, are prone to failure; as Christians, though born again, are still human.

But even when believers are unfaithful, God remains faithful.

This means total security in Christ’s promises.

BUT, this does not give a license for faithlessness; rather, it eases our conscience when we fail, allowing us to come back to the Father and start anew.

See also Heb 6:13–18

The writer of Hebrews, demonstrating YHWH's trustworthiness, uses the words of the Abrahamic Covenant and the fulfilled promise of descendants to illustrate the absolute assurance:

This ancient Hebrew tradition of swearing by someone greater is not really known to us or used today, but it was to add trust to an agreement--it is almost like saying, "...it's true, just go ask so-and-so if you don't believe me!"

That "so-and-so" is the greater one.

However, it was not really necessary for God to swear that he would keep his promise, because God cannot lie or break his word.

However, YHWH made the promise, swearing by the greatest standard and with the highest accountability possible—he took an oath in his own name.

Abraham could not have received greater assurance!

And so we, too, can have great assurance that when YHWH calls us to serve Him, He is radically dependable to see the work through.

II.

The knowledge of His faithfulness

Yahweh’s faithfulness is known through fulfilled promises.

Joshua knew this and proclaimed it to God's chosen nation:

Joshua 21:45

and a couple chapters later:

And we know we will continue to see His promises fulfilled throughout the rest of this age:

This piece of knowledge here in 2 Peter adds at least a couple important elements.

First, His faithfulness and His promises are now directly tied to our repentance today.

Second, God is NOT on our timeline--He's on His timeline.

Faithfulness Exemplified

Yahweh’s faithfulness is proved by all His fulfilled promises.

We can see His trustworthiness in the following 3 examples:

1. Abraham’s fatherhood

You all know the story of Abraham's son, Issac.

This story is first fulfilled promise of the Abrahamic covenant.

As we read in Hebrews 6 a moment ago, YHWH promised to multiply Abraham and that first starts with Abraham's own son

But in Genesis 15, Abraham starts to get impatient having no child yet AFTER 15 YEARS and complains to YHWH and tells YHWH that one of his other relatives, Eliezer, will be his heir:

After 15 years of waiting for the promise, God visited Abraham again here and assured him that the promise would be fulfilled in due time.

It took another 10 years after the reassurance in this passage for Abraham and Sarah to give birth to a legitimate son, Isaac.

But what is really interesting here is the connection that the Apostle Paul makes to us from this passage in Galatians:

2. The building of the temple

In 2 Samuel 7; God tells David that although David wishes to build YHWH a house, David will not build the temple.

Rather, David's son, Solomon, will.

The fulfillment comes in 1 Kings 8:

1 Ki 8:17–21

3. The exile in Babylon

Jere 25:8–11 God’s faithfulness will not always mean human prosperity.

as terrible as this last particular example is, the Exile and the eventual return is a wonderful testimony to the faithfulness of God

In 2 Ki 25:8–12 comes the promised wrath:

But finally the fulfillment in Ezra 1:

This passage in Ezra is about the same time as Nehemiah comes on scene in timeline of events.

This reminds me I heard yesterday about the sermon preached at the inauguration on Nehemiah building the wall being similar to Trump building a wall--um, no comment ;-)

There are plenty more examples in the pages of scripture but these three examples will suffice as proof to YHWH's trustworthiness.

Faithfulness constantly Revealed

God’s faithfulness is revealed to the faithful and so known by the faithful believer:

David in 2 Samuel sings joyfully to God over the protection from King Saul:

This speaks beautifully of the doctrine of Illumination which is when a believer reads scripture, he or she has a better understanding through the Holy Spirit, than the unbeliever that reads the Bible.

Faithfulness Constant

God’s faithfulness is constant and cannot be thwarted by anyone or anything

Ro 3:3–4 God’s faithfulness is not negated by human unfaithfulness.

No one, not even the most evil people (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Kim Jung Un) could derail God's plans.

You see again in Habakkuk, sometimes we have to wait on God's faithfulness to see it in full fruition, but His promises are steadfast: