Your faithfulness extends from generation to generation. You established the earth and it will stand firm.
Why can you trust God? Because gravity works.
God’s authority as lawgiver, and his ability to offer grace and salvation is based directly on God’s creative power. This verse parallels God’s faithfulness to those who trust in God’s power, and it bases that on God’s creation.
This is a common theme in scripture, but it is one we often ignore. We think of creation as something in the past. Yes, God did it, and we believe it, because we’re supposed to. But do we apply it to current reality?
Psalm 104 expresses the present nature of God’s creation:
These all look to you to give them their food in due season; when you give to them, they gather it up; when you open your hand, they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground.
Psalm 51 alludes to this creative power in verse ten, when the psalmist asks God to create in him a clean heart. It’s reflected in the New Testament in 2 Corinthians 5:17 – “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”
When we doubt what God can do in our lives, we are denying God’s creative power. On my own, I can do no good thing. But I am not alone. God can work things through me that I can’t even imagine.
A friend of mine signs every email “Practice Resurrection!” It’s a good idea. How about “Practice creation!” That’s good too.
When discouragement threatens, try to remember that God’s creative power is at work in you. God created galaxies. Perhaps God has enough power for your life.
Let your lovingkindness comfort me as you have promised your servant.
Lovingkindness is the Hebrew word hesed, which can also refer to faithfulness, favor, goodness, or grace. It also refers to the loyalty involved in a covenant relationship.
I think one of the most commonly forgotten aspects of Christian faith (also true in Judaism) is living in the knowledge of being in a relationship with God. A covenant is a relationship. We often talk about our relationship with God as a sort of romantic adventure based solely on emotion.
I don’t want to deny emotion. Emotion is important. Experience and the emotion that grows out of it is as critical as the facts on which it is based. One can get lost either way. The idea of meeting a God who demands that we keep his commands outside of such a relationship is quite daunting.
You know that YHWH your God, he is God. He is a faithful God who keeps covenant and lovingkindness – to those who love him and to those who keep his commands – for a thousand generations.
Deuteronomy 7:9 (author’s translation)
Now keeping all those commands is a lot of work! Works will not save you. Works will not make you a child of God. But the book of Deuteronomy doesn’t teach that the works are somehow earning the favor. Rather,
Not because you were more numerous than all the peoples did YHWH passionately desire you and choose you, for you were the smallest of all the peoples. Rather, because YHWH loved you and because he kept the oath which he swore to Abraham, YHWH brought you out with a powerful hand and ransomed you from the house of servitude, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Deutereonmy 7:7-8 (author’s translation)
Now there’s something interesting about the word used to describe God’s passionate desire. It’s the same word used by Hamor of his son Shechem and his desire for Dinah, daughter of Jacob. I don’t bring this up to somehow ransom the sordid story of Shechem and Dinah. But this illustrates the strength of the emotional bond. Hamor, in using this word of his son, is telling the people of the town that the prince has to have the girl he desires. He can’t do without her.
God’s love for God’s people is powerful, demanding, and must be satisfied. When God gives a covenant to Abraham, and repeatedly renews and restates it, God is saying that his love is overwhelming.
In ancient times, the breaking of a covenant was regarded as a very bad thing, often resulting in a penalty of death. In Ezekiel 17:11-21 God’s message is that the people made a covenant with the king of Babylon and then violated it. God asks regarding the king who did this, “Will such a man be successful? Will he escape destruction if he acts in this way? Can he violate a treaty and escape unpunished?” (Ezekiel 17:15b). This is a condemnation of violating a human treaty.
In Jeremiah 31:31, God says he will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah, and in verse 32 he says the old one was “one they broke.” Do you hear what’s going on here? Violation of a human covenant is condemned. And yes, violation of God’s covenant is condemned. But what does God do?
God makes a new one. Why? Because he loves his people so much. He has to have that relationship. Notice that the new covenant is in what we Christians call the “Old Testament.” The same love expressed in Deuteronomy 7 as Israel prepares to enter the land, is again expressed by creating a new covenant to replace the broken one.
So does this only apply to Israel? We have only to pay attention to the covenant from the start to realize that God invites Israel to be his to be a blessing to all. God claims sovereignty over all the nations and moves the save them.
It is in this overwhelmingly faithful, overpoweringly loving relationship that we can find that comfort. That kind of love is the best atmosphere in which to grow. Holiness only occurs immersed in God’s all-encompassing grace.
I know, LORD that your judgments are righteous. It’s in truthfulness you have humiliated me.
If I were making a translation for publication, there would be a footnote on “truthfulness” that would include “faithfulness,” “honesty,” and “trustworthiness” as a minimum. It’s important not to imagine that a Hebrew word brings all of its applications into each use. The Amplified Bible does this by giving many synonyms in a single verse.
But in poetry, we can see a less limited way of reading, because the text is intended to be brief and to evoke a range of related ideas.
I’m leaving “righteous judgments” for another day. But righteous judgments are also truthful judgments. In much of what I’ve read of court cases, I get the feeling that the judgments rendered by human judges are often constrained by current custom, and less so by written law or by principles of justice. I would say that the idea of divine justice involves an expectation of total truthfulness and faithfulness as well as adherence to statutes of law. This is an unreachable goal for humans, I think, though it is a good goal for which to strive.
I couldn’t think of an efficient way to say it, but the final words of this verse suggest that we are brought humiliation by truthfulness/faithfulness. One might say “integrity.” God simply brings truth to bear on our actions, and it’s humiliating.
It’s in our human nature to get upset at this. We don’t want to be humiliated. But how often does reality do that to us? We think we’re great, and then reality strikes and something goes wrong. We announce that we can handle a situation, make a repair, or pass a test. Then reality comes to get us.
Most spiritual things have everyday analogies. Spiritually, we decide to do things a certain way, accomplish certain goals, spent certain amounts of time in prayer or service, keep our motivations pure, avoid unjust anger. And then we get busy and we don’t get that time in prayer, we don’t read out Bible as we planned, and we find we have less time and resources to serve others as we had determined.
I can give an example from this series. On the one hand, I’m happy to be 75 verses (and days) into a 176 verse plan. But I can’t count the number of times I’ve actually forgotten which verse I was working on during the day. I’ve sat back, intending to bring the verse to mind, and I can’t remember it. I’m supposed to be meditating on it. That’s a minor failure, but it’s still a failure, and it annoys me that I do it.
I wish I could say that my faults are generally small, like forgetting a verse. I can always look it up again. But when I speak hurtful words in anger, for example, the problem is not so easy to repair.
So what shall I do? To echo Paul, “Who will rescue me?”
Well, actually, the same God who provides the truth that puts me in my place over and over. The same God the psalmist has been praising for these 75 verses and will continue to praise for another 101. This help comes in three ways:
I can learn to know my own limitations. It may be humiliating to come up against the truth, but if I’m not arrogant, it’s not going to hurt as much!
The same God also provided this law, this distant goal, that helps keep me pointed in the right direction.
Coming up against the real standard is good for us in all these ways. We tend to want to pretend that the standard is lower so we can feel better. We’d like God to protect us from the results of our own stupidity and failures. But those options results in a lack of growth. God wants to grow you up. To take the next step. And the next.
I like the term confidence; many prefer boldness. Boldness is an interesting concept in Christianity. I’m taking my title from Hebrews 4:16, and in fact most of my thoughts here are based on the book of Hebrews.
I first encountered the claim of boldness when I was quite young, and I heard a taped sermon in which the speaker claimed that he had been in need of transportation. Upon discussion with his wife, they had determined that God desired that they own a Cadillac, so they prayed and claimed their Cadillac. According to the tape, they were, in fact, provided with, you guessed it, a Cadillac.
I was living in southern Mexico at the time, where my parents were serving people who were too poor to own a car. Many were too poor to own a donkey or a mule. Often these people would walk through the jungle for two or three days in order to receive medical care at the clinic where my parents worked. We had a discussion as a family as to whether this demand for a Cadillac was faith or presumption.
Since then, I’ve heard it called boldness. In fact, when I have heard people discuss “approaching the throne of grace boldly,” they’ve generally been referring to asking God for the things they (think they) need, or that they want. Sometimes boldness is represented as asking God for luxurious consumer goods, always, of course, destined to help one build the kingdom or carry out one’s mission. I have always found it hard to understand why people need such expensive things.
But that isn’t my topic here. What is the author of Hebrews talking about here? Does he have Cadillacs (or luxury chariots, fine horses, or fine clothes) in mind? No, that’s not the topic. He has been developing his ideas of what God has done with us, how God has communicated with us, and the basis for our trust in God. He has just summarized in the previous couple of verses (14-15) that Jesus is like us, except without sin.
He will move on in chapters 5 and 6 to discuss faithfulness and endurance. This is for our spiritual well-being. We need to understand the basis of our salvation and the faithfulness of God who saves us in order to receive endurance. The foundation is solid, so we can be confident as we build on it.
This confidence is needed for:
Our salvation. It is through trust in God who is trustworthy that we are saved.
Our sanctification. It is in response to God’s faithfulness that we follow, learn, and grow. The conclusion to Hebrews 11 and its examples of faith is not what we can receive, but rather that we need to turn away from everything else and turn to the one who is faithful as we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses (12:1-3)
Our witness. Our witness is implied as we are called to witness the endurance of others and to encourage one another. Hebrews says little explicitly about evangelism, but witness is woven through it.
Our faithfulness. It’s not even really our faithfulness, it’s God’s faithfulness working in and through us. It’s interesting to read the stories of the examples of faith from the Old Testament and then compare them to the stories told in Hebrews 11. Many of them don’t look nearly as good in the original story. Is the author of Hebrews lying? Not at all! He’s telling the story of God’s faithfulness in and through them.
Our reward. Again, this comes only through God’s faithfulness. Our confidence grows out of what God has done for us.
Because of this, our confidence should mirror God’s faithfulness. Our confidence is about God, not about the stuff that we can get, or what we can make God do by praying in the proper manner. Prayer is not magic. Prayer is talking to a faithful God in response to the faithfulness God has displayed.
God may provide you with things that you wouldn’t otherwise have. But those things will be because you need them to be the person God wants you to be and to carry out the plan he has for you. God may even be generous with you, but you should never assume you’re better because of what God has given you. You should never take God’s gifts in the material realm for granted.
God is indeed faithful and we can be bold. But the major result of God’s faithfulness in us is our endurance–right to the end.
