Sunday School | God Is Faithful and Unchanging

We are weeks and weeks into a series talking about what God is like. I will tell you, we're only going to do this section for one more week, and it's a little bit arbitrary. Doing a series on the attributes of God—how many do you pick? You could pick three things, you could pick 50 things, you could just go on for ages and ages because he literally is infinite and we could explore different aspects of who he is. And in fact, you will. In a billion years, and I mean this quite literally, in a billion years, you're going to discover something about him that you did not know. You're never gonna get to the bottom of this well.

Nevertheless, we're limiting ourselves to some of the biggies, some of the things that from our current vantage point seem most central and important. So we're gonna talk about God's attributes this week, and then next week we're gonna do one more time for a final attribute of God's nature that I'm saving for—that'll be a little bit surprising, perhaps. But I'm not gonna tell you what it is. I'm just gonna tease you. So come back next week, and it'll be one that might feel a little bit different, but that I think is actually pretty important to understand. It's pretty central to who he is, and we'll unpack it a little bit more. You could quiz yourselves. What do you think I'm going to say next week? The first letter was a U.

No, no hints. No hints. There are no hints. But you can guess, and we'll talk about it next week.

God's Attributes as Savior and Redeemer

This week, we're gonna continue what we've been saying—that we organize his attributes: things that he is like as creator, things that he is like as judge, things that he is like as savior or redeemer. Although he's all of that at all times. The last thing we've been looking at is what God is like as savior or as redeemer. In particular, last week we talked about his love and his mercy. This week we're gonna talk about the fact that God is faithful and unchanging.

God's Faithfulness

When I say that God is faithful, what does that mean? Let's start at a dictionary level. What does it mean that he is faithful?

He keeps his promises. That's excellent, Eric. His word—always true to his word. So faithful means you have an understanding of who or what something is, and there's an accuracy to it. If he says this, then it's gonna happen and there's no gap between expectation and reality.

Right, so we often link God's faithfulness with his love. The verse I quote constantly is Exodus 34:6:

The Lord, the Lord, gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

We do link these things together. So consistency—that's great. These are all great synonyms. So in the New Testament, the word that is translated as faithful is pistos—p-i-s-t-o-s. That word is sometimes translated as faithful, sometimes as reliable, sometimes as trustworthy. It conjures all these things that you're describing.

So if God is faithful, and he is, and he describes himself as such all the time, here's an anchor passage. Psalm 89:8 says:

Oh Lord God Almighty, who is like you? You are mighty, O Lord, and your faithfulness surrounds you.

The image here is just an abundance, an encompassing nature—that he is faithful.

If you had to make a case that God is faithful, where would you go in the scriptures? Besides Exodus 34:6, do you have faithful passages that you like?

I would go to the beginning of time with Adam and Eve. If you look at the scripture, even though he may have been upset, he still showed unwavering faithfulness to his children. In the very beginning, Adam and Eve were given a very clear condition: if you eat from the tree and the fruit in the garden, then you will surely die. And then they don't. Pretty much everything that has happened in the history of the world ever since then has been his graciousness, his continued relationship to undeserving creatures.

Where'd you go? Faithful texts? Deuteronomy 7. Okay, we talked about Deuteronomy 7 last week.

What part of it in particular? That he's the one who keeps covenants, that he's faithful. It says that he's the faithful God who keeps covenants. Very good. Excellent. Deuteronomy seven—he is the faithful God who keeps covenants. Do you have others in your brain? I don't know if your brain works this way, like, ever Rolodex it off, like faithful? Can you scan for faithful texts?

Yeah, Craig? John one nine, faithful and just. Excellent, okay. So Craig's saying, first John one nine. This is, we might—I think we probably talked about this earlier—we're talking about God's graciousness, right?

He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to purify us from all unrighteousness. — 1 John 1:9

What's kind of interesting about that is when the Bible repeatedly talks about God's faithfulness, and if you went through and looked at a whole bunch of them and sorted them, you'll notice that the faithfulness of God is argued as a point in many different directions, okay? So here's what I mean by this.

God's Faithfulness Explained by His Nature

Sometimes faithfulness is used as a way to explain—faithfulness is explained by his nature. Okay, so go to this. Two Timothy two says:

If we are faithless, he will remain faithful because he cannot disown himself. — 2 Timothy 2:13

So we see Paul arguing his faithfulness is in some way a product of a more fundamental reality. He cannot deny himself, so of course he will be faithful to us. Which is similar to the situation that Nate was describing.

God's Faithfulness as a Promise for What We Can Expect

Sometimes though, faithfulness is used as a way to explain to us what we can expect. And that's exactly what's going on in that first John one passage. Right? First John one, the whole opening section is all about confession and forgiveness. And John says, if we confess our sins, what would happen? Okay. There are people, there are relationships that you have that if you admitted that you did it, it would go poorly for you. Right? You have relationships like that, right? You probably believed this as a child. Like if you admit it, it's gonna go badly for you. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and he is just and he will forgive us. So his faithfulness becomes a way to explain what we can expect.

Same thing. First Corinthians 10, here's another one:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you could stand up under it. — 1 Corinthians 10:13

Be careful with this one, right? The fact that he will provide a way out does not mean you will avail yourself of it. Have you ever noticed this about yourself? Okay. So the idea that he won't tempt you beyond what you can bear does not follow that you won't nevertheless give way to it. Right? So we're not saying, hey, you'll never sin, because God is faithful, so you'll never sin. That's not how this plays out.

This week, last week, the fellows, Kelly and I, we went to a conference in DC, and so we had a long car ride back, and Caleb Meyer was DJing and I'm like, pull up Hamilton. And so we just listened to the whole Hamilton soundtrack. How many of you are relatively fluent in Hamilton? Alright. A bunch. Cat's hand is like, are you discouraged by the number of people who didn't raise their hands? I could see it on your face. You're like, what is the matter with you people? Okay. Well, there's a song in the Hamilton soundtrack called "Say No to This." You listen to that song and basically Alexander Hamilton ends up having an affair and then he ends up writing about it and this is all ridiculous. But when you listen to the song, Say No to This, you just wanna be like, just say no, dummy, like just don't do it, right? I mean, it's just ridiculous. And it ends up just unraveling his life and it's terrible for his wife and it's just ridiculous.

And it is true that God is faithful. Watch it in your own life. When you find yourself tempted, is there not a way that you could get out of that and that you still choose like, I'm gonna, I don't know how to say no to this. How do you say no to this? You just say no to this. And the chorus is basically screaming at him like, dude, just don't do this. This is terrible, right?

God is faithful. Whether we will be faithful is not yet clear. And in fact, in that second Timothy passage that we were just looking at:

If we are faithless, he will remain faithful. — 2 Timothy 2:13

God's faithfulness is very often not mirrored in our faithfulness. Right? Okay. So sometimes, since we can expect—here's another one of the things that we can expect. Listen to this, Philippians one six. Doesn't use the word, but it is the exact concept.

Paul says in Philippians 1:6:

I am confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will see it through to completion.

That's faithfulness. He will finish. He will do what he said. He will keep his promise. He will finish what he started.

First Thessalonians 5:24 fits with that:

The Lord, the one who calls you is faithful and he will bring it to pass.

That's hard because a lot of things in your life are not faithful. You're like, "I don't know if they'll keep their promise. I don't know if it'll work." But this is a fundamental thing about what he is like, what he will do.

So sometimes his faithfulness explains his nature. Sometimes it tells us what we can expect, which can be helpful. But sometimes it is used in the scriptures to indicate what we ought to be. He's faithful, and we are often faithless. But when we reflect on and understand his faithfulness, there are implications in our lives.

How God's Faithfulness Should Change Us

Look at Hebrews 10:23. This was one of those hinged passages in Hebrews that glues the whole thing together:

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

His faithfulness should produce a particular effect in our lives. We will hold firmly to the promise that we have. I'm not going to let go because I know he's not going to let go, so I'm not going to let go.

Or look at First Peter 4:19. Here's another instance of how his faithfulness should matter in our lives today:

So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful creator to continue to do good.

When you're suffering and you're like, "I hate this. I want to escape this. I might have to sin to get out of this because this is just miserable"—instead, we should commit ourselves to our Creator because we're mindful of his faithfulness. We just stay the course. We are suffering. We will take the hit. We'll continue to do good. And we're resourced to do it because we have a rich understanding of his faithfulness.

When we're talking about our sin, we often think we'd find more comfort from a reminder that God is merciful. But in fact, his faithfulness combined with his justice is incredibly good news because Jesus has paid for our sin and so we don't have to pay for it twice. It would be unjust for us to pay it again. So if we really are in him, we're saved, we're safe. His commitment to it—he's not going to be arbitrary. He's not going to on a whim just decide to write this off. But he will fulfill what he said. I'm glad he's faithful because we'll never get away with sin. He's just taking care of that. It has to be paid for. And so he paid the price.

Finally, look at Lamentations 3:22-23, the only verse in the entire book of Lamentations that anybody likes:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

And if you ever sing the song "Great Is Thy Faithfulness," right? That's the heart of it. But literally that verse is surrounded by agony. Lamentations is the most sorrowful thing. But right there, there's one little part, like, oh, I like that part. But it is true, right in the midst of our sorrow, his faithfulness gives us hope.

One more? Two more on faithfulness? Yeah, Brenda?

The image in Revelation 19, the rider on the white horse where it talks about he is Faithful and true.

He is Faithful and true. — Revelation 19

That's right. Shows up a lot, you guys. Interesting, the things that get a lot of attention. This is one that I think, for us, this is easy to get our head around because so many things in life are not faithful. Right? There's that one psalm—I forgot the number. We looked at it a couple weeks ago. Is it 136 that has the refrain, "his love endures forever"? And it says it over and over. Kelly, do you know, is that 136?

His love endures forever. — Psalm 136

Like every other line it says, "his love endures forever." And the "endures forever" part, that's the faithfulness. Right? That's why I think, Chris, to your point earlier, that his love and his faithfulness are often linked because he faithfully loves undeserving creatures.

God Is Unchanging

Alright, so number one: he's faithful. Number two though, let's talk about he's unchanging. This is—where would you go for this? The idea that God doesn't change? I have a guess for what you guys are gonna say, and it's a good guess. Does anything leap to your mind of where the scriptures would affirm that he doesn't change? He's not shifty. Gil?

When Jesus is talking in John, I think it's chapter eight, where he says, "Before Abraham was, I am"—so he's still the same.

That's a really interesting answer. That's not what I was thinking of, but in John 8, Jesus basically grabs the covenant name of God, which is Yahweh, which basically means "I am," and he describes it to himself. And we recognize that when God says "I am," He is the eternally present one. He's not like he was this, and now he will be that, but he is the eternally present one.

Before Abraham was, I am. — John 8

Yeah, Roger. Hebrews 13?

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. — Hebrews 13:8

Very good. Okay, this is a central text. Excellent. Adam, what were you gonna say? Did Roger steal it? I should've called on you first. I'm sorry. I will never call on him again. Yeah, Melissa?

Revelation 4:8.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. — Revelation 4:8

Right. Excellent. Fetzer? Numbers 23?

God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?

God is not a man that he should lie, nor a son of man that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill? — Numbers 23

Good. He cannot act as he by promise and not fulfill. That's good. Can't repeat all of it. Andy's good at scripture memory.

And now, maybe that's not actually more important than the other ones, but that's where my mind goes first. James 1:17.

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. — James 1:17

He does not change like shifting shadows. Right? Excellent. Bob? Malachi 3:6?

For I the Lord do not change. — Malachi 3:6

Right? It shows up a lot. And again, faithful and unchanging are related to the same idea. Because we are not. We're like, I feel like this today. How many of you have ever decided to do something that you didn't do? I mean, how many times a day? How many times, Fred, for crying out loud? Just finish your game. Do what you said you were gonna do. Right? Fred told me I could borrow his truck. And I did, over and over and over again, having never bought a truck.

What you wanna do is have a friend who has a truck. This is so much better. Because if you have a truck, everyone wants to borrow your truck. And if you don't have one, you can borrow your friend's truck. That's my strategy.

He's the same yesterday, today, forever.

But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. — Psalm 33:11

That's good news—he's never gonna change.

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. — Isaiah 40:8

Same idea. If you're ever in a situation and you don't know what to say, if people are praying through God's attributes and you need to act like you know things that are true about God, Isaiah 40 is your go-to. It's just this fantastic thing about what's true of him.

Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, before you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. — Psalm 90:1-2

Psalm 90 is a great psalm. I think that's the one we taught in your front yard—remember we did those Bible studies in the middle of COVID? Pretty sure that's one of the ones we did in your yard. That was really fun. COVID's terrible, but that was fun. That was good.

Unchanging. So I want to tie the two together with the promise you gave to the children of Israel and to the Gentiles. Faithfulness and unchangingness tied together in the promises to Israel.

God's Unchangeable Oath

When God desires to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his promise, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of our soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. — Hebrews 6:17-20

And Paul in Romans says:

What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though everyone were a liar, as it is written, "That you may be justified in your words and prevail when you are judged." — Romans 3:3-4

Look at Hebrews 6, verse 16. The author of Hebrews is building this massive argument, and he's warning all of Hebrews 6—it's essentially a warning against falling away. His big metaphor is the wilderness: the Israelites coming out of Egypt into the promised land. They spent forty years in the wilderness, and a lot of them didn't make it. They left slavery, but they never entered the promised land. And the warning of Hebrews is, don't be like that. You don't wanna be the ones that begin this process but don't finish it. He says their bodies fell in the desert in a hundred different ways. It's a fearsome book. But he's using it here in this moment to contrast our faithlessness to God's faithfulness.

Men swear by something greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. But God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, so he confirmed it with an oath. He did this so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged. — Hebrews 6:16-18

When you make an oath, step one is "I promise," and you're basing it on me—I'm not a liar, so if I said it, it's true. But then the second thing is, "I swear on the Holy Bible. I swear on my mother's grave." You pick something meaningful and heavy, so there's you and then there's this oath. These two things are meant to double lock the door. You can take this to the bank. You've been doing this since you were a kid: "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye." That's an oath. That's the same thing.

What he's saying is, God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised. So he confirmed it with an oath. So that by two unchangeable things—number one, himself.

And number two, his word. It's locked up. It's secure. Our salvation, his purpose to take upon himself our badness and brokenness, to grant to us the full righteousness of Christ. It's a lock. It's solid. He's not gonna change his mind. This is what he's doing.

And that's really important in the book of Hebrews because Hebrews is filled with threat and warning. It could leave you thinking, "I don't know. Everything feels arbitrary now and maybe I'm gonna lose everything." No, no. This is how it works. He made a promise. He himself never lies. He has sworn an oath. What he offers us in Christ is never gonna go away. Never gonna go away. In a book that's as frightening as Hebrews, that case really needs to be made.

So that's just one more place where knowing this thing about him—if you're like, "I don't know, is he gonna ditch me?"—being able to answer that question with confidence because you know that his nature is to never change, that there's deep assurance in that.

Why This Matters

And in fact, here's what I wanna invite you to think about. In our remaining time, what I wanted to do in every one of these attributes is link them to something that matters. I want there to be in your brains a "so what" for all of these things. Not so that I can win a Bible trivia contest, but so that it matters. Why does it matter if God is omnipotent? Is it really important that God is gracious? Does it matter if he is unchanging?

I'm gonna email you guys something probably later today that is a recap of all 12 of these. It's an article written by Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade. He wrote a book about God's attributes and then Cru people turned it into a much shorter version. The book is called God: Discover His Attributes. I think it's brilliant. It's my favorite thing that Bill Bright wrote. But this article will give you the essence of it.

What he does so well—and this is really part of the secret of Bill Bright—is everything matters. Everything links to us. What do I do with it? He was very good at sticking to things and helping us see why I care. So I'm gonna send you this article that gives all these different things about what's true about God, but they all come attached to a "so what."

You can read it over Thanksgiving break or something and look at it. We've hit these as we've gone, but I wanna read you through the recap. We've talked about 12 different attributes of God's nature so far. Again, we got one more coming next week. That's the weird one. But just listen to these, and I want you to notice the "so whats." My invitation to you is: is there one or two of these that you particularly want to hang on to this week? It's probably different for different persons in this room. There's different things that are going on. One of these may be sweeter to you than another one.

I'm gonna go through this a little bit slow, but I just want you to think about not just what he is, but why it matters for you. I will give you this in writing later on today. But if you're not on the email, just send an email to chsdoctrine@gmail.com, and we'll send the thing back out to you. If you've already emailed that address, I've got you. We'll send it out.

12 Attributes of God That Matter for You

So here it is. 12 things that are true about God that matter for you:

Number one: God is a personal spirit, so you can have intimate fellowship with him.

Number two: God is all powerful, so he can help you with anything. There's nothing beyond him.

Number three: God is present everywhere, so he's always with you.

Number four: God knows everything, so you can go to him with all your questions and all your concerns. There's nothing he does not know.

He's a personal spirit. He's all powerful. He's present everywhere. He knows everything. You're gonna fellowship with him. He can help you with anything. He's always with you. You can always go to him with your questions.

Next: God is sovereign, so you should joyfully submit to his will. He runs the world.

God is holy, so you can devote yourself to him in purity, worship, and service. There's nothing sullied about him.

God is absolute truth, so you can believe what he says and live accordingly.

And God is righteous, so we should live by his standards.

His standards are good standards for he is righteous. God is just, so he will always treat you justly. God is love. You might write this one down. God is love, so he is unconditionally committed to your well-being. He's unconditionally committed to your well-being. God is merciful, and so he forgives you of your sins when you sincerely confess them. He's merciful. God is faithful, so you can trust him to always keep his promises. And as you said, he is unchanging. You never have to worry if he's gonna keep his promises. You never have to worry that the rug's gonna be pulled out from underneath you. He is all this and he is a whole lot more, but we're gonna leave it at that for the moment.

Upcoming Schedule

We'll hit one more attribute next week. I wish to tell you this: we will have class like normal next week. Then not the week after. So the Sunday after Thanksgiving, we won't have class. The reason we tend to not is because so many people travel on these holiday weekends and we can't get enough childcare workers downstairs, so we just give everybody the day off.

We do have class next week. Then we'll take a week off for Thanksgiving, and classes will be normal through December. But this is really important: we will not be in this room. This room needs to be used because there's a whole bunch of stuff—kids are gonna be singing. There's just a bunch of stuff that happens at Christmastime during Advent. So we get kicked out of the sanctuary, and we're gonna kick everybody out of the fellowship hall and get our room back.

So we'll be here next week, then we'll have a week off, and then once we get back, we'll be in the fellowship hall through the month of December, and then we'll be back in here in January.

Email us at chsdoctor@gmail.com if you want these files, and I'll send out these files to you. But I'd invite you to reflect: What have we covered in the last number of weeks about what God is like that's most needful to you today? Remind yourself of what he is. This document I'll send you is not just a list of those things, but will also contain a whole bunch of scripture—many of which we've looked at—that you might spend some time reflecting on these things and kind of anchor this all.

Alright. We'll see you next week. Thanks for coming.