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Great is Thy Faithfulness
A sermon by Dr. Russell Dilday
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, January 21, 2007
I think typical of this church’s spirit of friendliness and
openness you’ve made this preacher feel very much at home these first few days
of our time together and I’m grateful for that. The generous introduction last
Sunday by Lynn Turner and the kind words printed in the bulletin today all
contribute to that sense of “at-homeness.” It isn’t always that way.
I preached out in West Texas at First Baptist Church San
Angelo in the absence of their pastor, not long ago. At the close of the service
they called on an Airman from the military base there nearby to lead the closing
prayer. He was a brand new believer, he had never lead in public prayer and he
very nervous. In fact he told me beforehand, “I’m scared to death, prayer for me
as I prayer.” He did a good job. He came to the pulpit and he prayed and thanked
the Lord. He said, “Lord thank you for sending brother Dilday here to preach for
us today, but Lord, bring our own pastor back to us as soon as you can” he
prayed. So, I hope that’s not the feeling of some you as you come to worship
these days together.
I have today both a hymn text and a biblical text for the
sermon. And I’m going to ask you to do a little bit of congregational aerobics
and take your hymnal first and turn with me to hymn number 54 and look at the
hymn text for the sermon. Hymn 54 is “Great is Thy Faithfulness, Oh God Our
Father.” That’s also the title of the sermon today. I want you to look at those
words, very powerful words. “Great is thy faithfulness, oh God our father. There
is not shadow of turning with thee. Thou changest not, they compassions they
fail not. All thou has been, thou forever will be.” And later the words, “All I
needed, they hand hast provided.”
Wonderful words reminding us of the faithfulness of God.
You’ll see that the hymn was written in 1923 by a man name Thomas Chisholm. It
wasn’t used much until it became a favorite on college campuses around the
country. Then it spread into our churches and first came into one of our Baptist
hymnals in 1956 and now it’s really a favorite hymn of so many of us.
You’ll notice that hymn is based on a biblical text found
in Lamentations. So now I’m going to asked you to take your Bible and turn with
me to the book of Lamentations, Chapter 3. You don’t hear that book referred to
very often so let me give you time to find it. In that section of the Old
Testament called the prophets, comes right after Jeremiah and right before
Ezekiel, page number 1278 if you’re looking at one of the pew Bibles.
I’m going to read a few of the verses from Chapter 3 of
Lamentations as our Scriptural Text. Jeremiah, the supposed author of these
words says this in Chapter 3, “I’m the man who’s seen affliction under the rod
of God’s love. He’s driven and brought me into darkness without any light.”
Verse 4, “He’s made my flesh and my skin waste away and broken my bones. He has
besieged and enveloped me with bitterness and tribulation.” Verse 7, “He’s
walled me about, so I cannot escape. He’s put heavy chains on me.” Verse 10,
“He’s to me like a bear, lying in wait or like a lion in hiding, he led me off
the road and tore me to pieces. He bent his bow and set me up as a target for
his arrows. He drove into my heart the arrows of his quiver and I’ve become a
laughing stalk of all the people.” Verse 16, “He’s made my teeth grind on
gravel, he made me cower in ashes, my soul is bereft of peace.” Then listen to
this, he says, “I have forgotten what happiness is.” Well after all that
description of misery he comes to verse 41 and there is that transitional,
constructive word, “but however” after all of this suffering, “but this I call
to mind and therefore, I have hope. The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy
faithfulness.” And there’s the theme of this text and of the hymn and of the
sermon today.
A couple of things very interesting about this chapter in
Lamentations, the first, it’s written as an acrostic. The ancient Hebrew, when
Jeremiah composed these words, the Holy Spirit, permitted him to employ that
literary device—that beautiful poetic form of an acrostic. Every verse begins
with a successive letter in the Hebrew alphabet. Probably to help readers
memorize these passage. They had very little, if any, written scripture and this
was a technique for memorization. So, it’s an unusual literary piece.
The second thing interesting about the passage is that the
author, Jeremiah is obviously in trouble. He’s in deep trouble. I don’t think
I’ve ever read a more expansive, heart rending description of human misery
anywhere in scripture than here. It’s a very sad, sad chapter. In fact one of my
seminary students said, “This chapter does for happiness what Britney Spears
does for modesty.” It just about destroys it; it is a very sad, sad chapter. You
think you’ve go problems? You listen to these complaints of this prophet from
the early centuries. But the highlight of the verse, the passage, is there in
verse 21. “The good news, God is a faithful God.” And it’s that reminder that I
have for us today in our time together.
We know what faithfulness is, we’re expected to be
faithful—God expects us to have those qualities of faithfulness, dependability,
reliability. We are to tell the truth, we’re to keep our word; we’re to be
dependable and reliable. The good news is you can take all of those qualities of
faithfulness expected in us and others and apply them to God perfectly. He is
faithful, he is reliable, he is dependable. He keeps his word, he never breaks
his promise. He is consistent. That’s good news; the God we worship is a
faithful God. And you come to the hymn that Thomas Chisholm wrote about that.
And he says faithfulness of God is expressed in several ways.
In the first place, it’s expressed in the fact that God’s
love never ends. He is faithful, his love never ends. And right here in the
third chapter in verse 22 it says here, “His compassions never fail.” Maybe your
translation says, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” God loves you
so much that he sent his son. Scripture says God loved us so much that while we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That means his love is immeasurable, it
cannot be described adequately. It certainly cannot be presented in human terms
as to its limitations.
David said it this way, he said, “God’s love reaches to the
heavens.” He may not have known about light years of measurement, but he did
know as he looked up that even the sky at night and in the daylight could not
contain the love of God, it is beyond computation. It can’t be measured.
I found on in a newspaper article not long ago that
scientists are particularly good in computers spend a lot of time searching for
prime numbers. I don’t remember my math, I didn’t remember what prime numbers
were but they tell me it’s a number that can only be divided itself and one. The
number sixteen is not a prime number because you can divide it by four, two of
eight. But 17 is a prime number, you can’t divide by anything but 17 and one.
But I didn’t know that people spend a lot of time prime numbers and up in the
Corey Institute in Minnesota a scientist named David Slowinsky just announced
that he had discovered a new one and he guessed it was the largest prime number
ever discovered. Here’s the way he defined it. It’s the number two multiplied by
itself 32,582,657 times minus one. Aren’t you glad that you came to church to
learn about that? You couldn’t have made it through the week without that, a
huge prime number. He said it’s so large a number that if you had to print it
out in a newspaper it would take up 33 pages of news print, just to print that
number. Thirty pages in the Richmond Times Dispatch to read that number. Well,
if David were here he’d say even 33 pages of newspaper ciphers can’t really
measure the love of God. It is beyond computation, it is beyond measure. He’s
never too busy to help you. His love reaches out to you all the time, as though
you were the only person in all the universe. He cares for you that much.
I preached in a large church in Florida. They have a large
church like you do, ten ministers, and in the church office window they had a
sign that said, “Minister on call tonight” and a place to put the name and phone
number and I thought that was good. If you had an emergency you knew who to
call. I went away thinking—God is always on call. The Bible says he neither
slumbers nor sleeps. He is constantly waiting to hear from you to speak to you
and related to you and to help you and give you strength. He’s even given the
name by which we call on him.
The ancient Hebrews didn’t want to call the name of God but
the Scripture says that Jesus is the name for whom we come to God. In fact in
John 16 it says, “Truly, Truly I say to you, if you ask anything in my name the
Father will give it to you, in my name. Hitherto, you’ve asked nothing in my
name, ask and you will receive. We are able to come through the name of Jesus to
speak to God. We don’t have to go through an access code or password. You can
come directly through the name of Jesus to your loving heavenly father.
When somebody knows your name, it’s pretty important. I
preached Ridgecrest, North Carolina on an occasion a couple of years ago.
Leading the music and a guest soloist there was a friend of mine named Russell
Newport. We had a wonderful time and at the end of the first service I went down
and sat on the front row after my message. The man in charge came to the
platform to make announcements at close. He looked right at me and said,
“Russell come up here and help us complete this wonderful service. And I thought
he wanted me to come up to pray and so I started up toward the platform and
everybody started laughing, it’s embarrassing. You’re up there, I turned around
and kind of blushing looking to see what’s happening and well, Russell Newport
was seated right behind me. It was that Russell he was calling up on to come up
and sing a song. How do you look cool up on the platform when you’re not
supposed to be there? It was horrible and I made some joke about it and went
back and sat down, hunkered down. But I came away, you know, when somebody knows
your name, they have kind of a control over you. They speak your name and you
turn, you listen, gets your attention, you do something, you respond. And God
has given us the name by which we call on him, the name of Jesus. We can
approach him directly. We don’t have to go through a receptionist. We don’t have
to go through some kind of answering machine or voice mail.
Wouldn’t that be awful? Hello you’ve reached your heavenly
father. Can’t talk to you right now, give me your name. No, no—not with God. Or
worse than that, for forgiveness press three, for encouragement press four. No,
no, not with God, not with God. The scripture says he’s constantly there. He
loves you so much he’s waiting to hear form you and he invites you to call upon
him and give him your life so that he can bless you.
The hymn writer says his compassions don’t fail, his love
never ends. And you can know God through faith in Jesus and experience that
unchanging love for yourself. It’s a wonderful miracle of his faithfulness, His
love doesn’t end. The song writer says, too, the faithfulness of God can be
expressed through his sufficiency. His sufficiency is never exhausted.
The hymn writer put it like this, “all I have needed, thy
hand hath provided.” He takes it again right from Lamentations 3 there in verse
32 the abundance of God’s care for us. He could have found that in other places.
In Hebrews God said, “I will never leave you, never forsake
you.” The Apostle Paul even asks the question, “Who is sufficient for these
things? Who is sufficient to face life with its challenges and problems and
difficulties?” Kind of a hypothetical question, but he meant it from his heart
and he came up with an answer. In Second Corinthians he writes, “Our sufficiency
is of God who makes us competent.” And he went on to say God’s grace is
sufficient. And in Philippians, “My will supply all you need according to his
riches in Christ Jesus.”
The other day we had a text from Deuteronomy 33: 26-27 a
remarkable description of the sufficiency of God. I’ve seen parts of it, but
parts of it were brand new to me. I knew I’d read that book and have preached
some parts of it but here was something new.
Did you ever suspect, when you’re not looking, God sneaks
new verses into the Bible.” You know, you’ve read a passage, you’ve looked at a
page over and over again but all of a sudden something leaps out as thought it’s
brand new and you’ve not seen it before? That’s the dynamic of God’s word and
this is one of those passages. “Moses wrote to Israel and said, ‘Israel, there’s
no God like your God. He rides through the heavens to your help and in his
majesty through the skies.”
God rides through the heavens to your help and in majesty,
through the skies. That metaphor that God is a sky writer, he’s a space
traveler, he’s a cloud surfer, nothing hinders him, nothing impedes him, he
comes directly to you, riding through the heavens to your help. What a powerful
metaphor. The other parts say, "God is also your dwelling place, your home." But
unlike your earthly home, this one can’t be broken into or burned or flooded or
abandoned. He’s your eternal home.
And then the third metaphor in that passage, “His
everlasting arms are underneath you.” What a powerful picture of sufficiency.
He rides through the heavens to your help, lifts you in those everlasting and
when you do you are home with him. God’s sufficient. And you can know that
sufficiency as you trust him through Jesus Christ. And he becomes to you an
eternal dwelling place, everlasting arms and a sky writer who comes to you help.
No wonder we love to sing that hymn. God’s sufficiency is
never exhausted. All I have needed, thy hands have provided—He is faithful.
But the writer also talks about the faithfulness of God
expressed in the fact that he never changes. He never changes. They hymn writer
put it like this, “Thou changest not, there is not shadow of turning with thee.
As thou has been; now forever will be.”
This time Tom Chisholm, the author, moves from Lamentations
and he comes over here to James, to the letter written by the half-brother of
our Lord, who also wanted to express the unchanging faithfulness of God. And he
looked around for a creative way to do that. He found the vocabulary of the
first century astronomers. And he said, “That’s it, that’s the way I want to
express it.” The Holy Spirit led him to that. These first century astronomers
knew a good bit about space. They could predict the movement of the
constellations. They could predict the phases of the moon and even the solar and
lunar eclipses. And so James listening to that says, “God is the father of
light.”--lights, the sun moon and stars. He created all of the lights. He is the
father of lights, he is dependable and predictable like the moon and sun and
stars, always in their place, always dependable, that’s God’s unchangeableness.
And so he picked out these words from astronomy from the first century. God is
the father of lights, in whom, is no variation, variableness—in who is no
shadow, in who is no turning.
Three important words in that first century astronomical
world. God is a God of no variation. There he is the word “parallax” in his
language, I’m told that’s the same word used by astronomers today depicting the
movement of the stars as from our position here on earth as it rotates they
change here and there in the heavens in their “parallax” they move about. James
says that’s okay for the stars, even their predictable, dependability—they shift
around, but not God, in God there is no “parallax” there is no variableness. He
doesn’t change. And he said there’re no shadows. That was a first century
astronomer’s word for eclipse. Even the sun and moon with their dependability
sometimes are darkened. But James says not God, there are no shadows in Him, his
brightness is never dimmed, his greatness is never hidden, he never changes.
And the third word he uses is that word for the tropics,
“trope,” we get that word tropics from that. There’s no turning in God, that’s
what the word means, turning. They knew as navigators do today that the sun
moves north and south to a point on the globe beyond which it never goes, the
Tropic of Cancer, the Tropic of Capricorn. Even the sun with all of its
dependable, predictability moves about here and there—but not God. In him are no
tropics here or there marking his wandering. He is the father of lights in who
there’s no variables and there’s neither shadow nor turning.
What a powerful way to describe it. God doesn’t change, we
can trust him, he is faithful. You’d have to admit, some of you here, that some
of the trouble and disappointments and tragedies of your life are because
somebody changed, somebody you trusted, maybe a husband or a wife, maybe a
devoted friend you thought you could depend on. Something happened they changed,
they betrayed you, they turned on you, their faithfulness was gone and you were
crushed cause somebody changed, faithful friend, faithful loved one, they
changed—but not God.
The truth of this passage is that he will never let you
down, he will never change, you can always depend on him. You can anchor your
life in him, you can trust him—he doesn’t change.
Is there anything unchanging in life today? Poets speak
about the unchanging hills, but they weren’t out here at Mount Saint Helen’s in
the northwest when that mountain exploded and spewed dust and ashes over several
states. Even the hills change. But we come to this passage in the hymn and it
says, “God never changes, in him is no variation, neither shadow nor turning”
and we’re encouraged by the fact that you can trust the Lord and he will never,
never disappoint you.
So that’s the message this morning. Go back in your
spiritual life to the high point in your relationship to God, to that day when
he answered your prayer, when you felt him so close you could just sense his
nearness, to that day when he gave you a way out, when he helped you and you
look back on that high point in your spiritual experience and take courage in
the fact that he hasn’t changed. He wants to be that for you today, even exceed
that. You may have drifted from him but he hasn’t changed. He wants to be just
that near to you as he was then—that’s encouraging.
Or go back in the life of this church, First Richmond
facing uncertainty, transition, and change in leadership. But look back over 225
years of how God has lead this congregation, has preserved it, has seen it
through different problems and brought it forth to this very day. That ought to
encourage us. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever and he’ll see this
church through to the future—take courage from that.
These are things that we can nurture both from the hymn and
from the text time-and-time again—that God is faithful he doesn’t change. You
can put your trust in him and to know God’s consistency through your faith in
Jesus and all of that constant dependability and unchangeableness is your gift,
tomorrow, ten years, fifty years from now, you can take heart that he’ll be
there. The same yesterday, today and forever.
Thou changes not we sing, there is no shadow of turning
with thee. As thou has been, thou forever will be. He is faithful. All that I
need, thy hand has provided. His sufficiency never exhausted, he is faithful,
thy compassions they fail not, his love never ends.
Hebrews scholars say the Hebrew word for faithfulness that
you find here in the Old Testament in Lamentations for example is the Hebrew
word “amunaw” which from the same root from the Hebrew word “amen.” They even
sound alike, “amen” “amuna” “amen.” It occurred to me that as we say here in
church today, God is faithful, it sounds like we may be saying, “Amen, and
amen.”
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