Please stand. I'll read the first four verses, 1 Corinthians chapter four. Paul says, let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful. But with me, it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgment. Yea, I judge not mine own self, I am a higher judge. For I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified. But he that judgeth me is the Lord. We ask Heavenly Father, by your grace, we might glean a point or two that ought to be applied to our lives, daily lives, lives in general. We thank you for what we have heard this morning, the blessings and instruction, exhortation that we've had there. May your spirit exhort us once again. Be in charge of this message, we pray, for Jesus' sake. Amen. You may take your seats. I would like to begin a short study of the biblical subject of faithfulness. I know it's not as interesting as the millennium. And I know that there are a lot of people would like to hear messages on how the upcoming election or the war in Gaza plays upon the upcoming tribulation. I know that the study of faithfulness isn't like studying evangelism or the doctrine of the church. So I doubt that anyone is going to be pleading with me to put these into print. And I know that some theologians might not put this on the same level as God's sovereignty. But the fact is, faithfulness is linked to the millennium, the tribulation, God's sovereignty, and all of these other things, evangelism, the church. And I believe that you are responsible before God for your faithfulness or your lack of faithfulness. That means we need to know what it is. We need to know what it is we're trying to apply to our lives. The word faithfulness is used 105 times in the Bible, almost equally split between the two testaments. But to my shame, it is not something that I have directly taught or preached. It's simply not Excited? There are many other subjects that need to be expounded. There are many other subjects which need to be re-expounded. And in truth, there are few scriptures which jump off the page and say, expound this, the faithfulness of the child of God. In my study this week, I couldn't find a single direct exhortation that we are supposed to be faithful. That surprised me. Furthermore, the Bible doesn't give us a nice, neat, crisp definition. Here is what Christian faithfulness is. It is not declared to be a part of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5, although I will argue that it is. And it is not listed in any of the exhortations that Paul gives to the saints, whether we're talking about Ephesians or 1 Thessalonians, whatever. 1 Thessalonians 5, for example, you tell me if you hear the word faithfulness in this statement. See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the spirit. Despise not prophesying. Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil. Where is faithfulness? It should be in there. But it's not. But offsetting the lack of these things, we are told that various eminent saints were faithful for various reasons. In several cases, faithfulness is the only thing which the Spirit commands about the people that He calls faithful. It must be important. Furthermore, God the Father is faithful. Christ Jesus is described as faithful. If we're supposed to be good representatives of Christ who is faithful, faithful to his promises, faithful to us, it means that we should be faithful to him. One of Jeremiah's great contributions to the word of God is found in the very sad book of Lamentations. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. He's faithful. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul. Therefore I will hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. God's graciousness, God's faithfulness is considered or described as being huge. It is great. I wanted to begin our study with a good solid biblical-based definition of the subject. So after two days, of sifting through my Bible and cruising through my library, combing through my library, I came up with essentially nothing. Empty. In a thousand books, with one exception, there's almost nothing on Christian faithfulness. I have several books that are dedicated to new believers. You've just trusted in Christ. Here's what you need to do. Not one of them has a chapter on faithfulness. I couldn't believe it. My Bible dictionaries, encyclopedia, they offered very little help. ISBI is my go-to encyclopedia, the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Under the word faithfulness, the first thing written is, this article is limited to the consideration of the scripture teaching concerning the meaning of faithfulness in application to God. It doesn't talk about the faithfulness of the martyr Antipas. Revelation chapter two, or to the faithful Epiphras, or Onesimus, as we find them in the book of Colossians. Gil has a huge book. We can call it a tome, a huge tome called The Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity. It doesn't have a chapter on the immensely practical, Faithfulness to God. He does have more than 10 columns on the faithfulness of God. And we will come back to the faithfulness of the Lord because he is our highest example for the subject. But I'd really like to begin with a biblical definition. I don't have one. Yet even without one, I will start with the predetermined a priori. I believe that God expects you and me to be faithful to him, to be faithful to the promises, to be faithful to his word, to be faithful to the brethren. I believe that God will judge us whether or not we have been faithful to the church of which we are a member. And if you don't want to hear me say that, then you can ignore the rest of this message and the rest of the messages in this short series. I think that faithfulness will be a subject which will come up at the bema, at the judgment seat of Christ. This will be one of the precious stones that are built on the foundation there, the Lord Jesus. So again, I say, this is important. And yet, 98% of the authors in my meager library do not bring up the subject, don't even refer to the subject. And I have been remiss in exhorting you to be faithful to the Lord. For an initial definition and description, I had to turn to my trusty 1828 Webster's Dictionary. It's not exactly the Bible, but at least he was a good man. He was definitely a Christian. What is faithfulness? Webster's first definition is a synonym, fidelity. What is fidelity? It speaks of accuracy. We don't use the term as often as we used to, but audiophiles consider high-fidelity sound to be important. Fidelity in recordings refers to how accurately a copy expresses the original. In audio, high-fidelity, or hi-fi, describes a recording that's produced as closely as possible to the original. So, a high-fidelity recording of the New York Philharmonic, when taken to our house and played on the right kind of equipment, should fill our living room with the same quality of sound, or nearly the same quality of sound, as we would have heard if we were in the concert hall. It creates a high-quality listening experience with clear, accurate, and minimal distortion or background noise. So here we have the preacher. Of course, the preacher of the gospel is supposed to be faithful in his presentation of God's word. Paul used that word in 1 Corinthians to describe Timothy. Wherefore, I beseech you, Christian saints, be followers of me. Wherefore, I beseech you to be followers of me. For this cause, I send unto you Timothy, who is my beloved son and faithful in the Lord. who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways, which be in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church." Paul expected Timothy to reproduce a high-fidelity message wherever he went, reflecting what Paul had taught him, what he had heard. He and Timothy were said to be faithful in the Lord. Surprising me just a little, another of Webster's definitions is loyalty. But I like it. We may use modern technology to produce high quality fidelity. But in my opinion, loyalty takes fidelity to a higher level. Rather than some sort of mechanical transcription, this kind of fidelity that we're talking about comes from the heart. It is alive. We've got this little mp3 recorder here. We use that to put messages on sermon audio. It doesn't care personally about Austin Fulton or Scott Silvers. It's supposed to record what they say and it does a good job. It records what they have said. But I hope that your attitude and your love to these who preach the word to you means that not only are you hearing what is said, you transcribe it and share it with an emotional attachment to the one who's preaching, not just mechanical. Are you faithful or are you faithfully loyal? Do you pray like a Muslim? Three times a day he's supposed to get down on his knees and put his head on the prayer mat. Do you pray like a Muslim or do you pray and talk to the Lord because you love him and you think of him throughout the day? Webster goes on to say that faithfulness involves truth and veracity. Again, this brings us back to accuracy. Did Isaiah truthfully describe what he saw in heaven in chapter six? Did John accurately tell the truth about what he saw in heaven? Of course they did. When it comes to the written word of God, we have a faithful declaration of God's message. But I'll have to admit that it necessitated the ministry of the Holy Spirit, not only in the inspiration of it to begin with, but also in its preservation so that we have it today. Not only was a spirit necessary for the initial, but also for the final. And you and I, as sinners, we have a relationship to the Holy Spirit, but we are not exactly like the word itself, the written word. We have a different relationship there. You and I, as saved sinners, still have deceitful and desperately wicked hearts. We have a problem with veracity. Some of us have a problem with voracity, but we're talking about truthfulness. But as we are filled with the spirit of truth, when we are faithful to the God of truth, we will become more and more truthful. When we're clothed with the breastplate of righteousness, when we are girded about with the girdle of truth, we will be the faithful representatives of the Lord that we are supposed to be. Our lexiconographer adds one more thing. Faithfulness involves strict performance of promises, vows, and covenants. I will come back to this because it is so critical to the faithfulness of God. But my primary objective this afternoon is to try to find a definition that applies to us. And these things do. The Bible tells us in more than one place that Abraham was a faithful man. Tells us that in the Old Testament, tells us that in the New Testament. I don't know if his example bore fruit in everyone around him, but it did bear fruit in one fella that we know of for sure. His closest servant was also a very faithful man. There may not be a more concise illustration of human faithfulness than Abraham's servant. In Genesis 24, Abraham was old and stricken with age, and the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things. And Abraham said unto his eldest servant of his house, that ruled over all that he had, put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh. and I will make thee swear by Jehovah, the God of heaven, the God of the earth, that thou shalt not take a wife unto my son of the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but thou shalt go all the way up to my old country, to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac. The rest of that lengthy chapter describes how this servant, probably Eleazar from Damascus, how he went north and the things that he endured to find a wife for Isaac. It required considerable work. It required prayer. It required the blessing of the Lord. To be faithful required faith on this man's part. But the faith of that man, coupled to his faithfulness, is a testimony to all of us. And then do you know what? He disappeared. Poof. He was gone. His faithfulness was How shall I put it? His faithfulness was its own reward. Proper faithfulness is linked to humility. I think Eliezer probably rejoiced in and played with baby Jacob when he was born. but we have no reference to him again. It just tells us, here's a faithful man. And the faithful man, the faithful servant of God is just happy to be available, faithful. Have you ever made any vows to God? That time when you were sick and nigh unto death, did you make any promises to the Lord? Lord, if you get me out of this, I will, I will, I will do that. I hope that you've been very careful about making those vows. Among similar verses, Ecclesiastes 5.4 says, when thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it, for he hath no pleasure in fools. Pay that thou hast vowed. There are other scriptures like that. Be slow to make promises to the Lord because he expects you to be faithful in each and every one of those promises. But isn't there one vow which we all made when we were baptized? After which we joined one of the Lord's churches, perhaps not verbally, but didn't we essentially promise to faithfully attend Christ's church? I'd be baptized in joining this church. I have responsibilities here. Perhaps we, or didn't we promise to support that church with our prayers and with our finances, with our encouragement, Didn't we become a part of the family which meets in that particular place? I think that people whose faithfulness Paul praised in his epistles were faithful to God in their local church, and they were praised for it. Webster uses the words fidelity, loyalty, truthfulness, and trustworthiness to define and illustrate faithfulness. Now consider something implied behind each of these definitive words. In order to have a high-fidelity recording, there must be something to record. There could never be any kind of loyalty if there wasn't something or someone to whom we should be loyal. Eleazar was true to the vow that he made, and he was faithful to his master to whom he made that vow. The marksman trying to hone his skills in attempt to be accurate and win the gold medal at the Olympics, he uses a target with a tiny bullseye. When you and I stand before Christ, as he's sitting there on his judgment seat, we will have to give an account according to all that we have done, whether it be good or bad. The standard will be that of good or bad. More important than whether or not we have been faithful is the target that we have been shooting at. The standard of our judgment will be the Word of God. It won't be a human expression of the Word of God. You will not be judged based on what I tell you. I will be judged for what I tell you. You are going to be judged on what you see in the Word of God, and hopefully I have shared with you the Word of the Lord. The point is, the standard by which our faithfulness will be examined, the standard will not be cloudy, will not be fuzzy. We will be judged by Christ, not by some servant of Christ. We will be judged for our Christ-likeness. Paul may say in 1 Corinthians 11, be followers of me. But he also added, as I am a follower of Christ. All the people who died down in Jonestown. I don't know why that came to me. I think Brother Silvers brought it up sometime during camp. All those 900 and... people who died down in Jonestown were fools because they died while being faithful to the Antichrist. I shouldn't say all of them because many of them were children, but the adults were following an Antichrist. Faithfulness to the Pope means eternal judgment, not salvation. The target that we're shooting for The standard of our fellowship, or our faithfulness, excuse me, must be correct. If not, then it doesn't matter how close we have come to what we strove to do. The target has to be correct. Our faithfulness is meaningless unless we're faithful to the ultimate standard, which is the Lord and his word. And at the same time, the Lord will not be pleased with our faithfulness if it is of a low quality. So there's gotta be both the precise target and our nearness to that target. Both the original sound and the fidelity to that sound must be crisp, not fuzzy. Nearly faithful is not the same thing as faithful. Almost loyal is not the same thing as loyalty. There's a difference between high fidelity and low fidelity. I'll take you to one more thought before I let you slip off to sleep. The Bible is replete with statements about God's faithfulness. He is the standard of faithfulness. We are to be as faithful as he is faithful. Through faith, this is Hebrews 11, Through faith, also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed and was deliberate of a child when she was past age because she judged him faithful who had promised. The Lord is faithful. He made a promise to her. Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. There are many, many more scriptures, and we'll get to some of them, which speak about the faithfulness of the Lord. But here's the question I'd like to leave with you this afternoon. To whom or what is God faithful? If he is faithful, to whom is he faithful? It takes us back to our lesson this morning. If to have a high fidelity recording, we have to have something to record, to what is Jehovah faithful? If loyalty is a part of the definition of faithfulness, to whom is the Lord loyal? I hope you all know the answer. To himself. God never lies. He's totally faithful to the truth. His veracity is undeniable. He is truth. Why? He cannot deny himself. He cannot contradict his nature. Everything about the Lord is the standard by which our faithfulness is to be judged. I would have more to say about this in lessons to come, but we who are sinners and originally were children of the one who was a liar from the beginning, we will always have to struggle with faithfulness, whether it be to the truth or in other areas. We'll have struggles with faithfulness, period. But when we are surrendered to the Lord, when we are filled with the Holy Spirit, when He is in control of us, He becomes, how shall I put it, our core. And there's a sense in which we become faithful to ours, no, the Lord who is within us. Fidelity, loyalty, reliability, faithfulness will be easy when we are filled with the spirit of the faithful one. God is faithful because faithfulness is one of his attributes. It is a part of who he is. And the saint of God should be faithful because God is who he is. And we're supposed to possess him. The saint of God should find at his core, at his heart, the indwelling Holy Spirit. We can be faithful. We should be faithful because we possess new hearts, new natures. We are Christians, possessed by Christ. Therefore, faithfulness shouldn't be in doubt when it comes to living our Christian lives. Paul said, it is required in stewards that they be found faithful. I will add, it is required in Christians that they be found faithful. At this moment, right now, does God consider you to be faithful? Please stand.