Feast: Israel's Missing Characteristics of God

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Given 21-Oct-19; 67 minutes

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Of the estimated 70 billion people who have lived on the earth, only one human being, Jesus Christ, has been faithful to the Creator. Everyone else from Adam and Eve down to today has had highs and lows due to human nature, which proves at enmity against God and His laws. Carnality is a part of our make-up, requiring a steel band to be drawn around it to give us a fighting chance. Moses had the same challenges as we have, requiring three distinct phases to grow spiritually, moving from arrogance to meekness, rivaled only by Jesus Christ. Because of the meekness and humility of Moses, God commissioned archangels to tend to his burial. We have the same carnal nature our ancient forbears labored under in the wilderness. We must love God by keeping His Commandments, realizing that love is an action rather than merely a feeling. What distinguishes godly love from human affection is faithfulness. Faithfulness is living continually by faith, completing a commanded act, even though doing so may cost us something of value to us. Love is not primarily a feeling, but faithfulness in applying His Word.


transcript:

I do not know whether this statistic is true or not, but demographers estimate that around seventy billion people have lived on earth. Among these multi-billions born from Adam and Eve, only one—only one!—has been fully faithful to our Creator. All the rest have at least one time sinned. And that One who lived among us is, whether one will acknowledge it or not, the ultimate reality regarding righteousness and fidelity.

This is important because, like you and me, He was born of a human woman, and therefore, like all the rest of us, He had the same human nature as part of His internal makeup. And He never sinned! We blame things on our nature. I do not think that Christ did any blaming because He never sinned. It did not pull Him into the gutter. He got hungry, thirsty, and angry. He had desires to attract His attentions to explore, to pursue, and to use. He was at times mocked and He received bloody persecution and a totally unjust death, but He never allowed one jot those natural drives nor attacks against Him to dominate His mind and thus control His personal conduct.

Now, you all know of whom I speak and in a way brethren, He was the forerunner of a new race. He was the Promised Seed, our Savior, Redeemer, the Messiah, our Creator, and is now our High Priest. He is our model we seek to follow. And God has introduced Him to us and is calling out others who will give themselves by faith to be like Him.

As we know, the Bible contains the running histories of the Israelitish peoples' intermittent relationships with God beginning with Abraham and continuing through the New Testament to Jesus' appearance on earth, on through the book of Acts, and to the beginning of the life of the first six or seven decades of the history of the church of God. That time measurement brings us to the close of around AD 100 and the giving to the apostle John the book of Revelation.

Now, that history is awash with a multitude of highs and lows. The overall history of the relationships without a doubt gives the impression that there have been far more lows than highs. The relationship that God had with Abraham, Moses, and with David were undoubtedly among the highest, perhaps the highest of all. And I believe there was a reason why they were so good. There were other fine relationships God had with outstanding godly personalities such as Noah, Joshua, Samuel, Daniel, the apostles, and a multitude of prophets God dispatched to the recalcitrant people bound within the covenants they made with Him and then miserably failed to consistently adhere to them.

The problems in the relationship, you know as well as I do, were never with God. His character was always beyond reproach. His Word says that He is God and He changes not. The Bible also says regarding Jesus that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Is that not what we are supposed to shoot for? His character, like the Father's, is also always above reproach. The central problem in that long history from Adam and Eve on is always human, and that includes you and me. How many problems are we still giving Them? From the sermons, the messages that I heard during this Feast, we touched on that aspect of our relationship with God very much. And of course, whenever we create problems with our brethren, that creates, we will say, problems for God to deal with as well.

Biblically recorded history presents overwhelming amounts of evidence that God and the Israelitish people cannot get along for any extended length of time. Now, I do not believe that those problems that I am thinking of are confined exclusively with the Israelitish people. However, because the relationship between God and Israel is so well-documented, Israel's consistencies are vividly exposed before the world to our shame. What a break God gave to the Israelitish people of being part of their history, and yet we have snubbed our nose at Him on so many occasions. However, I do not know whether this gives you any comfort, but Israel's problem is a problem that all of humanity has. So we share it except for the fact that, because we have been given the advantage of God being with the Israelitish people, then the hammer comes down on us a lot harder. We should know better.

How does that principle apply to the church? We should be working on those problems, remedying those problems, but are we doing it up to what God might expect?

Now, regardless of which ethnicity made a covenant with God, the same result would have occurred. The central internal character problem I am thinking of began with Adam and Eve. It was exposed immediately in the Garden of Eden. It seems as though the very first time they were allowed to go in there without God as their companion right along with them, and bam! they mess things up right away. I say this only because I want you to understand how quickly carnal nature, our human nature is to react to the opportunity to sin. It seems as though it is right on the surface at all times.

It should not be that way with those of us in the church but with humanity in general it should be much more quickly than it is for us, because they have not had the opportunity to be part and parcel in the Family with God. Now, because all of those 70 billion or so born on earth have exactly the same family roots, we all have the same internal problems to overcome regardless of when God calls us in order to overcome this challenge to good relationships that we have with Him.

So this problem is not confined to one with God and here is the problem: carnality impacts on every relationship. That is why there are wars. That is why people steal. That is why people rape. That is why people murder. That is why people lie. It seems as though that drive to sin, to react against the laws of God, are right on the tip of our tongue, right on the edge of our mind at all times. It has to have a steel band drawn around it to stop it from controlling our thoughts and our actions. We have to be alert regarding its presence because it desires to please itself under virtually any situation.

We are going to spend a little bit of time with Moses and the book of Deuteronomy that he wrote in the last month of his tumultuous 120 years long life. Moses met the same challenge that we face and he successfully overcame it even though he experienced great emotional tensions in his relationship with God. The first 40 years of that life was a fairly calm period because of growing to manhood as part of what appears to have been a fairly significant royal family in Egypt and he was in that family because he was rescued from the Nile River by a member of that family.

The second 40 year period of his life was spent as a shepherd, herding sheep and goats, because he was exiled from Egypt and had to flee in order for his life to be preserved after having killed—Moses did things like that?!—an Egyptian citizen who apparently was about to kill another fellow Egyptian. That change to being a shepherd was quite a contrast with that first period. It seems as though he dropped all the way from royalty to the bottom of the pile.

The third 40 years segment was really and truly a contrast with the first two because at its beginning God spiritually called him from the burning bush and enlisted him to be the leader of the enslaved Israelites in Egypt and to lead them into freedom in their own land, which God would give them.

Moses was undoubtedly handpicked by God to carry out these varied life experiences from bottom to top, then back to the bottom, then back to the top again. And when God revealed Himself at the burning bush, Moses very quickly grew to become one of the humblest of all humans who ever lived. Now let us read of a fairly significant event that took place in Moses' life.

Numbers 12:1-3 Then Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married; for he had married an Ethiopian woman. So they said, "Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken also through us?" [Now the speaking that they did was detrimental against Moses' character, and they had self-elevated themselves to be on the same plane, perhaps, in a relationship with God.] And the Lord heard it. [verse 3 very interestingly says] (Now the man Moses was very humble [He was not just humble. This is right in the Scriptures. He was very humble. And then the next phrase is even more significant], more than all men who are on the face of the earth.)

In terms of that characteristic that was part of him, he was really top drawer and you all know that humility is necessary for a relationship with God. But already that man had grown to that place. He was really, really a submissive-to-God person. And here they were running him down. They did not know good, as God knew good, and they had in their midst a really unusual person and he was their brother.

Numbers 12:4-8 Suddenly the Lord said to Moses [I just have to ask you, how would you like to live with a person like Moses? Maybe that is why they got upset. They were jealous!], Aaron, and Miriam, "Come out, you three, to the tabernacle of meeting!" So the three came out. And then the Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle [He was right there. I think that I can say that, as much as God could be offended, He was offended for Moses.], and called Aaron and Miriam. And they both went forward. Then He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; he is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face [How would you like that?], even plainly, and not in dark sayings; and he sees the form of the Lord. Why then were you not afraid to speak against My servant Moses?"

Like I said, that was pretty significant for that to occur.

There are some translators who replace the word humble with the term meek. It really makes little difference which is used because meek also has the sense of not being a personality that we would call aggressively pushy. Incidentally, in the New Testament, Jesus Himself directly makes known to mankind that He too was meek. It is a good term. It is a good characteristic. Make no mistake though, meek does not mean weak. Jesus and Moses were great leaders. But this humble, meek characteristic guided him in that relationship with God.

Do you know what this tells us about Moses? That he faithfully waited on God. He did not push God to rescue him or whatever. That did not happen very often with Moses. I will not say that he never did that. But he was a man who did not push God to a decision. He had learned a great deal of wisdom from those very varied experiences that he had in early life and he put those things together in his dealings with God as God was teaching him as well. And they served him well, and God too, because God appreciated that quality in Moses because Moses extended that quality in his dealings with the Israelites.

Now, Moses waited on God as Abraham did. Why? Because Moses really and truly believed God and humbly submitted to Him because he believed God. That extra emphasis on the word because is important. There are an awful lot of people who say they believe in God, but do they believe God and put what that word says into practice in their life? Moses did. He acted on his faith personally. Moses did not attempt to rush things, but one time he did lose his temper in the face of aggressive Israelitish attitudes and behavior. He struck the rock and that got him into a peck of trouble because metaphorically, at that time, that rock was Christ.

So, make no mistake, meek does not mean weak. Moses was not in any way what we would call a pushy person. He faithfully waited on God. And Moses' leadership was a good presentation of God before the Israelites in his position. He had learned a great deal of wisdom from his experience with God and of course what preceded that. Now that wisdom, in part, comes to us in the very Word of God for our benefit in life during our attempts to glorify God.

Interestingly, Moses finished writing Deuteronomy and then disappeared into the sunset, buried by an archangel. Not just a normal angel, an archangel (or two), who had to fight off some demons in order to complete their assignment. How many humans have been distinguished by that—buried by archangels who had to fight off the demons! That gives you a pretty good idea of the reputation of Moses and what he held there in heaven. He was really respected.

Turn with me now to Deuteronomy 8. These are a couple of very familiar scriptures. Moses wrote,

Deuteronomy 8:1-3 "Every commandment which I command you today you must be careful to observe, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land of which the Lord swore to your fathers. And you shall remember [here is the part that is really important to us] that the Lord your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness [here was the purpose], to humble you [He is leading you to humble you.] and to test you, to know what was in your heart [It is out of the heart our actions proceed. He wants to know what is in there.], whether you would keep His commandments or not. So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, fed you with manna which you did not know [had no relationship with before] nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know [here comes the really important part] that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord."

We can know that or understand that the Word of God is more important than food. Ha ha! Try to test that one.

Let us go to Matthew the fourth chapter.

Matthew 4:1-4 Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And when He had fasted forty days and forty nights, afterward He was hungry. [I told you earlier He got hungry. After a forty day fast. Huh.] Now, when the tempter came to Him, he said, "If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." But He [Jesus] answered and said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

The same thing that appears in Deuteronomy 8:1-3.

Do you know what one of the major things that these two sets of verses are telling me despite not directly saying what I am going to tell you it tells me? Now, they were written around 1,400 years apart and another almost 2,000 years has passed since Matthew and Luke wrote them and God has not changed them in Matthew and Luke. The verses are telling me that nothing has changed from the beginning of God's experiences with mankind in developing His purposes, in conjunction with Jesus Christ, of creating us in Their image. He still has exactly the same goals as part of the same purposes He has had since Adam and Eve were created. And that is why we can trust what it says in Deuteronomy or any one of the other books in the Old Testament as well. God still has exactly the same purposes and those words are intended to be our guide in life and in our relationship with Him regardless of when they fall.

Let us go to John the second chapter and verses 24 and 25. A bit different context, but it says something that is, I feel, significant.

John 2:24-25 [this happened at Passover during the feast] But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.

I think it is referring to the carnality that is there.

What these verses indicate is that mankind has not changed either. Neither has God and neither has mankind changed and that is why Jesus did not trust them. Therefore we will tend to reflect the same basic flaws in our character as ancient Israel had in theirs. This was not Jesus' first rodeo. Therefore, in the overall context, it is saying that humanity is flawed so that people are basically untrustworthy to Christ. That is an important distinction for this sermon.

Now, God's relationship with Israel has moved from the very warm, friendly, and trusting relationship between God and Abraham (and Abraham is titled in the Bible as God's friend), until now, in the present days, highly skeptical non-relationships that now exist in most Americans, despite having free access to God's Word. Now, this, despite the fact that these relationships exist in this nation began with fairly high moral standards drawn from God's Word, they were not really Christians. Morals are still rapidly declining and it seems that most Americans can simply take God or leave Him. The attitude is generally quite casual regarding His importance to their lives at this time.

A great number of kinds of experiences have taken place in which our Creators and mankind have participated. Records of those experiences are easily available to us and we can get much instruction there. But here is a major question for this sermon. Since nothing really has changed from the beginning to right now, either with God or with mankind, what quality is it that our Creators are seeking to develop within us that it appears that the Father and Son greatly desire with great intensity?

Now, I am looking for a singular term, one term that in a way says it all, but it is not love. We might name love, since God's Word even tells us in I Corinthians 13:13, that it is the greatest of all qualities one might possess as part of his character. And that would be a very good answer. But it is not the one that I am looking for. The one that I want is not defined in the way love is defined in these days. The definition of love has been so disturbingly perverted by this world, that many do not tend to think of it in actual practical ways. It has descended through unconverted and perverted usage by the public into the pit of being nothing greater than possessive affectionate feelings.

According to the Bible, love is far more than that. The quality that I am seeking indeed does possess some of those positive feelings in almost every case. But love in almost all biblical usage is truly positively active. Love is an action. Do you get that? Love has feelings that are warm and good, but biblical love is active. It does positive things that are in alignment with the character of God. It is that action part that is so important. I once read a small book written by a woman that I believe captured the essence of biblical love. That book's title alone captures that essence. It was titled, Love is What You Do. And she used that whole little book to describe places in the Bible where it very clearly shows that that is where love takes place—in what we do.

Notice the emphasis. Godly love not only expresses a positive emotional quality, it also motivates and does actions that are indeed love, from the beginning of the act to the very end. Now, with mankind largely carrying around a perverted definition of what real love is, real love may not appear to those unconverted as a process, especially when that process begins. A very vivid biblical example is that God, by means of the Flood as His righteous action, brought death on all mankind, except for eight sanctified people. That was an act of love by God to put those people to death! You begin to see here that love is more than just a feeling, it does something. So that was a loving action.

God has every right to determine what He desires of us, not only because He is our Creator, but because His every act is love. The Bible clearly says, "God is love." It is certainly one, if not the primary of His characteristics. Now He wants a little bit more from us than just a beautiful feeling. So just for starters involving our life when we fully deserve death along with billions of others, He, God—God who is love—called us into His Family Kingdom. He granted us forgiveness, gave us His Spirit and hope for eternal life, and He is educating us regarding truth. But how many others did He pass by and allow to die without calling them at this time?

You begin to see in a way there is the same thing happened to us as happened before the Flood when God made a decision, "I'm going to save these eight people, but all the rest are going to die." So there is some similarity here with the Flood episode. We are selectively (which I heard in the prayer today) given life and others death. Would they consider that love? I do not think so. But you see, from God's point of view, what He did even in allowing them to die was a favor. So, love is more than just a feeling.

Also He has every right to demand that we meet His terms since we voluntarily agreed to the covenant. So, I am looking for one clear expression in His Word that expresses the way in which God desires we express our love toward Him as we express our witness of Him and His way of life.

Are you ready? Now, you know the answer already, in a sense, most of you do. This is one of the first things that Evelyn and I taught our children because it is so biblically simple and also easily remembered. Turn with me to John 14 and in verse 15.

John 14:15 "If you love Me, keep My commandments."

Those combinations of numbers, 14 and 15, are easily remembered so that one never loses track of where it is in this big Book. But there is one more number that has to be added to this. In addition to 14/15, the unique way with love being shown as being important as a characteristic (I know you all know this), is I Corinthians 13:13. See the numbers beginning to line up.

The outstanding characteristic of a human being, because of his contact with God, is that they can have love. I Corinthians 13, the greatest of all qualities. Now, right action for that love is given in John 14:15. So, I Corinthians 13:13 is where this great quality is named; John 14:15 is where it tells us what we are to do with it. 13 14 15. So easy to remember as a guide for what we are to do with the love of God that has been shed abroad in our hearts.

Now, I am going to mess things up in a little bit. I want to add one brief series of verses and they appear in I John chapter 2.

I John 2:3-6 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. [That is very clear, it is in perfect agreement with John 14:15. Jesus said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments. Okay, we are keeping the commandments.] He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. [And here it comes] By this we know we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

We just read that from the New King James version. Now I am going to read that series of verses from the Amplified and I think that we will be able to discern more clearly then how we know we are on the right track, heading toward the kind of character that will bring us into alignment with God's character.

I John 2:3-6 (AMP) And this is how we discern [daily, by experience] that we are coming to know Him [to perceive, recognize, understand, and become better acquainted with Him]: if we keep (bear in mind, observe, practice) His teachings (precepts, commandments). Whoever says, I know Him [I perceive, recognize, understand, and am acquainted with Him] but fails to keep and obey His commandments (teachings) is a liar, and the Truth [of the Gospel] is not in him. But he who keeps (treasures) His Word [who bears in mind His precepts, who observes His message in its entirety] truly in him has the love of and for God been perfected (completed, reached maturity). By this we may perceive (know, recognize, and be sure) that we are in Him.

I will tell you brethren, that is a mouthful because the way they expanded that it is telling us that this is something that we have to check on, and do, to fill up our mind with His commandments every day and it is not restricted to just the Ten. This is why you have heard so much in this particular Feast about loving your brethren. It is not just feeling nice thoughts about them, it is doing something about it! That is where the issue is with God and that is why He so loved and respected Moses. He did something about it, even though he was not pushy in the way he approached God. That man really took care of his brethren.

This is something you know, but I am going to remind you of it anyway. However, what this paragraph directs us to do, the biblical record, which we mentioned at the beginning of this sermon, overwhelmingly shows that this mankind will not consistently do on his own. The key word there is consistently and this is why God's relationship with the Israelitish people was up down, up down, up down. For awhile they would do it and then, whether it was poor leadership or what, they would drop off and quit because they could not keep at it. And that is why I said as we were going through this translation, this is something that we are to practice every day and fill our mind with, and it is not limited to just the Ten Commandments. That is a big thick book of law.

We know why, but I am going to remind you why we do not consistently do it. I want you to go with me to a familiar scripture in the book of Romans.

Romans 8:8-10 So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But [as Paul says to the Roman church members] you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

Verses 5-8 clearly states what the carnal mind does indeed do very well, and that is ignore or attack God. So, "to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." Again, this tells very strongly, very clearly why Israel and God's relationship was up down, up down, up down—and mostly down. It is because "the carnal mind [which is part of us] is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God [notice Paul's last phrase], nor indeed can be."

The carnal mind cannot be harnessed by an individual man without the Spirit of God. With the Spirit of God, it can be controlled and subdued, but it is still always there. So consistent obedience is impossible as long as the carnal mind dominates the person and that is why those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Because the overwhelmingly vast majority is enslaved to the carnal nature. And even if they are aware of some aspects of the pressure of its strength, they cannot break free from it. So we can make a positive statement. Mankind simply will not—will not will not!—keep God's law consistently. The Father and Son are seeking love for them by us taking action in every aspect of life to be faithful.

But the Pentateuch, which Moses authored, and especially Deuteronomy, is a collection, it is a record of Israel's continuing faithlessness. Now we, the church of God, the Israel of God, must not fail Them because God is now working within the church. He is not working in Israel in the same way as He is working in the church and Galatians 6:19 very clearly says that the church is the Israel of God. So there is more than one Israel. There is physical Israel and there is spiritual Israel, and the church is the one that God is working with.

Now I want to spend a bit of time defining faithful because if I did not make it clear to you to this point, what They are looking for is faithfulness. What They are hoping to build within us is faithfulness. They will forget the sins, or cover the sins, that we commit in weakness. And as long as we maintain the good relationship with Him, They are still nonetheless looking for faithfulness. The exercise of love in faithfulness to Them. I am going to do this so that we grasp this term more broadly because the synonyms this adjective is parallel with are many and varied. Because of that we may not be as faithful to God as we might think or believe of ourselves.

A faithful person is one who may take the blame and the pain belonging to another, as Jesus and others did when the circumstances are correct. Jesus is a primary example, He paid for our sins. That is what a faithful person does. He takes the blame. He takes the pain. So one who is faithful adheres firmly and devotedly to a person, an idea, a concept, and the term loyal comes to mind. Staunch is a very strong synonym for faithful—staunch. They stand when others run. A faithful person is one who is worthy of trust or belief. In other words, you can believe what they say, you can trust their words. It is a quality of one who is reliable and is consistent with truth and actuality.

The most commonly used synonyms in English are loyal, true, constant, steadfast, staunch. That is a faithful person. They do not buckle under pressure. Biblically, the term tends to imply undeviating attachment and allegiance to the Creator God, to His commands, to His way of life. It also is used to imply steadiness, sincerity, reliability, and in certain contexts also tends to imply unshakable allegiance.

Let us go back to Moses' writings in the book of Deuteronomy once again, and we are going to go to chapter 7.

Deuteronomy 7:6 "For you are a holy people [Moses tells them] to the Lord Your God; . . .

Holy at this point does not mean necessarily pure. It mostly means a set apart people from others. They have been separated from the others of the world. You are a holy people, but it is to the Lord your God. And that is what is really important.

Deuteronomy 7:6-9 . . . the Lord your God has chosen you [deliberately, as we saw just a little bit before] to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Therefore know that the Lord your God [notice what He says about Himself], He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments."

I believe, but I am not absolutely certain at this time because I did not have a concordance with me, this characteristic, except for generalities regarding love, that faithful is the very first character quality God uses to define Himself. And He does that for our spiritual strength within our relationship with Him because He wants us to be faithful to Him! That is what is missing in the relationship with the Israelitish people. Love combined with the action of being faithful. This is no small matter with Him. Who can He trust? We found out in John 2 that Jesus trusted Himself to no one. They cannot. Is God is going to trust Himself to carnal man? Not on your life.

Maybe this will not surprise you, but the first person called faithful in Scripture is Moses. And of course this occurred when God rose to Moses' defense in Numbers 12 when Miriam and Aaron accused him of not being faithful to God when he married the Ethiopian woman. Moses was most certainly not the first faithful person. But this statement regarding him made such a strong impression on the minds of the converted authors of Scripture it is repeated at least three more times by other men. In Acts twice and then by the author of Hebrews (and one other) that Moses was faithful in all of God's house.

However, the first faithful person may well have been Abel and he died for his faithfulness. Abel is the first person listed in the well known epistle of Hebrews, chapter 11 Hall of Faith. And what this reinforces, along with the very term faithful itself, is there must first be faith within the person before that person can be faithful, because faithfulness is a continuously active action. So faithful is full of faith consistently displayed before God in the keeping of God's commandments.

Now, this opens the door, as it were, to understand that there were many others who were also faithful. Just in Genesis alone there was: Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. And just as Genesis ends and Exodus begins, who should have come upon the scene of biblical history but the most faithful of all, Moses. Moses though receives really a special commendation directly from God Himself. That too is in Numbers the 12th chapter in that God says of Moses, "He is faithful in all My house."

The pronoun "My" draws attention to God's house, and house, in this context, means "in all the affairs and responsibilities I have given him in the administration of all the responsibilities that I have laid upon him since I appointed him to work directly under Me, whether in regard to Israel in Egypt or Israel in the wilderness." And it was an emphatic refutation of Miriam and Aaron's jealous slander of Moses' faithful loyalty to God. Now we may not think of it often, but we too—listen—have been called to work in God's house! Are we responding as Moses surely did?

This may take some honest and careful thought. What do we do in the privacy of our own minds? Are we humble as Moses surely was? Do we wait patiently for God? Do we actively use our faith consistently, day by day overcoming the little things, thus helping to move our character inch by inch towards acceptability in glorifying God?

I believe that we are beginning to see more clearly what faithfulness is in practical usage. Faithfulness is the instrument of continuously living by faith. The keyword is continuously. This is not merely a person who believes something, but a person continuously, consistently acting according to God's law because at the very core of what he or she is, is faith in God and it is directing one's activity. And such a person follows it with little or no hesitation to completing a commanded act. Even though it may cost them something, they will do it anyway.

Well, I have a little bit more here, but I think that I have covered the subject here at least reasonably well. I am going to summarize it. God is not just looking for love, especially the kind of love that the world has, which is a possessive feeling, but rather what He is looking for is faithfulness in applying His Word.

JWR/aws/drm





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