I Am Worthy of Your Trust // Promises You Can Depend On, Part 8

Trustworthy people – people who stick by you through thick and thin can be few and far between. God on the other hand – He has an abundance – an abundance of steadfast love and faithfulness. Yesterday on the program we started talking about trust, people we can trust. And God, can we actually trust Him? It's a big question, let's say God's all powerful, let's say He can actually do anything He wants to do. Well that could be bad news instead of good news if what He wants to do is punish us every time we take a step out of line, if He's just a nasty old piano teacher that wraps you over your knuckles with a ruler every time you play a wrong note, that is definitely not good news and what we looked at yesterday is this promise from God about himself, this is what He says. It comes from the book of Exodus chapter 34: The Lord your God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Keeping His steadfast love for the 1,000th generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That's interesting, this promise of being slow to anger appears quite a few times and it's always accompanied by these words; not only is He slow to anger but He is "...abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness." And it's that steadfast love that we're going to take a look at today, it's that steadfast love that's the flip side of the coin that has the "slow to anger" on the front of it. I was talking to a young person recently and he's gone to take up an apprenticeship as a motor mechanic. A young boy, who had struggled at school, wasn't academic but he was great with his hands. Anyhow he takes up this apprenticeship and what he discovered was that his employers were great trainers, they really invested in him and he learned a lot but every now and then the boss would explode, lash out at his staff, get angry at the smallest thing. Do you see the conflict? On the one hand the boss invests a lot in these apprentices, He's in it for the long haul. He takes them through thick and thin. And yet, on the other hand, the guy's got a short fuse and he's not slow to anger. And that places immediate conflict in the minds of these apprentices. In his anger he would lash out and say stupid things like, 'I'm going to sack you and get rid of you' and rob them of their sense of security even though he never intended to get rid of them, even though his history was actually going the distance with his apprentices. The conflict arises in the apprentices mind and heart because being slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love are two sides of the one coin. One is a part of the other, you can't really be abounding in steadfast love and yet have a short fuse. "Steadfast" is not a word that we use that much these days but it's a great word. It means, "rock solid", it means "unfailing", it means "something that will stand fast through the storms", something you can absolutely rely on, on the bad days as well as the good days. Now I want to go back and look at the circumstances that this promise was given. It was given to Moses who was heading up Israel at the time and they'd just come out of Egypt. He'd brought them through the Red Sea, they'd seen amazing miracles done to the Pharaoh and to the Egyptians and the parting of the Red Sea and then it came crashing down on the Egyptians and destroyed the Egyptian army. Amazing stuff and yet, the moment they get to the other side, the moment they find themselves in the desert, what do they do? They start to grumble. Anyway Moses goes up to Mt Sinai and he received from God two tablets – not pills, tablets – stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments. But while he's up there the people down in the valley, are making an idol, a golden calf. That's an offence to God 'cause they go and worship this other thing instead of worshipping God. Moses comes down, sees that, smashes the tablets with the Ten Commandments on them, Gods not happy with them, Moses is not happy with them. And so eventually he goes back up a second time to get the Law from God again and just as he gets up there, this is the promise that's given to him. The Lord passes before him and proclaims, "The Lord, your God is a merciful and gracious God. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the 1,000th generation, FORGIVING the people their iniquity and transgression and sin. Yet by no means clearing the guilty but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children's children, to the third and fourth generations. See, what this says is, God is slow to anger. He's abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness and He will keep that love to the 1,000th generation. You know that's an awfully long time, if a generation is roughly 25 years, He's talking 25,000 years. Where as iniquity and sin is only visited to the third or fourth generation. This God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin but if we keep on and on and on in it, by no means clearing the guilty. You know what this promise means; that God will hang in there for us, He is "abounding in steadfast love", that's an over the top statement. I love this 'abounding' thing. I walk past a florist shop and there's all these flowers and smells and beauty and life, that's abundance. I sit down to a really warm hearty meal on a cold winter's night, that's abundance. There's an overflowing, there's a "more than enoughness" of His steadfast, rock solid love that goes on to 1,000 generations. See, this promise comes in the face of a people who, the moment Moses turns his back, start making idols for themselves, turning their backs on God. See this is about mercy, this is about grace, this is about God being slow to anger. That is definitely an abundance of steadfast love. God knows we're going to make mistakes, the name Israel means literally, "to struggle with God" and the whole of the Old Testament is the story of how this nation, Gods chosen people, Israel, struggled with God. He knows that, He knows that you and I are going to stumble; He knows that you and I are going to make mistakes and some days we'll even fall flat on our faces. He knows that. And at those times, here is the promise of God, it's the same promise He made to Israel in the face of their sin, "I am slow to anger, I am full of mercy and grace and I am abounding in steadfast love towards you". That … that is a promise that you and I can depend on, it's rock solid. And let me tell you why it's so important, because when we fail, which we do, God doesn't fail. When we desert Him, God doesn't desert us. That is so amazing, that is so hard to get our minds around. You see, sin is a two sided transaction, it separates us on God's side because He is a good and holy and perfect God and it separates us on our side through our sin. God is righteous. He made you and me in our image and so when we reject Him, He can't accept us until we're forgiven and that's what Jesus Christ did on the cross. He paid the price and grace is a double sided transaction because it opens the door to God and removes our sense of guilt. God is full of grace and mercy and slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. He is ready to forgive, that's who God is, that's why in Hebrews we read: For we will not have a high priest who's unable to sympathise with our weaknesses but one who, in every respect, has been tested as we are but was without sin. Therefore, let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. God is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. That my friend is a promise you and I can depend on.