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  CAN GOD BE TRUSTED
  by Anton Bosch
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Summary: This sermon delves into the importance of faith, using the
example of Abraham and Sarah from Hebrews 11. It emphasizes the need to
trust in God's faithfulness, even when faced with seemingly impossible
situations. The speaker highlights the difference between true faith,
which relies on God's power, and false faith, which relies on human
effort. The message encourages listeners to judge God as faithful and
reliable based on the evidence of His past faithfulness throughout
history.

Duration: 48:05 Topics: "Faith in God's Promises", "Trusting Beyond Circumstances"
Scripture References: Hebrews 11:8, Genesis 18:10, Romans 1:20, 1 Samuel 17:32, Hebrews 3:19, Psalm 78:11, Joshua 4:6, Luke 22:19

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon delves into the importance of faith, using the example of
Abraham and Sarah from Hebrews 11. It emphasizes the need to trust in
God's faithfulness, even when faced with seemingly impossible
situations. The speaker highlights the difference between true faith,
which relies on God's power, and false faith, which relies on human
effort. The message encourages listeners to judge God as faithful and
reliable based on the evidence of His past faithfulness throughout
history.

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CONTENT
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All right, so Hebrews chapter 11, as we continue our study on the book
of Hebrews and obviously the study on the subject of faith. If you
weren't in previous studies or those who are watching online, if you
haven't watched the previous ones on Hebrews 11, I think it would be
helpful for you to watch the others because the subject is so big we
can't cover it in one session, and it's going to take us many sessions
to get through Hebrews 11. And so it would be helpful to get the rest of
the story from the beginning of Hebrews 11 verse 1. I think this is the
third or the fourth session, I can't keep track.

So Hebrews 11, let's read from verse 8 through verse 16. Hebrews 11
reading from verse 8 through verse 16. By faith Abraham obeyed when he
was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an
inheritance, and he went out not knowing where he was going.

By faith he dwelt in the land of promise as in a foreign country,
dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same
promise. For he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder
and maker is God. By faith Sarah herself also received strength to
conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because
he judged him faithful who had promised.

Therefore from one man and him as good as dead were born as many as the
stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which is by the
seashore. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but
having seen them afar off, were assured of them, embraced them, and
confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. For those
who say such things declare plainly that they seek a homeland.

And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had
come out, they would have had opportunity to return. But now they desire
a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to
be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.

And so we're in verse 11 this morning. We're going to do verse 11 and
verse 12, just two verses mainly focusing on verse 11. As we've said in
the previous sessions, when it comes to the issue of faith, we have a
real problem teaching on it because there are so many misconceptions,
there are so many wrong teachings on what faith is all about and how
faith works.

And I'm pretty sure that most of us have some misconceptions concerning
the subject of faith. This morning we're going to see one of the most
important aspects of the issue of faith, and I trust that you'll be able
to follow along. Most of the ideas that I'm going to share this morning
we have shared in previous sessions over the years, and yet it's
important that we reiterate these because these are so important.

So, by faith, Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and she
bore a child when she was past the age. Now you remember what happened
was that Sarah had been barren. She had not been able to have children.

She was now almost 100 years old, and so not only was she barren, but
she was now well past the age of being able to have children. So we have
a double jeopardy situation. On one of these alone, she would not be
able to have children.

Now she is doubly impossible. It's doubly impossible for her to have
children. The third problem is that while Abraham clearly had been
fertile because he had raised up Ishmael, he also was now past the age.

So you now have three problems in one, making it absolutely impossible
for her to have children. There's an important lesson in that, because
sometimes God waits until we come to the end of our resources. He waits
until there is no human way that we can fix our problem before he
intervenes.

Now it's not because God likes to watch us suffer, but because God is
teaching us faith, and we're going to see how that works in a moment.
But God is wanting us to learn that we don't fix our own problems, and
that problems don't just naturally go away, but God miraculously and
supernaturally intervenes in our lives and performs the miracles that
are necessary for us to live our lives. And so when God told Sarah that
she was going to have a child, you remember what she did? She laughed.

So Sarah did not believe she could have a child. In fact, if we look at
the Scriptures in Genesis chapter 18, he, that's God, so God meets with
Abraham in a theophany, in an appearance, as God takes on the form, it
seems, of angels or of men. Three of them appear to Abraham, but clearly
the context tells us that God appeared to Abraham and tells him that
they're going to have a child.

And so when he, God, said, I will certainly return to you according to
the time of life, and behold, Sarah, your wife, shall have a son, Sarah
was listening at the tent door which was behind him. I won't comment on
that. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age, and Sarah
had passed the age of childbearing.

Therefore Sarah laughed within herself, saying, After I have grown old,
shall I have pleasure, my Lord being old also? And the Lord said to
Abraham, Why does Sarah laugh? Saying, Shall I surely bear a child,
since I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time
I will return to you according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have
a son. So here's the problem, and yet in this is a very important
lesson. Did Sarah believe she could have a child? Clearly no.

So then we have a contradiction, and those who don't believe in the
inspirational scripture will love this idea, because the Old Testament
tells us she didn't believe she could have a child. She thought it was
ridiculous, I mean so ridiculous that she laughs at God speaking to her
husband. And yet Hebrew says that through faith she was able to have a
child.

So what's the deal? Does the Bible contradict itself? Is the Old
Testament right, or is the New Testament right? Well in fact they're
both right. And this is where we have this very, very important concept
that we need to come to terms with. You see, if we look at this fancy
graphics that Kelly did for us, when we have a problem, what are we
going to do about the problem? Well, the conventional wisdom says what
you need to do is you need to exercise faith towards the problem, and
the problem will be solved or go away.

And so in most Word of Faith teaching today, in fact all of Word of
Faith teaching, it's a matter of mind over matter, faith over the
problem. And so what I need is I need enough faith to be able to deal
with a problem, and the problem will go away. So I exercise my faith at
the problem.

In fact, they'll tell you straight, you need to speak to your
pocketbook, you need to speak to your disease, you need to speak to your
body. If your body is not well, then you need to put faith into the
situation, and that will fix the problem. But that is not true faith.

That is false faith. It is humanistic, and in fact it deals and it draws
on certain powers which we seem to have. We sometimes forget that the
human mind is incredibly powerful.

It has been proven, scientifically, that you can, through thinking,
change material things. Now, we've all heard about Uri Geller, who bends
the spoons, and I see Jason pulling his face. And we say, well, you
know, that's trickery.

Well, it may not be. I'm not sure about Uri Geller. I'm not sure about
his situation.

If you don't know about him, well, you can look it up. But what has been
proven, scientifically, is that they have taken a jar of oil, which is
of a constant viscosity, and they mechanically drop a perfectly round
ball bearing, and they drop it hundreds of times, and they mark the spot
on which it falls at the bottom of the vessel. Every time, it's the same
thing.

Then they bring someone in, not anyone who's specifically trained, just
anyone off the street. And by concentrating, they're able to move the
ball so that the ball doesn't fall on exactly the same spot. Now, I
don't understand much of that.

What I do understand is that there are certain humanistic, soulish
powers which we have. We know that we're able to make ourselves sick if
we really want to. To some extent, we seem to have the ability to heal
our bodies.

Just think of the modern idea that hospitals want to send people home as
quickly as possible because they recognise that the environment is not
healthy, that it has a mental impact which prolongs healing. It's better
that someone goes home and are in a more friendly environment, and they
heal quicker that way. Be that as it may, the moment I exercise my faith
at a problem, I'm drawing on human power, on soulish power.

It may or it may not work. The problem then is that if I've got a small
problem, and this is the conventional wisdom, if I have a small problem,
well then, I just need a little bit of faith to fix that small problem.
If I have a big problem, I need a lot more faith to fix that big
problem.

In fact, if the problem is big enough, I need to solicit the faith of
others. I need to get others involved and say, well, will you all
exercise faith on my behalf to fix this problem? When I first came to
Los Angeles, the room I was staying in had a TV that could only play one
channel, and the channel was K-Doc, for those who, I don't know if they
still have K-Doc. The older guys may remember K-Doc.

And the thing about K-Doc is that there was this preacher, Gene Scott,
who appeared on the channel every night, and so I used to watch this
guy. He was a little crazy, I think, maybe a lot crazy, but anyway. He
contracted prostate cancer, and every day he would have his PSA test
done.

PSA, for those who don't know, is the measure of, in layman's terms, of
how the disease is progressing or regressing. And so every day he would
come online on his TV, so sometimes he would preach, sometimes he would
be in his studio and he'd just speak to his audience. He had and still
has a worldwide audience.

He's since died of prostate cancer. But every day he would come and say,
every time the reading goes, sorry, when the reading goes up, he would
accuse them, and he would say, you guys are not standing with me. You're
not exercising faith on my behalf.

The reading is going up. The cancer is increasing. When the cancer
decreases, he would say, well, you've done well.

Everybody is exercising faith and the cancer is receding. That is not
biblical faith at all. And in fact, in the end, he died of the disease.

So all of the faithing, and he used that term, the faithing, the
exercising of faith on his behalf by thousands of people didn't help him
at all. That's a human understanding. True faith does not exercise faith
at the problem.

True faith exercises faith towards God. Hebrews chapter 6, verse 1, the
first principles, repentance from dead works, faith towards God. Your
faith cannot fix anything.

But God can. So it's not my faith that fixes the problem. It's not my
faith that performs anything.

It is God who does the work. All I need to do is to trust God and God
will do the rest. When you get into your motor car and you start it and
you start driving back home, you don't open the door and start pedaling
like a scooter.

You sit in the car and let the car do the work. And yet when it comes to
spiritual faith, spiritual things, we feel, well, you know, I'm getting
into this car called God. God's going to take me wherever I need to go,
but I need to really help him.

And I need to be scooting along and trying to make things happen. No,
God makes things happen. Now, here's the wonderful thing about real
faith, the right faith, is that it doesn't matter how big the problem
is.

Because the problem and my faith are not proportionate. It's God who
does the work. It's God who does what needs to be done.

And if it's a big problem, well, in fact, there's no problem with God.
God is so powerful that whether it's the biggest problem in the world,
it doesn't take any more power from God to solve the biggest problem
than it does to solve the smallest problem, because he has unlimited
power. And so how much faith do I need? I just need enough to trust God.

And we're going to speak about this idea of trust again this morning. We
touched on it earlier on. All I need is to be able to trust God.

God does the rest. So whether it's a big problem or a small problem,
it's no difference. All I do is I need to trust God.

The problem is that we can trust God for small things, but we don't
trust him for big things. And yet, it's the same God. So if God is
dependable and if God is reliable, concepts that we're going to speak
about in a moment, if he is those things, then I don't need more faith
or less faith for bigger or smaller problems.

I just need to trust God, and he takes care of the rest. And so it's not
trying to direct faith at a problem. It's not trying to get thousands of
people or hundreds of people to exercise faith at the problem.

It's simply a matter of trusting God. Now, what does that have to do
with Sarah? Because it says, By faith Sarah herself received strength to
conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past age. So let me ask
you the question again.

Did Sarah believe she could have a child? The answer is no. She looked
at herself. She looked at her husband.

She said, there's no way. But, and there's the word because, she judged
him faithful who had promised. You see, her faith was not in herself.

In fact, it wasn't like she didn't have faith. She had negative faith,
in the sense that she said, I cannot have a child. It's impossible.

But, God is faithful. That is true faith. And that is where the whole
thing turns for Sarah.

Because she puts her trust in God. We need to, and I know you may say,
Well, I understand that. But I know the next time you have a problem,
you're going to start praying at the problem.

You're going to try and exercise faith at the problem. No, it's not
exercising faith or praying at the problem. It's praying to God.

And it's putting our trust and our confidence in Him. Now, it says that
when she, she bore a child when she was past the age because she judged
him faithful. Who had promised.

Two very important concepts that I'm going to spend some time on now.
The first is that she judged him. She judged him.

And I think this is a good translation of this word. What does it mean
to judge? Well, it means you look at the evidence, and you make a
decision. We found this concept earlier on in chapter 11, verse 1. At
the very beginning, the first definition.

Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen. Now, when we introduced this subject a few weeks ago, I said,
Do you remember this word evidence? Because it's going to come up again.
Where do we use evidence? We use evidence in a court of law.

We use evidence in making scientific decisions, or coming to scientific
conclusions. And so, we can look at creation. And in creation, we don't
see God, but we see evidence that proves the existence of God.

That proves the existence of a creator. And so, evidence leads to a
conclusion, a decision. Whether it is a scientific conclusion, or
whether it is a judicial, a legal conclusion.

And so, when it says that Sarah judged him, on what basis did she judge
God? On the basis of evidence. You cannot judge without evidence. We
understand that even in civil law, you can't send a man to prison, just
because you think he's guilty.

Because he looks guilty. Because you don't like his ethnicity. Evidence
has to be brought, to prove that he is guilty.

And if he is guilty, he needs to be sentenced. If he's not guilty, he
needs to be declared such. So, it is the evidence.

Now, does God provide evidence? And the answer is, he provides ample
evidence. I basically quoted Romans chapter 1, where it says that even
those who have never heard the gospel, are able to look at creation, and
they're able to look at their own conscience. And in those things, find
evidence for God.

And the fact that they are then accountable to God. Now, let's go back
to the Old Testament. And I want to show you how this works in practice.

God comes to Israel, when they were still in Egypt. They'd been in Egypt
for 400 odd years. They had no knowledge of who God was.

And even when God appears to Moses, who was the best of the bunch, Moses
says, who are you? Who will I tell people which God sent me? And God
declares himself to Abraham, to Moses, and he says, I am that I am. So,
the people don't know God. They know many gods, the gods of Egypt.

They don't know the true God. They don't know whether they can trust
this God. I'm going to come back to this idea of trusting something.

And so God begins to build a relationship with Israel. And he begins to
prove himself to Israel. And it begins with ten miracles.

Now, if you've been with us before, you remember that I don't believe
that those are ten plagues. They are ten miracles. They were plagues
from the point of view of Egypt.

They were miracles from the point of view of Israel. God was not dealing
with Egypt. He was dealing with Israel.

If God wanted to deal with Egypt, he could have spoken one word and
wiped the whole Israel, the whole Egyptian nation off the face of the
earth in one word. So why does God go through ten plagues? Because he's
speaking to Israel. And he's saying to Israel, you can trust me.

And so there's darkness on Egypt, but there's not darkness in Goshen.
The waters turn to blood in Egypt, but it doesn't turn to blood where
the Israelites are living. Then finally, the greatest of all of the
miracles, the oldest in each family, dies where there is no blood on the
door.

And, of course, we understand that's a picture of the gospel. But at the
same time, God is saying to Israel, I can do the impossible. I am
trustworthy.

I'm reliable. And above all, and here's a concept I'm going to come back
to in a moment, these things are not random. You see, because one of the
things we do is that we say, well, things just happen.

Things are just random. There's no real reason. And so what happens is
if you had blood on the doorpost, it doesn't matter whether you were
Egyptian or Israeli, but if there was blood on the doorpost, the eldest
would be saved.

If there was no blood on the doorpost, it doesn't matter whether you
were Jew or Gentile, the oldest would die. And so what is God doing? God
is saying to them, these things are not random. This is my supernatural
intervention in the affairs of men.

And, folk, when things happen in our lives, we need to be careful of
just saying, well, it just happens. No things happen with a reason.
Things happen with a purpose.

This morning, Tatcho called the third hymn, Praise the Lord. And I
thought, well, we sang the hymn on Thursday. Why do we have to sing it
again today? Well, I realized why we have to sing it again today when we
did the reading, which begins with Praise the Lord.

And the second line, again, Praise the Lord. Folk, those are not
coincidences. Those are not things that just randomly happen.

I believe that there is a message for us. And as these ten miracles
happen, God is giving Israel a message, and there's one message only,
and that is, trust me. The Egyptians can perform miracles.

They throw their sticks down and their sticks become snakes. But Moses
the snake eats theirs. They could perform some of the other miracles
that God created, but they couldn't do it selectively.

And then God brings them to the Red Sea. Now, remember that God is
powerful. He's all-powerful.

God could have destroyed the Egyptians, as I said, with one word. He
could have, with one word, taken Israel, cleared the land, and
translated the nation into the promised land. Could He not do that? Of
course He could.

Would He not have saved Himself a lot of trouble if He did that? Yes, He
would. But it's not about God finding the easy way to do something,
because God is trying to teach Israel certain lessons and certain
principles. And there's one principle through it all.

Trust me. So they come to the Red Sea. Now, they've just personally
witnessed for themselves the ten miracles.

And they come to the Red Sea, and what do they do? They say, oh, no,
there's no God. He doesn't care. He's just brought us here to the Red
Sea.

The Egyptians are behind us, and the sea's in front of us. We're dead
meat. God had just proven Himself, and yet they forgot.

And He opens the Red Sea. They go through, and they come out on the
other side, and they're rejoicing, and they sing a great song, and
there's great celebration. And it's a couple of days later.

They're complaining again. Oh, where's the water? What are we going to
eat? For all of those years, God proved Himself to them every day,
because every morning they woke up, and there was manna on the ground.
Now, folks, this is important.

Modern theologians will tell you that, oh, no, this is just something
that happens in the wilderness. There's a certain bug in a tree that
secretes a certain sap, and it falls on the ground, and that's what they
ate. It's just common.

No, it's not. And it's not for this reason, that it would be there for
six days, and it wouldn't be there on the seventh day. Not just for one
week or for one month, but for 40 years.

So these bugs in the trees had calendars, and they could figure out what
was a Sabbath and what wasn't a Sabbath. And on top of that, if you took
a double portion any other day, it would go rotten. If you took a double
portion on the sixth day, it would last through the seventh day.

God is doing one thing, and he is saying to them, trust me. I'm
reliable. I am faithful.

I can do the impossible. I am in control. Day after day after day, he's
providing water out of the rock.

The pillar of fire warms them at night. The cloud changes into a cloud
during the day and cools them during the day. Every day, God is
revealing himself to them, over and over and over again.

Now, folks, here's the problem. I once talked along these lines a long
time ago in a Bible study, and one of the people in the Bible study
said, well, if we saw those things, we would believe God. Well, the
problem is that we are no different to Israel.

And not only have we seen those things because they are recorded in
Scripture for us, but we have seen even greater things. We have seen the
crucifixion and the resurrection. We have seen the transformation in our
own lives.

And so we have more than they had, and yet we don't believe. And don't
tell me we believe, because every one of us is exactly the same. I have
the same problems.

Every time we come up against the next problem, oh, woe is me, the world
is falling apart. What's going to happen? What are we going to do? No,
God has proven himself to be faithful and to be reliable. And so over
and over and over, God proves himself to Israel.

And he's just saying to them one thing, trust me, just trust me.
Remember, God is not like people. When people tell me to trust them, I
know I can't trust them.

Because if they were trustworthy, they wouldn't have to make a point
about it. Just my cynical view. But Hebrews chapter 3 verse 19, which we
dealt with some time ago, says they could not enter because of unbelief.

What happened? So God brings them to the River Jordan. Now remember, the
River Jordan is a small little river. It's no big deal, really no big
deal.

I mean, we can't really speak of the LA River because it's not a river,
but the Jordan is very, very small. You can't even begin to compare the
Jordan with the Red Sea. Now, God had brought these same people out
through the Red Sea.

Caused the water to stand up and dry land and they were able to pass
through. And again, you know, the modern theologians say, oh well, you
know, there was a shallow area and it's called the Reed Sea and so it
was very shallow and so there was a, there was a, like a center and a
wind that came and that dried up the water, they were able to pass
through. And of course, if that's the way it happened, well then the
other miracle then was that the Egyptians drowned in a few inches of
water.

But they passed through the Red Sea. Now they come to this little river
and they say, we could, there's no God. God had given them victory over
enemy nations as they journeyed.

And yet they heard about the giants and they said, no, we can't, we
can't, this is, God's not, God's going to fail us. And you remember that
of the whole nation of Israel, they took on a vote and the majority of
the nation said, no, we're not going to go. There were only two men who
said, we trust God.

You see, at that point when Israel was brought to the River Jordan to
cross over, they had to judge. This was really the issue. You know, when
we had, for those who voted recently, there were all the propositions.

And there's a lot of fake news about what the propositions are. And if
you vote this way, it's going to do this. If you go this way, it's going
to do that.

Well, the vote Israel had to take was a very simple one. It wasn't about
giants or fortified cities. It was simply, can we trust God or not? And
699,998 said, we cannot trust God.

He is not reliable. And two said, we can trust God. Folks, it's no
different today.

The majority of us do not trust God. He's not asking us to perform
miracles. He's asking us just to trust him.

So, the whole generation dies in the wilderness. 38 years, 40 years
later, they go in. They send new spies.

So, they send new spies into the land. And you remember, they come to
this woman called Rahab, who operates a public house. And she hides them
on the roof of the house.

Because the inhabitants had heard that these guys were in the land and
they were looking for them. And so, before they lay down, Rahab, she
came to them on the roof. And said to the men, now watch this.

I know that the Lord has given you the land. Who's this woman? She's a
prostitute. She is a member of the enemy.

She had not seen the miracles. She had not eaten the manna. She had not
drunk the water.

She had not seen the pillar of fire or the cloud. She had had nothing of
that. But she says, I know the Lord has given you the land.

Now watch. That the terror of you has fallen on us. And that all the
inhabitants of the land are faint hearted because of you.

Then she says, for we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the
Red Sea for you when you came out of Egypt. And what you did to the two
kings of the Amorites who were on the other side of the Jordan, Sion and
Og, whom you utterly destroyed. Can you see what's going on? Here's this
woman, she heard second hand of what God had done.

And what does she say? I believe this God. I trust him. That he's
against me.

Effectively. And as soon as we heard these things. 38 years before.

In other words, the day that Israel came to the river Jordan and they
took that vote against God. The inhabitants of the land had taken a
vote. And they said, we believe this God.

We may not trust him, we may not like him, but we believe him. As soon
as we heard these things, our hearts melted. Neither did there remain
any more courage because of you.

For the Lord your God, he is God in heaven above and on earth beneath.
What a statement. Israel says, we don't trust him, he's not God.

And this woman says, all of the land believes this God. And what she is
effectively saying is, if you guys crossed the river 38 years ago. We
would have run out the other side.

For 38 years they suffered. Because they wouldn't trust God. And folk,
we suffer.

We go through things in our lives because we won't trust God. Sorry, let
me go back because I've got my scriptures mixed up. So after this all
happened.

Israel goes into the land. They conquer the land. And even then, they
don't really trust the Lord because they leave the most powerful cities
where the giants were.

In the hill country, which is hard to do battle in. They leave that. And
remember that a young man, one of the two who did go into the land, who
did trust God, called Caleb.

And remember, he wasn't even a Jew by birth. But Caleb says, what about
those fortified cities? He says, I want those. And he trusted God.

And at 80 years of age, he took those cities for himself and for his
tribe. He trusted God. So God gave them the land.

Gave them victory. They take the land. Everything is great.

God continues to prove himself through the judges. And then eventually,
Israel comes to a point where they say, well, we want a king. We don't
trust God to lead us.

We want a king. We want to be like every other nation. So God gives them
Saul.

And during the time of Saul, you remember David comes. And during that
time comes Goliath, the Philistine who defies the armies of God. And
remember, David is a young boy.

And he comes to the camp where the soldiers are all camped against the
Philistines on the other side of the valley. And the whole army,
seasoned men of war, are cringing in the trenches. Because the giant is
over there and he's saying, send us a champion and I'll fight him.

Saul, the king, is hiding away. And David comes there and he looks at
this whole lot and he says, what's going on here? He's a shepherd boy.
He has no experience at war at all.

He's probably never held a sword in his life. And David looks at this
lot and he says, this is crazy. What happened to God? And in 1 Samuel
17, 32, when David said to Saul, let no man's heart fail because of him.

Your servant will go and fight with his Philistine. And Saul said to
David, you're not able to go against the Philistine to fight with him.
You're a youth and he is a man of war from his youth.

David said to Saul, now watch. Your servant used to keep his father's
sheep. And when a lion and a bear came and took the land out of the
flock, I went out after it and struck it and delivered the land from the
mouth.

And when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard and struck and
killed it. Can you imagine such a thing? Doing hand combat with a bear
and with a lion. Probably a mountain lion like we have here.

Your servant has killed both a lion and a bear. And this uncircumcised
Philistine will be like one of them, seeing as he defied the armies of
the living God. And Saul looks at David and he said, man, you're just
full of it.

Who do you think you are? But David says, the Lord. The Lord who
delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear. He
will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.

And Saul said to David, go and the Lord be with you. You see, David
remembered. He remembered God's past deliverances.

He remembered that God had been strong on his behalf in the past. And
because God had proven himself to be reliable, he trusted God for the
future. Whereas Israel could not do that.

So by faith Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and she
bore a child when she was past the age. Because she judged him faithful.
David judged God faithful.

Israel judged God unfaithful. Sarah judged and said God is faithful.
Folks, many of us are facing problems and challenges.

There's just one issue you need to resolve in your own mind this
morning. And that is, is God faithful? Can I trust God? Is God reliable?
Now remember I said to you that Israel had some proof in the ten
miracles and the manna and those kinds of things. But folks, we have a
book of evidence.

Thousands of years of history. From the beginning of creation till
today. And all of these pages, all of these 66 books tell me one thing.

God has never failed. God is faithful. We look at the church today and
we say what's happening to the church in the world today? Churches are
failing.

And I'm not going to speak about all of that. But it's very, very real.
We've just had a major division in the church that I shared with you a
few months ago.

We're dealing with another one right now. Churches are falling apart.
What's happening to the church? What's happening to the world? What's
happening to America? Well I know.

God is faithful. God is faithful. And he will fulfill his promises.

And remember his promise to the church is that the gates of hell will
not prevail against it. And it doesn't matter what the world is bringing
against the church. It doesn't matter what the devil is bringing against
churches.

Jesus' promise is that his church will be triumphant in the end. And so
can we trust God? Can we judge him? And so this is why God gives Israel
memorials. And that's why I'm very grateful for the opportunity to
celebrate Thanksgiving.

As you know I'm against many holidays which are pagan. But I think
Thanksgiving is a very important time for Christians. Because it's an
opportunity for us to remember God's faithfulness.

God's faithfulness to us not just in this last year but God's
faithfulness up to this point. Ebenezer, hitherto has the Lord brought
us. And so God gives them memorials.

They raise up stones. And when your children ask you, what are these
rocks about here? Why do you have them all heaped up like this? You'll
tell your children, here God gave us a great victory. Remember.

He gives them the Passover. When your children ask you, why do we do
this Passover? You tell them, God is faithful. God brought us out of
Egypt.

We have the Lord's Supper that we celebrate on a regular basis.
Reminding us, God is faithful. He's raised Jesus from the dead.

And so, folks, we need to judge God. God is not afraid to be judged by
us. Because he knows he is true and he is faithful.

Now, verse 12, I'm just going to touch on this and then we're going to
close. Therefore, from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as
many as the stars of the sky in multitude, innumerable as the sand which
is by the seashore. It wasn't Abraham.

It wasn't Sarah. It was God. And God will do the same for us if we will
only judge him, make a good decision, and account him to be faithful, to
be trustworthy, to be reliable.

Because he is all those things. Father, we thank you for being a
faithful God. Lord, that you're not like man who says and doesn't do.

Lord, that you're not a liar who gives your word and takes it back. But,
Lord, that you have proven yourself over thousands of years of human
history to be the one who keeps your word. And who not only has the
desire to keep your word, but has the power and the authority to keep
your word.

Sometimes we make promises and then we find that we just don't have what
it takes to fulfill those promises. And yet, Lord, you have all power
and you keep your word. So, Lord, we thank you that you're true and
you're faithful.

Forgive us, as the disciples said, Lord, forgive us our unbelief.
Forgive us, Lord, for not trusting you. Forgive us, Lord, for trying to
generate sufficient faith to deal with our problems when all we need to
do is put our confidence in you.

And so, Lord, I pray that these things may become real to us, Lord, that
we may live lives of just walking with you and trusting you moment by
moment, day by day. And even though the days may be dark, even though
the problems seem to be insurmountable, we know that there is nothing
that is impossible with you. And so, Lord, keep our eyes on you.

Help us, Lord, to remember your faithfulness to us individually and to
the church in the past. And know that you have never failed and you will
never fail. Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name.

Go with us, keep us, protect us. Bring us together again safely next
week, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/1BBFZ_nN0AI.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/anton-bosch/can-god-be-trusted/
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