======================================================================== WHAT A FAITHFUL GOD HAVE I by Sandeep Poonen ======================================================================== Summary: This sermon emphasizes the faithfulness of God, highlighting how God is reliable, trustworthy, and faithful in fulfilling His promises and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. The speaker delves into various Bible verses to underline God's faithfulness in forgiving sins, fulfilling promises, enabling us to bear temptations, and ensuring our blamelessness until the end. The message encourages believers to trust in God's faithfulness, live joyfully in obedience, and find security in God's shepherding through all circumstances. Topics: "God's Faithfulness", "Trust and Obedience" Scripture References: 1 John 1:9, 2 Corinthians 1:18, 1 Corinthians 10:13, 1 Corinthians 1:8 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ DESCRIPTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This sermon emphasizes the faithfulness of God, highlighting how God is reliable, trustworthy, and faithful in fulfilling His promises and cleansing us from all unrighteousness. The speaker delves into various Bible verses to underline God's faithfulness in forgiving sins, fulfilling promises, enabling us to bear temptations, and ensuring our blamelessness until the end. The message encourages believers to trust in God's faithfulness, live joyfully in obedience, and find security in God's shepherding through all circumstances. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENT ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I wanted to share something about God. And there's a phrase that appears a few times in the Bible. It may not be exhaustive. But I wanted to underline a phrase that appears in the Bible, which is, God is faithful. God is faithful means that God is reliable. God is trustworthy. And hopefully, if we believe this book, that this book is the word of God, and we know what is written in God's word, all of these verses here should tell us that God is faithful. But interestingly enough, the Holy Spirit felt it necessary to underline that truth. That God is faithful when he says certain things about himself and us. So I wanted to share with you very simple things. It's not a complicated thing. You could have figured this out, too, if you had just read those verses. So I don't think it'll be very hard for me to convince you of it. But I just wanted to show you that the Holy Spirit thought he should underline the fact that God is faithful when he's telling us certain things. The first one is in 1 John, chapter 1, verse 9. These are things that God is saying, you already know that I'm faithful, but I'm going to underline it. Hey, by the way, remember, I'm faithful. Remember that about me when I tell you this, because it'll be hard for you to understand it. Your feelings are going to tell you that it is not true. Circumstances may tell you that it is not true. But that's why I'm going to underline one more time. I am faithful. I am reliable. I am trustworthy when I tell you this. 1 John, chapter 1, verse 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful. He is faithful. He is trustworthy. He is reliable. And he's righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now that word cleanse is the word I wanted to underline. He is faithful. He is reliable to cleanse us, to purify us, to make us 100% clean. Of all our sins. Does that include the sins that I committed two seconds ago, two minutes ago? Yes. If we confess our sins to him, he is reliable. He didn't have to say that. He could have just said, he will forgive us of our sins and cleanse us. But no, the Holy Spirit said, let me tell you, he is faithful. He is trustworthy to cleanse us. I was thinking about this. You know, in India, we have all kinds of animals. Outside and inside. Some of them live inside the house. One of those animals that is a troublesome animal, for me at least, is a lizard. And you find them in the king's palaces apparently even. That's what even the king or whoever it was, the wise man said in Proverbs. But you find the lizard in some odd places too. On the walls many times, on the doors. And I remember one time, I opened a door and I felt something land on my self. I didn't think much of it. But then I looked and I saw a lizard. And my instinct was immediate to shake him off. But let me take that analogy a little further. It hasn't happened to me, but I'm sure it's happened to some human being. That a lizard has come and the person's not been aware of it. And it crawls onto the skin and maybe finds a little particle of food that it wants to eat. And then darts its tongue out and grabs a hold of that piece of food that's on my skin. And I feel something wet. I don't know what a lizard's tongue feels like. But I feel something like that on my skin. And that's when I look down and I find that there's a lizard that just licked me. What would my response be? The same as your response, right children? I'll just flick it off. Now the lizard is gone, but something has remained. It's this feeling that a lizard has licked me. Maybe you're okay with it. I'm not okay with it. I'll go and take a shower or I'll go take a bath and I'll find the most powerful soap there is. And I look at the box of the soap and it says, will kill 99.9% of bacteria. So I'm still a little worried. What about the 0.1%? So I'll probably do it five times. And I still walk away thinking, I still don't know if I'm completely clean. That's what I would do with a lizard and something that is yucky that touches my hand. And I was thinking of that analogy and I was thinking of the similarities it is with sometimes the way I sin. I sin, if I'm a Christian, I sin and it leaves a stain on me. Now the question is, when the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin, do I think it may be as powerful as that Purell or that detergent or that soap that purifies 99.9% of germs? Man cannot give a 100% guarantee. It has to protect itself from lawsuits. That's why it puts 99.9% because it doesn't know there may be an odd case in which the detergent didn't apply. And I wonder about that sometimes as it relates to the blood of Jesus and our past. Do you really believe that he's got a 100% success rate to cleanse us, to cleanse us, to clean us from all our sin? Now look, the memory of the lizard licking me is still there, but I am clean. And I have to do something with that memory because that memory can tell me I'm still dirty, but I'm not. The memory is just a memory. It's like a dream. We have bad dreams sometimes. It doesn't affect us. It's not real. In the same way our past must be towards us, our past must not be real because it's been cleansed. We still remember it, but it has been cleansed. We are 100% clean. It's easy for me to say it, very hard for some of you, maybe for me to apply it. But I have to do the hard work to believe that God is reliable, God is trustworthy. He says 100% clean, spotless, as if I had not been stained to begin with. That is how clean God makes me. I know how hard it is to believe it in your mind, but you have to see that God, through the Holy Spirit, underlined it. I'm reliable, I'm trustworthy. I don't know what is in your past. It may be something small in the eyes of others, or it may be something big. Confess it to the Lord. If you've hurt somebody else, if you've stolen money from somebody else, tell them, go and tell them, I've done this, I'm sorry, I may not be able to pay you back, I'll try a little bit, one dollar at a time. But the moment you confess your sins, and you have a desire to set it right, God says, clean, 100% clean. And God says, I'm trying to underline it, I didn't have a marker, a yellow marker to do it when I was writing this down, but I'm going to put that extra word in there, that God is faithful, He's reliable, He's 100% trustworthy, that He will cleanse us of our sins. I wanted to spend the most time on that, because to me, I feel that's the starting point. We must sit here in this church, if we sit here in Jesus Christ, and the blood of Jesus washes over us, we must sit here as ones who are all equal, who are all 100% clean, man, woman, child. That's the basis in which we sit here. If you ever think you're a little inferior to anybody else sitting here, you've not understood this basic truth, that we're all equal, brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ, because we're all 100% clean, and none of us did anything to deserve it, but it is available to us. Second promise is in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 18-20. 2 Corinthians 1, verse 18-20, it says, As God is faithful, our word is not yes or no. And then it says in verse 20, for as many as the promises of God are, they are yes. Dear brothers and sisters, God's promises are yes. They are not 99.999% guaranteed, they are 100% guaranteed. Now, you know this, so I'm not going to belabor the point. I will tell you that you just can't apply promises as you see fit. That is why we need to have good teachers, good people who have been gifted by God through a gift of the Holy Spirit to teach us what it is exactly that God's word says. Because there's a lot of Christendom who says, I'm going to take this promise and that means that God is going to make me rich financially. And they have not understood God's word, they're not good teachers of God's word because God's word's promises are not to make us rich physically or financially. They are meant to make us rich spiritually. And in that sense, it's guaranteed that God's promises are meant to make me spiritually rich, full of the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness and so on. We are supposed to have that riches and it's guaranteed to me through the promises of God. So if I don't have it, if other Christians or non-Christians, my family members, my friends who are not Christians don't see the fruit of Jesus, love and peace and kindness coming increasingly in me, it's not God's fault. Because that is 100% guaranteed. It's my fault. If I'm not rich financially, there's no promise in God's word about me being rich financially. So it doesn't matter to me if I meet a poor person or a rich person. If I meet an unhealthy person and I meet a healthy person, it doesn't bother me. Some of you may have cancer inside of you, you may not just know it, maybe you know it. I have sicknesses in me. It doesn't bother me whether we have sicknesses or financial, poor or rich. But it should bother us if we've got unloving attitudes in us, if we're unkind, if we're impatient with our wife. That's not the fruit of Jesus Christ. And Jesus guarantees us that we will increase in it from one year to another. That's his promises. God's underlining it, guaranteed, 100%, not in 99.9%. And we must go to God with that confidence. God, you promised me. What? Spiritual riches, spiritual fruit. So let us quit going to God and expecting him to guarantee us a promotion or an increased salary or health for our children or health for ourselves. If we can pray confident that God can give it to us, God can give me the financial benefits or the health benefits, but he doesn't guarantee it to us. Doesn't mean he will. But he will give me the spiritual benefits. The only thing God wants me to have before I go to heaven is that I become like Jesus Christ. That's the only thing he asks me to do. And he says, through my promises, I can guarantee it. Let us hold fast to it. The next one is in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13. Dear brothers and sisters, I hope that you will see this as a guarantee in your life for every situation in your life. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13. Again, God underlines it by saying God is faithful. No temptation has come to you that is not common to man, but God will not allow you to be tempted or tested beyond what you are able. This is not hopefully this is a verse you've heard before. God is faithful. He's underlying it. He will never allow you to face anything that you cannot bear, which means every situation has been in my life. Every situation in my life has been checked by God himself to make sure I can bear it. So if I lose my job, what do I know has happened? It has gone through the filter of God's check to make sure that I can handle it. Before it came to me, there's a filter. There's a seal that the devil is trying to pull all temptations through. He's trying to kill me. He's trying to destroy me. But there's a big filter through which is a strainer, whatever the thing you can think of. It says, here's the strainer for Sadiq. Nothing can go through that I define how big the hole can be. And he's watching for every single situation. Do you believe that? If you do, you will never say again, Lord, please don't allow this to happen to me. How could he? You'll never say again, Lord, this is too much for me to bear. How could he? It's impossible. It's more impossible than me throwing a ball up and it not coming down. I absolutely believe that. It is more possible that I'll throw a ball up and it will stay up. And you'll be like, what happened to it? No idea. Defy the law of gravity. The law of gravity is less reliable than the law of one Corinthians 10, 13. God will never allow me something into my life that I cannot bear. Dear brothers and sisters, dear husbands and wives, let us be ruthless to shut out all doubt that can come into our lives. When we face situations, when we face pain in our lives, when we face difficult situations, let us be ruthless. God is underlining it. I'm guaranteeing you this. I will never allow you to be tested. I have taken that to my prayers for years now. I have taken that to my speech for years now. And I'm absolutely confident and I'm absolutely determined that I will live that kind of life where I will never again say this is too much for me, Lord. No matter what he sends my way. I'm talking about physical sickness. I'm talking about loss of loved ones. Nothing. God will never allow anything to come into my life that he cannot give me the grace to bear. I must believe that. And the last one is in one Corinthians chapter one. God wrote this to the church in Corinth through Paul. And the church in Corinth was a pretty pathetic church. It had some serious sins. But in the beginning of his first letter, before he goes into correcting them, he starts with what? Verses four through nine where he compliments them of all the good things God has given them. And then he says in verse eight and nine, who will also confirm you to the very end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful. And God not only has our past taken care of, he's got our promises for our present, as well as he's saying every situation I'm going to take care of it. But he's also saying I'm guaranteeing the present continues to the very end. And he's underlying it saying God is faithful. God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And God is saying, look, you're going to go through situations here, some of which you think you cannot bear, but you can, because I'm telling you in your word that you can bear it. And I've given you promises that will give you the fuel. And I've given you promises about my love and my grace. And that will be the fuel that will keep you going one day at a time. And trust me, I'm going to be with you. I'm going to shepherd you through this journey as you say amen to my promises, as you live a life without complaining and murmuring, as you trust me that I've ignored and cleansed your past completely. I'll finish the work that I've started in you. I'll take care of you on that day. There's a day coming, dear brothers and sisters, guaranteed to every one of us, where you're going to stand before God. And God is going to ask you how you lived your life. And not everybody is going to stand there without shame. Some of us are going to stand there, even though we're Christians, we're going to stand there with shame. But God is saying you don't have to stand there without shame. That's from 1 John 2. Some of you will draw back, dear beloved children, some of you will draw back without confidence. But you don't have to be that way. And of course, those who have not known Jesus Christ and have dishonored God will go to hell. God will send them to a place where he has nothing to do with. But even among Christians, we can stand before God full of shame. Or we can stand before God secure and blameless. Because we have trusted God in the present to change us, change us, change us. And we can have confidence that he is the one shepherding us through all of our circumstances, through all of our situations in life. And he'll complete the work. What a guarantee for our future. Dear brothers and sisters, may we see that God is underlining these things. Making it 100% guaranteed. Let us live as ones who have been cleansed of our past. That God looks at us as if we've never sinned. That God looks at us as if we've always obeyed. This is a huge truth. Let us know that it is guaranteed, God's promises for our spiritual life. That the fruit of the spirit are guaranteed to us as we obey the commandments. And that we will never live a life where we complain or murmur. Because God will never allow us to be tempted beyond what we can handle. Through all the different situations. And finally, God will complete the work in us. Dear brothers and sisters, I want NCCF to be a very happy church. I want it to be a very joyful church. To be a very secure church. Amidst trials, amidst difficult situations, I want us to be a church full of joy. If we have such a God, so faithful, it will happen in our lives. I'm starting to experience it. I want us to all be in this life where we can be happy all the time. And I'm not talking about a happiness that's based on feelings. It's a happiness and a joy that's based on obedience to God's word. You know what that word blessed means? Blessed means happy. How fortunate are these people who are poor in spirit. How fortunate are the gentle. How happy are those who are filled with the spirit. Is that God's testimony over our lives? What a happy bunch of people these people are. They're poor in spirit. They're gentle. They extend mercy to others. They're pure in heart. That's the life God wants us to live. May God help us. ======================================================================== Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/LRnH8171JDg.mp4 Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/sandeep-poonen/what-a-faithful-god-have-i/ ========================================================================