Your real problem in dealing with the clay as it affects the vessel

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Grace Bible Church
The Tree of Life
A Weekly Review
Week ending 03/27/11
Your real problem in dealing with the clay as it affects the vessel.

Believing in and observing the faithfulness of God always coming through for me, as many of you experienced the His same thing as well.

If we endure, we shall also reign with Him; If we deny Him, He also will deny us; If we are faithless, He remains faithful; for He cannot deny Himself. (2TI 2:12-13)

Knowing and believing and observing the faithfulness of God always coming through, still there was a question lurking in my mind...that He finally answered in His time. We watched reputations be destroyed and individuals making accusations against others that they were guilty of fulfilling what our Father said is true in:

Therefore you are without excuse, every man of you who passes judgment, for in that you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. (ROM 2:1)

We have all seen many believers walking on a dark spiral downward taking others along with them. In fact, we were warned by our God that this would happen in the last days.

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths. (2TI 4:3-4)

We saw it happened, and, in fact, are still observing what the great apostle, the apostle Paul wrote in;

But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self‑control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; (2TI 3:1-4)

Knowing and believing and observing the faithfulness of God always coming through. From now on I am telling you before it comes to pass, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am He (JOH 13:19). Then I faced along with some of you questions like:

Why is there a hell?

Why is there suffering?

Why all the sorrow and pain to the little children?

I received what I truly believe was an answer from God. Then I believe I found an answer that was already inside my soul. I find it pleases Him when I can testify, I'll trust my God to do what's best and wait to find out why. And even though I believed MAT 10:30, “But the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” I also believe ROM 8:32, He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Yet knowing all this and believing and observing the faithfulness of God always coming through, I still had one more question: What about my family? My parents? Especially, My children? And He taught me and many of you.

“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter‑in‑law against her mother‑in‑law; and a man's enemies will be the members of his household. He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.” (MAT 10:34-38)

We were even taught, even concerning our children,

Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life. But many {who are} first, will be last; and the last, first.”

(MAR 10:29-31)

Observing the faithfulness of God always coming through by operating under such principles as ROM 3:3, For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?\

Even though I had all my questions answered like Abraham did in Gen 18. In effect, Abraham said something like this. Oh may the Lord not be angry, and I shall speak only this once more. And then, believe it or not, the first passage I read to you this morning answered the main question. Not only did it answer how GBC and RMBM was built and it also answered a question concerning another issue I wanted solved. The answer was given in three passages:

1. PSA 127:1-2, Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman keeps awake in vain. It is vain for you to rise up early, To retire late, To eat the bread of painful labors; For He gives to His beloved {even in his} sleep.

2. PRO 22:6, Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it.\

3. PSA 37:25, “I have been young, and now I am old; Yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, Or his descendants begging bread.”

JOB 5:25, “You will know also that your descendants will be many, And your offspring as the grass of the earth.”

The point is no matter who you are or where you are, the faithfulness. God keeps His word. He has never made a promise He has not kept, Psa 119, There never was a time when God was unfaithful. It is blasphemy to think so. Therefore, unfaithfulness is totally incompatible with the very nature and essence of God, MAL 3:6, “For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed.”

HOS 14:4, “I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely, for My anger has turned away from them.”

The very existence, function, and provision of blessing for the Royal Family of God, both now and forever, depends on the faithfulness and character of God. God is always prepared. He is never caught off guard. God's nature is to be faithful. How refreshing it is to know that in spite of all this there is One who is faithful. He is faithful in all things, at all times, even unto the end.

DEU 7:9, “Know therefore that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God, who keeps His covenant and His lovingkindness to a thousandth generation with those who love Him and keep His commandments;”

This quality is essential to His being, without it He would not be God.

LAM 3:22, The Lord's lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail.

Now, it is one thing to accept the faithfulness of God as truth, it is another thing to act upon it. God is faithful to us and He is not only faithful to tell us the good things but He is also faithful to tell us the bad things. He has faithfully described the ruin that negative volition toward doctrine leads to. He has faithfully diagnosed the terrible results and effects of sin. So God is faithful in all things.

The Bible states many ways in which God is faithful. For instance, God is faithful in keeping His promises;

For as many as may be the promises of God, in Him they are yes; wherefore also by Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us. (2 Co 1:20)

God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good? (NUM 23:19)

Think of all the rebellion that the children of Israel fell into and yet God was faithful. Many times they were faithless but He was faithful! Why? Because in Titus 1:2, it is impossible for Him to lie. In Hebrews 10:23, He who promised is faithful. The permanence of God's character guarantees the fulfillment of his promises.

ISA 54:4-10 has an application to us and though it was said to the Jews, think how more applicable it is to the Church.

“Fear not, for you will not be put to shame; Neither feel humiliated, for you will not be disgraced; But you will forget the shame of your youth, And the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the Lord of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth. For the Lord has called you, Like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, Even like a wife of {one's} youth when she is rejected, Says your God. For a brief moment I forsook you, But with great compassion I will gather you. In an outburst of anger I hid My face from you for a moment; But with everlasting lovingkindness I will have compassion on you, Says the Lord your Redeemer.

For this is like the days of Noah to Me; When I swore that the waters of Noah Should not flood the earth again, So I have sworn that I will not be angry with you, Nor will I rebuke you. For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, And My covenant of peace will not be shaken, Says the Lord who has compassion on you.”(ISA 54:5-10)