Introduction

God is Forever Faithful — As a child of God, do you know that the Lord loves you and that you can never lose His love no matter what you or what others may think?

Something that I have noticed in my life and in the life of others who genuinely believe in the Lord is how we let guilt get the better of us.  Guilt can put some bad thoughts into our head that can burden us and even cause us to be depressed in our soul.  What I mean by this is that sometimes we can feel guilty for things that we may have said or done.  With a guilty conscience we can begin to think and believe that the Lord no longer cares for us or loves us.

We begin to believe that our guilt can block us from God.  In our guilt we can feel great shame and even great embarrassment which can keep us from going to the Lord.  In this state, I believe that all believers are at their most vulnerable state.  In this frame of mind, we leave ourselves wide open to attack from the burdens of life and even from our great adversary and his agents of wickedness.

Throughout the history of those that are righteous, you will find that we are often antagonized by guilt and by doubt.  Guilt and doubt can be pushed on us by our great adversary.  Even worse, guilt and doubt can be pushed on you by an even bigger enemy than the devil; that enemy being you.  I want to focus on our wrong and on our guilt in today’s message.  At the same time, I want to show you why you don’t have to be weighed down by your guilt or ever question whether the Lord loves you. 

The Love of God

So, the first thing I really want to drive home today is the love of God.  God’s love is something that I often focus on because His love is very important to us.

In our Sunday School last week – Jesus’ Prayer for His Disciples – we spoke about whether or not the Lord truly does care about us.  Now, this thought may seem silly to those who are strong in the faith, but this is a subject of great importance, especially to those who are of little or no faith.  

Something I feel all people should know, whether they believe in God or not, is that the Lord truly does love and care for all people.  I want to share with you one of my more referenced verses on this subject of God’s love.  In Matthew 5 , we will see where Jesus spoke of God’s love towards all people to the disciples.  To the disciples, Jesus said in our familiar verse of reference, “[God] makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matt. 5:45).”

God truly does love all people.  We know that the Lord cares for all people through the very action that I believe defines God’s.  In another very familiar verse, we know that Jesus said that God so loved the world – which means all people – and gave to the world His only begotten Son (John 3:16).  So, to anyone that ever suggests that God does not love all people, I would suggest you think again.  I can look around today and see that the sun truly does rise and set for all people while also clearly seeing that it rains for all people – this is the blessing of nature.

God’s special love for His children

Now, for the children of God, scripture makes it very clear to us that while God loves all people, we hold a special place in His eyes.  In the gospels, we are told that whatever the child of God asks Him, we will receive so that He may be glorified (Matt. 7:7-8; John 15:7-8).  Paul and James wrote of God’s love stating that He pours out His blessings on us liberally.  Lastly, of the Lord’s love for His children, Christ told us that He is our Good Shepherd and that He keeps us in His care (John 10:11, 14; Psalm 23).

Now, the question we must answer is whether or not we truly believe in what scripture shows us.  Some of us have answered that question and said that we do believe in what scripture shows us.  Yet, the honest truth is that in our walk of faith, there are going to be several times where we question if God really does love us.  For example, should we lose a job, house, cars, clothes, family, friends, our health, when things go wrong, many of us will wonder if God still loves us.

So, in our own personal guilt, some of us may begin to believe that we have lost the Lord’s love.  In this very thought and feeling, there begins to even be questions about whether or not we have lost our salvation.  I want you to understand that I am saying this from my own personal experience – I have been there before!  I have had moments where I wondered if I did something to stir up the Lord’s anger towards me and lost His love and favor.

I feel like this is an honest feeling to have for us as genuine believers.  To me, this actually shows that we care about God loving us and having His favor; it shows that we care about our salvation because it is important to us.  So, is it possible for a child of God to lose God’s love towards them?  Will the Lord stop being faithful towards us and can we lose His salvation?

God’s Unwavering Love to Us

In Psalm 37, we will see David speaking to those who I believe were of no faith and little faith in the Lord.  David says to mark and observe the blameless and upright (Ps. 37:37).  David also speaks to them of the Lord’s love in a manner that will help us be able to answer our questions for today.  This will also help to reaffirm and strengthen us in our faith, especially when we are feeling doubt or guilt in our hearts.

God orders our steps

In our key verses for today, we will see David state, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord (Ps. 37:23).”  The good person that David is speaking of is one who is righteous.  As we know, those that are considered to be righteous are those who the Lord calls His righteous.  We can only be righteous in God’s eyes through our genuine faith in His only begotten Son, as you often hear me say.

So, let us understand that David, in essence, is touching on God’s love towards those that are His.  David states to us that through His love, God is with those that are righteous.  Not only is God with those that are His, but David tells us that the Lord orders the steps of the righteous.  What this means is that God goes before those that are His and He guides them, just as we saw the Lord do for the children of Israel when He guided them to the Promised Land.

In his own personal experience David spoke of how the Lord brought him out of a horrible pit, set his feet upon a rock, and established his steps (Ps. 40:2).  From David back to Joseph, who was literally put in a pit and sold into slavery by his own brothers, we saw that God was with him in that pit and while he was in bondage.  It could have certainly been easy for Joseph to lose hope in the Lord, but his faith only grew stronger as the Lord proved to be with him and blessed him greatly in his steps.

As the Lord was with both Joseph and David, He is with all of us and guides all of us who are righteous.  You see, God dwells in our heart (that is the soul) through the inner dwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Through the inner dwelling of the Holy Spirit, our every step is ordered and led in all truth, according to Christ (John 14:16; 16:13).  I want you to understand that no matter where you go on your journey, the Holy Spirit (God) is with you.

We are not perfect

Even when we fall into a pit of sin, God is still with us, and what this means is that the Lord knows when we have trespassed against Him.  Now, there are some who profess to be a follower of Christ who believe themselves to be perfect and without sin; they never fall off the narrow path, according to them.  In his first epistle, John commented that those who say that they have no sin are deceiving themselves and the truth is not in them (1 John 1:9).  

The truth must be in us today and I believe that those who feel guilty over their wrongdoings have the truth in them through the Holy Spirit.  Those that have the truth in them are able to humbly acknowledge that they have done wrong because they have listened to the Spirit’s guidance.  Something I feel we have to be able to do as a child of God is humbly acknowledge that we are not perfect.  Even though we are in fellowship with the Lord, we are still capable of error — we are not perfect.

As I said a few Sundays ago in my sermon – Go to God – there are two natures present inside of all genuine believers.  Those two natures are a nature of worldliness (of the flesh) and a nature that is of the Spirit (Gal. 5:17).  The Holy Spirit comes and dwells inside of the righteous ones which gives us a nature that is of the Holy Spirit.  Yet, many of us can acknowledge and recognize that our old nature which opposes the Lord, is also ever present in us as well.

So, admittedly, we all have our moments where instead of following the Spirit’s lead, we will give in to our old nature.  This act, we know, is an act that does not please the Lord.  Because we know that sin is not pleasing to the Lord, we are left with a guilty conscience, which if we allow it, can take control over us.  In those moments when things do not seem to go our way, we can begin to think that the Lord has forsaken us because of our guilty conscience.  

Even worse when it comes to dealing with the guilt of our conscience and whether God loves us or not, we have Satan and his agents that will play with our thoughts and our emotions.  As always, Satan’s goal is to drive a wedge between us and the Lord.  Then, when I think about Job in his days of great pain, Job’s so-called friends did not help as they tried to make him believe that God turned away from him because he had done wrong in their mind.  Again, it always seems that the righteous is being persuaded to doubt the Lord.

God upholds you when you fall

In those moments where our guilt or where others are trying to make us think that God has turned away from us because of our sin, or because they think we have sinned, I want you to see what David said.  In the second of our key verses, we will see David say, “Though he (a righteous person) fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; For the Lord upholds him with His hand.”

David learned from his own personal experience that the Lord will uphold those He loves – the righteous – even when those He loves may fall.  In his great sin, David prayed that the Lord have mercy on him.  David said to God, “Create in me a clean heart and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  Do not cast me away from Your presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me (Ps. 51:1, 10-11).”  This is a thought that I believe all genuine believers have when we error and when we fall; we don’t to lose God’s love!

I want you to remember that the Lord created in all of us a clean heart when He gave the world His only begotten Son and we chose to believe in Him.  As we know, the Lord is both faithful and just to forgive us of our wrong doing if we confess them to Him.  The doors to the Lord are always open for us to go to Him, and He desires for us to come to Him and cast our cares on Him (Matt. 11:28).

To those of a guilty conscience, Paul said to the Ephesians that the Lord is “rich in mercy” out of “His great love” for us (Eph. 2:4-5).  We should all understand that The Lord’s love and mercy towards us is unending!  God is rich in mercy towards you!  God loves for you is great!  God is not going to cast you away – He is going to show you mercy!

When God sent the great flood during the days of Noah, He could have ended it all, yet God gave mankind another opportunity – He was merciful.  The Lord gave the children of Israel His law to keep and when they failed to keep the law, God did not give up on them and was merciful yet again.  When the world was lost in the pit of sin, God did not give up on the world but came to the world and manifested Himself in the flesh with an offer of mercy and salvation.

God is Forever Faithful to Us

If the Lord did not give up on us when we were once sinners, why should we ever think that He is going to give up on us when we have become righteous?  God is never going to abandon the righteous!  Moses conveyed this same message to the children of Israel when he said, “the Lord, He is the One who goes before you. He will be with you, He will not leave you nor forsake you; do not fear nor be dismayed (Deut. 31:8).”  Again, I say to you today, that the Lord is with you through good and bad; over every hill and mountain, and through every valley, God is with you because God loves you!

Chastened by God

Now, something we should certainly understand about the Lord’s love, as a child of God, is that we do not go without being disciplined by the Lord.

Solomon said to those that desire to be wise (righteous), “do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights (Prov. 3:11-12).”  I certainly believe that there are times when we get down because of how God corrects us when we do trespass against Him.  Yet, if the Lord did not care about us – if He abandoned us – then He certainly would not give us the time of day to correct us.

The writer of Hebrews wrote and said to us, “If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? .. They indeed for a few chastened us as seemed best to them, but He (God) for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness (Heb. 12:7, 10).”  So, when we do wrong, the Lord does not come close to abandoning us, He offers His rebuke (correction) so that we can grow for our sins.

God will lift you up!

I encourage you today to not let the weight of your wrongs – your guilt – weigh you down.  Do not let your guilt or Satan and his agents wickedness try to persuade you away from the Lord with the idea that God no longer loves you because of something you may have done.  We ought not be weighed down because the Lord is too busy lifting us up over our sins!

Be confident today that the Lord is a merciful and a forgiving God who lifts up those that are righteous, just as David said.  To the children of Israel, we will see that Moses once said to them of the Lord, “know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments (Deut. 7:9).”  I want you to understand today that there is nothing that can break the Lord’s love and faithfulness towards we who are righteous!

To this day, everyone has an opportunity at God’s salvation.  Because the Lord’s love towards us is unending, the salvation that we have received through His mercy and our faith is also unending.  What this means is that our salvation cannot be lost – it has been sealed!  To the Ephesians, Paul said, “In Him (Christ) you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise (Eph. 1:13).”

You are not going to be lost from the hands of the Lord when He has laid hold on you.  I want to end today’s message with this statement from Christ when He said, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.  My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father’s hand (John 10:27-29).”  God is not going to ever let the righteous one go.

Thought: God is Forever Faithful

By Rev. Leo H. McCrary II – January 20, 2022
Responsive Reading – Psalm 37:16-27
Key Verse – Psalm 37:23-24