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No apostle insisted more strongly on the liberty of God than St. Paul. This is understood when we remember that he wrote to churches largely composed of Jews whose inveterate inclination was to believe that God had bound Himself to them by an inviolable and exclusive covenant. To uproot this he teaches that the covenant with Israel did not prevent God being the God of the Gentiles. But that teaching may raise a formidable objection. The freedom of God; is not that arbitrariness? No; Paul the great defender of Divine liberty is also the one who insists with most force on the Divine faithfulness, that attribute which affirms that God is without shadow of turning. The two truths thus balance each other.

I. The Lord is faithful — HAS NOT GOD WRITTEN THAT THOUGHT IN ALL HIS WORKS? Do we not each spring read it in the renewed nature?

1. Alas I we can count on that faithfulness and not recognize its source. The peasant who, perhaps, has never bent his knee to God, turns up the ground, confides the grain to its furrows, and awaits the future with confidence. The atheist who denies the sovereign ordainer believes in universal order in nature. The scientist counts so on the exactitude of the laws of nature that a thousand years beforehand he announces the minute when two stars will meet in space. Everything in our plans for the future rests on the confidence that what God has done until now, He will do again. Yet the carnal man stays himself in this very fidelity in order to dispense with God, and because everything happens as it did in the time of his fathers, he infers the uselessness of prayer. The very faithfulness which ought to fill him with gratitude serves as an excuse for his unthankfulness.

2. What then is necessary that God's action may be manifested? That He interrupts the course of His benefits? This He does sometimes, and with what results? Man says "Chance alone governs us." Thus whatever God does, man succeeds in eluding Him. If order reigns, the sinner says "I can dispense with God"; if disorder occurs, "There is no God."

II. GOD'S FAITHFULNESS APPEARS IN THE MORAL ORDER.

1. What are moral laws? Not variable commands which God is able to change when He likes, but expressions of His very nature, "Be ye holy for I am holy."

2. This being so, I can understand why God cannot contradict Himself, and that at all costs His law must be accomplished. You would regard him as a fool who would trifle with steam, but look without terror on the sinner who violates the Divine will. Yet which is the most certain. I can conceive of a world where the law of gravity does not exist, but not one where, by the will of God, evil would be good. I cannot believe, without tearing my conscience in two, that if the seed buried in the soil must appear, yet what a man sows he will not reap.

3. On what does the confidence of the greater part of men rest? On the idea that God's justice is never vigorous. Who told us so? Sinners interested in believing it. But is a criminal to witness in his own cause and pronounce his own verdict? Let us not abase God by such an idea under the pretext that He is good. God is faithful to Himself, cannot give the lie to His holiness, and according to His immutable laws sin must entail suffering.

4. Though all sinners should agree in denying God's judgment that will not hinder them from being carried each minute towards the judgment which awaits them. I can believe everything except that God ceases to be holy; and convicted of that, the only suitable prayer is "God be merciful to me a sinner."

5. There is the admission the gospel wishes to draw from us. And when repentant men by faith throw themselves on the Divine mercy, they find in God a reconciled Father, and the thought of His faithfulness becomes the source of the firmest assurance, and the sweetest consolation.

6. God's faithfulness, like the wilderness pillar, is at once dark and light: to the sinner it is justice, to the penitent mercy.

7. Not that God in pardoning sacrifices His righteousness; righteousness has received this sanction on the Cross.

8. But will not such a doctrine countenance presumption. Yes, just as if you take one of the elements out of air you can make it poison. But the perversity of man must not prevent us from preaching God's mercy. For wherever that was believed it has produced obedience. Do you encounter the most lax lives among those who believe most in the love of a faithful God? The danger is in believing in it too little. At the time of the errors of your youth, did the pure and holy kiss of your mother make you indifferent and trifling? Inspire an army, weak and demoralized, with a steadfast confidence in its general, and they are already half-way to triumph; and the Christian's cry of victory is "The Lord is faithful."

III. WHAT PART DOES THIS FAITHFULNESS PLAY IN OUR LIVES?

1. Have you understood it? Is there anything below more beautiful than a faithful attachment? Ah, perhaps you enjoyed it yesterday. That happiness was only lent you for a few days. Sooner or later the strongest and tenderest ties must be broken; but if you have known them only for a single day, you have caught a glimpse of the faithfulness of God.

2. The Lord is faithful. Lay hold of that word and oppose it —

(1) to all the events of your life. It will help you to traverse the gloom. We must walk by faith, not by sight. When the sculptor attacks a block of marble, who could discern the noble image which one day will be disengaged? So let the Divine artist act, let all that ought to disappear fall under His faithful hand.

(2) To all the failings and variations of your heart. If we are unbelieving, He abideth faithful.

(3) To all the temptations which beset you. His faithfulness will provide a way out of it.

(4) To all the discouragements which would paralyze your activity.

(E. Bersier, D. D.)

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KJV: But the Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and keep you from evil.

WEB: But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you, and guard you from the evil one.