Sermonette: The Only Sure Thing
Who or What Can We Trust?
#FT01-13s
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 09-Oct-01; 19 minutes
summary: We live in an unstable world. Not only is there terrorism and war, but even during peacetime, nations have diplomats to keep even allies from coming to blows! Financial instability seems to be the norm, and our culture is a roiling mess. Who can we trust? Only God the Father and Jesus Christ are constant, sure, and faithful. This applies equally to His Word. God is our anchor, and during times like these, that is a treasure we need to hold on to with all our might.
transcript:
Have you noticed that we live in a rather unstable world? I will key you in right now. This is an old offering sermonette that I did in the spring of 2000. I was in a hurry to get everything done before the Feast, and I thought, well, maybe I have got one in the archives, so to speak, that will fit. And I looked and I could not believe what I had written a year and a half ago. And I thought, “Wow, maybe God allowed me to do it then so it would be ready for now, even though I gave it a year and a half ago.” I think if you will go back and listen to the message then, as opposed to now, it is going to sound pretty different, because there is a different spin on it this year. As I said, we live in a very unstable world. Even without the terrorist attacks that have been happening, and the retaliation that is occurring now, normally nations just barely stand one another. They have people they call diplomats that go back and forth between nations to help keep the peace between nations, to keep each other at arm's length, rather than at each other's throat. It is very difficult in this world for men and governments; or maybe I should put it this way, human governments, to keep themselves contained within the space that has been allotted them. We have not seen a great deal of imperialism in terms of armed armies (obviously armed armies; that sounds dumb, doesn't it?)—hostile forces—invading other nations, though it does occur. But that sort of thing can heat up very quickly. Even longtime allies and partners view each other with a bit of distrust, and it takes them a little bit of time to come on board with anything the other one may want to do. And though we saw over the past few months that Britain came on rather quickly with the United States to this war on terrorism, France and Germany and some of these other nations dragged their heels. They had a few things that they did not quite like, and so we were not exactly sure early on just how great our support would be. But the tribes of Joseph banded together very quickly. Canada dragged its heels a little bit, and I have heard that they are calling Chretien the new Chamberlain, because of his wanting to pacify the terrorists rather than to confront them. But even so he is probably a Reubenite, but the rest of Canada was solidly behind the Americans. Well, that is okay. We understand that nations distrust each other and there is a bit of instability there. There is instability on the economic front too, and we have seen more instability because of these terror attacks. It was before the terror attacks, the Dow would go up 100 points one day and down 100 points the next, and companies would lose millions or billions of dollars in just the swing of a day or two. Bill Gates lost a huge sum of money there a few months back. It was like $9 billion or something like that in one day! That is not stability in the financial markets. We cannot be sure if we put our money into mutual funds, or stocks, or a 401k, that we are going to get out of it what we put in. We always have these disclaimers at the end of the commercials that say this is risk capital. You should be willing to lose it. No, not even our money is stable. We see crime on the evening news, and it seems to encroach closer and closer and closer to us just about every day. There is somebody down the block that gets arrested for something, or it is somebody down the block that got their house broken into or got mugged on the street. It used to be that we looked at these things in a kind of a telescopic way where we could view them from afar, and say, “Wow, isn’t crime bad.” But now it is encroaching closer and closer to our own lives. We have to be careful of whom we give our information to. We have to be careful that we do not answer the phone in a gullible fashion, because somebody is going to want to take our money, give us a vacation we do not want, and find out you have to spend an hour and a half, or three hours listening to the spiel. And they sign you up without your knowledge or what have you, for a very large bill. Can we trust anybody or anything these days? I wonder. Can we? The answer is yes, we can. There is Somebody we can trust. Just as sure as the sun will rise in the morning, and it will set in the evening, there is one being—God—who we can trust! He is constant. He is sure. He is faithful. Without God there is no trust. Without God there is no hope. And in a world like this there has to be an anchor somewhere. And He is the anchor that we have—He and His Son. Anything that is His, totally His, like His law, His Word, His prophecies, His testimony—everything that He has given to us, His revelation—is sure. Having such an anchor to hold onto in these turbulent times is something to really appreciate, and to treasure. I would like to begin in Psalm 19:7. We will quickly go through several scriptures here. I want you to see that the Bible confirms the sureness—surety—of God. And we do not have to doubt at all where He is coming from, what He is doing, or what He said. We can always rely on Him to give it to us straight. And also, to be our shelter in a time of need. Psalm 19:7 The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. Do you know that this is the first thing in the Bible that is called “sure?” God's testimony! This testimony seems to be one of those religious theological type of terms that we sometimes have trouble getting our minds around. But it is not really that hard to understand. His testimony is basically what He has revealed, what He has told us, what He said, what He has proven to us. Specifically, here, it is in a parallel with the law. So His testimony in a way is a synonym of the law because these clauses then parallel one another. We could define testimony as a strong verbal or symbolic statement of assured truth. That is a legal definition of it. But basically, it is His sure Word, His sure statement, His sure truth. His testimony then affirms His way of life, and His purpose. We can count on it. It is sure. We can believe it. We can trust it. And then we could be happy. We can walk through the valley of the shadow of death that we just sang about, twice. Now to Psalm 93:5, the last verse in that short chapter. Psalm 93:5 Your testimonies are very sure; holiness adorns Your house, O LORD, forever. Here it is connected with holiness. God's Word is holy. God's Word is unique. It is separate; it is transcendent, which can be used as synonyms of the word “holy.” It goes beyond anything that man has ever come up with himself. And those testimonies, thus what He has revealed to us, are very sure. That almost seems like overkill to say very sure, like very unique. But I think it is an emphatic way of saying that you can trust it. And you can trust it forever, all your life. Psalm 111:7 The works of His hands are verity [truth] and justice; all His precepts are sure. A precept is a command, or a law, or a statute. What it does is it lays out a person's responsibilities primarily toward God but also toward fellow man. So if God gives you a precept, He is telling you what you need to do. And the psalmist tells us that these commands, these outlines of righteousness, are sure; that we can trust them. If God tells us to do something, then we can do it in faith and trust and confidence that it is going to produce what He says it is going to produce. So we do not have to doubt, “Well, I don’t know if I should keep that old Sabbath day, you know, everybody else doesn’t keep it. Look at all Christianity. There are billions of people keeping Sunday, and I’m just one.” But no, we can be sure that if God says to keep the Sabbath day, we should keep the Sabbath day. And it will be good for us, because He made it for us. Proverbs 11:18 The wicked man does deceptive work, . . . Obviously, just in this first clause here, he is giving us a counter to God, or to a righteous person. A person who is not righteous is going to deceive; you cannot trust a deceptive person; a liar. Proverbs 11:18 . . . but he who sows righteousness will have a sure reward. This leads on the heels of following His precepts, because if we do those precepts, if we practice righteousness, we can be sure of the reward that God will give us in the last day, once we are resurrected and changed. So not only is it good and right to do it, we can trust that it is going to produce the right things. We can trust that in the very end it is going to give us all the very best of everything, because God will make sure that we are rewarded for our works. That is sure. It is something we can hang on to in these times of trial and turbulence, test and tumult and upheaval. Isaiah 28:16 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: "Behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation; a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; whoever believes will not act hastily.” This is just a backup for something we have said before. Who is this sure foundation we are talking about? It is Jesus Christ. The church is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and Jesus Christ is the chief cornerstone. And He is the one that we can trust in. He is the logos—the Word. So it all comes back around into a circle. We can trust what God says, and we can trust the Person, the being who says it, Jesus Christ, the Spokesman, the Logos, our Creator, our Savior, our High Priest, and our soon coming King. We do not have to worry that the shifting sands of misfortune, and all these things that are going on around us will cause God's way of life to break down, or that the promises will not be fulfilled because we have Jesus Christ, who has made it sure for us. Now let us leap into the New Testament. Hebrews 6:19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil. Jesus Christ is not just a man hanging on a cross anymore. He has been resurrected, and ascended to heaven, and sits now at the very throne of God the Father. He is our anchor inside that throne room. It is like there is a very long rope that stretches all the way down to where we are. And it has gone through the veil. The way has been opened. And so, we have sure access to the Father. We also have a sure hope because Jesus Christ the Righteous died and rose from the grave, we can follow Him, pulling one handhold at a time of that rope, as it were, because it is anchored firmly up there. And if we keep pulling, we will make it. Now finally, II Peter 1:19. II Peter 1:19 And so we have the prophetic word confirmed [made more sure], which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Yes, we can trust the prophecies too. The Word of God in which the prophecies are found are more sure, He says, than the very eyewitness accounts of Christ's transfiguration on the mount. He had three witnesses to that. But the Word of God and the prophecies which are written in it are more sure than even that. If they were standing here today and testifying before us that they had seen Christ glorified on top of the mount, we could believe them less than actually having read it here in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But also there are the prophecies of Daniel, and Revelation, of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and the Minor Prophets. They are all sure. They will come to pass. We can believe them. We can trust in them. We can set our lives according to them. They are sure. So with all this going on around us, this uncertain world, we could see the terrors of the great tribulation, and beyond that the Day of the Lord flare suddenly into an inferno. It could happen at any time. Who knows what kook out there will decide he is had enough and do something really dangerous? Who knows how quickly the beast could rise in Europe in response to something like that? Who knows? But these uncertainties are nothing beside the only sure thing—our God, His Word. What God is, and what He has revealed are more certain than the sun rising. You expect the sun to rise. Well, God is even more certain than that, because He created the sun to rise, and He set everything in its timetables. He set everything in motion, and we can trust the Creator. So because of that, because of those proofs that we have, because of what He said in His Word, we could live in faith, in confidence, in contentment, without fear. We have so much to be thankful for, and as is my wont in these offering sermonettes, is to bring up some point in which we could be thankful. And this is just one of them that we have a very sure God. And we can be sure of Him.
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