The Importance of Faithfulness

By Jason, M.Ed., M.A.R., Headmaster

The Life God Treasures and Blesses

Yesterday, I was reading through I Chronicles 5. I started a new plan to read through the Bible in a year this year, and this plan has four tracks of reading each day. One of the tracks begins in 1 Chronicles. I think it’s wise of this plan to start you reading 1 Chronicles at the beginning of the year, when your resolve is fresh and strong. If you’ve read 1 Chronicles before, you will understand that this is where many plans to read through the whole Bible go off the tracks.

A few years ago, I read through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, straight through. Leviticus was tough with its obscure ceremonial laws and regulations, but the hardest section to read faithfully was definitely 1 Chronicles 1-9, which is primarily nine chapters of lists of names. Add to that the fact that these names are really hard to pronounce, like Hazarmaveth and Mehetabel, and you can see why the section is not one of the most frequently read or memorized sections of Scripture.

And yet this list of names, as tough as it is for us to read, is still God’s Word and we can still learn much from reading it. One of the great themes of this section of Scripture is faithfulness: God’s faithfulness as He keeps His promises in generation after generation, and the blessings that come when God’s people are faithful to  Him.

One of these lessons on faithfulness comes at the end of Chapter 5 with the description of two different battles. In verses 18-22, God tells us of a battle waged by the Reubenites, the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manassah in which “they cried out to God in the battle, and he granted their urgent plea, for they trusted in him (v. 20).” This is contrasted by the following verses (vv. 23-26), which tells another story of the half-tribe of Manassah, the Reubenites and the Gadites (the very same group of people). In this second account, “they broke faith with the God of their fathers and whored after the gods of the peoples of the land... So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, the spirit of Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, and he took them into exile...”

God is teaching us a clear lesson through the actions of His people over 2,700 years ago. Northern Israel went from prosperity and victory to humiliation, defeat and exile in a fairly short period of time. While historians and scholars may look for geo-political reasons for such a decline, God gives us one clear, powerful answer: Israel fell because they broke faith with God and worshipped idols.

God always keeps His promises. He never breaks His covenant faithfulness. He calls His people to belong to Him whole-heartedly, to trust Him, to cry out to Him and to be faithful to Him throughout all of life. The world and our flesh and the enemy of our souls all conspire together to lead us astray, to encourage us to trust in anything but God – in other words, to run after idols.Whether it’s the idol of materialism, the “fleeting pleasures of sin,” or even a respectable idol, like needing “the best education possible” for our children --  anything that we look to and trust in more than in the Lord is an idol and will lead us astray from our first love, our first loyalty to Him alone.

The Bible is very clear: True victory in life and for eternity comes only from the Lord. Hebrews 12:5-6 gives us the formula for avoiding idolatry:

"Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (ESV)

The message is clear: fear and discontent lead us to covetousness and idolatry of all kinds. But God’s people have no reason to fear and every reason to trust Him. He has promised to be with us and to help us. We just need to stay the course and trust in Him!