God Teaches Faithfulness Through His Own Character
1) Man is fickle. It doesn’t take any special insight to know that people are inconsistent. We experience it every day in ourselves and others around us. Sometimes the fickleness comes from malice while at other times it is simply neglect. Either way, we know that people cannot always be counted on.
2) We sometimes expect God to be like us. In Numbers 22-24, King Balak of Moab feared the Israelites who camped nearby in a great horde. Balak recruited Balaam to invoke a curse upon them with the promise of a great reward if he is successful. Balaam attempted to do so, but God tells him that He will continue to bless Israel as He promised. Balaam tried three times to ask God to change His mind, but he did not understand that God had covenant loyalty toward His people.
It initially seems
like Balaam understood, especially when we see his responses to Balak. In the
first attempt, he said, “Must I not take care to speak what the L
ORD puts in my
mouth?” (Num. 23:12). After his second try, he speaks more boldly: “God is not
man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has
he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?
Behold, I received a command to bless: he has blessed, and I cannot revoke it”
(Num. 23:19-20). And after the third time, he proclaimed, “If Balak should give
me his house full of silver and gold, I would not be able to go beyond the word
of the LORD, to do either good or bad of my own will. What the LORD speaks,
that will I speak” (Num. 24:13).
These seem like declarations of faith, but we have to ask why Balaam even kept trying. This is not a case of making supplication to God for providential help. He was asking God to break His covenant with His people. A man might be persuaded by repeated requests and offerings. Indeed, that is a factor for Balaam. Balak continually offered him riches and honor, and so Balaam looked for a way to change the outcome. Eventually when it was clear that God would not cooperate with Balak’s desires, Balaam found another way to bring a curse upon Israel. He counseled Balak to use idolatry and sexual immorality to draw the Israelites away from God (Num. 31:16; cf. chapter 25). That’s not anything that a faithful servant of God would do.
Balaam was able to be persuaded, and so he assumed that God was as well. God is faithful in a way that astonishes man!
3) The unchangeable God. Because man is faithless, we use oaths and vows to get people to believe us. Jesus warned against this behavior especially when it gave license to deceive when there was a lesser oath or no oath at all (Matt. 5:33-37; 23:16-22). When God guarantees His words with an oath, He does it in a different way. He doesn’t need to appeal to anything higher—He simply swears by Himself. This should remind us that God’s words are always trustworthy because He by nature is faithful. “So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain” (Heb. 6:17-19).
God is steady, sure, and consistent. We can anchor our very lives on His promises without hesitation or doubt. Everywhere in Scripture He has shown Himself to be a perfect model of faithfulness.
4) Learning to be faithful
like God. The
passage we started with in Hebrews 10:23 admonished us hold on to our
confession without wavering—to be faithful like God is faithful. Is that
possible for us to do? I know that I am not wholly like God, but the Christian
walk is all about becoming more like Him. Don’t give up because you are only
human. Dedicate yourself, rededicate yourself, and maintain your faith one day
at a time.
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