Freshbrook Church Podcast | 30Aug26 | Who Is God | Steve Poulson

There are three readings this morning, all coming from Saint John's Gospel.

And the first one is in John fourteen one to six.

Do not let your hearts be troubled.

You believe in God, believe also in me.

My father's house has many rooms.

If it were not so, would I have told you that I'm going there to prepare a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me, that you also may be where I am.

You know the way to the place where I'm going.

Thomas said to him, Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?

Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

He will not speak on his own, he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

He will glorify me because it is from me that he will receive what he will make known to you.

All that belongs to the Father is mine.

That is why I say the Spirit will receive from me what he will make known to you.

And in John 17, sanctify them by the truth.

Your word is truth.

As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.

Okay, well, thanks again for the invite and just being part of this great series that you've been doing.

Who is God?

Have you been enjoying the series?

You know, it's it's all about one of my greatest subjects, which is theology.

And some people think of theology as as being dull and boring, but you know, theology is what?

It's the study of God, it's getting to know God better, more about God.

And what could be more exciting than that?

Remember, Jesus said in his prayer in John 17, he said, This is eternal life, this is real life, life in all its fullness, eternal life, that they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

So, this series is all about getting to know God better, and what could be more exciting than that?

And today, the subject that I've been given, the part of God's character that we're gonna look at, is the fact that God is true and God is faithful.

And we're gonna begin by looking at truth and what truth is, then look at the God of truth, that he is a true God, everything he says is true, and then we're gonna finish by looking at the faithfulness of God and see how these aspects of God's character should impact our lives.

So let's begin by looking at this important question, and it's this is it even possible for us to know who God is and what he is like?

There's a lot of people that say no, it's not possible.

Turn your Bibles to John's Gospel chapter 18 and verse 26.

Jesus here is standing before Pilate, and uh he's at his trial, and in response to the charge that he is claiming to be a king, and so would be a threat to Caesar, Jesus says to Pilate these words, he says, My kingdom is not of this world.

If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders, but now my kingdom is from another place.

You are a king then, said Pilate.

Jesus answered, You say that I am a king.

In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth.

Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.

What is truth?

retorted Pilate.

So Jesus says to Pilate, the reason why he was born, the reason why he came into the world was to testify to the truth.

John says a similar thing, doesn't he, at the beginning of his gospel?

When he says of Jesus, the word who became flesh and made his dwelling among us, he says of him in verse 18 of John 1, he said, No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in close relationship with the Father has made him known.

So Jesus says to Pilate that the reason he was born, the reason he came into the world was to testify to the truth.

Specifically, truth concerning God and what he is like.

And so those words about truth, Pilate retorted.

He said, What is truth?

What is truth?

Many people would say the same thing today when you talk to them about truth, particularly truth concerning God.

They'll say with Pilate, what is truth?

Actually, there's no such thing as absolute truth.

What is true is is just what's true for you.

If something different is true for me, then that's true for me.

Truth is relative, there's no such thing as absolute truth.

Well, that's what many people today believe, don't they?

So, in the words of Pilate, what is truth?

Well, actually, there's a very easy answer to that question, which I think everybody will agree with, and it's this a statement is true when it lines up with reality.

It's a pretty simple definition, isn't it?

Statement is true when it lines up with reality.

For example, if you're sent to get a scan done at Swindon Hospital, and then you're called back to the doctor's surgery, what the doctor tells you is truth if it lines up with reality, if it lines up with what is on that scan, if it lines up with what's going on in your body, then that is truth what he says to you.

But if he doesn't want to upset you, doesn't want to upset me, so he tells me what doesn't line up with the reality of what's on that scan.

And he says, Oh, it's okay, you're fine.

Then obviously he's not telling the truth.

So truth is when what you say lines up with reality.

We all know that, don't we?

So don't be fooled by those who say there's no such thing as truth.

Of course there is.

But what about truth concerning God?

Can we know the truth about whether or not God exists?

And if he exists, what he's like.

Now, Richard Dawkins would say, yeah, we can know the truth, and the truth is that God definitely doesn't exist.

Although he's never really given any convincing evidence for that assertion.

Interestingly, Sir David Attenborough, who's a good friend of Richard Dawkins, disagrees with him on this, and he said in an interview that you can watch on YouTube that actually you can't say that God definitely doesn't exist.

And uh he he gives this illustration, he said that he was once standing over a termite hill.

There's a lot of termite hills in Senegal, and that's a picture of one I took on our last visit.

And David Attenborough said he once stood over a termite hill where they'd sliced the top off.

And he looked down into the termite hill and he could see all these termites working away.

And he said, Those termites didn't have any idea I was there looking down on them.

No idea.

And David Attenborough concluded, Well, how do I know that there isn't a God up there looking down on me?

And so David Attenborough is like many people today, not an atheist, but he's an agnostic.

He believes you can't know if there is or if there is not a God.

And you certainly can't know what that God is like.

But just think about it, what if miraculously a human being could go down into that termite hill and become a termite and speak the language of termites and reveal to those termites the truth concerning the reality of human beings?

Well, there's no way anyone could do that, could they?

However, that is exactly what God, the creator of this universe, has done.

He has entered into the termite hill and become a termite, so to speak.

He has entered the world and become a human being.

That is the wonder of the incarnation that we celebrate every Christmas.

God has become a human being and he has revealed to us not only the fact that there is a God, but he has revealed to us what God is like.

As John said, he says, the Word, who was God, he became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son who is Himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father has made him known.

And as Jesus said to Pilate, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth.

Specifically, the truth concerning God, the reality concerning the God who is there.

You see, God didn't only reveal truths concerning himself to prophets like Abraham and Moses.

He actually came down into the world he had made.

He became a human being in the person of Jesus and revealed to us what God is really like.

And in his wisdom, God arranged for what those prophets heard from God and what Jesus did and said to be written down and to be accurately preserved for us in this book that we call the Bible.

So when we read this book and read what those prophets, such as Moses and Isaiah, wrote, and what the followers of Jesus wrote about Jesus in the Gospels, we can know the truth.

We can know the truth about many things, but specifically, we can know the truth about God and what he is like.

So what is God like?

Well, today we're gonna look at the truth that God is faithful and God is true.

First of all, we're gonna consider the fact that God is true.

He's true in the sense that he is the one true God, as Isaiah writes in chapter 65, or the only true God, as Jesus puts it in John 17 there.

In the first century, the Romans and the Greeks believed in many gods, and today many religions, notably Hinduism, teach that there are many gods out there.

But the Bible teaches us that, and Jesus reveals to us that there is only one true God, the maker of the heavens and the earth.

One true God existing eternally in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And he is the God who is there, who has revealed himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

And secondly, the God who has revealed himself to us is not only the one true God, but everything he says is true.

Now, this is where the God who has revealed himself to us in the Bible through Jesus differs from Allah, the God of the Muslim, God of Islam.

For the Muslim, the dominant characteristic of God is his greatness.

Allahu Akbar are the words you hear ringing out from the mosques every day, many times a day in Senegal.

Allah Akbar Akbar means God is great.

And nothing can limit God's power.

That is a dominant characteristic of Allah.

He is great.

Nothing can limit his power, he can do whatever he wants to do.

Because he is an all-powerful God.

So if he wants to say something that isn't true, he has every right to do that.

Because there are no limits to his power.

He can do whatever he wants.

You know, the Bible tells us that the God who is there, there are some things that that God cannot do.

Did you know that?

One thing God cannot do is lie.

God cannot lie.

In fact, the Bible tells us that it is impossible for God to lie.

Just look at Titus 1, verses 1 and 2.

Titus 1:1

This is what Paul writes.

He says, Paul, a servant of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, to further the faith of God's elect and their knowledge of the truth that leads to godliness, in the hope of eternal life, which God who does not lie promised before the beginning of time.

King James translates verse 2 in hope of eternal life, which God that cannot lie, promised before the world began.

In fact, the Greek there says literally, which the unlying God promised.

And Hebrews 6 and verse 18 says, God did this so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged.

So why is it impossible for God to lie?

He's all powerful, but one thing he cannot do is lie.

Why?

Well, it's impossible for God to lie because God cannot do anything that is contrary to his holy character.

And light stands for holiness and truth.

And God can never do anything other, can never be anything other than holy and true.

And that is why it is impossible for God to lie.

So because God is true, everything He says is true.

So this book, the Bible, otherwise known as the Word of God, is true.

The Bible is true.

Not only are all the words spoken by God, recorded in the Bible true, but all the words, all the truths that God inspired his prophets and apostles to write in the Bible are true.

Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room before he was crucified, Rosie read these words to us.

He said to his disciples, I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear.

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, now a wonderful title for the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth.

When he comes, said Jesus, he will guide you into all the truth.

He will not speak on his own, he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

And that's exactly what happened.

The Holy Spirit filled the apostles on the day of Pentecost, and he inspired them and others to write down what we have in the Gospels.

And because God the Holy Spirit inspired them, then everything they wrote was true and is true.

And Paul, who himself was an apostle, wrote in his letter to the to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 3 and verse 16, he said, All scripture is God breathed.

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

So no no no wonder that Jesus said when he was praying to his father, Father, your word is truth.

Somebody has called the Bible the story of reality.

If truth is saying or writing what lines up with reality, then the Bible is truly the story of reality.

And much of the Bible is history, true history, that's backed up again and again by what archaeologists dig up.

The Bible is a story of what really happened in the past, how God has broken into human history and revealed Himself to mankind.

Firstly speaking through prophets, and then actually becoming a human being in the person of Jesus.

It's a story of what happened in the past, but it's also the story of what will happen in the future.

When there will be a final judgment, and God will create a new heavens and a new earth for his redeemed people.

So God is true, and all that he has said is true.

God's word, the Bible, is true.

But secondly, God is faithful.

Faithfulness means doing what you said you would do.

So everything God says is true, and God will do everything that He has said he will do.

He'll keep all of His promises.

God is both true and faithful.

God said to him, says, Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed his name the Lord, and he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

Our God is not only faithful, but he's abounding in faithfulness.

God has made many promises to his people, and he has faithfully kept all of those promises, and we can be sure that the promises he has made to us, he will faithfully keep.

Here are just a few examples of the promises God made to his people and how he's been faithful to keep those promises.

Look at what God promised Abraham in Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

God said to Abraham, Genesis 12, verse 2, he says, I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.

Genesis 12:2

I will make your name great, and you'll be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.

God promised Abraham and his wife that he will give them a son.

And even though they were way beyond childbearing age, God faithfully kept his promise and miraculously gave them a son.

And through that son and his descendants, God made Abraham into a great nation, the nation of Israel.

And through that nation, specifically through Jesus, all the nations of the earth have been blessed.

Or certainly they will all be blessed.

And we know that God will keep that promise because in Revelation it talks about those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation around the throne of God, praising Jesus.

And as we do mission, we partner with God in seeing that promise fulfilled and seeing all the nations of the earth being blessed.

God even promised Abraham that he would give the nation of Israel a land to live in.

Just listen to what God promises Abraham in chapter 17.

It says, The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as An everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you, and I will be their God.

And God faithfully kept that promise.

And amazingly, over 4,000 years after that promise was given, and after many attempts to wipe the nation of Israel off the face of the earth, the nation of Israel still exists.

And they still live in that land, the land of Canaan.

God is so faithful in keeping his promises.

And even after Jerusalem was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the nation was taken off into exile into Babylon, God promised that he would bring that nation back to the land of Israel.

Just listen to God's words through the prophet Jeremiah, written in a letter that he sent to the people in exile in Babylon.

Jeremiah 29, 10.

He says, This is what the Lord says, When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

God faithfully kept that promise.

After 70 years in captivity, Persia conquered Babylon, and the Persian king Cyrus issued a decree that all the Israelites in captivity could return to the land of Israel and rebuild Jerusalem.

But you know, even before that happened, while the people were still in captivity in Babylon, the prophet Jeremiah wrote in the Book of Lamentations these words.

He wrote, as he was grieving over the destruction of Jerusalem, he wrote these words.

He says, Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.

For his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

And Jeremiah wrote those words because despite his devastation at what had happened to Jerusalem and to his people, Jeremiah knew that God would keep his promise to bring his people back to their land.

And that's why he said, concerning God, great is your faithfulness.

And of course, the greatest promise God ever made was that he would send his Messiah to rescue us from our sins.

And God was faithful to keep that promise to the minutest detail in the coming of Jesus.

All of God's promises prophesied in the Old Testament concerning the coming of Jesus were fulfilled.

Born of a virgin, born in Bethlehem, all of those prophecies were fulfilled in the coming of Jesus.

And because we know that all the promises concerning the first coming of Jesus were fulfilled to the smallest detail, then we know that all God's promises concerning the second coming of Christ will all be fulfilled.

God is faithful in keeping all of his promises.

What God says is true, and he will do everything he has said.

The psalmists love to sing about the faithfulness of God, didn't they?

First of all, there's a psalm we started the service with.

Sing to him a new song, play skillfully and shout for joy.

For the word of the Lord is right and true.

He is faithful in all he does.

And then enter his gates with thanksgiving, Psalm 100.

And his courts with praise.

Give thanks to the Lord and praise his name, for the Lord is good, his love endures forever, his faithfulness continues through all generations.

And then Psalm 108, verse 4, for great is your love, higher than the heavens, your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

Psalms 108:4

If God's faithfulness could, every time he was faithful, a building block appeared.

And when he was faithful again, another building block appeared on top of that.

Those building blocks would mount up, mount up, mount up until they reached right up into the skies.

God's faithfulness reaches to the skies.

So God is faithful and God is true.

In fact, faithful and true, do you know it's one of the names of Jesus?

Revelation 19 11, John has a vision of Jesus coming back, uh, just like a rider wide riding on a white horse.

And John says that his name is what?

His name is faithful and true.

It says, I saw heaven standing open, and there before me was a white horse whose rider is called faithful and true.

It's one of the names of Jesus Himself.

Now the fact that God is faithful and true has real implications for us.

I just want to finish up looking at these three implications.

It has implications for our eternal security, it has implications for our conduct, and it has implications for missions.

First of all, it had implications for our eternal security.

The writer to the Hebrews says in Hebrews 10 23, let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.

And that hope we profess, that sure and certain hope.

If you look in the preceding verses in Hebrews 10, that hope is the fact that we are totally forgiven by God because of the death of Christ upon the cross.

So how do I know that I am forgiven?

How can I be certain I have eternal life?

These are some of the most important questions you can ever ask yourself.

And some people think we can never know, we can never be certain, but as Christians, we can know with certainty that we are forgiven, that we have eternal life.

Why can we know?

Because he who promised is faithful.

Our eternal security, our certainty of having forgiveness and eternal life is based upon the promises of God.

A God who cannot lie.

And the faithfulness of God is the bedrock of our certainty.

Yes, our eternal security is based upon all that Jesus did upon the cross, and it's based upon the promise of God that all who believe in Jesus and what he did for us upon that cross are completely forgiven and have a life that will never end.

A life that will continue beyond the grave and right into eternity.

God has promised that to all who believe in Jesus.

And it's impossible for God to lie.

And he's faithful to keep all of his promises.

Here are some of those promises straight from the Word of God.

The first promise is very, very familiar.

Do you know this verse?

John 3.16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but will have eternal life.

And then one other promise straight from the mouth of Jesus.

John 5.24.

Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from death to life.

Because God is faithful and true, I can know that because I've trusted in Christ and Christ alone for my salvation, he will keep his promise to me.

Complete forgiveness and eternal life.

Isn't that wonderful?

Absolutely wonderful that we can have that certainty because God is faithful and true.

But secondly, the fact that God is faithful and true has implications for our conduct as Christians.

As Christians, we should be Christ-like in our conduct.

The Holy Spirit is slowly transforming us to be more and more like Jesus, more and more like God in the way that we live.

And Paul wrote to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 3.18, he says, and we all who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

So because God is faithful and true, then we too should be faithful and true.

We should be like God, like Jesus in that respect.

Like God, like Jesus, what we say should always be true.

And we should always do what we say we're going to do.

We should be truthful and faithful.

I wonder, are we?

Are we truthful?

Be careful always to speak the truth, always write the truth.

Am I known for my honesty and my faithfulness?

Someone always does what they promise that they're going to do.

One of the fruits of the Spirit is faithfulness.

May God daily fill us with his spirit, the spirit of truth.

Produce in us these wonderful fruits of truthfulness and faithfulness.

So we might become more and more like Jesus in this respect.

And then thirdly, the fact that God is faithful and true has implications for mission.

So why do we do mission?

The heart of all mission is obeying the command of Jesus to take the gospel to the world, to preach the gospel to every creature, to go and make disciples of all nations.

Why do we do it?

We do it because the gospel is true.

That's why we do it.

It's true.

We don't do it because our religion is better than other religions.

We don't do it because the teaching of Jesus is better than the teaching of Muhammad or Buddha.

No, we do it because the gospel is true.

There is only one God who has revealed Himself to us in history and through the message of the Bible.

And the message of the Bible is the story of reality.

There is a God, the one true God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, who made us as human beings in his image.

And the Bible tells us a story of how we fell.

But how as sinful human beings we can come into a relationship with the God who is there.

It's a story of creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

It's a story of reality, and people need to hear it.

Because it is the only story that gives us hope for the present and the future.

That's why this story is such good news.

It's good news for Muslims.

It's good news for Hindus.

Because neither of those religions tells you how you can know that you're forgiven.

How you can know that you have eternal life.

All those religions give you is some vague, maybe possibility of getting to paradise, but nothing more.

But the gospel, the story of reality that gives you certainty because it's true.

And it's the story of what God has done to make salvation possible for all who trust in Jesus and his death on our behalf.

And as we take this good news to the world, we have the promise of a faithful God going with us as we do it.

In the words of the great permission, great commission, in the final verses of Matthew's gospel, Jesus said, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And then Jesus, our faithful God, gives those who go this wonderful promise.

Surely I am with you always.

To the very end of the age.

And when we go on mission, wherever that may be, we can be sure that our faithful God will keep this promise.

He will be with us in a special way to protect us, to give us the strength we need to serve Him, to work in people's lives through the words we speak, through the gospel that we proclaim.

And that is our testimony this morning.

As we look back over the years, we can testify that God has been faithful to his promise.

On the very day you sent us out to the mission field as a newly married couple in 1980, all the way to today, God has been faithful to this promise.

He's been with us to protect us as a family.

As we served for 16 years in Senegal and for much of that time in the middle of a war zone.

But God protected us and our family.

He gave us the strength to serve him and see him work in the lives of those who'd never before heard the good news about Jesus in their own language.

God has been so faithful to keep all of his promises.

All of them, and he's given us so many, hasn't he?

Here's one.

And God has been faithful to keep that promise.

Another promise: cast all your burdens on the Lord, and he will sustain you.

What a wonderful promise that is, isn't it?

And God has been faithful to keep that promise.

So many promises, another one up there, isn't it?

Come to me.

And I will give you rest.

And you know, we can be absolutely certain that Jesus will faithfully keep his promise when he said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And if God challenges you to give your life to mission, which is partnering with Jesus in building his church, wherever that might be, here in Swindon or among and under his people group, far away from here, if God challenges you to do that, be assured of this.

That our faithful God will go with you, and he will be faithful in keeping all of his promises to you.

Let's pray, shall we?

Lord, we thank you for your character.

We thank you that you are true.

That not only do you not lie, but it's impossible for you to lie.

And everything you have said that you will do for us, all of your promises, you will faithfully keep.

Lord, we thank you.

That as we go out to serve you, we serve a faithful God.

A faithful one, so unchanging.

Agelus one, you're my rock of peace, Lord of all.

I depend on you.

I call out to you again and again.

You are my rock.

In times of trouble, you lift me up when I fall down all through the storm.

Your love is the anchor.

My hope is in you.