Lesson Eight: The Fruit of Faithfulness

SUMMARY: In this lesson we will look at the concept of faithfulness. We will come to understand that faithfulness is about commitment and dependability. People in relationship together expect faithfulness, and it is at the foundation of the Christian’s relationship to God.

LEAD-IN QUESTIONS:

1. What are some synonyms of the word “faithful”? 2. When you think of the word, “faithful,” what comes to mind? 3. Can a person be faithful to Christ and still have periods of backsliding? In other words, how dependable must we be, if we are to be considered faithful? 4. In what ways did Solomon, Peter, and Judas demonstrate a lack of faithfulness?

The Meaning of Faithfulness

DISCUSS

Have you ever entrusted someone with money to invest on your behalf? What were your expectations of them? How does this relate to Jesus’s expectation that we be faithful servants? Faithfulness is simply the quality of being full of faith — that is, someone whom others can put their faith in, someone who is trustworthy. The famous geyser at Yellowstone National Park is named Old Faithful because its eruptions are so predictable. The national park service says that “the famous geyser currently erupts around 17 times a day and can be predicted with a 90 percent confidence rate within a ten-minute variation.”22 It had likely been faithfully erupting long before it was discovered in 1870, and has continued to do so ever since that time. Using Old Faithful to help us define the term, we might say that faithfulness means dependability, continuity, or even longevity. Thus, something, or someone, is faithful if they continue doing the same thing, the same way, continuously, over a long period of time. When I was growing up, if you had turned on your television at a certain day and time you would have heard the following words spoken as the sound of the William Tell Overture played in the background, “Hi-Yo, Silver! A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty ‘Hi-Yo Silver’...The Lone Ranger! With his faithful Indian companion, Tonto!” If you watched the episodes, it quickly became clear that Tonto could be counted on to track the outlaws, help the Lone Ranger think out the proper course of action, and then help win the fight against the desperadoes they faced as a team. As a faithful companion, he always stood alongside the Lone Ranger, and would never abandon or leave him when things got difficult (indeed, one wonders why he was called the “Lone” Ranger). From these and other similar examples we might say that faithfulness represents a commitment to someone or something regardless of the cost, and regardless of the benefits to the one who is faithful. Faithfulness is marked by trustworthiness and following through on your commitments. It is not based on emotions or rewards.

Faithfulness and Responsibility

In the Scripture there are two ways to look at faithfulness. Both are connected to the idea of being dependable and trustworthy, but in two different types of behavior. The first type of faithfulness is related to being dependable with our responsibilities. Jesus gave several parables to illustrate that God expects us to use the time and resources entrusted to us profitably. On one occasion, Jesus told the story of how a wealthy man gave out money to three of his servants. To one he gave five talents (a “talent” is an amount of currency ranging in value from two to seven million dollars by today’s standards); to another three talents; and to another one talent. These sums were given according to the capabilities of each of the servants. When the businessman returned, he asked them to give an account for what each had done. The first two had doubled their sums by shrewd investments. The rich man gave the same response to the first two servants: “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful (or “trustworthy” in other translations) with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:14-30, NIV) However, the last one simply buried his talent until the owner returned, and then returned it to the owner. He was rebuked for being unfaithful—he failed to fulfill his responsibility to make a profit with what was entrusted to him. Jesus is encouraging his audience to get busy using their gifts and talents on behalf of the Kingdom of God. No one knows when the Master of this world will come to settle accounts, so we should be working to produce return on His investment in us. Faithfulness is shown in how we use our time and abilities to further the work of God in this world. In another teaching, Jesus speaks of the servant who is the “faithful and wise manager” of the other servants. “Blessed is that slave (servant or steward) whom his master will find at work when he arrives. Truly I tell you, he will put that one in charge of all his possessions.” (Luke 12:41-48) Here again the emphasis is on being busy working for the Lord while we wait for His return. We want him to praise us for our work, rather than question us about our laziness. Jesus explained that it is not the amount of responsibility we have been given, but the degree of faithfulness we

show that determines our rewards in heaven: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” (Luke 16:10-11)

Faithfulness and Loyalty

The second type of faithfulness in the Bible is loyalty to God. Examples of loyal faithfulness include Moses or Samuel, while examples of disloyalty include Judas and Peter (although Peter repented and was forgiven). The primary example of this kind of faithfulness, of course, is God, as seen in His relationship to His chosen people, Israel. God’s loyalty is particularly striking because Israel was so disloyal to Him. They were unreliable and unfaithful, despite God’s continuous care for their well-being. When things went in favor of Israel, the people immediately abandoned their own God for all the gods of the neighboring nations. It could truthfully be said of them, “they could be depended on to not be dependable.” And yet, God offered them all the favor and blessing they could have imagined. God promised the people of Israel as they were about to enter the Promised Land: “If you will only obey the Lord your God, by diligently observing all his commandments that I am commanding you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth; all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the Lord your God: Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field. Blessed shall be the fruit of your womb, the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your livestock, both the increase of your cattle and the issue of your flock. Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you; they shall come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways. The Lord will command the blessing upon you in your barns, and in all that you undertake; he will bless you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” (Deuteronomy 28:1-8) This is about as good a set of promises as imaginable to a people who are starting a new nation! Just stay faithful and everything that you could wish for will be supplied by God. This was not the only time that these promises made to the people of Israel. When setting up the ritual system in Leviticus relating to sacrifices and the Tabernacle/ Temple, the Lord repeated the requirements and the promises relating to them. “You shall make for yourselves no idols and erect no carved images or pillars, and you shall not place figured stones in your land, to worship at them; for I am the Lord your God. You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord. If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall overtake the vintage, and the vintage shall overtake the sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and live securely in your land. And I will grant peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and no one shall make you afraid; I will remove dangerous animals from the land, and no sword shall go through your land. You shall give chase to your enemies, and they shall fall before you by the sword. Five of you shall give chase to a hundred, and a hundred of you shall give chase to ten thousand; your enemies shall fall before you by the sword. I will look with favor upon you and make you fruitful and multiply you; and I will maintain my covenant with you.” (Leviticus 26:1-9) The same promises of being “fruitful” and “multiplying” that were given to Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden before Sin entered the world are here being given anew to the people of Israel, if they will only be loyal to God. Yet, what was the outcome as God’s Chosen People began to live into these promises? No sooner did the people of Israel begin to settle into the land than they began the process of mixing the religion of the LORD with the false religions of the neighboring people groups (what is called “syncretism” or blending). They continued to do the ritual and trappings of their own religion, while adding to it the gods and rituals of the nations that they encountered. God knew they had been surrounded for 400 years in Egypt by a pagan, polytheistic culture, and that the nations all around them had similar systems of idolatry, immorality, and injustice. God had carefully prescribed safeguards to keep them away from this temptation to be unfaithful to God. For example, He commanded them not to make treaties or intermarry with these pagan peoples, and to make sure that these nations were pushed out of the land. The reason from God’s perspective was simple. If they made alliances with the neighboring nations, they were going to be exposed to all manner of gods and goddesses, moral compromises, theological lies, and heresies. Nevertheless, even though God miraculously delivered them out of Egypt, provided for them through their forty years of wandering in the Wilderness (neither their sandals nor their clothes wore out during that time), and promised them tremendous blessings, the people were easily swayed to doubts and complaining whenever circumstances became tough and threatening. They disobeyed God and did not displace the neighboring nations fully. As God had warned them, they soon began to adopt the pagan idols, false sacrifices, and sinful ways of their neighbors who did not know the true God. The life of the people of God in the land is a sordid tale of rhythmic movement from God’s blessings on the people, to the nation’s betrayal of their faith, and then their oppression by their neighbors. When things got bad enough, the people of Israel would once again reach out to God for help in humility and brokenness. God would then exhibit His faithfulness over and over. He would raise up one hero after another (called “judges”) to deliver them from their oppressors. God’s

DISCUSS

God showed His loyalty by rescuing Israel before He ever asked for their loyalty in return. Why is it important for us to remember that God always takes the initiative in our relationship?

16 | SUSTAIN faithfulness was exhibited by never abandoning His people, and by saving them time and time again despite their waywardness and betrayal. Eventually, the unfaithfulness of Israel became so great that God handed them over to the greatest oppression by their enemies: He allowed them to go into exile in Babylon. Their temple was burned, their cities desolate, and their children taken captive. It seemed that the nation of Israel had come to an end. But all of this was simply a prelude to God demonstrating His faithfulness once again in an even greater way: By sending His own Son Jesus to deliver them and the whole world from the oppression of Sin and Death. Let’s take a closer look at how other portions of Scripture describe God’s faithfulness so that we can learn how this translates into the life of us Christians as we seek to live the Spirit-filled life.

The Faithfulness of God

DISCUSS

What challenges does the story of Joshua raise regarding our responsibility to the next generation? What challenges do we face in passing on the faith? How can we get this done? As we have seen consistently, the character that is expected from God’s people is simply a reflection of the character of the God they serve. If God is the model of faithfulness, then Christians should likewise be characterized by faithfulness. The framework for faithfulness was fashioned through covenants that God made with human beings, and particularly with Abraham. That covenant was founded on a partnership between two consenting parties, and the stipulations made between them were to be carried out in perpetuity (forever). The claim of Scripture is that God remained faithful to His promises, despite the unfaithfulness of Abraham’s descendants. God is faithful for countless generations: “Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generation.” (Deuteronomy 7:9) His faithfulness never runs out but is continually renewed: “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23) In fact, Paul reminds Timothy that even “if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself.” (II Timothy 2:13) Like us, God cannot be anything other than what He is, and thus it is impossible for him to be faithless; to do so would be to deny his very being. And, as the saying goes: “the proof is in the pudding.” God’s actions in history bear out the fact that He remained faithful to His covenant promises. At the height of the Kingdom of Israel, King Solomon acknowledged: “Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant.” Here are a couple of case studies to explain how the concept of faithfulness played out in the history of Israel.

Case Study #1 – Joshua

In Judges 2:10, we read, “Moreover, that whole generation was gathered to their ancestors, and another generation grew up after them, who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.” (1:10) The next verses show how quickly the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel developed and grew. “Then the Israelites did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and worshiped the Baals; and they abandoned the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt; they followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were all around them, and bowed down to them; and they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord, and worshiped Baal (storm god) and the Astartes (fertility goddess).” (2:11-13) While Joshua and the Elders of Israel remained alive, the people of Israel remained faithful, but as soon as they died the Israelites began following after the gods of the neighboring nations. This says two things about Israel: (1) they did not have a relationship with God with any depth; and (2) apparently Joshua and the Elders did a poor job of transferring their faith to the children of the next generation. A religion will last only so long as we transfer the commitment and training to the upcoming generations. If we do a poor job of teaching and mentoring, it can take only one generation to lose the spiritual momentum of a people. Take Away: Religion is always one generation away from being lost. Every new generation must take up the torch of faith. If there is no investment made by the previous generation, then there will be no buy-in from the next. Even though their parents had seen mighty miracles of God in delivering them from slavery, and even though they had been blessed by God richly with the Land promised to Abraham, they still fell away from God. How dangerous does that make our own time in history, a time when much of society is built on foundations that are not conducive (or supportive) to our following Christ and the spiritual traditions of our previous generations?

Case Study #2 – King Solomon

Solomon was considered one of the wisest men to have ever lived, according to Scripture. He looked promising as a young ruler. After he was elevated to King, God came to him in a dream and offered to him anything he wanted, and Solomon chose wisdom to rule. Because he was so humble in his request, God also promised to give him power, wealth, and fame. There was one stipulation added to these promises: God asked him to be faithful to His laws and statutes, and to remain pure in his love of God.

God certainly fulfilled His promises to Solomon. Through God’s blessing, Solomon was able to extend his rule beyond anything his father King David could have imagined. He experienced unprecedented political stability and economic prosperity. 1 Kings 10:21 indicates that gold was so abundant during his reign, that silver was not even considered valuable. Solomon became the King who built the splendid Temple that became the center of religious life in Israel. As for his wisdom: we are told that Solomon wrote over 3,000 proverbs, and over a thousand songs. (1 Kings 4:32) He was said to have been recognized for his wisdom by all the known world. The Queen of Sheba came to visit him, and gave him tests to see how smart and wise he was. (2 Chronicles 9) Her assessment was that Solomon exceeded his reputation, and she said that his servants should be thankful that they had the privilege of working for him. However, not all was not well in the house of Solomon. Like the pagan kings around him, Solomon began making alliances with the neighboring countries, and he sealed these alliances with marriages to the daughters of the kings or high dignitaries: “King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughter of Pharaoh… from the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the Israelites, “You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you; for they will surely incline your heart to follow their gods”; Solomon clung to these in love.” In the end he had 1,000 wives and concubines (the sheer numbers are staggering). But, the most unfortunate part of the story is that Solomon did exactly what God had warned them would happen if they made such alliances: He began to follow after the gods of his wives. “For when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David.” (I Kings 11:4) He even built sites for them to worship their idols. God was faithful to Solomon, but Solomon failed to be faithful to his God. He chose earthly loves and relationships over his relationship with Yahweh. Though Solomon was considered one of the wisest men in the world, he did not use wisdom when he lost his devotion to the God who gave him wisdom in the first place. Take Away: Although wisdom is valuable, strength of mind alone is not enough to remain faithful. Faithfulness is ultimately a matter of the heart, and we must use our wisdom to guard our hearts or competing loves will pull us away from our faithfulness to God. Faithfulness means that we remain pure when we are surrounded by impurity. Faithfulness means that we can’t divide our hearts between God and all the other idols available to us in culture.

Faithfulness in Christians

So, what does faithfulness look like among Christians? How can we tell if someone is truly faithful or not? Faithfulness in the followers of Christ begins with the purity and consistency of the commitment that they have to God. If we waffle in our allegiance to God, or alternate between commitment to God and compromise with idols of any kind, we lack faithfulness. And since longevity and continuity are characteristics of faithfulness, the Christian who displays faithfulness will remain trustworthy and dependable in their faith for the duration of their lives. Jesus explained the all-encompassing nature of following him: “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” (Matthew 12:30) There is no place for compromise or moderation when it comes to following Christ. This is the same sentiment the Lord expressed when several individuals told him that they would follow him, but only after attending to other priorities. His response is that “no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62) As the old song says, “I have decided to follow Jesus — no turning back, no turning back.” At times that Jesus seemed to try to scare off people with his statements about the requirements needed to be his disciple. On one occasion, when large crowds were following him, he stopped and challenged them with the disturbing message that unless they “hated” (comparatively) their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, they were not worthy of being his disciples. Even today in many nations where Christianity is socially unacceptable, new converts know that when they are baptized their family will disown them. Jesus’s next words were even more disturbing: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34) Here we see that as a follower of Christ we must deny our fleshly desires and take up our own personal cross to be a true disciple. As Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Galatians 2:20) One of the most important sacraments of the Christian church is meant to symbolize these truths. Being covered by the waters of baptism (regardless of the method) is meant to symbolize death and resurrection. Paul frames this point with a question: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” This is why Paul will later tell his readers that if they have died to sin, they should stop walking in sin – there is no compromise to be made between life in the world and life in the Spirit. Faithfulness to the Christian means that life completely changed when salvation came into their life. God has made a covenant with us through the blood of Jesus, and our part is to respond with faithfulness, being trustworthy and dependable in allegiance to Christ alone. The Bible uses the analogy of the marriage covenant (See Romans 6, Ephesians 5). What man or woman

DISCUSS

If the wisest man in the world could fall into compromise and idolatry, how can we stay safe in our faith? Where did Solomon ultimately go wrong? What do we need to do to avoid having the kind of ending that Solomon had as a spiritual leader?

18 | SUSTAIN would enter into a marriage covenant with a partner who plans to remain married only as long as things go their way, or who is only half-hearted in their commitment to the marriage? The very language of the standard marriage ceremony is the language of faithfulness. As we stand before a room full of witnesses, we say vows to be dependable and trustworthy “for better or for worse; for richer or for poorer; in sickness and in health; ‘til death us do part.” Each partner assumes the faithfulness of the other, and believes that each of them has taken stock of the costs that will be required of them, and, most importantly, has made the decision to keep those vows and promises for the rest of their life. These vows are true regardless of the percentage rate of divorce or broken marriages. They are vows built to last – faithfulness is their foundation. For the Early Church, taking up the cross deal was not a commitment to be taken lightly. As the Romans came to realize that the Christians were not merely a sect of Judaism, they saw the threat posed by Christianity to the absolute allegiance demanded by the Emperor. Jews, for the most part, did not recruit others to their religion. They were the chosen race of God, linked by DISCUSS blood, and thus, their relationship was fixed and needed no fresh additions. What other Christianity, the Romans came to realize, was a different stories of Christian animal entirely. Not only was their commitment to Christ martyrs are you familiar with? How might believers benefit from time absolute, but they were also radically committed to evangelizing others across all national, racial and ethnic lines. The Roman requirement to bow the knee to Caesar studying these and proclaim that this secular ruler was Lord was not stories? (Note: an option for true followers of Christ. The Jews also persecution.org refused to bow the knee to Caesar and rather than kill is one source them, the Romans gave them permission to be different of information from the rest of the world. But Christians were recruiting about persecuted Christians in the world today.) followers from every level of society (remember Paul’s statement to the Philippians that there were followers even in Caesar’s personal guard). To make matters worse, every person converted was a person who now refused to submit to the authority of Caesar over Christ. Every person converted refused to take part in pagan ceremonies, or to buy products that honored gods or goddesses. Most of the Christians began to boycott the gladiator events (many would soon be in them for execution) because of their brutality and the way that they appealed to the baser nature of human beings. Rome realized soon enough that this new religion was a threat to its very base of power, and it wasn’t long before the emperors began Empire-wide purges of Christians, and especially the leadership of the Church. In this climate, martyrdom became a real possibility for disciples of Jesus. The word, “marturas,” in Greek means “witness.” To be faithful unto death became a chief way these early followers of Christ witnessed to his Lordship. When Rome began its program of killing Christians, they used the catch phrase “Caesar is Lord” as the weapon for identifying Christians. Refusal to make the statement was sufficient to get you arrested, and to be arrested was to be set apart for martyrdom. (We don’t have time to pursue the full story, but willingness to die for the faith was so important to the Early Church that they had to wrestle with whether to accept back into the congregation individuals who had, under torture, denied their faith. It took some time for the Church to offer mercy to those considered traitors (traditores) to the Faith.)

A Historical Example of Faithfulness

To close our lesson today, let’s look at the martyrdom of Polycarp (69-155 AD), the Bishop of Smyrna (a city in the area of modern-day Turkey). The story of his execution is our “earliest known history of a Christian martyrdom, the genuineness of which is unquestionable.”23 Polycarp was said to have known all the first Apostles and to have been discipled by the Apostle John. During a time of persecution in the Roman Empire, soldiers were often sent out looking for leaders of the Christian movement so that they could capture them and send them to the Arena for execution. Polycarp’s church members begged him to hide from the soldiers, and so, for a time he stayed with another family in the countryside outside of the city of Smyrna. When his whereabouts was discovered, the soldiers made their way to the house in which he was staying. Instead of running away, Polycarp hosted the soldiers with food and drink. Then, he asked them for the opportunity to pray before leaving, and took time to pray for his congregation and the whole church throughout the Empire. When he was taken into the Arena, the magistrate, who apparently respected him, said that considering his old age, if he would just take an oath in the name of Caesar and say, “away with the atheists,” he would be happy to release him. Christians were referred to as atheists by pagans because they had no visible “god” or idol that they worshiped. Polycarp turned this around the other way; looking up at the crowd, he spoke directly to them, and cried out “Away with the atheists,” thus dismissing their pagan gods as nothing. The magistrate then spoke to him again. He told him that he could be free if he would say, “Caesar is Lord,” and curse Christ. Polycarp’s answer has been honored throughout history for its courage: “Eighty and six years have I served him, and in nothing hath he wronged me; and how, then, can I blaspheme my King, who saved me?” The proconsul then threatened to throw him to the wild animals stored within the arena. Polycarp told him to bring them on – he would not change his position. The proconsul, seeing that he was not afraid of the beasts, then threatened to burn him at the stake. Polycarp told him that an hour of burning was nothing compared to the fire of “the future judgment and eternal punishment, which is reserved for the ungodly.” He told the proconsul that he might as well get on with it; he would not back down. The Romans then put his back to a stake and prepared

to nail his hands to it in order to hold him there. He told them that it was unnecessary; he would not try to get away. They lit the fire, and to their amazement, though the flames rose high around the stake, he wasn’t consumed by the fire. They spoke of a smell like burning bread or incense coming from around him. Finally, the proconsul commanded a man to stab him with a dagger to kill him. When he did so, Polycarp’s blood put out the fire, and the crowd marveled at the difference between the death of pagans and Christians.

Summary

We have seen God’s uncompromising, unwavering faithfulness to keep His covenant promises. God’s ultimate faithfulness was revealed when He took on flesh and died for us while we were yet sinners. In response to God’s faithfulness, what does our faithfulness look like? It looks like the life and death of the martyrs (“witnesses”), who chose to make a commitment to Christ Jesus that would tolerate no compromise, not even at the threat of torture and death. It looks like Polycarp who served Christ in purity and dependable service all his life, and at the age of 86, when he was threatened with death by fire, refused to declare Caesar as Lord. He happily chose to die for Christ rather than deny him or replace him with an idol of this world. To be faithful certainly means that we, as Christians, need to utilize our time and talents to honor the Lord, and to influence others for Christ. But, more importantly, it means to serve Christ faithfully, without compromise, in good times and bad, regardless of the benefits gained or lost, for as long as we have breath and life. That is what it means to display the fruit of faithfulness today – that is our challenge and task!

Application Idea: This week, ask the following questions of yourself: Am I using my time and gifts well in serving the Lord and his Kingdom? What more could I do to be a “good and faithful servant” in the eyes of my Lord? Secondly, do I have an all-or-nothing faith? Have I given my life so fully over to Christ that I could say with Paul, “I am crucified with Christ, and I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me?” Though I may not be a literal martyr for my faith, do I have the faith of a martyr? If you find your faith lacking, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal more of Christ’s faithfulness to you, so that you can be filled with more of him and to allow his faithfulness to strengthen your faith in return.