The Faithfulness of YAHWEH

I can't say it enough....the faithfulness of the LORD is AMAZING! It overwhelms me sometimes when I stop to think about His consistency in my life.

David writes in Psalm 28:1,

"Unto You I will cry, O LORD, my Rock..."

The LORD is unchanging and steadfast. More and more through my life I realize that when I am like the shifting sand, He is immovable and constant.

I say all of this because once again He has shown me that the more I try and do things my way the more I step away from Him. But if I slow down and listen to what He is saying to me then I will be able to walk with Him through this life.

It's so important for us to understand HOW to listen to the LORD when He speaks. He speaks clearly through His Word. If we do not read His Word then we will have no idea what He is trying to say to us.

"If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ouselves, and the truth is not in us."
-1 John 1:5-8

Notice John mentions both "light" and "truth" several times in this passage. What is the light and truth that John is speaking of? Is it some ethereal light surrounding God? Perhaps a glowing light around His throne?
And what about the truth? Pilate asked Messiah "What is truth?"

In Revelation 21:23 we read,

"The city [New Jerusalem] had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light."

The Lamb, Yeshua (Jesus), is the light of the New Jerusalem, which is to say He is the light of His people.

We know that Yeshua is also the living Word of God.

In John's gospel, he writes,

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,"
- John 1:1

and also

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
- John 1:14

Messiah was/is the living Word of God and the Light. Yeshua said to Nicodemus,

"For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."
- John 3:20-21

Christ as the Light and the Truth are synonymous with that of God. There can only be one source of Truth and since the LORD created everything, He has to be it. So what does this have to do with His faithfulness. Well as we've already seen, His faithfulness is most effective in our lives when we listen to what He is saying to us. Though the faithfulness of the LORD is not limited to our ability to hear Him (He can clearly work in and through us IN SPITE OF US), but in a relationship with the Living God we must be able to hear Him speaking.

If He is the Word, and we must listen to His Word, then it stands to reason that we must come to Him and allow Him to expose our evil deeds for what they are - lawless acts against Him - and cleanse us from our sins. That is what He was saying to Nicodemus, that those who hate the light hate it because it exposes the very things their flesh delights in.

So, in order to hear what He is saying, we must listen to Him through His Word which is both light and truth.

Again, in John, Yeshua says,

"Father, sanctify them by Your truth, Your Word is truth."
- John 17:17

What "Word" is Jesus speaking of here? The New Testament? It wasn't written yet. His own words? Well technically yes, because He's God, but He clearly makes the point throughout His time here on earth that He didn't come to speak His own words.

"I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak."
- John 12:49

Why would He say that? Isn't Jesus God? Yes, but He was making a very clear point. That point is that He came, not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill (fully preach) them. He came to firmly establish the Torah (Law) in the hearts and minds of believers. In order to do that He had to A)Live Torah perfectly and B)Obey the Father and speak on His behalf.

Jesus didn't come to set down any new rules. If He did then He would be against the commandments of God and therefore would be disqualified as the Messiah. But we know that He IS the Messiah because He lived the Law perfectly, not to do away with it (which makes no sense contextually)but to fill it up full, which is what the Greek word for fulfill, pleroo, means.

Looking again at the concept of Light and Truth, if we look back into Psalm 119 we find something very interesting. Remember, Yeshua said, "sanctify them by Your truth, Your word is truth". And we asked the question, "what is the word He is speaking of?"

"Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and
Your Law is truth."
-Psalm 119:142

The entirety of Psalm 119 is all about God's Law/Torah. Verse 160 says, "The entirety of Your word is truth."

We cannot separate the Word of God into sections that meet our purposes and throw out the parts that we don't like. The WHOLE Word of the LORD is truth, and all of it is founded upon His Torah/Law. Back in verse 29, the psalmist writes,

"Remove from me the way of lying, and grant me Your law graciously".

He writes this because he knows that the Law of Yahweh IS truth, and what better teacher to correct his lying tongue than the Law of the LORD?

We cannot deny that the Law of God, which is truth is also light.

"Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. I have sworn and confirmed that I will keep Your righteous judgments."
- Psalm 119:105

Remember that the context of Psalm 119 is the entire Word of God, namely His Law.

Solomon wrote, "For the commandment is a lamp, and the law a light."

So God's Law, which is the foundation of the rest of His Word, is both Truth and Light. Jesus, the Living Word, or we could say the Living Torah, came to speak that which the Father told Him, thereby establishing again the foundation of Torah. This leads us to see a little more clearly what John was writing about in his 1st epistle when he said, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." If we walk apart from His Torah, then we are living according to our own standard of righteousness which is to say, none at all.

"There is none righteous, no not one." - Romans 3:10 quoting from psalms 14 and 53.

It is by His standard - Torah - that our sin is identified and can be dealt with, all in line with His will.

John goes on to say in 2:3,

"Now by this we now that we know Him, if we keep His commandments."

Yeshua said, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments."
- John 14:15 Again, He didn't come preaching a bunch of new commandments, but those which the Father (and He) had already established from the beginning.

If we truly love our Savior then the natural extension of that love will be that we keep His Commandments. Not to be saved, but because we ARE saved.

His faithfulness is that He continues to pursue us when we stray, reminding us by His Law that because we are in Him, our flesh is not in control. It can only give off the illusion that it is, but there is no power in our flesh. It's dying and we are told to crucify it along with its desires.

The flesh is hostile toward the law of God and cannot be subjected to it. This should be enough of a reason for us to seek the Lord and His Torah in order to gain a better understanding into His will for our lives. If we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16) then we should be walking in obedience to His Law, knowing that it has shown us our sin and that we needed a Savior, but now that we are no longer under that schoolmaster (Galatians 3:24-25), we are free to live according to His Law by our own choice, knowing that His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5:3) but a delight (Matthew 11:30).