Unleashed: As You Go – Pray

God – Faithful for a thousand generations

“Understand, therefore, that the LORD your God is indeed God. He is the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love on those who love him and obey his commands.” Deuteronomy 7:9 (NLT)

Worthy of trust; consistent with truth; accurate; exact – these are words that convey the meaning of faithful. Images of steadiness, loyalty and reliability come to mind when we talk about a person who is faithful. Scripture captures for us the faithfulness of God from Torah to Psalms to the Prophets through the Gospels to Revelation.

Normally faithful is an adjective describing someone but in the case of Jesus, Faithful and True is one of his names, “Then I saw heaven opened, and a white horse was standing there. Its rider was named Faithful and True, for he judges fairly and wages a righteous war.” – Revelation 19:11

Faithfulness “for a thousand generations” is a number we struggle to wrap our minds around.  A number that basically has no end is how the writer of Deuteronomy is trying to capture the unending faithfulness of God. As followers of Christ, faithfulness becomes a source of hope from generation to generation. A.W. Tozer wrote that “The faithfulness of God is a datum of sound theology but to the believer it becomes far more than that: it passes through the processes of the understanding and goes on to become nourishing food for the soul…. Upon God’s faithfulness rests our whole hope of future blessedness.”

A story is told of an old Scottish preacher who was rebuked by one of his deacons for the dismissal results from his preaching. The pastor was reminded that only one boy had been added to the church all year.  The pastor agreed saying, “I feel it all but God knows I’ve tried to do my duty.” On that day the minister’s heart was heavy as he stood before his flock. As he finished the message, he felt a strong inclination to resign but after everyone had left the building, the one young boy added to the church came to the pastor and asked, “Do you think if I worked hard for an education, I could become a preacher and perhaps a missionary?”

The old faithful pastor didn’t live to see the end of the story but he knew “the faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations.”  Years later an aged missionary couple returned to London from Africa after spending over 50 years on the mission field.  It is said, “His name was spoken with reverence. Nobles invited him to their homes. He had added many souls to the church of Jesus Christ…. His name was Robert Moffat, the same Robert who years before had spoken to the pastor that Sunday morning in the old Scottish kirk.”

Robert Moffat and his wife Mary’s faithful impact still continues on to the generations that followed. Moffat worked to translate the whole Bible into Setswana to provide ongoing teaching and nourishment of new believers. Moffat would mentor David Livingstone for the ministry and their daughter, Mary would later marry him. Livingstone would become part of the great gospel expansion into Central and Eastern Africa.

Faithfulness is not confined to what we see but of what we don’t see. Moffat wrote that, “We shall have all eternity in which to celebrate our victories, but we have only one swift hour before the sunset in which to win them.”

Thomas Chisholm captured well the awe-inspiring faithfulness of God in his great hymn, “Great is thy Faithfulness.” “A faithful God who keeps his covenant for a thousand generations and lavishes his unfailing love” on us.

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father, There is no shadow of turning with thee; Thou changest not, they compassions, they fail not; As thou hast been thou forever wilt be.

Great is thy faithfulness! Great is they faithfulness! Morning by morning new mercies I see; All I have needed thy hand hath provided; Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Undoubtedly each of us will walk through periods of pain and suffering, yet as we lament, we are able to identify with the words of Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations: “The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” (3:22-24)

God is great,

Pastor Lynn