Psalm 111:7,8 – “Faithful”

As always, here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

   the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

   being done in truth and uprightness.

There is one more thought I have from this passage which I’d like to record. Back to my post, “The Best King,” as we look at this Psalm and particularly at verses 7 and 8, we’re reminded how totally awesome the Lord is. He is so faithful, so trustworthy, so dependable. He always does what He said He would do. He always does exactly what He should do. You can totally count on Him.

And as we let our minds reel in all His wonderfulness, as we realize just how much His faithfulness means to us, our hearts hopefully take the same turn Paul’s did for him. Consider what he said in II Cor 1:18:

“But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’”

I think it is enormously instructive that Paul does not simply say, “Our message to you is not ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’” There is a reason why he’s that way and it is “As surely as God is faithful …” Does anyone else see the profound but simple truth buried in this one little verse? Paul is saying exactly what I believe I’ve learned – that just knowing God, really truly knowing Him, pondering who He is, changes me. And here Paul is particularly thinking about God’s faithfulness, just like in our Psalm 111:7,8, and the result is that Paul himself cannot help but want to be faithful himself. “Because God is so faithful to me,” Paul says, “I am faithful to you.”

I actually ran across this truth when I was studying through II Corinthians some time way back in the Stone Age and here it is again in Psalm 111. Faithfulness is so important. We know how important it is to us that God is faithful. Of course there’s Jeremiah’s words, “It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam 3:22,23); and then there is: “Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee; He will not fail thee, nor forsake thee” (Deut 31:6), which the Lord repeats in Heb 13:5, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.”

People of faith hang their very souls on God’s faithfulness. All of this led John Rippon to write the old familiar hymn, “How Firm a Foundation:”

Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed,
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid;
I’ll strengthen and help thee, and cause thee to stand
Upheld by My righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,
The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow;
For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,
And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathways shall lie,
My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply;
The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design
Thy dross to consume, and thy gold to refine.

Even down to old age all My people shall prove
My sovereign, eternal, unchangeable love;
And when hoary hairs shall their temples adorn,
Like lambs they shall still in My bosom be borne.

The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

We need God to be faithful. And He is.

But others need us to be faithful as well. It is amazing to stop and ponder how much we all depend on one another. As I sit here typing in the middle of the night, someone somewhere is working at a power plant, keeping the electricity flowing. Just a couple of blocks from my house is a police station, a fire station, and a hospital. There are people working there right now – people who were scheduled for this shift and they came to work and there they are, doing their jobs. And we need them to! What if they didn’t?? Also there is the post office right there. I often drive by and drop letters in the mailbox outside. As incompetent as the government may be, yet (nearly) without fail, my letter magically appears at the destination I intended. I go to a store that says it’s open from 8:00 to 5:00 and it is. I come home at lunch in a mad frenzy and my beautiful wife has lunch ready for me so I can gulp it down and catch a 15-minute nap before I have to be back at work. I go to work in the morning and the lights are already on, the coffee’s hot, and there are a whole host of other people I utterly depend on – and there they are, just like they’re supposed to be, at their desks, doing their jobs.

Throw into all of that the thought, “And what if they didn’t?” What happens when other people don’t do what they’re supposed to or when they don’t do what they said they would? What if none of these people I’m counting on did their job? What is it like when I go to the store at 10:00 AM and it’s not open? For no good reason? I rush up to the door assuming it will open and about kill myself running headlong into it. “Hey, what’s going on?” I ask myself. What would it be like if I suddenly realized at work the receptionist isn’t answering the phone? She’s there, but she doesn’t feel like answering it. So she just lets it ring. What if she did answer and was supposed to take a message and just doesn’t. “Oh, yeah, they called yesterday, but I didn’t feel like telling you.” What if my neighbor doesn’t mow his grass? What if someone isn’t doing their job and suddenly none of the stop lights in town are working? I find at work the most difficult people to deal with are the ones who tell us they’ll do something, then just don’t do it.

The fact is my life would collapse in one big frustrated heap if other people didn’t do what they’re supposed to. Faithfulness is very important. We are all deeply dependent on each other simply to do what we’re supposed to do when we’re supposed to do it. I depend on the Lord. I depend on other people. And here’s the kicker: and they depend on me.

If I stop and ponder for just a minute, there are a lot of people depending on me to do a lot of things. I’m not talking about the unreasonable expectations. There are always seemingly a million or two people who think I ought to do this or that for them to the point I find myself exclaiming, “There’s not enough of me! I run out of day long before I run out of do!” But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the reasonable expectations others have of me. I’m supposed to be at work at 8:00. I’m supposed to keep my grass mowed. I’m supposed to pay my bills. I’m supposed to keep things around the house fixed. I’m supposed to be home at noon for lunch and again about 5:00 or 5:30 for supper. When I do my job at work, I’m supposed to do my best to solve people’s problems for the least cost and in the best way. Everywhere I look someone else is counting on me. I tell someone, “I’ll take care of that,” and they expect me to. I tell someone I’ll meet them at 2:30 and they expect me to be there.

If I don’t simply do what I’m supposed to, if I don’t do what I said I would, it upsets other people’s lives and schedules just the same as their unfaithfulness upsets mine. It’s important for me to be faithful.

And the good news is God is faithful. And if He is faithful and I see it and appreciate it, then I can be like Him. I want to, need to, make every possible effort to be dependable, to be faithful, to do what I said I’d do – because others need me to and because that’s the way my God is. Once again, may who He is rub off on me!

⁷The works of His hands [are] truth and justice;

the all of His commands are trustworthy,

⁸Being established to forever to ages,

being done in truth and uprightness.