Introduction: Last week we looked at God’s faithfulness. God is faithful as a person and if we strive to be faithful, we should compare ourselves to God who is the standard, and not compare ourselves to other men or women. Before we can talk about how faithfulness should look in us, which will be next week’s lesson. First, we have to see why we aren’t as faithful as God who is our example.
Why aren’t we faithful like God?
- Because it’s uncommon- Proverbs 20:6 “Most men will proclaim everyone his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find? “
- According to the Bible, people will say they are great at something, however, it is hard to find a faithful man/woman. Are we as faithful as we think we are? What are some things in your life where you would proclaim yourself to be good at? Is it true that you are faithful in those things, is it your own goodness or is it faithfulness?
- Most people today are not faithful in church attendance, in giving, in God’s service, in declaring God’s Word, in helping others, etc.
- People today are afraid of commitment, of serving God faithfully, and instead we just give him little bits here and there. Get faithful.
- Because we don’t try- Psalm 12:1-2 “Help, LORD; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men. They speak vanity everyone with his neighbor: with flattering lips and with a double heart do they speak”.
- To FAIL means to: become deficient, to be insufficient, to cease to be abundant for supply.
- If the few faithful men or women that do exist are becoming deficient, and insufficient, and they don’t have an abundant supply of faithfulness to give, what ends up happening? They end up flattering with their lips, and speaking with a double heart.
- Instead of changing and becoming more faithful, they just stay where they are and just talk about how good they are when in reality they are not as faithful as they think.
- A person that proclaims his own good will speak with flattering lips, trying to flatter someone else to believe of them something that they really are not. In other words, they might say, I’m faithful at such and such when they really aren’t. The faithful are becoming less and less.
- Because we don’t care – Luke 16:10- 12 “and if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s who shall give you that which is your own?
- In getting credit- Because it might benefit others, or make others look good, or others getting the credit, we are not faithful to help them or to give our best for them.
- In material things- To the person who owns the company, to the Pastor of our church, to the goods of another person, to the wealth of another person, etc.
- In prayer- in another man’s burdens, needs, necessities, problems.
- Galatians 6:10– “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith”.
- God is faithful all the time, we pick and choose when we want to be faithful. That is not true faithfulness.
- Lamentations 3:22-23– “because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
- Because it’s unimportant- Matthew 25:14-26- This is a Tribulation passage however, the principle is something we see even today. This person made excuses and didn’t do anything with what God had given him. Instead of investing what God had given him, he just decided to not do anything, it obviously wasn’t important to him.
I Timothy 6:20- Paul tells Timothy to “keep that which is committed to thy trust”.
I John 5:2-3 “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments: and his commandments are not grievous”.
Conclusion: Sometimes we think we are faithful, and we may be, but compared to God’s faithfulness, I think we all need improvement. Hopefully today we have seen some hinderances that may keep us from being as faithful as we are capable of being.