August 17, 2025 - Tenth Sunday after Pentecost: The Faithfulness of God

August 17, 2025 Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Ladue Chapel Presbyterian Church
Lamentations 3:21-24, 31-33      Second Timothy 2:8-13
“The Faithfulness of God”
Melissa K. Smith

A man once dreamt that he walked along the beach,
and as he walked along,
he saw his life flash before his eyes.
As he looked back over his life,
he saw that for every memory there were two sets of footprints in the sand,
one belonging to himself and the other belonging to the Lord.

But as he looked more closely,
he saw that for the most difficult and painful memories in his life,
there was only one set of footprints.
Turning to the Lord, he said,
“Lord, when I needed you the most, why did you leave me?”
And you might know what God said back.
God says back, “those were the moments I carried you.”

This poem, “Footprints in the Sand” is a familiar poem – it’s one I grew up knowing. It’s a poem that teaches us about the faithfulness of God. In the sand, when we only see one set of footprints, it isn’t ours because God abandoned us. It’s God’s – we are the ones who turned away, who faltered in faith. But God is always there. He is faithful.

I have found that I experience faithfulness in two contexts: our faith in God, and our relationship in marriage. We are called to constantly consider our faith and faith journeys and assess if we are being faithful to God. But we also always profess faithfulness in weddings: “I promise to love you, and to be faithful to you, as long as we both shall live.”

What does faithful mean?
 
Faithful means “to remain loyal and steadfast” – in the context of marriage it means to remain loyal to your spouse as long as you both shall live. Faithful in scripture is twofold: one, it is part of the nature of God. God is faithful. But it is also a crucial value that we must have as Christians – that we must be faithful to God.

In our text this morning, we have heard from the Apostle Paul who is writing a second letter to his dear friend and protégée Timothy. In his encouragement to Timothy who is now leading a church on his own, Paul says, “8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, 9 for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained.”

Paul is rooting the Gospel of Christ in history, telling Timothy to remember Jesus who was raised from the dead and who is a descendant of David. Remember the resurrection that changed human history – and remember that he was also human, like you and me, belonging to a genealogy of our patriarchs. Paul recalls Jesus to name: this is the Gospel – the good news is the news that Jesus lived among us, died for us, and rose from the dead defeating sin and death. It is this good news that Paul has suffered for. Though Paul may be chained while writing to his dear friend, the Gospel is not chained, and it never will be.

Paul then articulates the importance of what it means to be part of the Gospel – to be part of sharing the story with the world. He says, “If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” Each of us who have been baptized have died to our sins and been raised to new life in Christ. When you are part of the Body of Christ, you have died with Christ and you will live with Christ – and that will affect how you live, how you act, how you treat your neighbors, and how you share the good news with those around you.

He continues, “if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he will also deny us.” Other translations say, “if we disown him, he will also disown us.” Paul is writing in the time of Emperor Nero. Nero was known for his extravagance and his cruelty. And he did not like the Gospel. He is known for persecuting Christians throughout the Roman Empire.

Paul is writing to Timothy saying, “There are consequences for those who deny Christ for their own gain.” And if they deny God, God will deny them. He is trying to bolster Timothy’s resolve and conviction that what he is preaching and teaching matters. Christians were dying. The Empire was trying to silence the Gospel. But if we have died with Christ, we live with him – our faith has changed our life’s purpose, and we are called to be faithful to Christ. If we willingly disown or deny God, we cannot expect God to act like nothing has happened. But our God is a forgiving God, and invites us to repent…he invites us and calls us back to himself.

Paul continues, “if we are faithless, he remains faithful – he cannot deny himself.” It is in God’s nature to be faithful. Everything Paul is naming to Timothy is something he has shared with other churches in his letters. But this point is vital.

In Romans chapter 3 Paul says, “What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means!” God’s faithfulness is not dependent on our faith – and to that I say, thanks be to God. This final clause is reassuring – God cannot be unfaithful to us because in his nature, God is faithful.

God describes himself as faithful throughout scripture. God says, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.” And throughout Scripture we see this in action. Israel was a sinful nation – and time and time again the people of God turned away from God. They worshiped other gods, they looked to other leaders, they disobeyed the law. God continued to be faithful to them. When Israel said “we want to be like the other nations – we want a king!” They rejected God as their king and God allowed them to be ruled and anointed Saul. Then they had Saul, David, and Solomon. When Solomon’s sons split the kingdom, God remained the God of both the nation of Israel and Judah. God spoke through prophets and shared messages of repentance.

For example, the prophet Hosea was called to preach a message of God’s abounding faithfulness in the face of the people’s unfaithfulness and lack of desire to repent. But God used Hosea’s life as a representation of his message. He had Hosea marry a prostitute – and as Gomer, his wife, continued to cheat on him, Hosea was charged with welcoming her home. This was a direct analogy to God’s love for his people. Though they turn from him, though they disobey him, though they have not been faithful to him, God is faithful. God will always be faithful.

Paul’s letter to Timothy is a letter to us as well. We are not experiencing persecution, but we need to be reminded of God’s faithfulness. Though we are not being persecuted, we still live in a fallen world – a world where the goings on are discouraging and can make us question our faith. We live in a world where there are distractions – things that pull us away from God and we lose our faith because we stop pursuing God. We live in a world where things don’t go as planned, where bad things happen to good people, and where we get sick even if we have been healthy our whole lives.

We need to remind ourselves of the faithfulness of God as our own faithfulness is in question. God’s faithfulness does not make up for our lack of faithfulness – we still need to pursue our faith and we need to be loyal to God.

But God’s faithfulness is essential for us to know: through life’s chaos and unpredictability, through disappointments and frustrations, through sickness and injury, through political turmoil, through trials all around the world: God is faithful.

God was with his people, Israel. God never gave up on them. God sent his only begotten son into this world to save the world. He lived among us, he died for us, and he rose from the dead – defeating sin and death. The last word, because of Christ, is life everlasting – not death.

Stories or poems like the footprints poem that remind us that God is faithful to us through every trial and tribulation help us to see God’s nature more fully. God is faithful. He has always been faithful. He will continue to be faithful.

Sometimes we don’t get what we want, or things don’t turn out the way we wanted them too – that does not indicate God’s lack of faithfulness. Our God is not a transactional God. Rather, know that God is always with you – just as he was with our ancestors. Paul needed Timothy to know of God’s faithfulness as he proclaimed the gospel.

When we recognize God’s faithfulness, when we sing of it, when we rest in it – we are able to take the next step forward in our own faith journeys and draw closer into God – who is in his nature, faithful.

Thanks be to God.
 
Amen.