Thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth

Isaiah
{25:1} O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I
will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things;
thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.


Thy counsels of old...

are faithfulness and truth.

Faithfulness and truth.

Time and time again we hear of faithfulness.

We need faith.

We need the truth.

These two things are essential.

People say they want proof- not faith. They want something substanial- not faith. They want something solid- not faith. They want facts- not faith. They call anything other than tangible evidence folly and those who believe deluded.

Faith.

Heb. {11:1} Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen

Hope.

Can you put your hands around hope?

What is hope?

Dict.

hope (hop) verb
hoped, hoping, hopes verb, intransitive
1. To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment.
2. Archaic. To have confidence; trust.

verb, transitive
1. To look forward to with confidence or expectation: We hope that our children will carry on our family traditions.
2. To expect and desire. See synonyms at expect.

noun
1. A wish or desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment.
2. Something that is hoped for or desired: Success is our hope.
3. One that is a source of or reason for hope: the team's only hope for victory.
4. Often Hope (hop) . The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a future good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God's help.
5. Archaic. Trust; confidence.

Excerpted from The American Heritage® Dictionary

Hope isn't something we touch. You can say you place your hope in someone, but that hope is in the something that someone is doing, not really in that person, it's in an accomplishment they have the possibility of fulfilling.

Hope - theological virtue - desire and search for a future good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God's help.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for.

Faith is the hope of a future fully absorbed in God's love. Faith is the hope of a world without sin. Faith is the hope of a world the way it was intended before sin took over.

Abraham, Moses, David had faith. They had this hope that God, their creator would rule, that He would be the God of all one day, that His reign would be realized. They all lived in a world just as we do, with some believing and others not believing, with some following and others not following. They all lived in a world full of sin and temptations towards that sinning. They shunned the sinning and grasp hold of a better world. Or, they repented of their sin and grasped hold of a better world, an unseen world, a promised world.

When you're promised something as a rule, the promise is for something that isn't seen.

When a man and woman promise to love each other until death do they part for as long as they both shall live- they are hoping for a future live that will keep them together in love until death. That promise isn't realized until way down the line when one or the other dies and they've lived a life together through all the hardships, the ups and the downs, and then they can say that promise was kept.

When you promise someone you'll get them a present that person will wait for the present and until that present arrives all they have is the promise of tha present, the hope of the present and that the promise will be kept.

We you promise to meet someone at a certain place and time, until the moment of the meeting the promise is unkept, but once the meeting takes place the promise is realized.

Great men and woman of God throughout the Bible held fast to the future promise, they had hope in that promise, they lived believing that God would fulfil the promises made to them. They had faith- hope in the promises even when there was no evidence to support the promises. Even when their lives seemed such that those promises being fulfilled would seem to be impossible. Even when DEATH was inevitable and they were tasting the precusors of the end of their lives, they still HOPED. They believed in something more and they trusted in God.

People say it's crazy to have such hope, to believe in such a thing, that here and now is all we can really trust and believe in. They call it false hope, and foolish dreaming. They say it's a waste of a good life and a chance to have all sorts of worldly pleasures when people deny themselves that pleasure because they are hoping in something better in the future, a future promise that might not even be realized in their lifetime. They have hope beyond the grave, beyond their deaths.

When EVERYTHING seems to be telling us, tickling our senses, tempting us to grasp hold to ONLY what we can see, touch, smell, feel, taste we have to look beyond all that, way beyond all that to the hope that is found in Jesus Christ, to the promise that God gave to Abraham and extended right on down to us.

People as a whole will never agree to look beyond the here and now.

As individuals we have to look beyond, we have to have hope and faith in God's promises.

Isaiah
{25:1} O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I
will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things;
thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.

We need to exalt in God, our God. We need to praise His name. He has done wonderful things. His counsels of old are-- faithfulness and truth.

Faithfulness and truth.

God has made promises.

God has give us prophecies and allowed us to look back through history and see the prophecies fulfilled.

God tells us what will be and by faith in God who has done wonderful, wonderful things, we have to have faith- hope in Him, He will keep His promises, He is truth.

John {14:6} Jesus saith
unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man
cometh unto the Father, but by me.

The way, the truth, the life, may we find it all in our Lord and Savior, through His wondrous grace and mercy, in Jesus Christ, now and forever...

Amen.