Faithfulness

If we want an example of faithfulness, we have both angelic and apostolic directive to consider Moses (Numbers 12:7; Hebrews 3:5). He was entrusted with the care of Israel, the ”house of God,” the children of the covenant.

A faithful man, in the exact sense of the English word, is one in whom fullness of faith or trust can be placed—which means much if there is a hard job to be done. The Hebrew word aman, used of Moses in Numbers 12, is interesting too. It is also the word for a nurse, and in the previous chapter, when his people wept because they craved flesh, he cried out in bitterness: “Did I conceive all this people . . . that thou shouldst say to me, ‘Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse (aman) carries the sucking child, to the land . . . ?” The answer to Moses’ doubts was emphatic: “Is the Lord’s hand shortened?” Faithfulness will always be rewarded by divine strength.

This same word aman conveys the idea of strength, never-failing support and steadiness. A “faithful” nail is one that will not give way when a load is placed on it (Isaiah 22:23, 25). A “sure” house is one that is enduring. Mordecai was an aman to Esther (2:7), rendered “brought up” or “nourished” in our English version. It is clear that she owed to Morde­cai far more than board and lodging; a faithful training had given her a spiritual stability and security that fitted her to be a deliverer of her people in their hour of need.

Every relationship, divine and human, depends on faithfulness; God and man, parent and child, husband and wife, master and servant, employer and employee, friend and friend. All positions of trust require faithfulness in order to be acceptable to God and those for whom the service is rendered. We have abundant evidence in Scripture that God detests those who through self-interest betray a faithful trust, however humble and simple it may seem. When the Korahite psalmist sang, “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness,” he was saying in effect that he would faithfully carry out his own duties—for “the Kora­hites were . . . keepers of the gates of the tabernacle (1 Chronicles 9:19) !

It is sobering in these days, when loyalty to others and reliability are looked upon as more weakness than virtue, to read of the faithfulness of such worthies as Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24, Joseph in Potiphar’s house and Rebekah’s old nurse Deborah. She was well named ‘the bee’, for there is no more devoted nurse in nature than the female worker bee who, denied a reproductive role itself, devotes a lifetime caring for the future queens. When after a lifetime of unrecorded devoted service, Deborah died in the midst of a journey, there were many tears, for her burial-place was named the Oak of Weeping.

But how appropriate that she should rest “beneath Bethel” — the house of God, where the stairway from heaven touched the earth. Beneath every work of God there is at least one faithful servant to support and uphold it.

When faithfulness is put to the test, men and women are capable of great self-sacrifice and devotion. Whose heart is not full when following Jonathan in dread peril through rocky gorge and forest height to David his friend in the wood of Ziph, there to “strengthen his hand in God” (I Samuel 23:16) ? Samuel Fritz, a Bohemian missionary to the Amerindians, was put in charge of “fifty Christian settlements linked by 1,000 miles of river” in the jungle interior of South America. “He had no assistance, and a dugout canoe was his only form of transport. His life was spent in this canoe. Lizards and rats ate his food and ran across his body; the sinister grunting of alligators kept him from sleep.” Yet he faithfully fulfilled this task for nearly forty years from 1686 to 1723, until he died, “deeply ulcerated by insect bites,” at the age of seventy.

Fortunately, faithfulness does not always demand such heroics. But routine may demand of us more faithfulness than does crisis.

“Well done, good and faithful servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

Every one of those words of Jesus is full of meaning. The accepted one has not been merely a member; he had actually done something. It was well done. He was good and faithful, and he did not despise being a servant. Finally the Lord was his Lord, whose eternal and faithful service was his ultimate joy.