Equipping Eve: The Fruit of God’s Faithfulness

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Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

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Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies.

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But beyond Sunday morning, are Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

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Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,

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No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

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My name is Mike Abendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

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Well, hello ladies and welcome to Equipping Eve, the show that seeks to equip you with fruits of truth from God's Word so we can stand strong and firm on that Word in an age of deception.

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Deception comes at us from all angles, from all places, even from within the professing church, unfortunately.

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And we know that, we've all been confronted with it, we've all seen it.

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And so hopefully, ladies, we all understand that that is why we need to turn to the only objective truth, the only knowable truth,

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God's Word, the Bible, 66 books, there are only 66, we've talked about that in the past, check out some past episodes and you'll see that conversation.

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And so we rely solely on the truth of the Bible, God's Word, infallible, inerrant, inspired.

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So I am your host, Erin Benziger, hey, check us out, Equipping Eve is on Facebook, type

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Equipping Eve into the search bar and the page should show up, I think, we hope, anyway, it's there, at Equipping Eve on Twitter, so you can find us there, equippingeve .org

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or .com, both addresses will get you to the website. The website will keep you up to date with podcasts, blog posts, there are resources on there, there's other podcasts that we trust and respect and enjoy.

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Other websites that we would encourage you to visit to find some doctrinally sound truth.

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So hopefully, you find that to be a good resource. If you have ideas for the show, ideas for the website, you know, any, maybe perhaps other ministries you want me to check out, see is this something we can recommend, whatever, you can contact me at the website, you can contact me on Facebook, you can contact me on Twitter, you can contact me, there you go.

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It is the age of being able to contact anybody, anytime, whether they like it or not, but I love it, so go for it.

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So anyway, maybe you noticed that Equipping Eve kind of took an unexpected summer break, and maybe you didn't know that it was unexpected, but I'm here to tell you that it was.

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I did not plan on not airing a new show for most of the summer, so my apologies.

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The good news is it's summer, and most of you probably weren't expecting new podcasts.

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If you were, and they didn't show up, maybe you weren't surprised, because it's summer, and we're all a little busier, we're probably not listening to our podcasts as often, we're busy, enjoying time with our family, time outdoors, things like that, and that's more important.

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So, I'm okay with that. If you didn't miss Equipping Eve, I'm okay with it.

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I'm not offended, yet, no, I'm really not, but it was unexpected,

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I really hope to keep going at least with a few new shows, and it's just been a crazy summer,

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I feel like I say that a lot, but it's been, yeah, so, it's, it's been a summer, so we'll see how things keep going, but good news, the good news is

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God is faithful, God is sovereign, God is good, and He has shown

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Himself, even though He didn't need to, has shown Himself to be all those things and more, because He is so much more, and He has done that this summer in my life, and in the life of my family, and so I'm very thankful for that.

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Always thankful for situations that allow God to reveal

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Himself and His goodness to His people, regardless of what that situation is, because that brings

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God glory, and that's our ultimate goal, right, and so very, very thankful for the summer, in spite of the heaviness of it all, and busyness, just busyness, just a lot of busyness, we're all so busy.

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Anyway, here we are, sitting in front of the microphone again, and I hope you'll enjoy the show today, so we'll go ahead and get started, and, you know,

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I could try to like transition this really smoothly, but I'm not going to, because that's just,

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I'm just not savvy like that, so here's the deal. I taped the teaching portion of the show previously, and now

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I'm taping the intro, and, you know, there's just no smooth way for me to transition into it, because I'm not quite sure how the audio is going to go there either in that transition, so I'm just going to put that out there and be really honest that that's how this happened, but that's okay.

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So I do hope you enjoy the show today, and, you know, I'm praying that we'll be able to get back into the swing of things around here, to get shows to you on a regular basis, and not because it's, you know, this hugely popular show that everybody can't live without, that's not it, but I am blessed by being able to do a little digging, do a little study to come speak to you ladies, and even though we don't get to speak face -to -face, interacting with you on social media online is a gift and an encouragement and a blessing to me.

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So I know that sounds cliche, but it's true. And so the show is very much for my encouragement as well as,

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I hope, for yours. I hope you're edified and encouraged as we move on. So there we go.

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Thanks ahead of time for tuning in, ladies. I hope you had a great summer. Hopefully by the time this airs, summer isn't quite over yet.

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So ladies, the episode that you're about to hear is about God's sovereignty and His faithfulness, and as the title implies, the fruit of God's faithfulness.

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And so, you know, not a controversial subject out there with all of the craziness happening in the professing evangelical world.

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There are a lot of things we could talk about, but it's so much more edifying to talk about God and to talk about Christ and who

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He is. And when we have a firm grasp of who God is, it helps us in our spiritual walk.

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It helps us in our sanctification and our growth, and it helps us deal with some of the junk that we see going on around us, even in the visible church.

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So I hope you'll enjoy the next few minutes as we just take a look at the sovereignty of God and the faithfulness of God and the glorious fruit that comes from that gift of our wonderful Creator, Lord, Sovereign, King, Jesus.

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I don't know about you, but I can look back on my life and even look at the time before I was saved and see how

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God was protecting me, you know, how He was just preserving me and protecting me, whether it was from bad theology.

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I mean, He didn't protect me from all of it, but He protected me from a lot of it in college. I went to a Christian university that was actually quite liberal.

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And, you know, I remember reading some books from our religion classes and just thinking, these are so stupid.

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I mean, those were my actual thoughts. And, um, like a book by Richard Foster called Streams of Living Water. And Richard Foster, of course, is, um, you know, the, the lead mystic, um, of the last century.

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So I just remember reading that book and I couldn't wait to sell it back at the end of the semester because it was just dumb.

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It was just frou -frou and stupid. And there was no reason for me not to be sucked in by that book because I wasn't saved at the time.

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And so God protected me and exposed me to a lot of, uh, liberal Christian thought, uh, for four years.

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And, um, I had no idea how He would use that down the line after He saved me. So it's just really remarkable to consider how

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God protects us all throughout our lives and to just see His provision and His sovereignty through everything.

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And this struck me the other day, um, just a really bad illustration that I'll give. I was watching out my back window and, um, there are a lot of ducks that come to feed in my backyard because there's a pond down the way, a couple of houses down.

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And every year we wait to see if we will have baby ducks and we do this year. And there's a mama and six baby ducks.

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And, uh, she waddled down with her babies a few days ago and, uh, they were all eating some corn back in the woods and, um, suddenly, uh, another pair of ducks showed up and this pair is kind of mean, especially the male.

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He's very mean actually, and, um, has chased the mama away before. And, uh, he's, he's on my list.

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I do not care for him, but anyway, it is a duck. And I watched because he was going to chase away the mama and her babies again.

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And this mother duck, when she saw that male starting to come toward them, she did this more than once, she ran out and led him away from the babies so that he would not go and snap at the babies, um, or scare them away so that they could keep eating and they did.

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And she kind of led him away and he ran after her and chased after her. Um, and this went on for quite a while.

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And it was just, uh, kind of an interesting illustration to me of a mother protecting her children and just the thought of how

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God also protects his children, oftentimes in ways that we don't even see or understand, you know, something happens and, uh, it's just a huge bend in the road that you didn't anticipate and it might not be for weeks or months or years that you look back and you see how

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God protected you by avoiding that situation or, you know, causing that situation to resolve itself in a different way than you anticipated or whatever the situation is.

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That is the God we serve, that he is so present and so aware and so involved in every single detail.

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We can be so confident that he is protecting his children. Does it mean that we, uh, will have a rose garden of a life?

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No, or maybe yes, if you want to think of it as yes, a rose garden that is filled with thorns, depends on which way you want to take the, the metaphor, but it doesn't mean that we're going to have an easy road, but it means that we can have confidence that our

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God is watching over us and protecting us. And as we strive to walk in holiness and live by the spirit that he has graciously bestowed upon us, we can be confident that we are walking according to his will and that all things will work out for our good and his glory, either our good here on this earth, or maybe it won't seem like our good, our good here in this earthly life, but it will be for our ultimate eternal good, right?

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And always, always for his glory. So there you go. That is your metaphor for the day.

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So that was just something I was thinking about and, um, talking about God's sovereignty there previously reminded me of that.

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So speaking of God's protection, God's sovereignty, his loyalty, his dedication, his faithfulness to his children, that's just been something that's been very present, um, kind of at the forefront of my mind lately.

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I recently listened to the third sermon in a series on Esther that, um, one of the elders of our church has been, uh, delivering and it's a wonderful series so far, so you'll have to tune in.

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I'll link to it at the equipping Eve blog. But just listening to the sermon, I was just struck by how the narrative of Esther, the book of Esther demonstrates

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God's faithfulness in spite of the unfaithfulness of Israel. And we just, you know, if you pause and you think about it, you can see this faithfulness of God on display throughout the old

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Testament. And so often we hear from the liberals, uh, you know, well, the God of the old Testament is just a murderer and he hates people.

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He sent everybody to kill people and babies and women and what a terrible murderous

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God. It's not the same God as the God of the new Testament, which is so wrong. It's such a lie. And I think most of us anyway, listening today, know that we understand that the

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God of the old Testament is the God of the new Testament. There is only one God. He has not changed. And we see his faithfulness and his love for his children, his chosen children,

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Israel throughout the old Testament. And I've just been struck by that recently.

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And you think about it, God may discipline his children, but he does not abandon them and he does not, this is so key.

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He does not nullify his promises to his children. A frequent theme that we see throughout

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Psalms is a celebration really of Christ's love for his people and his faithfulness for his people.

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Uh, we can see this in, um, just a couple of places to illustrate Psalm 25 verse 10.

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Turn with me there, ladies. It just talks about celebrating the

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Lord's faithfulness. All the paths of the Lord are loving kindness and truth to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.

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Psalm 85, 10 speaks to this as well. Loving kindness and truth have met together.

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Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. And you see this, um, side by side, loving kindness and truth.

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God does not abandon truth. He does not abandon his loving kindness. He is forever who he is.

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His attributes do not change with the wind. Isn't that right? In fact, if you, uh, turn back further to Deuteronomy, we can see some illustrations, some comments on the

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Lord's faithfulness to his people. Deuteronomy 7, 9.

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Know therefore that the Lord, your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps his covenant and his loving kindness to a thousand thousandth generation with those who love him and keep his commandments.

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But repays those who hate him to their faces to destroy them. He will not delay with him who hates him.

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He will repay him to his face. Therefore you shall keep the commandment and the statutes and the judgments, which

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I am commanding you today to do them. And so we see his loving kindness to his people, but his righteousness exercise to those who are his enemies.

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And that is our God. He is righteous. He is true. He is holy. And so he must repay evil, uh, in accord with his holiness and his righteousness.

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Deuteronomy chapter nine, ladies, if you turn over there, let me see this again.

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Verse four, do not say in your heart, when the Lord, your God has driven them out from before you because of my righteousness, the

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Lord has brought me into possess this land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you, it is not for your righteousness or for the uprightness of your heart that you are going to possess their land, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the

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Lord, your God is driving them out before you in order to confirm the oath, which the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

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No, then that it isn't not because of your righteousness that the Lord, your God is giving you this good land to possess for you are a stubborn people.

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But God is faithful. And he promised that Israel would possess the land. And so he kept his promises.

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God keeps his promises. This is God's faithfulness to Israel in a very tiny nutshell.

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And I think we'll revisit this again in another episode. Well, what does this mean for us?

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What does this mean for us today? Uh, Louie Burkoff in his systematic theology says, quote, the faithfulness of God is of the utmost practical significance to the people of God.

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It is the ground of their confidence, the foundation of their hope and the cause of their rejoicing.

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It saves them from the despair to which their own unfaithfulness might easily lead, gives them courage to carry on in spite of their failures and fills their hearts with joyful anticipations, even when they are deeply conscious of the fact that they have forfeited all the blessings of God.

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And so that just gives us some insight into the faithfulness of God.

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Uh, and I don't know, I don't actually recall if we've done a show specifically on the faithfulness of God, we probably have, or if we haven't, uh, we've certainly spoken about it in the past because you can't talk about the wonders and amazingness that, is that a word, amazingness, you can't talk about our amazing

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God without talking about his faithfulness, you just can't because it is a grace to us that we do not deserve, hence the definition of grace, right, it's undeserved.

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And so it certainly never harms us to speak more and more about the faithfulness of God.

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And I think it always helps us to ponder who God is, because I know that at least speaking for myself, there was a time when

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I believed erroneously, but, um, naively, uh, that God's faithfulness depended at least in part on my performance.

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Uh, now there is an aspect of course, if we are in sin, um, you know, we, we are still justified before God, but if we're living in conscious ongoing rebellion, um, you know, we are separated from God in the sense that that relationship with him is just, it's not what it should be.

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And we can almost feel that, right? Maybe in our prayer lives and just in our day to day, because we know that we are, um, grieving the

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Holy spirit inside of us, but at the same time, God's faithfulness does not depend on our performance because if it did, then

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God would never have to be faithful because we can never perform to the level that we must.

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That's because our righteousness is as filthy rags and we are clothed in Christ's righteousness.

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That's the only way that we are justified before God. Right. And so this mindset that, you know, well,

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God won't watch over me in this situation because I said a bad word the other day or whatever, uh, this is an example of what we we've discussed previously, this idea of, of legalism that can abound in some quote unquote, doctrinally sound churches.

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And so again, I want to be clear. I'm not saying that we run around sinning. You know, we do not sin that grace may abound.

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May it never be. And to quote the apostle Paul, but the reality is that we do sin.

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And while our sin must grieve us and we must strive to mortify that sin by the enabling power of the

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Holy spirit, it must not cause us to despair to the point of being useless for the kingdom.

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And for God, because remember ladies, what does first John say in first John, what does the apostle say in verse nine, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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In fact, verse 10 says, if we say we've not sinned, we make him a liar. And his word is not in us because we are sinners.

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And so we should be so thankful that we serve a faithful God. A .W.

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Pink has said, quote, this quality is essential to his being without it. He would not be

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God. In fact, it is contrary to God's nature to not be a faithful.

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If you look at Psalm 36, verse five, you'll see this. Your loving kindness,

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O Lord extends to the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches to the skies.

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Pink says, quote, far above all finite comprehension is the unchanging faithfulness of God.

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And I'm just going to read a little bit, um, on the faithfulness of God from A .W. Pink here, because I think it's so helpful and it's said so much better than I could say it.

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So it's better just to let the masters say it than to, for me to try to reward it.

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So Pink goes on, he says, quote, God is true. His word of promise is sure in all his relations with his people.

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God is faithful. He may be safely relied upon. No one ever yet really trusted him in vain.

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We find this precious truth expressed almost everywhere in the scriptures for his people need to know that faithfulness is an essential part of the divine character.

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This is the basis of our confidence in him. It's like we spoke about earlier, but it is one thing to accept the faithfulness of God as a divine truth.

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It is quite another to act upon it. God has given us many exceeding great and precious promises, but are we really counting on his fulfillment of them?

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Are we actually expecting him to do for us all that he has said? Are we resting with implicit assurance on these words?

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He is faithful. That promise from Hebrews 10, 23. Pink says there are seasons in the lives of all when it is not easy.

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No, not even for Christians to believe that God is faithful. Our faith is sorely tried.

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Our eyes be dimmed with tears and we can no longer trace the outworkings of his love. Our ears are distracted with the noises of the world harassed by the atheistic whisperings of Satan.

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And we can no longer hear the sweet accents of his still small voice. Cherished, I know, don't write me a letter.

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You know what he's saying there. Cherished plans have been thwarted. Friends on whom we relied have failed us.

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A professed brother or sister in Christ has betrayed us. We are staggered. We sought to be faithful to God and now a dark cloud hides him from us.

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We find it difficult, yay, impossible for carnal reason to harmonize his frowning providence with his gracious promises.

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Ah, faltering soul, severely tried fellow pilgrims, seek grace to heed Isaiah 50, 10, who is among you that feareth the

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Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light. Let him trust in the name of the

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Lord and stay upon his God. So in this little treatise,

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Pink offers three ways that God is faithful.

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And of course there are a million others, but this is just his quick summary. He says first that God is faithful in preserving his people and uses 1

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Corinthians 1, 9. God is faithful by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of his son.

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And the previous first promise was made that God would confirm unto the end his own people. The apostle's confidence in the absolute security of believers was founded, not on the strength of their resolutions or ability to persevere, but on the veracity of him that cannot lie since God has promised to his son, a certain people for his inheritance to deliver them from sin and condemnation and to make them participants of eternal life and glory.

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It is certain that he will not allow any of them to perish. So not only has God saved us, but he will keep us.

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John 10, 27, Christ says, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

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My father who has given them to me is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch them out of the father's hand.

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I and the father are one. Christ has promised that he will preserve his people.

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Secondly, Pink says that God is faithful in disciplining his people, which we mentioned briefly previously.

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Psalm 119 verse 75 reads,

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I know, O Lord, that your judgments are righteous and that in faithfulness, you have afflicted me.

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And if we want to turn to the new Testament, we can turn to Hebrews 12 and you're probably familiar with the passage where I'm headed.

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Hebrews 12, verse seven, it is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as with sons. And what son is there whom his father does not discipline.

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But if you are without discipline of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

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Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live for they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good so that we may share his holiness, all discipline.

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For the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful yet to those who have been trained by it afterwards, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness and God is faithful.

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And it is in his faithfulness that he afflicts or disciplines us. Pink says the faithfulness of God is a truth to be confessed by us.

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Not only when we are at ease, but also when we are smarting under the sharpest rebuke. I think that's hard for us to acknowledge, but important.

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And thirdly, he says that God is faithful in glorifying his people. First Thessalonians 5, 24, faithful as he, which calleth you who also will do.

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The immediate reference here is to the saints being preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. God deals with us, not on the ground of our merits for we have none, but for his own great namesake,

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God is constant to himself and to his own purpose of grace, Romans 8, 30, whom he called, he also glorified.

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God gives a full demonstration of the constancy of his everlasting goodness toward his elect by effectually calling them out of darkness into his marvelous light, and this should fully assure them of the certain continuance of it.

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So God is faithful in preserving, disciplining, and glorifying his people.

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And this truth ladies should quell our fears and our worries and halt any of our complaints.

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Shouldn't it? It quells our fears and our worries about the future, about that decision we have to make, because God is faithful and it should stop us in our tracks when we complain and instead should cause us to, cause our trust in God and in Christ to strengthen, because we know that we serve a faithful God who is faithful in spite of our unfaithfulness.

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He is faithful and that faithfulness is not dependent on our performance. And because God is faithful, he keeps his promises.

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He is a promise keeping covenant, keeping God. And I think actually that perhaps over the next few shows, or at least scattered here and there, maybe throughout a few shows over the next few months, we're going to take a look at some of God's promises and just how

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God keeps his promises and how God is faithful to his people. He was faithful and continues to be faithful to his people,

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Israel, and he is faithful to the church, his bride. And that is you and I ladies, if indeed we have been saved, redeemed, regenerated by this

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God of mercy, this faithful, gracious, kind, loving God. Well, ladies,

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I think that's a high note for us to end on. So before I wear out my welcome, we'll go ahead and close the show, but I look forward to getting back in the swing of things after not recording for a while and running a few reruns and it's summer.

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So I figure a few reruns for a few, I can't even talk today. A few reruns are okay.

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If it's good enough for television, it's good enough for equipping Eve, right? But we are going to get back into it with some new episodes.

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And so I hope you'll tune in. I hope you'll keep listening and I hope that you'll take away some of these thoughts on the faithfulness of God.

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And perhaps if you're in a season of worry or just a season of uncertainty, a study of the faithfulness of God might be helpful to you.

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And even if you're in a good season, you know, where things are going well, God allows those for us as a respite.

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You know, if you're not directly undergoing persecution or trying time, it doesn't mean you aren't saved.

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It might just mean that God in his love and faithfulness is giving you a reprieve and get ready because your time's coming.

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I think we all know that if we've been Christians for any length of time, that there is always another shoe that drops and that just brings us closer to Christ and makes us long more for that eternal life that we've been promised, doesn't it?

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It makes us, uh, it spurs us to evangelize and share the good news of the gospel with others, and it keeps our eyes fixed on Christ because we understand and we know that this world is not all there is.

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It is not our best life now. Our best life is ahead of us because we have a faithful, kind, loving, forgiving

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God who purchased us with his own blood. All right, ladies.

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Until next time, get in your Bibles and get on your knees and get equipped.

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Thanks for listening. Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

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Well, it's true. There's no shortage of candy coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies, but beyond Sunday morning, are

31:45

Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

31:50

Eve in the garden in an attempt to address the need for trustworthy biblical resources for women?

31:57

No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

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My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's word.