CEDRICK BAKER: Alright. Good morning, Woodland Hills. Good morning. Good morning. How are you?

Woo. Good. Doing good. Doing well. First of all, it's great to be with you.

Great to see you. My name is Cedric Baker, and I have the opportunity, to speak a, hopefully, a word, a message you this morning. I wanna thank, first of all, Greg and the team for this opportunity. It's always a joy and a privilege, to to be with you. I have been here at Woodland Hills for about seven years, me and my family, and we have, well, first of all, we enjoy it.

Me. We like being around you, you all. We also just really call this home, and so we're grateful and appreciative of everything that Wheeling Wheeling Hills means, in our lives. So Christmas. We're in the Christmas season, And if you are starting your shopping at all, you've probably run into the song All I Want for Christmas by Mariah Carey.

Anybody know what I'm talking about? I love the song. A little bit repetitive. A little bit repetitive, but I love the song. I love Christmas see I love the Christmas season.

I love the songs. I love hearing Christmas songs. As a matter of fact, I start the process right after Thanksgiving. Some years, a little bit before, but I try my best to start, the songs. I ran into this new group.

I don't know if any of you have heard of them called Pentatonix. Oh my goodness. A capella. They sound amazing, But it's those types of songs going back to just regular Christmas songs that just makes my heart just sing. So we are currently in a Christmas series right now.

We've taken a break, on the series of revelations, And we are really getting into this Christmas, series called God is the Gift, where we zoom out And we connect Christmas to the larger story of who God is and his character. So two weeks ago, Greg started the, message series the series, and he talked about the justice of God. I also wanna thank Greg for dealing with some Sticky versus, in Exodus, and so I'm grateful. We also had Shauna last week, come to us and talk about the forgiveness of God. And so this morning, I wanna talk about God's faithfulness to us.

So today's title is the gift of God's faithfulness. Most of us are familiar with, the story of the birth of Christ us in Luke, the second chapter where it talks about Jesus being born in a manger, and Joseph and Mary is their, humble start, humble beginnings. And so we pretty much are all familiar with that. Most of us are. But in this series, we actually take a little bit of a different, view of it, and we actually submit our time in this series in Exodus thirty four six and seven.

And it says, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a god merciful of gracious A god merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, Keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquities and transgressions and sin, Yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquities of the parents upon the children and children's children to the third and fourth generation. Okay. We don't have to cover that part because Greg has already done that. But I wanna actually really focus on verses six in part of verse seven. It says, and abounding in steadfast love.

That that phrase steadfast love, in the Hebrew and I've been practice practicing my pronunciation, so bear with me, you Hebrew scholars in there. But it is pronounced, from my understanding, Hesa. Hesa. And faithfulness Keeping steadfast love, hesed, for the thousandth generation, for the thousandth generation. So as I was preparing for this sermon, I actually am really reading this scripture.

I thought of my memories as a kid growing up, and some of you may also remember this as well. Every year around Christmas time and Easter, There are certain old, old movies that come on that talk about, you know, biblical stories. And one of those movies that came around in eastern time is this one, the Ten Commandments. I don't know if you remember this, but it actually comes on every year around the same time. It is, It was made back in the nineteen fifth fifties by Charleston Heston as Moses.

Everybody remembers Charleston Heston. And it would come in during Easter time. Well, this is what I thought of in reading the scripture. And this is God talking to Moses as Moses leads his people Out of Egypt. We see multiple times in the Old Testament that God continues to show love to the Israelites over and over again even though they consistently don't show it back.

They are what we would call undeserving, but he still does it anyways. In verse six, god uses that Hebrew word hesed, Which is translated steadfast or loyal love to describe himself. A word that embodies his love, his you. Kindness, his goodness, his loyalty, his faithfulness, all wrapped up into this one phrase. It expresses his promise keeping loyalty motivated by deep personal care.

Some scholars even refer to this word as a covenantal love. God is being faithful to his covenant promise that he gave to them. And as I'll go, further down in this message that we'll see that he gives to us. We see over and over in the Old Testament, specifically with the Israelites, How god mercy and love and faithfulness continues and continues to show up. But in particular, there's a point in time that I wanna really dig into when the Israelites actually rebelled with their frustration with god and Moses.

And then Moses actually needs to go and intercede on their behalf. And so in numbers fourteen and nineteen, this is what Moses says to god. Forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love Just as you have pardoned these people from Egypt even until now, he is reminding God after, Again, they're undeserving as a people, but he's saying, hey. I need you to forgive your people. The people that you brought out of Egypt.

Remember them. Remember your promise to them. Also in verse six, God also uses the Hebrew expression, we said, To describe his faithfulness, this word is translated to consider someone trustworthy. Means that God is faithful and that he can be trusted. When I think of the whole concept in the word of someone that can be trusted.

I actually think of my best friend, David. We had this thing together where we, called each other by their full name every time we met. So I would always say David Anthony McLean, and he would say, Cedric Floyd Baker every single time. And being a transplant from the south, it was hard for me in the beginning to really connect here in Minnesota. And David was a person that I connected with, and we just hit it off really, really well.

I met David at my former church, and he became my best friend. He was the best man in my wedding. I told him everything. We considered ourselves spiritual friends. The main thing that I learned about David, which had my heart, is that he could be trusted.

I could trust on him. I can lean on him. He was such a solid guy. Ultimately, one of the right ways and reasons that I felt that way is because I can say something to David as I was processing, ideating, just feeling crazy at the time, and he would make me feel like I still had a really good idea even though sometimes they were stupid. He made me feel like a good person.

I felt like he had my best interest, at heart and that I did not need to be judged during that time. Last year, Actually, David was tragically killed in a car accident. Rocked my world. Rock my world. As a matter of fact, I, was texting him, and I said, hey.

Let's meet up. And he said, okay. Yeah. I'll be able to meet up. And he gave me, like, eleven or twelve o'clock.

Called him back, Text him back. He was like, you never called me back. It was because he had died in a car accident probably, like, an hour afterwards. And so it rocked me, rocked my family, rocked my community, and It really pulled on my ability on this word of trust. He's no longer here.

He's the person that I really a lot of, I leaned and depended on. As a matter of fact, one one story comes to mind, which is when Rachel and I when Rachel was pregnant with our first son, Christian, and we were I was so excited as a dad, but it was really, really you know, that time was really, really early in the pregnancy. And so we didn't wanna say anything because we didn't technically wanna get our hopes up because anything could happen, you know, during that time. And but I had to tell someone. So, of course, who did I tell?

To who did I tell? I told David. And I was like, David, my wife would kill me, but you cannot Say Anything. Like, please do not. And weeks, you know, passed by, and we've, Rachel, finally told people in our community, and it was so interesting because David's wife was like, wow.

That's So great. David was like, oh, yeah. I knew. And she said, David, you knew? And I looked at him and I said, man, I can trust you.

You. You didn't even tell your wife. I thought you would tell your wife, but you he was like, hey. You told me. Don't tell anybody, so I didn't.

And so it was those types of things that, just I I just so loved about him. But I step back and I say even though he was awesome him in my life, and I'm grateful to have known him the amount of time that I did. He was a person that technically sometimes didn't call me back. He was a person that tried his best to keep his word, but we're we're human. And so he let me down just like I let him down at times.

I wanna talk today about someone that will never let us down. Someone that will always be with us through every situation that we're in. How much more that I would like to offer to you that we can trust god. Deuteronomy seven seven and nine just really sums this up beautifully. It said, it was not because you were numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you.

He's talking to the Israelites. For you were the fewest of all people. It was because the lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors That the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Know, therefore, that the lord your god is god, the faithful god who maintains covenant loyalty with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousandth generation. In this scripture, what god is trying to say is you were not great and grand and awesome.

Actually, you were small. You were the fewest of people. And god still said, I love you. I'm choosing you. I want to have a covenant with you.

And because of the covenant that I had of old, you are partakers in that covenant. We also see this theme throughout the New a man. In second Timothy, second Timothy two and thirteen, it says, if we are faithless, He remains faithful, true to his word and his righteous character, For he cannot deny himself. When I don't keep my end of the bargain, God will always see to it that he will remain faithful in our lives. Oh, yeah.

He is consistent. We can always depend on him. And I know it's hard right now and currently in our society. There is high levels of polarization. There's eroding trust in people and institutions.

We are always trying to seek out who can I trust? We deal with it at work, Trying to scope out who can I lean and depend on, who is actually behind me trying to stick a knife in my back and take credit for my work? We're seeing it all the time. People are always trying to find some level of trust and stability in such an unstable and polarizing world. But I am here to say and you all, I got a chance to pick this topic Because I truly believe, and I am a living witness, that god can be trusted If you are able to put your trust in him, God can be trusted because he is loyal.

If we zoom out, we can actually say that god chooses us. Amen. It's not just that we look up and we say yes to him, but scripture has said us that god chooses us through the birth of his son, Jesus Christ, to save us from our sins. If we are willing to accept the gift, because, ultimately, with everything with God, everything's as a choice. Will you be willing to accept the gift that god has given through his son, Jesus Christ?

This time of year allows us to remember and reflect on god's faithfulness to us through Jesus Christ. And, there are just a few things that I just wanna give you as points For you to remember. Number one, we are unable to earn his love and faithfulness. Even though it's simple, it is actually very, very profound to me. First Corinthians one and nine says, god is faithful.

By him, we were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our lord. In Lamentations three twenty two through twenty three, it says, the steadfast love of god never ceases. His mercies His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.

It's actually, when you think about it, extremely humbling to understand that the god of the universe says that he wants to be faithful to you In everything that you and I represent, he is still committed to us. Again, it hearkens back to his promises and his covenant. This is an area where I personally struggle with Because it has a lot to do as we talk around here about your mental picture of god. And I am always struggling as I go through situations Francis and just live life on how do I see God in those situations. Do I see him as someone that is faithful that I can depend on?

Or do I see him as someone that is helping me get out of trouble, and then I go back into my siloed space, and then he's over here on high looking at how bad I messed up? Ultimately, I am always having to reframe my perspective about God and get to the point, And sometimes it's a struggle, but that he is always rooting for me. Every situation, he is always rooting for me Even when I mess up. Right. And I will be the first person to tell you that I mess up.

But, ultimately, god is always rooting for us in every situation. Number two says, god is faithful to us during troubled times. We can remember this, and if we can remember this, it's actually extremely empowering while we go through heartache, Terrible situations, loss, suffering. I actually believe that it is a fundamental truth. And until I truly get this down deep on the inside of me, I don't believe that I can really fully live a true god centered life.

Because when it's all said and done, the basis of it is that God can be trusted, and I have him as an anchor In my life, he is faithful to me even when, and there will be multiple times, that I am not faithful to him. I can depend On his faithfulness. I believe it is important to remember that god is faithful to us During troubled times. However, I do understand that it is just at those times when we are in trouble that many people believe That god cannot be trusted. It is during those times when I am going through loss That I had I made a prayer to God, and I didn't get it.

That someone left my life unexpectedly At the prime of his life, at thirty eight years old, when he was, in many instances, a large part of my community and my anchor. Can god be trusted during that time? Can god be trusted during the time when I'm praying for a job and I don't get it? Can God be trusted during the time when my child experiences sickness? I'll give you a testimony that I hate RSV.

I hate I hate I hate RSV and any other viral infection and everything else that comes with little kids and germs and sickness, but I just hate it. And so recently, me and my family experienced RSV yet again where my one year old was in a hospital for multiple days. And it was at that time where, as some of you know with kids, you're so busy just going through making sure that things are alright. They're with mine. Especially if you have other kids, you still gotta do drop off in day care or school or this.

There's just so many things that are going on I don't even have time to really think through what is happening right now. What am I navigating? And I just had to take a step when we brought Caleb Holm recently from the hospital, and he's had tubes up his nose and everything. Had to step and say, even though we just went through a very horrible situation for my family, I still believe that God was with us in this broken world. Amen.

And I wanna leave that with you today. We will go through trouble. Actually, the Bible says that expect to go through trouble. This is what you get in a fallen and broken world, But we can lean and depend on a god that says that he will be with us, that he will never leave us nor will he forsake us, that he will be with us all the way until the end of the world. Now that may look different for me and my family than yours, And what I am not trying to do is minimize the hurt, the pain, the suffering, and the loss that many of us many of us, go through and experience.

But you all, if you don't take anything that I am saying today, I want you to know that god can be trusted, and he wants you to trust him because I truly believe that he is trustworthy. Number three, this is the good news to the world. This is the good news to the world. This brings us to the importance of Jesus's birth. It highlights and reminds us that God is faithful through him bringing Jesus Christ, his son, to us in our world in the humble beginnings because he cared so much for us, because he loved us.

He and his sacrificial love came in to think about us, you and I, To make sure that we can have everlasting life. It highlights to us that he can be trusted. We are never abandoned. And a lot of times in the situations that we go through and just, It feels like the hopelessness of what the world is bringing. I, even though they tell me not to look at the news, I actually really like to look news because I like to know what's going on.

And sometimes it can be actually extremely depressing because there are so many things that if I'm not in the right frame of mind, I see that, where are you, god? What in the world is going on? You say you're here. You say you are with us, but I am seeing craziness happen all over the world. And for those that are not connected with Jesus, it actually comes across as hopelessness.

So when there's a situation and you have a disaster, a shooting, I mean, just terrible, heinous situations, I have even had to frame it for myself. God, this is actually really, really bad. Where are you? Where are you in all of this? But I believe, specifically as children and people of God, that if we step back and we remove with from the buzz and the craziness of what this world is offering us.

And we go back to the scripture. We can see countless times That God, even when the Israelites were not faithful and a lot of things were going on, God was able to show different ways in that he was faithful, and he showed his faithfulness and love to them. I know that I may not always get it, and And there are some things that are gonna go over my head when it comes to why certain things happen. Now if you wanna go deeper in this, I know that Greg has given sermons on this, about suffering. And so I will allow you to listen to his sermon on that.

But what I will tell you is as someone that has gone through my share of suffering and all of our shares of suffering is different. I believe That god has shown himself to me in ways that if in the middle of it, I don't think I could really see it. But after the fact, I saw that god was so faithful to me even when the world and situations were terrible. Jesus presents this pathway of love, peace, joy only found in him. It's only founded him.

And I want us to remember today that sometimes it can actually be frustrating when you're in the middle of suffering and situations. But if we can just hold on to that glimmer of hope That god is with us. It doesn't necessarily lessen the pain, but it does give us a confidence and motivation the stick on during the situation. I so when I grew up, growing up, And I know some of you remember the terminology of hymns, hymnals. Devotional songs.

When I was younger, it it I will tell you, I didn't really like hymns because they were just old folkie, like, old school. There was no, like, good tempo and beat to them. Like, they were just really, really bland, and you had to focus on the words, you know, that kind of stuff. And so as I've gotten older, now I'm like, oh, the words actually do mean a lot. I need to think about the words.

And, there was a hymn that I used to sing when I was younger in church, and the lyrics just continue to keep him back to me as I was thinking about this message. And the hymn is called Great is Thy Faithfulness. This happened to me last night. God is so faithful to us. And I just want us to take a time, just a moment to just I don't wanna go through the whole hymn, but I just want us to take a moment to just Read the lyrics.

And I want you to think about and reflect, we're the end of the year, of how good God has been to you in your life and your family and your friends. How he has kept you in so many different ways even when in the middle of it, it seemed like It was crazy, and how in the world would this work out? And it was my fault, and he still was faithful To us. This hymn is based on Lamentations three twenty two that we read earlier by Thomas Chisholm in nineteen twenty three, so it's old, as a testimony of god's faithfulness in his life. This song, you all, I believe, gives us an opportunity, the lyrics, gives us an opportunity to just sit back for a moment and just reflect on the goodness of God.

And before I say it, I just wanna say this. It gave me the opportunity more recently to reflect on my life. You all a young boy from Florida Well, my parents worked hard and struggled and sacrificed like many of yours to give me as much of a good life as they I they possibly could, but they struggle. And I have seen How God has been so faithful to me because all I have ever wanted to do and be is valuable in any space that he gives me. Any space.

I wanna be able to bring value, and I have seen God do it in very strange ways. Extremely strange ways, but he's been so faithful. As I said earlier about my family, he has he has us in so many different ways. And we don't have testimony service here at Woodland Hills, But I want to testify today That God is faithful. He is so faithful.

You. It brings an emotion to me that I can't hardly contain because I think about if he wasn't faithful to me, you. I would have gone. It'd probably been a statistic. Yeah.

But God is so faithful. You. And you all, if you have opportunities to think about that in your life, I promise you there is you. Something there for you to see that god is faithful. There are he's shown himself in you.

Small ways, maybe large ways, ways in which we were the problem, we were the issue, but he still came out with a solution. You. God is faithful. You tell it, brother. Oh.

You tell it. So I want us to look at these lyrics. Yeah. And I want us to just think about in our lives the faithfulness of God. It says great is thy faithfulness.

Great is thy faithfulness. Oh, god, my father, there is no shadow you. Of turning with thee. Thou changest not thy compassion. It fails not as thou has been, thou forever will be.

He is consistent. Yes. The refrain says, great is thy faithfulness. Great is thy faithfulness. Morning by morning, and I wanna put in
there in morning and morning you. And morning and afternoon and day and morning and morning and morning and morning,
you. He consistently shows himself. Mercies I see. All I have needed, Thy hands have provided. Great is thy faithfulness.

Lord, unto me. Take a moment and just think about the goodness and the faithfulness of god in your situations. Even when it did not work out the way you thought that it should, god has a way Of still working things out in our lives that allows us to still able, able to point to him you. Say that if it had not been for god who was on our side, where would we be? Where would we be?

This gift is based on God's character. It embodies the character of God found in Jesus Christ. And so as we, I'm sorry, As we think about this Christmas season, and we think about Jesus Christ and being born in a manger, Which has also been great. But I want you to make the connection to your life and think about how good and how trusting god has been to us as we search for meaning and stability in an increasing polarized and untrustworthy world. Remember, god can be trusted because he first loved us.

It's not that we came in and that our deeds and our acts warranted the love of god. It's that god said, I'm going to choose you when you don't deserve it. He said yes to us when many times we say no to him. And as we search for meaning and stability in an increasing polarizing world. Please remember, we can trust God because I truly believe.

If you allow him to be, he will be faithful to you in your life. I wanna pray for a moment, and then we'll end our time together. Father, we thank you so much for your son, Jesus. We thank you so much for this Christmas time and allowing us to reflect on who you are and your character That you are faithful, that you are loving, and that your steadfast love will endure and abound in our lives. I pray that you allow this message to just take root in our hearts.

And over the next few days and weeks that we find opportunities and ways to reflect on how good you have been to us and our families. How good you have been to us in the situations that we've been in Even when we were the reason for us being in those situations, you still find ways to show your love and your mercy to us. So I pray father god that it's rooted in us and that we can continue to learn to grow stronger in our dependency On you. Amen. Amen.

Thank you so much for your time today. You. I wanna say, at the end of this message, I wanna say that we have prayer, at the, in the back of the auditorium excuse me, the front Torium and then also online. The newscast with Shauna and Dan Kent go a little bit further in this message and go deeper in a different angle. And don't forget our gathering groups throughout the week where you can connect with others on this and other messages, here in the Twin Cities, but also around the world.

Thank you so much for your time, and please go out and remember the faithfulness of God. Thank you.