Isn’t it important to spend time with God in prayer?  Don’t you think that has to be a constant in our lives?  Is it a resource you use faithfully?  Listen, I can’t tell you how important it is to remember how much God loves us and that He responds to our concerns! However, suppose when I went to God, I got God’s voice mail instead? Suppose I got an automated voice saying: “Thank you for calling My Father’s House. Please select one of the following four options: Press 1 for a request. Press 2 to give thanks. Press 3 to complain. For all other inquiries, press 4.”

So I press 1 and hear: “We’re sorry. All of the angels are helping other customers right now. Please stay on the line. Your call will be answered in the order it was received . . . I’m sorry, our computers show you have called once today already. Please hang up immediately.” Or, even worse, “This office is closed for the weekend. Please call again Monday.”

Thank God for a direct line into His presence!  How do we know that we have a direct line?  How do we know that God cares about us in a personal, loving, faithful, and constant way? One reason is in our text from 2 Timothy. In this lesson, the Apostle Paul says there is one thing God cannot do.  Now does that surprise you?  That there is actually something that God can’t do?  But that is what Paul says to us: There is one thing God cannot do.

What is it that Paul says God cannot do?  He says, God “cannot disown himself.” Listen to his words to in 2 Timothy:  “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” (v.11-13)

What does that mean, God cannot disown himself?  It means that God cannot be anything other than who He is!  And that’s good news for us, because it means God can never forget us nor forsake us!  It means God will always be faithful!  He cannot not be faithful! God will never forget us nor forsake us regardless of what we may do. “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”

I love the way Anselm, one of the early church Fathers, put it: “I fled from God and God came with me.” Isn’t that kind of ironic?  Kind of humorous? “I fled from God, but couldn’t shake Him, for He came with me.” Many of us can give that testimony, can’t we?

I’m sure that many of you remember Margaret Wise Brown’s beloved children’s book, The Runaway Bunny. A mother rabbit tells of the lengths she will go to find her baby who threatens to run away. “If you run away,” says his mother, “I will run after you. For you are my little bunny.” She goes on to tell him that if he becomes a fish in a trout stream, she will become a fisherman and fish for him. If he becomes a sailboat, she will become the wind and blow him back to port over and over again. “If you become a little boy and run into a house,” says the mother bunny, “I will become your mother and catch you in my arms and hug you.” It’s a wonderful story… and it is our story in our relationship with God!

“Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?” writes the psalmist (139:7). “I fled from God and God came with me.”  What is the one thing God cannot do?  God cannot betray God’s own character!  God cannot do anything that is unloving. Why? Because God is love!  God cannot do anything unholy. Why?  Because God is holy!

The one thing God cannot do is disown Himself.  This is the hope on which our lives are built!  If we are faithless, God will remain faithful, because God can’t disown himself! (Gospel)

Are we sometimes faithless?  Do birds fly?  Do fish swim?  Human beings sin!  You sin!  I sin!  As human beings, we are susceptible to the power of evil, and we find ourselves being faithless far too many times, don’t we?

Adolf Eichmann was one of the most “evil” men who ever lived. Eichmann served in Hitler’s inner circle and devoted his energies to wiping the Jewish population off the face of the earth. All the most evil Nazi methods--the concentration camps, the gas chambers, the forced imprisonment of Jews--Eichmann supported all of these.

After World War II, Eichmann escaped to South America, where he hid from the law for many years. Eventually, Nazi hunters captured him and brought him back to Israel to stand trial.
One of the many witnesses at Eichmann’s trial was a Jewish man named Numea. Numea had only barely survived being in a concentration camp, and he had first-hand knowledge of the evils that were perpetrated there.

As Numea sat in the courtroom waiting to testify in Eichmann’s trial, he began to cry. Someone asked if he was crying over the evil that Eichmann had done. No, he answered. He was crying because he saw that Adolf Eichmann was just an ordinary person. He was not a monster. And if an ordinary person could commit such horrific acts, then, thought Numea, couldn’t he, Numea, also be susceptible to such things?

Do you believe that you could have committed the same kinds of atrocities that Adolf Eichmann did?  Probably not.  However, could you have stood by and allowed these atrocities to be committed?  Be careful how you answer. Millions of ordinary German citizens did just that. They stood by while their country committed awful atrocities. They didn’t want to seem unpatriotic, so they said nothing. They were afraid of what their neighbours would say, so they said nothing. They didn’t want to lose their jobs.  Or go to jail.  So they said nothing.

Maybe we wouldn’t have committed the same atrocities as Adolf Eichmann did. But there is a good chance we could have been part of those who stood by and let these crimes against humanity be committed.  Don’t we sometimes stand by and let people around us commit things that we know are wrong?  And sometimes, maybe even join in with them? We’re weak when it comes to standing for justice and righteousness! We’re more concerned with what our neighbour thinks than what God thinks!  Oh, yes, my friends, we have been faithless!

That is an interesting word, faithless. It can mean the opposite of faithful, referring to how we act: Faithless.  It also can mean, “lacking in faith,” referring to what we believe.  Rather than being full of faith we are faith-less.  And we have been both. We are unfaithful to Christ in the way we act, and we lack faith in what Christ has done for us and in what God promises to do for us.  But here is the Good News: “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”

God is faithful.  That’s the only hope we have!  God is faithful.  John says in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins, and purify us from all unrighteousness.” That is our hope!  God cannot disown himself.  God can do none other than love us and forgive us!  God is faithful, no matter who we are or what we’ve done.  And nowhere else do we see that truth so clearly and brilliantly as when we see Jesus hanging on that cross!

That is the nature of God. “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful . . .”

There is a story of a young mother, wise beyond her years, who takes her little son to his first day of nursery school.  As she lets go of his hand at the edge of the classroom, she kisses him and says, “Goodbye, my love. No one is leaving.” Of course, she is leaving in body, but not in spirit. This young mother wants her boy to know that she will be thinking of him all day, and that she will return to get him at the proper time. Every morning when she drops her son off at his new school, she says, “Goodbye, my love. No one is leaving.”

The years pass, and the boy grows into a man. One day, the mother becomes too old and frail to care for herself. Alzheimer’s has begun to steal her memories. Her son places her in the nicest nursing home in town. Each day he comes to visit her, and at the end of each visit, the nurses overhear him saying, “Goodbye, my love. No one is leaving.” And for a moment, his mother’s eyes brighten, and she remembers.

We know faithfulness when we see it. “Goodbye, my love. No one is leaving.”

God is speaking those words to us today. Your eyes can brighten with hope!  Regardless of our needs, regardless of our misdeeds, God will never forget us nor forsake us!  You will never get his “voice mail.” There is one thing God cannot do, “If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”   Amen.