There’s a lot of bad news out there. People are suffering and dying from a world-wide pandemic. The world is falling apart, the sky is falling, there are wars and rumors of wars, and there is infighting here and outfighting there. The worst news of all is that we are sinners!
Well, how about some good news?
God Loves You.
I'm here to tell you that God loves you. Yes, he does. I want us today just to realize the fact that God loves us. I don't want to look for practical ways that plays itself out. I don't want to make a to-do list of how we are to be more loving. I just want and need us to hear that God loves us. God’s love is demonstrated in a thousand different ways. I invite you to consider just a few of these ways.
He created humanity.
Genesis 1:27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them
Genesis 1:31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
Being created in God’s image is a marvelous and loving gift. Imagine what we would be if he created us in the image of a dog, or an elephant, or a tree. He did not do this. He wanted us to look like Him!
He put humanity into a marvelous creation designed exclusively for us to live in, be sustained by and to enjoy.
When we take the time to look, it is a marvelous and wonderful thing to see the glory of God all around us! Looking at majestic mountain ranges, or the vast, crashing oceans, or watching tiny sparrows feasting in the trees, we can be awestruck at his majesty and wonder at his care that we should enjoy this world.
Psalm 104:13-14 He waters the mountains from his upper chambers; the land is satisfied by the fruit of his work. He makes grass grow for the cattle, and plants for people to cultivate—bringing forth food from the earth . . .
He watched over you while you were being formed and when you were a dependant infant, unable to do anything for him or for others.
Psalm 139:13-17
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
God demonstrates his love for us by calling us to purpose and fulfillment.
Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Work is part of God’s initial design. It is part of God’s purpose for your life (housewife, truck driver, engineer, doctor, nurse, ditch digger, teacher, mother, father . . .). When we till the soil and produce good food, when we create things that help the earth to prosper or to be restored, and when we help others, we can find incredible fulfillment. Haven’t you ever wondered why you feel so satisfied after you have worked hard at something? It’s because God loves you enough to give you purpose for living.
Sometimes God calls us to specific roles or tasks in the world or in ministry. After Debra’s leadership recorded in Judges 4-5, we read: Then the land had peace forty years. (5:31) The Apostle Paul was given a very specific work to do. Acts 9:15-16 But the Lord said to Ananias, "Go! This man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings and before the people of Israel, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name,"
God loves us even while we sin.
Make no mistake, God hates our sin while continuing to love us. And in his love, there are great and terrible consequences for our sins if we do not confess and repent (turn away from) them. But, if we do confess our sins to him, if we go to him and ask for forgiveness—all that guilt, all that sorrow, all that burden is lifted off of our weak shoulders by his great hands.
This demonstration of love started all the way back in the Garden of Eden. Did you know that the instant the forbidden fruit touched the lips of Adam and Eve, God’s love never failed or faltered? He loved them before they sinned. He loved them after they sinned. And his great love pushed all the way through human history and landed on our doorstep in the person of Jesus Christ—God himself among us, with us, for us!
Romans 5:6-8 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
This kind of love, of course, does not make us free to sin. Rather, God's grace and the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the present resource of the Holy Spirit give us the choice to not sin. But until those choices are made, his love and grace are also extended towards us while we are sinners.
If upon our death we have resisted so great a love, then we live without him for eternity. But make no mistake, no one is so great a sinner that God’s love will not cover them when they call on his Name.
God loves you by making a way for you.
Genesis 37-50 tells the incredible story of Joseph whose life could have been destroyed by his brothers’ betrayals, the lies of foolish people, and the prison cells of Egypt. But God always gave him a way out—out of death, out of slavery, out of temptation, out of prison, out of revenge and out of unforgiveness. God raised Joseph up out of that terrible life to make him into a leader who had the wisdom to save a nation. When finally facing his brothers who betrayed him many years earlier, Joseph could talk about the love of God. Genesis 50:19-20 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives."
Between Joseph and the First Century Church rests the greatest truth of all.
1 John 4:8-10 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Make no mistake you cannot get out of sin and trouble on your own. Oh, how many times we have tried! It is only through the shed blood and the resurrection power of Jesus Christ that we are made free. What greater love is there than that?
Another man who experienced similar beatings, imprisonment and persecution both to Joseph and to Jesus Christ, wanted to make sure that his readers understood that the God of Joseph in ancient Egypt and the risen Christ was still the same God of his present troubles.
1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
God loves us by demonstrating patience toward us.
Through the ups and downs of Israelite history and our own waffling levels of obedience, God still loves us. The great re-builder of the walls of Jerusalem, Nehemiah, a tremendous and godly civic leader prayed this out honestly. He understood God’s love in the demonstration of incredible patience.
Nehemiah 9:16-21 “But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,’ or when they committed awful blasphemies.
“Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.”
Peter, the great apostle of Jesus Christ and one of the pillars of the New Testament Church wrote this great love. 2 Peter 3:8-9 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
Is not the evidence of God’s love in the very fact that we are not completely consumed and destroyed by our sins past and present? Oh, the immense patience of God toward us!
God loves us when we cannot do anything for Him. It's more than a utilitarian love.
God thought about us before we were conceived and while we were being shaped, totally dependant on our mother's body and as a crying infant unable to lift, tote or bale. This is also true at the end of life as well. When our bodies fail us or disease takes over, God still loves us. If you need to, read Psalm 139 again. God loved us!
God still loves us when we haven't had time to make things right, make amends or correct behaviors.
My brothers and sisters, if you go from reading this today and you find yourself on the brink of death within minutes or hours, you still have time to receive the love and forgiveness of God. That’s grace and love indeed.
Luke 23:38-43 There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.
One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”
But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
God’s love is eternal.
Did you know that God’s love will always outlast yours? Did you know that God’s love will always hold out longer than that of anyone else? Even the saints and angels cannot out-love God. You might think because of all the shallow, false, and finite loves you have experienced with human beings that God’s love could not possibly be greater. But the love of God is so great that we cannot truly comprehend it nor do we deserve it. But, praise God, we can receive it!
The old and faithful apostle John received a great gift from God. It was a revelation of the end of times and the beginning of eternity. In this great and terrible vision certain truths were set before him. In the Spirit he saw the glory of God and angels and saints worshipping God in absolute humility and joy because of his love.
Revelation 5:11-14
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”
The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down and worshiped.
Friends, if the angels worship him like that, he must be love. If the saints and elders will worship him like that, he must be love.
There are going to be a lot of things in this life that you think are evidence that God does not, will not, or cannot love you. But you are wrong, deceived or full of self-pity. God loves you so much that he's willing to go, and has gone, that extra mile to Calvary, that extra mile to Hell and back, that extra mile bursting through graves clothes, and is now seated mighty and strong in heaven, proclaiming his loving victory for you and me.
Today we need to receive that truth of God's gracious, unmerited love to live in his fullness today. Simply open your hearts, perhaps for the first time, or for a renewal of our understanding of God’s love, and just receive that love today.
Romans 8:31-39
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
© M.R. Hyde 2020
