How To Seek God First, Jan 2, 2016

I wrote about how I first applied Matthew 6:33 in the 1980's and 90's in my first post of 2016: How To Seek First God's Kingdom. How might I apply Matthew 6:33 today? These are my random, rambling, ruminating, reflections:

• Don't cheat my conscience. Paul says, "So I strive always to keep my conscience clear before God and man" (Ac 24:16, NIV). I cheat my conscience when I do and think of what I should have no business doing and thinking of. Yet like Paul I know that I do not do what I want, but instead do what I do not want to do (Ro 7:15-16). Lord, have mercy.

• Guard my heart. Proverbs says, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life" (Pro 4:23, NLT). I need to do so because "The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?" (Jer 17:9, NLT)

• Delight in the Scriptures (Ac 20:27). The psalmist cried out, "Oh, how I love your instructions! I think about them all day long" (Ps 119:97, NLT). Also, the psalmist said, "Instead, his delight is in the Lord's instruction, and he meditates on it day and night" (Ps 1:2, HCSB).

Love by C. S. Lewis

The will. "Christian love, either towards God or towards man, is an affair of the will." "Love in the Christian sense, does not mean an emotion.  It is a state not of feelings but of the will; that state of the will which we have naturally about ourselves, and must learn to have about other people."

Feeling after acting. "The rule for all of us is perfectly simple.  Do not waste time bothering whether you "love" your neighbor; act as if you did.  As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets.  When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.  If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more.  If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less."

What More Could God Have Done (Isaiah 5:1-7)

Isaiah 5:1-7, 1, 4 (1-7, 8-25, 26-30) [Reading of Isaiah 5:1-7 with pictures - 1 min)]

"I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside." "What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?" (Isa 5:1, 4, 7).

Outline (5:1-30):

1. The Song (1-7): Love and grace.
2. The Woes (8-25): Laments of sorrow.
3. The Judgment (26-30): Defeat and darkness.

I will sing for the one I love (1). "I" is Isaiah. "The one I love" or "my beloved" (ESV) is God (1a). Isaiah had an intimate relationship with God. The prophets, including Isaiah, are touched by the pathos of God. God is passionate for his people. He is jealous for them. Yet they seemed determined to have their own way at all costs. It is like Isaiah is entering into the heart of God, feeling the very heart of God as God looks at his vineyard (1b).

The Dimensions of Love (Ephesians 3:14-21)

Ephesians 3:16-19, 18b "...grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ."

"I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Eph 3:17b-19, NIV).

Christ's love has many dimensions: width, length, height and depth. No matter how much and how far one knows the love of God, he or she will never get to the end of it. For Christ's love is:

• wide enough to encompass all mankind.
• long enough to last for eternity.
• deep enough to reach the most broken person.
• high enough to exalt him or her to heaven.

How To Delight in God's Word

The first sermon that I will preach in 2015 this Sunday is from Psalm 1, titled: The Secret of Happiness.

The theme: One is happy and blessed when they delight in the law (instruction) of the Lord, and meditate on it day and night (Ps 1:2).

What does it mean to delight in God's word? Loving God's word cannot be separated from loving God and loving others. Delighting in Gods word should include at least the following:

1. Loving God.
2. Loving others.
3. Loving Scripture.

Only Ending the Old Way Produces a New Way

Yearning for a new way will not produce it. Only ending the old way can do that.

You cannot hold onto the old all the while declaring that you want something new.

The old will defy the new; the old will deny the new; the old will decry the new.

There is only one way to bring in the new. You must make room for it.

Love (Dt 6:5)

Deuteronomy 6:4-5 (The Shema)

"Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength."

1. What love is
2. Why we love
3. How to love

I. What love is

• God is love (1 Jn 4:8, 16).
• Not words or feelings, but a practical demonstration (Rom 5:8; Jn 3:16).
  

II. Why we love

• God first loved us (1 Jn 4:19).
• God redeemed us from slavery (Dt 5:15; 15:15).

The Search For One TRUE LOVE (Gen 29:15-35)

"...the Lord saw that Leah was not loved..." (Gen 29:31).

Theme: Those who have an inner vacuum and emptiness give themselves to a hope---a hope for 1 true love.

"The Titanic" was a mega hit in 1997 partly because every girl in the world wishes to have her own Leonardo DiCaprio, who sacrificed himself to the freezing ocean out of his undying love for his 1 true love. Many a girl wishes that her "heart will go on" forever because of a true love that never dies. Because of the undying desire for 1 true love that never diminishes through out life, James Cameron made $1.8 billion with his own personal share of $100 million. We agree with the Beatles that "All you need is love."

The Bible is utterly realistic about how hard it is to not be married (thus "not loved"), and how hard it is to be married (somehow the love is not enough). Outside the church people are cynical about marriage. Inside the church people think that family values are what life is all about. The Bible says both these attitudes are wrong. The Bible does not hold up marriage as what one needs to have a fulfilled life. Rather, it points us to a person, to Jesus, the ultimate source of our deepest fulfillment.

There is a fascinating account of Jacob's search for 1 true love. He gave himself to a singular hope--a hope for 1 true love. We learn 3 things about man's quest for 1 true love:

1. What’s behind the hope (What is behind that hope for 1 true love)
2. The disillusionment that generally accompanies that hope for 1 true love
3. What will actually/ultimately fulfill that hope (the hope for 1 true love)

I. The Hope Behind 1 True Love (There is an overpowering human drive in every person to find 1 true love)

This text begins with Laban asking Jacob what wages he would like (Gen 29:15). Jacob had to flee from home. He had deceived his father Isaac to give him the blessing of the firstborn that belonged to Esau, his older twin. Thus, Esau wanted to kill him. Jacob had no choice but to travel a month's journey to his uncle Laban, his mother's brother.

Laban, a shrewd businessman, realized Jacob's tremendous ability as a good worker and manager. He figured that he could make a lot of money if Jacob cared for his flocks. So he asked how he would pay Jacob (Gen 29:15). Jacob's answer was simple: "Rachel, my 1 true love!" She was Laban's absolutely stunningly gorgeous younger daughter (Gen 29:16), with "a lovely figure and was beautiful" (Gen 29:17). Robert Altar, the great Hebrew literature scholar at Berkeley, says that there are all sorts of signals in the text about how over-the-top, intensely lovesick and overwhelmed Jacob is with Rachel. Upon meeting her, he showed off his strength, kissed her and wept aloud (Gen 29:10-11). He agreed to work 7 years for her (Gen 29:18). "So Jacob served seven years to get Rachel, but they seemed like only a few days to him because of his love for her" (Gen 29:20). After 7 years, Jacob demanded, “Give me my wife. My time is completed, and I want to make love to her" (Gen 29:21). In the Hebrew, this statement is so bald, so graphic, so sexual, so over-the-top, inappropriate and non-customary. The narrator is showing us a man driven by and overwhelmed with emotional and sexual longing for 1 woman. Why?

Jacob's life was empty. He never had his father's love. Now he didn't have his mother's love. Though he had met God (Gen 28:17), he had no sense of God's love. He'd lost everything -- no family, no inheritance, no nothing. Then he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He said to himself, "If I had her, finally something would be right with my lousy life. She will make my life right; she will fix everything that's wrong about my life." All of the longings of the human heart for significance, for security, for meaning--they were all fixed on Rachel.

Cultural historians say that in ancient times people married for status; they didn't marry for love, which is supposedly a relatively recent phenomenon. Our culture is begging us to load all of the deepest needs of our hearts for significance, security, and transcendence into romance and love, into finding that 1 true love. This will fix my lousy life! In most of the world today, people cannot imagine living without apocalyptic romance and love. This has been magnified to an astounding degree. Where does this lead?

II. The Devastation/Disillusionment that Accompanies the Hope for 1 True Love

Laban knew exactly what it meant when Jacob offered to serve 7 years for Rachel. At that time, to marry someone required a bride-price paid to the father (30-40 shekels). Robert Altar says a month's wages was 1 and a half shekels. Jacob offered 3-4 times the normal bride-price. Why? He was absolutely love struck, love sick. He wanted to show how much he loved her. Laban knew how vulnerable he was.

Commentators say that there are indications in the text that Laban immediately came up with a plan, realizing that he could get even more out of this deal. When Jacob proposed the 7 years (Gen 29:18) (the bride price he did not have), Laban never said, "Yes! Deal!" He said, “It’s better that I give her to you than to some other man. Stay here with me” (Gen 29:19). Jacob wanted to hear a yes, so he heard a yes. But Laban did not say yes.

7 years pass. Jacob says, "Give me my wife" (Gen 29:21). So Laban prepared a great feast (Gen 29:22). In the middle of the feast, the bride, heavily veiled, was given to him, and he took her into her tent. He was inebriated and in that dark tent, "Jacob made love to her" (Gen 29:23). But "when morning came, there was Leah!" (Gen 29:25a). Rightfully angry, Jacob said to Laban, “What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn’t I? Why have you deceived me?" (Gen 29:25b). Laban nonchalantly responds, “It is not our custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. Finish this daughter’s bridal week; then we will give you the younger one also, in return for another seven years of work" (Gen 29:26-27). Without a fight or protest, Jacob basically says, "Oh, OK" (Gen 29:28). Why?

Jacob was obviously absolutely angry, knowing he was thoroughly unfairly deceived. Why doesn't respond with righteous unrelenting indignation and wither Laban's cool exterior? Many devastating persuasive reasonable 'comebacks' are possible. But he didn't retaliate. He is unlike the usual "man of struggle and conflict" that he is. He also just caved in and agreed to another 7 years for Rachel without a fight. His indignation was absent. Why did Jacob quietly just give in?

1st, Laban said, "It's not our custom here..." (Gen 29:26). Robert Alter translates it, "It's is not done thus in our place..." Laban is an instrument of dramatic irony: his perfectly natural reference to "our place" has the effect of touching a nerve of guilty consciousness in Jacob, how in his place acted to put the younger "before the firstborn" (Gen 29:26, ESV), the word Laban used to refer to Leah. Those words must have been like a dagger in Jacob's heart. They could not fail to make Jacob think of what he did and set his guilty conscience on fire.

2nd, Jacob said, "Why have you deceived me?" (Gen 26:25) Here the word translated "deceived" is the same word Isaac used to describe Jacob to Esau (Gen 27:35). "It has been clearly recognized since late antiquity that the whole story of switched brides is a meting out of poetic justice to Jacob--the deceiver deceived, deprived by darkness of the sense of sight as his father is by blindness, relying, like his father, on the misleading sense of touch." (Robert Altar, Genesis, 1996, 155). The parallels are hard to miss. Jacob's deceit and Laban's deceit both entailed deception and exploitation of weaknesses and the switching of the 1st-born and 2nd-born.

Likely Jacob realized that Laban did to him what he had done to his father. In the dark, Jacob thought he was touching Rachel, as his father in the dark of his blindness had thought he was touching Esau. In an imaginary conversation the next day between Jacob and Leah, Jacob says to Leah, "I called out 'Rachel' in the dark and you answered. Why did you do that to me?" Leah says, "Your father called out Esau in the dark and you answered. Why did you do that to him?" Suddenly the evil Jacob has done comes back to him. Jacob sees what it is like to be manipulated and deceived, and meekly picks up and works another 7 years.

We see Jacob in his devastation, but what about Leah? Who is she? She is described variously as having eyes that are weak, tender, soft, delicate (Gen 29:17). The Hebrew word is ambiguous. Perhaps, she was cross-eyed. Likely, it was something unsightly. The point, however, is that she is particularly unattractive, in sharp contrast to her absolutely stunning sister. Laban knew that no one was ever going to marry her or offer any money for her. How was he going to get rid of her? How would he unload her? He found a way through Jacob who was completely vulnerable and love struck. Now the girl that Laban, her father, did not want was given to a husband who doesn't want her either. She is the girl nobody wants.

Leah has a hollow in her heart every bit as big as the hollow in Jacob's heart. She begins to do to Jacob what Jacob had done to Rachel and what Isaac had done to Esau: She set her heart on Jacob. The evil pathology in the family just ricochets around from generation to generation.

When Leah had her 1st 3 sons (Gen 29:32-34), what was she doing? She was trying to get an identity through traditional family values. In those days, having sons was the best way to do that. But it was not working. She set her heart, all of her hopes and dreams, on her husband, by giving him many sons. She thought, "If my husband loves me, it will fix my lousy life." Instead, she was just going down into hell. Gen 29:30 says, "his (Jacob's) love for Rachel was greater than his love for Leah." It meant that she was condemned every single day. Her hell was to see the man she most longed for in the arms of the one in whose shadow she has lived all of her life. Every day was like another knife in the heart.

What can we learn here?

1st, in the morning, it is always Leah! In all of life there runs a ground note of cosmic disappointment. Understand that life will always disappoint. Jacob says, "If I just get Rachel, everything will be OK." Like Jacob, whatever we set our hopes on--in the morning, it is always Leah! Why? Because the good things in the world that we desperately want (marriage, families, ministry) will never be able to do what we want them to do for us. If one puts weight on the person we are marrying, (the children we love, the ministry we desire), we are going to crush him or her. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, we KNOW that everything disappoints, and that there is a note of cosmic disappointment and disillusionment in everything, in all the things into which we most put our hopes. When we experience this, there are 4 things we can do:

1. Blame the thing (The fool's way), drop it, get new and better ones.
2. Blame yourself (The way of self-pity and despair). Beat yourself up. Hate yourself.
3. Blame the world (The cynical way). This leads to ever increasing hardness.
4. Realize the reality (God's way). In Mere Christianity, CS Lewis said, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in the world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world (something supernatural and eternal)."
   

2nd, liberalism and conservatism are wrong about romance, love and sex. Jacob was liberal, "Give me my wife! I want sex!" Leah was conservative. She is having babies. She is trying to find her identity in being a loving wife. They are both wrong. Their lives are a mess. Earnest Becker (Denial of Death, 1973, 166) says, "No human relationship can bear the burden of godhood... However much we may idealize and idolize him (the love partner), he inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection. And as he is our ideal measure of value, this imperfection falls back upon us." We are all seeking redemption, value, significance, meaning, validation through love, through our idols. It doesn't work. Yet we have this undying drive in us for 1 true love. What can we do?

III.  What can Fulfill the Hope for 1 True Love

See what God does in Leah and for Leah. She is the 1st person to get it. Scholars notice that even though she is clearly making a functional idol out of her husband and her family, she is calling on the Lord. She doesn't speak about God in some general way or invoke the name Elohim. She uses the name Yahweh in the birth of the 1st 2 sons (Gen 29:32-33).

Elohim was the generic word for God. The general idea of God in all cultures were gods at the top of the ladder. So we had to get up there through rituals, moral performance, transformations of consciousness. Everyone understood God in that sense. But Yahweh was different. Yahweh was the God who came down the ladder, the one who entered into a personal covenantal relationship and intervened to save. In Altar's translation of Genesis, Gen 28:13 says, "the Lord was poised over him." Likely Leah learned about Yahweh from Jacob. Even though she is still in the grip of her functional idolatry, somehow she is trying, she is calling out, she is reaching out to a God of grace. She has grasped the concept. Finally, with the birth of the 4th son, there is a breakthrough. She does not mention husband or child, but says boldly, “This time I will praise the LORD” (Gen 29:35). At that point, she has finally taken her heart's deepest hopes off of the old way, off of her husband and her children, and she has put them in the Lord.

Jacob and Laban had stolen Leah's life. She had given her heart to a good thing (husband, love, children) and turned it into an ultimate thing. The result was only heart break and more heart break. But when she gave her heart to the Lord, she got her life back. What good thing in your life are you treating as an ultimate thing? What do you need to stop giving your heart to in order to get your life back?

Something happened to Leah. She began to understand what you are supposed to do with your desire for 1 true love. She turned her heart toward the only real beauty, the only real lover who can satisfy those cosmic needs. God did something in her. There was a breakthrough. She sensed that God was doing something in her. The author of Genesis knows what God had done. It is the child Judah, through whom will come the King (Gen 49:10). God has come to the girl nobody wanted, the unloved, the unwanted, and made her the mother of Jesus! Leah is the mother of Jesus, not beautiful Rachel, but the homely one, the unwanted one, the unloved one. Why did God do that? Because of his person and his work.

1st, his person. "When the LORD saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive" (Gen 29:31). God is saying, "I am the real bridegroom, the husband of the husbandless, the father of the fatherless." God is attracted to the people the world is not attracted to. He loves the unwanted, the unattractive, the weak, the ones the world doesn't want to be like. God says, "If nobody is going to be the spouse of Leah, I will be her spouse."

2nd, the gospel. Jesus came as the son of Leah. Jesus became the man nobody wanted. He was born in a manger. He had no beauty that we should desire him (Isa 53:2). He came to his own and they received him not (Jn 1:11). At the end, nobody wanted him. Everybody abandoned him. Even his Father didn't want him (Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34).

Why did Jesus become the man nobody wanted? For you and me! Here is the gospel: God did not save us in spite of the weaknesses that he experienced as a human being but through it. No one gets salvation through their strength; it is only for those who admit they are weak. If you cannot admit that you are a hopeless moral failure and a sinner and that you are absolutely lost and have no hope apart from the grace of God, then you are not weak enough for Leah and her son and the great salvation that God has brought into the world. God chose Leah because he is saying, "This is how salvation works." This is the upside down way. The way up is down. The way to become rich is to give your money away. The way to power is to serve. God came as the son of Leah because he choose the foolish things to shame the wise; he chooses the weak things to shame the strong (1 Cor 1:27-29).

Practical Applications:

1. "Enjoy" the "Labans" in your life. Don't be bitter and beat them up. God can use them in your life to make you better if you don't become bitter.
2. Enjoy rejection. God knows/cares for the rejected/betrayed. Jesus was rejected. God didn't just love Leah, but he actually became Leah, the son of Leah.
3. Know/understand that in the morning, it will always be Leah. It will make you less desperate in your marriage-seeking, less angry with your spouse.
4. You can't mess up your life. You can't screw up God's plan for you. Everyone has blown up/screwed up their life. Everybody sinned. Jesus is the "fruit" of everyone's sin. Jesus is not plan B.
   

The devastation and unhappiness and misery that happens in your life because of your sins are always your fault. You are responsible. You should repent. Yet God is going to work through you. These 2 things are together. This is an antimony, a paradox. It's never too late for God to work in your life. Start over now. Like Leah, say, "This time I will praise the Lord."

This is based on a sermon by Tim Keller, "The Girl Nobody Wanted," published in Heralds of the King, 53-72.

Genesis Study Guide by Tim Keller: What were we put in the world to do? 191-201.

The Girl Nobody Wanted (Gen 29:15-35)

1. What might Laban know about Jacob (Gen 29:10-14)? Why was the motivation of Laban and Jacob (Gen 29:15-20)?  In what ways is Laban's scheme ingenious, though cruel (Gen 29:21-26)? What did Laban gain?
2. Though Jacob was shocked and furious (Gen 29:25), why did he agree so compliantly to Laban's explanation and further offer (Gen 29:26-30)? How was Laban's deceit with Jacob parallel to Jacob's deceit with his family?
3. How does the affirmation of Gen 28:13-15 and the discipline of Gen 29:15-30 work together for Jacob's good (Heb 12:5-6; Prov 3:12; Amos 3:2; Gen 50:20)?
4. Identify the idols of Jacob (Gen 29:18,20,30), Leah (Gen 29:32-34), Rachel (Gen 30:1,8). How does God deal with the lovelessness of Leah (Gen 29:31) and the barrenness of Rachel (Gen 30:22-24)? What does this tell us about God's salvation (Isa 53:2; Jn 1:11; Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34; 1 Cor 1: 27-29)?

Surprising ("Hesed") Love (1 Samuel 9:1-13)

Benjamin Warfield (1851-1921) was professor of theology at Princeton Seminary from 1887-1921. Before that he was pursuing studies in Leipzing, Germany, in 1876-77. This time also doubled as his honeymoon with his wife Annie. They were on a walking tour in the Harz Mountains when they were caught in a terrific thunderstorm. The experience was such a shock to Annie that she never fully recovered, becoming more or less an invalid for life. Warfiedl only left her for seminary duties, but never for more than 2 hours at a time. His world was almost entirely limited to Princeton and to the care of his wife. For 39 years. One of his students noted that when he saw the Warfields out walking together "the gentleness of his manner was striking proof of the loving care with which he surrounded her." For 39 years.

Love that truly loves is willing to bind itself, is willing to promise, willing and gladly obligates itself, so that the other may stand securely in that love.

2 Sam 9:1-13 is all about love. It is about David's love for Mephibosheth. The Hebrew word, which appears 3 times in 2 Sam 9:1,3,7, is hesed. Its meaning is rooted in the character of God. It is so rich that so single English word can fully do it justice: stedfast love, loving kindness, covenant friendship, loyal love, and justi ce are a few of the ways we translate hesed. Notice 3 things about hesed in David's example:

1. It is a priority.
2. It is surprising.
3. It is promise-driven.

I. Top Priority

What is the priority David gives to hesed? When David was finally established king of Israel in Jerusalem, what was the very 1st thing he does? He sought for a way to show kindness (2 Sam 9:1). The search goes on until Saul's crippled grandson is found (2 Sam 9:2-6). David is like this because God is like this (Lk 19:10; Jn 4:23).

How aggressive is hour love for people? Like David, and like God, are you on the lookout for people to love?Are you on the lookout to find ways to love people who can't pay you back, who are weak, who might even have been your enemies? This is what hesed does.

II. Surprising Generosity

A 2nd thing about hesed is that it is "over-the-top" generous. Mephibosheth was the surviving grandson of King Saul--the deeply troubled ruler who hated David and sought repeatedly to kill him. Mephibosheth's father was Jonathan, David's dearest friend despite Saul's hatred, now dead along with his father. Years before, knowing that David would one day rise to power, Jonathan asked David not to cut off his love (hesed) from his family (1 Sam 20:14-15). It meant, "please don't do to me and my family what is customary in regime changes...please don't kill us." David refuses this narrow meaning. His application of the promise is expansive (2 Sam 9:7). David will show him a "kindness"--a Hebrew idiom for intensity of expression, something like "Upon my life I guarantee that I will look after you!

God's hesed love is like this. He is not content simply to see us taken care of. He wants us with him--he wants to honor us as his children. What makes this love doubly amazing is that we are proven enemies, not just potential ones. What is most astonishing about this love is what it cost: our elevation to the king's table cost God much more than some territory that he might have kept for himself. It cost him his life (Rom 5:6).

Is our love like this? Is it over-the-top, surprising in its generousity? Does it think through and address the particulars? Is it directed toward the "lame"--those who are in no position to reciprocate? Does it find special joy in conferring honor upon others? Is it fearless, reaching out to those who might turn out to be our enemies? Is it costly?

III. Promise Driven Commitment

David's hesed arises from faithfulness to pledges earlier made (2 Sam 9:1,7). What drove David's kindness was not human pressure. No one expected it. No one knew about his promise except Jonathan, who was dead. It wasn't to save face (lame beggar begging at his gate). It wasn't a deadline (20 years). It wasn't political safety (which would dictate his death). It wasn't convenient (easier to ignore him). What drove David's kindness was his word.

David shows us what our God is like. God would rather die than break a promise. In fact he did. Having promised in ancient times to rescue us from bondage to sin and death (Gen 3:15), he followed through, submitting to the horrors of humiliation, crucifixion, and death in order to bear away our sin and death. God swore to his own hurt (Ps 15:4).

Our words tend to be so much cheaper than God's. We make our marital promises that at least 50% of us formally break, and the rest of us break in our adulterous imaginations. We make vows, commitments and pledges lightly, not willing to pay the price to keep them. But God's love is a love that loves to honor--a love that pays a price. It is a love that keeps its word. So here we have God's standard, displayed movingly in David's 1st act as king:

• a love that takes the initiative,
• a love that is over-the-top generous,
• a love that is costly,
• a love that is thoughtful and particular,
• a love that never wanders from promises that have been made.
  

We are to love this way because we are made in God's image and God loves this way.

IV. The Source of Costly Commitment

How do we do this? Where do we find the power to love this way? The standard is beyond us.

We find the power to love this way in the same place where David found it--in the hesed that God bears toward us. David could love Mephibosheth as he did because he had tasted God's faithful and practical love through 2 stormy decades. Though life was not easy, he had been fed, sheltered, delivered, loved, and finally vindicated by God (Ps 27:1). Similarly for us (1 Jn 4:19).How do I know that I have God's hesed? That I am safe and beloved? How can I be sure when I am so lame and crippled in both feet (2 Sam 9:8,13)? Because God's hesed toward me is not grounded in my performance. It is grounded in the performance of someone else. It is at the heart of this story and it is very important to understand.

Why was Mephibosheth so safe with David? Not because of Mephibosheth. Not because of anything he had done. Not because he had drawn out David's compassion. Not because he had done something to merit David's concern. His good fortune had nothing to do with him. It had everything to do with Jonathan (2 Sam 9:1,7). Jonathan swore undying loyalty to David, surrendered his crown to him, loved David unconditionally to the bitter end. Not Mephibosheth, but Jonathan was the reason for the pouring out of the king's love upon Mephibosheth.

Why are you and I so safe with God? Not because of us. But because of Jesus--the one who gave his crown to the Father, the one who pledged his love and stayed loyal to his Father to the very end--even though that end meant crucifixion and hell, in obedience to the Father's wishes.

Jesus is the one and only man in history who has fully and fairly won the full outporuing of God's abundant lovingkindness (Mt 17:5). Yet he lost it all on the cross (Ps 22:1; Mt 27:46; Mk 15:34) on our behalf. Thus, God's hesed on Jesus is given freely to us (1 Jn 3:1-2; Rom 8:32).

Jesus is our true David who loved us more than Mephibosheth. Jesus is our true Jonathan because of whom we are so loved.

This is a rough transcription of a sermon by Charles D. Drew, Heralds of the King, 103-116.

6 Ways God Loves Us (Isaiah 1:1-31)

How God Loves Impossible Incorrigible Sinners (Isa 1:1-31; 1:18)

1. God indicts (Isa 1:1-4)
2. God preserves (Isa 1:5-9)
3. God rejects (Isa 1:10-17)
4. God appeals (Isa 1:18-20)
5. God avenges (Isa 1:21-25)
6. God redeems (Isa 1:26-31)