God loves you

Psalm 136

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 13 Jul, 2008

THE GREATEST truth we can ever know is that God loves us. It is the message of the Bible, but it is a message which has grown and deepened as time went on.

Psalm 136 repeats over and over that refrain,

His love endures forever.

It is a message that Israel had to learn.

God’s love never comes to an end. It endures, it lasts, forever.

Hodu l'adonai ki tov
Ki hasdo l'olam

Thanks to the Lord who is good
Whose love is unto the coming age.

The Hebrew translates awkwardly into English. An ancient Israelite would have understood immediately; we take a little longer.

There are so many people who are angry with God. They say, “How could God be loving? He allowed my brother to die young! How could God be loving, when so many people suffer? How could a loving God permit hell?”

These are valid questions. They underly a lot of atheism today. People are angry with the God they think has let them down, so they decide not to acknowledge God in any way.

Whenever I meet an angry, aggressive atheist, I always wonder what underlies that anger.

We know that everyone dies, that none of us can guarantee the span of our lives. Two of my great grandfathers died in their 90s. The kid across the road from our house in Ingleburn died at 14 while skylarking on a train. We can guarantee nothing.

It doesn’t help to tell people, though.

Nor does it help to point out that people choose hell, and a loving God eventually has to let people have what they want. It doesn’t help to say that this is an imperfect world where people suffer.

They want a God who will take all of this away. It doesn’t matter that that is not how the real world is. “Where was God?” they protest. It is not a question — it never is.

Psalm 136 is a great Psalm, because it reminds us that God’s love is unending. We need to tell ourselves that fact repeatedly, or else we will soon give in to the same kind of discouragement and doubt that so many people are prone to.

We have three choices about our world. Forget for the moment about God. Three choices about the nature of life. We can decide that things are basically good, that the focus of the Universe is benevolent. Or we can decide that the focus of life is bad, that the Universe is malevolent. Or we can decide that the Universe is erratic, that it is up and down and all over the place, and there is no real way of telling which way it is going.

The answer you give is the way you see God. If we think that the Universe is benevolent, that is what we think God is like. If we think the Universe is malevolent, we will see God in the same terms.

But we can get a glimpse in real terms of what way the universe is inclined. We can pick up something of what God himself is like, if we look carefully at our own experiences.

That is the point of Psalm 136.

The Psalmist looks at the world, and sees a good hand behind it, the hand of God, who

...alone does great wonders,
...who by his understanding made the heavens,
...who spread out the earth upon the waters,
...who made the great lights —
    the sun to govern the day...

We can look at all that exists, and we can choose to view these things negatively or we can choose to view them positively.

I can’t prove to you that these things are good. I choose to think that it is good to have fresh air, that it is good to live on a wet planet, that, somehow, the sun, moon and stars are there for us to enjoy.

But the Psalmist goes further and speaks about the more general events of history.

This is a God who is actively on the side of his people.

He says we should give thanks...

^{PSA 136:10} to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
 and brought Israel out from among them
 with a mighty hand and outstretched arm;
 to him who divided the Red Sea asunder
and brought Israel through the midst of it...

The God who delivers his people acts for us.

Can we prove God from the good experiences of life? Of course we can’t — not in the sense that some people want us to prove God. But when you live in a world of coincidences, you become suspicious that someone is causing the coincidences.

G K Chesterton wrote about the repetition of things in life and commented,

 It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society.

So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot.

In the same way, the fact that prayers are answered — even sometimes — begins to look like someone is doing the answering.

Are you like me, and able to point to unexpected healings soon after someone prayed earnestly? Of course, you can assume that the world must be against you. You can say, “Look at the times when people pray and nothing happens.” And I can’t contradict you. Every one of us has the experience of praying and heaven seems to be made of bulletproof glass.

And then a prayer is answered and a healing occurs.

Or finances become available when there was, seemingly, no possible source. Or someone softens and acts in a friendly way when every indication had been that you would meet hostility.

Our church has experienced some of these things. I have personally experienced others.

At least twice I have come to what were critical times for me. People were involved who clearly disliked me and what I stand for. One even went out of his way to undermine my position. But at these critical times, both unexpectedly stood up for me. I think that with the one who disliked me so intensely, it was perhaps that he disliked someone else there even more.

But all I could do was thank a prayer–answering God.

I was in the same condition as the Psalmist who said,

^{PSA 136:23} to the One who remembered us in our low estate
  and freed us from our enemies,
    and who gives food to every creature.
    Give thanks to the God of heaven.

And he gives his reason:    

His love endures forever.

The Psalmist is rather more specific in what he says about God’s love than we might realise, though.

This is not emotional love that he has in mind.

There are two words in Hebrew for love.

There is ohev and there is hesed. They overlap, but they are different in many ways.

In Deuteronomy 6:4,5 we read,

 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.

That “love” is the ohev kind. So you can see that both kinds can be associated with God.

But hesed is special. It is a guaranteed love. It is a constant, unfailing love.

It is, in fact, a love which grows out of covenant.

When God entered into a covenant with Abraham, when God entered into a covenant with Moses and the Israelites at Sinai, he made a promise sealed with blood, never to leave or to forsake his people.

It was this kind of love.

I recently received an e-mail, telling the story of a Chinese couple.

The man had hand-carved over 6,000 stairs up a mountainside for his wife to reach the cave in which they had lived for over 50 years.

Liu Guojiang, as a 19 year-old boy, fell in love with a 29 year-old widowed mother named Xu Chaoqin.

Friends and relatives criticised the relationship because of the age difference and because Xu already had children. So, to avoid gossip, the couple eloped and lived in a cave.

Life was harsh, food was scarce. Liu made a kerosene lamp as they had no electricity.

In the second year of living in the mountain, Liu began to hand-carve steps so that his wife could get down the mountain easily. 

In 2001, a group exploring the forest was surprised to find the elderly couple and the  over 6,000 hand-carved steps. One of the couple’s seven children said, ‘My parents loved each other so much, they have lived in seclusion for over 50 years and never been apart a single day. He hand carved more than 6,000 steps over the years for my mother’s  convenience, although she doesn’t go down the mountain that much.’

The couple had lived there for over 50 years until recently. 72 year old Liu returned from his daily farm work and collapsed and died. In 2006, their story became one of the top 10 love stories from China. The local government has decided to preserve the love ladder and the place they lived as a museum to their love.

Liu’s love was that kind of love. It was committed to an extraordinary degree. I am sure that they had their quarrels and their disagreements. I am sure there were times when they were barely speaking to each other. That’s what married life is like. And don’t forget that Liu was only 19. He had to do a lot of growing up, love or not. A 19 year old woman is usually a lot more mature than a 19 year old man. What about when the woman is 10 years older again?

But the thing is that Liu knew how to live in covenant. And, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, he stuck it out.

And this kind of love has the name, hesed. God has promised to love, and he will love, and nothing can stop that love,

^8:38 ...neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ 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.

This is the love which endures forever. This is called agapi in the New Testament, hesed in the Old Testament. It is a love which plods on regardless.

You and I sin. You know that.

But Jesus died to establish a new covenant between God and us, and God’s love endures even when we sin, because we have an advocate with the Father, even Jesus.

As we read in Hebrews,

 ^9:12 [Jesus] entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. ¹³ The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. ¹⁴ How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

 ^9:15 For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance -- now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.

Jesus has made everything new.

The incredible thing is just how extensive this covenant love really is.

The Psalmist says,

For his covenant love endures forever.

This is such a weak translation, but we really have no better words.

The Hebrew, as I said at the beginning is,

...ki hasdo l'olam.

That word, olam, is possibly best translated, world, or even era.

The problem is that that sounds like nonsense unless we understand what olam, what world, is referred to.

The rabbis understood God’s plan to involve two creations, two eras of God’s work,

The first creation is the world, the time, the era in which we now live. It is fallen and every part of it is damaged by that fall.

We received a new server at work for our computer network. I unpacked it, mounted it in the rack, connected it up, booted it, and three green lights and one yellow warning light came on. It was not booting up properly.

I attached a keyboard and monitor, but it was only getting as far as starting the hard disk controller, and it would go no further.

When I inspected the server and the box it had come in, it became clear. The couriers had obviously dropped the equipment, and the whole thing was marred by the fall. If you didn’t look closely, it looked OK, but a close look said it was not fit for the purpose.

In this case, we were able to get it repaired and put into service.

But this present fallen world is beyond any kind of patch up. It has to be replaced.

The Rabbis knew that a new world, a new era, a whole new creation, was coming.

And the Psalmist picks this idea up and reminds us that God’s covenant love does not just end when this present era comes to an end. God’s covenant love endures even to the new, perfect age, even to the coming new creation.

It goes all the way through to the end of the current age, and it will last through the never–ending age to come.

But here is the best news of all.

That new creation is already here.

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation,

says Paul

Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand!

says Jesus.

God so loved the present fallen world,

Jesus told Nicodemus

...that he gave his only–begotten son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have the life of the age to come.

God’s love is not merely there until some indefinite future: God’s love endures forever because that future is now! This present age is beyond repair, but by faith in Jesus, every one of us can be repaired and made fit for the age when God rules over all through Jesus.

By faith, we can have sins forgiven, a home in heaven, and a love which just never, ever ends.

Why not come to the one who loves you? Come today, because he will save you today.

© Peter R. Green 2008. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)