Week 4 – Love: “My Steadfast Love I Will Not Take Away”

Core Text: 2 Samuel 7:15 + Psalm 89

The fourth candle this week represents love. I have spoken a lot about love and what it actaully means and how we miss the point of what love really means sometimes. we are going to get into love, but a aspect of love that has a great meaning. I have used this word before, but today we will get into it a little more and what it means for the birth of Jesus and His coming back again.

one of the ideas behing the love that we are going to learn is that it is a faithful love that matters not what people do to us, matters not how people live their life. It is a love that forgives all when people turn to God, a covenant that has been made between God and his faithful followers since the beginning of time.

This can be seen in the life of an ancient mennonite man named Dirk Willems, a 16th-century Dutch Anabaptist Christian.

In 1569, during a time of intense religious persecution in the Netherlands, Willems was arrested for his faith (which included adult baptism, seen as heresy by authorities). He was imprisoned in a castle tower, facing torture and likely execution by burning at the stake.

Willems escaped by fashioning a rope from knotted rags, lowering himself out a window, and fleeing across a frozen pond (called the Hondegat). Weakened from prison rations, he was light enough to cross the thin ice safely. A guard—his pursuer and persecutor—chased after him but broke through the ice and began drowning, crying out for help.

Despite knowing that stopping would mean recapture, torture, and death, Willems turned back and rescued the man who was trying to arrest him, pulling him to safety. The guard wanted to let him go in gratitude, but authorities overruled this, and Willems was rearrested, severely tortured, and burned at the stake on May 16, 1569.

This act of selfless love toward his enemy has been remembered for centuries as a profound example of living out Jesus' command to love and do good to those who persecute us.

HBI - Psalm 89:2 “For I will declare, “Faithful love is built up forever; you establish your faithfulness in the heavens.”” God has established his faithful love through the birth of Jesus so that all who turn to Him will have their sins erased.

What is Faithful Love?

we are going to follow this idea from Psalm 89 to the NT and the birth of Jesus Psalm 89:1

Psalm 89:1 CSB

I will sing about the Lord’s faithful love forever; I will proclaim your faithfulness to all generations with my mouth.

What is this faithful love that we see here, different translations say it differently.

Psalm 89:1 ESV

I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord, forever;

Psalm 89:1 NLT

I will sing of the Lord’s unfailing love forever! Young and old will hear of your faithfulness.

why do we have so many different ways of speaking of this type of love that is translated from the Hebrew word Chesed. It is a hard word to translate as it embodies so much of the character of God.

There was an article I was reading that helps describe this concept of Faithful love:

Many biblical words such as mercy, compassion, love, grace, and faithfulness relate to the Hebrew word hesed  but none of these completely summarize the concept. Hesed is not merely an emotion or feeling but involves action on behalf of someone who is in need. Hesed describes a sense of love and loyalty that inspires merciful and compassionate behavior toward another person. Hesed, found some 250 times in the Old Testament, expresses an essential part of God’s character. When God appeared to Moses to give the Law a second time, He described Himself as “abounding in” or “filled with” hesed, which is translated “love and faithfulness,” “unfailing love,” “faithful love,” “steadfast love,” and “loyal love,” depending on the Bible version (Exodus 34:6–7). The core idea of this term communicates loyalty or faithfulness within a relationship. Thus, hesed is closely related to God’s covenant with His people, Israel. As it relates to the concept of love, hesed expresses God’s faithfulness to His people.

So we have steadfast love, we have faithful love unfailing love, lovingkindness. I think the KJV and NKJV missed the amrk a bit when they put mercies but what can you do,

Psalm 89:2–4 CSB

For I will declare, “Faithful love is built up forever; you establish your faithfulness in the heavens.” The Lord said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one; I have sworn an oath to David my servant: ‘I will establish your offspring forever and build up your throne for all generations.’ ” Selah

The Lord’s Love is seen in the covenant that He made with us through the birth of Jesus on Christmas. A love that says your sins can be removed as far as the east is from the west, that we can be known, that we can be lvoed that we are known and loved. Even though we have done nothing to deserve it. In the book of Exodus we read that God’s faithful love is lavished on us for a thousand generations on those who love Him and obey his command.

This is a trustworthy, ever enduringlove. Think of it like a covenant, God made a promise that His love would endure, that his promsies would always come to pass. The also means that God is slow to anger and forgiving of sin.

While God’s faithful love is without limits to those that follow Him and obey His commands, humans to can express faithfull love to those around us. God Hesed is from our great God, to us lowly humans. We can show this same thing to this that are weaker then us. Like Jonathan the crown prince did to David when he made a covenant with Him to ensure that they would both be okay when David became King.

God’s covenant relationship with His people results in His loyal love and faithfulness [hesed], even when His people are unfaithful to Him. Always at the heart of hesed lies God’s generous sense of compassion, grace, and mercy. Hesed surpasses ordinary kindness and friendship. It is the inclination of the heart to show “amazing grace” to the one who is loved. Hesed runs deeper than social expectations, responsibilities, fluctuating emotions, or what is deserved or earned by the recipient. Hesed finds its home in committed, familial love, and it comes to life in actions.

Oath to David

Psalm 89 is a longer one, and we will get into it a bit more, maybe not all of it today though. But this mentions how God’s faithful love as seen in the promise made through king David. Part of how God has established His faithful love is through giving his people an eternal kingship. But as we have been going through all seemed lost because the kingship had failed, but God said His faithful love will endure forever. God still loved his chosen people, God loves us so He made them a promise here in the Psalms and elsewhere in the OT as well.

Amos 9:11–12 CSB

In that day I will restore the fallen shelter of David: I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old, so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name— this is the declaration of the Lord; he will do this.

This is what faithful love looks like The promise to never give up on the commitment made Between God and His people. The book of Romans tells us that Romans 1:3–4 “concerning his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was a descendant of David according to the flesh and was appointed to be the powerful Son of God according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.” Jesus was the promise of love that was given to us. This gracious merciful love that has forgiven those who give their lives to Jesus says we will not be put to shame.

You see The prophets preached the Davidic covenant to a nation in exile with no realistic hope of a throne ever returning. Yet God kept saying, “I will not lie to David.” That stubborn, never-give-up love is hesed incarnate.

Advent Love: The fourth candle burns because Love himself has come to keep a promise made a millennium earlier. which brings us to the message of the gospel.

The message of the gospel—God’s act of forgiveness and salvation in Jesus—is rooted in hesed. Hesed describes the disposition of God’s heart not only toward His people but to all humanity. The love of God extends far beyond duty or expectation. His forgiveness of sin fulfills a need that is basic to all other needs in the relationship between human beings and God—the restoration and continuation of fellowship with God in Jesus Christ. God’s hesed manifested in forgiveness makes a relationship with Him possible. That forgiveness comes to us freely as a gift from God based on the sacrificial act of Christ.

Hesed is not merely an emotion or feeling but involves action on behalf of someone who is in need. Hesed describes a sense of love and loyalty that inspires merciful and compassionate behavior toward another person.

So because God loved us enough to prmise to forgive, we forgive others. Because God was merciful in dealing with us we are merciful to others. Because God is slow to anger when it comes to dealing with our sin we are slow to anger when others sin against us. Mercy, grace, compassion, slow to anger, trustworthyness, covenant these are all things contained in what this means.

Jesus Message of Love

There is a lot encompassed in this message of Hesed Love that should cause us to look within and see if we are really living up to the standard of God like we are called to. All these ways in which God has shown faithful love to us we are reminded of the Christmas season and it should cuase us to reflect once again on something we learnt a few years ago, what this love should look like in us.

So we know Jesus is the fulfillment of the promsied love that God gave us all the way back in the OT and the Psalms that we read. So what did Jesu sdo?

you see people didn't like the fact that Jesus hung out with those that where in need of Him. After all is was not proper for a Jewish Rabbi to do such things. so now I want to move forward a few chapters.

we have so far established the fact that we are called to love others as Jesus has shown love to us. We have established that Jesus met with the least of these to show them love as well. The people that no one else really wanted to hang out with. we go to the story of the rich young ruler.

AT the time this happened Jesus was teaching in Judea along the Jordan river.

Matthew 19:16–17 CSB

16 Just then someone came up and asked him, “Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?” 17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” he said to him. “There is only one who is good. If you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.”

Matthew 19:18–19 CSB

18 “Which ones?” he asked him. Jesus answered: Do not murder; do not commit adultery; do not steal; do not bear false witness; 19 honor your father and your mother; and love your neighbor as yourself.

Matthew 19:20–21 CSB

20 “I have kept all these,” the young man told him. “What do I still lack?” 21 “If you want to be perfect,” Jesus said to him, “go, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Matthew 19:22 CSB

22 When the young man heard that, he went away grieving, because he had many possessions.

Jesus met the man while He was teaching the crowds. He treated Him with love but also taught Him the truth. This rich young ruler was not really one of the least of these, but He was one that approached Jesus wondering about what He must do to inherit eternal life.

As Jesus was teaching them He loved them, He met them even when He wasn't supposed to according to Jewish tradition anyways. I am not saying that this young man was one of them, but He is the first example that we are going through anyways. The question that was addressed was one of eternal life.

The example that we where given is that as Jesus loved others and shared the message of the gospel so must we.

The message as we have said was one of eternal life and the kingdom of God. So in this example Jesus was already teaching the people, but with the young man he gave him a challenge that left the young man feeling sad. The response is one that we get as well. when we tell people of the message of the gospel, sometimes it ends with them feeling the ssme way.

So we go first to the message.

Jesus had just challenged the people saying that one must be like a child to enter the kingdom of god. To humbly obey the law in childlike faith. The type of faith that believes completely without question. One must give up ones doubts and trust in God for eternal life.

It starts by entering a form of existence contrary to the way you are born. We are not born following the law of God, and Jesus claim here is that we ust follow the law of God, which we know is impossible. the main point of this is not sell everything you have, but rather come follow me. Instead of grilling the young man on where and what laws he surely has broken he moved right along to His inner being to show Him that he has truly missed the mark.

The love that was promsied us by God we are to show to those around us that do not know Him, calling them to change their way of life and turn to Him. But for those who do not know Jesus what does this all mean for you? For this I want to go back to an ancient promise.

Psalm 89:33–35 CSB

But I will not withdraw my faithful love from him or betray my faithfulness. I will not violate my covenant or change what my lips have said. Once and for all I have sworn an oath by my holiness; I will not lie to David.

God has not forgotten you

As we read in the Psalms and in the rest of the scriptures, God has not forgotten you, God has not left you rather you have not turned tyo Him. God’s faithful love has already been given to you in the birh of Jesus and His death for you sins, the promsie has been fulfilled it is up to you to respond to the call of God and turn to Him.