The Love of God

Introduction

We’re going to hear a weird sermon this morning. The title is the “Love of God,” and we will indeed discuss the love of God as a never-ending, always faithful, promise-keeping, unconditional love. It’s the final topic of the Advent study because we Christians understand that when Jesus was born, it was a display of God’s love that showed his desire to be with us. And while I think that we could be content to make that our only meditation this morning, this passage is actually going to motivate us to do something.

I try very intentionally to never preach a sermon where there isn’t some sort of take-away: something practical we can do to change our perspective or our actions. Because I think as we open God’s word and discover his character, his character will provoke a response from us. So as weird as it sounds, I’m going to preach a sermon about God’s love, but the takeaway is going to be a command to obedience and faithfulness to the Law.

I know, sounds crazy. Obedience and love strike two very different tones. But I stole the idea from a pretty reputable preacher, this guy named Moses. He wrote this book of Deuteronomy where he recaps much of what the Israelites had already heard. In today’s passage we’re going to see this weird contrast between Moses’ understanding of the Love of God and the Obedience of Man. I believe we’re going to find that The Love of God is unlimited and unconditional, but human love means obedience.

What the Scripture Says

Deuteronomy 7:7–11 NIV

The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today.

Deuteronomy is a beautiful book that closes out the first five books of the Bible normally attributed to Moses. It’s a record of Moses’ final address to the nation of Israel. It’s a sermon, given 3400 years ago to a nation wandering in the wilderness as a final admonition before his death. It’s the “Listen, my time is short, here’s the important stuff” kind of sermon. Actually, to our modern ears, it reads like a funeral sermon.

Some preachers joke that they’re going to preach their own funeral, then hop in the casket and shut the lid on themselves. The way Deuteronomy is written, moses almost seems to do exactly that. That should, I think, show us how vitally important these words were to Moses as he delivered this address to the people of Israel. He recounts history, recounts the law, and reminds Israel of all they’ve been through.

He also reminds them of why they’re wandering in the wilderness and reminds them of the character of the God they serve. That’s what we see in this passage: he’s telling Israel why they’ve been chosen and why this good and gracious God has decided to show them favor.

If you place yourself in this ancient world, Israel was surrounded by polytheistic religions where the favor of the gods was a matter of whim and fate. “If the gods allow it” there will be a good harvest this year. “If the god will it” I will be healthy and happy. Whatever happened in your life, good or bad, was the result of some cosmic power struggle between dozens of gods who had control over their little domains within your life.

Israel was already an outlier by believing in the One God, but they also believe that this God’s favor was predictable. But this favor comes not because there is a certain list of things which please him and make him show favor. Moses says clearly in verse 7: god didn’t show favor for the normal reasons gods tend to show favor. It wasn’t because Israel was a mighty nation. God’s favor comes from his character.

Verse 8 says this favor comes “Because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors.” God made a covenant with Israel’s forefathers, with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and his faithfulness to that covenant and his love for the people is what motivates his favor.

If they need proof of this favor, then Moses reminds them at the end of verse 8 that the keeping of this oath meant deliverance for them. He reminds them of when they were delivered out of slavery in Egypt. By the time Moses is giving this message, some of the people who witnessed this deliverance may have died, but it would have been decades since that event and apparently they needed reminding.

This deliverance from Egypt shows God’s faithfulness to his people and his love for them, that as they suffered in slavery God still looked on them and showed favor to them. Their suffering was not pleasurable to God. He saw fit to deliver them, proving his love and his covenant faithfulness.

Verse 9 is the conclusion of this proof: “Know therefore that Yahweh your God is God, he is the faithful God keeping his covenant of love.” That’s a unique phrase there: “covenant of love.” The Hebrew word for love being used there is hessed, a word that means “Loyal Love,” or “Steadfast Love.” It’s a word almost uniquely used to describe the love of God. In fact, later in verse 9 when it speaks of those who “love him and keep his commandments,” it’s a different word for love being used. We’ll come back to that in a second.

But “Those who love him and keep his commandments” is the group of people who follow the law, so the Israelites. It is one group who loves God and keeps his commandments, and it is this group to whom God is faithful with his covenant of love for a thousand generations. This contrasts with the next verse where God promises destruction to those who hate him.

Like we have discussed before, this is just the other side of the coin of God’s covenant. God is always involved in the lives of his covenant people. In their disobedience he is still faithful to them, but his faithfulness looks more like discipline. So the conclusion in verse 11 makes a lot of practical sense: “therefore, take care to follow the commands I give you today.”

What this Means

In trying to understand the Love of God, we run into a recurring theme throughout the scripture: his love is accompanied by a command to those who follow him. Throughout the Bible, from here in Deuteronomy all the way to the epistle of 1 John we get this repeated idea that those who love God will keep his commandments. Why is that?

Well, remember how we talked about the word being used for love here? That Hebrew word is hessed and it means Loyal, unfailing, never-ending love. God’s love for his people is loyal, meaning that his love is not misdirected to other things, but is is also unwavering, meaning that it is unconditional. He chose Israel not because they were special, but because he loved them. He chooses his church not because they are special or more holy or more deserving of it, but because he loves us. And when God loves a people, he loves them with unending faithfulness and care for them.

That care is more than just a subtle affection or desire, it’s actually meeting needs and matching the promises of his covenant. When God loves, it is a verb. He provides for his people, keeps his promises, and blesses them as they keep his commands. He also disciplines them, because in loving them he desires to see them be like him - holy. When you have loyal love for someone you love them regardless of their behavior but part of loving them means helping them correct their behavior so that you can remain in fellowship.

See, God’s love is sewn into his character but it is no greater and no lesser than his other attributes. God is loving but He is also just, merciful, and holy. He loves faithfully but he also deals justice faithfully. We cannot divide God into the “God of Love” contrasted with the “God of Righteous Anger.” The God of the Old Testament is as much a God of Love as he is a God of Wrath, and he is the same God of the New Testament whose love was displayed by Christ and whose wrath is shown at the Second Coming.

So when we speak about God’s loyal love, we must understand that God’s love is also just. The Love of God is intolerant of sin and the Love of God is holy. So when God loves a people, he also does justice to them and makes them holy. When God loves, his heart breaks for the people who are broken by sin and he reaches out to heal them. The loyalty of his love means that he cannot stop loving a people who are rebellious, so he seeks to make them holy like He is holy. God’s loyal love always means action, whether blessing or discipline.

The incarnation of Jesus shows us exactly that character of God. As the hymn says: “Fullness of God in helpless babe.” Jesus exemplified God’s love to humanity. He lived it, showing compassion and love to those around him, and occasionally getting angry when sin and oppression took hold of those around him. The Love of God was displayed through the way Jesus lived his life.

But the Love of God was also displayed at the cross of Calvary. John 15:13 says “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” God’s love is a radical and selfless love that looks at a broken creation with more than just affection, but a desire to fix that brokenness. How great it is that the Love of God has the power to fix that brokenness! God loved us, looked upon our brokenness, and in his almighty power, stepped out of heaven to be born unto us.

That’s why God’s love is so closely followed by an expectation of obedience. Because there is no such thing as a love which does not entail action. Christ came to be with us and love us because it is impossible to love someone from afar. I may say that I love a person, and while I may have affection for them, love must necessarily be a verb. To love someone means to make them aware of your love by doing something about it.

We have this word “Charity” in English to describe a caring act of generosity, but this word was once used to describe Love. Love and charity have always gone together, but we have separated them. Now, we believe charity is an act that has no emotion and no conviction behind it. It’s just an obligation. And love is an emotion with no action, simply saying that we love someone is considered an adequate expression of our love.

The two are meant to work together. Love is always an action, charity is always love. So obedience is the action that corresponds to our human love of God. It is not an obligation, it’s an outpouring. We don’t obey because we feel guilty or obligated to obey. We obey because we desire to be close to the one we love!

God’s love is shown by his covenant faithfulness to his people. He keeps his promises even when we fail to keep ours. That’s love. The command to love God is a command to loving obedience to this God with infinite and unending love for us. It’s not a “Well we owe him, so we better obey,” it’s a “We love Him, so we’re going to seek to be like Him.”

How We Live it Out

One of the greatest joys I had in Spokane was meeting with our “Young Married” small group. There were about 5 or 6 married couples in our group who met to go through some curriculum designed for early marriage counsel. It was awesome getting to discuss the difficulties of marriage with other people and fellowship together.

But one of the most enlightening things that come from our time together was the command from Ephesians 5 given to husbands that they should “Love their wives as Christ loved the church.” Now the meaning there is pretty simple: husbands should love their wives enough to lay their lives down for them.

But here’s the thing: we husbands all have this bizarre male bravado where we could take a bullet for some stranger on the street if we believed it was the noble thing to do. I think most of us would take a bullet for our wives in a heartbeat. Bruno Mars would catch a grenade or throw his hand on a blade or jump in front of a train (not sure how that last one would help). It’s just a thing: we men like to say that we will sacrifice our lives for our wives.

But would we really? Some men are hard-pressed to sacrifice one Friday night a month to take their wives on a date. Some of us wouldn’t give up 30 minutes to fix the leaky sink she’s been asking about, let alone sacrifice our lives. See, true love is about sacrificing your life, but also your time, resources, and energy.

Our love toward God is likewise an action of sacrifice. We have to sacrifice ourselves. Jesus commanded his disciples to take up their cross and follow him, then he said “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” The call to following Jesus is a call to die. It’s a call to give up our desires and motives and instead follow God in humble obedience.

So when your pastor stands in the pulpit and, like Moses, commands you to obey, understand that he is saying it with the same tone that he would say “Husbands, if you love your wives, serve them sacrificially.” When we talk about obedience, I don’t ever want to communicate guilt or obligation. Rather, I think that serving God is one of the most fulfilling acts of love that humans will ever experience.

Because when we serve God, we sacrifice ourselves. But that means we are using every gift God has given us. Every one of those good things is being offered up to God. I say it’s fulfilling because we all want to spend our lives doing something we enjoy that we are good at, right? That’s the goal of education early in our lives, to help discover what we enjoy and get good at it.

So obey God! Listen to what he says and do what the word tells you. But I think if you earnestly set out on a path to discover God’s commands for us in his word: it’s a command to live a life like Jesus lived: one of joy and redemption and grace and seeing those things spring up around you. The commands of God create in us the character of God. When we have the character of God working through our broken humanness, we know it is the miraculous work of God and nothing of our own doing.

So this week as you contemplate the baby born in the manger, and as you spend time with people you love, think about the incarnation of Love. How can you make love a verb? How can I love these people, some of whom I only see once per year? What crazy act of self-sacrifice or service can I do to show these people Christ? Because God’s love became incarnate in Bethlehem, but we have a call to obedience that, if we follow it, will incarnate love to the people around us.

I can tell you some quick do’s and don’ts. First, don’t make your obedience something to brag about. Your job isn’t to be morally superior to the nonbelievers in your life. Instead, let your obedience create good character. Obey so that your heart is transformed into one that loves people better. Second, don’t claim to love someone you’ve never served. Instead, go out of your way to love people with your actions so that you never have to say “I love you.” Third, don’t love people selfishly. Selfish love tries to love people in hopes of being loved in return. Instead, love people with complete self-abandon. “Love until it hurts” even if they never love you back.

The Christmas season is a time which we believe to be marked by love, yet I know it can sometimes be isolating and lonely for many people. Go out of your way to serve those people this season. God went seriously out of his way to be born in a manger and suffer a sinner’s death for us. We will never love like that. But by obedience I believe we can see the Love of Jesus spread to those around us.

If this love is unfamiliar to you, or if you want to make the decision to follow Jesus this morning, please come see me after service. As we celebrate this holiday season, I hope that every one of you experiences the Love of Christ, but I also hope that we can all show the Love of Christ.