Loyal Love

if you tried to describe what god is like it could be difficult or daunting but when the people who wrote the bible pondered the mystery of god they consistently describe god's character in this way compassionate and gracious slow to anger overflowing with loyal love and faithfulness we're going to look at this fourth phrase loyal love it translates the hebrew word which is hard to translate into any language because it combines the ideas of love generosity and enduring commitment all into one describes an act of promise keeping loyalty that is motivated by deep personal care like in the story of ruth ruth is a foreigner married to an israelite man but tragically her husband dies along with his brother and his father all ruth has left is her widowed mother-in-law naomi who has nothing to give her naomi tells ruth she should go back to her people but instead ruth promises to stay by naomi's side and take care of her and as other people watch ruth keep this promise over time they call it an act of kheset notice that ruse hesed is not conditional or based on naomi's worth rather it's an expression of ruth's character she just is a generous and loving person who keeps her word that's present now ruth's loyal love is truly inspiring but the one who shows the most enduring hesed in the bible is god like in the story about jacob who is a treacherous liar even to his own family but despite that god chooses him and repeats the promise he made to jacob's grandfather abraham that he would have a huge family through whom god would restore his blessing to the nations and so 20 years later when jacob realizes how undeserving he is he says to god i'm not worthy of all the hesit you've shown me and he's right but god's hesed was never about jacob's worth in the first place it's a display of god's generous loyalty to his promise god's hesit continues into the story of jacob's descendants the israelites when they're enslaved by pharaoh in egypt we're told that god remembered his promise to abraham and jacob so god defeats egypt and raises up moses to liberate the people and lead them into the promised land and in the story this is called an act of hesit because it was about god keeping his word now on their way to the promised land the israelites are scared of the nations around them and they doubt that god can protect them so the people threatened to kill moses and appoint a new leader to take them back to egypt god is understandably hurt and angry but moses steps in and says forgive the sin of these people because of your great khed notice that moses asked god to forgive not because the people deserve it but because it's consistent with god's own character and god agrees and he recommits himself to a people that don't want to be committed to him in the bible god is loyal and loving for no other reason than it's just who god is of course he wants his people to respond with hesed in return but even when they don't god's it remains the prophet hosea compared israel's chesad to a morning mist it's here one moment and gone the next but god's hesed is enduring like in the celebration of psalm 136 that opens by saying give thanks to the lord for he is good and then 26 times repeats his hesed is forever and so after centuries of israel betraying their commitment to god and after humanity's long history of violence and death god still kept his promise in a dramatic and drastic way by becoming human and binding himself to us in the person of jesus and the people who followed jesus of nazareth said that in him they encountered the god of israel who is full of loyal love and faithfulness jesus is the ultimate loyal and loving human and in his life death and resurrection god opened up a new future for all of us and for all of creation and god did this because it's just who god is generous loving and eternally loyal to his promises and when we experience the purity and power of god's loyal love shown through jesus it compels us to reimagine why and how we can show back to god and to the people around us this is what it means to say that god is overflowing with loyal love [Music] you

Channel: BibleProject

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Length: 5min 11sec (311 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 12 2021