I'm turning everyone. I'm glad to be back with you this morning. Flew back a little early so I could be with you today. I have to tell you, my heart in many ways remains back in Guatemala.
I was doing the math with my wife last night. God has blessed me. I've gotten to spend over the last 20 summers or so, about six months of my life, if you add up all of the visits I've made down there, serving the treasures of the Guatemalan garbage dump communities. That place and those people have changed me, like nothing else in my life.
If you got to stand where I stood the other day, where it's just dark, like you would see the scavengers coming out of the smoke of the fires come up to get something to eat. It'll change you. We're going to talk about all these things a few weeks when everybody gets back home. But for now, let me just ask you to do two things.
The first is pray for the team that is down there serving this week. Actually, there's a picture of them right here. Here they are, many of them with their sponsored children. Some of them have been serving these kids for years.
Pray again, just as I said, that they have eyes to see, like Jesus and ears to hear his people and hearts that are moved by their cries. But the second, and I beat this drum all the time, is if you have not gone with us, or maybe if you have and it's been some time as your pastor, and I'm sensitive to the fact that I know everyone can't go. But if you can go, please go. Make a commitment today to join us next summer.
You have my personal promise to you. It will likely be one of the three most significant choices you'll make in your life, if you go to Guatemala with us next summer. We are in a series called Still We Sing, kind of a fun series. We're looking at the songs from the late 80s up through the early 2000s, which changed the church's songbook.
For generations, right? The church had sung the same songs. I worship God with the same hymnal on Sunday morning, got my great, great, great, great, grandmother sang from her. And there's something wonderful and powerful about that.
Make no mistake. But something happened in the late 80s and early 90s if you were around the church then. The church began to do, well, what the scriptures command we do, Psalm 96 says, sing to the Lord and new songs, sing to the Lord, all the earth. We began singing new songs.
And so this summer, we're kind of going retro a little bit, not just to sing what were then these new songs that changed the songbook, but trying to look, especially the ones that have resonated through the decades a little bit. Now, looking at the eternal meaning behind the most significant of those songs, the ones if you're old enough to remember, maybe if you've been around the church long enough, the ones that, well, the ones that stick with us. This morning, our song is one that has consistently now over a few decades ranked in the top 25 songs that churches are singing. It's the song forever by Chris Tomlin.
It speaks of a defining characteristic of God. Now, if you've been around the church for some time, you've likely heard preachers talk about the attributes of God. Maybe you've taken a Sunday school class. Some of those attributes are sometimes called the omnes of God.
He's omniscient. He's omnipresent. He's omnipotent. Theologians call these things God's incommunicable attributes, meaning that they are his alone.
They're not shared with or true of any human being. They speak of only the divine's capacity. Well, forever are this quite famous song. It sings of a communicable attribute of God.
Not one related to his capacity, but one that is true of his character. The Hebrew word for this attribute is the word has said, has said. And it might be the most important word in the Bible that you've never heard of or never truly understood. And I'm telling you, when you start to go down the rabbit hole of has said, you cannot understand who God is without understanding has said.
So here's what I want to do. I want to read the scripture from which that song forever is taken. To do that, I want to do it. I want you to experience it in the way that the ancients would have.
It comes from Psalm 136. And it is what's referred to as a responsive psalm, one where the here actually plays a part where they respond. And so today you have a participatory role in the sermon. Can I ask if you can stand to stand?
I would like you to stand up and I would like you to do your part in response. Now your part is going to be simple. It is four words. They are repeated what will seem like towards the end and endless amount of times.
We'll get to that in a moment. But this morning you are going to pronounce and reflect with me on has said. So here we go. If we can put Psalm 136 up, your part will always be his love endures forever.
Every time you see it, that's you. Right? Don't screw up. Here we go.
Give thanks to the Lord for he is good. I want you to say it like you mean it. Give thanks to the God of gods. Give thanks to the Lord of Lords.
To him who alone does great wonders. Who by his understanding made the heavens who spread out the earth upon the waters who made the great light the sun to govern the day the moon and the stars to govern the night. Don't get lazy. Say it like you mean it to him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt.
There you go. And brought Israel out from among them with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm to him who divided the Red Sea asunder and brought Israel through the midst of it, but swept Pharaoh and his army into the Red Sea. To him who led his people through the wilderness. To him who struck down great kings and killed mighty kings.
Sahan king of the Amorites and Og king of Bishan and gave their land as an inheritance and inheritance to his servant Israel. He remembered us in our lowest date and freed us from our enemies. He gives food to every creature. Give thanks to the God of heaven.
Give yourselves a round of applause. Would you not that grab a seat if you would. Now can we be honest? Seems like a bit much doesn't it?
Right like that's a lot. Anybody get a count on that? How many times you said it? Close.
26 times his love endures forever. His love endures forever. What's the point right? Well I think it's twofold.
The first you can kind of figure out right? Repetition it's a Hebrew poetic device. An ancient oral culture is where people didn't have copies of things. It impressed a truth into their memory.
It helped listeners to internalize meaning. It created a rhythmic meditative experience. That's what Psalm 136 is. It's a very famous Psalm.
That's what it's doing. It's building like a crescendo. It's moving from their story of creation. It's teaching the listener the story of creation.
Right? Who by his understanding made the heavens. Who spread out the earth upon the waters. Then it goes into the history of their people.
To him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt and brought Israel out from among them. To him who divided the Red Sea asunder. And then it gets into their personal story. He remembered us in our lowest state and he freed us from our enemies.
He gives food to every creature. And every time it ends. Right? Every time it ends with his love endures forever.
The point was what the author was trying to do was remind people that all of these events moving from the universal, the stars and the sky down to the food that was before them that night that these things weren't random. It wasn't just by chance all of those things happened. And that they weren't earned. It was because of the steadfast love of God.
When you hear something once you might notice it and you just experience this. When you hear it 26 times, maybe you'd start to believe it. But the second reason I think is actually pretty cool. Why 26 times?
Well in Hebrew, what's called... Right, right. Gematria. Where numerical values are assigned to letters in a Hebrew alphabet.
The sacred name of God, Yahweh. It has a numeric value of 26. And so some people believe Psalm 136 repeats the refram 26 times because it reflects the essence of Yahweh. In other words, this at its deepest level is who Yahweh is.
It is God's unchanging name which is directly related to his unending love. And that love, the love of God, the one repeated 26 times. That word that is said over and over and over. It's actually not the lengthy saying, the foreword saying that you just expressed.
It's actually in Hebrew, just one word. It's this word, has said. If you want to understand who God is, his essence, then you have to, and very few people ever really understand this. You begin to understand what has said means.
Do you want to know why so few people understand what has said means? Because it's really hard to understand. There's actually no English or for that matter Greek word to translate has said in two. It appears 204, I mean it's amazing.
That word, that description, appears 245 times in Hebrew in the Old Testament. And depending on the translation, you'll see the word translate 10 to 15 different, into 10 or 15 different English words or sometimes phrases. That could be confusing. It can also become ashamed.
Because when authors of the various books of the Bible wanted to explain the very nature of God, when they were trying to help their readers understand who God was, they just kept saying, oh, I'll explain it to you. He is has said. He is has said. He is has said.
This is who he is. But it's hard for you and I to put a word on it. There's a very ancient foundational story in the Old Testament book of Exodus. Many of you know it.
It's where God first introduces himself to Moses. And it's God that introduces himself as has said. The Scriptures say that God passed in front of Moses and he proclaimed. The Lord, the Lord, that in Hebrew there is Yahweh, Yahweh, Yahweh, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
That's has said. Slow to anger has said, maintaining love 2000s and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished. Again, hard to define, but I'm going to give it a shot so you can kind of understand how God is introducing himself. God says that he has said the word, the best way to try to understand what one word means is, it is combining these ideas of an unconditional love with generosity and this enduring commitment.
It's an act of promise keeping loyalty. It's motivated though by a deep personal care. We're in a series on songs from the 80s to the early 2000s. Last week I shared with you that the artist from that time period that has impacted me more than any other artist is Michael Card.
If you don't know Michael Card, as I said last week, you should. Michael Card was studying the laments in the Bible. If you haven't done that, that's an interesting study. You're studying the laments, things that people were lamenting over in the Scripture.
When he began to come across over and over, this word has said, and where he would see it over and over in these laments, was that has said would mark the pivotal shift from despair to praise. The thing that would connect them to despair and praise was has said. And so he said, whatever this is, I'd like to figure it out because clearly it moved people from a place of despair to a place of worship and praise. What could do such a thing?
It started him on a 10-year journey of wrestling with the word has said. He notes that in just six English translations, that word appears 169 different ways. That's why it's hard for us to explain it. He was so captured by its meaning.
He actually wrote a book on it. You can pick it up. It's called Inexpressible, has said and the mystery of God's loving kindness. And so Michael Card after 10 years of study of this word, which is so profound and so spot on about the character of God, he attempted himself to create a definition for it.
And I love it. I just love it. I want to share it with you. Here's what Michael Card after 10 years of study says that has said means to him.
And said means when the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing gives me everything. That's worthy of reflection for a moment. And said means when the person from whom I have a right, I should expect nothing when he gives me not just something, but when he gives me everything. He said this faithful and enduring and generous and unconditional love of God, most of the time in the scripture is better seen than read.
I want to show you various scenes where you'll kind of get an understanding of what this characteristic of God is, what this attribute is. Some of you know the story of a man in the Old Testament in the book of Genesis named Jacob. He's one of the patriarchs in the book of Genesis. Oftentimes you'll hear God the father of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
That's Jacob. Now if you know the story of Jacob, Jacob's not a good guy. He's a liar. He's a deceiver, even to his own family.
Yet despite all of that, despite who he is, like he's not a good guy. God is has said. And God's has said is not dependent on the character or the actions of Jacob. And so God chooses him and extends through him a promise that he had made to his grandfather Abraham, that he would have a huge family through whom God would restore a blessing to all nations on earth.
And so here's this guy that's not a good guy. 20 years later, Jacob begins to realize who he is and how undeserving of the love of God that he is. And he comes face to face with the God of the said. Here was his prayer when he realized that he said, oh God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord again, there at the Yahweh, Yahweh who said to me, go back to your country and your relatives and I'll make you prosper.
I am unworthy of all the cassette and faithfulness you have shown your servant. Because that had nothing to do with him. God had made a covenant. God was going to keep it.
God was going to love despite the character of the man. God loves because it is the character of God. Another place in the story that's familiar to some is the story of Ruth in the book of Ruth. She is a foreigner married to an Israelite man whose husband, Ruth's husband, along with his brother and his father, they all die.
So all Ruth, this young widower, widower, widower has in left is her mother-in-law Naomi. And Naomi, a widower herself has nothing to all Ruth other than truth and advice. And so she goes to Ruth and says, Ruth, go home. You're going to need to find another husband.
This is the only way for you as a woman to survive in an ancient world. But seemingly for no reason. Ruth pledges to stay with Naomi and take care of her instead of herself. And if you know the story, she does.
And the scriptures repeat and sort of the people who witnessed what she was doing over and over that this is an act of has said. Why? Because Ruth's love for Naomi wasn't conditional or based on Naomi's worth or anything that Naomi could do for Ruth. There was nothing she could do for Ruth.
Her love just simply was an expression of her character. It's who Ruth was. She is a generous and loving person that keeps her word. And she kept it.
Hundreds and hundreds of times. You see this word come up in the scripture. When the people of God, whom he had rescued from the hand of the Egyptians, when they rebel against God, the whole golden calf story. Moses goes up.
He's dealing with God. He's getting the 10 commandments. All the Israelites are down below the mountain. They're worshipping a golden calf.
God, who feels emotions, and this is tied to his said. He's hurt and he's angry. And so Moses goes to God. And what does he ask God in the midst of this mess?
He says, God, in accordance with your great has said, forgive the sins of these people. Now notice what Moses does not say. He doesn't go, oh God, please forgive these people because they deserve to be forgiven. He doesn't say that.
Lord, these are, you know these people. You know they're good people. They've just made a mistake. So you should forgive them.
God, look at the entirety of their lives, right? If you weigh them in the balance, God, you would see that these people down there, yes, they're worshipping a false God. But if you look and weigh their lives, they've done much more good than they have had. There is no appeal to God about the people.
It's so important. The appeal to God was about God. It was about the people. It was about God's character.
God agrees. This is who he is. He recommits himself to the people who refuse to be committed to him. He's loyal and loving to people not based on people, not who they, not based on whom they are, what they do or what they can do for God.
God is loyal and loving to people because that's who God is. It's funny that Prophet Hosea compared the cassette of God to God. He compared the cassette of God to God's people. He said the cassette of people that it was like the morning mist.
It was here one moment in God and the next. But God's has said endures despite who we are and what we do again from the Psalms. If thanks to the Lord for he is good, his cassette endures forever. The Prophet Micah, he explains it this way.
He has shown you, oh human, what is good and what does the Lord require of you? To do justice and to love has said and to walk humbly with your God. God wants us to love enduring love because it is a communicable attribute. Meaning it's one that God wants us to not just enjoy but to reflect and mirror.
I love how you see it again. It's hard to define but it's easy to see in a story from the life of David, Israel's great king. David had bound himself. He had this loyal friend named Jonathan and they had bound themselves together by covenant several times.
But if you're familiar with the story, Jonathan dies and some time goes by. King Saul, who is David's predecessor and rival and all of his sons, including Jonathan, are killed in a battle on Mount Gilboa. And so after some time goes by, listen to what David says. He says, is there anyone left of the house of Saul to whom I can show, has said, for Jonathan's sake, he's looking for someone to show, has said.
In other words, a servant of Saul's household named Ziba, they summoned him to appear before David and the king said to him are you Ziba? At your service he replied, and the king asked, is there no one still alive from the house of Saul to whom I can show the has said of God, the desire of a man who's following God? And so Ziba answered the king. Well, there is still a son of Jonathan.
He's lame in both his feet. And so King David had him bought from low to bar when Mephiboseth, which was his name, when Mephibosheth son of Jonathan, the son of Saul came to David. He bowed down to pay honor to David. And David said, Mephibosheth, at your service he replied, don't be afraid, David said to him, for I will surely show you has said, for the sake of your father, Jonathan, I will stall to you all the land that belong to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.
Mephibosheth had nothing to offer. David, nothing. He was lame in both feet like he could do anything. In fact, he was the grandson of his great enemy.
Remember Michael Card's definition? When the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing gives me everything. This is God. It's not just how he loves, but it's actually who he is.
There is not another God in the pantheon of world gods over all of time who has described himself in such a radical fashion. But here's the thing. We confuse this. Christians and non-Christians alike.
We often claim the same thing about God that God is love, and he is. It was Jesus's disciple John who wrote that. And yet we get confused on what that means when we say that God is love. Well, we mean that God is a sad, and yet it's important to understand what it means when we say that God is love, because sometimes we use it, and especially, I think we all use, I think when we repeat unknowingly that God is love, sometimes we use it as like a blank check type of thing.
Well, you know, God is love. It doesn't matter what you do or say or believe. God is good, and since God is good, we're all good. Everybody's fine.
Don't worry about a thing. Live your life, go on your way. All roads lead to the same place. Well, God is love.
That's not love. Our understanding of that is incorrect. Is it true that God loves everyone? 100%.
We saw it in the beginning of this Psalm. God's enduring love is seen and experienced by everyone in all of time for all of creation. I just read it, and you affirmed it when you spoke of his to said, here's what the Psalmist had said. That God gave us the Son to govern the day, his love endures forever.
The moon and the stars to govern the night, his love endures forever. Everyone experiences the headset of God. This is what theologians refer to as common grace. It's a reflection of God's love for everything and everyone that he has made.
Jesus explained that this way. Jesus said that God causes his son to rise on the evil and the good, and he sings rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. It's a common grace of God. He loves everyone.
Yet, the psalmist and the psalm makes a turn. To him, to him, who led his people through the wilderness. To him, who struck down great kings and killed mighty kings and gave their land as an inheritance. And inheritance to his servant Israel.
His love endures forever. The love of God moves for the psalmist from general to what theologians call God's special or saving love for his people. You see it better maybe in Psalm 145. It begins to with common grace.
Here's what the psalmist wrote. The Lord upholds all who fall, and he lifts up all who are bowed down. The eyes of all look to you, and you give them all food at their proper time. You open your hand and you satisfy the desires of every living thing.
Here comes the shift. The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desires of those who fear him. He hears their cry and he saves them.
The Lord watches over all who love him. But the wicked, he will destroy. There are two aspects to God's said to his love. And this is where it gets confusing.
There's this last part about God's love which we wish it wasn't there. The Lord watches over all who love him, but the wicked he'll destroy. We read about this aspect of his said in Psalm 136, right? We just read it together.
To him who struck down great kings and killed mighty kings. His love endures forever. Love and strike down seemed pretty disjointed. Pretty out of place.
Because if you stand back you have to go, wait a minute, wait a minute. God loves everything, everyone, all he's made. And so you're telling me if I read this correctly, God loves everything and everyone that he makes. And he's going to strike down those he loves.
There are people that God loves on whom he's wrath six. That's kind of confusing. Right? He's going to take sense of the two.
But this concept of the love of God is displayed throughout the entirety of the scriptural canon. In fact, you're familiar with it. The most famous verse in the Bible, right? The one almost everybody could quote Christian and non-Christian alike.
It's about the love of God. John 3 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world but to save the world through him. But John's not done.
I mean, you're pillow at home with the crochet might be done. But John is not done describing the love of God. His thought continues. Whoever who ever believes in him is not condemned.
But whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only son. God loves the world at every single person in it. And yet those on whom God's love rests can also be condemned. It's a condition because what theologians call the fall of man, the sin of man, each of us has a part in it.
And all of us, as a result, all of us apart from what we call the justification of Jesus, his death, his punishment on our behalf, all of us apart from Christ loved by God. By God, stand condemned. Still confused? The scriptures try to give us a sense of this.
Here's how God reveals his love to the prophet Ezekiel. Listen to the emotion behind this. Say to them as surely as I live, declare this, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked. But rather that they turn from their ways and live.
Turn. Turn from your evil ways. Why will you die, people of Israel? You hear the emotion of God?
The love that he has for everyone. It's as if he's pleading. I don't want to judge you, but I will because I love. I can't allow sin to stand.
A God of love is not going to allow what's been done to you and I and others to just be okay. Tim Keller tried to explain the analogy full short, but I thought it was interesting. He said it's like when you and I really love someone and they begin, well, their life just goes off the rails. Some of us have had children and this is their story.
They're doing things that hurt themselves. They're hurting others around them. And you love that person so deeply. When that's going on, when you love someone so deeply, but their life is out of control and it's wrecking their lives and wrecking their lives of others around them, what's the first thing you feel?
Anger. You're mad. Now think about it. If you didn't love them, you wouldn't be mad.
You really wouldn't care that much. You had a co-worker at work who came and was sharing the story in the lunchroom about how his son had been hooked on drugs and recently he'd been arrested for knocking off liquor stores. When you hear about that, you probably go, well, that's a shame. I feel bad, but you wouldn't be mad.
But if it's your kid, then you get mad because you love your child. Love and wrath coexist because they come together. One is the product of the other. If you really love them, you're going to, what's the next thing you're going to do?
You're not just going to let it go on. You're going to confront them, right? It might be awkward. It might be uncomfortable, but you'll do it anyway because you love them.
And if they don't listen, if you hold the intervention, right, and they choose not to go, then what? Well, then out of love for them and out of love for those that they're hurting, you might even turn them in. Why? Because it's never loving to just let the perpetrator go on in their sin.
Now, you and I have a lot of other emotions that are tied up in there, right? God doesn't. God, our feelings here are imperfect, but God's, in God, these things find perfection. He has love for all that he's made.
He has a special love for those who turn to him, but this love also brings with it wrath for those who don't and continue on and rebellion and continue to do evil. And this is where understanding God's love incorrectly can become and has for the church over generations. It becomes super dangerous. Here's why, because what tends to happen is we choose one side of God's wrath or our excuse of love or another side of God's love.
If you think God's love is just common grace, which is what some people believe. Oh, God loves everybody, exactly the same. God never gets mad. God doesn't have feelings involved here.
God just loves. There's no wrath or judgment. Then you've just kind of domesticated God. You've made him tame.
He loves everybody the same. His love just becomes ephemeral. It's generic. It's milk-toasty kind of love.
That is not the love of God. Conversely, if you only see the love of God for those who love him, that God loves me because I'm not well. See, I'm in God's love because I'm a Christian. I'm safe and God hates everyone else in this terrible world, which we should pull ourselves out of.
Right? We might have put this narrow God who only loves us and everybody else can go to hell. And honestly, I've met Christians who are glad everybody else is going to hell. Neither of these are love.
Neither of these represent the hesed of God. Again, Jesus has explained it. If you want to understand where God's love is rooted. Here's how Jesus explained it.
He said, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father's commands and I remain in his love. Jesus is saying, I love my Father and since I love my Father, I've kept his commands.
And then he extends it to us. He says, if you love me, you should keep my commands. And here's the thing. If the next line isn't tied to this, you can go down a wrong understanding about rules and God.
And God only loves me if I keep his commands. And see, since I'm not keeping his commands, he must not love me because I don't love him and we get all messed up about this. But Jesus doesn't leave it there. Jesus says one more thing.
He goes, I told you all those things about if you love me, you'll keep my commands. I told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. Why does the God of a said want us to obey? Because he wants us to experience joy.
This is the essence. This is the deepest form of love. It is to care about the joy of another above one's own joy. When we talk about love, the love of God, well here's why I can get confused.
When we think about love, especially with a Western view of love, we tend to think about emotion and attraction. Right? Then there's other definitions of love. When we talk about love, we think merely of action and serving people.
But in God, we have a God who has chosen to identify himself with our welfare. This is, when I wrestle with this this week, at first I'd almost seen blasphemous. God is binding his heart to ours. God so identifies with us that God permits his joy to be contingent on our flourishing.
Crazy. God ain't happy when you are not happy. This is how committed God is to your joy. He has bound his own to it.
He's a story that Keller told about this, which I thought was pretty interesting. He was talking about his wife and he said, the first time, and this is an experience many of you have had. Do you remember the first time you held the hand of your wife? You know, maybe you remember what it was like, right?
I'm going to reach out and grab her hand and I'm hoping she's not going to pull it back. Right? I'm hoping she's not going to pretend it didn't happen. I'm hoping she's not just going to try to check out of it.
Right? I remember the first time I held Jones's hand, I think we were on the boardwalk at Seaside Heights. I was Jersey Shore before the show we even came on. And I remember reaching over to grab her hand and having all of those fears and all of the fears and the first time I held her hand, the first time I kissed her.
Remember that like electric charge that goes through you, right? You're like, you feel something, you can't really describe it, right? But there's something attached to it and we're like, oh, this must be love, right? It must be love or I wouldn't feel this way.
It's not love. I'm 35 years into this. That wasn't love. You know what that was?
That was ego, right? The reason it's so thrilling, especially for me when I was 145 pounds yet my head was still the same size as I was right now. I had glasses. It wasn't good.
But when I held the girl, on the hand of this girl that was so out of my league and she held it back, right? It was like, this girl liked me. It was like validation. It was like, I can't believe she likes me.
I remember one time I was at college and Jones came to visit me and she walks down the hall and she was just so stunning. Imagine if you remember this one kid he played on a football team at Rutgers and Jones walks by him and comes to me and I see him behind her and he's just like, he couldn't fathom it, right? Like what she would be doing with me. I still can't fathom it.
Sometimes I wonder if Jones could even fathom it. But that's not love, right? I was getting something from her out of her. It was about me.
It was about what she could do for me. It was about how it changed my identity. Here's what love is. God so identifies with our good that he chooses not to be happy unless we're flourishing.
What do you think love is about me flourishing because what you can do for me? That's not how God thinks. God so identifies with our good that God chooses not to be happy unless we are flourishing. And he demonstrates this throughout the Scriptures.
How about this? The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil at the time. The Lord regretted he had made human beings on earth and his heart was deeply troubled. Isaiah 63, speaking of his people.
In all their distress, he too was distressed. Again, the prophet, Hosea. How can I give you up? How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like, Alma? How can I make you like, it's a bloyum? Those were the cities that were judged like Sodom and Gomorrah. He goes, my heart has changed within me.
All of my compassion is aroused. God so identifies with us that he chooses not to be happy unless we are full of joy. It is the complete opposite of what we call love. It is the opposite of selfishness and ego.
It's the beginning of what, in the beginning of what we call love, it's all about us. The person is building me up. The person fills my needs. The person gives me value in earth and identity.
Love in its early forms is about me. But if a marriage is to last, and then he don't, if a marriage is to last, to get there, you have to move from where you started with what the person can do for me. At some point you have to shift. You have to begin to see things differently.
You have to become unselfish and permit your joy to be contingent on the others. I am committed to Jones' joy now. In the beginning, I really didn't care. She was hot and I wasn't, I was getting something out.
But I'm 35 years into this. I am not happy unless Jones is happy. I can tell you, it happened about 10 or 15 years ago, John, I could be alone talking about this. We're all of a sudden there was a shift in both of our mindsets where it became about the other person's joy.
I am committed to that woman flourishing. I'm willing to do what I need to do for her happiness, even if it costs me mine. Now, Jones, I'll tell you, this is not yet complete in me. I have a ways to go.
But don't you understand, when I hold her hand now, there is not electricity. There is something way more powerful than the hundreds of people, way more powerful. Maybe it's even easier seeing this decision by God to bind himself to our joy. Maybe it's even seen better by the parent-child relationship, right?
There are two off-repeated lines about parenting. The first one is, once you have a child, your heart will forever live outside of your body. And the second is, a parent will only be as happy as their unhappiest child. This is our God.
This is how he feels about you. See, it's who has explained it this way. It's a little bit of an intellectual quote, but I think it's good. Stick with me through it.
God has no needs. God has no needs. Human love, as Plato described it, is the child of poverty, right? This was our initial reaction of love.
Love is the child of poverty, of want or lack. It's caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved, which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness and the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, causes the goodness the object has, loving it first into existence and then into real, though derivative, loveability. God is goodness.
He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense, his love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition. God has everything to give and nothing to receive. It's unbelievable.
He's starting to get a feel for this. Or as Paul explained it, this is said of God's enduring covenantal, unshakable love of God, which finds its greatest revelation in Jesus himself. Here's what Paul told Titus, but when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. God does not love us because of us, something we've done or we could offer him.
He loves us because of his mercy. That word, mercy in the New Testament is the most off-used translation for the Greek term that was the translation of the Hebrew word, as said. Why does God love you? Because God is, has said, and you had nothing to do with it.
So I close with two things. The first is this, man, if you get this, if you would understand the love of God, this is who he is, it's not based on what you've done. It's not going to change. You can't change the way God will relate to you.
You don't approach God anymore either with bold confidence because you're having a good day, your devotions are good, you're giving is good. Just got back from Guatemala. God must love me. Right?
No, it doesn't. God didn't sit up there and go, you know I wasn't really kind of tired of you, but now they went to Guatemala. I'm rethinking the relationship. Conversely, and this is so important.
God's love for you doesn't change based on your poor decisions and crummy choices. How many times you screwed things up and mess things up? God's love for you is no different on your best day than on your worst day. At one level, God's love for you is never about you.
It was always about him. It's who he is. And at the same time, and at the same time, it's all about you. Not about your behavior, but about your joy.
He has chosen a God that needs nothing, has chosen to bind himself to your heart. This is God. And that is why Jesus is a disciple John concluded that in the end, and so we know and rely on the love that God has for us. Lastly, I end with how I began.
This is a communicable attribute of God. It is the one that we share and should share. Here's Jesus, my command is this. Love each other as I've loved you.
Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. Again from John, this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anybody else material possessions and sees a brother or a sister in need, but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
Do your children let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and in truth? It's end. It's hard to put into words, but when you see it, you'll know it. In the scriptures and today, the modern day moment of a said, this modern day moment of a said was captured on film.
It so stood out, has said, will always stand out. It won Life Magazine's Picture of the Year. In 1996, there was an anti-Cuk Klux Klan rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There was an angry crowd there, and it turned violent when a white supremacist that walked into it, wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt he had not seen tattoos, he was spotted among the crowd.
Well, as you can imagine, that didn't go well for him. This flew. And then suddenly, an 18-year-old black woman named Kishia Thomas did the unthinkable. She threw himself over the man, shielding him with her own body.
She took the blows meant for him. Her only weapons were mercy. The kart. Later when she was asked why she did it, she said it was a zest.
Her act in an excuse is hate, it overcame it. Just like David had extended his head to Mafibah Shath, right? Not because he deserved it, but because of a covenant, Kishia showed his said it was loyal love that protected and restored, and asked nothing in return. Is it rare, sure is, powerful?
It will change the world, and it is holy. And it's exactly the kind of love you and I are called on to rely on from God that we rest in, and we live out before others. May I ask you to stand and sing with me of the enduring covenant-based character-defining everlasting compassion, a shed of God.