Video Transcript: The Lovingkindness of God (Salvation)

We've been talking about Satanic and human rebellion against the divine order,  and God's inevitable and righteous judgment against it. You might call this  judgment God's resounding no to sinful rebellion. But that's only part of his  answer for sinful rebellion. In fact, God says no in judgment, in order that he can say yes to those who repent of their rebellion and wholeheartedly agree with him on the matter of their proper relationship to him and place in his creation. And so we speak today of the loving kindness of God. From the beginning, God has had kind and loving intentions for his whole creation, and particularly the image  bearers whom he appointed as stewards over it. And God's loving kindness has  become even more apparent in the way he is work to restore what sin and  rebellion have torn down. So for example, what happened right after what is  called the fall, that first act of disobedience by Adam and Eve, they immediately  realized and regretted their sin and tried to hide from God. Their shame over  their nakedness showed their awareness that they had disqualified themselves  from continuing in the relationship they had previously enjoyed with God. It's  clear that they were afraid at what he would say to them, much as disobedient  children are when they've done something very wrong and know, their parents  are coming to call them to account. One question that parents sometimes put to  their children at such a time is, why, why have you done this? And the pent up  anguish and frustration behind that question may also come out as an  accusation. How dare you? Why, after all, my sacrifice for you after working my  fingers to the bone to provide you with not all the necessities of life, but the  luxuries too Why do you repay me like this? How dare you? God did not ask  Adam that why question it would have been logical to do so. God, after all, is the perfect Creator and He cannot tolerate sin. And Adam and Eve were definitely  sinners. But God did not withdraw from them in disgust or shocked disbelief at  their nerve. Nor did he ask other questions parents are sometimes want to ask  why have you done this in the psychological sense as if it were important to  uncover the underlying factors that motivated Adam and Eve's disobedience? Or what am I going to do with you as a way to vent his frustration with them? Or  where are you phrased as a threat of the deserved punishment to come? But  God did ask the where are you question but to a different end, to let Adam and  Eve know that he was not yet finished with him. He had not withdrawn from  them but still love them and wanted to have a relationship with Him? God did  later speak of punishment for their disobedience. But his question was a  preliminary call for them to come clean. And to return to believing and trusting in  Him and then make a new commitment to obedient living. God knew the worst.  He knew the evil that had been done, and yet, still loved Adam and Eve and the  rest of his creation. And shortly afterward, he gave them the amazing promise of eventual eventual victory over the serpent to be achieved by one of their  offspring. The love of God, which prompted that promise would culminate in the  gift of Jesus God's only begotten Son, given as the apostle John put it because 

God so loved the world. But that love had been repeatedly displayed in the  centuries and millennia prior to that too. For example, Noah in the patriarchs  definitely saw God's love firsthand. But it was especially Abraham's descendants enslaved in Egypt, to whom God's loving character was more profoundly  revealed. In that series of events culminating in their freedom from slavery, and  acquisition of a homeland in Canaan. The Israelites didn't know much, at first  about what God was like that was clear and what Moses asked God after being  told that he was commissioned to rescue them from Egypt. Exodus 3:13, says,  Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of  your fathers has sent me to you. And they ask me, What is his name? Then  what shall I tell? The Moses question about God's name was really a question  about his character. I know that you're the God of our fathers, but what are you  like? In response, God gave this enigmatic reply, I am, who I am, this is what  you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you. And God also identified himself as Yahweh, Yahweh, I am who I am, are also translated as I will be who I will be. In effect, this is what God told Moses, I am who I am revealing myself to  be right now to you. And I will be what I reveal myself to be in everything that's  coming. That's what Yahweh means. Yahweh is what his deeds have been  showing, and will be showing him to be. Maybe that sounds a bit like double  talk. But look at how God identified himself already in the incident of the burning  bush. Moses learned here that God had heard the groaning of his people, he  had seen their misery. And, as Exodus 3:9 says, the cry of the Israelites has  reached me, and I've seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. But God not only saw and heard, he had a heart for what he saw and heard, I'm  concerned about their suffering, he said of Israel. For more than a century,  things had been really tough for the Hebrew slaves. In all this time, they had  cried out to God, not sure that he was personal and merciful and concerned  about them. But God told Moses he was indeed, thus revealing a foretaste of  His love, mercy and compassion to be shown in events to come. For God was  making plans to rescue the Israelites from Egypt, but more than to bring them  into a good land of their own. Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush  showed him a little of the loving kindness of Yahweh. But by the end of the  matter, both he and the rest of Israel would see much more of it. They would  learn that Yahweh the God of their fathers was more personal and merciful, and  faithful that than they had ever imagined. Sometime later, after God had  arranged the freeing of his people from Egypt and dealt with the subsequent  threat to them with the shores of the Red Sea and, and arrange for their survival in the wilderness through provisions of manna and water, and repeatedly help  them through various other threats, including their own rebellious natures. We're told that the Lord again revealed Himself to Moses in a sort of reprise of what  had happened at the burning bush. The occasion was the second giving of the  10 commandments. This was after Moses had destroyed the first set of tablets 

upon seeing the rebellion of Israel. Exodus 34:6 tells us in following, and God  passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate  and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in love and faithfulness,  maintaining love to 1000s and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, yet he  does not leave the guilty unpunished. God had earlier told Moses that he and  Israel would find out who he was and what he was like by his actions on their  behalf. And indeed, they had to be sure he did not leave the guilty unpunished.  But he had shown himself to be compassionate, gracious, patient, faithful and  forgiving, in short, abounding in love and faithfulness, and determined to remain  so for those he called his treasured possession. The biblical emphasis on the  loving kindness of God is highlighted by a study of the Hebrew word hesed,  which is translated in an English Bibles with a variety of words including  kindness, love, loving kindness, steadfast love, loyalty, faithful love, and so on.  Let me summarize some of the points made about this word by Will Kynes in an  article entitled considering the hesed of the Lord. This is from the CES, quote,  CS Lewis Institute quarterly publication, knowing and doing summer of 2010.  Scripture sometimes uses hesed to describe loving relationships between  individuals or groups. Whether that is between family members, a host and a  guest, friends, or a king in his subject. There's an enduring quality to hesed.  H-E-S-E-D is English spelling. But it's not just love or kindness but steadfast or  unfailing love or kindness, it persists over time. Of course, in relationships  between people, this persistence is fallible. But hesed is stronger and more  reliable when a describes God's loving kindness. And in fact of the 246 times  hesed appears in the Old Testament, the great majority refer to how God relates  to people. The steadfast love, the hesed of God, as depicted in the Old  Testament extends to the whole community of its people. But it is focused  particularly on and through the person and line of the Anointed One whom Israel recognized as their greatest king David. Let me read a few verses from Psalm  89, which reinforce the gracious and enduring nature of God's commitment to  keep loving David and work out his purposes through him and his offspring.  Beginning verse 20, I have found David, my servant with my faithful with my  sacred oil, I have anointed him, my hand will sustain him, surely my arm was  strengthened. The enemy will not get the better of him. The wicked will not  oppress him, I will crush his foes before him and strike down his adversaries, my faithful love, will be with him, and through his name, my horn will be exalted. I  will set his hand over the sea, his right hand over the rivers, he will call out to  me, You are my father, my God, the rock, my Savior. And I will appoint him to be  my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth, I will maintain my love to  him forever, and my covenant with him will never fail. I will establish His line  forever his throne, as long as the heavens endure. Of course, David's line  culminated in Jesus Christ, through whom it would become clear that God's  hesed is big and powerful enough not only to cover the entire nation of Israel, 

but all of humanity. God's hesed even fills the earth is Psalm 33:5. True hesed is never merely a matter of possessing loving feelings but always involves  practical action taken on behalf of another. Pharaoh's cup bearer, you remember that story grateful to Joseph for interpreting his dream showed hesed by  speaking to Pharaoh on Joseph's behalf practical love and Israel's army much  later on grateful for Rahab's help showed her and her family hesed by saving  them out of Jericho's destruction. Hesed is love in practice. God love God's  hesed is practical too. Scripture says that he shows hesed to those who call on  him. And so the psalms are full of appeals to God to work in hesed on behalf of  the psalmist or the community to hear, to answer to save, to redeem, to deliver,  to help to protect and to forgive. In fact, the repeated refrain of Psalm 136 is his  love endures forever his hesed endures forever, suggests that all of God's  actions way back from the creation of the world to the redemption of Israel from  Egypt and beyond. All of God's actions testify to his hesed. God's hesed can be  the basis of these appeals, precisely because it endures forever. And so the  appropriate response to this is to continually remember and proclaim it with  singing and rejoicing not only as a testimony to others, but also as a way to  keep renewing one's own hope and trust in God. One of the Old Testaments  most effective and compelling metaphors to help us understand the great loving  kindness of God is that which compares God's love to the love parents have for  their children. God loves His children, with the love of a father and the love of a  mother. In Isaiah 66:13, God compares himself to a mother who comforts her  child and he says in just that way, so I will comfort you. That's also reminiscent  of how God treated Israel in the wilderness between Egypt in the Promised  Land. Deuteronomy 1:31 reminds people of Israel the Lord your God carried you as a father carries his son, fathers and mothers both have a gentle and  unbounded love and emotion for their children. That's the point of the scriptural  comparisons more than anything else. Fathers and mothers love their children.  That's part of their many sided tasks that stands out. They love their children.  And God knows just what that's like even more than parents do. God loves His  children. Isaiah makes that clear. Chapter 49:14, and following, Zion said, The  Lord has forsaken me the Lord has forgotten me. Can a mother forget the baby  at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has born? It's a  rhetorical question. Of course not how can it be impossible, but God continues,  though she may forget, I will not forget you. God loves us the way mothers love  their children whom they have born and carried and nursed, and even much  more. For as impossible as it may seem, a mother can forget her child.  Lamentation in chapter three tells us of people being in such desperate straits  and so starving that they killed and ate their own children. I can't imagine that.  Even less Can God imagine forgetting his own children, His love, His  compassion never fails. Isaiah speaks in chapter 49:16, have a tattoo on the  palm of God's hand that he always sees. See, I have engraved you on the 

palms of my hands, your walls are ever before me. And Hosea points out the  ties that bind God to His people. Chapter 11:3-4. Hosea says, quoting God, it  was I who taught Ephraim to walk taking them by the arms, but they did not  realize it was I who healed. I led them with cords of human kindness was ties of  love. I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them. As parents  feed their children and teach them to walk and kiss their wounds, better love  them, and lead them along. That's how God treats his children. Psalm 103:13  puts it like this as a father has compassion on his children. So the Lord has  compassion on those who fear him. Not all of us are fathers or mothers. But  each of us is someone's child, and should be able to understand something from one side at least of the love that exists between parents and their children. Now, to be sure too many children received from their parents not love, but only  grudging attention, or even violence and abuse. But most of us I think, have  occasionally if not regularly, experienced how great it is to be loved by a father  and mother. We've experienced how secure it feels, how comforting it is to  receive love from a parent. And if we take that sense whether we've experienced it a little or a lot, and we magnify it 1000 times, or 1000 times 1000 times. We  know a little bit of how God wants us to feel about his love for us. And then we  know a little too of how God wants us to respond to and bask in his love.  Throughout history, the lives of parents have revolved around their children.  Parents want to see their children do better than they did. They're proud to say,  those are our children we nurtured them. They belong to us. But not even a  perfect father, mother can love us as God loves, consistently and with such  passion. Not even the best human parents always avoid the trap of  manipulation. And what parent has an experienced impure motives toward a  willful and disobedient child. But God loves us perfectly. He never abuses his  children, never. He always has their best interests in mind, and he will heal his  children of even the most traumatic memories and experiences. As you walk  with Him. He will demonstrate to you the grace of true parental love. God says  of his children, these children are mine. I love them. I want the best for them. I'll  never forget them. Even if they run away from home, they'll always be in my  heart, my thoughts I want to do something for them to spare them difficulty.  That's the sense conveyed by the love and compassion, the hesed of God. In  the Scripture passages. It's a strength of feeling which leads one to action on  behalf of another. It's the strength of that hesed for us, even when we were dead in sin, and completely unlovable that led God to make the supreme sacrifice, so  that we might be called the sons and daughters of God, so that we could be the  full fledged, restored, regenerated children of God. This scriptural emphasis on  the loving kindness of God hinted at already in Genesis 3 and in God's Where  are you question to Adam with a little later in this promise to Eve of an offspring  a coming offspring to vanquish the serpent keeps getting fleshed out more and  more in the redemptive historical story, until it becomes brilliantly clear with the 

coming of Jesus. It is this love of God. That is the basis of the Christians life and security. And that also gives each of us the ultimate role model for our own  parenting, as well as an indication of the other works of love to which God calls  his church