Tag: love of God

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Not To Be Forgotten

During this season we are reminded of prominent people who have died during the year just past. Their names and photographs appear briefly in news reports before our attention is drawn to the Rose Parade, football games and the crowds gathered in Times Square for the celebration of the new year.

No matter now famous or infamous they were, it seems that they are soon forgotten by most of us. Do you remember the people on last year’s list?

Knowing how forgetful we are, the writer of Psalm 136 drives home a refrain to remind us of the love of God. He repeats it 26 times. It is a great theme to take with us into the new year: “His love endures forever.” Like a hammer hitting a nail, he pounds it into our consciousness: “His love endures forever.” This is how he wants us to think about God.

Why is this theme repeated so often in this single Hebrew poem? The most obvious reason is that the writer wants to help us remember what God is like. Repetition is an aid to learning. Isn’t that how we learned the alphabet, or the multiplication tables, or the periodic table of the elements when we were in school?

Another reason the theme is repeated is that it represents a form of congregational worship. Imagine two choirs, one singing, “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good;” the other choir answering antiphonally, “His love endures forever.” Worship is to be participatory and we are being invited to join the refrain, “His love endures forever.”

The psalmist does not want us to think of God as we think of the celebrities who appear for awhile on the world stage, then pass away, forgotten. He intends for the Lord to remain the center of our thinking and of our worship. This is a good reminder for us as we begin a new year.

Remember God’s goodness

The word “love,” used here, appears over 250 times in the Old Testament. It is sometimes translated “lovingkindness,” or “mercy.” It is God’s steadfast love, or covenant love. It is the unchanging goodness of God which binds him to keep faith with his people. We will need to remember that in 2025, in seasons of change or uncertainty, or trouble. God is always good. His love never fails (Psalm 136:1).

Remember God’s greatness

Psalm 136:2-9 reminds us of God’s sovereignty. He is “Lord of lords” (a title the New Testament ascribes to Jesus!). He is the creator of the heavens and the earth, the sun, moon and stars. The psalmist invites us to look around at creation and see it as a work of God’s steadfast love.

Then he recounts, in poetic fashion, some facts of Israel’s history which reveal the Lord’s intervention on their behalf (Psalm 136:10-20). He rescued his people from bondage in Egypt, led them safely through the Red Sea, and gave them victory over their enemies. All of this is evidence of God’s covenant love, so he repeats the theme, “His love endures forever.” The greatness of God is not to be forgotten!

Remember God’s generosity

Psalm 136:21-26 tells how the Lord generously provided a homeland for his people. The Promised Land was to be their inheritance in perpetuity. When Israel sinned against God, and he judged them by removing them from the land, they could know that in his covenant faithfulness, he would someday liberate them and restore them to the land (Psalm 136:23-24). The prophets often wrote of Israel’s ultimate restoration.

The fashions and the famous of the world fade and pass away. But we may be sure that “God’s love endures forever.” We must never forget this. Through the coming year we will need to remind ourselves of this, just as the theme punctuates the psalm.

J. A. Motyer said of this psalm, “From the beginning of creation, to the climax of redemption, from the first making of the heavens to the final inheritance of the saints, all is to be seen against the background of the love of God. That love is both indestructible, because it is covenant love, and boundless, because it endures forever.”

Pastor Randy Faulkner

 

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Thinking About the Trinity

I have been thinking about the Trinity. Christians believe that God is eternally self-existent in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

One of the best proofs of this is love. Love requires a giver and a recipient. It is relational. It is reciprocal, Love has no meaning otherwise.

The New Testament teaches that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). God is love in his very essence. To deny that God is three persons in one divine being, is to deny that God is love. In eternity past, before the creation of the world, if he was only one person, he could not love.

From eternity to eternity, the Father loves the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit loves the Father and the Son, in a mutual, self-giving reciprocity. This is how the Son glorifies the Father, the Spirit glorifies the Son, and the Father glorifies both the Son and the Spirit.

Creation was an act of self-giving love. God needed nothing outside of himself to be complete and completely satisfied. But in extravagant love he created the universe and created human beings to experience his love.

Unfortunately, the disobedience of the human race resulted in alienation, death and judgment. According to the opening chapters of the Bible, humans became self-centered instead of loving their creator, and the relationship was spoiled by sin. The self-centeredness which plagues the human condition is the opposite of the love of God.

Fortunately, God provided a way back into his love through his Son. Jesus came into the world to put divine love on display in the ultimate act of unselfishness. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Those who believe in him become part of a new God-centered community in which it is possible for us to love one another as he has loved us. Just as the members of the Trinity pour love into one another, so the Holy Spirit enables the new community of Christ to live in love for one another.

I have been thinking about the Trinity. One of the strongest evidences for the Trinity is the love of God.

Pastor Randy Faulkner

 

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God’s Love on Display

On this Good Friday, I invite you to think with me about how Jesus, the Son of God, gave his life to rescue sinners and reconcile them to God. This was God’s love on display. “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6).

“Powerless” means helpless. After the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City in 1995, scores of injured people lay amid the rubble of concrete slabs, steel rebar and rising water. Helpless. Awaiting rescue. Romans 5 says that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross was for those who were helpless to save themselves.

Paul’s text is an unflattering description of humanity. “Ungodly” means irreverent, people without serious thoughts of God. “Sinners” are those who by nature and by choice violate God’s law. “Enemies” means that Jesus died for those who were alienated and rebellious against God’s rule in their lives. According to the New Testament, that is us, all of us.

How did God respond? He responded with love. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). God put his love on display on Good Friday. As you read in the gospels the gory descriptions of the Lord’s sufferings: the mock trial, the false accusations, the beatings, the thorns, the nails, the spear, remember that it was love that carried him through it.

The message of Holy Week is not just a sentimental story. It tells us how we may experience God’s love. Romans 5:9-10 expresses this in three weighty theological words. Through faith in Christ we may be (1) “justified by his blood.” That means to be declared right with God, and secure in that position.

(2) Then, believers are declared to be “reconciled to God through the death of his Son.” This assures a peaceful, harmonious relationship with God.

(3) The third word is “saved.” It means to be rescued, delivered from the wrath of God’s final judgment. “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” He died so that we could be justified before God, reconciled to God, and saved from the wrath of God.

If you are asking, “How may I know it was for me that he died?” I can tell you. If you are willing to admit that you are helpless before God, indifferent toward God, alienated from God, and in God’s eyes, a sinner, then I have good news. It was for people just like you that Christ died.

This may be hard to admit to yourself and to God, but it is a necessary first step. Confess your sin to God and express your faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Ask him to be your savior and begin to follow him as your Lord. Then Romans 5:1 will be true of you: “Therefore since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Good Friday was God’s love on display.

Pastor Randy Faulkner

 

 

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The Certainty of God’s Love

The past year has been stressful and uncertain for many Americans. New variants of the COVID-19 virus still threaten the population. A significant percentage of people remain suspicious and fearful of the vaccine. We hear sad reports of young people who are depressed and suicidal. Businesses have closed for good. Millions of people have lost their jobs.

In these uncertain times, I want to turn readers’ attention to themes and promises of which we may be certain. It is possible to maintain a sense of calm confidence in the middle of this perfect storm of economic disruption, health crises, and social change.

This is not escapism or a state of denial. The problems are real. But so are the promises of God. It is by keeping our focus on him that we maintain stability as we live in this present world in this present time.

This leads me to recommend the writings of the apostle John. John is an apostle of certainty. {Count the number of times he repeats the word “know” in his first letter.) In 1 John 4:7-21, the knowledge of God leads to the certainty of the love of God for us. In spite of everything, we may be sure of God’s love.

God’s love is on display. God’s nature is love. God is the source of love, the essence of love. “Love comes from God” (1 John 4:7). “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The Holy Trinity is a divine inter-relationship of eternal love. This infinite, glorious and loving God is great, but not remote. He has shared his love with us human beings living on this tiny planet. He “showed his love among us” ( 1 John 4:9).

John circles back to Jesus Christ. God showed his love among us when he “sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him” (1 John 4:9). “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10). Sin results in death and condemnation. Jesus’ sacrificial death results in life for those who believe in him. This is God’s gift of love.

John can write with confidence about this because he was an eyewitness to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. “We  have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14). The Christian faith rests on objective facts which have been verified by the sensory experience of those who were there. These facts are passed along to us by the Lord’s apostles.

He goes further. He says that if we accept this objective testimony about Jesus, God in his grace will send his Holy Spirit to confirm it to us as a subjective witness. “This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: he has given us of his Spirit” (1 John 4:13). “If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God” (1 John 4:15).

This acknowledgement of Jesus is a formal declaration of faith in him. It happens when one says “yes” to the gospel. “This is what I believe.” It is reaffirmed in water baptism as a confession of one’s faith in Christ. It happens again when a Christian explains the faith to another person. In the words of the apostle, it is the declaration that Jesus is “the Savior of the world.” It is the acknowledgement “that Jesus is the Son of God”  and that God sent him (1 John 4:14).

These facts prove God’s love. His love is reliable. “And so we know and rely on the love God has for us” ( 1 John 4:16). Reliance upon God’s love gives us stability. It anchors us. It completes us. “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12). “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment” ( 1 John 4:17).

God’s love is the life-force working within individual believers and through the Christian community. It is the vitality of the church. We are called to be loving because God is loving. “Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). “No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12).

The invisible God is made visible to a watching world when Christians love one another. Frederick F. Bruce wrote, “The love of God displayed in his people is the strongest apologetic that God has in the world.” It is the love of God, costly love, practical love, visible love, serving love, forgiving love, which makes the gospel believable to our neighbors.

“God is love” (1 John 4:16). This is a great certainty for uncertain times.

Pastor Randy Faulkner