We’ll be in Judges chapter 10, I’m going to turn there in your Bibles, Judges chapter 10.
We’ll start in verse 6.
The Lord said, The Lord said, And He sold them into the hand of the Philistines and into the hand of the Ammonites, and they crushed and oppressed the people of Israel that year. For eighteen years they oppressed all the people of Israel who were beyond the Jordan and the land of the Amorites, which is in Gilead. And the Ammonites crossed the Jordan to fight also against Judah and against Benjamin, against the house of Ephraim, so that Israel was severely distressed. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, saying, We have sinned against you, because we have forsaken our God and have served the Baals. And the Lord said to the people of Israel, Did I not save you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites, from the Ammonites and from the Philistines, the Sidonians also, and the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you, and you cried out to me, and I saved you out of their hand? Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods. Therefore, I will save you. I will save you no more. Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen. Let them save you in the time of your distress. And the people of Israel said to the Lord, We have sinned. Do to us whatever seems good to you. Only please deliver us this day. So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the Lord. And he became impatient over the misery of Israel. Then the Ammonites were called. They took their arms, and they encamped in Gilead. And the people of Israel came together, and they encamped at Mizpah. And the people, the leaders of Gilead, said to one another, Who is the man who will begin to fight against the Ammonites? He shall be head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Now Jephthah the Gileadite was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. As I chose this text for a particular reason, but as I began to study it and read it, and asking questions of the text, I felt like I had to zoom farther out to really get the main point. Because in its immediate context, sure, there’s plenty of application, and there’s reason to study the specifics of this passage. But I didn’t feel like that was right. And so I began to survey it in the context, in the context of the book of Judges as a whole. And I’m still left asking, Okay, what now? Because the end of the book of Judges, the last verse, says that the people went their own way. They did what was right in their own eyes. What kind of resolution is that?
So, I asked of the book, How does the book of Judges fit into the history of Israel? What does it matter? If you were to read only the book of Judges, I think you would be left in despair. And you wouldn’t know what to do, where to go. And so, I think in the context of the entire Bible, of the entire redemptive history of God, of God and His people, I think I want to say this to you in this passage, that God loves His children. And I’ll prove it to you. But God loves His children.
And He does it, even though we are guilty of compounded compromise. It starts out saying that the people of Israel, again, again, again, did what was evil. And so, it wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the first time in the book of Judges. And it wasn’t the first time in the history of Israel. It’s happened over and over and over again. We were talking about this earlier. Before most of the Judges are introduced, it starts the story off by saying, the people of Israel, again, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. So, we’re not only sinful, but we’re repeat offenders. We’re not guilty of a sin, or turning once. We’re guilty of over, and over, and over, turning, again, and again, and again, from the Lord, and doing what is evil in His sight. So, what specifically was Israel guilty of in this passage?
This is a bit of a sharp-edged statement, but I think it should be. The text says that Israel whored themselves out to the gods of the nations. They played the harlot. God doesn’t share His people with anyone. He doesn’t share His glory with any other god, as if there were one to share with, God is a jealous God, and He will have none of that.
They served not an other god, they served multiple other gods. Whatever was going to please or suit their desires and their passions, they were going to serve this God. And, part of the reason that this was even an issue, is that because when they were in the city, they went into the land of Canaan, they did not obey God and drive out completely and annihilate the Canaanites. And so, here they are dwelling in the land with these peoples, with these other nations, while they’re still practicing their religions, worshiping their gods. And, so, my dad used to tell me, son, you’re going to become who you hang around. And he was right. He told me that over and over again, and I just thought, oh, dad, you know what you’re talking about. Not me, right? I’m exempted. I’m exempted from that, dad. He was right. And you see it with Israel. They became like the nations around them. And they worshipped these gods. But, God loved them, even in the midst of it, even though it wasn’t the first time that they did it. To Hosea, he said, I want you to go and marry a woman who’s loved by another man, just like I love the children of Israel. And they serve other gods, and they eat the cakes. They just suit their immediate desires. God loves a people who constantly and consistently turn from Him.
They also, not only, they broke the first great commandment, right? We can’t have any other gods but God. But they violated, they violated in general other points of the law as well because these gods, they’re not just an image that you would set up on the shelf and pay some homage to. They’re going to require something of you. They’re gods of something. Take, for example, Moloch. Moloch required you to sacrifice your children. And they, Israel served Moloch. And the Ashtaroth is, is a god of fertility. We won’t go into detail, but I’ll let you think for yourselves on what that might ask them to do in their private lives and in their relationships. They would break God’s commandment on murdering, on adultery. They would give glory to these gods. Oh, this is the god of, of the land. And he’s going to, he’s going to give us an abundance in the harvest. So they’re attributing glory to this false god that only God deserves. God gives growth.
God gives children and they must not be sacrificed to Moloch. That’s an abomination. So they were, they were repeat offenders. We are repeat offenders in heinous acts. And it says that they, they all together left behind the Lord. They, they forsook the Lord. It has the idea of forgetting, leaving behind, unbinding. So, so I’m supposed to be bound as I am to my wife. I’m bound to her in a covenant relationship. I’m supposed to be tied to the Lord in this covenant relationship. No, I cut those loose as if they were chains. And I go and I serve other gods.
Where, where have you forsaken the law of the Lord? Where have you turned for provision? Where have you turned for approval? What is your God? Who is your God? I hope the only answer is the Lord. Let us not be like the children of Israel. And I think it’s easy for us to sit here today and say, wow, couldn’t they get it right? How many times Israel like, come on, let’s get with the program. We’re just like them. We are the children of Israel. We’re wayward. We so easily forget.
Where, where is it that you compromise? How often do you go to the Lord and say, Lord, I did this again. God, God, God delivers you from, from a struggle, a sin that just attacks you day in and out. He delivers you and you don’t, you don’t do away with the enemy in your life. You, you, you leave it lingering and sooner or later it rises up and it snatches you again. And you, you come to your sins and you’re like, Lord, I did it again. I did it again and again. And again.
I have good news for you if that’s you because God loves his children even though we’re guilty of compounded, consistent compromise. But what am, what am I saying? I don’t, I want to tell you what I’m not saying. And that, what I just said doesn’t prove that God loves us. I realize that. And it only shows us how sinful we are. But the story doesn’t stop here. So does, does God love us by leaving us to do what we do to serve other gods? Does he love us and allow us to compromise? No, that’s fine. I’m, I’m okay with my spouse, you know, going to hang out at the bar and meeting people and doing things they shouldn’t be doing. And I’m, I’m okay with that. I’m still, you know, I’m her husband. So, you know, it’s good. Does he, does he allow us to approve of God? Does he allow us to approve and celebrate those things?
We were at the, at the park yesterday and Huntsville had their, their now annual pride parade. And I was looking on a website earlier in Decatur where I work, had their first pride parade yesterday. And, and, and the big, the big theme with that seems to be love, right? Love is love. And, and, and I realized a point like that, like God loves his children can be misunderstood. So I really want to let you know what I’m saying because we’ve confused the word love today. It’s been maimed and abused and destroyed almost. So, so we really have to define our terms. So, so is God’s love like the love that the pride LGBTQ culture demands of us that we love by approving and celebrating their chosen life? I don’t think so.
What then is the loving response to them? What, what do we do in that? And, and sadly, that mentality creeps into the church.
And so you have mainline Baptist or whoever churches across the nation. Well, love is love. Who am I to judge? Preaching it from the pulpit. That’s not God’s definition of love. So, so what, what does it look like? How, how does God love us in spite of our sin? He loves us by correcting us with corrective consequences.
Turn to Hebrews chapter 12.
The writer of the Hebrews is quoting the proverb.
He says, My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by Him. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves. And He chastises every son whom He receives.
God’s love corrects when we compromise. It chastens when we sin and we go astray.
And He says that if, if it doesn’t, you’re, you’re an illegitimate child. You don’t, that’s not a father. Someone who doesn’t correct their son or their daughter is no father. No father or mother at all. Because the loving thing to do is to, to correct them, rebuke them, maybe with the rod and steer them back to the right way. The, the severity and the specifics of the consequences that are divvied out are determined by God in, in our passage here. So, before, before Gideon gets called, it says that Israel was oppressed by the Midianites for seven years. And then in our passage, the Philistines and the sons of Ammon oppressed Israel for 18 years. Israel before this was in slavery for 400 years. And then later on, they’ll be exiled again for X amount of years. So, so it’s up to God to determine what the right response to this rebellion is. And, and, and we should just trust that it is good. And that’s a hard thing to do. I promise you. But, God is a loving father. He loves his children. And his, his consequences, his discipline is thought out. It, it, it’s, it’s, it’s specific. It’s not some random number of years or whatever. He’s going to do something with it. Right? And so, we as parents, we, we should put great thought into the specifics of the consequences of our, our children’s sin and rebellion. When, when, when your child disobeys you, we should have already laid out the guidelines and the parameters for what the consequences would be. Okay? So, let’s take, let’s take church for example. We’re driving in the van on the way to church. And you lay down the guidelines for your children. You say, hey kids, we’re going to church. We’re going to worship. It’s going to be great. You know what we expect of you. You will sit still. You will not talk. Whatever, whatever those guidelines are. Right? Reasonably. And so you get to church. You sit through worship. And then after, you, you analyze the behavior. If they were great, you say, hey, great job. Fantastic. I’m so proud of you. You obeyed mom and dad. Buy them a sucker or an ice cream. Or let your commendation be enough. That should be enough for us sometimes. We don’t always need a treat. Just the approval of my parents knowing that I’m a good kid. Knowing that I did what was right in their eyes and they celebrate it should be enough. Right? You should love it when your dad tells you good job. It means something. Your dad loves you. So, we still need something to inform our decisions on discipline. Okay? So, you can’t just fly off the handle and smack your kid in the back of the head because that’s what they deserve in the moment. Right? This thing has already been pre-thought out. You have guidelines for yourself as a parent. But also, you have to have a goal in your discipline. So, the goal is to correct the behavior that you didn’t approve of, right? And produce something better. So, in Israel’s case here, they rebelled in a serious way. For the umpteenth time, God delivers them over into the hands of their enemies and they were there for 18 years. That’s what God saw fit to do to them. But lo and behold, after some time, they cried out to the Lord. Help us. We’re in bad shape. Right? So, you start to see the effect of the discipline. They realize now that, hey, what we were seeking after isn’t quite what, what we bargained for. It’s more than we bargained for. Help us. Deliver us, Lord. And God gives a very severe, and you have to keep reading or you won’t sleep well tonight. You have to keep reading on past this verse here, verse 14.
He says, I delivered you from these gods. I delivered you from these enemies. Go and cry out to them and let them deliver you.
And what does he say? I will save you no more. What do you do there? I think it’s going to depend on what you believe.
So, the text of the scripture says that God is merciful and compassionate and that, and His mercy endures forever, and He forgives sin. So all these texts that you know, that inform you about who God is, I think, well, the rubber meets the road right here. They’ll demonstrate whether you really believe them or not. Because you hear something like this, you’re like, well, let’s take it to the house, boys. God’s done with us. No, I have to cling to this text, and I have to cling to the promises of God and say, please, God, I know I’ve sinned. I know I’ve done wrong. I know I’ve betrayed you again. Please, we know we’ve sinned. Do whatever is good to you, but please deliver us this time. It produced something in them. God’s discipline produced something in Israel, and it should produce something in us. So, if God sends Israel into… …to bondage, to be afflicted by their enemies, and it ends there, it’s not much of anything but just some people suffering, right? There’s a book that… It’s called Why Children Matter. It’s by a man named Doug Wilson. I highly recommend it. This book has informed how I parent and, more specifically, discipline my children. It’s a great book. It’s very… It’s simple. It’s very… …common man level stuff, you know, like it’s really practical. But he leans on Hebrews 12 quite a bit. And he says this in his book. He says, Hardship in a story is grace. Hardship without a story is just pain. So, this hardship in the middle of this story, it’s going to turn out to be grace, and I’ll show you that. But if it just ends here, if it’s just, if it’s just hardship, if it’s just Israel suffering, it’s just suffering and pain. Praise be to God, it’s not. It’s a story. Right? So, the consequences are calculated. They’re intended to achieve a particular purpose, namely, repentance. You see, God’s severe discipline produces repentance. Because what does it say? It says, We have sinned. Do to us whatever seems good to you. Please deliver us this day. And so they put away the foreign gods from among them.
It produced something in them. And back to Hebrews 12.
Verse 10.
He compares, you know, earthly father discipline to, to his, he says, Earthly fathers disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them. But he, God, disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. But later, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. So, I as a father, my wife as a mother, you as parents, you, you have to have specific purpose in your discipline. And, and to go just super high level, it, it needs to be to make them like Christ. It needs to be to produce in them Christ’s likeness. It’s not punishment. Again, Wilson in his book makes a distinction between punishment, and he uses capital punishment, and discipline. Punishment is just punishment. This is what you get. You’re on death row, you die. Discipline produces something in me. It changes me. As the writer of the Hebrew says, it makes me to share in God’s holiness. It’s unpleasant. I don’t like it. But it’s what a loving God does. Because if not for the afflictions that he put on Israel, if not for the conviction that he, he, he gave them, they’re just another heathen nation. They’re not God’s children. And God’s children will behave like God’s children. And he will see to it. Because he loves them. And it’s for their good that they may be holy.
It says that, that it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. So, so you think about a farmer. He goes to a farmer. He goes and at the beginning of the year, he tills up the ground. And then he’s going to plant some seed. And then he’s going to do some soil sampling and testing. And he’s going to make sure it has everything that it needs. And it’s going to be a long time before he even sees a sprout.
He’s going to put in a lot of sweat equity before he sees any results. But it’s worth it. Your labor is worth it. Because you know it’s going to yield the fruit of righteousness.
And so whenever your kid is just over and over again talking back. I don’t think we have any kids like that at Providence, but just hypothetically.
And they roll their eyes and they’re sassy. And they’re sassy. Remember. That that labor is not in vain. Parents, please. Don’t give up. Don’t give up on disciplining your children in order to produce in them Christ-likeness.
It’s what a loving parent does. Ad nauseum. Toil. Day in and day out. And day in and day out. And grandparents too. It’s producing something. I know I’ve repeated that. But I’m trying to make a point.
So, at the end of that, does the story end there? What happens now? God places his consequences on us. We’re afflicted for 18 years by the sons of Ammon and the Philistines. Beaten down. Miserable. It produced repentance in us. We’ve realized that we’ve gone astray. We’ve realized that we’re wrong. But what now? Is that the end of it? Does God’s love stop there for his children?
No.
What do we do? What do you do when you, in your sin, come to a realization of it? And you cry out to God for forgiveness? For restoration? Do you have the faith to do that? Do you have the grounds to do that?
Matthew Henry, in his commentary, says that true repentance is not only for sin, but from sin. As the disobedience and misery of a child are a grief to a tender father, so the promise of repentance is not only for sin, but from sin. So the provocations of God’s people are a grief to him. From him, mercy never can be sought in vain. Let them, hear this, let them, the trembling sinner, and the almost despairing backslider, cease from debating about God’s secret purposes, or from expecting to find hope from former experiences, but let them cast themselves on the mercy of God, our Savior. Humble themselves under his hand. Seek deliverance. Seek deliverance from the powers of darkness. Separate themselves from sin, and from all occasions of it. Use the means of grace diligently, and wait the Lord’s time. And so, they shall certainly rejoice in his mercy. Matthew Henry acts like he knows from the scripture that it’s a certain thing, that if you will do that, you will rejoice in God’s mercy. So then, how do you seek this mercy? How do you obtain the mercy? Calvin says this in the Institutes. I went back to this, and I’m reading his section on prayer. I find it interesting that, of that word, it’s like four books, the longest section in the Institutes is on prayer. I find that powerful. It’s prayer. That’s how you’re going to find and obtain, the mercy of God. In true repentance, genuine repentance, I seek God in prayer. Listen to what Calvin says. He says, To prayer, then, we are indebted for penetrating to those riches which are treasured up for us with our Heavenly Father. For there is a kind of intercourse between God and men, by which, having entered the upper sanctuary, they appear before him and appeal to his promises. That when necessity rests, requires they may learn by experiences that what they believed merely on the authority of his word was not in vain. Accordingly, we see that nothing is set before us as an object of expectation from the Lord, which we are not enjoined to ask of him in prayer. So, true is it that prayer digs up the treasures which the gospel of our Lord discovers to the eye of faith. The necessity and utility of this exercise of prayer, no words can sufficiently express. Assuredly, it is not without cause that our Heavenly Father declares that our only safety is to call upon his name, since by it we invoke the presence of his providence to watch over our interests, of his power to sustain us when weak and almost fainting, of his goodness to receive us into favor, though we’re miserably loaded with sin. In fine, call upon him to manifest himself in all his perfections. Hence, admirable peace and tranquility are given to our consciences, for the straits by which we were pressed being laid before the Lord, we rest fully satisfied with the assurance that none of our evils are unknown to him, and that he is both able and willing to make the best provision for us. Two things I want to draw from that for you. The things that we read in the Word, and we know intellectually to be true of God, that he may pardon and he may show mercy, by prayer we seek to realize it, and experience it in our own life.
And then this, knowing that God sees all of your evils, and he knows the depths of your sin, yet he is still both able and willing. That one always gets me. I know God’s able. I don’t doubt that. But where I’m weak in my faith is that he’s willing. Amen. To make the best provision for you, a sinner.
So, we’ve come to our senses. We’ve called out to God in repentance. We’ve turned from our sin. What is our expectation now? What does God do?
Well, God loves us so much, and he proves it, when he’s moved by cosmic compassion to deliver us from all of our miseries.
Cosmic compassion. That sounds kind of strange. So, I want to define those two terms for you. Using Merriam-Webster, define cosmic as this. Characterized by greatness, especially in extent, intensity, or comprehensiveness. So, this kind of compassion, even cosmic, I think, sells it short, but it’s the biggest term that I can relate to. It’s the biggest in terms of extent, and intensity, and strength, comprehensiveness, and compassion. Listen to compassion. It’s a sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it. So, God is not only aware of the distress that you’re in. God is not only conscious of your misery produced by your sinful lifestyle,
but because you’re his children, he’s moved to alleviate it. He has a desire to do something about it. God has a love. For us. And he proves it when he’s moved by compassion to deliver us from our miseries.
In verse 16, this is really the verse that drew me to this. The ESV says that he became impatient over the misery of Israel. The NASB says that he could bear the misery of Israel no longer. He could bear it no more. You think about whenever you’re sitting in a hot car and the AC’s not working and you’ve got the windows turned up. I can’t take this anymore. I’ve got to get out of here. Or when the TV’s too loud and the kids are chirping and it’s too much for your mind to comprehend. I’ve got to go. I can’t bear this any longer. Those are really trivial examples, but the idea is true that God couldn’t bear the misery of Israel any longer because he was moved by compassion for the misery of Israel. For them. Even in their lowest of lows. Even though it took them 18 years to repent. Even though it wouldn’t be the first time or the last that they would repent. God was moved because he couldn’t bear the misery of his people any longer.
I remember I was young. I was 17. I moved out of my mom’s house. I was going to seek my own life.
And I believe at the time she had she had co-signed a loan for me and I had this car. Well, because I was moving out without her approval. I’ll say that. She wouldn’t let me take the car with me, right? Rightfully so. I’m glad she didn’t. And so, you know, I scrounged up like, I don’t know, $800. I bought this 1988 Oldsmobile Delta 98. And this thing had seen its better days, for sure. I mean, the struts and shocks on this thing sounded like flat basketballs when you ran over paint stripes. Much less you hit the railroad tracks. You thought them things would come through the hood. It was terrible. And it leaked transmission oil like nobody’s business. I mean, I bet I added a quarter transmission oil to this thing every other day or more. So, I’m at Walmart and I’m buying a quart of transmission oil. And I’m walking out to the parking lot living a miserable life. Man, it’s just terrible. But I ain’t going back home. I can’t admit to that. You know, I’m going to make it. I run into my mom and my stepdad in the parking lot.
And that wasn’t the first time that I had spit in their face and rebelled against them. This was countless times. You know what they said to me?
Chase, why don’t you come back home?
Please, come back home.
If my mom and my stepdad can show that type of compassion, what kind of compassion do you think God shows?
It can’t be compared.
God’s compassion is unbounded and limitless and undescribable and unimaginable. If you, being a sinful man, know how to give good gifts to your people, your children, how much more do you think God will give good gifts to you?
So, what did God do?
Well,
the Ammonites were called to arms and they encamped in Gilead and the people of Israel came together and they encamped at Mizpah. And the people, the leaders of Gilead said to one another, who’s the man who’s going to begin to fight against the Ammonites? He’ll be the head over all the inhabitants of Gilead. Now, Jephthah, the Gileadite, was a mighty warrior, but he was the son of a prostitute. And I don’t have time to go into that, into much detail about Jephthah, but I’ll give you an overview. We’re coming up to, he’ll be the ninth judge in the book. Okay, he was a bit of an illegitimate child and he was kind of, he was an outcast and he was disowned by his siblings. And so, out of their desperation, because he was a valiant man, they were like, well, we ain’t got nowhere else to go, let’s call up old Jephthah. And so, they go into negotiations with him and they’re like, hey, if you’ll fight for us and deliver us, we’ll make you the head of all of us. That’s how desperate they were. So, Jephthah, you know, he negotiates and works out a deal. And so, he then, he sends a message to the sons of Ammon. And the Ammonites were Abraham’s nephew Lot, Ammon was his son, Lot’s son. So, closely related to Israel in a roundabout way. So, they’re coming to fight. Why? Because Jephthah finds out, well, they think Israel stole their land from them. And Jephthah goes on to explain what really happened. He recounts the history to them. Well, no, the deal was that the Lord gave us this land. So, it’s ours. And they didn’t want to hear it. So, they go to war. Jephthah has victory over them. Now, before he makes this vow, he vowed to give, sacrifice the first thing out of his house if the Lord would give him victory. And it turns out that it’s his daughter that walks out of the house. And there’s some debate on it. I think the text is pretty clear that he sacrificed his daughter. Some theologians and whatnot will say that, no, he just devoted her to virginity for her life or whatnot. Personally, I think it’s pretty clear. I don’t think it ultimately matters. So, Jephthah delivers them from the sons of Ammon. And then they have some in-house fighting. Ephraim, one of Joseph’s sons, they’re going to start fighting. And at the end of it, guess how Jephthah’s story ends? He dies. Jephthah dies. Next.
So, God, in a very real way, delivered Israel from their immediate miseries. And he used Jephthah. The text doesn’t introduce Jephthah like it did Gideon. It said that the Lord, the Spirit of the Lord, you know, it kind of starts out with that and he grabs Gideon. You see, kind of in the middle of this story, that the Spirit of the Lord came upon Jephthah. And so, either way, I think you would be splitting hairs to say, you know, Jephthah was raised up by God to deliver Israel from the sons of Ammon. I think that’s pretty clear. But he died. So, what then? This cycle just repeats. You see, if you read the book of Judges, this story, it’s going to look different. It’s going to have some different skin on it, some different flavors. But the story’s going to happen again. And it’s going to end, maybe more tragically than this one does. Jephthah died. So then, what is the real deliverance of Israel? What are they going to do?
We all know the story. God sent his son, Jesus. And Jephthah was a valiant warrior who delivered from the sons of Ammon, but Jesus was a valiant warrior who delivered us from even the last enemy death and he gives us the crown of life. Jephthah was the son of a harlot. Jesus is the son of a virgin.
Jephthah, he promised to sacrifice the first thing out of his house in exchange for guaranteed victory. Jesus came to sacrifice himself, trusting that God would give the victory. Jephthah died. Jesus died. But lo, he rose again and he ever lives. And God shows his love for us that while we were still sinners, still sinning in the midst of our sin, Christ died for us.
So we now know that God loves us in spite of our sin. He does something about the sin. He won’t let it remain as our culture would like us to do.
And then he delivers us from the affliction of it. So he proves it by sending his son. So we know that he loves us, but why would he love us like this? How could he endure such wicked behavior? Why would he trouble himself with the care of correcting us? Not once, not twice, but over and over and over again.
How can he ensure such a resolution? How could he promise for this thing to be resolved ultimately?
It’s this. God loves his children with an everlasting love. In Ephesians 1 it says that in love he predestined us to adoption as sons. And Jesus says that all that the Father gives to him he’ll lose none. Jesus loves with an everlasting love. He has joined himself to us. And no one can separate us from him.
I hope that you will rejoice in that today.
In the depths of your sin, know that God has loved you with an everlasting love.
When the affliction gets heavy and the correction is hard, know that God is loving you with an everlasting love and he’s not allowing you to stay there, but he’s producing something in you. Namely, the likeness of Christ. And know that God has loved you with an everlasting love that delivers you from all of your enemies. It shakes off the chains, the bondage of sin. It shakes off the fears and uncertainties of life. It deals with the anxieties of the unknowns.
And it deals with the greatest enemies. And it deals with the greatest sins. And it deals with the greatest sins. And it deals with the greatest sins. God loves us with an everlasting love. Amen. Would you pray with me? Father, I thank you for the love that you love us with. I thank you that you’re not a fickle God. I thank you that you’re not a changing God.
But you endure patiently, long-suffering through our foolishness, our rebellion, our wickedness. And you love us out of it because you know it’s right for us. And you give it to us. Though it hurts, it’s unpleasant for the time, but surely it can’t be compared with the weight of glory that you’ve given us. That waits for us. I thank you that you so love us, Lord, that you sent your Son to die on a cross. To bear our sins in His body on a tree.
To drink the cup.
And I thank you, Lord, that we have a great hope that the story doesn’t end there, but one day Jesus is returning to God. To gather in your children. That we can forevermore live and dwell with you in peace.
And I thank you. In Jesus’ name, amen.