Covenantal Love - 250102

SPEAKER A Hello, I'm Rod Butler. Welcome to Let God Speak. Evangelist Dwight Moody famously said, the world does not understand theology or dogma, but it understands love and sympathy. Well, Jesus made this point very clear when he told his disciples, by this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. The Bible tells us that God's love for us is unconditional, and he longingly desires for us to love him back. Join us today as we discuss God's love and the conditions necessary for a covenantal love relationship with God. On our panel today, we have Cassie Sollano and Rosemary Malkiewycz. Welcome, Cassie, and welcome, Rosemary. SPEAKER B Hi. SPEAKER A Before we start our discussion, let's bow for prayer. Gracious Father, we want to thank you, Lord, for your great love for us, Lord, a love so deep that we have trouble to understand and comprehend it. And Lord, as we discuss this topic today, God's covenantal love, we ask please for the Holy Spirit to guide our discussion. Give us wisdom and may you bless our viewers. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. SPEAKER B Amen. SPEAKER A Well, the word love occurs more than 300 times in the New Testament King James Version Bible. However, the New Testament was written in Koine, or common Greek. And the Koine Greek language differentiates different types of love. For example, love for a friend, a husband, a brother, a child, or for mankind, and even love for others, regardless of self, to name a few. All these nuances of love are translated into one English word, love. So let's start looking into God's love at perhaps the most well known verse in all the Bible, John 3:16. And I'll read John 3:16, which says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Cassia, I've got a question for you. What does it mean when it says that God so loved the world? SPEAKER C Well, it's talking about the people. God chooses to love all the people in the world, not just some, but everyone. Which is the beautiful thing about God is that as people, we discriminate based on any kinds of grounds, but God doesn't. The word love in this verse is the Greek verb agape, which means being, welcoming, benevolent, and having strong fondness. God's character is like that. The Bible is consistent that he sees each person like that with this great love. And because God loves everyone, he also wants every single person to be saved. I'd like to read from First Timothy, chapter 2, verses 3, 3, and 4. This says for this, yes. Yeah. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. SPEAKER A Yeah, very important that, isn't it? Come to a knowledge of the truth. Now you mentioned agapea or however you pronounce that, which is the verb, the noun for that is agape. And C.S. lewis defined the definition of agape as a selfless love that is passionately committed to the well being of others. Rosemary, that's all nice, but is it easy to accept God's love? SPEAKER B Let me first say I really like what C.S. lewis wrote there. It's very, very, very, very well written. But to accept the love of God for us, it's not easy for everybody. Some people it is, some people it isn't. Some find it very hard because maybe they have a very low self esteem and think nobody could love them. Maybe they've come out of an abusive childhood, they may have had an aggressive father figure in their lives and they find it very, very difficult to believe that God as a father could love them because they have not felt loved. And so there's a number of things that can impact people and their concept of love has been completely distorted by these things that have happened or their self esteem. So let's look at First John 4:19 and this will tell us something very important. We love him because he first loved us. So God loves us first. Otherwise we wouldn't even think to love God if we didn't know that he loves us first. And through all of this love we can either choose to accept his love or to reject it. SPEAKER A Now it's interesting, the word agape, some people say that just applies to God's love. But agape can be human love, it can be God's love. And it just means that a person who's passionately committed to the well being of others. And I just want to read, going back to your point about God's love, Jeremiah verse 31. Sorry, Jeremiah 31:3 is a beautiful verse. It says the Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee. So that gives us, you know, again, God's love for us has been foreverlasting and he's reached out first to us. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A So Cassie, what does the Bible actually say about God's character? SPEAKER C The Bible has a lot to say, but I'd like to turn to this particular story of Moses. And he asks God to show him God's glory. He knows God, but he wants to see something. And incredibly, God agrees to that. He hides him in a cleft of a rock to allow him to watch his hind parts pass by. Otherwise God's dazzling light would have destroyed him in an instant. But God doesn't stop there. He explains of his glory. And it's not what we might assume. So I'd like to read Exodus 34, verses 6 and 7, which say, and the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord. The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. God starts talking about his character to describe his glory. And these things about justice and mercy and love are so important when considering who God is. The New Testament also sums up God's character. We can find it in the New Testament. There's plenty of verses to turn to there as well. So I'd like to turn to First John 4, 8, which says, he who does not love does not know God. For God is love. God is love. And God is agape. SPEAKER A There's that word agape again. God is love. This passionate love for the well being of others. So that's God's character. Rosemary, let's go way back. What does the Bible say about the human character before sin entered? SPEAKER B Okay. Man was originally created in God's image. And that image means we were like God in our capacity to love. God gave us his love for others and also gave us the ability to be loved, the desire to be loved and to give love. And let's look at Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 and 27. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God. He created him male and female. He created them. So we were created to love. We were not created as robots programmed to love. Because then love would not be voluntary. God gave us the freedom. He created us with freedom to love or to choose not to love. SPEAKER A Yeah, that's very important, isn't it? Because as you say, if we were created to love, where's the love? You've got no response from you just. SPEAKER B Automatically Doing it without any emotional bond. SPEAKER A Now, Jesus was the Creator and he came to pay the death penalty price for our sins. And he lived a sinless life. And of course, his death on the cross paid the atonement for us. Rosemary, when we look at the life of Jesus, what other important work, apart from dying on the cross, which is extremely important, what other important work did he do for us? SPEAKER B Okay, through the love he showed us, he gave us a practical, living example of what God is like, because man had lost sight of who God really was and, and what he had done for them. So he came to show us God's character of unconditional love for his creation. And that's the agape love that we're talking about. So let's look at John chapter 14 and verses 8 and 9, because this will tell us some of this. Philip said to him, to Jesus, lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus says to him, have I been with you so long and you have not known me? Philip, he who has seen me has seen the Father. So how can you say, show us the Father? So Jesus came to reveal God. He came to show us what God is like. And we all know that Jesus is loving. Jesus was kind and thoughtful, very compassionate. So he came to show us that. But he also gave us an example of what we are to do if we believe in him, if we follow him, we are to do the same thing. We love God more than we love ourselves. And we are to love other people as we love ourselves as much. Jesus actually said as much as I do. Let's look at John 15, 12 and 13. Jesus said, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this than to lay down one's life for his friends. So that is the kind of love that Jesus said we are to have for others, love them as much as he loves us. SPEAKER A And in Jesus day, can you imagine how radical that message was? Because their version of God or their understanding of God was a stern, judgmental character. SPEAKER B And that's why Jesus came to change that. SPEAKER A And Jesus came as this loving person who healed the sick and did the work that he did. Total service to humanity. Very important that that was, that was shown. SPEAKER B And we can only love that way because of a personal relationship with God. There's no other way we can do it. SPEAKER A That's right. Now, Cassie, question to you. Is there anything we can do to make God not love us? SPEAKER C The amazing thing is that there isn't. God will Never stop loving us. And in our human relationships, often people experience that, oh, I've done something, and that person doesn't want anything to do with me anymore. But God isn't like that. He isn't a judgmental character like people thought and people still think today. He never stops loving us. In the Bible, we have the example of David. He tried to conceal his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah. Yet God did not reject him. He sent Nathan the prophet to confront him, and David repented. I'd like to read Psalm 51, the beginning in verse one, which is David writing, have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. And that is what God did. SPEAKER A Powerful, isn't it? SPEAKER C It is. SPEAKER A So God loves us unconditionally, no matter what we've done. And he's a deeply relational God, so he wants a relationship with us. And he created us with the free will to love him back or choose not to love Him. So, Rosemary, question for you. How does God go about having a love relationship, a holy God, with us sinful humans? SPEAKER B Well, first of all, there's a problem because sin drives us away from God, because sin is the opposite of God. God is holy, and so God is totally opposed to sin. And so sin can't exist where God is. And if we are sinning, we will want to flee from God. We will want to be away from Him. So it makes it very hard for him to have that relationship with us. But for us to have that relationship with him, we have to allow his love to come into our hearts. We have to deal first of all with the sin in our lives and turn away from it so that God can then fill us with his love. And God is wonderful in that he pursues us and calls us, as Cassie has even said, he doesn't just wait passively back. He actually pursues us and tries to get us to listen to Him. And that's one of the way he deals with sinners. He. After he's done that, after we've actually taken notice, he doesn't just leave us there. He cleans us up. He takes away our sin from us as we give it up. And then when he does that, he shows mercy to us so that we can show mercy to other people and show people what he's like. We have to witness of his love. So when we turn to God and away from sin, we enter that covenantal love relationship with Him. SPEAKER A Powerful and I guess as we deal with more and more of the sin in our life, through the power of God in our life, we get to see more clearly God's love for us, which again, reinforces and deepens our love relationship. So there's a very powerful spiral there, isn't it? SPEAKER B And helps us to see more clearly any more sin. SPEAKER A Any more sin. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Yep. Okay. Well, let's. You mentioned covenantal love relate. Let's look at. Let's look at a covenant. Now, a covenant is an agreement between two parties. And, you know, it's a contract virtually. And a contract or a covenant is normally initiated by the stronger entity, the stronger, more influential party in that relationship. Turn with me to Deuteronomy, and we're going to look at Deuteronomy 7. And we're going to be looking at verses 6 to 9, Deuteronomy 7, 6, 9. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people. For ye were the fewest of all people. But because the Lord loved you and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondman from the hand of Pharaoh, King of Egypt. Know therefore, that the Lord thy God is. He is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. So question to you, Cassie. Were the Israelites chosen from these verses? Were the Israelites chosen because they were a particularly special group of people? SPEAKER C No, they weren't. In verse six, it says, the Lord thy God has chosen thee to be a special people unto Himself. They weren't already a special people. God was going to make them that as an act of grace. In verse seven, God says they were chosen not because of anything notable or special about them. He initiated the covenant and chose them because, as it says in verse eight, he loved them. And he made promises to their forefathers, such as Abraham, that they would be delivered from slavery. And God keeps his promises. SPEAKER A Okay. Interesting, isn't it? So, Rosemary, what are his people required to do to keep in this covenant? SPEAKER B Okay, let's look at verse 9 again. Deuteronomy 7, 9. And this tells us very distinctly. Therefore know that the Lord your God, he is God the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments. So the Israelites had two conditions. First, they had to love God. And second, they had to obey God. They had to keep his commandments, specifically the Ten Commandments. And unfortunately for many generations, they chose to go the opposite direction. They still wanted God's blessings, but they did their own thing. They didn't love God and they didn't obey Him. And we have many examples in the Bible, in the Old Testament of how the people went astray from God, still expecting that they were God's people, but doing everything he said not to do. And they were choosing to worship false gods and idols and to do things that God had said not to do. SPEAKER A Yeah. It's interesting how there are so many examples in the Old Testament of how they broke their covenant. SPEAKER B Yeah. SPEAKER A Wasn't God the people broke the covenant? SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER A So, Cassie, what actually happened when the people did break the covenant? SPEAKER C When the Israelites broke the covenant, God let them go in their own direction. He said, oh, that's what you want to do. Go ahead and do it without me. Without God. I'll read in Jeremiah again, this time in chapter 16, verse 5, which says, for thus says the Lord, do not enter the house of mourning, nor go to lament or bemoan them, for I have taken away my peace from this people, says the Lord, loving kindness and mercies. It wasn't that God suddenly came down on them and punished them. He took away the peace and the mercy that he was giving to them. It was only fair if they said, oh, no, we don't want to do what you say, that God can't keep giving them this peace and mercy. And this had bad consequences going in their own direction because they were left defenceless against their enemies. SPEAKER A And as I said, there are numerous examples how the invaders came in and destroyed many people because they'd broken their covenant. And that was the way that God also spoke to them, to let them know they'd wandered away, to bring them back. This is the discipline part as well. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER A So, Rosemary, we know what the people had to do if they did keep the covenant as required. What did God do for them if. SPEAKER B They kept the covenant and remember it? Just in saying that there's a condition. Right. If we've seen the two conditions in Deuteronomy 7, verse 9, to love God and to obey his commandments. So it is conditional. And if the people did do what God said to love or to lovingly obey him, that's the way I personally like to put it, the Bible is full of wonderful promises where God wants to fulfil these exceptional things for his people, who will listen to him and who will have a relationship with Him. And when we fulfil these conditions, God protects, God bestows, God does wonderful things. And the Bible is full of wonderful times when God had worked miracles to sustain and to look after his people because they were faithful. One of my favourite stories is the one of Jehoshaphat. SPEAKER A Yes, indeed. Yep. Well, so what you're saying God's love is, is not conditional? SPEAKER B No, his love isn't, but we are. SPEAKER A But the covenant relationship is. Is conditional, Correct? Yeah. Okay, so apart from the temporal bless the temporal blessings of the relationship, of course, the ultimate is that he promises us eternal life eventually. So Cassie, question to you. Is there any misunderstanding for us today what we have to do to remain in God's love? SPEAKER C Wonderfully, there is no misunderstanding. If we look to the Bible, it's very clear that God requires us to obey His Ten Commandments. And turning to John, chapter 14, verse 15 says, if you love me, keep my commandments. It's very simple and there can be no misunderstanding in a verse like that. And later in verse 21, it continues, he who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to Him. SPEAKER A This is interesting too, because it's linking the word love to commandments. And people have the perception that commandments are stern, legalistic, you know, do's and don'ts. But this is linking the commandments to being something good that'll make us actually want to love the Lord, which is very powerful. SPEAKER B Does that over and over again. SPEAKER A Yes. So question to you, Rosemary, what is it about keeping the commandments that is so special, that is so important? SPEAKER B Keeping them shows our love and faithfulness to God. Let's look at Matthew, chapter 22, verses 36 to 40. It says, Teacher, someone came to ask Jesus a question which is the great commandment in the law. Jesus said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is, like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. And so when we look at the 10 commandments, the first four commandments are about our relationship with with God, that we are to have him as our only God. We're not to worship idols, we're not to make idols. We're not to have anything but him as our God. We're not to take his name in vain. We're not to pretend or to say we're Christians and to live like the devil. We are to keep his seventh day Sabbath holy. And the last six commandments are about our relationship with each other. There's our parents to honour them. There's to not kill, not commit adultery or immorality. Not to steal, not to lie about someone else, not to covet someone else's possessions. So all those things are to do with loving your neighbour as yourself. So if we keep them, we will have great inner peace and a love for God that will last throughout eternity. To me, that's exciting. SPEAKER A That's a very powerful motivation why we should love God. What's another motivation, Cassie? Why we should love God? SPEAKER C Yes. Well, it's what we've discussed, that God loved us first before we asked and before we did anything. God's love was there for us. It's a beautiful thing that we can get all of these things from loving him and that he will be in a relationship with us. But at the beginning of all of that, he loved us unconditionally. I'd like to turn to Romans 5 and I'll read verse 8, which says, But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He has given his life to pay the price for our sins as a free gift. All we have to do is accept that gift and eternal life with Christ in a loving relationship is ours. SPEAKER A Yes, that's very important, isn't it? The loving relationship is ours. I just want to close with this one text here. This is first, John 3, 16. This is a repeat of John 15. 13 different words hereby perceive we the love of God because He layeth down his life for us and. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. Laying down your life with someone is a pretty powerful thing. Rosemary, very quickly, does it mean we actually physically lay our life down? SPEAKER B No. It can mean giving our time, giving our influence. Helping others in some way can be actually laying down our lives because we've taken our time to do it. SPEAKER A Thank you for that. Well, that's all we've got time for. Thanks, Cassie. Thanks, Rosemary. If to love God entails that we love others, we should with urgency share this message of God's love both in word and in deed. This is the message the world desperately needs in these last days. We should help people in their daily lives here and now, and also seek to be a conduit of God's love and point people to the One who offers them the promise of eternal life in a new heaven and a new earth. Well, we're glad you joined us today on Let God Speak. Remember, all past programmes plus teacher's notes are available on our website, 3ainaustralia.org.au. email us if you wish and join us again next time. And God bless. SPEAKER B You have been listening to let God speak, a production of 3ABN Australia television. To catch up on past programmes, please visit 3abnaustralia.org.au. Call us in Australia on 02 4973 3456. Or email [email protected]. we'd love to hear from you.