The Great Love of God

Psalm 107 The Great Love of God Introduction: This is a Psalm of testimony - A retelling of all the ways and different circumstances that the LORD redeemed his people out of… “Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story—those he redeemed from the hand of the foe, those he gathered from the lands, from east and west, from north and south.” -NIV Translation OR "Say thank you to the Lord for being so good, for always being so loving and kind. 2 Has the Lord redeemed you? Then speak out! Tell others he has saved you from your enemies.” - The Living Bible Think of your own story… How has God delivered you? Even in this last year, what are ways that you have seen God’s faithfulness, and provision?How is God presently delivering you? This Psalm says, Tell your story!! Now this Psalm also comes with a promise.You don’t really pick it up in the english translations but the last verse of this psalm is a promise of wisdom. It says, “Let the one who is wise heed these things and ponder the loving deeds of the Lord.” (NIV) So the call is not just to tell your story but to let that story of God’s unfailing love inform your life, let his goodness and faithfulness make you wise, stable, mature, unmoved by circumstances. Let it make you faithful. You see in Hebrew theology wisdom or being wise doesn’t simply mean knowledge and information; wisdom is a transformed life and character through an encounter with the living God. So this Psalm is saying IF you consider the love of God rightly, if you ponder it and study it, your life will be changed, your heart will be transformed. You will be wise. This Psalm is an invitation and a guide to do that. 1. Where do we encounter or where do we go to consider the Great Love of God? 1. This is a wonderful Psalm for us to consider because this Psalm starts at a place where everybody, at least in the west, already believes today, and that is this: If there is a God, he is a god of love. And this is what the theme of this psalm is all about. It’s about considering, studying, weighing out how great God’s love is. 2. Most Americans believe that if there is a God, he is a God of love. The question is, where do we get this idea? 3. People might say, it’s instinctive, I just know, I’ve always known. Or people have always known that. Really? 1. Do we get it from History? - No, Almost all of history tells us that all cultures and peoples believed that the gods must be appeased. That to be in the presence of the divine was terrifying and life threatening, you needed sacrifice, appeasement and priests to mediate for you. 2. How about the Religions of the World? Does the idea of a personal God with whom you can have a personal relationship common among the religions of the World? 1. The answer, again, is No. This is surprising because many people want to claim that all religions are alike, they all teach the same thing.. but this is just a way to dismiss all religions, then you don’t have to listen and do the hard work of thinking through them and weighing them out. 2. Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism - none of them believe in a personal loving God. And in original Buddhism you have to get past love in order to achieve Nirvana. 3. Islam teaches that God is Almighty, but he is not friend or father. He is merciful, but you cannot have a personal relationship with him. 4. So where does this idea of a God of love come from? 3. How about Nature? - Can you just go out into the wild and clearly understand that there is a great God of love? what do we see in nature? Though we do see great beauty and often experience tranquility in nature, what we often find in nature is violence, absurdity, and waste.. 1. Annie Dillard in her book “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” talks about her observations of nature - “I had thought to live by the side of the creek in order to shape my life to its free flow. But I seemed to have reached a point where I must draw the line. It looks as though the creek is not buoying me up but dragging me down. Look: Cock Robin may die the most gruesome of slow deaths and nature is no less pleased; the sun comes up, the creek rolls on, the survivors still sing. I cannot feel that way about your death, nor you about mine or either of us about the robin's... We value the individual supremely, and nature values him not a wit. It looks for the moment as though I might have to reject this creek life unless I want to be utterly brutalized.” 2. Annie Dillard describes nature as red in tooth and claw -we know exactly what she is talking about - the natural world around is brutal, with natural disaster, and the brutality of wild animals. 1. Again, does Nature reveal to us a God of love? No 3. Where do we consider the Love of God - (Love Hebrew word Chesed - his unfailing love or faithfulness, Never stopping, never giving up, un-breaking, always and forever love) We consider God’s love in his wonderful deeds in history - There is a God of love revealed in the Bible. The source for human thinking of the concept of a loving God comes from the Bible. The Bible alone gives us a frame work for the love of God. A loving God could not have created the world we live in unless there was such a thing as human free will and sin, (what we call the Fall of creation) and even then could we really believe that God was love if he left us there? -He created us, we destroyed his creation and now he’s left us on our own to work it out…. But the narrative or frame work of the Bible says, there’s more to the story: God has re-entered the story, he has broken back into the world to redeem and heal it through his Son, Jesus Christ. Only in that frame work of the Bible (Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration) does a loving God make sense.. If you don’t believe in Jesus, the idea of a loving God makes no sense at all. 1. Unless you consider the great deeds of God recorded in the Bible you cannot have a true encounter with the God of Love. 2. What do we Consider? - The Complexity of his Love 1. We are to consider his great deeds in history. In this Psalm there are four scenarios of human predicament and divine intervention. Four totally different groups of people from all over the world North, south, east west and yet they all get the same treatment. They all experience same love of God. 1. Those who wandered in barren places looking for a city (vs 4-9) - Lost, hungry, thirsty, exhausted, looking for a home. What do they need? They need a father who will care for them and bring them safely home, to a city, to security. 1. God is to them as a Father 2. Those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death (vs 10-16) - Enslaved or Trapped: guilt, darkness, grinding toil, enslaved - condemned prisoners -bonds, doors of bronze and iron chains. 1. What does this group need? They need a King who will pardon and deliver them. God becomes king for them. 3. Those who suffered for their own foolishness (vs 17-22) - Sick - bringing depression and sickness. Why? Through their own sinful ways - self inflicted trouble - they’ve ruined their lives through overwork or addictions or because of a lack of knowledge and wisdom. 1. What do they need? A physician, but more specifically a counselor. God becomes their Counselor - they are healed by his word. 4. Some went down to the sea in ships - Insignificant and small in a huge, chaotic world (helpless) (vs 23-32)… became surrounded by chaos, danger, and certain death..this situation shows mankind how helpless we are in the face of the natural disasters, and should remind us of how truly helpless we are to save ourselves out of any plight - the things show that we live by permission and not by our good management. 5. What does this group of people need? - An Omnipotent Friend - The Lord of the Storm. God becomes for them their omnipotent friend. 1. Isn’t this what God said to Moses, “I Am that I Am - that is my name forever! And in this way I am to be remembered forever!” becoming whatever we need, becoming all that we need. 6. Now you’ll notice that each stanza ends with praises to Yahweh (the LORD) for his unfailing love. This means that each act of deliverance is equally a demonstration of God’s unfailing love. You cannot emphasize one above the other. 1. What do I mean? Some of us over emphasis God as sovereign King or Judge (Conservative view of God - keep the rules and the king will bless you, and will smite you if you disobey him) and some of us over emphasis the Father/Loving Healer aspect of God (Liberal view -God is Father and he loves all). But this is to make God a caricature. This Psalm won’t allow us to do that. God is equally- Father, King, Counselor, Omnipotent Friend. But aren’t these contradictory? Maybe that’s why this Psalm is calling us to consider, to ponder these things! It’s complex! The God of love is complex, he’s not a caricature of one dimension. 2. This Psalm is calling us to hold these different love persona’s of God together at the same time, and only then do we see how impossible God’s love is.. If you are going to actually encounter the living God you have to let him be the complex character that he truly is. 3. How do we Consider? How does pondering God like this really change you? 1. When you behold the real God, you see his complexity… Father, King, Loving Counselor, Omnipotent friend..you see the impossibility of his love. 2. Look at the second stanza again (vs 10-16) “Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons….He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron.” 1. The people are enslaved and the Lord - the King frees them. But who’s prison is this; who’s bars are these? They are his prison, his bars. The people are there because they rebelled against his word, and yet when they call on him he cuts through his own bars. You see if he was only a friend he would have never put them in there. If he was only a king he would never let them out (they’ve broken his Law they’ve done wrong. Isn’t this a contradiction? Isn’t this impossible? Yes! 1. You see only in Jesus can the impossibility of God’s love be solved. At the cross we see perfect Justice (the King, the judge) and perfect mercy (the Father the Lover, the Friend) come together. The righteous demand of God’s Law, the sin committed by all people judged at the cross, and yet the great display of God’s mercy is that he substitutes himself. Our sin for his righteousness. 1. The reason God can take us home is because Jesus lost his home, he was the Son of Man who had no where to lay his head 2. The reason God can heal all our self inflicted wounds of addiction and sin is Jesus bore all our sicknesses and disease.. 3. The reason God can take us out of great darkness and gloom is because great darkness overcame Jesus on the cross. 4. The reason we can have the calm of the storm is because Jesus is the true and better Jonah who is cast into the sea of God’s wrath. 5. The reason we can call at anytime and he will answer our cry is because of Jesus, and the substitutionary work he did on the cross, his cry was not answered so that our cries will never go unanswered. thank God! 2. You see there is nothing great about a King loving or punishing us dependent upon how good we are, that’s what kings do. 3. There is nothing so special about a friend or father who will pardon and forgive us, that’s generally what they do. 1. It is only when we take the great complexities of God’s person all together that we see his true greatness and the greatness of his love. Only then can we truly say -“Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men! For he satisfies the longing soul, and fills the hungry soul with goodness.” 2. Only as we see God through the cross, where all his complexity comes together, is he real, is he allowed to be complex. It’s there we see Jesus is King, Jesus is Loving Counselor, Jesus is omnipotent Friend. 1. As we contemplate this love more and more it truly changes us - 1. Examples: When you are tempted to worry about provision, you’ll remember God’s faithfulness to you from the past, and you can go forward in peace and rest and make wise decisions. When you are tempted to harbor bitterness and un-forgiveness, you can think back and remember how God has forgiven and forgives all of your sin and you too can walk in the freedom of forgiveness and peace.. 2. When you are tempted to lie to save face, you can remember how Jesus bore your reproach openly so you don’t have to pretend to be something you’re not anymore. God loves and accepts you as you are..these and a hundred other ways.. 3. See, when you consider the works and faithfulness of God it changes you. 4. How do we get that love? All you need is need. All you need is nothing. Each one of these scenarios whether it’s a storm in your life, or wandering homelessness - lost in a big world, or it’s the sickness of your own doing, your own foolishness… they simply cry out to the Lord and he answers with his unfailing love. 1. You see there’s nothing you can do to earn it, there’s no deed you can do to lose it… it’s a gift all based on what God has done through Jesus. Through Jesus, God has made his impossible love, possible. This year as we meditate on the faithfulness of God may it inform all that we do - may it make you hopeful for the future and at peace in the present, may it make you wise, and fruitful in all your ways. May it make your life a megaphone to a deaf world concerning the unfailing love of God.