We have
been moving round a center and viewing it from different
angles, in different relationships. The center is given
to us in Eph. 2:4 - "His great love wherewith he
loved us."
GOD'S
GREAT DECLARATION
We are now
coming to look at one of the most amazing statements ever
made.
"The
Lord appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved
thee with an everlasting love: therefore with
lovingkindness have I drawn thee" or, as the
margin gives the alternative rendering, "therefore
have I continued lovingkindness unto thee" (Jer.
31:3).
I repeat,
that is one of the most astounding statements that has
ever been made. To verify that, to realize something of
that fact, you need to read all that leads up to it and
that follows afterward. That is to say, you need to read
the prophecies of Jeremiah throughout, and then to add to
them some of the prophecies of other prophets. For the
work of the prophet was very largely to point out how
far, how terribly and tragically far, those being
addressed had gone from God's mind, God's thought, God's
will, God's way, and in what a terrible state of hardness
of heart and rebellion - and worse than that - they were
toward God. All that - and it is a terrible and dark
story - gathers round this statement. "I have loved
thee." At the time when they were in the very worst
condition that ever they had been or would be in
spiritually and morally, it was then He said "I
have loved thee with an everlasting love." Viewed
in its setting, you must agree it is one of the most
amazing statements ever made.
"His
great love wherewith he loved us." We are
baffled and almost rendered silent when we try to fathom
and comprehend the word "grace" in reference to
the love of God. How great is God's love? Were we to
spend our lives trying, we could never utter its depth or
content. Yet here is a statement, and we have to do
something about it. We have to approach it, to try to
grasp something, be it very small, of this
incomprehensible love of God, the mystery of it. So I
shall adopt the very simplest method of trying to get
into this word, just breaking up the statement into its
component words.
THE
ONE WHO MAKES THE DECLARATION
We will
begin then: "I." You notice here the statement
is really governed by the words "Thus saith
Jehovah" (verse 2). Who is it speaking? To begin
with, it is the One whose name is Jehovah. By that name
He made Himself known to the Hebrews through Moses. But
later that name became so sacred to Israel that they
would not use it, and it was mentioned but once in the
year, the great day of atonement, by the High Priest, as
he went into the Most Holy Place by the High Priest the
name was pronounced, so great, so awful, was that name to
them. But what does it mean? Jehovah, the unchanging One,
the eternal One, the self-existent One, existing not by
anybody else's act or power or support, perfectly
self-existent - that is Jehovah, that is the One who
says, "I have loved thee with an everlasting
love."
But look
again. It is the name of the One of infinite holiness,
whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity, whose nature
is too pure and holy and altogether right to have any
association with sin. You see how helpless we are when we
try to deal with God and explain Him and define Him.
These are statements, but if you and I, apart from some
great provision of God to cover our sinfulness, were to
come into the presence of that infinitely holy God, we
should be shattered beyond repair. The infinitely holy
God! It is He who says, "I have loved thee with
an everlasting love."
It is the
name of infinite majesty, glory, might, dominion, power.
He is very terrible in majesty, in glory, in power; and
that One says, "I have loved thee with an
everlasting love."
And still
we press in to this name. It is the name of infinite
self-sufficiency. From time to time He has found it
necessary to state that in various ways. "If I
were hungry, I would not tell thee" (Ps.
1:12), He said to them of old. "Every beast... is
mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills" (Ps.
1:10). "I have made the earth, and created man
upon it: I, even my hands, have stretched out the
heavens" (Isa. 45:12). "The nations are
as a drop of a bucket" (Isa. 40:15). "Do I
need anything or anyone? Am I, the creator of the
universe, in need? Am I suffering want? Am I not utterly
and absolutely independent, self-sufficient, the only One
in this universe who is self-sufficient?" And that
One, out of it all - His holiness, His majesty, His
self-sufficiency - says, "I have loved thee with
an everlasting love." It is a mystery. Can you
explain that? Can you understand that?
"I
have loved"
"I
have loved." The very essence of love is "I
must have, I cannot do without." Here the word
"love" is just the common word that was used in
all true human relationships. It is the word used of
parents for children, of children for parents, of husband
for wife and wife for husband, of friend for friend. Of
the classic instance of the love between David and
Jonathan, it says, "Jonathan loved him as his
own soul" (1 Sam. 18:1). "Thy
love," said David of Jonathan after his tragic
end, "thy love to me was wonderful, passing the
love of women" (2 Sam. 1:26). That is the word
here. Jehovah, infinitely self-sufficient, used that word
concerning Israel. As the friend's love for the friend
must have the friend, and, as in every other true
relationship, true love must have the one loved, must
have the companionship, the fellowship, the nearness, so
is Jehovah speaking about Israel. "I have LOVED
thee." Amazing love!
"I
have loved thee"
Ah, but
still more inward - "I have loved THEE."
Now we are at the end of wonder. At the beginning I
pointed out the state of these people. Not only were they
in a deplorable state morally and spiritually, deeply in
sin; not only were they in this tragic plight; but they
were in positive antagonism, rebellion, repudiation,
killing the very prophets of the Lord who would tell them
of their wrong. "I have loved THEE."
Without
anything positive in the way of opposition or antagonism
or rebellion or stubbornness on our part, it is still the
greatest mystery and wonder that He should love us. But
think of this - "thee"! Think again of whom
that is said, to whom it applies. "I have loved
thee"; and that, moreover, coming at the point
where it did and at the time it did.
"An
everlasting love"
"I
have loved thee with an everlasting love." You
can never translate that word "everlasting"
into English. It simply means that you have got into the
spaceless, boundless realm, you have fallen out of time
to where time is no more. You have gone out into that
mysterious something where nothing can be taken hold of
as tangible, it is all beyond you, beyond your grasp,
beyond your calculation, beyond your power to cope with
it and bring it into some kind of dimensions. That is the
word: beyond you, beyond your time, beyond your world,
beyond all your ways of thinking and working. "I
have loved thee with an everlasting, timeless, spaceless
love." Did you notice the alternative marginal
reading to the phrase? "Jehovah appeared of old unto
me"? It is, "from afar appeared unto me" -
outside of our world altogether. He says, "I have
loved you with a love altogether outside your dimensions
of time and space."
"I
have loved thee with an everlasting love." And
strangely, the repetition of the word "love"
here adds an extra feature or factor. It is in the
feminine, and it means mother-love. "I have loved
thee with an everlasting mother-love." Now,
mother-love is one of the most mysterious things with
which in ordinary human life we have to deal. You cannot
always understand mother-love. You may look at a baby and
you may see much that is not lovely about the child, but
the mother of that child simply adores it. That is
mother-love. That is the word the Lord is using here. The
world would see everything to the contrary - but the Lord
says, "I have loved thee with an everlasting
mother-love."
HIS
LOVE FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE NEW COVENANT
Well, we
are touching the fringe of this thing, but you are
perhaps asking a question. You are not gripped yet,
because you say, "That may be quite true as to
Israel, but can we rightly and properly appropriate that?
Can we step into that and say it is ours; that this same
One says that to us?" You have only to read on to
verse 31 of this same chapter to find your answer.
"The
days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:
not according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring
them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they
break, although I was a husband unto them, saith
Jehovah... I will put my law in their inward parts, and
in their heart will I write it" (Jer. 31:31-33).
Now do you
not know that is taken up in the New Testament, in the
letter to the Hebrews, and applied to the Church in this
dispensation? Its fulfilment is there said to be not in
the Jewish dispensation, but in the New Testament
dispensation. That applies to those to whom the gospel of
the grace of God has been preached, the new covenant; and
it is the new covenant, not in the blood of bulls and
goats, but the blood of the Lamb of God, God's Son, who
said, in the night in which He was betrayed, when He took
the cup - "This is my blood of the new covenant;
which is shed for many unto remission of sins"
(Matt. 26:28). Are we in this? Oh yes, it is for us,
the people of the new covenant in the blood of Jesus
Christ. Oh, if He could say such a thing to Israel, then
if it is possible to say it with fuller meaning and
greater strength at all, so He says it to us.
We have so
much to confirm this in the New Testament. "God
so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but
have eternal life" (John 3:16) - that mysterious
word, that age-out-lasting life. "His great love
wherewith he loved US" - that word was said not
to Jews only but to Gentiles, and comes in the letter to
the Ephesians, the letter for all men, Jew and Gentile
alike. Or again, "who delivered us out of the
power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of
the Son of his love" (Col. 1:13). I could go on
piling up Scripture to show that it is the same love as
that love in Jeremiah 31:3. It is the same God and it is
the same love, and now it has expanded beyond Israel to
embrace us.
Listen
again then. This same God, no less holy, no less majestic
and glorious, no less self-sufficient, says to you, to
me, "I have loved thee, I have LOVED THEE with
an everlasting love". "His great love wherewith
he loved us." Are you impressed, do you believe
it?
HIS
CONTINUED LOVINGKINDNESS
What then?
There follows the second half of the statement - "therefore
with lovingkindness have I drawn thee" or "therefore
have I continued lovingkindness unto thee." "I
have borne with you all this time because I love you;
anything could have happened to you, but I have not let
it, I have shown you infinite longsuffering and patience,
and earnest solicitude for your eternal well-being:
because I love you, I have kept you alive, and have
brought you to this time and to this place; I have not
let you go." Oh, that this might come home to us! We
may, all unconsciously be hearing this message now simply
because of this infinite love of God which has been
preserving us unto this hour to let us know it. You may
think it is quite fortuitous that you are hearing it -
just one of the chance happenings of life; but if you
knew the truth it is this infinite love of God which has
held you to this time in relation to the infinite
purposes of that love to let you know it. There is
nothing casual about it, there is sovereign love here.
"Because I have so loved, because, self-sufficient
as I am, I cannot do without you" - oh, mystery of
Divine love! - "because I so much wanted you I
created you, and now at this moment I am drawing
you." We cannot take that in, but that is the
teaching of the Word of God.
We started
these messages by pointing out that behind the universe,
behind the mind, the reason, the plan, the design, there
is a heart. The universe exists as an answer to that
heart. Today that heart in its love is bleeding. It has
suffered a great deal of disappointment, deprivation; it
has been robbed of its object - the wife has been
unfaithful. But the Lord comes out in the presence of it
all and says, "I loved you and I still love you; My
love is an everlasting love: therefore I have kept, I
have preserved, and I have brought you to this very hour
and I am telling you now that this is the position; there
is no breach of love on My part."
LOVE
PERSISTING THOUGH SPURNED
But Israel
went into a great deal of suffering and distress because
they did not respond to that love of God thus expressed,
and it looked very much as though the everlasting love
was lasting no longer. But not so, it has never changed.
You see, love has sometimes to change its form of
expression, although in itself it does not change, and so
we have another side to the revelation of God's ways with
wayward and wilful man. Suffering, affliction and
adversity to individuals and to nations and to the world
is not because of a contradiction of the statement that
God so loved the world. It is the only way in which that
love stands any chance of getting a response of the kind
God wants. God does not want that kind of love that is
not love at all because it gets everything that it wants
to satiate its own lusts. That is not love. This love of
God must make us like itself, it must be after its own
kind.
And so,
strangely enough, many have come to find the love of God
through the dark way of suffering - to discover that God
was not their enemy but their friend, when they thought
that He was pursuing with the object of destroying them.
But I am not going to follow that out just now.
I want to
be content now with making that great declaration with
which we started, doing the little I can to try to bring
it home to you - who it is that says it, what it is that
He says, the people to whom He says it, with the
assurance that, so far as He is concerned, He will never
take another attitude but love, even if it is
disappointed love and we ourselves should lose all that
that love meant for us. To lose that and to know it would
be our hell of hells. There could be no deeper hell than
to discover all that was meant for you by infinite love,
and to realize that by your own folly and your own
stubbornness it has gone beyond your reach forever. What
more of a hell can you imagine than that? I think that is
the only kind of hell we need contemplate, whatever may
be the full truth about it. For any one to wake up and
have to say, "Oh, what might have been, if only, if
only I had done so and so! If only I had taken the
opportunity! It is too late now!" - that is agony of
soul, that is misery, that is despair. You see, it is the
effect of love, Divine love's immense purposes, and we
discover that it is now all impossible because we have
foolishly rejected, refused, repudiated, gone our own
way, stubbornly said No! to the Divine love. That is the
dark side of this, but I am not going on to the dark side
now. Listen again, whoever you may be. If you know
yourself only a little you must be amazed at this
statement, but if it does not come to you as the most
wonderful thing that ever was or could be, there is
something grievously the matter with you; that such a One
should say to such as WE, "I have loved THEE,
with an everlasting love." May God Himself bring
that home to us with something of its implication,
something of its meaning and value, its glory, its
wonder. If He should graciously do that, we shall be
worshippers for the rest of our lives; there will be
something about us that is in the nature of awe and
wonder and we shall go softly. The realization of it will
smite all our pride to the dust. There is no room for
pride here. This will remove all those horrible things -
pride, avarice, covetousness, self-interest, worldly
ambition - and we shall be very humble, very grateful
people, full of a great longing somehow to requite that
love, somehow to win for that One His rights. This has
been the motive and passion of many who have given
themselves in the far places of the earth in a daily
suffering for their Lord's sake. Love - a little return
for this so great love wherewith He loved us.