God Loves....me?

GOD LOVES….ME?

GENESIS 22:1-14; HOSEA 11:1-4; 8-9; HOSEA 14:4-7

One of the incredible truths of the word of God is the height and depth and breadth of love that God had for man. The Psalmist writes in amazement of this truth, of all that God has done for man. (Psalm 8:3-8)

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place.

What is man that thou art mindful of him,

the son of man that you care for him?

You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings

And crowned him with glory and honor.

You made him ruler over the works of your hands,

You put everything under his feet;

All flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field,

The birds of the air and the fish of the sea, all that swim in the paths of the sea.”

In return for such a place of honor, man responded by failing to obey the one and only command of God. And like the case of our earthly parents, our heavenly Father had to discipline, to punish…but He did not utterly wipe out man. He could have cosmically erased us and begun again.

And so God began a heavenly plan wherein His son, both man and God would take the place we deserved, received the punishment we deserved. And provide a pathway back into a loving relationship with God to last for all eternity.

In a sense, that is what the Bible is all about. It’s about the love of God…. and it’s about our struggle to understand and learn to accept that love. There are three things we need to do: REALIZE THE LOVE OF GOD, RETURN TO THE LOVE OF GOD and REFLECT THE LOVE OF GOD.

REALIZE THE LOVE OF GOD

I think the first step for all of us is to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. I then think the next challenging step that lasts our entire lives is to walk a walk and live a life that shows that Jesus is in fact Lord and Savior. And one of the necessary truth that we have to realize in our mind and more importantly in our heart is simply this.

God…loves….ME.

The strongest and most critical truths are taught in those early formative years. Remember the words to this?

JESUS LOVES ME

THIS I KNOW

FOR THE BIBLE

TELLS ME SO

LITTLE ONES TO HIM BELONG

THEY ARE WEAK

BUT HE IS STRONG

YES, JESUS LOVES ME

YES, JESUS LOVES ME

YES, JESUS LOVES ME

THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO

Do you ever feel like saying those words differently?

JESUS LOVES….ME????

CAN IT BE?

I CAN’T SEE

WHY HE’D LOVE ME

HE IS GOOD

AND I’M SO BAD

I FOREVER MAKE HIM SAD.

HOW CAN JESUS LOVE ME?

HOW CAN JESUS LOVE ME?

HOW CAN JESUS LOVE ME?

E’EN THOUGH THE BIBLE SAYS IT’S SO

JESUS LOVES….ME!!! GOD LOVES….ME!!Sometimes, that’s hard for us to believe…sometimes that hard to accept. Two reasons for the difficulty we have in accepting the love of God are captured in a verse of the hymn “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”

“Two wonders I confess

The wonder of his redeeming love

And my own worthlessness”

The wonder of God’s unfailing love…we have to grapple with the infiniteness of God’s ability to love.

In September of 1982, my Mother passed away very unexpectedly. Through a series of events, I was actually spending the weekend at my parent’s home sick with a stomach flu, in order that my wife would be able to work and get a good night’s sleep. Early on the Sunday morning, my mother had a stroke and was gone in an instant. That was a heart-breaking time, because of the love I had, as any son has for his mother…and it had made having my father still alive that much more precious.

My mother was very quiet and private about her accomplishments, but one of the significant things she did was to open one of the first art galleries exclusively for Atlantic Canada artists in the City of Saint John. One of the most beautiful tributes to my mother following her death was what became known as the Barbara Ring Memorial Collection. Every artist that had been a client of my mother’s gallery either painted a work for specific donation, or donated a selected work of art. With only a few exceptions donated by our family, major artists of New Brunswick and the other Atlantic Provinces were represented. That showed a special kind of love.

As powerful as that act of love was…as powerful as the love of a son, of a husband, of a daughter-in-law for my mother…there is a biblical truth that needs to be realized.