Sobering, Divine, Love

As I pray for my brothers and sisters who are beginning new chapters in their lives, I am more and more inclined to think about God's perfect love. And I must confess that, as a fallen human being living in a fallen world, it is difficult for me to conceive of such a pure, perfect, redeeming love. I suppose I will never understand until I meet Lord Jesus face to face. But presently, let us consider what Moses says to Israel just before his death. His last exhortation to Israel is so richly full of assurance about God's amazing love -- and it is an assurance that rests on what people of Israel have seen and heard! It is an assurance that comes from having experienced the living God in real time and in real space. Hear what he says:

"Then I said to you, `Do not be shocked, nor fear them. 'The LORD your God who goes before you will Himself fight on your behalf, just as He did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness where you saw how the LORD your God carried you, just as a man carries his son, in all the way which you have walked until you came to this place.' But for all this, you did not trust the LORD your God, who goes before you on your way, to seek out a place for you to encamp, in fire by night and cloud by day, to show you the way in which you should go." (Deut 1:29-33)

"Your eyes have seen all that the LORD your God has done to these two kings; so the LORD shall do to all the kingdoms into which you are about to cross. Do not fear them, for the LORD your God is the one fighting for you." (Deut 3:21b-22)

=> God in love consistently displays fatherly care, fighting for Israel on their behalf and seeking out their campsites Himself lest nightdews make a child catch a cold.

"These forty years the LORD your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing." (Deut 2:7b)

=> God in love faithfully makes provisions for Israel for forty years in the desert. They never were hungry or thirsty, even in the midst of the wilderness. They never were hot by day or cold by night because of the pillars of cloud and fire that guided them in their journey.

"For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as is the LORD our God whenever we call on Him? Or what great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you today?" (Deut 4:7-8)

=> God in love responds personally to His children whenever they call on Him; God in love entrusts the most righteous, the most divine law to human care.

"But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, from Egypt, to be a people for His own possession, as today." (Deut 4:20)

=> God in love reaches into the burning iron furnace to rescue Israel, to make her as His own.

"Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them. And He personally brought you from Egypt by His great power, driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today. Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on the earth below; there is no other." (Deut 4:37-39)

=> God in love chooses Israel -- not because they were great in number or mighty among the nations, but because He loved them, he chose them. God Himself goes before Israel to defeat other nations so that Israel may dwell in their lands.

I want to conclude these scattered thoughts about love with these words of Moses:

"Has anything been done like this great thing, or has anything been heard like it? Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived? Or has a god tried to go to take for himself a nation from within another nation by trials, by signs and wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great terrors, as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him." (Deut.4:32b-35)