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“The Everlasting Love” Part 1 Jer 31:3 The Lord has appeared of old to me, saying: "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving-kindness
I have drawn you.” NKJV These were indeed dark days
for the kingdom of Judah. The army of Nebuchadnezzar was outside
the city walls building the ‘siege ramps.’ Jeremiah was ‘shut
up in the court of the prison.’ Nearly 7 years have passed since the
confrontation and conflict with the false prophets. Hananiah had
predicted that within two years the power of Babylon would be broken;
the vessels of Jehovah’s house would be restored to the Temple; and
Jeconiah, together with the captives of Judah, returned to the city.
The prophecies had been demonstrated false. Things have gone from
bad to worse in the life of the nation, and now the enemy was at the
gates; Jerusalem was already imprisoned within the might of Babylon;
and the prophet of Jehovah was held captive by the rebellious spirit
of the sinning nation. Could any hour be darker, or could any
circumstance cause the heart to be filled with utter despair?
In about 1 year the city will be taken. Chapters 30 through 33 of Jeremiah
are words different from the other prophecies contained in this great
book. They stand out as a stark contrast to the general tone and
message of the book, a message of coming destruction. In these
4 chapters we find a heartthrob cry of hope and deliverance from Jehovah
for, not only that of Judah, but also of Israel. There will be
a restoration that will take place. God will return His people
to their homeland. It is a song full of confidence, “the triumphal
hymn of Israel’s salvation.” Chapters 30 and 31 contain the song of coming deliverance. In chapter 32 Jehovah tells Jeremiah to purchase land in his native place of Anathoth and God tells the prophet why. In chapter 33 we have a glorious
promise of a final restoration under the Righteous Branch, when Zion’s
name would be Jehovah-Tsidkenu, the Lord our Righteousness. The secret of the song contained in chapter 30-31 is discovered in our text today: I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you.” These words from Jehovah were
a revelation to Jeremiah of the deepest thing in the heart of God, the
reason of all His dealings with His people. Inspirational words
to the prophet became the foundation of his hope. 30:3 “I will bring back the captivity of My people Israel and Judah.” Vs. 17 “I will restore health to you and heal you of your wounds.” Vs. 22 “You shall be My people, and I will be your God.” 31:31 “Behold the days are coming says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.” Vs. 33 “But this is the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Jehovah:
I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and
I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” A new covenant shall be given.
A new song will be sung. Sorrow will be turned to joy. It
is through trouble that the people of God are to be brought to triumph. The Divine purpose is always
that of restoration. Through tribulation and affliction, peace
and joy must come. The city is to be built, the people to be gathered
back again to their homeland, and sorrow is to pass away. And
a new covenant will be established with Israel. All this declares most plainly
of the fact of Divine love for His people, for humanity. “I have loved you with an
everlasting love.” And the relation of that love is that of
God dealing with His people in love: “Therefore with loving-kindness
have I drawn you.” The everlasting love of God
is incomprehensible to man. The Bible declares throughout that
God loves. God is love. The Bible never attempts to explain
it. It declares it; it sings of it; it celebrates it; it illustrates
it; but nothing more. God’s love is not explained. “I have loved
you.” These words are the words that
were used as everyday words in the Hebrew language for the love of husband
and wife, and with parents and children. It was an ordinary and
everyday word of the common speech of the people, a word indicating
desire for, and affection centered upon the one who is loved. “Everlasting
love” Everlasting is the concealed,
the hidden, and the veiled to the person looking on. The observer’s
sight is limited. He can see only so far and no further.
Quite literally ‘everlasting’ means the vanishing point, the point
beyond which sight cannot penetrate. When used of time, it means
time out of mind. If we travel back as far as history, archeology,
or science can take us, at that point there our mind speaks to us of
something even before that. Before time, before the universe,
before anything, there was the everlasting love of God. If we travel forward into time
when time shall be no more, into eternity, into the limitless reaches
of our mind, into the forever that never ends, it will be there we also
find the everlasting love of God. In the dimensions of space
with its unending height and its fathomless depths we discover the everlasting
love of God. If I gaze into the starry night, and with my most
powerful telescope wherever placed on the planet or in the heavens,
I still cannot see the ultimate height of the heavens, but beyond that
is the everlasting love of God. If I gaze into the depths and
descend into it, into the abyss, the everlasting love is beneath that.
No matter how high I go and no matter how low I get, the everlasting
love is there. “Everlasting love” The last term, love, is also
the common everyday word that these men were using all the time, but
in the Hebrew Bible the word love in this text is in the feminine form.
This is another of the great texts in which that supreme and too often
forgotten fact of the Motherhood of God gleams out through the sacred
declaration, “I have loved you with an everlasting Mother-love.” This song began with these words found in chapter 30 and verse 2. Jer 30:2 "Thus speaks
the Lord God of Israel.” NKJV It was Jehovah speaking, the
God of Israel. Jehovah to the Hebrews meant the becoming One,
the One who was for evermore becoming what man needed. Jehovah
was the God, or the Elohim of Israel. As we attempt to translate
Elohim into our English we have difficulty. The Hebrew language
was pictorial, poetic. Our English word God for Elohim is insufficient.
The meaning of Elohim is indeed pictorial. It is plural and carries
the meaning of Strengths, Powers. Being in the plural, Elohim,
means all-sufficient strength. He is the All-Sufficient.
He is God Supreme. He is Majestic in power. He is Awesome
in Might. I, Jehovah, the Elohim of Israel, the All-sufficient
one Who becomes what man needs in order to the perfecting of man, “I
have loved you with an everlasting love.” I have loved you with a love
that has no beginning; I have loved you with a love that can have no
ending; I have loved you with a love that knows no change. The amazement of this declaration
by Jehovah God grows upon the soul and mind of man when the object of
God’s love is considered. God loved these people of Judah regardless
of their condition of backsliding, sinfulness, and forgetting him while
going after other gods, committing adultery against God, against Jehovah. Now take the wider outlook.
Look at entire humanity today and down through the ages and the ages
yet to come. I, the All-Sufficient One whose power is unlimited,
who consistently becomes what you need in order to perfect you, it is
I who loves you with an everlasting love. Apart from this declaration
how could I say that God loves you? How can I even begin to imagine
that God loves me? Humanity is a mass of loveless people.
It is amazing to me how He can see anything in us to love. But if when I look at the object
of His love, Judah, Israel, humanity, myself, I am amazed; when my eyes
are turned from the object to the Lover of my Soul then there is a sense
in which my amazement is at an end. In spite of what I am, in
spite of what humanity is, in spite of what Israel was, God can do no
other but love. Amazing love! Behold, what manner of love
the Father has bestowed upon us. “Herein is love; not that we
loved God, but that He loved us.” This indeed is Love. He has loved! He has loved!
He has loved! I cannot tell you why. That is when I look
at myself. But when I know Him, and look at Him as He has been
unveiled in the Son of His love; then I say, O God, had I been ten thousand
times more polluted than I am, You could not have helped loving me. Jeremiah discovered this truth
in the darkest day of all. The place of revelation was that of
darkness, of disaster, and of distress. It was out of the horror
of all that awful hour that Jeremiah lifted his voice and sang with
this key-note, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
Everlasting love is love which exceeds the possibility of measurement
in any dimension of time or space in any age and in any direction. I believe Paul said it well
when he wrote: Eph 3:17-19 “…that Christ may dwell in your
hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may
be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length
and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge;
that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. NKJV "Yes,
I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore with loving-kindness I have drawn you.” |