Abounding in Love

Today on Senate life with Jeannie Greer.

Jonah finds God's love scandalous because God's love reaches out to people that Jonah knows are completely unworthy of God's mercy and his love is forgiveness. The irony of the book of Jonah is that Nineveh is not some random bad city to God Roseanne as if to say, hey, there's a few really bad people I love, along with all of you good people of Isaiah's life with pastor Jeannie church in Raleigh, North Carolina.

As always, I'm your host Molly events to why so many movies and songs are focused on romance because every one of the deepest places of our hearts longs to feel loved and respected. If were honest, we know that we don't deserve unconditional love because eventually stumble and fall short disappointing. The people that we care about the most.

Yet God knows that we are like this.

He continues to lead and pursue less yesterday. He answers this question today in a message he titled bounding in my day, Bibles were you begin to turn.

We are going to look at how well is a part of the essential disruption of God's name.

I would ask questions like how do you know that God loves you how you can't feel the love of God. What do you do when you feel like it you have any love for God in your heart is the love of God over overwhelmed you. That's the kind of questions you can answer Cartwright Julie so Exodus 34 if you have a Bible again to get out and turn their all of us know what it's like to have a situation where we someone doesn't love us as much as we seem to love them.

I was with several of our pastors is regarding your Bible was at a concert commission earlier this summer in Columbus, Ohio, and on one ice was game six which are not the final game of the NBA finals and so pastors that I was with and I thought be greater watch game were in Ohio. It's exciting, but it was actually downright disappointing, not just as the outcome but because just a thought to be more three-point to good sports bar which is pretty famous was half deserted door and there were watch a game or even our wings or whatever and you got engrossed in conversation. I look up and suddenly the bars now, getting filled out but they're all women in their mid-30s and they all dress like it would be dressed in high school. I thought this is like an odd group to watch basketball game. So we are back going again have a conversation and then I would promise you would more than three minutes later I look up and place is now, shoulder to shoulder. Standing room only people, flowing out the doors. All of them women in their mid-30s were dressed like they would address when they were in high school I looked out the window and out in the street are 1500 1500 women on their mid-30s all dress like they would be dressed in high school and about what is happening right now were on the streets of downtown Columbus saw turn one of these girls around what was going on as I go. The new kids on the block concert right on the road just let out this reunion tour and so were all here to see them alike.

Now it makes sense. I went home and told my wife that probably a good 40% of those women were convinced when they were in middle school that they were going to marry Donnie from new kids on the block right you really get all dressed up in your best to talk outfit with the parachute pants and you stand on the front row with all the other girls and you were going to scream. I love you Donnie with all of them but yields a little bit louder than everybody else and he was returning you guys are a lot guys in this one, moment of enchantment you were to have an and later in the concert or a bouncer was gonna bring you a note that said you got the right stuff, baby. You're the reason why sing a song and you guys are to get married and you have two little kids with floppy hair, but it never happened. It never happened it right because right now you're married to Phil from accounting he sees right beside you this morning.

He is slightly overweight, balding, draws a minivan just didn't turn out now you look at some of these girls doing the same thing with Justin Bieber and you tell them they never did happen sweetheart and it comes from a slight place of bitterness in your heart because you did marry Donnie, but that's okay because you're discipling the next generation and part of that is helping them to live on planet Earth right you gotta shake them to wake them from that bad dreams right will what you may or may not ever have been a groupie at some point in your life and I covered some of you got a guilty and so like you start like you started taking it. So I noticed some of you are most of us, even if you have a minute groupie.

No, what it's like to love somebody who doesn't love you back or begin to somebody that's just not that into you. I think for me, one of the most mind blowing things in Scripture. One of the things is hardest for me to get my mind around is that we see God the Almighty God. The self-sufficient creator, which means that he doesn't need anything theologians call that the society of God. He doesn't need anything or require anything be happy he's happy in himself we see that God continually putting himself in that position we find him constantly reaching out to love people who don't love them back.

When he really has no reason to tell you this weekend that understanding that one thing about God will probably do more to change your life than any other realization, you could have in your life, I began this series with this statement by AW toes are what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us what comes in your mind. When I say God is the most important and most defining thing about you because we can by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God, you begin to resemble what you worship rather for whether it's for ruin or restoration on the most determining fact about any man is not what he at a given time, I say or do but what he and his deep heart conceives of God to be like what you believe about God is the most life defining relationship shaping contact about you. If you believe that God is angry and distant and you're going to feel fearful and insecure. If you see God as a judge mental tyrant that means you will become an intolerant bigot but when any of you come to see the steadfast love of God.

It's going to give you a joy and a fullness and a freedom that will redefine you and all of your relationships that will transform you into being the kind of loving person that you've always wanted to know and the tubule that you've always wanted to be all our deepest longings are for love our day. We know that just listen to the songs that we sing and listen to watch the movies that we put out we want we want one of well that's what our souls want from Exodus 34, six and seven Moses asked God if he can see God for who he really is a God put them into a cave and a mountain covers him with his hand God says as Exodus 3319 dockable over there. I will make all my goodness. God says pass before you and I will proclaim before you my name galore.

That's how I'm going to reveal my glory to you, it's my goodness, can be expressed in the name my Holiness were at 734 verse five the Lord descended then on a cloud and he proclaimed the Lord in Hebrew use the proper name of God, Yahweh literally means I am I am I am a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, the element that dominates this description of the name of God's love is presented here in this name like a mini sided diamond. So let's walk through to get several descriptions that all kind of turned the diamond of God's love and show you different dimensions of it, merciful and gracious, that may at first sound to you like. Needless redundancy like saying something is redundant and repetitive but merciful and gracious in Hebrew have slightly different shades of meaning merciful comes from the Hebrew word rock whom, and it is about a feeling of compassion. The word translated gracious is walk-on noon and it comes from the action that you take when you feel rock whom rock whom is the feeling 100 is the action God felt his people's pain, and then he acted on their behalf. He saw us in our pain, and he couldn't just sit by the rock whom in his heart forced him to take an action he had to do something to deliver us, slow to anger is love does not preclude his anger is love makes him slow to it. He is angry about sin that he loves us even as much as he hates our sin. So he overcomes his anger because he wants to save us all.

It is a perverse and twisted idea to say that God's love precludes his anger because when you really love something or someone. It demands that you get angry at certain things. It is because I love my kids that I am angry at the things that I see destroying if I see them. For example, why or do something that I know is going to hurt them. It makes me angry. Not in spite of the fact that I love them.

It makes me angry because I love them. People say oh you know the Bible says. First John 418.

God is love, and they use that somehow to conclude that God never gets angrier judge is Sandy just a sentimental deity. You just copy all the God is angry at sin precisely because he loves us the same writer who wrote first John 418. God is love, also wrote first John 16 God is light and in him is no darkness at all. The light of God's presence exposes and drives out darkness. God wants us to be filled with light and goodness of love like he is because he loves us his love is a purifying love, not being satisfied with only goodness in himself once goodness and loving those that he loves, like what you love. A cancer patient. You don't simply rejoice in the back of your cancer free because you love them you hate the cancer that is eating away their body and you desire them to be cancer free, as well of God's love is not preclude angry at sin, but it does make him slow to it because he loves us more than he hates her sin and he would rather read us of our sin and he would get rid of us because of our sin is love, Moses says or is love, God reveals a steadfast step as means it does not change based on his moods or how worthy or not worthy. We are on a given day is love is more of a settled resolve something like what I would feel for my children that this is how King David said in Psalm 103 as a father has compassion on his compassion by the late roughly as a father has rock whom on his children, so the Lord has rock whom on those who fear him or listen to a message titled, abounding in love and it might with Judy Greer usually blame our lack of prayer on lack of discipline and we try to fix it by making resolution really it's not so much a discipline problem as it is a theology problem is he deep down we really don't feel like it makes a difference even more. We don't truly realize that God has for this month we are offering a bundle of resources to help make praying regularly little easier. It's three bucks each of them called five things to pray they will cover how to pray for your city and community care for your parent. Take a look right now@jeanniegreer.com JD TR are.com. Let's return to today's message. There's probably nothing that is more about the love of God and having children.

There is something about when as a dad I see one of my kids suffer even if the suffering that Marianne is their own fault.

I do not stand above them and say watch own fault. You deserve it might sit at first but when I see them suffer.

My heart begins to change and get every parent knows this right you look at your kids and it's not rhetoric it's not if I could take the pain from them even it's pain of their own doing and if I could somehow take it into me so that they would be happy you would suffer, I would gladly do it. This is how a father feels about his child. This is how God feels about you. We have this wrapped up his emotions and yours. Isaiah will take it even further. Isaiah 49 gentlewoman forget her nursing child, that she would have no compassion on the son of the rock whom on the server will have you ever seen a newborn child and their mother and a lot of women over the years to come were not baby people at all like your baby but also may have their baby and also may become suddenly in tune with this baby and it's like this. Tenderness in this rock whom this mercy because I come out of them that my wife is always better baby persons or mental motor. But when we did have our first baby. There was a part of her that she used that way you like me would be better 3 o'clock at night and you know our first daughter is due to their weeks old Ellis and she would sit up in bed like a dog. Her dog was have any idea what's going on with you and she's like something good terraces subunits the slightest whimper and she which she bound out of bed and she's trying to get up to terraces right she is half-asleep to bounce off the burners on a pinball come trying to get out of the room and made a rookie mistake. This is for you future dad from uncle Ginny, about three or four weeks after care. I was like I thought. Terraces been sleeping for the night. Now the last week or two. I had been sleeping to the night terrors brought him to learn my lesson. Yes of course I heard her to but I wanted to give you time to bond as you. I headed my mother with a newborn child. Of course, not that you never forget them or something, but what Isaiah says, yeah.

Even these may forget, yet I will never forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. I have actually made you part of who I am. I am more in tune with your pain in the most starry odd mother is with her newborn God's nanny cam is always on and he knows when even a single hair falls from your head. I know a lot of attentive obsessive mothers. I do not know one that can tell you the number of hairs on their child's body and when one single one falls off yet. That is how your heavenly father feels about you the doubts and the link of God's love revealed in Scripture is shocking. In fact it is so shocking that God chooses to reveal to get to us through a series of stories rather than a set of propositions because there are some things that really cannot be explained adequately. They really have to be sensed and felt so when God begins to describe his love very quickly goes to illustrating it for you so that you can identify with it and understand what is talking about when we say what I mean.

What start with the book of Jonah and the book of Jonah is a place for you to see Exodus 30 467 come back up. God called a prophet named Jonah to go and preach salvation to the Ninevites and Jonah did want to do it. If you remember, when I walk you through this book of the Bible. I told you before we get all self-righteous about Joan MBI well you know what God told him we ought to stop and at least consider who the Ninevites were and what they had done to Israel. They were pretty close neighbors of Israel and they were some of the cruelest people that we know about. In the ancient world, not too long ago. Some archaeologists uncovered an ancient Assyrian library books in that library was a book of records of the conquest of the kings of Nineveh when some of the conquest.

B would've involved Israelites.

Here are some of the actual statements that complement book but date on earth is real, amount of heads directly from his city.

Their use and their maidens. I burn up in the flames. Another one said this, I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their precious lives is one touch a string like the many waters of the storm. I made the contents of their gullet and their entrails run down upon the wider hands are cut off.

I slayed him his skin. I spread upon the wall of the city. I pierced his chin with my dagger through his jaw. I pastor wrote about a dog chain upon them, and I kept him in a kennel in the city square. I tied them up and made them listen to the frozen soundtrack both day and night one of theirs is not real how to decide which one it is, but you can see why Joan I don't want to plant a church does not know what these people to be saved. I want them to die. So God brings on the whale incident that you grew up in church you know about eventually Jonah relents and he goes and bridges the Nineveh, not because he loves them and he said James Arba because he don't want to be whale bait.

Sure enough, they repent so Jonah says this chapter 4 verse one but it displeased Jonah exceedingly and he was angry.

He said Lord is this not what I said I told you this will happen when I was still in my country. This is why verse two I made haste to flee to Tarshish, for I knew I knew you weren't gracious God, walking in God and I knew that you were rock, whom I knew that you were slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love the quote for Mac 234, six and seven I knew you would relent from disaster. I know it's Jonah finds God's love scandalous because God's love reaches out the people that Jonah knows are completely unworthy of God's mercy and his love is forgiveness exploiting the irony of the book of Jonah is that Nineveh is not some random bad city that God present as if to say, hey, there's a few really bad people I love, along with all of you good people.

Nineveh is us in the whole point is is that God doesn't love you good preview bad people, along with the good people God only loves bad people because that's the only kind of people that there are. We are Nineveh and one day you and I will see with clarity the love that God extended to us and how much he had to forgive us when we actually see that you have a hard time believing it because we think were Jonah in that story but note are Nineveh and you see in that when Jonah looked to these people and says they don't deserve forgiveness and love and God says that's how I feel about you.

I'm to come is the real Jonah and I want to die for the real Ninevites and Jonah your Ninevites in this is how I love you. Some things can't be explained. They have to be felt experienced. That means if you ever had the experience of being really betrayed by by a son or daughter or parent or neglected by a friend or a spouse, but for whatever reason you can't stop loving them and you keep reaching out for them in that moment you get a glimpse of what God feels and what he is done with you.

Some things can't be explained have to be experienced.

Jonah felt that I got that. That's why was go to Hosea another prophet shortly thereafter rose up was a prophet of God who was given the most unusual assignment in the Bible God said to him as a 12. Go Hosea and marrying a prostitute, but you didn't see that one coming. Hosea and have children with her. This will illustrate how Israel's excellent prosody by turning against the Lord worshiping other gods. How would you like to get that job or that calling and seminary pastor you thought you to be a missionary in your leave the nomination your America prostitute enjoyed so Hosea is given that assignment because God needs to demonstrate some things about his character. So Hosea, who has to be the most underappreciated man in the Bible obeys goes America prostitute named Gomer that enough.

She's a prostitute. Her name is Gomer and he didn't just go to the formalities. Evidently Hosea says that he actually falls in love with her.

Yes kids with her but soon after they married. She cheats on him and eventually she leaves him for a man that is abusive to her and the mandible will not even provide for her most basic needs throughout the book. Hosea pleads with her to come back, but she won't do it. Hosea even gives the man that she is living with now money so that he can take care of her basic needs, but she seems woefully to stay blind to the fact that the money that is being used to care for come from Hosea. Eventually this man sells her back into the sex slave trade and God tells José comes and appears on the second time Jimmy said go and buyer back off the auction block. You can imagine. Hosea same buyer back.

She humiliated me she is dishonored me.

She has broken my heart. She's in the situation because she messed it up and now you tell me to go humiliate myself again and buyer back and God says yes chapter 3 verse one the Lord said to me go again. I love this woman who is a serial chronic adulterous.

Even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, which include you.

Hosea, they turned to other gods neighbor scholars tell us what the scene would've looked like slaves sex slaves in those days were stripped down naked so that the buyers could see what they were getting in there with all these men that are just putting in prices so they can abuse these women and use them for their needs, their stance Hosea in front of his wife now stripped naked is cheated on him again and again being bent on by men who were given this trader and finally Hosea stands up and raises his hand and says I will top the highest bid. I'm going to make her mine again. God was trying to reveal his nature to Hosea he was trying to give Hosea a glimpse of his love, and he says Hosea, you and I have given our hearts to people who utterly reject us in order to spend our time and our lives in our efforts going after them. Hosea there's some things I cannot explain to you in proposition you have to seal them until you experience these things. Hosea never can understand the depth of my love or how my heart works like I think the most remarkable verse in Hosea may be the most remarkable verse in the Old Testament is Hosea 11 eight. God says how can I give you up Israel attached. How can I let you go.

I can't. My heart is torn within me.

In other words, God has bound his happiness in ours. He can't be happy until we are happy if you were Gomer's friend or girlfriend as you convert your house and just combated and you and she basically says that I'm leaving my loving husband is give me a great home and her wonderful kids and leaving for this guy who mistreats me and abuse me that they provide for me is your friend you like stop it full don't do that. I will say she ignores your advice.

When she comes back over to your house night after night after night and you had the exact same conversation right. At some point you like. I'm not going to have a friendship with somebody that is this hardhearted and listen to the most basic advice. But if that person Gomer is your beloved daughter work you're married to her.

Your heart is become so bound up with hers and that her wounds have become your wounds. Your happiness is not contingent on her happiness. This is how God reveals he feels about his people about you endless reality, the love of God pastor Jeannie Greer you're listening to some it like this meant our featured resource is a set of three books on prayer T-shirt but select 21 key areas of spiritual growth and character development for each one. There are five short prayer prompts John straight from the Bible you could work through it as a part of your daily quiet time or pick it up whenever a particular need arises.

Either way, it's worth stepping out of the busyness of daily life just for five minutes to pray meaningfully for your parents, your community or even your child, grandchild, godchild, kids in your church from toxic teams in every age and between. We'd love to hear from you and get you the five things to pray set of facts will send them as our way of saying thanks for your financial gifts F $35 or more support ministry join this mission today when you get by calling 510 20 go online to get your copy Jeannie Greer.com failure on the website. Don't forget to sign up for the newsletter ministry and date information about new resources and castigating the latest blog post delivered straight to your inbox dynamically go to Jeannie Greer.com I'm not even if it's sure to tune in tomorrow at daddy got my right here Friday and it might Jeannie