The God who Loves

"Did any people ever hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as you have heard, and live? Or did God ever try to go and take for Himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, by wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?"

 

"To you it was shown, that you might know that the LORD Himself is God; there is none besides Him. Out of heaven He let you hear His voice, that He might instruct you; on earth He showed you His great fire , and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire. And because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them; and He brought you out of Egypt with His Presence, with His mighty power, driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in, to give you their land as an inheritance, as it is this day."

 

"Therefore know this day, and consider it in your heart, that the LORD Himself is God in heaven above and on the earth beneath; there is no other." Deuteronomy 4:33-39 NKJV.

 

"And because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them; and He brought you out of Egypt with His Presence, with His mighty power."

"That you might know that the LORD Himself is God; there is none besides Him."

"That He might instruct you."

"To give you their land as an inheritance."

 

The Israelites were slaves in the land of Egypt. They had no hope in the social-political and economical structure under Egyptian dominion. But God was with them. He kept faith with them.

He delivered them out of bondage; revealed Himself to them; and gave them guidelines to help them live holistically, that the world might know Him through Israel's right living in relationship with Him.

 

What He did for Israel, He would continue to do for the rest of humanity. "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again." John 3:16-17 The Message.

 

This is the God who gets involved for the good of His people because He loves them. This is the God who bears the pain, sorrow, guilt, shame, hopelessness, weariness, filth, wickedness, evil of humanity because He loves them. This is the God whose original vision for humanity compels Him to become one of us so that we may know that with God all things are possible, that we may recover what was lost, our full humanity - made in the image of God. That we may know that we are made for goodness, not evil. This is the God who loves.

 

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