I Am Abouding in Love

Good morning and welcome to Twin Lakes Church. We're glad you're here either in the auditorium or joining us via live stream. My name is Jessica Frankel. I'm the pastor to junior high students. And I think it's pretty appropriate that we have somebody from our youth ministry team preaching during our back to school weekend.

And to answer a deep burning question, I know a few of you have had because you've been asking throughout the summer, we are restarting our junior high ministry next Sunday. You can find out more about that at tlc.org/jh. Also, if you're a female and you've ever wanted to lead a small group of middle school girls, we could use some volunteers. I know I hear some laughs, like middle school girls aren't the most appealing population, but they're really fun. Promise, I love it. But we could use some ladies to help lead our small groups for girls this coming year. We meet on Tuesday nights. So if you're interested in that, you can email me, jessica@tlc.org to find out more information.

It's been a while since I've preached in the main service in youth ministry, we say it's been a hot minute. And by hot minute, I mean four entire years. I don't know where they went. Actually, I do know where they went, but two of them went by really slowly and I would never want to live through them again. And two of them flew by in the blink of an eye.

So before I start our series and our topic for today, I just thought I'd give a little life update. Four years ago during the summer, I preached a sermon called When Faith Runs Out, and it was all about handling disappointment with God. And when we were planning that series in the spring, little did I know that that summer, I would be dealing with one of my deepest disappointments ever.

So for my birthday in May of that year, I wanted nothing more to be pregnant, and then I was. And then a few short weeks later in June, I wasn't. When I miscarried that baby, which was not our first loss. So that summer, I was dealing with deep, deep disappointment. I was living out exactly what I was preaching on and it was so rough. And I doubted all of the attributes of God that we're talking about in this series as my husband and I walked this very dark, lonely road of our fertility journey.

For about 18 months, I was barely able to teach middle school students about Jesus, let alone preach a full length sermon in the main service. That journey consumed my emotional, mental, and spiritual energy. It took so much of our time and a lot of our other resources. And thankfully, our journey didn't end in darkness. If you've watched any of my video devos from the last year and a half, then you know we have a beautiful baby boy. Here's a recent family picture. So this is Logan, and thanks to the blessing of God and the intervention of modern medical technology, I gave birth to Logan in January of 2020.

And a few weeks ago, we went back to Glacier National Park where we decided on his name 'cause we had to take Logan to Logan Pass. And also, we are expecting our second baby, a little girl, in November, early November. So you can imagine when it came to planning this series that I was thrilled to get a bounding in love because if I'm going to learn another life lesson through the sermon writing process, I would much rather it be on love than on anger. Thanks, Jay, for tackling that one or on disappointment again or something like that.

And I promise I will launch into today's topic soon, but I just wanna say that if you are experiencing fertility issues and you're on that long, dark, lonely road, you are not alone. There are actually a few of us on pastoral staff here that have experienced multiple losses and fertility treatments, and we would love to walk with you on your journey. So please reach out. Feel free to email me, jessica@tlsc.org, so we can walk with you on that journey.

And now, I am gonna jump into our current series. It is called "God's Guide to God," and it is largely based on this book, God has a name by John Mark Comer. You can pick up a copy, you can buy a copy in the lobby after the service if you're interested. And this series definitely builds on itself, so I'm gonna take a little bit of time to review this morning.

The more we hear these attributes of God, the more they sink into our hearts and our minds. And reviewing's just a good idea. We're about halfway through this series, and so by the end of this review, we'll all be on the same page of what we've covered. The theme verses for this series are found in Exodus 34:6-7, which says, "And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin, yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished."

René kicked this series off with an in-depth look at God's name, Yahweh, and an overview of what he reveals about himself in these verses. And from René, we learned that Yahweh is personal, responsive, and radically different from all the other gods that people were worshiping at that time. Another highlight of René's sermon was this A.W. Tozer quote, and it says, "What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us, because we become like the God we worship." You know, what we think about God, whether we think he exists or not, informs our entire worldview. It shapes what we think and how we interpret the world around us. And so we want our beliefs to line up with what God has actually said about himself to us.

Sarah followed up that sermon, I mean, Sarah followed up René with a sermon on Yahweh's compassion, which is rooted in unconditional love, is an enduring ever-present quality of God, and can be seen in his forgiveness and restoration. Next, we heard from Val, and she taught us that God's graciousness is both practical and generous. The bottom line from Val's sermon was go and do likewise, which is a fantastic reminder that we're not just doing this series to learn about God in our heads, but we want what we learn to come out in our lives. We want these attributes to be visible in how we treat those around us.

And then last week, Jay Kim had the tough job of tackling slow to anger, a topic I was selfishly relieved I did not get. And so from Jay, we learned he did a great job. If you missed it, you should go back and listen to it. It's amazing. From Jay, we learned that God's anger is a loving consequence in response to human rebellion against God's plan for human flourishing. It is love and action that sets things right.

So that's the review. We made it, made it through the review. And now on to today's attribute, which is abounding in love. And on the surface, this might seem simple enough, but we have a very complex and nuanced word when it comes to the Hebrew language. So right now we're gonna do a deep dive into a word study. And truth be told, I'm a little bit of a nerd and I really liked this part of the sermon writing like research and the sermon process of research and writing exactly what this word means.

So the Hebrew word used here is chesed. It has that guttural like ch behind it, which as I preach, I'm not going to use because I would spit on the front row and it doesn't really flow well in English. But the word is chesed and there is no English equivalent. Other Hebrew words like compassionate and gracious have a very direct English translation, but chesed does not. Throughout history, translators have struggled to accurately choose words that encompass the complete meaning conveyed by chesed.

And that struggle isn't limited to English translation. There are actually no other words in other ancient languages that communicate the same idea as chesed. And not only do various English translations use a wide range of phrases and words, but within each individual translation, we see an array of English words used just for this one Hebrew word. Word choice fluctuates. And so depending on the context of the verse, translators choose different words so that they can convey the original intended meaning.

So the most common options for chesed include steadfast love, unfailing love, loyal love, mercy and loving kindness. Those are the options you'll see the most throughout Hebrew scriptures. And chesed carries with it the idea of a promise keeping loyalty motivated by deep personal care. In the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, chesed is translated as elios or mercy. And if that sounds familiar, it came up in Val's sermon a couple weeks ago because that's the same word they use for gracious.

And so to distinguish between the two, the Septuagint will often add mega elios to chesed, which means great mercy. And so in Hebrew, there are two distinct words and ideas here. There's mercy and there's chesed. And they are related and God is merciful, but that's not the word he chose in these verses to describe himself. He chose chesed, a loyal, loving kindness.

A few weeks ago, Sarah taught us that in Hebrew, both word order and word pairing matter. And like compassionate and gracious, abounding love and faithfulness often go together throughout the scriptures. So this week we're gonna look at love and the next week we'll look at faithfulness. Also in the Hebrew language, repetition is important. So when you see a word multiple times in a row, it's like we use bold or all caps today and it's like, pay attention, take notice, this is important.

And there are only two words that are repeated in these verses, Yahweh and love, chesed, which makes it clear to us that these are the two most important words in Yahweh's self revelation. And what's more, the word chesed actually appears over 250 times in the Hebrew scriptures. An article I read recently said that it may be the most important word in the Hebrew scriptures because it so much defines who God is and how he acts towards his people.

So if that weren't enough, we also have another hurdle when we come to English translation and that's really just that our word love just kind of fails to encompass the whole meaning of Hebrew chesed. And part of that is because we use it so much and so widely, right? I don't know if I run into this more because I work in youth ministry, but I hear things like, oh my gosh, you look so cute, I love your outfit. Or Gold Stryker's the best ride at Great America, I love it, it's the best roller coaster ever. Or breakfast burritos are my favorite, I love burritos from Tocqueria Vallarta, I could eat them all day, which you can after the service. And so we've watered it down.

I mean, we use it to describe how we love our friends and family, but we use it pretty much for anything we have an affinity for. And then culturally, we tend to equate love with infatuation. If you think about every Disney movie or rom-com that you've ever seen, love is portrayed as an emotion and it's that excited butterfly in the tummy feeling that ignites at a new relationship. The princess finds her prince and they live happily ever after and that's where the story ends, right? But that's really where Hestid picks up in that nitty gritty practical way of loving each other.

The Hebrew idea of Hestid involves a deep lasting significance, which is why translators pair it with other words to really try to communicate what it means. So we're gonna look at these one more time before we move on. Hestid has translated steadfast love, unfailing love, loyal love, mercy and loving kindness. What's more, it's not an abstract idea. Hestid always entails practical action on behalf of another. It's an enduring commitment to a preexisting relationship and it refers to actions demonstrating loyalty to that relationship.

In other words, it is long lasting sacrificial love in action. The overwhelming majority of the time when we see the word Hestid in the Bible, it's referring to God's unfailing love but there actually are a few examples of people who demonstrate this love and one of them is Ruth. When she says to Naomi, I'm gonna go with you, your God will be by God and your people my God, your people my people, sorry about that, that is called an act of Hestid in the Bible.

So it's not just God that acts in this way, we can act in this way too. And I was thinking to myself this week about what would that look like in today's world and have I ever been, because I know I have been, on the receiving end of this kind of Hestid and this experience came to mind. In 2008, I broke my ankle and I had to get surgery and get screws in there and I was non weight bearing for like eight or nine weeks and because it was my right ankle, I couldn't drive.

And at the time, my friend Laura and I had been doing Tuesday morning bike rides and those Tuesday morning bike rides turned into Tuesday morning doctor's appointments as Laura chose not to ride by herself, not to ride with other friends but to drive me to Mountain View to the doctor and then bring me home. And what's more, when I transferred from a cast to a boot and this is kind of gross, I had dead skin flaking off of my foot and collecting on the floor of my room. And because I couldn't stand up and put any weight on my foot I couldn't sweep the floor by myself.

So Laura swept my dead skin up off the floor of my bedroom. She made sure I had food, I think she brought me groceries and until I was able to meet those needs myself, Laura stepped in to meet those needs. And that is a fantastic example of Hestid. It's a practical sacrificial love in action.

One more thing is that God doesn't say, hey, I'm loving and I'm faithful. He says, I am abounding in love and faithfulness. Hestid is eternal, everlasting and indestructible. It cannot be watered down or washed away. It flows from a source that never runs dry. We can trust in it, ask for it, hope in it and rely on it. And this is a lesson I've had to learn repeatedly throughout my life.

So I grew up going to church, my dad's a pastor and my family, we joke that we were all born on Tuesdays because we were both my sisters, neither three of us. We were all born on Tuesdays and in church the following Sunday and pretty much didn't miss many Sundays after that. And so early in life, I learned that God loved me and my parents demonstrated this love to me. And I learned at church and at school, we'd memorize Bible verses that taught me that God loved me.

But somehow I missed that this love sprang from a well that never ran dry. When I was about to finish college, this pestering worry entered my head for the first time and it went something like this. What if the first 20 years of my life were so great that all of God's blessings were concentrated in them and the rest of it's just gonna get worse from here on out? What if God's blessings are scarce? What if the next part of my life is struggle and strife? Like is God up there? Do we each just get a limited number of things and I got all of them front loaded?

And somehow through cultural myth or misunderstanding of God's nature, I constructed this false image of God. And I pictured him kind of like a stingy old guy, maybe like a Scrooge who had a lot but would only give so much to each person because if he gave too much, that person might become spoiled or entitled. And I hadn't really been conscious of constructing this image, but it definitely took hold and I'd worry that God was either gonna withhold good things from me or that he'd say something like, "Jessica, you've had enough for one lifetime. I need to spread this out a little bit and give these blessings to other people." I really thought that by the way, maybe you have to.

And this directly contradicts what God reveals about himself in the Bible and in our theme verse especially. In fact, the New Testament book of James tells us that God gives generously to all without finding fault. And Jesus taught us that God loves giving good gifts to his children. And Paul writes that God is able to do abundantly more than we ask or imagine. God is not stingy. He is overflowing with abundant loyal love like a spring that never runs dry.

And I haven't visited too many natural springs, but there is one that I thought of that is remarkable and memorable and it is in Israel. So if you ever get the chance to go to Israel, you should take it. And when you're there, you should go to a place called Ngedi because it is absolutely amazing. And it looks a little bit like this. When you leave Jerusalem, you go into the Judean wilderness and it is hot, it is dry, it is desolate. It looks like nothing can live there at all. I don't think very many things do.

And you're driving from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea. And then all of a sudden you take this turn into a canyon and brown becomes green and hot and dry becomes lush and cool and refreshing. And there's no life in the desert. And then this canyon is teeming with life. There are leafy green plants. There's animals running around and out in the desert, you didn't see any of that. And I've never seen two decidedly oppositional environments in such close proximity.

And this spring, it's called Ngedi, has been flowing for thousands of years. This canyon has been inhabited since 3500 BC. It's a really, really long time for water to just keep pouring out of the ground. And this place at Ngedi, and it really does look like this. And when you come from the hot, dry desert and you go into that waterfall, it's amazing, you should go. And this is the place where David hid from Saul. If you remember back in the Hebrew scriptures, Saul was the first king of Israel and David had been anointed king, but he wasn't king yet.

And Saul was jealous and a little crazy, which is a really bad combination. And so he was intent on killing David and David had to flee for his life into the desert. And this place, Ngedi, is where he found rest and refreshment. And amazingly, you and I can go there today and find similar rest and refreshment. Hopefully, I mean, when I went there, I wasn't on the run for my life. And if you get there, I hope you're not on the run for your life either. But this place is significant and it provides a great illustration.

How amazing is it that we can enjoy refreshment from the same spring that King David did over 3000 years ago? And isn't that the perfect picture of God's abundant love? It never runs dry. It never runs out. It is a constant you can count on. The ever flowing spring is a reminder of God's hesed, a promise keeping loyal love motivated by deep care, which has no limit. It flowed for David and it continues to flow for us today.

David went on to write a number of the Psalms. And when I imagined David writing those Psalms, I picture him thinking back to his time at En Gedi, the spring there reminding him of God's love. And David definitely understood and held tightly to this idea of God's love. He used the word again and again and again throughout the Psalms. In fact, of those 250 times that hesed is mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures, over half of them are in the Psalms alone and David wrote a lot of those Psalms.

So today we're gonna look at one of those Psalms. If you wanna grab a Bible, you can turn to Psalm 13 or you can pull it up on your phone. It's a short Psalm, it's only six verses. So I'm gonna read the entire thing. And one more thing before I read it is that when we see this L-O-R-D, that word right there in all caps, it's Yahweh's name. So David is calling out to Yahweh by name. He's not just saying God, he's saying Yahweh. And I think that's kind of important in this Psalm.

So here we go. Says, "How long Lord will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer Lord my God, give light to my eyes or I will sleep in death. And my enemy will say, I've overcome him and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in your unfailing love, I trust in your hesed. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord's praises for he has been good to me."

Psalm 13, I love the Psalm. I've gone back to it again and again throughout my life. And it is a Psalm of lament. David is crying out to God for help. He feels forgotten, distant from God, full of sorrow. He feels like his enemies are surrounding him and there is nowhere to turn. He's pleading to God for help. He's saying, God save me. And this is like a literal save me. This isn't a figurative save me. This is like these people are gonna come kill me, God save me.

And then it's like he immediately switches gears and his entire attitude changes. So what changed? Well, his focus, instead of focusing on his enemies, he focused on God's unfailing love. Maybe he's sitting there desolate and he remembers in Getty and he remembers how God has saved him in the past and provided for him in the past. And in doing so, David makes an about face. He turns his focus from his troubles to God's unfailing love and he does it with an attitude of joy. Why? Because God's salvation.

This reference to salvation is both a literal, like David literally talking about how God has saved him in the past, saved his life in the past. And it's also a foreshadowing of the salvation that will be available to all of us through Jesus. And lastly, David concludes by praising God for his goodness. Despite his current circumstances, his doubt and his worries, David chooses to trust in who God has revealed himself to be. And we can make that same choice today.

We can choose to look at the chaotic world around us, which has been really chaotic recently. We can choose to look at our individual circumstances, at our personal disappointments, at strife and the strife and the conflict that we see all around us and lament about it. And there are definitely times when we need to do that. There are times when we need to bring our disappointments and our struggles before God and just say, "God help, this is horrible." But then we have a choice.

We can choose to continue to focus on those troubles, or we can choose to turn our focus onto Yahweh, the one who pursues his creation with an endless sacrificial love. The theme of unfailing love is woven throughout the entire Bible. From beginning to end, it is the story of how God pursues his creation in one enduring act of hesed. And that pursuit culminates in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, Yahweh taking on flesh and actually living among us.

As Jay said last week in doing this, "Jesus entered our pain, and he did this because of Yahweh's hesed, his enduring, practical, and sacrificial loving kindness. He became one of us in order to sacrifice himself in our place, making salvation available to all who accept it by grace through faith." When we truly grasp this concept of this limitless, loyal love, it changes us. And throughout the Bible, we see examples of this.

If you think of Moses, Elijah, and David in the Hebrew scriptures, or in the New Testament, we have Nicodemus, Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, Paul, all of Jesus's disciples. There are so many people whose lives were transformed when they encountered Jesus. Yahweh's loving kindness forever changes the lives of those who experience it.

So as we wrap up today, we're gonna look at three ways that we are transformed through encountering God's loyal love. So if you've been writing your notes, here's your chance to fill in all those blanks that we still have. So when I understand hesed, when I really understand God's loyal love, I will have the confidence to approach God with my biggest dreams and desires.

Moses and David are great examples of this. Once they really grasped God's loving kindness, they made bold requests of God. Moses tended to appeal to God's loving kindness for the Israelites to help them along the way since they kept messing up. And David tended to appeal to God's loving kindness literally to save his life and to forgive his sin.

The author of the New Testament book of Hebrews encourages us with these words when he writes, "Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." What are your biggest dreams and desires? What is holding you back from asking God to grant them? Boldly bring your request to God. He is able to do more than you can ask or imagine. And his love pours forth from a spring that never runs dry.

Number two, when I understand God's hesed, I will have the confidence to weather the storms and difficulties that come my way. Again, we go back to David 'cause he's a great example of so many of these things. Psalm 23 is one of the more famous and familiar Psalms in the Bible and in it, David talks about walking through the valley of the shadow of death but not being afraid. Why wasn't he afraid? The Psalm tells us because God's goodness and mercy were following him. And that use of mercy there is a use of the word hesed.

David has the confidence that God will see him through the current dark valley because he has experienced God seeing him through other dark valleys. In fact, Psalm 103, which is another Psalm that David wrote, David reflects on these past experiences and he literally writes a list of the ways that he has seen God provide for him in the past. And creating this list of the ways David has seen God's hesed in the past helps David through the storms that he's currently facing.

And I know at times in my life, when I've doubted God's love in the middle of difficult circumstances, like during our fertility journey, taking the time to literally write down how I have seen God's love in my life and in the lives of those around me has given me the confidence to trust him with the current circumstances that I'm experiencing.

And lastly, when I understand hesed, I will have the confidence to share God's love with others through acts of hesed. Michael Card is a Christian musician, but he's also an author. And he recently wrote an entire book on hesed called "Inexpressible." And it's good, I read it in preparation for this. And in it, he wrote, "You come to understand hesed by doing it, not defining it." And there you have it. Learning about God's attributes isn't merely intellectual, it's transformational.

And in recent weeks, the theme of action has come up and we didn't coordinate on this at all in our sermon prep. So these are independent things that we're coming to, but all of these, we know that God, how do we know that God is loving and gracious and compassionate? Not just because he tells us, but because of what he does. God demonstrates all of these attributes through his actions and we are called to do the same.

Micah 6:8 says, "He has shown you what is good and what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy," which again is the word hesed translated as mercy there, "and to walk humbly with your God." You know, we can sit around and talk about God's attributes all day long, but that won't get us any closer to sharing those attributes with those around us. We are called to demonstrate God's enduring sacrificial love to others by what we do.

So in a minute, the worship team is gonna come back up here and lead us in our final song. And during that song, I encourage you to meditate on God's loyal, steadfast love. Do you really understand it? Where do you need to move forward with confidence? Maybe you're hesitant to boldly ask Yahweh for your deepest desires. Then take this time to bring those desires for him, ask him for what you really, really want in your life, those big, deep desires.

Or maybe you're in the midst of one of life's storms and you're doubting his love. Ask for reassurance from him. He is there in the midst of the storm. Think back through how you have seen his steadfast love in your life and use those examples to confidently weather your current circumstances. Or maybe you're hesitant to boldly love others in a sacrificial way. Maybe you don't wanna put yourself out there or you just don't know how they're gonna react. And maybe God is calling you to love someone in your life in a way that's gonna take a lot of time or effort or sacrifice.

Remember, we come to understand Hestid not by defining it, but by doing it. So this week, there's a one more note on your note page, but this week, think of a way, how can I practice Hestid? How can I put God's loving, loyal kindness into action? Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your unfailing, loyal love that you continue to pour out on us even though we are undeserving. We thank you for demonstrating that love in our lives. Help us to better understand the deepness of your steadfast love so that our lives may be transformed by it. Help us to confidently approach you with our needs, to trust you no matter the circumstances in our lives, and to boldly share your love with others through our actions. May we live in such a way that those around us see your loving kindness in what we do and what we say. Amen.