Chapter
4 – Introducing Love
“I
will sing of the LORD
's
great love forever; with my mouth I will make your faithfulness known
through
all generations. I will declare that your love stands firm forever”
(Psa 89:1,2)
Chapter
4 Contents
4.1
Comparing Testimony about God with His Activity is Important
4.2
Declaring the Nature of God as shown in the Bible
4.3
Setting out a Biblical World View: an overview revealing God's
love
4.4
To Summarise
| The
Heart of Chapters 4 & 5: The
Bible is uniform in declaring that God is a God of love. When
we realise that we then need to look at all that happens in
the Bible and see it in that light. As we look at the beginning
and end of the world according to God's design, we see all the
hallmarks of His love in it. |
4.1
Comparing Testimony about God with His Activity is Important
| Ch.
1-3 Basic Belief
Ch.4-6
Character of God |
Having
put down some foundation stones for basic belief in the first
three chapters, we now want to lay three more stones about the
character and nature of God. |
If
the Bible is quite clear in its assertions about the character
and nature of God – and it is – then we need to consider how
the various things that happen, especially in the Old Testament,
comply with those descriptions. |
Key
Question: How is God's character seen in His acts? |
That is at the heart of the following chapters: descriptions of God
define the true nature of His activities.
We
will state this again and again in the coming chapters, for it is
something that is very significant and which most people never seem
to take into account. It is the fact that if the whole of the Old
Testament testifies to a particular positive characteristic of God,
then they must have believed that in the face of all the happened
to them – which includes things which we, at first sight, might have
negative questions about. If the testimony is true, then it means
we need to think more about the ‘questionable' events that occurred
in the Old Testament.
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4.2
Declaring the Nature of God as shown in the Bible
A
little while ago, I painted a picture of God for a small group of
seekers and asked them what they felt about my descriptions. These
were those descriptions that I used.
First,
I said, I want you to imagine that He sympathises with us, feels
for us and understands us. How would you feel about that?
Good,
they replied.
OK,
suppose He is kindly and has feelings of good towards us. How would
you feel about that?
Still
good, they replied.
Right,
well suppose He doesn't get worked up by our mistakes. How does that
make you feel?
Good!
Supposing
love is his primary characteristic, a love that doesn't change, so
He sticks with us and doesn't give up on us, and supposing He puts
asides our wrongs with no rancour the moment we say sorry. How are
you now feeling about Him?
Really
great!
Well
that, amazingly, is how He is described in the Bible. See this verse
from the Bible:
“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.”
Now
for those who think the God of the Old Testament is an ogre, it might
surprise you to know that that comes from the second book of the Bible,
Exodus 34:6,7. In other words, this is how the early
Old Testament describes Him! Moreover, that description of Him is
continued throughout the Bible!
The
summary of that comes from the apostle John in his first letter,
in the New Testament, near the end of the Bible, when he simply
declares, “God is love.”
(1 Jn 4:8,16) |
The
Starting Point:
"God
IS love." |
So
why is it that so many of us, having just read what I've written above,
have a big “But?” hanging over us which wants to challenge this? Why
is it that so many of us doubt God's love? I'm going to make two preliminary
suggestions by way of working towards an answer to those questions
– and this whole book is about answering those doubts:
a)
Personal Emotional History
First,
I believe that many people go through an emotional crisis somewhere
in life and, because they do not have a sufficiently strong or clear
understanding of reality, they become confused and upset and doubtful.
| I
recently came across a quote from Charles Darwin as a particular
author sought to explain why Darwin
moved away from faith.
What was tragic was the fact, which was so patently obvious,
that Darwin
actually had little understanding of reality as described in
the Bible. Scanning a book a number of years ago by philosopher
Bertrand Russell, the same thing became obvious of him as well.
|
Did
Charles Darwin and Bertrand Russell have a grasp on the Christian
faith and on the theistic world view? Almost certainly, no! |
b)
Casual & Careless Reading
of the Bible
| Don't
listen to critical people who are ignorant about the Bible!
|
Which
brings me to the second suggestion, which is this: many people
have got questions about God's love because they have simply
not taken the trouble to carefully read the Bible and see the
reality that is laid out there (as I said in the first chapter).
|
They
have simply listened to the crusading atheists who pick on one or
two events in the Old Testament that they don't understand and, without
looking into the Bible for a deeper understanding, arrive at a shallow
and incorrect assessment of the true situation.
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4.3
Setting out a Biblical World View: an overview revealing God's love
Before
we move on any further considering God's love as seen in the Bible,
we really do need to clarify our thoughts about the Bible itself,
otherwise anything we say about His love will fall in the midst of
a pile of doubts.
| For
the moment we won't try to justify what we say, or even give
reasons why we believe it is valid to take the Bible at face
value (because hopefully you've seen something of that in the
previous chapter), but simply lay
out the basics of what the Bible says which 'fits' and makes
sense of everything else. |
The
Biblical world view 'fits' reality |
The
Biblical world view makes sense!
|
We
need to reiterate this: the Biblical
world view really is the ONLY world view that
makes sense of all that we know
– and this book will seek to work out that premise, linked to
the premise that God is a God of love. |
We'll
leave the justification of detailed passages to later chapters. But
we must start with this thought that not
only does the biblical world view make sense of everything else, it
also confirms the assertion that God is a God of love.
In
essence it is very simple:
- God
made the world perfect,
- we
human beings rejected Him so that the way we live makes the world
go wrong, and
- God
now works to draw us back to Himself and back to a way that restores
us, in a measure at least, to what we were designed to be.
That
is it simply, but to take it in we'll have to look at it using more
detailed propositions in a moment or two as we seek to paint the big
picture.
Postmodernism
tends to write off ‘big pictures' but that is probably because,
by and large, ‘big pictures' don't actually explain things as
they are. This Biblical world view, however, ‘fits' the world
as it is. What follows is what is either explicit or implicit
in the writings of the Bible. |
The
'big picture' is important despite post modernism |
Let's
express it in what follows, in a way that may be slightly different
from what many Christians and, especially, non-Christians think.
Nevertheless,
it is as accurate as I can make it, from what my reading of the Bible
over many years has told me:
A.
God's Original Design
1.
God made the world perfect and He designed human beings so that they
‘worked' best when they lived in relationship with Him. (Possibly
a most simple reason for this, is that He could tell us then how we
work best and how each situation in life can best be worked out.)
2.
In His design for them He purposed good for them, a world of wonderful
provision, a world to be enjoyed and a world to be lived in perfect
harmony.
3.
He gave them the abilities to communicate,
think, plan, reason, invent, create, write, work, order, purpose and
enter into the fullness of what they were designed to be.
Put another way, He has given us
self-consciousness, imagination and conscience, and ability to grow
and develop. It is all these things that separate
mankind off from the rest of the animal world and, I suggest, are
what the Bible means when it says we are made “in the image
of God” (Gen 1:26).
4.
He also gave them free will
– the ability to choose how to live – what to think, what to say,
and what to do.
5.
He set all this in place and gave them complete freedom - with one
exception. That one exception acted, if you like, as a barometer of
their relationship with God. It was an easy thing to do and in no
way inhibited their enjoyment of the world God had provided for them.
It simply gave them a specific way of expressing their love for God,
while
revealing their ability to exercise their wills as they wanted.
| Please
note, that that is how God designed things at the beginning
– everything going well, a world to be fully enjoyed, and complete
peace and harmony (and yes, in many ways very different from
today!). |
That's
how it WAS at the beginning |
B.
What then happened at the Beginning?
6.
The original first two human beings (distinct from all living creatures
before them) initially enjoyed all of God's provision for them. Subsequently
they (exercising their free will) chose to disregard God's one exception
to their freedom. When they did this, for the first time they experienced
self-awareness through guilt, shame, fear of God, and self-justification.
Their innocence was gone. This is what we mean when we refer to ‘The
Fall'. (They fell from a place of innocent enjoyment and when there
had been no wrong in the world). We'll see all this in far more detail
in a later chapter.
7.
Now they had experienced this ‘freedom to rebel' it was now part of
their being, and the Bible calls this ‘Sin' and every subsequent human
also expresses it.
8.
We might summarise this ‘Sin' as a propensity to self-centred
godlessness which is expressed through unrighteous behaviour.
•
It is ‘ self-centred godlessness' because
it is human activity expressed without any reference to God, i.e.
He is ignored in their thinking. Everything starts from self.
•
It is ‘unrighteous behaviour' because
it is behaviour that is contrary to God's design for human beings.
9.
The result of this sin-tendency is that the world no longer works
properly – and it all starts with human behaviour, so
-
•
Human beings are unkind to one another
(understatement!)
•
Fear has entered the animal kingdom
and nature is ‘raw in tooth and claw'
•
Spiritual forces are unleashed so
that even in nature things go wrong – earthquakes, hurricanes etc.
– things that, the Bible hints, are affected by more than mere physical
forces.
10.
Wherever God was, His life force was shared, resulting in ‘blessing'
or ‘impartation of goodness'
in a whole variety of ways (which we'll examine later in the book).
Because of humanity choosing to do their own thing, and because goodness
and non-goodness just don't mix, God stepped away from us and we have
known a general separation from Him (He feels ‘at a distance'). Thus
His blessing (‘good' naturally being imparted) is withheld
or limited. We have chosen to lead our own lives and He respects that!
Again
we emphasise, this is how it was at the beginning, after
the Fall (Adam & Eve's disobedience), so that we now
live in a Fallen World – a world with Sin in it and a world
that ‘goes wrong' – but that was not how it had been at the
beginning. |
This
IS how it is NOW |
C.
God revealing Himself through Israel
NB.
What has been considered so far is that found, explicit or implicit,
in the first three chapters of the first book of the Bible, Genesis,
and the rest of the Bible is about God revealing Himself to the world,
despite the presence of Sin.
11.
Despite there being this ‘general separation' from mankind – so that
men lived without a constant conscious awareness of God's presence,
we see as we read through the early chapters of Genesis, that God
still reached out to individuals to make Himself known and to draw
them into a relationship with Him, by way of preparation
for what would follow later in the Bible.
12.
God thus entered into a relationship with Abram, later to become
Abraham, and his subsequent family, Isaac and then Jacob. It was
a relationship where each of these ‘patriarchs' learned about God
and learned to trust Him and see that He knew best.
13.
Jacob had twelve sons who eventually grew into twelve tribes living
in Egypt. Jacob was renamed Israel, and the twelve tribes of Israel
became a nation which God led out of slavery in Egypt, to meet Him
at Mount Sinai where they entered into a relationship with Him, and
eventually were led by God into the land of Canaan (often referred
to as the ‘Promised Land' because God had promised it to them) where
they settled.
14.
It is in this ‘Promised Land' that they grew and were supposed to
be a light to the rest of the world, i.e. revealing God to the rest
of the world. (See chapter 9 of this book)
15.
Yet all we find happening is that, again and again, their sinful nature
turned them away from God and they failed to be the God-revealing
nation they were called to be.
16.
Cutting a long story short, by two thousand years ago they were a
distinct nation still in the land but under the domination
of the Roman conquerors.
Well,
that's the basic history of the Old Testament as it affected
Israel who were to be God's light to the rest of the world.
In fact they simply revealed even more of the fact of sin in
the human race! |
Israel
were God's light |
D.
God revealing Himself through His Son, Jesus Christ
17.
It is into this environment that Jesus Christ was born two thousand
years ago.
18.
The declared purpose of Jesus coming was:
| |
•
to reveal the character
of God – love and goodness,
•
to die in our place to take the
punishment due for our sins, and
•
to show a way is possible to re-enter
into a relationship with God both now and in eternity.
|
|
This,
in perhaps the simplest overview possible, while seeking to be comprehensive,
is the overall picture of what is revealed in the Bible. Put most
simply, the Bible is a record of God's activities, seeking to draw
mankind back from the destructive abyss they have chosen, into a place
of goodness where they experience the ongoing love of God, both on
this earth and into eternity. That is what the Biblical worldview
displays. Everything about it reveals a God who IS love and who, therefore,
displays love in everything He says or does, even though we may not
realise it or understand it.
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4.4
To Summarise
In
this chapter we considered:
| |
4.1
Comparing Testimony about God with His Activity is Important
Here
we noted that:
•
Whatever
conclusions people jump to by picking on particular aspects
of the Old Testament, the record declares God to be compassionate,
gracious, slow to anger, loving and forgiving.
•
Our
role in future chapters is to see if this squares with what
we find in the overall Old Testament.
4.2
Declaring the Nature of God as shown in the Bible
Here
we recapped on what we have seen previously about God being
declared a God of love, and then we considered reasons why
people may struggle with this.
4.3
Setting out a Biblical World View: a quick overview
We
summarised the contents of the Bible as follows:
-
God
made the world perfect,
-
We
human beings rejected Him so that the way we live makes
the world go wrong, and
-
God
now works to draw us back to Himself and back to a way that
restores us, in a measure at least to what we were designed
to be.
|
Within
this chapter we have not sought to justify these things, merely to
state them as things that the Bible reveals or declares. Because of
the assertion, strongly made in chapter 1, that very often it is ignorance
of the Bible that causes questions and doubts, this chapter has been
about laying down a framework of understanding of what the Bible says,
at least in outline, of who God is and what He has done. The detail
will follow in later chapters.
In
the next chapter we will consider more about what it means to speak
of 'love' especially as it pertains to God.
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|