Lord of all pots and pans and things,
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Charles Spurgeon. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Spurgeon” in the search box to read more entries.
Instructor And Indweller
O righteous Father! The world has not known You, but I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me. And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:25-26)
John’s Gospel is always easy for the child to read, but it is always hard for the man to understand. And these two verses, which are almost entirely made up of words of one syllable, contain mysteries that baffle the most enlightened understanding. …
The twenty-sixth verse speaks of the wonderful discoveries of a love of infinite excellence: “That the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” And you notice that in order to bring that love home to us, there is a divine Indweller who goes with it, and without whom it could not be! As a teacher is required to bring us the choice knowledge, so an indweller is necessary to infuse into us the infinite love: “And I in them.” Jesus must teach us or we will not know the Father. He must dwell in us or we will not rejoice in His love.
Thus our first subject is divine knowledge and the divine Instructor. Our second subject is indwelling love and the indwelling Lord. The two are one! The blessed Person of our Lord Jesus is so connected with both and so unites both that the subject is one! To know God in Christ Jesus is to love Him, and to be loved of Him is the cause of our being made to know Him! When Jesus declares the Father’s name, we both know and love. And when we see the Father in the Son, we are filled with both instruction and affection. …
“Righteous Father”—I know of no other place in Scripture where God is called by that name. … He is righteous, having the attributes of a judge and ruler. He is just, impartial, by no means sparing the guilty. He is Father, near of kin, loving, tender, forgiving. In His character and in His dealings with His people, He blends the two as they were never combined before! How can the Judge and the Father be found in one? When guilty men are concerned, how can both characters be carried out to the fullest? How is it possible? There is but one answer, and that is found in the sacrifice of Jesus that has joined the two in one! In the atonement of our Lord Jesus, “mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed” (Psalm 85:10).
From The Righteous Father Known And Loved
Jesus showed us the full extent of His love at Calvary. When He was ready to ascend to heaven, He promised to send the Holy Spirit to remind us of all that we had learned about this love and salvation of Jesus, and so much more!
This should suggest to each of us a searching question: Do I know the Lord?
If not, you can know Him today!
Micah Berteau dismantles all of the false definitions of “love” the culture has concocted. Love Changes Everything is a great book! Check out my full book review by clicking here.
“Do not let your perception of reality shape God’s voice in your life. Rather, let God’s voice shape your reality.”
“It is difficult to know God’s values when we keep telling Him ours.”
“The world will always define love in a way that makes us thirst for a version that only benefits self.”
“If the culture is going to be obsessed with the thought of love, we must become possessed by the truth of it.”
“The dictionary defines a mirage as ‘something illusory, without substance or reality.’ Too often we find ourselves chasing an image mirage that has no substance or reality. We try to wear other people’s opinions, only to realize that’s the wrong measurement for our lives. Stop running after what you think you see and start running after what you know. Don’t chase an image mirage. Chase the Image Maker, Jesus Christ.”
“Real love pushes you away from a cycle of sin. Authentic love encourages you not to sit on your calling. Perfect love casts out all fear because the love of God will cause you to leave all that is comfortable.”
“God’s love does not equal God’s approval. … Love is not an approval to continue living a sinful life. Love is the power that possesses you to change everything. … Love is not a stamp of approval but a fire that consumes.”
“Hosea was not becoming the culture, he was bringing love to a dark place. Jesus was a friend of sinners. How can we win a world that we are distanced from? We do not embrace immorality to reach people; that is a ridiculous idea. However, we are called to love all people and to be a light in the darkness. It is time to get out of the pews and show Jesus in the streets.”
“Feelings are fleeting things that we buy into. Emotions then begin to disguise themselves as truth. When we start listening to our emotions, we even weigh them against the voice of God. It then becomes difficult to discern which voice is leading you—your own or God’s?”
“Do not let what’s happened in your past stop you from receiving God in your present.”
“Loneliness is not the result of being alone but of not letting God fill that missing void. … No other person can fill the emptiness that plagues our souls. Don’t put that pressure on another human being. Fulfillment is the job of the Almighty; submission is our job.”
“Love does not magically change things in your life. It does not do the work for you. Love is an altering agent that must be received and applied. Love has to be in charge. Once this love is in you, then it can do work within you. Once it is working within you, it must come out of you. You are not loved just so you can walk around being loved. You are loved so you can be love. The places where love does not reach go unchanged.”
One of the most fascinating love stories in the Bible is between Hosea and Gomer. In this story, we see a picture of God’s unconditional love so clearly. Using this story as a backdrop, Micah Berteau explains how this love is still potent for all of us today. His book is called Love Changes Everything.
Micah believes our culture has watered down and diminished what love really means. And I heartily agree with him! There’s an old children’s song that says, “Jesus loves me this I know,” but Micah entitles one of his chapters: “Jesus loves me… this I don’t know.” This book is meant to help us recapture what real love is.
Weaving aspects of the rescuing love Hosea had for Gomer throughout the entire book, Micah teases out thoughts that many may not have considered. He then skillfully uses his own personal life journey to bring a modern-day feel to this love story. Each chapter opens a new facet of God’s love that is intended to dismantle all of the false definitions of love too many have previously taken to heart.
Although this book is a good reminder for a wide audience, I especially think this would be a good discussion guide for a mature Christian to use with someone who is struggling to believe that God can unconditionally love and forgive them.
I am a Revell book reviewer.
Before Your Cross I kneel and see
Hosea is the only prophet from Israel (he calls the Israelite king “our king” in 7:5), and along with Amos he is the only prophet to address the northern kingdom exclusively. Hosea addresses the northern tribes of Israel with brutal honesty—he calls them an adulteress wife! Hosea isn’t alone in saying this, as Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all same the same thing too.
But Hosea alone is called on to live out his message in a most unusual way: God instructs him to marry “an adulterous woman”! The question is: was she already a promiscuous woman before they married? Or did she become unfaithful after they were married?
I believe that she became unfaithful after marriage. When Gomer gives birth to their first son, Hosea writes that “she bore him a son”—indicating he is the father. But with Gomer’s second and third pregnancies, Hosea simply writes, “she gave birth,” leading me to think that Hosea wasn’t the father of those children.
From the Faithlife Illustrated Study Bible
The names of the children are also interesting:
How sad! Can you imagine Hosea’s heartache?! Can you imagine God’s heartache?! God tells Hosea the penalty for their adulterous life (Hosea 2:2-13), which the apostle Paul would later sum up in these straightforward words: the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).
“YET” and “THEREFORE”…
In the middle of God expressing His heartache over His wayward wife He says two amazing words “Yet” and “Therefore” (1:10; 2:14).
This is UNBELIEVABLE!! Who would respond like this to such vile unfaithfulness?!
God would.
God did! But God shows and clearly proves His own love for us by the fact that while we were still sinners, Christ—the Messiah, the Anointed One—died for us (Romans 5:8).
Hosea—whose name means salvation—is called on to do exactly what Jesus did for us. Hosea buys back his wife from her master. Hosea pays the price for Gomer’s sin, just as Jesus paid the price for our sin.
What amazing love God has for us!
You have never lived an unloved day in your life. Not a single one! God loves you more than the best husband could ever love his wife. He paid for your forgiveness and your freedom. Will you receive that forgiveness and restoration today?
Join me next Sunday as we learn more major lessons from the minor prophets.
My dear friend Josh Schram relaunched our summertime series looking at the Selahs in the Psalms. “Selah” (or “Interlude” in some Bible translations) can mean either a time of reflection, a deep breath to go into something stronger, or a time to weigh the contrasts.
Psalm 44 is a classic example of a Selah calling us to weigh the contrasts! The first 8 verses of this psalm celebrate the recollections of God’s past victories, declarations of God being our King, and crescendoing to a note of continual praise—O God, we give glory to You all day long and constantly praise Your name!
Then comes the Selah—pause.
And after the pause, the scene turns dark. The psalmist now recounts how bad his situation is, descending to the low note of “we collapse in the dust, lying face down in the dirt” (v. 25).
Josh reminded us how our preferences change over time. Consider the telephone—we’ve gone from push-button corded phones, to phones with longer cords, to cordless phones, to bulk bag phones, to smaller cell phones, to smartphones. It’s very human for our preferences to want more and better.
But God’s preference never changes. God’s preference is YOU!
He can never love you any more than He already does. Nor can He love you any less.
The apostle Paul quotes Psalm 44:22—yet for Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered—when he explains that absolutely nothing can separate us from God’s love (see Romans 8:31-39).
In marriage vows, we usually promise to love our spouse “for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health.” True love goes through it all!
God’s love goes through it all with us. That’s why the psalmist’s last words are so hopeful: Rise up and help us; rescue us because of Your unfailing love. His unfailing love is our assurance of His presence and His ultimate rescue. Paul also reminds us “indeed we share in His sufferings in order that we may also share in His glory” (Romans 8:17).
Josh said, “I want you to remember one thing: Nothing!” Nothing can separate you from God’s love. Ever!
Hillsong United has some memorable words in their song Highlands—“I will praise You on the mountain, and I will praise You when the mountain’s in my way. … You’re the heaven where my heart is, in the highlands and the heartache all the same.”
No matter what you’re facing, God’s preference is you. He loves you, and He wants you to grow closer to Him through this trial. Praise Him for His unfailing love on the mountain and in the valley, and then wait in eager expectation for Him to come to rescue you.
Give me the love that leads the way, 
Every fallen soul, by sinning,
“His love endures forever” (NIV)The psalmist says this in every single verse of Psalm 136.
Get the point? Just in case you missed it—
