Ash Wednesday “Steadfast Love”
February 17th, 2021 – Joel 2:13
What is steadfast love? Perhaps it would help to update the wording and call it “loyal love.” This is a part of who God is. Khesed. Great Bible Project video called “Loyal Love” to help you understand this.
We, as children of God made in His image, aught always to pursue being like God in our lives. To ask the question “what would God do?” and seek out the answer in Scripture is a good and Godly thing.
In your life, when have you been given the opportunity to be like God and show Khesed? In order to show loyal love, there needs to be some way to test it. For example, if you are married and there are no other “options” of the opposite sex to entice you away there is very little opportunity to live out your loyal love – and thanks be to God for it! You are simply loving. Taken a step further, if there are no other options to entice you away, but you fight all the time with your spouse and there is the temptation to end your relationship, you would then have the opportunity to show khesed.
Let’s look at your children. Whether your children are young or old, have you had the opportunity to show loyal love to them? In showing loyal love to your son or daughter, you help communicate in a big way to them who God is. Loyal love does not mean much unless it is put into action. How is loyal love put into action? When there is the opportunity, or even the strong temptation, to abandon them to shun them, disown them, and instead, you show them love that is unconditional and lasting – yet still not permissive of evil or wrong. In other words, when love is tested, you have the opportunity to show loyal love to others like God shows to us.
What is it you love? Do you love your spouse? Your kids? Your parents? Your church? Your home? Your God?
When those relationships are strained, for whatever reason, how do you respond? Is your go-to abandoning them? “Strength” by cutting them out of your life? Tough love & disownment? Do you treat your relationships like a hard business deal and say “Out of love for myself, I will cut you out and only love you if you change”?
Perhaps treating other people like this fits some situations. Maybe there are situations and circumstances that warrant this kind of action toward someone. Maybe your divorce, your disownment, cutting your child out of your life, it fit the situation you were in. The intention of this message is not to dig into the details of our own lack of loyalty in our lives. Suffice to say, our loyal love is lacking as a human race and, perhaps, as individuals, too.
Where I want you to look with this message is not at yourself, but up to God.
What if God treated us the way we treat each other? What if God abandoned us until we were worthy of His care? What if God’s forgiveness was conditioned on our change of attitude and accepting of His love? What if God divorced us because of our actions which break down the relationship?
If you’re thinking, “Oh no! God does treat us like this. I’m not good enough, I need to be better” you’re not entirely wrong. God promises to punish all those who break His commandments. He promises to punish children for the sins of their fathers to the 3rd and 4th generations. If a father fails to raise up their child to know who God is by teaching them God’s Word or living it out as an example to their child, the child will suffer for the father’s willful neglect of duty. There is a point where God demands us to be holy as He is holy. It is good for us to recognize the specifc ways we sin and be sorry for them. To put ash on our foreheads and say “I am not worthy. I am as good as dust before God.”
Perhaps you will get to the point of understanding you are imperfect and undeserving of God’s love. You could never earn it – you don’t deserve it. Yet, God gives us a gift. God gives us faith, an amazing willingness to trust what He tells us and cling to the promises He makes to us. The faith that He gives to us tells us that God is gracious and merciful; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Let’s break this verse from Joel down.
He is gracious: He gives us a gift we do not deserve. He is merciful: He does not give us the punishment we deserve. Slow to anger: His final punishment is not swift and reckless. He is abounding in steadfast love: This is loyal love – khesed – love that endures hardships, infidelity, hatred, and fighting.
Do you want a parent who, no matter what happens, loves you? Do you want a child who, no matter what happens between you two, loves you in return? Do you want friends who are loyal and won’t abandon you when you’re angry or sad and start lashing out – even at them? Do you want a spouse who is loyal to you no matter what, because they promised they would be?
Yeah, me too.
God is all these things. He is loyal because He promised to be. He forgives, not because you deserve it, but because He said He will. This is a beautiful thing.
This is something worth remembering over and over and resting upon in the good times and the bad. God has promised good to us. He has promised to be with us when we do not deserve Him to be.
Our Ash Wednesday texts are all this message – we are not loyal – God shows loyal love to us. Our Ash Wednesday texts remind us who we are and who God is. Who God is, is Jesus, crucified for us to take away our sin – showing His loyal love to us.
In closing, Psalm 51 says it this way:
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin!
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence,
and take not your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
May God grant this to us all.