Sunday: Beyond Reasonable Expectations
Daily Lesson for Sunday 29th of December 2024
God not only asks us, “Do you love Me,” but God Himself loves each person, and does so freely. Indeed, He freely loves you and me and every other person more than we could possibly imagine. And we know this love by the way He has acted in the history of His people.
Read Exodus 33:15-22 and consider the context of these verses and the narrative in which they appear. What does this passage, especially verse 19, reveal about God’s will and love?
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All seemed lost. Not long after God’s amazing deliverance of His people from slavery in Egypt, the people of Israel had rebelled against God and worshiped a golden calf. When Moses came down from the mountain, he saw what they had done, and he threw down the tablets containing the Ten Commandments and shattered them. Though the people had forfeited any right to the covenant privileges and blessings that God had freely bestowed on them, God freely chose to continue with them in covenant relationship anyway—despite their unworthiness for the covenant blessings.
The words of Exodus 33:19, “ ‘I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion’ ” (NKJV), are often misunderstood to mean that God arbitrarily chooses to be compassionate and gracious to some, but not others. However, in context, God is not stating here that He will arbitrarily be gracious and compassionate to some and not to others. That is not how God works, contrary to some popular theology in which God predestines some to be lost and to face eternal condemnation.
What, then, is God proclaiming here? Essentially, God is proclaiming that, as the Creator of all, He has the right and authority to grant grace and compassion freely to even the most undeserving of people. And He is doing so in this situation, even after the golden calf rebellion, by granting mercy to His people, Israel, even if they didn’t deserve it.
This is one of many instances in which God manifests His love and does so beyond any reasonable expectations. Good news for us all, is it not?
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In what ways has God continued to reveal and manifest His love to you—even beyond any reasonable expectations? |
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I woke up this morning thinking I have been married to Carmel for 55 years. "No!" she said, "It's 56! And she was right. Where has all the time gone? How does a marriage last that long?
We like to think long marriages are romantic idylls with kisses, soft music, holding hands, candle-lit suppers, walks in the moonlight, and all that other wonderful stuff. But who writes about the floor vacuuming, the shopping, the laundry, the rehoming of spiders, arguments won and lost, rebellious teenage children, and all the shared stuff of real life? Get real folk! 56 years of married life is about tolerance, sharing, forgiving, sharing, compromise, sharing, sharing, sharing.
If I have any picture of God's love worth sharing with others, it is because I have a wife who has put up with a self-centred cantankerous old bloke for 56 years and still loves me, even at my worst.
... and God's love is even better than that!
“Reasonableness” is simply a measure of human limitation. Who can measure or understand the full extent of God’s love? What is the height, length, and width of God's love? How much is the love that made Jesus hang on the cross? God’s love has no limit or expectation. God’s love acts in a “strange” way putting human reasonable expectations into utter shame. This is God's extravagant love “wasted” on undeserving sinners. Can anyone possibly start to imagine what manner of love this is? No wonder God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9).
The reasonable expectations were for the Prodigal Son not to receive royal treatment upon his return having squandered his inheritance in wild living. He was not only forgiven but also restored. Even so, his father rejoiced. This mirrors the love of our heavenly Father. This is the love that knows no boundaries. This is living love. This is eternal love.
“Long ago the LORD said to Israel: “I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love, I have drawn you to myself” – Jeremiah 31:3 (NLT).
This is the love that made one of the Godhead hang on the cross. This love can be ours by faith. This is the love that has the power to change the world. Dear Jesus, please, give me the smallest piece of this love.