SERMON
NOTES

GOD: Love me for who I AM, not (just) for what I do and give

God sent prophets like Jeremiah and Ezekiel who at first, before the fall of Jerusalem, gave the Israelites the truth – that they would be exiled because of their sin and disobedience. The Exile was God’s righteous response to Israel’s consistent sin and disobedience. Instead of representing a God who is distinct from any other deity they were no different in their behavior from the cultures they were supposed to replace in the Promised Land. So being a just God he finally brought on them what he said he would as far back as Deuteronomy 4:24-28. But the Exile didn’t seem to change God’s people; they still kept sinning.

Then, after the Exile, Jeremiah and Ezekiel began a ministry of comfort that included the promise of a return from the Exile. A part of that promise included the New Covenant, a new way of God working among his people. God speaking through Ezekiel (similar to Jeremiah) said:
“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will…give you a heart of flesh…then…you will be my people, and I will be your God” (Ezekiel 36:26-28)

• The Promise of the New Covenant – A New Relationship
  • Forgiveness – cleansing from the sinful past
    • For I will take you out of the nations…I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean (Ezekiel 36:24-25)
  • Transformation – changed from the inside out
    •  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will…give you a heart of flesh...I will put my Spirit in you (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
• Intimacy – belonging and joined
  • …you will be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:28)

But the promise and fulfilment of this New Covenant had a surprising basis.

• The Basis of the New Covenant – God, and God Alone
  • The Essential Nature of God
    • “It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name” Ezekiel 36:22

• God’s Holiness shows up in a completely unexpected way. It’s as if he was saying, “You don’t get it, do you? I will act in mercy not because you deserve mercy – it wasn’t a gaping need of yours that I have to fulfill”
• It reminds us of a similar message given much earlier to the Israelites as they entered the Promised Land: “The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you…” (Deuteronomy 7:7-8)
• In the New Testament Paul would write that the hard fact was that “there is no one righteous, no not one…for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:10,23)
• So why would God act on Israel’s behalf when they didn’t deserve it? Why would he act on our behalf when we don’t deserve it? It is because that is his essential nature: “…but for the sake of my holy name…I will show the holiness of my great name…” (Ezekiel 36:22-23)
• Normally when we see/hear of a particular need, if we are able to, and inclined to, we respond to that need. It either stirs our sense of generosity or guilt and we act. Normally when we lose sight of that need it no longer affects us that much
• Not so with God. God does/acts based on his essential nature, his essential nature being Love:
  • “…for love comes from God… God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a redeeming sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:7-10)
• God takes all sin and our brokenness seriously, therefore the need for a “redeeming sacrifice”
• But whether God is speaking through Jeremiah, Ezekiel, or Paul, he promises and works forgiveness, transformation, and intimacy because of who he is – “God is Love”
• God made all of that possible through Jesus when “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14). God seemed to be asking, “I promise to do all I said I would do. But now that I have come to actually be with you, will you love me for who I AM, not (just) for what I do and give? Because I love you for who you are, not for what you have done, can do, will do, or give.”
• All love begins in one way or the other as transactional: I respond to you (either in love or gratitude or both) because of what you have done for me. But it needs to go beyond that in order to be true love – seeing, appreciating, loving the other for who they truly are
• Why do we truly pray, “May your Name be holy…?” It is when we fall in love with God’s essential nature…

• The Witness of God
  • I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Sovereign Lord, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes (Ezekiel 36:23)

• God’s acts of Grace, however strange and unexpected, would be a witness to the peoples around
• When God’s people finally begin behaving as a result of God’s transformational work, the “outsider” will get the message – “if this who Israel’s really is, I want to follow him too”
• As people of the New Covenant, we too will have the same essential nature of the God who is transforming us – we will have this “mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16; Philippians 2:5)
• What this means is that this holiness, this uniqueness of God will be shown through our generosity, worship, kindness, love. We will give not just when it is convenient, or a need arises; we give because of Christ’s self-giving nature in us. We will love not only in response to when we are loved, we love with the sacrificial love that Jesus fills us with. We are able to worship even in our darkest moments because we have become people of worship
• Such behavior because of what Christ is doing in us point to God’s holiness as a witness

God wants us to experience his forgiveness, transformation, and intimacy so that we may know him as he is. That’s when our lives will be changed too to reflect the very nature of Christ as well!