Psalm 119:76 – Comfort
Let your lovingkindness comfort me
as you have promised your servant.
Lovingkindness is the Hebrew word hesed, which can also refer to faithfulness, favor, goodness, or grace. It also refers to the loyalty involved in a covenant relationship.
I think one of the most commonly forgotten aspects of Christian faith (also true in Judaism) is living in the knowledge of being in a relationship with God. A covenant is a relationship. We often talk about our relationship with God as a sort of romantic adventure based solely on emotion.
I don’t want to deny emotion. Emotion is important. Experience and the emotion that grows out of it is as critical as the facts on which it is based. One can get lost either way. The idea of meeting a God who demands that we keep his commands outside of such a relationship is quite daunting.
You know that YHWH your God, he is God. He is a faithful God who keeps covenant and lovingkindness – to those who love him and to those who keep his commands – for a thousand generations.
Deuteronomy 7:9 (author’s translation)
Now keeping all those commands is a lot of work! Works will not save you. Works will not make you a child of God. But the book of Deuteronomy doesn’t teach that the works are somehow earning the favor. Rather,
Not because you were more numerous than all the peoples did YHWH passionately desire you and choose you, for you were the smallest of all the peoples. Rather, because YHWH loved you and because he kept the oath which he swore to Abraham, YHWH brought you out with a powerful hand and ransomed you from the house of servitude, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Deutereonmy 7:7-8 (author’s translation)
Now there’s something interesting about the word used to describe God’s passionate desire. It’s the same word used by Hamor of his son Shechem and his desire for Dinah, daughter of Jacob. I don’t bring this up to somehow ransom the sordid story of Shechem and Dinah. But this illustrates the strength of the emotional bond. Hamor, in using this word of his son, is telling the people of the town that the prince has to have the girl he desires. He can’t do without her.
God’s love for God’s people is powerful, demanding, and must be satisfied. When God gives a covenant to Abraham, and repeatedly renews and restates it, God is saying that his love is overwhelming.
In ancient times, the breaking of a covenant was regarded as a very bad thing, often resulting in a penalty of death. In Ezekiel 17:11-21 God’s message is that the people made a covenant with the king of Babylon and then violated it. God asks regarding the king who did this, “Will such a man be successful? Will he escape destruction if he acts in this way? Can he violate a treaty and escape unpunished?” (Ezekiel 17:15b). This is a condemnation of violating a human treaty.
In Jeremiah 31:31, God says he will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah, and in verse 32 he says the old one was “one they broke.” Do you hear what’s going on here? Violation of a human covenant is condemned. And yes, violation of God’s covenant is condemned. But what does God do?
God makes a new one. Why? Because he loves his people so much. He has to have that relationship. Notice that the new covenant is in what we Christians call the “Old Testament.” The same love expressed in Deuteronomy 7 as Israel prepares to enter the land, is again expressed by creating a new covenant to replace the broken one.
So does this only apply to Israel? We have only to pay attention to the covenant from the start to realize that God invites Israel to be his to be a blessing to all. God claims sovereignty over all the nations and moves the save them.
It is in this overwhelmingly faithful, overpoweringly loving relationship that we can find that comfort. That kind of love is the best atmosphere in which to grow. Holiness only occurs immersed in God’s all-encompassing grace.
Can you feel that grace today in every moment?
(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)
