He Loved

Deuteronomy 4:36-38 – From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you. On earth he showed you his great fire, and you heard his words from out of the fire. Because he loved your ancestors and chose their descendants after them, he brought you out of Egypt by his Presence and his great strength, to drive out before you nations greater and stronger than you and to bring you into their land to give it to you for your inheritance, as it is today.

Hebrews 12:25 – See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven?

Jeremiah 31:3 – The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.

Hosea 11:1 – “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

Malachi 2:11 – Judah has been unfaithful. A detestable thing has been committed in Israel and in Jerusalem: Judah has desecrated the sanctuary the Lord loves by marrying women who worship a foreign god.

Deuteronomy 6:5 – Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

Exodus 25:30 – Put the bread of the Presence on this table to be before me at all times.

Application:

• ·         Since we have greater revelation, we have greater responsibility and therefore greater danger.
• ·         “He loved” is the first reference in Deuteronomy to God’s love for His people. The corollary truth is that His people should love Him.
• ·         The Hebrew underlying “drawn…with unfailing kindness” is translated “Continue…love”.
• ·         Hosea saw God’s love as the basis for the election of Israel.
• ·         Marriages to pagan women were strictly forbidden in the covenant law, not for ethnic or cultural reasons but because they would lead to apostasy.
• ·         Love for God and neighbor is built on the love that the Lord has for His people and on His identification with them. Such love is to be total, involving one’s whole being.
• ·         The bread of the Presence represented a perpetual offering to the Lord by which the Israelites declared that they consecrated to God the fruits of their labors and by which the nation at the same time acknowledged that all such fruit had been provided only by God’s blessing.

All Scripture verses taken from NIV