We all want to be loved. We love stories about love. We love songs about love. We love being loved. Funny how God made us that way. He made us with a desire to be loved, and He desires for us to desire His love.
Yet, have you ever felt that you've done too much wrong for anyone, let alone, God, to love you?
Psalm 78:56-66 talks about the children of Israel turning their backs on God (v 56-57). Because of their behavior, God became furious and "abhorred" Israel (v 59). The word, "abhor" is synonomous to "despise, hate," it means "to regard with extreme repugnance or aversion; detest utterly; loathe; abominate" (dictionary.com, 2010).
Is this the God of Love that we know?? How can God extremely detest these people?? I thought He loved everyone??
Exactly, He does. In Jeremiah 31:3, God says about the children of Israel, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." This word, "everlasting" means without end, of old, or infinite. So if God loves us with a love that never ends and is infinite, how can He abhor us? That's just it. He doesn't abhor US, He abhors our ACTIONS.
He is jealous when we place other things/people above Him in our lives.
He is hurt when we criticize and bring down other people.
He hates it when we disobey Him and disgrace His name.
But He still loves US.
Isn't that refreshing? No matter how much wrong we do, no matter how badly we think we've messed up, God still, and always will LOVE US. Just as the children of Israel in Psalms, we will face consequences for our sins, but God will never stop loving us.
He loves us with a love "of old": the same love He had for King David, for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for all the saints we read about and think we can never be as close to God as they were - He loves us just as much as He loves them.
Everlasting. Without end.
