God Really Does Love Me!
Author: Pastor John Smith, Jr.
December 02, 2020
You know sometimes you run across a Scripture that not only causes you to take a significant pause so that you can try and digest what you just read but it also occupies your thought life for long periods of time because you really don’t comprehend all of the implications of the Scriptural text. Today, as I was reading Jeremiah 31:20 where it says, “Ephraim my dear son? A pleasant child? For since I spake against him. I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the LORD,” I decided for some reason to attempt to examine it in the Hebrew text.
One of the hardcore rules of biblical exegesis is to define the words of the text so that you can begin your exegesis with understanding the individual words of the Scripture under consideration. So, I pull out my handy BDB (Hebrew dictionary) to assist me and ohh man did it ever help me. When you first look at this text the first thing that pops out at you is the one to whom the passage is addressed. It says, “Ephraim my dear son.” I believe that It is addressed to two parties, individual Israel and corporate Israel, which is an encouraging realization for me that God is not only devoted to “the Body of Christ” but He is also devoted to me, as one of His own.
I discovered that in the Talmud (Jewish literature) it is explained that God uses the name Ephraim when He is speaking of Israel as a nation that has broken His heart. Goodness! So right away we are to understand that something has gone awry in this relationship between God and His people! We are too acknowledge that the strained relationship is not on God’s behalf but on His people. They have broken His heart. God calls His people, the ones that have broken His heart his dear son, which is a phrase expressing a tender loving relationship. He uses the Hebrew word “Yakir” which means rare and precious, as in the sense of being priceless. It is interesting to note that He still considers them priceless even though they have broken His heart. This is brought into even sharper focus when God follows up during His anguish with another descriptive phrase concerning Israel, He calls him a pleasant child! The Hebrew term utilized here is sh’shua, which is a term used to express great delight in an object of great enjoyment.
How humbling it is to realize that God still looks at Israel and me for that matter as an object of great enjoyment after we have dealt Him such a hard blow of spurning His love by participating in things that dishonor Him and comes against His righteous rule in our lives. This phrase is used to describe a parent who is so blinded by their love for their child and a spouse for their mate that they fail to see their faults even though they are glaringly present and all they are able to see are all of their good qualities! Then God says that He earnestly remembers them. This is the word Hebrew word “Zacar” and it is repeated twice in the Hebrew text but once in the English text. Another rule of exegesis is that when a word is used twice it is placed there for extreme emphasis. When I first read this part I just read it and passed over it as if it meant very little but when I kept reading it, it started leaping off the page at me. I started believing that God was showing me something that would shift some things for me in my spirit.
This double usage of “zacar” means that this dear son, me as an individual believer and the corporate body of Christ are constantly on His mind. Literally, He cannot take HIs mind off of us! Every second of every minute of every hour of every day He is thinking about us! This behavior from God is on the backdrop of us not obeying Him and loving Him as we ought. God starts to bring this verse to a close by stating that this continual thinking of the one that has wronged Him and violated their covenantal relationship with Him, causes His bowels to be stirred within Him. Now, I know that does not seem like something that is affectionate in our day and time. However, the Hebrew language is full of word pictures and this is a section where we really need to understand the word picture. This phrase comes from the root word “racham” in the Hebrew, which means “the love that a woman experiences for the unborn child in her womb.” I have to admit that I could not really understand this word picture!
So, I called and spoke to several women that God has placed in my life to explain to me what type of love is it that a mother has for her unborn child. Unilaterally, they all began to attempt to explain it with many pauses between words and everyone of them stated that it is a love that is so deep that it becomes unexplainable! This adventure through this text during my devotional time has caused me to view God’s love for me from a totally different perspective. At one point in my life I viewed God as this person that was waiting on me to mess up so that He could get me! However, now I view Him as the God that loves me so deeply that even when I have broken His heart He remains infatuated with me! HE LOVES ME SO MUCH! It is a love as described by the women in my life as UNEXPLAINABLE! I pray that this blog helps you to see a different aspect of God and blesses you today!s own!
BACK