Jan. 26, 2025

Livin’ in Love

Introduction - In last week’s lesson we learned that God has feelings.  Since He is an intelligent being, far beyond our understanding, we would be wise if we chose to start supplying those needs. In today’s lesson, we’ll explore living in love, which is the easiest, most powerful way to live as our creator intended for us to live in harmony with Him.  

Love, from a biblical standpoint, is: The sacrificial, unselfish, loyal, benevolent concern for the well-being of another.  It is the most powerful way to live as a Christian because you are capturing the very essence of God and flowing with it, almost like a fish swims along with a current of water.  We can live out a christian life under a sense of duty, like Navy SEALS executing a mission.  Not bad, but we run out of steam eventually.  Self-motivation is not bad either, if we are following the Lord to improve our own health, or marriage, or job, but it runs out of steam when the self-motivation wanes.  God has a better plan: for us to live out our lives in the power of His love, which never diminishes.  Let’s examine first what life was like under the period of the Law, which is the period (called a Dispensation) which ended just prior to the one in which we now live, Grace.  

Life under the Mosaic Covenant

The Israelites lived out a life under an agreement which God made with them called the Mosaic Covenant. It was temporary, and depended on two people keeping their agreed upon responsibilities.  God said He would bless the Israelites if they obeyed Him.  If they didn’t, they would be cursed.  It was not a bad covenant, but one which required a lot of obedience to detailed laws (animal sacrifices, ritual purity, dietary restrictions).  They were to be God’s light to other sinful populations around them. If they did well, dramatic victories and miracles dazzled the other sinful nations.  The Mosaic Covenant only lasted until the coming of the promised “seed” (Jesus) who then replaced the Mosaic Covenant with the New Covenant, which became available to all people everywhere.  The lessons taught to the nation of Israel under the Mosaic Covenant were like tutorials to demonstrate basic relational rules for dealing with God: Be faithful to Him, put Him first, and you’ll be blessed.  Spend time serving another God and you’ll be punished.  As He said very simply:

Deuteronomy 6:1-3 “These are the commands, decrees, and regulations that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you. You must obey them in the land you are about to enter and occupy, 2and you and your children and grandchildren must fear the LORD your God as long as you live. If you obey all his decrees and commands, you will enjoy a long life. 3Listen closely, Israel, and be careful to obey. Then all will go well with you, and you will have many children in the land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you. NLT

Deuteronomy 6:14-15 “You must not worship any of the gods of neighboring nations, 15for the LORD your God, who lives among you, is a jealous God. His anger will flare up against you, and he will wipe you from the face of the earth. NLT

The arrangement under the Law of Moses was fair and good.  We humans, only a finite number of generations  removed from the original fall of man were just not equipped to perfectly keep it. It was “a given” that we would fail, so God scheduled regular “failure makeup sessions” involving sacrifices for individuals and for the nation of Israel.  Feast Days and regular sin offerings dotted the Israelite calendar.  He always knew that a better arrangement was needed, and He called it a “better covenant.”

Hebrews 8:7-13 If the first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no need for a second covenant to replace it. 8But when God found fault with the people, he said: “The day is coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 9 This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt. They did not remain faithful to my covenant, so I turned my back on them, says the LORD. 10 But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the LORD: I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 11 And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the LORD.’For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already. 12And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.” 13 When God speaks of a “new” covenant, it means he has made the first one obsolete. It is now out of date and will soon disappear. NLT

Under this old arrangement, people got to know God through obedience to a mission.  In all the years it was in force, Their lives were making an example for us to learn from, that is, that the moral laws of God were perfect, but that we could never satisfy the demands of them, and we always stood with a record of condemning sin in front of us, like a big heap of rotting refuse.  We’d just offer the prescribed sin offering and head into another year.  It was always possible and very probable that multitudes of Israelites were justified (saved) by faith which they demonstrated by their countless acts of obedience. They were saved on the merit of the future sacrifice of Jesus, which God credited to their benefit. Today, tithing stands as one of these moral challenges for the Christian. Giving a tenth of one’s income is a challenge for poor people.  It is easier for people with disposable income.  Under the Law, it was an imposing demand.  Under grace, It is only a training program which, little by little, teaches us to trust God to provide for us.  God does not need tithe money! Tithing is for you to grow in faith. Contrary to popular teaching, tithing always involved the giving of earthly things, if accepted in the culture, or money, not time or special abilities.  Try paying the water company with donated time, or pumpkins, or singing for them.  This would make you nothing more than a slave to all your debtors, if that is your only means of repayment.  God always was after love from His people, not just obedience.  

Life Under the New Covenant

The New covenant is often spoken of as being better than the Old (meaning usually the Mosaic Covenant).  The thing that changed was the massive injection of love in the form of God giving up His Son as a permanent cure for the sin of man.  When we see how sinful we all are, and how much He has forgiven us, we really start to understand God’s love toward us.  We then are able to start loving Him in the full depth He yearns for.

Psalm 103:8-14 The LORD is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. 9 He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever. 10 He does not punish us for all our sins; he does not deal harshly with us, as we deserve. 11 For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth. 12He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. 13 The LORD is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him.14 For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust. NLT

Remember the above verses was written about the Israelites, still under the Law of Moses. How grace-filled!

1 John 4:9-17 God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. 10This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 11Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. 13 And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. 14Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. 16We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world.  NLT

Nobody forced God to give His only Son to be killed as a sacrificial payment.  His own inherent sense of right and wrong and justice demanded that something be done to make up for our sin.  What had to be done needed to permanently change the hopelessly bad hearts of all mankind, as well as make a payment for our willful, moral crimes.  

Conclusion - Knowing these things, let’s move out of the previous motivators we had for serving God: fear of punishment, sense of duty, desire to improve our situation, all of which rose only to the levels of the Law of Moses.  Let’s get into the powerful, unstoppable flow of God’s love.  Here’s where there is boundless energy to live the Christian life!  Let’s use the biblical definition of love: The sacrificial, unselfish, loyal, benevolent concern for the well-being of another and start supplying it to God, who needs it from us!