God’s Love Pursues Us
Last year, I worked through the Bible chronologically with The Bible Recap. If you’ve ever read through the Bible, you’ll know that at one point in the Old Testament, it seems like you’re doomed to an endless cycle of depressing narratives and prophecies about the disobedience of Israel and God’s subsequent judgment.
These are hard passages to read. Taken on their own, these narratives usually don’t have happy endings. They’re filled with violence and gore and suffering.
But it didn’t have to be that way. We know that suffering is a part of living in a broken and fallen world, but for ancient Israel and Judah, they heaped so much grief upon their own shoulders because of their rebellion against Yahweh.
Many of these stories and prophecies in the Old Testament say something to the effect of, “But Israel would not listen.” God said to do one thing; they said no.
For example, 2 Kings 17:13-14 says, “Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, ‘Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the Law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets. But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.”
2 Chronicles 24:19 says, “Yet he sent prophets among them to bring them back to the Lord. These testified against them, but they would not pay attention.”
Judges 2:17 says, “Yet they did not listen to their judges, for they whored after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord, and they did not do so.”
Jeremiah 6:16 says, “Thus says the Lord: “Stand by the roads, and look,’ and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it.’”
Israel rejected God’s ways, running after something they thought was better. And what did they give up in that pursuit of their own agenda and their own idols? The reluctant prophet, Jonah, tells us.
Jonah 2:8 says, “Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love.”
Now, I’m not necessarily erecting shrines or bowing to a golden image, but there are plenty of ways I choose to worship and trust something other than him. I pay regard to vain idols in my own 21st century way, and I forsake what God wants to give. He says, “Do this,” and I too often say, “No.”
God’s way offers Sabbath, but I bow to the god of productivity.
God calls me to live in community, but many times serve the idol of pride and self-sufficiency.
God asks me to fix my eyes on Him, but my gaze is transfixed by the glowing rectangle in my hands.
God reminds me he’s in control, but I demand that I should be in control.
God says worship him alone, but I put people or power or political ideologies or pride on a pedestal they were never meant to stand on.
The truth is you can’t run away from God and towards steadfast love at the same time, because God is love. He is, “a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). What idols could be worth giving that up for?
But here’s the even greater truth. We’ve all walked away from the love of God…and yet his love pursues us. Over and over again in the Old Testament narratives and in the prophets, we see Israel’s sin–but then God’s compassion (see also passages like 2 Kings 13:23, Isaiah 14:1).
Lamentations 3:19-24 says:
“Remember my affliction and my wanderings,
the wormwood and the gall!
My soul continually remembers it
and is bowed down within me.
But this I call to mind,
and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”
And Micah 7:18-19 says:
Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity
and passing over transgression
for the remnant of his inheritance?
He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.
He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.
You will cast all our sins
into the depths of the sea.
And those prophecies and so many more culminate in the ultimate demonstration of love shown in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the one who took the punishment we deserved (John 3:16, Romans 5:8). We ran away, so God came after us. What a grace.
I don’t want to run away from steadfast love, and Jonah’s words offer a convicting reminder to let go of the idols we’re so tempted to worship. Giving up what God offers will never be worth it.
Yet even so, even when I fail, I can hold onto the hope that God’s steadfast love runs after me, even when I’m running away.
Thanks be to God.
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