God the Lover

Sermon for North Hill Adventist Fellowship for February 11, 2012.

Text: Deuteronomy 7:7-10

One of my favorite love songs is “Would You Go with Me?”

Would you go with me if we rolled down streets of fire?

Would you hold on to me tighter as the summer sun got higher?

If we roll from town to town and never shut it down?

Would you go with me if we were lost in fields of clover?

Would we walk even closer until the trip was over?

And would it be okay if I didn't know the way

If I gave you my hand would you take it and make me the happiest man in the world?

If I told you my heart couldn't beat one more minute without you, girl?

Would you accompany me to the edge of the sea, let me know if you're really a dream?

I love you so, so would you go with me?

Would you go with me if we rode the clouds together?

Could you not look down forever if you were lighter than a feather?

Oh, and if I set you free, would you go with me?

If I gave you my hand would you take it and make me the happiest man in the world?

If I told you my heart couldn't beat one more minute without you, girl?

Would you accompany me to the edge of the sea, help me tie up the ends of a dream?

I gotta know, would you go with me?

I love you so, so would you go with me?

“Would You Go With Me”

Songwriters: John Sherrill;Darrell De Shawn Camp

Performance: Josh Turner.

Imagine a rugged guy in leathers standing beside his Harley talking to a sweet, beautiful girl. He's pleading:

Would you go with me . . .?

Would you hold on to me tighter . . .?

He's tough. He doesn't walk, he swaggers. He makes his own way in the world. He does what he wants, when he wants, the way he wants. He's used to barking orders not asking favors. But now . . . he's begging.

Would you go with me?

It's no a casual invitation, no flippant flirtation. “Hey, you want to go for a spin? No? That's cool.” This guy pours his whole heart into his proposal:

If I gave you my hand would you take it and make me the happiest man in the world?

If I told you my heart couldn't beat one more minute without you, girl? . . .

I love you so, so would you go with me?

He is in love. The entire universe has been condensed into the beauty who has captured his heart. He needs her. He wants her. Will she come with him?

This is the third in our series on “Pictures of God in the Bible.”

First: God is the Almighty. The Rock.

Second: God is the judge.

Today: God is a lover.

It's a wild and daring picture. Some of us who are philosophically inclined like to think of God in terms of principles and ideas. God is love – as a principle. God is just. God is eternal. God is merciful. God is light. We conceive of these as statements of principle, as predictable laws of being and action. As long as God remains confined within these categories, he's fairly safe. He's manageable. We can make confident statements about what God will and will not do, because there are logical implications of these principles. But God as lover introduces a note of non-rationality. Love does wild things sometimes, things that are not predictable. Love involves emotion and desire, jealousy and dreams. Dangerous stuff.

Note for theologians: Anders Nygren argued in his book, The Christian Idea of Love through the Ages: Eros and Agape, that divine love—Agape love—is a purely spontaneous outflowing from the heart of God. There is nothing in humans that awakens or calls forth this love. We are not desirable, but God loves us any way. God gets nothing out of his love for us. God does all the giving. We receive all the benefit. Eros on the other hand is love that sees something desirable in the beloved. The lover finds great delight in the loveliness of the beloved. Nygren argued this was unworthy of God. Nygren was wrong. His God of principled, unilateral love is a rather sterile ideal.

Back to the motorcycle lover in our song. If the girl had responded, “See ya later,” the tough guy would have been crushed, devastated. No matter how he acted on the outside, inside he would have died.

If I gave you my hand would you take it and make me the happiest man in the world?

If I told you my heart couldn't beat one more minute without you, girl? . . .

But what if she didn't take his hand? What if she refused his affection? She would make him the most miserable man in the world. He would question the value of life itself.

He offers her everything. He declares his love. And desperately hopes she will say yes. She has to come with him. She can't say no. He can't imagine life without her. This is one of the pictures the Bible paints of God.

(v. 1)When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations . . . (v. 5)This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. (v. 6)For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. (v.7)The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. (v.8)But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharoah king of Egypt. (v.9)Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. (v. 10)But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. Deuteronomy 7

To paraphrase: God says, “I love you. I love you more than I love all those Canaanite people. I don't want you mixed up with them. And I don't want you flirting with their gods. Those gods are my rivals. Don't look at them. Don't mess with them. I love you. I want you to love me. I am not willing to share you. Why did I pick you? Because I loved you. Don't bother asking about 'objective' reasons. It doesn't matter what outside observers think. I picked you because I loved you. Period.”

A careful reader might object: What about the statement that God's love is compelled by the oath he swore to Israel's forefathers? This just pushes the very same question back a few generations. Why did God choose Abraham out of all the tens of thousands of people in Ur of the Chaldees? Why did God choose Jacob over Esau? The only answer is the non-logic of love. God loved Abraham. God loved Jacob. God loved Israel. He wanted them to be his own special people.

God's love for Israel was no casual invitation to dance. It was a fiery, passionate proposal of irrevocable union. I love you. I want you to love me. Love only me. Love me forever. If you do, I will give you every blessing. If you don't, I will curse you. I will hate you!

Wow! That's intense!

Another instance where Moses plainly gives personal love and affection priority over cool, reasoned principle is in the story of Balaam the prophet.

No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, even down to the tenth generation. For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you. However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. Do not seek a treaty of friendship with them as long as you live. Deuteronomy 23:3-6. [The story referenced here is told in detail in Numbers 22-24.]

Do you hear the emotion in these words? The anger? “Those people did not meet you with bread and water!” Any slight to someone you really love cuts you to the quick. The Moabites refused hospitality to Israel. They slighted God's lover. God was deeply offended. And he remembered!

The Moabites went even further. They hired the prophet Balaam to curse Israel. Balaam was famous for his supernatural powers. When Balaam blessed people, they were blessed, indeed. People he cursed were in deep weeds. But when Balaam came to curse Israel, it didn't work. Note Moses' words: The Lord would not listen to Balaam and turned his curse into a blessing BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU.

It didn't matter that Balaam had a track record. It didn't matter that Balaam and God had apparently cooperated in the past. When Balaam set out to curse Israel, his mission was doomed to failure. Not because he was a fraud. Not because he didn't have supernatural power. He was guaranteed to fail because he was running up against God's affection for Israel. God loved Israel and would do whatever it took to protect his beloved.

Moses does not describe God's action here as the cool, reasonable application of the principle of justice. It is an intense, emotional, driving desire. God loves Israel with every bit as much fiery passion as burns in the heart of our motorcycle lover. Israel's response matters to God. God is saying,

Would you go with me if we rolled down streets of fire?

Would you hold on to me tighter as the summer sun got higher?

If we roll from town to town and never shut it down?

I love you so, so would you go with me?

Let's be clear, there is nothing casual about climbing on the back of that hog and roaring off down the road. You're not merely a passenger. You're a lover. And driver of the motorcycle is a wild, burly man.

And so is God . . . at least in these pictures from Deuteronomy.

Another passage that features imagery bordering on lurid is Ezekiel 16. In this chapter, the prophet pictures Israel as an abandoned newborn. The Lover sees the helpless infant and rescues her. He assigns her to competent nannies and showers her with every advantage. She grows into a stunning beauty. He is utterly smitten, enthralled. When she reaches marriageable age, he marries her. All he has is hers—all his affection and desire, all his money and status.

She begins taking lovers. When she is unable to attract them with beauty alone, she pays them, with her husband's wealth, to sleep with her. She is like a dog in heat desperately seeking every opportunity for sex.

The Lover finally can't take it any more. He strips her naked and parades her publicly. He manages to turn all her lovers and paramours against her. They abuse and reject her. He drives her to confront her shame.

Somewhere in all this ruin and punishment she awakens to her shame. (Not merely feelings of shame, but the genuinely, ontologically shameful nature of her behavior.) She gives her heart to her Lover and he takes her back. They are reunited and lived happily ever after.

The entire chapter bleeds desire and anger, outrage and passion. God's love is portrayed as unreasonable. Any counselor would have told him long ago, “She's not that into you. Let her go. You can't make her love you. She obviously doesn't. Quit trying to force what can't be won.”

God rejects the wisdom of the counselor. He rejects the advice a good friend would give. He is an irrational lover. His love is full of passionate desire. And when his love is betrayed, when his beloved uses him and cuckolds him, he reacts in hurt and anger and outrage.

The flip side of this picture of the fiery negativity of love betrayed is the magical wonder of romantic love. God wants us. God schemes and connives to win our hearts when we are reluctant. God does not give up. Through a thousand rejections, through a thousand instances of unfaithfulness, God pursues us still.

Going back to the Bible, Israel is described as the bride from hell. Failure after rejection after affair after neglect. Twice in the Bible (Jeremiah 22:28-30, Matthew 21:43-46) there are formal declarations by God, I'm finished. It's over. I'm through! Then later Bible passages describe God coming up with work arounds so that both statements of “divorce” become effectively invalid. And God again is pursuing the girl who will make him the happiest man in the world, if she will only take his hand. (See Matthew 1:12 [Jeconiah is the same as Jehoiakim] as a de facto repudiation of Jeremiah 22:28-30 and Romans 11:26 and Revelation 7:1-8 as invalidations of Matthew 21:43-46.). God cannot “get over” his love.

Even after he's roared off, blasting our ear drums and spewing gravel, in his rage at rejection, he circles the block and idles up to us again, singing,

I love you so, so would you go with me?