The Simplicity of the Gospel revealed in the Character of YHVH.
He has turned to humanity. The Father has, without apology and without restraint, given His greatest prize and poured on us the most elaborate display of love that He, the God of all things, could give. He has held back nothing. He has given us His Son for now and evermore.
I will punish their sin with the rod,
their iniquity with flogging;
but I will not take my love from him,
nor will I ever betray my faithfulness.
I will not violate my covenant
or alter what my lips have uttered.
Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness—
and I will not lie to David—
that his line will continue forever
and his throne endure before me like the sun;
it will be established forever like the moon,
the faithful witness in the sky.”
Psalm 89:32-37
I have turned to you. I have cherished you since the beginning, before you were born into this world. Before you were brought forth, I knew you. I have chosen you in Christ before a single day came into being; that is how dearly I have loved you and cared for you, and all I ask of you is for you to remain in the place of humility, accepting the love that I have for you as well as the grace that I freely give for you to be able to stay and remain in all that I am. I am yours and I am truly all you could ever need. I have given you myself so that you can come to the place of peace and joy, trust, rest and consistency and simply see that I am all in all. I am your everything and I have become your prize. To live with me in mind, is to see me as I am and to run, knowing that there is much to be gained. If you live without conviction, without vision, you will wander when I want you running. Why? To run for me is to live intentionally and it is to trust that there is more, there is greatness available to you in both this life and the life to come and all you must do is cherish and embrace that truth and that reality. This is my heart for you and instead of trying to do anything in your own strength, what I ask of you is for you to be yourself and for you to enjoy the process of becoming all that you are called to be in Christ; this means something so simple, rely on me and my faithfulness to bring you into all that I have promised through the Son by the Power of my dear Holy Spirit. This is the joy that you have as my branches, you don't do it, but by yielding to me, you begin to create life in barren places and begin to defy the odds of this life by being fruitful beyond any natural means. This is the invitation and this is the joy and this, yes this, is your prize. It is to share the love of Christ in ways that the world has not seen, in ways that others (including yourself) have yet to see and believe; this is what I invite you into and this is a gift, for one and for all. As you choose to embrace me, this life will change altogether as you no longer live life bound by believing lies that you are not good enough and somehow need to prove something; this lie has led you to try and work for my approval and affection instead of living from it. To live from the place of love, the permanent place of peace that I have prepared for you through my Son, is the desire of my heart for you; it is this, for you to know truly what it means to rest in me and rely upon me for everything. Love does not diminish and does not give up and as you embrace this reality and this truth, you begin to see things as they truly are; for to see me as I am is the invitation and the privilege of being called faithful in the courts of heaven. Heaven looks on favour on those who choose to follow this love despite set-backs, oppositions, persecutions and seeming abandonments of that love and that faithfulness. I have never left and will never leave because I cannot deny myself. The invitation that I extend to all of you is this; become aware of me again and see me as I am. Always with you, always for you, never against you, all in all in all. To live in any other way, to live as though you have been cast aside, forsaken, abandoned or rejected is to live a lie and not to come alive. To come alive is to accept the truth despite what you may see and to trust completely, knowing that despite those external circumstances, I am revealing myself as faithful and I will do it, as you endure and as you choose to continue through it all, despite the set backs that come. They come to you to challenge your faith and to see who is worthy of receiving the prize of this life; the fullness of Christ. Not just a glimmer or a shadow but the full reality of who Christ is and all that He has done for you by shedding His blood and giving up His everything. To live in any other way is to be distracted by external things and to fail to attain to the true measure of what I offer through this life; it is to know me and to be made like me, making me known in the process through the works that I offer to you in partnership with me. This is the Greatest Privilege for those who are called by the Name and it is the invitation in this time; leaving behind all things that the world would want to give to you and pressing on to true life, to true liberty and to the full manifestation of the desire of my heart, to have many sons made in Christ's image.
And he [YHVH] passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “YHVH, YHVH, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness (devotion) and faithfulness (truth)...
Exodus 34:6
'Abounding in love and faithfulness' - Rav Chesed Ve-Emet
Emet can mean both truth and faithfulness. In essence, Emet refers to stability, consistency, something or someone that is trustworthy, one who delivers what they promise, one with integrity who fulfils all they agree to. Emet is derived from the root word 'Aman' which means to make firm or strong; it paints the picture of a parent with an infant, holding them in their arms, supporting their head.
This is who YHVH has been and who He will be. He is consistent and fulfils every word that He has spoken. He is faithful in all his ways and trustworthy in all he does. He can be relied upon for strength, support and stability.
The faithfulness of YHVH is revealed in Christ. Christ is the fulfilment of every promise that YHVH ever gave concerning humanity. He is the fullness of the deity, dwelling in bodily form. This is revealed in many ways; through his work, words, faithfulness. John reveals this reality in the opening of his gospel...
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
John 1:14
Grace and truth = Chesed (loving kindness, grace) and emet (faithfulness, truth). The name of YHVH revealed to Moses in Exodus is declared to be found in the Christ; Jesus Himself. He is the living embodiment of that Name.
David is a man in the Old Testament who understood the 'emet' of YHVH; who learned that He could rely upon His faithfulness and depend upon Him for strength and stability. David proved YHVH's power, prominence and love for Israel time and again through the victories that he achieved in the Name.
YHVH gave David a remarkable promise; that he will always have a descendant on the throne, that eternally, one of David's sons will be seated in power, honour and glory and his dominion will never end. YHWH rewarded David's 'emet' by including him in his divine purposes. This is what YHWH does to those who are faithful to Him; He remembers them and shows remarkable favour to them.
Christ appears at the start of the New Testament and is revealed to be this 'Son of David', the Messiah, the King who was the complete fulfilment of the divine promise, the one who's government and peace will never end.
Christ fully displayed the Father. To see Christ is to see the Father. Christ only did what He saw the Father do. The Gospels therefore are revealing the Father and His Heart, His Emet, His faithfulness by giving Christ to humanity. He is the way to the Father and our complete understanding of our position and place with Him... He settles our minds and hearts as we see what the Father is truly like in Him and how He truly cares for us.
Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O LORD: let thy lovingkindness and thy truth continually preserve me.
Psalm 40:11
The Lord's faithfulness is revealed in the Old Testament as that of a husband towards his wife. (Isaiah 54, Song of Songs, Hosea...)
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. 15 There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
16 “In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’
Hosea 2:14-16
I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy. (Hosea 2:19).
The Old Covenant was a prophetic promise for the New, where Christ Himself is calling us to become His bride; engage in a two-way relationship with Him, rooted and grounded in love and faithfulness (Chesed and emet). Even now, Jesus is 'alluring' his bride. His faithful love wakes us every morning, choosing to forget all of our old ways, the ways in which we strayed and says 'yes, you are my bride. I choose you, I want you, I love you'.
In Christ, the Father has given His heart to us and will never take it back. It is now our choice, daily, do we want to engage with Him and love Him? Do we want to build a life with Him?
Does sin still get in the way? Can anything separate us from this love? Paul, in Romans 8 argues otherwise. Yet with sin, comes shame...'I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid'. It is seen from the first moment that man rejected YHVH and is still seen today. We hide because we fear punishment. Yet we have a promise... perfect love casts out all fear.
He has chosen not to abandon us. He could easily have done so, had He not been full of 'emet'. Yet He is and so has chosen, through Christ, to bridge the divide once and for all, and to make a way for us to continually come into His embrace and live from that reality, daily. Our re-covering is the Father's provision of love, by sacrificing Himself so that we can be clothed again. Not simply in what we once had, but within Christ Himself. Therefore, we are now seen as Christ by the Father. Outside of time, we already look like Christ in everyway imaginable, we are now on a journey of discovering the truth and learning to live from that reality.
Let us return to the word 'emet'. In John 14, Jesus promises us that we will be given the Spirit of Truth (Ruach Ha-Emet), who will lead us into all 'emet'.
The word 'emet' is made up of three hebrew letters; the alef, mem and tav. Jesus Himself is the alef and the tav which is the first and last. Within Him is mem. Mem has the gematria value of forty. Forty is symbolic of metamorphosis, transformation and purification. Moses had forty days on Mount Sinai before the Lord, the Israelites had forty years in the wilderness, the flood lasted forty days and forty nights...
As we enter into Christ, the alef, we begin to undergo a process of 'mem', a transformation where we are brought from immaturity to maturity (technon to huios sons), from impurity to purity and from darkness to light. This process is one of transformation, metamorphosis and regeneration, where what we once were begins to die and we are brought forth into new life; the life of the new creation, which is the Christ-life within us. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. He is our confidence that our sin has been defeated, even whilst we learn to live in a different way.
Jesus said of Himself that He is the way, the truth (emet) and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Him. We enter into Christ and as we do, we are invited on a process of dying to the old man to encounter and live out of the new. This is a daily process. C. S. Lewis said that 'we have to begin everyday as though nothing had yet been done'. Lamentations 3:22-23 says, 'YHVH's acts of mercy indeed do not end, for His compassions do not fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness'. The daily rhythms of life are meant to reveal the inner journey that we are to undergo on our own walk with the Lord; a continual dying and rising again. The daily bread is our provision in Christ; the Holy Spirit, who is at work within us, teaching us, communicating Christ to us and revealing His nature and essence within us and through us. Yet it is day-to-day, daily bread. We are to live life as believers, present in the day in which we find ourselves in, because that is where the Lord has chosen to reveal Himself. The only question is our we willing? What will we choose, life or death?
Within the 'emet' is (as mentioned), the alef, mem and tav. If you remove the alef (alef represents the oneness and unity of YHVH, as well as His glory), you get the word 'met' which means death. Any form of spirituality outside of Christ leads to 'met', to death. Any form of religious activity that does not begin with Christ and that is not initiated by Christ, leads to 'met'. He is the beginning. He is the end. He is the light of life. It all begins with Him and in Him, we encounter the Father.
Like in the parable of the prodigal son, we see that the Father has ran to us, through Christ. He has done everything He possibly could to reveal His love to us. All we have to do is enter into Him today and find life. It's not about waiting for a more opportune time, it's not about waiting for us to 'be better'; sin has no solution outside of Him, it is to enter into Christ today and leave the word of transformation up to the Holy Spirit, as we simply remain in love with all that YHVH is and say our daily 'yes' to His glorious invitation to enter into relationship and find life, again and again and again.
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