Do you love me?
I drew attention to the scene where Tevye is asking his wife Golde if she loves him. They had been married the traditional way, by a matchmaker.
They never saw each other until their wedding day. His parents had told Tevye that they would grow to love each other. He hadn’t thought about that much until it was time for his daughters to be wed. They had each fallen in love and did not want to be married to someone chosen by the village matchmaker. They were breaking tradition because of the love in their hearts for someone else. Tevye gives in to their request, but now he is wondering, does his wife love him.
Tevye : “Golde, Do you love me?
Golde responds: “Do I love you? With our daughters getting married,and this trouble in the town you’re upset, you’re worn out. Go inside, go lie down! Maybe it’s indigestion.”
Tevye persists with his question: “Do you love me?”
Golde responds to his persistence: “Do I love you? For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow, after twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?”
Tevye wants an answer, “Do you love me?”
Golde, speaking to herself: “Do I love him? For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him, fought with him, starved with him, twenty-five years my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?”
Yes, it is nice to know. We all need to be loved & to give love in return. Jesus summarizes the whole of the law of the Old Testament with 2 great commands in
Mark 12:28-31
28 …“what commandment is the foremost of all?”
29 Jesus answered, “The foremost is,
‘HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD;
30 AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART,
AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND,
AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.’
31 “The second is this,
‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’
There is no other commandment greater than these.”
I have a good handle on what it means to love others. Not that it is all that easy. Some are easier to love than others. That is not so much a judgment on them as it is me. My love needs to do a lot of growing here.
After the resurrection Jesus appears to the disciples on the shore of Galilee (John 21:15-17) where Jesus asks Peter three times in a row, “Do you love Me?”
Each time John responds in the affirmative, & each time Jesus tells him to “take care of Jesus’ sheep”. I take this to mean that our love for Jesus is shown to Jesus when we do what he wants us to do.
He says as much in John 14:15
“If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”
And then in John 14:21
“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.”
In John 14:23 Jesus answered and said to him,
“If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.
24 “He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”
And then Jesus closes out this section by saying in John 14:25
25 “These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you.
26 “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My Name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.”
Based on what Jesus has taught in these verses, then I can say with Golde when God asks me if I love Him, “Yes, I suppose I do.”
My answer does not come from my emotions, it comes from my actions, living my life in obedience. I gave up my dreams for my life & accepted God’s will for me to preach and teach His Word, and to tend His flock by feeding them. Although I must say I have struggled to bring them in from the field. Sheep are a stubborn lot, and many prefer to just stay out in the world for whatever reason. But for those who come I have tried my best to feed them not only the milk, but the meat of the Word of God. And I also believe that at Pathway we have done a good job in fulfilling His greatest commission by leading His sheep into the uttermost parts of the world in order to love people and share the life changing Gospel, the good news of salvation to all who would receive.
Not everyone has the same calling. Some are called to do other things than the things that I have done. It makes them no less or more important than me. We are all children of God, on equal footing, seeking to be faithful to serving God’s particular call upon our lives. The trick is in discerning what God’s will is. What is God calling you to do?
Have you been obedient to all that God has asked of you? I can’t say that I have. I know that I have messed up quite a bit. But I do keep trying. I need to lean a little more on the “teacher” “my Helper”, the Holy Spirit of God. (John 14:26)
I still struggle with the emotional part of this. Some followers of Jesus seem to have this incredible deep “feeling” of love for God. I wish I could experience that. Maybe it’s my personality. I’m just not an emotional kind of guy. I don’t have the answer. But I do know that I am hungering for more of Him.
THE Name Above All Names
Isaiah is a towering book of prophecy & one of the most beautiful and significant of Old Testament books. Its messages of judgment are balanced by matchless words of comfort and hope. And its vision of the Savior is the most moving as well as the clearest of all Old Testament portraits.
Its 66 chapters make it the third longest literary work in the Bible.
One of the book’s greatest values is found in its unforgettable images of God. Isaiah’s distinctive title for God, “the Holy One of Israel,” is used 25 times and captures something of the majestic glory with which He is displayed. He is Creator, King, and Savior for His people, the “Mighty God” who sends His Servant, the Messiah, to rescue them at a terrible personal cost. Isaiah 53’s graphic study of the Servant’s suffering is an unmistakably distinct portrait of Calvary, penned some 700 years before Jesus’ birth.
We would know nothing of God except that He revealed Himself to us in His word. Some of the greatest revelations of our Infinite God comes through His Names. The name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. There around 420 names of our God in three persons.
In the Old Testament there are 223 & in the New Testament there are 195.
To the Old Testament saints the name Jehovah was an ointment poured forth shedding its fragrance over all. When God spoke with Moses, Moses asked Him what is the name that should be used for Him. God responded
“I Am Who I Am”. In the scriptures all we have is the 4 letters of that name, “YHWH” – it is known as the tetragrammaton. They only wrote the consonants because they did not want to break God’s Command by using His name in vain, so they simply omitted the vowels. Then no one would really be saying His name. Thus the original pronunciation was lost. The name of God is represented in the Masoretic Text as being the 4 consonants & adding the vowels from the word Lord (aḏōnāy). From this the sixteenth century translators give us the word “Jehovah” or “Yahweh”. It is found in one of the words that is the exact same in every language of the world, “Hallelujah!”
New Testament saints think of Him as Jesus. In the Old Testament Hebrew this is the same name as Joshua, who led the children out of the wildnerness into the promised land. He as a type of salvation for the people.
The ultimate Savior is our Lord Jesus the Christ. If ever there was a name that, as ointment poured forth,” shed a fragrance over all of human life it is the name of Jesus!
The Name of Jesus is the saving name: “Thou shalt call His name JESUS: for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
The Name of Jesus is the sanctifying name. We are to do all things, in word and deed, in the name of the Lord Jesus (c.f. Colossians 3:17).
The Name of Jesus is the sovereign name. “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:10). It is the name that charms our fears and bids our sorrows cease.” It is the name that, as “music in the sinner’s ears, brings life and health and peace.”
This is a name that has no bounds. It cannot be mortally defined.
It is above all names.
Ephesians 1:18-21 NASB
18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened,
so that you will know what is the hope of His calling,
what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,
19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us
who believe. These are in accordance with the working of
the strength of His might
20 which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead
and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places,
21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every
name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.
No where do we find more names of our promised God the Son coming to save His lost creatures, than in Isaiah. For a world sitting in the darkness of terrorism & death, lost & hopeless, to our world that name came.
It was a dark hour in Israel about 730 years before Bethlehem’s babe.
But what about His name? What will this coming one be called?
Four pairs of distilled divinity are given to us in Isaiah 9:6.
Let’s savor them as we herald our Savior who came and has come to our lives and is coming…. Who is He?
Isaiah 9:6 NLT
6 For a Child is born to us,
a Son is given to us.
The government will rest on His shoulders.
And He will be called:
- Wonderful Counselor,
- Mighty God,
- Everlasting Father,
- Prince of Peace.
This Sunday I will be expounding on the meaning of this verse.
Remember when…
Maybe that is why I am obsessed, (Maybe a little too strong a word – depending on who you’re talking to – if you talk to my family, it is spot on), obsessed with capturing the past so that I will remember the wonderful events of days gone by. I guess that is why I love decorating our Christmas tree to the music of the Messiah every year.
As a youth, I would buy a big calendar to put on my wall beside my desk in my bedroom. Each day I would write down what happened – just the high points & the things I did not want to forget. Later in college I would graduate to a journal, at first hand writt
en. I have boxes of stuff out in the garage, keep sakes that take me back in time. I have things that I have purchased from all of the world on my journeys, decorating my office at work and at home. Some things especially have deep meaning & I connect them to some important event that took place.
There is a flip side to this. During a very dark period of my life, that came and went for about 10 years (mostly dark) – I kept a very detailed journal of the events, my failings and my feelings. It was much easier to do since I had joined the computer age. So I wrote a lot. I was struggling with depression during those years. Finally I started to get well, thanks to therapy, my wife and some very loving people at Pathway.
But I wouldn’t let go of that dark past. I would occasionally go back and read about what I had gone through and how it had such a devastating effect on me. The worst part was not so much what had happened, but what I thought about those situations and how they affected feelings and my self-image.
For years I hung on to those writings – going back to visit occasionally. It was like going back to a garbage dump. It was smelly. It was awful. And it would drag me back down into the darkness. I couldn’t really break free. God had forgiven. I had forgiven. But there it was, always waiting for me to return & recapture the pain, the hurt and the evil darkness.
Finally I did what Jan (my wife) had kept telling me to do. (Sometimes we men don’t always listen right away to those who love us.) I deleted it all, and threw all of the hard copies into the shredder. I would never be able to go back now. It hurt when I did it. But now they were gone. It was like cleaning a wound, hurtful and yet the only way for it to heal up. Over time, those things began to leave my conscious memories. Then I began to experience the real healing that I so desperately needed from God.
There is a great spiritual lesson in all of this. There are things in life that God wants us to remember. He wants us to look back and count our blessings. He wants us to remember just how good and faithful and loving and forgiving and wonderful He really is. Hence, we need to remember His kindness for two basic reasons.
The first, so that we know where our blessings come from & can praise Him.
Second, so that we can heed his warnings, and not go “off-roading” from His plan. He wants us to keep our lives in His circle of love. The good memories keep us on track.
And then there is the matter of the brokenness of our lives, the results of the darkness. He wants to forgive them. We need to forgive others and ourselves. And then we need to bury those events in the graveyard, never to go back. Not even to lay flowers. There will come a time, when you are so healed, that you can share them with others to help them in their despair.
But this is always from the side of victory, not defeat. As a result we praise God all the more. 
In the coming “holidays” focus on the good memories and try to banish the hurt and pain of things forgiven. God has forgiven them, and buried them.
We need to do the same, and then move on in the Love, Joy and Peace, that comes when we remember all the great things God has done for us, in us and through us.
