Everlasting Love

Are you familiar with the Rorschach test?

Genuinely, show of hands, have you heard of the Rorschach test?

The Rorschach test.

So Hermann Rorschach was a 20th century Swiss psychiatrist and artist who I think accidentally spilled a container of ink on a piece of paper and he went, oh, that looks kind of cool, this is what the ink blot looks like.

Now Rorschach, being a scientist, a psychiatrist, would ask his patients, what do you see?

So let me ask you, shout out, what do you see when you look at this ink blot?

Butterfly, bat, moth, batman?

A beautiful butterfly?

The point of the Rorschach test is that your answer doesn't tell us so much what the ink blot is, but it tells us about who you are.

Your answer, what you see in the Rorschach test, tells us about you and your story.

They say that most psychologically healthy people should see a butterfly.

So, if you saw a butterfly, that's good, and if not, then we'll see.

That's good too.

Batman counts.

The Rorschach test, what you see tells us about who you are.

I think it's the same thing with God.

All of us have an idea, an understanding of who God is, and that understanding of who God is tells us about who we are.

The understanding that we have of who our God is affects who we are.

AW.

Toser said, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

He goes on to say, because we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

What comes into mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

Now, if you don't understand that, I think what Toser is saying is, if we conceive of God as an angry judge who wants us to do good, that will shape our life and the way that we interact with God.

But if we conceive of God as a loving, gracious father, that will change the way we live.

And if we think of him as a distant, unconcerned deity, that will change the way we live.

What comes into your mind when you think about God is the most important thing about you.

The problem is, all of us can believe false narratives about who God is.

The image that we have of God, the understanding of who he is, can be based on a false narrative and not reflect the God that Jesus reveals.

In fact, I think in this life of following Jesus, which I think we're doing together, that's what a church is, it is crucially important that our idea of God, what comes to mind when we think of God, reflects the reality of God.

That we would be in alignment with the truth of who God is.

That is the task of theology, to replace false narratives with the true story of who God is.

That is what theology is.

So show of hands, any theologians in the room?

One, two, three.

Have you ever thought about God?

Have you ever had a thought about Christianity and tried to make sense of it?

Then you're a theologian, which means everyone in this room is a theologian.

If you think about God, you are a theologian.

And so the task that we come to today, as we come to Psalm 103, is the task of theology, to understand who God is, who has he revealed himself to be.

And when we think about theology, where do we get, what's our source text for theology?

This thing.

This is the basis of theology.

Now, theology kind of goes many places from here, but it starts with this.

In the Bible, we see revealed God, the character of God.

And what I find fascinating is in the Bible, theology begins as a story.

Theology comes to us as a story.

But over the course of time, I think it's human nature to move away from a story into a system.

Humans like things to be organized and neat, and we have categories for different qualities of God.

But theology in the beginning was a story.

And now, let me show you this kind of interesting thing.

You know the Apostles Creed?

That was one of the earliest formulations of doctrine around what Christians believe.

This is what the Apostles Creed says.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.

He descended to the dead.

On the third day, he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

From there, he will come to judge the living and the dead.

Notice, it's a story.

Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died, was buried, came back to life.

Theology, in the beginning, was a story.

But now look at this.

This is 250 years later, in the Nicene Constantinopolitan Creed.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father.

God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made of one being with the Father.

Through him, all things were made.

The creed goes on with this complex, but lofty and beautiful language, and the later creeds continue the pattern.

I was gonna read out the Chalcedonian Creed, but it's too much.

Theology moves away from a story into a system.

Now, that's not a bad thing.

It was crucially important at that time in church history that the church across the world decide on what the truth really is.

To defend against heresy and to outline the borders of orthodoxy.

But my point is, it's not bad.

It just moves away from a story.

And so for us, as we seek to answer this question, who is God?

We start with the theological task of the story.

And that's what Psalm 103 does.

Psalm 103 tells us the story of God.

So let's open Psalm 103 verse one.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

All my inmost being, praise his holy name.

Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

Who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases.

Who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.

Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

We're looking at the question of who is God?

And as we answer that question, we could start in 100 different places.

We could start from creation.

Remember Psalm 8, the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

It's true that we can look at the world that God has made, and then infer what kind of God God is based on the world.

We could start with reason.

We could think our way into the existence of God.

But the psalmist, I think in, it's David, it says, a psalm of David, he starts with his story.

The story of me is where the psalmist starts, and that is because God reveals who God is through his story.

That's where the theology of Psalm 103 starts.

And when the psalmist tells his story, we can see it in these first five verses, he lists five things, five, he calls them benefits.

Forget not all his benefits.

God who forgives all your sins, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with love and compassion, and who satisfies your desires with good things.

That's David's story.

That's what God did in his life.

And what I find cool about those five benefits of God acting in David's life is the progression over the course of the five.

So in the first one, the first two, you're dealing with the deficit.

God is dealing with what is wrong in David's life and his heart.

God who forgives sin and heals diseases, but slowly moving towards wholeness, until by the fourth and fifth one, who crowns you with love and compassion and satisfies your desires with good things.

David tells his story from old to new, from what he was into what he is now, from the deficit to the abundance.

And that is the true story of God's action in his life.

But many of us, or some of us here tonight, might have a false narrative of what God has done in your life.

Maybe in your narrative, the story you tell yourself, you never got out of the deficit.

Maybe the story you tell yourself is, I will never be enough for God.

I will never get over this thing.

I will never be welcomed.

I will never be what I want to be.

I will never get out.

You never got out of the deficit.

But that's a false narrative, if you know God.

Because if you know God, like the psalmist does, then the movement from deficit to abundance is true of you as well.

God is the one who crowns you with love and compassion, and who has satisfied and will satisfy your desire with good things.

Remember the words of the hymn, Amazing Grace.

I once was lost, but now I'm found.

I was blind, but now I see.

So as we start with the central theological question of who God is, start with your story and remember who you were and who you are now, because that reveals the character of God.

I think of my own story.

I've been fortunate that my parents have always told me the story of my life before I could remember it and the years before my birth.

And I know that story so well.

I know my origin story and I see the goodness in the hand of God in my story.

So as I think of this theological task of who is God and I think of my story, I know he's faithful.

I know he's the God who answers prayer because that's my story.

And that's where the psalmist begins and that's where you need to begin.

As you answer this question, who is God?

Think of what God has done in your life and start there.

If I can skip to the end of Psalm 103, we see this kind of bracketing that the idea which starts is the one which finishes.

Verse 19, the Lord has established his throne in heaven and his kingdom rules overall.

Praise the Lord, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word.

So praise the Lord, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.

Praise the Lord, all his works everywhere in his dominion.

Praise the Lord, my soul.

Those are the words which David opened with.

In verse one, he says, praise the Lord, my soul, all my inmost being, praise his holy name.

And then he closes with it.

It's called an inclusio, it's a technical term.

It's like a sandwich.

David has put the same line at the start and the beginning to frame the entire Psalm in praise.

David says, as we consider who God is, it leads us to praise and to obedience.

The story of me reveals who God is.

The story of you reveals who God is.

And secondly, the story of Israel reveals who God is.

Verse seven, the Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.

Sorry, that's verse six.

Verse seven, he made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever.

He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

The story of Israel reveals the character of God.

That's what David moves to.

He starts with his story, and then he moves on to his people's story.

The story of Israel reveals the character of God.

Do you remember the story of Israel?

It's massive, like that is the story of Israel.

But in 30 seconds, the story of Israel is God picks one man, Abraham, and he says, I will bless you, I will make your name great, I'll give you a nation, I'll give you land, and through you and your family, all nations on earth will be blessed.

Abraham has a son.

Isaac, Isaac has a son.

Jacob, Jacob has 12 sons.

No, he has 12 sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel, growing and growing and growing.

By the end of the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the people of Israel, the nation enter into, not the promised land yet, Egypt.

The story goes down, because you turn the page from Genesis to Exodus, this is longer than 30 seconds, I'm sorry, I'll speed up.

You turn the page from Genesis to Exodus, and the people of Israel become subjugated into slavery by Pharaoh.

God raises up a prophet called Moses to lead them out through the Red Sea, the 10 plagues into the wilderness.

God gives them the law, the revelation of his instruction, they build the tabernacle.

And then at the end of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, you have the scene where the people of Israel led by Moses are on the edge of the promised land.

Finally, the promise of God is going to come true.

Moses dies and Joshua leads the people in, and they have the period of the judges, and then the kings.

The first king of Israel was called Saul, and the second king, David, which brings us to Psalm 103.

This is David talking.

David says the story of Israel reveals the character of God.

And more specifically, David zooms in on the character of God in verse 8.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.

Another bit of trivia, not Zach trivia, Bible trivia this time.

That verse is the most quoted verse in the Bible by the Bible.

Meaning, that verse appears the most number of times, again and again and again and again, across the entire Bible, because that is the central theological text that describes who God is.

When someone wants to make a statement about what God is like, they go to Exodus 34, which says this, The Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with Moses, and proclaimed his name, Yahweh.

And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, Yahweh, Yahweh, the compassionate and gracious God.

Slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.

Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.

He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents, to the third and fourth generation.

That is, so when David in verse 8 says, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love, he's referencing in shorthand all of the character creed.

Describing who God is, he is loving and compassionate.

Because the story of Israel reveals the character of God.

Now, there are tricky parts of the story.

When you read that, there are some hard parts.

In verse 9, it says, God will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever.

In verse 6, it says, the Lord works righteousness and justice for the oppressed.

Now, in the story of Israel, that's great when Israel are the ones being oppressed.

But in the course of time, Israel become the oppressor and the hand of God is against them.

Remember in the character creed, it says, he maintains love to thousands, plural, but punishes sin to three or four.

So the balance of the character of God is just.

God has to be just, or his love doesn't mean anything.

But his love far outweighs his justice.

He's loving to thousands, and that is the story of Israel, which reveals the character of God.

Verse 11, David says, As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

So we're looking at the question, who is God?

The story of me reveals the character of God.

The story of Israel reveals the character of God.

And next, the story of us reveals the character of God.

The story of humankind reveals what God is like.

Verse 13, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

For he knows how we are formed.

He remembers that we are dust.

The life of mortals is like grass.

They flourish like a flower of the field.

The wind blows over it and it's gone.

And its place remembers it no more.

The story of us, of humankind, people with this kind of stuff, reveals the character of God.

Did you know, scientists or anthropologists estimate that there have been 117 billion people who have lived in the course of human history?

I have no idea how they got to that number, but I'll take their word for it.

We currently have, I think, over 8 billion on planet Earth alive now, but they reckon 117 billion human beings have lived.

That's 117 with nine zeros.

Thank you, Xander, my maths man.

117 with nine zeros is the number of human beings who have lived.

If you were to tell the story of us, the story of humankind, it is a long, long, long, long, long, long, long history to tell the story of all 117 billion of us.

But in another sense, when we step back and we look at the story of us, every single one of those 117 billion humans has the same story.

You're born, you live, and you die.

You do your dash, the gap between those two events.

Every single human being in the history of the world lived, was born, lived, and then died.

And we 8 billion who are currently living will die unless the Lord comes back before then.

The story of us, the story of humankind reveals the character of God.

The life of mortals, verse 15, is like grass.

They flourish like a flower of the field.

The wind blows over and it's gone, and its place remembers it no more.

That's our story.

Now, if that were the end of the story, that is depressing.

And that is a cause for, I think, meaninglessness and nihilism.

But in the world view of the Bible, the story doesn't actually end there.

It's a false narrative that that is the end of life.

Verse 17, the life of mortals is like grass, but there's a but in the story.

From everlasting to everlasting, the Lord's love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children's children, with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.

The story of us doesn't have to end in death because God has made a way for us to receive eternal life.

Not that we inherently are immortal, eternal, everlasting, but God is, and we are restored to relationship to have the life of God in us.

So, the story doesn't end there.

This is one of the core ideas of our vision for this year, which is everlasting.

The fact that our life is so brief and yet we will live forever with God.

So, if we're going to live forever with God, how does that change the way that we live today?

That's one of the core ideas that we're looking at this year.

The story of us reveals the character of God.

And finally, the ultimate story, the most true, true story is the story of Jesus, which reveals the character of God.

So, we're looking at this theological question, who is God?

And it's true, the story of me reveals who God is.

It's true that the story of Israel reveals who God is.

And it's true that the story of us, humankind, reveals who God is.

But ultimately and perfectly, the story of Jesus reveals who God is.

When we talk about Jesus as theologians, which we are all theologians, you know, we talk about two main things, two broad headings, the person of Christ and the work of Christ.

The person being his identity, his being, his nature, and his work being the things he did, his teachings, his parables, his healings, his deliverance, and of course, his work on the cross and the empty tomb.

The person and work of Christ reveal the character of God in the ultimate way.

Firstly, the person of Jesus.

Colossians 115 says, the son, Jesus, is the image of the invisible God.

That means that the God who is spirit, as John 4 says, is made tangible and visible in Jesus.

Hebrews 1 verse 3 says, the son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being.

That means that there is nothing in God the Father that is not in God the Son.

Jesus is the perfect revelation of the character of God.

John 1 verse 18, No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father has made him known.

Jesus makes known the character of the Father so that it's true when we say God is like Jesus.

Just think about that for a second.

God is like Jesus.

When I heard that line a couple of years ago, I was like, isn't it the other way around?

Doesn't Jesus make the invisible God visible?

Isn't he the exact representation of the Father?

And yes, that is true, but for us human beings, it is almost more helpful to conceive of the fact that God the Father, invisible, eternal, immortal, is like the man Jesus, who was revealed to us in the pages of the Gospels.

Which means when we read the story of Jesus, his person, his work, what he did, we see a glimpse, not even a glimpse, we see the fullness of the Father in the Son, because God is like Jesus.

All of the wisdom of God is in Jesus.

All of the holiness of God is in Jesus.

All of the love of God is in Jesus.

Everything that is in the Father is in the Son.

God is like Jesus.

When the psalmist says in verse 8, the Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, Jesus is like that.

When you read the Gospels, you see a man who was the most compassionate human being who's ever lived in the history of this world, the most gracious person, the most loving person.

The person of Jesus reveals the character of God, and secondly, the work of Jesus reveals the character of God.

John 3.16, For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

The love of God, the character of God, was revealed in what Jesus did on the cross.

And this is a cool little trick.

I think most of us have memorized John 3.16, right?

If you add a one to the start, one John 3.16, this is also a cracking memory verse.

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

The work of Jesus on the cross reveals the character of God.

It reveals the love of God.

And so when we read in Psalm 103 verse 11, as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

I think it's unlikely that David had this in his mind, but when we come now 3,000 years later, we see maybe the Holy Spirit was putting something behind these words.

When you consider that the first dimension that David paints is vertical.

As high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love.

And the second dimension is horizontal.

As far as the east is from the west.

And when you put those dimensions together, so you get the image of the cross.

Because on the cross, the love of God is made perfect.

It is revealed to us in the work of Jesus.

And so if you've ever wondered what God is like, look at Jesus.

God is like Jesus.

The story of me reveals who God is.

The story of Israel reveals who God is.

The story of us, humankind, reveals who God is.

But ultimately, the story of Jesus reveals the character of God.

So as we finish, we come back to that question, who is God?

And I want to kind of leave you with this question.

When you look at the face of Jesus, what do you see?

Not what color are his eyes and how long is his hair, but what's he like?

When you look at Jesus, when you imagine him, what is he like?

What's his character?

I'll put it to you that that's a Rorschach test question, because your answer to that question says volumes about who you are and who you will become.

If we have an image of Jesus, that he is a guy who said really lovely things 2,000 years ago, but unfortunately his life was cut short pretty quickly, and that's the end of the story.

That affects the way we live.

But if he is God himself, made known to us, that transforms everything.

Toser said, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.

Because we tend by a secret law of the soul to move toward our mental image of God.

So when you look at the face of Jesus, what do you see?

There's a scene, and I'll finish with this, a scene towards the end of the Gospel of Luke.

Jesus has predicted that Peter would deny him three times, and we read this in Luke 22 verse 60.

Peter replied, Man, I don't know what you're talking about.

Just as he was speaking, the rooster crowed.

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.

Then Peter remembered the word the Lord had spoken to him.

Before the rooster crows today, you will disown me three times.

And he went outside and wept bitterly.

The Lord turned and looked straight at Peter.

Now, what was on his face?

What did Jesus' face look like?

Luke doesn't tell us.

You fill in the blank with your image of who Jesus is.

Did he have a angry face?

Fair enough.

His best friend, one of his best friends, has just betrayed him.

Did he have a face of sadness?

Fair enough.

Did he have a face of compassion?

Did he have a face of indifference?

Luke doesn't tell us what Jesus' face looked like, but this is a Rorschach test, because our understanding of God, we cast onto the face of Jesus.

So when you look at the face of Jesus, what do you see?

That's the most important thing about you, your answer to that question.

What I think I see in view of the story of the Gospels, when you look at that scene where Jesus was literally hanging on the cross, and he said, Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing.

Jesus is revealed in the Gospels as a man with breathtaking compassion and forgiveness for his enemies, that he would bless and love the ones who are crucifying him in the moment of it happening.

And so me, when I read the Gospels and I come to that scene in Luke 22, I can't help but think that Jesus had a face of compassion, that he was compassionate and gracious to Peter.

Maybe there was hurt and betrayal, but overwhelmingly, the character of Jesus is the character of God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love.

So for us, it is important that we know God.

Jesus said in John 17 verse 3, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom you've sent.

We want to know God and we want to know what God is like.

And that is theology.

So I'll leave you with that question.

When you look at the face of Jesus, what do you see?

And as the bands come up, I'm going to read the words of Paul in Ephesians 3 as a blessing and a prayer for us.

Paul says, For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

I pray that out of his glorious riches, he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations forever and ever.

Amen.

Let's worship together.

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