Compelling Love

God’s word is truth.  There is creative power in declaring our agreement with the words God has spoken over our lives.  The next step is walking out those promises in faithful love, as the psalmist describes in Psalm 119:

Psalm 119
¹⁵⁹ Consider how I love Your precepts;
Lord, give me life according to Your faithful love.
¹⁶⁰ The entirety of Your word is truth,
and all Your righteous judgments endure forever.

Underscoring the cleansing power of God’s word, Jesus (Yeshua) in praying for the disciples in John 17 declares: “Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.”

John 17
¹ Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven, and said:
Father, the hour has come.
Glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You,
² for You gave Him authority over all flesh;
so He may give eternal life to all You have given Him.
³ This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God,
and the One You have sent—Jesus Christ.

¹⁷ Sanctify them by the truth; Your word is truth.
¹⁸ As You sent Me into the world,
I also have sent them into the world.
¹⁹ I sanctify Myself for them,
so they also may be sanctified by the truth.

God is faithful to keep His word; let us now keep our promises to Him.  David in his prayer of thanks in Psalm 138 declares, “You have exalted Your name and Your promise [Your word] above everything else.”

Psalm 138
¹ I will give You thanks with all my heart;
I will sing Your praise before the heavenly beings.
² I will bow down toward Your holy temple
and give thanks to Your name
for Your constant love and truth. You have exalted Your name
and Your promise above everything else.
³ On the day I called, You answered me;
You increased strength within me.

God founded the earth and established the heavens by His words of power and wisdom, as Proverbs 3 declares:

 Proverbs 3
¹⁹ The Lord founded the earth by wisdom
and established the heavens by understanding.
²⁰ By His knowledge the watery depths broke open,
and the clouds dripped with dew.

Proverbs 8 describes how God’s living word of wisdom was a “skilled craftsman beside Him” as He formed the earth, sky and oceans.

Proverbs 8
²² “The Lord made me at the beginning of His creation,
before His works of long ago.
²³ I was formed before ancient times,
from the beginning, before the earth began.
²⁴ I was born when there were no watery depths
and no springs filled with water.
²⁵ I was delivered before the mountains and hills were established,
²⁶ before He made the land, the fields, or the first soil on earth.
²⁷ I was there when He established the heavens,
when He laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean,
²⁸ when He placed the skies above,
when the fountains of the ocean gushed out,
²⁹ when He set a limit for the sea
so that the waters would not violate His command,
when He laid out the foundations of the earth.
³⁰ I was a skilled craftsman beside Him.
I was His delight every day, always rejoicing before Him.
³¹ I was rejoicing in His inhabited world, delighting in the human race.

David’s prayer in Psalm 110 predicts that God’s living Word would be born as Israel’s Messiah, and will one day reign as a priestly king over the world:

Psalm 110
¹ This is the declaration of the Lord to my Lord:
“Sit at My right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool.”
² The Lord will extend Your mighty scepter from Zion.
Rule over Your surrounding enemies.
³ Your people will volunteer on Your day of battle.
In holy splendor, from the womb of the dawn,
the dew of Your youth belongs to You.
⁴ The Lord has sworn an oath and will not take it back:
“Forever, You are a priest like Melchizedek.”

Isaiah 9 describes this coming king as the Prince of Peace, the Son of God who will reign forever on the throne of David:

Isaiah 9
⁶ For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us,
and the government will be on His shoulders.  He will be named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
⁷ The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end.
He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on
and forever.  The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.

Jesus (Yeshua) is coming again to fulfill these kingly prophecies.  In his first coming, he fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy that the Messiah would take upon himself the punishment for our sins.  God’s word of truth declares that by believing in Him we have eternal life:

⁵ But He was pierced because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds.  ⁶ We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the Lord has punished Him for the iniquity of us all.  (Isaiah 53:5-6)

For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.  (John 3:16)

David Krause, dhkrause@neteze.com, https://compellinglove.net/, 12/8/2013

(Bible Quotations are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible.)