Wondrous Works: What We Love when We Love God, part 5
“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… [And] You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” – Jesus, in Mark 12:30-31
We love God. He truly is Worthy. We love His Words. We love His World that His Words have made.
When Jesus underscores that, “To love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” is of first importance (Mat 22:38), He invites us to reflect on what it means to love God in this way. To start, we might ask, as we are doing here, What do we love, when we say that we love God? This question is good to reflect on anyway, but in the context of Matthew 22:37, Jesus means for us to learn something else too: how, in our love for God, we find what we need to “love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Mat 22:39) So let us continue.
What we love when we love God is, also, that we love God’s works.
Throughout the Bible, God is praised for His works. By God’s “works,” the Bible is usually referring to the ways He has interacted with the story of His people in real-time.
This could be the works He did for His people as a whole; for example, in bringing them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.
Oh give thanks to the LORD; call upon His name; make known His deeds among the peoples! Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; tell of all His wondrous works! ...Remember the wondrous works that He has done, His miracles, and the judgments He uttered… (Psa 105:1-2, 5; cf. 23-45, where the psalmist tells the whole Exodus story.)
This could also be referring to what God did for His individual people, in “delivering them from their distresses”:
Some wandered in desert wastes… Some sat in darkness, prisoners in affliction… Some were fools through their sinful ways… Some went about doing business… Then they cried to the LORD and He delivered them from their distress… Let them thank the LORD for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! (Psa 107, esp. 8, 15, 21, 24, 31)
We love God’s works because they are wonderful. His awesome power, His wisdom, are on full display in all He has done to work our Great Salvation. Nowhere is this as clear as in the life of Jesus Christ:
The works that the Father has given Me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about Me that the Father has sent Me. (John 5:36)
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through Him in your midst, as you yourselves know…” (Acts 2:22)
Jesus’ ministry was characterized by an extraordinary density of the same sorts of “wondrous works” that God’s people praised God for, and looked for God to do.
The greatest of God’s wondrous works—that Most Wondrous Work to which all His previous works pointed—was the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The death of Jesus Christ, which brought about our salvation, was a subtle work of God. In the cross, God brought about, by human sinfulness and folly, by the greed and hubris of the devil, that very work which would save us from our sins and defeat the power of the devil.
We impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. (1Cor 2:7-8)
And the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which announced that Christ’s work was effective, that He fulfilled all that God had planned, was a “declaration of power.”
He was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead—Jesus Christ our Lord. (Rom 1:4)
We love God’s wondrous works, their display of power and wisdom. But I suspect—I know for myself—that while I worship and praise God for these aspects of His works, it is the great humility, the kindness, mercy, and grace of His works, which moves me the most.
I love that our God is great in power and none can defeat Him. But I love with all my heart how “He raises up the poor from the dust; He lifts up the needy from the ash heap…” (1Sam 2:7) “The LORD upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.” (Psa 145:14) “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” (Psa 34:18)
Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool… All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. (Isa 66:1-2)
I love that this is our God, and these are His works.
I love that, greatest of all God’s works, was Christ Jesus—born in a humble place, to humble parents, made known to shepherds, and then emerging to join His people in baptism, gathering to Himself, not the high and mighty but “the poor in spirit,” “the persecuted,” “the meek,” from among fishermen, tax-collectors, “sinners,” and fools.
The great God of the Old Testament, the God of fearful wondrous works, came to us like this:
The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the LORD's favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn… to give them the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. (Isa 61:1-3)
The most wondrous thing about the works of God is that He works them for people like us. He works them, Yes, of course, who else but God alone could? But for us? Who could believe it.
We who had previously worked nothing but grief and subterfuge against Him. He saved His most wondrous works—the sacrifice of His heart, His Son, fulfilling all His plans and designs—for those who deserved it least. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us…” (Eph 2:4)
Don’t we love God? Don’t we love and adore Him, with full hearts, for His wondrous works… to us?
PRAYER
Father God, “What God is there in heaven or on earth who can do such works and mighty acts as You?” And yet, what do You do? “The LORD is righteous in all His ways and kind in all His works.” Indeed, “from of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God like You—one who works for those who wait for Him.”
Yes, LORD, You alone could have done all that we needed in Christ, and You alone would have done what You did indeed for us in Him.
O LORD, we give You heartfelt thanks “for Your steadfast love, for Your wondrous works which You do for us.” We thank You for Jesus. And we ask, Holy Spirit, that You continue Your good works, around us, that we may see Your glory, and in us, that we may glorify You as is fitting. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
(Deut 3:24; Psa 145:17; Isa 64:4; Psa 107:8)
Photo by Emma Svalstad on Unsplash