Judges 10

And the children of Israel cried out to the LORD, saying, "We have sinned against You, because we have both forsaken our God and served the Baals!" So the LORD said to the children of Israel, "Did I not deliver you from the Egyptians and from the Amorites and from the people of Ammon and from the Philistines? Also the Sidonians and Amalekites and Maonites oppressed you; and you cried out to Me, and I delivered you from their hand. Yet you have forsaken Me and served other gods. Therefore I will deliver you no more. Go and cry out to the gods which you have chosen; let them deliver you in your time of distress." And the children of Israel said to the LORD, "We have sinned! Do to us whatever seems best to You; only deliver us this day, we pray." So they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD. And His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel.

(Jdg 10:10-16)

That last bit of verse 16 is incredible. 10 words that reveal the heart of God… 10 words that demonstrate the truth found all throughout the New Testament. “His soul could no longer endure the misery of Israel”. They had sinned so much… They had forsaken Him time and time again, yet He still loved them! As soon as they put away their idols and began to worship God again, His love flowed freely towards them. The Israelites did not change God’s mind, they just returned to a place where they could once again receive the love the Lord had always had for them!

One of the reasons I love this passage is because it dispels one of the greatest myths that exists in Christianity. That myth is the concept that the God of the Old Testament is somehow different from the God of the New Testament. People think that the God of the Old Testament was all about wrath and judgment, while the God of the New Testament is all about love and mercy. The truth is, God is all of these things, has always been all these things, and will always be these things. There is a place for judgment, a place where His wrath MUST be poured out… but at the very core of who God is, we find this amazing LOVE!

Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the same YESTERDAY, TODAY, and FOREVER. He doesn’t change! He is the one constant in all of life! Love is not some new gig that God got involved with in recent history; it has been at the core of who He is from the beginning. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible is the most epic love story ever told. A story of a God who would not give up on a world that gave Him every reason to give up. Mankind blew it… we deserved death, and we STILL deserve death. But… God so loved the world, that He gave His ONLY SON… that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have ETERNAL LIFE. That is the God I know, and that is the God I love… He is found on every page of the Bible, and is at the very center of life. Without Him, there would be nothing… When we turn to Him, He fights for us. Look at Israel, and remember how much God loves you!