Many of you have heard me say that one of my favorite Hebrew words is chesed, a word that can best be transliterated into English spelling as c-h-e-s-e-d. chesed is defined differently by different scholars, but for me the best understanding of this term is provided by the archaic English word, "lovingkindness." "Lovingkindness" is the English word most commonly used by the New American Standard Version to translate chesed. I think that the word "lovingkindness" best conveys the fact that chesed is that love, mercy, sympathy, or compassion which motivates someone to do kind acts for another, and the active nature of this word is so important to its meaning, because chesed is not an abstract feeling that seldom if ever does anything. chesed is a feeling, but it is a feeling which prompts a person to respond actively to another person’s needs or hurts.

I want us to spend sometime now in an OT psalm that has twenty-six verses, and in those verses it uses this word, chesed, twenty-six times––once in every single verse. That psalm is Ps 136. Please, if you have your Bibles, turn there with me now. I want us to begin by reading the psalm’s first three verses so you can hear some the emphatic focus upon God’s lovingkindness. Psalm 136:1-3 says,

Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the God of gods, For His lovingkindness is everlasting. Give thanks to the Lord of lords, For His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Although these three verses indicate that the remainder of this psalm is going to be focused upon God’s lovingkindness, they do not indicate what that lovingkindness/that chesed actually does. But the other twenty-two verses make very clear the active way in which God reveals His chesed. Verses 4-9 focus upon God’s wondrous works of creation and make clear that God’s chesed/God’s lovingkindness is the motivating attitude or attribute behind those works. In other words, these verses tell us that God created because of His chesed. Verses 10-16 focus upon God’s delivering of his people out of Egypt––and they stress that this great act also was the result of God’s lovingkindness. Verses 17-22 refer to God’s deliverance of His people from a variety of pagan kings, and again God’s chesed is the motivating attitude behind those acts of power and deliverance.

In vv 23-25 the psalmist brings the force of these acts of divine chesed from the past right into the writer’s present. Verse 23 speaks of the exodus as the time when "God remembered us in our low estate." The force of this statement is that since the psalmist’s generation is a beneficiary of the exodus it rightly can be said that God remembered "us" when he delivered the people from Egypt. I believe that v 24 refers a second time to those kings who opposed Israel in the past and from whom God delivered His people. Again the psalmist refers to those past deeds as if they were done explicitly for the generation alive in the psalmist’s time, and the psalmist does that because the benefits of those past deeds were still alive in the psalmist’s day. Those acts of deliverance still had such an impact that it was as if they were done for "us," i.e., for the generation contemporary with the psalmist. God’s work with creation is also seen in the psalmist’s present. In v 25 the psalmist says that God "gives food to all flesh;" in other words, God continues to cherish and sustain His creation. And again, all of these divine acts of power, deliverance, and provision are the result of God’s chesed/God’s lovingkindness.

Before we leave Ps 136, let me draw attention to a recurring refrain in this psalm; it is so recurring, in fact, that it is found in every single verse: "for His lovingkindness is everlasting." God’s lovingkindness is stable and dependable. It lasts forever. His acts of love and goodness and deliverance and care are not flash in the pan occurrences; they are the actions of a reliable God who is engaged and engaged forever. His lovingkindness is central to His nature. It shapes what He does. It determines how He treats His people. When we think of the God of the OT we should think of the divine being whose actions flow out of His everlasting lovingkindness.

The God revealed in the NT is the same God; in fact, in the NT His lovingkindness is seen even more radically because of the sacrificial giving us His Son and the generous pouring out upon us of His Holy Spirit. God’s nature in both the OT and the NT is shaped by a lovingkindness that actively delivers and empowers. To go back to the words of Ps 136 we can say as born again Christians, "O give thanks to the God of heaven, for his lovingkindness is everlasting."

Today is Valentine’s Day. And it seems to me that on Valentine’s Day it is wholly appropriate to talk about God’s love and to make the point that our love for our husbands or our wives is to reflect the love that God has for us. Do you remember these words from Jesus?

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!

What are the "weightier matters of the law"? According to Jesus’ words here, they are justice and mercy and faith. The word "mercy"––the second word in Jesus’ list––is the Greek word commonly used in the Greek OT of Jesus’ day to translate the Hebrew word, chesed. In fact, everywhere that Ps 136 in the Hebrew has chesed, that Greek version has this Greek word, the Greek word eleos. So when Jesus in Mt 23:23 says that one of "the weightier matters of the law" is mercy/is eleos, He is making clear that the merciful, caring, compassionate lovingkindness of God is central to the way we should treat others.

Jesus places this mercy/this lovingkindness at the center of what God’s will has always been about, and Jesus makes clear that lovingkindness is not just something that God shows us; no, He makes clear that we are also to show it to others. We are to have an active lovingkindness toward others, an active lovingkindness patterned after the active lovingkindness of God, and there is no example of God’s lovingkindness like that of God’s offering of His own Son on the cross. The apostle John takes that very example and says we ought to love just like that. Listen to John’s words in 1 Jn 3:16. He says, "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters."

Husbands and wives, do you want to know the joy of marriage? Make the sacrificial love of Jesus your model. God wants us to treat everyone with that kind of love, but it will be hard to believe that Christ-like love is truly the center of our lives if it is not the center of our marriages. If the way we treat our marriage partner is not patterned after the love of Christ, then the watching world has good reason to doubt the reality of our faith.

We must not make excuses. We must get the pride out of the way. We must get hurt feelings from the past out of the way. We must clear the grudges and break down the walls. Remember, if God through Christ had not done that for us, we would still be lost. Can we expect to receive an abundance of God’s chesed when we will not share the same with others? Can we expect an abundance of God’s chesed when our treatment of our marriage partner is not characterized by that weightier matter of the law.

I know there are marriages that will not be saved, but I believe that every couple that looks to Jesus’ lovingkindness and perseverantly seeks to inject that lovingkindness into the whole of their marriage relationship will not only save their marriage; they will have a marriage that is joyful. Jesus’ lovingkindness, the Bible reveals, has the power to save the whole world. That same lovingkindness has the power to save a whole marriage. Please seek to transform your marriage by the power of the lovingkindness of God Almighty. Experience the joy of marital union, a joy that springs wide open when we open our hearts and our lives to the lovingkindness of our God.

I said earlier that lovingkindness is a feeling that motivates certain actions. The Bible reveals that God’s lovingkindness motivates actions of deliverance, provision, and care. Lovingkindness is a feeling made up of other feelings––feelings like sympathy, compassion, and love. Lovingkindness looks at someone who is hurting, unhappy, or in need; and it seeks a way to help.

It all begins with a feeling not unlike empathy. God empathizes with us. He feels our pain and our hurt, and that feeling prompts Him actively and unselfishly to respond. If you want a marriage filled with joy, then open your heart to the power of empathetic lovingkindness.

I think it was Pauline Rogers who, back in 1997, gave me the front page from the July 17, 1997 edition of a Tennessee newspaper. The paper was the Nashville Banner, and at the top center of that front page was a picture of Jim Bill McInteer and his wife Betty. Many of you know that Jim Bill was the minister of the West End church of Christ in Nashville, TN for a long time; in fact, he held that position for thirty-five years. The paper announced that this couple would be celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary in just a few days, but that was not the main reason that their picture received such a high-profile position in the paper. The main reason was that Betty, at that time, had been suffering with the effects of Alzheimer’s disease for ten years; and Jim Bill was still her primary caregiver. The article told how he kept her at home and looked after her every need.

Now, I know that Alzheimer’s disease affects different people in different ways, and I know that not everyone who has a loved one with that disease will be able to keep them at home as Jim Bill has been able to do. But the story of Jim Bill’s care for his wife is a story of chesed. He takes her with him everywhere he can. He buys her clothes and dresses her. When they are sitting together, people see her reach out and pat his hand. A long-time friend of Jim Bill is quoted as follows:

"We think it is too hard on him, taking full care of Betty, being involved in his business and preaching gospel meetings all over the country . . . . But we can’t tell him anything. He has a strong will that most people don’t have. He does what he has to do. Any other man I know would have cracked up by now."

Another friend says of Jim Bill, "I truly believe that through her sickness, he loves her even more."

The article goes on to tell how Jim Bill and Betty met and to give the names of their children and to reveal that they have five grandchildren. It talks about the luncheons and dinner parties which they still host with Jim Bill usually doing the cooking. The article notes that Jim Bill does all of their laundry and most of the cleaning having a couple to come in and clean only once every two weeks. And listen to this wonderful glimpse into their lives. The paper tells us that

Each night, McInteer gently helps her to bed, reads the Bible to her in which she often comments, "That’s good, that’s good," prays with her and kisses her good night. "I’m the last thing she sees at night," he says, "and the first thing she sees in the morning."

The article begins by taking the reader back fifty-four years to the time when Jim Bill and Betty stood side by side and "promised to take care of each other ‘in sickness and in health’ until they were parted by death." That promise was a promise to show chesed––God-like lovingkindness––forever. Jim Bill made that promise, and his keeping of it is an example to us all.