God"s Passion for His People: From Singing To Song by Sam Storms

God’s passionate yearning for you can be both tumultuous and tranquil, both celebrative and calm—one moment a party, the next, silent and placid. What imagery! What beauty! I’m stirred by the vision of a husband and wife of fifty years, sitting quietly together at night, rarely speaking, the only sound that of the crackling wood in the fireplace. They are mum, not because of some emotional barrier between them, but because they know each other so well and are so comfortable in the other’s presence that words would disrupt the serenity and tenderness of the moment.

I’m stirred with thoughts of a mother tenderly embracing her young child, rocking gently, softly caressing her forehead, an occasional light kiss on her cheek, without so much as a syllable to disturb the intimacy of her love for that child. Such is God’s love for you! Palmer Robertson is right. “To consider Almighty God sinking in contemplations of love over a once-wretched human being can hardly be absorbed by the human mind.”

From Silence to Song

If it were possible to eavesdrop on solar systems millions of light-years away, would we hear anything? Is there sound in space? I believe there is one voice that would indeed be heard, one all-consuming, dominant, deafening, reverberating sound. Even now, in the farthest reaches of infinity, among the trillions and trillions of stars yet unseen by human eyes, echoes forth the passionate voice of the Father, singing about His love for you and me.

Loudly and lively, God shouts with joy over His children. He fills the black holes with the light of His love and sings the stars to sleep with lullabies about you.

It isn’t extraterrestrial life-forms that NASA would discover, but the glorious presence of Life Himself, singing in love for His people. Are you intrigued by the thought of God singing? It makes you wonder: Is He a baritone or a bass?

 

-The Singing God

God"s Passion for His People: From Singing To Song by Sam Storms

The Father’s Passion Pt 1by Sam Storms

God’s presence comforts me. His power reassures me. But His passion overwhelms me. You may not be comfortable with me saying that God is passionate for His people, but there’s simply no way to avoid the force of this text: God exults, delights, rejoices, and sings as the expression of His love.

Some theologians insist that God is “impassible,” that is, He does not have passions. I’m sensitive to their concerns. They want to emphasize that God is not weak or mutable or subject to fickle feelings provoked by others. I have to agree with them on that point. But it simply won’t do to relegate such texts as the following to “figures of speech” or “anthropopathisms.”

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore my heart yearns for him; I will surely have mercy on him, declares the LORD. —JEREMIAH 31:20

How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim. —HOSEA 11:8–9

No one fully understands the nature of God’s “nature.” But I do believe God feels. I do believe that in some sense God has emotions, passions, affections. In particular He experiences delight and pleasure, dare I say ecstasy, over you and me! Sherwood Wirt goes so far as to suggest that it was out of joy that God created the universe! Personally I think he’s on to something.

When we read Genesis 1:1 and ask, “Why did God create the universe?”, the biblical response is: “So that He might manifest His glory.”

But why did God wish to manifest His glory? The answer must be because it pleases Him to do so. But that is just another way of saying it makes God happy. Theologians rarely speak of joy as a divine attribute. They probably think it is beneath God’s dignity (or theirs). But Wirt contends that “God’s nature expresses itself most characteristically and distinctively through joy.”

It was “for His own pleasure and joy,” therefore, that “in the beginning God created the heavens and earth.” God was delighted with the work of His hands and thus pronounced it “Good!” What

He made pleased Him. If the thought of God experiencing “pleasure” is a jolt to your religious sensitivities, consider what Jesus said in the parable of the talents: “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21). God is a happy God.

The glory of heaven is wrapped up in our participation in the very joy that floods the heart of the Father. Isn’t this why Jesus came? His desire is for the joy of His own life to become the joy of ours (John 15:11).

One can only wonder at the depths of divine delight in the soul of the Son of God. And Jesus intends for this very joy to fill up and overflow the hearts of his people (John 17:13). We are first to experience joy in God, as well as the joy that God gives, and also the very joy that God Himself enjoys. God’s joy becomes our joy, and in that God takes joy! All this is just another way of saying that God is ecstatically happy in His love for His little ones. If you still balk at such talk, return with me to Zephaniah 3:17 and look closely at the three statements in the latter half of the verse.

First of all, God “will rejoice over you with gladness.” What makes this remarkable is that the same language used in verse 14 to describe our rejoicing over God is here used of God’s rejoicing over us. We are exhorted to sing. God too rejoices with singing! We are to experience joy. God too delights over us with joy. Back and forth, as it were, God and His people take turns enjoying one another!

All of us know what it’s like to get excited over God. We read in Isaiah 61:10, “I will greatly rejoice in the LORD; my soul shall exult in my God.” But God gets just as excited over you! For He Himself says, “I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and be glad in my people” (Isa. 65:19).

Better still, God exults over you with “gladness” or in “festive pleasure” or with “great delight.” How else can I say it? When God thinks about you, His child, His heart explodes in glad celebration. There is divine glee and jubilation beyond words when the Almighty God ponders His own. If you think I’m just making this up, look at how the terms in Zephaniah 3:17 are used elsewhere and ask yourself if “glad celebration” and “glee” and “ jubilation” are too strong.

As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. —1 SAMUEL 18:6, (EMPHASIS ADDED)

And all the people went up after him, playing on pipes, and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth was split by their noise. —1 KINGS 1:40, (EMPHASIS ADDED)

 

-The Singing God

The Father’s Passion Pt 1by Sam Storms

GOD’S PASSION FOR HIS PEOPLE By Sam Storms

What does God think about when He thinks about you? When God meditates on you in His heart, what does He feel? When God focuses His eye on your soul, what does He see? When God opens His mouth to speak of you, what does He Say?

 

Unless I’m totally deluded, I suspect that many of you would answer those questions the same way Susan did when I asked her: “He thinks badly of me, He feels repelled by me, He sees all my ugliness, and He says ‘Yuk!’”

 

Nothing could be farther from the truth! Notwithstanding what you have been told in the past, notwithstanding what you may feel in the present, when God thinks about you, feels for you, and sees you, He opens His mouth and with joy inexpressible He sings! God’s love for you is so infinitely intense that He quite literally sings for joy. Such is the depth of His affection that mere words prove paltry and inadequate. So profoundly intimate is God’s devotion to you that He bursts forth in sacred song.

 

I’m not talking about all the other people reading this. I’m talking about you. That’s right, you. I’m talking about each and every one of you who is convinced that no matter how many times I say it, God surely has someone else in mind. No, if you are a child of God by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone, He has you in mind. “But Sam, you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know how ugly I am. You’ve never been around when I’ve failed, asked forgiveness, and then failed again, ten seconds later. You don’t know how poor of a wife (husband) I’ve been to my husband (wife). You’ve never seen me blow it with my kinds, losing my temper, breaking their spirit.”

 

But I don’t need to know you. I only need to know God! The issue here isn’t one of who you are or what you’ve done. It’s strictly a matter of the character of God and His determination to love you as revealed in the immeasurable sacrifice that He made on your behalf when He sent His only begotten Son to suffer in your place on the cross. Nothing else matters. I’ll come back to this later on, but for now all I ask is that you hold open the possibility that when I say God loves you so much He sings, it just might be true.

 

Look again at Zephaniah 3:17. Observe how it has been translated.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. —KJV

 

The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing. —NIV

 

The LORD your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy. —NAS

 

After careful study of this verse I’ve come up with my own paraphrase. It’s not a word-for-word translation but a free and expanded rendering of what I think the original author had in mind. The original Hebrew text isn’t as clear-cut as we might hope, and others may differ with my interpretation. But I feel confident that my version will stand up to the scrutiny of study. Here, then, is my paraphrase of Zephaniah 3:17.

The Lord your God is with you all the time. He is a powerful and mighty warrior who saves you. When He thinks of you He exults in festive pleasure and with great delight. At other times He becomes quiet as He reflects on His deep affection for you. He celebrates who you are with joyful singing.

 

Any way you read it, the words are stunning. Its force is unmistakable. If ever there were a Scripture verse worth committing to memory, this is it. It has rightly been called the

John 3:16 of the Old Testament.

 

-The Singing God

GOD’S PASSION FOR HIS PEOPLE By Sam Storms