I love the LORD, because he has heard
my voice and my pleas for mercy.
2 Because he inclined his ear to me,
therefore I will call on him as long as I live.
I will do so, “on one condition”. The secret weapon of parents the world over. We love our children unconditionally but when it comes time for discipline, we become quite conditional. If you obey, then you will get ice cream. God is our heavenly Father who loves us unconditionally, just as he loved Israel in the Old Testament. The covenant he made with them, however, was conditional. If you obey, then I will bless you. If you do not obey… bad things will happen. Here, David uses some conditional language but in a completely different sense. Because God heard my cry, I will love him and call on him. David became the child in our analogy and rightly so. We are all children of God and he loves us unconditionally.
Praise the Lord that we no longer need to meet God’s perfect conditions to avoid the curses of eternal condemnation! Jesus Christ met the conditions and we are seen as righteous in his sight. We no longer are under the cloud of “if you are good enough, then you will get to heaven”. Now it is, “because Jesus died for me and God saved me, then I will love him and call on him. This means we will serve him and worship him for his excellent goodness and we will cry out to him in prayer. He hears us!
Dear Lord, thank you that we can love you not to get saved but because we are saved. Thank you for Jesus who saved us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Brad Boyer
Cape Community Church