We are going to open up an amazing subject today. We are going to look at the Hebrew word chesed.
Say it with me, chesed. We are going to open this word up and you are going to get some incredible insights into God's love. Let's take a minute and just ask God to make this time valuable, to open our hearts, open our minds so that we can gain access into who He is. The character of God, an essential trait, an essential characteristic of our Heavenly Father. Understanding this can be absolutely life changing. So, I have been familiar with the word chesed for many decades. It is a word you learn fairly early on as you are learning Hebrew vocabulary from the Bible. Again, many decades now familiar with the word.
Whole books have been written on chesed to try to understand the exact significance of it. It is very difficult to translate it with just one English word. Sometimes you see steadfast love. Some modern translations have said loyal love. Sometimes you see loving kindness. When the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible translated it, it translated it with elios, mercy.
But it is really not the primary word for mercy. In the last few years I had taken numbers of scriptures from the Hebrew Bible and from the New Testament, taken them and just put them all in one file and sometimes in my daily prayers just meditate on these verses and look at these verses and try to understand who God is more and what he requires of us and how he wants us to live and what he has promised us. Pages of key verses just to go over on a regular basis. The more I meditated on them, the more I looked at them, the same verses I had known and many I had memorized years earlier, things started to open up. So, I think it is going to happen for you as well as we open up the scriptures that something about the character and nature of God is going to open up for you. So, my friend Pastor David Harwood has written a lot about God's love, God's true love.
David Harwood, some great books on that. And he has also written some about chesed, about God's steadfast love, loving kindness. And here is what Pastor Harwood says. When shown by God to humanity, it demonstrates his willingness to show mercy and is a model for human interaction. In order of its occurrences in Genesis, so this is first chesed person to person or people talking about chesed being shown to them. Angels showed lot chesed when they rescued him and his family from the coming judgment of Sodom. This was a sign of God's merciful kindness, of his covenantal kindness because of his relationship to Abraham. Abimelech asked Abraham to show him chesed according to the pattern he had shown Abraham.
Hey, I was kind to you, you be kind to me. The Lord showed chesed to Abraham and Abraham's servant when the servant was guided to Nachor's household. That same servant asked Laban and Bethel to show chesed to Abraham by sending Rebekah with him.
Hey, we're relatives, we're family. Show some loyal love. Let there be an expression of your loyal love to Abraham. Jacob attributed his protection and prosperity to God's chesed. Adonai, the Lord, extended chesed to Joseph when he was in prison. While incarcerated, Joseph asked the cup bearer for chesed to get him out of that jail.
Hey, I'm stuck here in jail. Be kind to me. Remember what I did for you and how I interpreted your dream for you and how I interpreted your dream for you and show that same loyal love to me. Examples like this, Pastor Harwood says, can be multiplied throughout the scriptures. From the context, he writes, we find that chesed is something one willingly does for others who are in need. It expresses everything from kind actions to loving life-saving interventions. When English Bibles speak of showing loving kindness, they are translating the deed of chesed.
It refers to something that is done. Chesed describes God's merciful acts toward all who rely upon him. The Lord's willingness to help and his act of chesed is a theme of his people's praise. God's chesed that he swore to Israel would be seen in every blessing that can be experienced in daily life. All right, so here's what we're going to do. In a moment, we're going to start reading through verses in the Old Testament in Hebrew.
And I'm going to highlight each time that chesed occurs. And I'm not going to translate it immediately. This is a great way to find out the meaning of a word.
Leave it in the original Hebrew, the original Greek, and say the sentence and just leave that one word untranslated. What's it saying? What does it mean? And if you do it enough, you start, oh, I see it. I feel it.
I'm getting something. And again, it's one of these things from language to language. Sometimes you have a perfect equivalent.
Sometimes you need several different words to explain one word in the other language. And it's the same with chesed. It's rich. It's beautiful. So, it's going to get a little technical for a minute. Stay with me through this. And then we're going to start reading and opening up the Scriptures. And I believe aspects of God's love, kindness, loyal love, graciousness toward you will be revealed.
When I work with AI, dealing with subjects in which I have expertise, I can keep asking questions until I get some good data laid out. And I like what AI, Claude, laid out for me as I interacted with it about chesed. Here are the contextual meanings of chesed. Covenant, loyalty. In texts like Psalm 89, chesed represents God's unwavering faithfulness to his promises, particularly regarding the Davidic Covenant.
It's about keeping one's word, even when difficult. God's covenantal love. Merciful compassion. In Psalms like 25, 6 through 7, chesed appears in context of God showing mercy toward sinners and those in distress, forgiving transgressions rather than punishing as deserved.
So, there's an aspect of grace to God's chesed. Practical kindness. In narrative texts like Ruth or 2 Samuel 9, chesed describes concrete acts of kindness between humans, Ruth to Naomi, David to Mephibosheth, that go beyond your obligation.
I'm going to do something special for you. Because of a covenantal relationship I have, or because of human decency, I'm going to do something, but I'm going to do even more. That's chesed. Relational love. In many Psalms, chesed conveys the emotional warmth and intimate connection in God's relationship with his people, not just contractual obligation. Enduring faithfulness. The repeated refrain in Psalm 136 that we'll look at in a moment for his chesed endures forever, emphasizes the persistent, reliable nature of God's love across generations and circumstances.
What's the overarching theme? What unites these various meanings is that chesed fundamentally represents covenantal love expressed through faithful action. And ultimately, God's covenantal love for you and me, through Jesus, through Yeshua, and how he then acts, what he then does, because this is who he is, and this is how he feels towards you in his son. It's not merely an emotion or abstract concept, but always manifests in concrete demonstration. The core essence of chesed is a love that is beyond covenant commitment, not just feeling. Persists, despite difficulties or unworthiness of the recipient, takes practical action to benefit others, goes beyond strict obligation to generous expression, maintains faithfulness even when the other party fails.
This is why chesed can't be perfectly translated by any single English word. It represents a relationship-centered ethic where loyalty, love, kindness, and action are inseparably united. It forms the theological foundation for how God relates to his people and how they are called to relate one to another. Okay, I'm going to start bathing you with the scriptures. Ephesians 5 talks about being washed by the word, and other verses talk about being nourished by the word.
I want to bathe you in scripture and nourish you with scripture, as I've been doing myself in my private times for months now. When I was going through a very severe trial not that long ago, I got hit with some unexpected news and the bottom just fell out. And it was bad news, it was false news, but it was devastating to hear. And I just remember one of the rare times in my life where I felt like I lost all hope.
It just seemed like the flood tide was overwhelming. And I thought to myself, I went up to my office, I just said to Nancy, I'm just taking a drive over to the office just to walk around the building and pray. And I thought, but you've received many, many prophetic words of encouragement. I thought, what if they're all fake? What about the things you believe God's spoken to you?
And I thought, what if they're just, it's just my own mind. And then I thought, what kind of God do you serve? Who is he?
What's he like? Can you trust him? And I said, yes, I can trust him. I can trust that God with my life.
And at the foundation of his nature is his chesed. So when God revealed himself to Moses, Moses had prayed, show me your glory in Exodus 33. And God said, I'm going to pass by. You're going to hide in a cleft of the rock and I put my hand over you. You're just going to see me from the back. In other words, not the fullness of my glory.
You won't see my face. No one can see my face and live, but God passed by. And it says this in Exodus 34 verses six and seven. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord Yahweh, Yahweh, a merciful and compassionate God, slow to anger and great and chesed and emet. Chesed and emet. Emet can mean faithfulness. Emet can mean truth.
They're overlapping concepts. But notice in this fundamental revelation of God, when the Lord wants Moses to know who he is, what does he start by saying? El rahum v'khanun, a merciful and compassionate God.
Erech hapaim, slow to anger. V'rav chesed vemet, an abundant in chesed and faithfulness. But now notice this, chesed is repeated in the next verse in verse seven. Maintaining chesed to thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who by no means clears the guilty or pardons the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children for the second, third, fourth generation.
Wow! chesed, maintaining chesed, being a God abundant in chesed, it's at the very foundation of the revelation of who God is. And a God of chesed vemet, loving kindness and faithfulness, loving kindness and truth, this is at the foundation of who he is. Psalm 86, 15.
But you, O Lord, are a merciful and compassionate God, compassionate merciful God. Once again, erech hapaim, slow to anger, v'rav chesed vemet, the exact same words from Exodus 34, they're quoting Psalm 86. In fact, these words, this description of God in Exodus 34, 6 is the most quoted verse in the entire Hebrew Bible. In other words, the Hebrew Bible is constantly making reference back to this. It is as fundamental a revelation of who God is as we have anywhere in the Bible.
You want to meditate on something, chew on something, pray over something. Exodus 34, 6 and 7. You will be richly rewarded as you do. Psalm 25. All the ways of the Lord are chesed and vemet. All the ways of the Lord are loyal love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his statutes, his testimonies. This is fundamentally who he is. This is fundamentally how he acts.
Yes, there is a devil who wants to destroy and kill, Satan who is the father of lies, Satan who is a murderer, Satan who is a deceiver. It's completely contrary to the nature of our Father. When Jonah preaches to Nineveh and the people of Nineveh repent, Jonah protests. He prays to the Lord and says, isn't this what I said when I was still in my own country before I fled to Tarshish because I knew you're a gracious and merciful God.
You're slow to anger and you're great in chesed. And you turn away from doing evil. You're bringing destruction. If you can be appealed to, if your mercy can be appealed to, you turn away.
You turn back from it. But he says, I knew that you were great in chesed. That's why they want to preach here because these are our enemies. I want you to come here and forgive them. I don't want you to do that. Forgive them and then they're going to hate us later, destroy us later.
I don't want you to forgive them. And I knew that you're, that's the kind of God you are. That's the kind of God he is. That's the kind of God he is.
And how about this? How about John 1 14? We've seen that God is full of chesed vermet, of loving kindness and faithfulness, of loyal love and truth. What does John 1 14 say? You're going to read it in the modern Hebrew translation. And the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the only son before the father, maleh chesed vermet, full of chesed vermet, full of grace and truth. This is the New Testament version of Exodus 34 6, that the son who reveals the father, Jesus Yeshua, is full of chesed vermet, full of grace and truth.
In fact, modern Hebrew translations of the New Testaments are translated into Greek into Hebrew. When they translate charis, grace, they normally translate with chesed. Chesed is the closest we get in the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament concept of grace.
They're kind of overlapping, each with a different emphasis. So that's why Psalm 136, over and over, through the whole psalm, Hodul Adonai Ki Tov, give thanks to the Lord for his good, kilolam chasdol, because his chesed is forever. And it's every verse. Oh, give thanks to the God of gods, kilolam chasdol, because his chesed endures forever. Oh, give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his chesed endures forever. Every single verse.
This is so central. If you're thinking about God and the dealings of God and how he's working in your life, remember, this is who he is. This expresses who he is. We often pass through dark and difficult times where we are not consciously feeling his chesed and experiencing his chesed.
And it may even seem like he's not with us. But if we have submitted our lives to him, if truly, with our heart, with our soul, we say, Lord, I'm yours. I want to serve you. I want to honor you with all my imperfections and all my flaws. Lord, I want to serve you and honor and honor you.
You can trust that his dealings towards you are dealings of chesed. Psalm 107, verse 8. Let them praise the Lord for what? For his chesed, for his wonderful works to the children of men.
These are repeated over and over in the Psalms. Why should we praise him? Because of his chesed.
Because his chesed lasts forever. Psalm 118. Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, kilolam chasdol, for his steadfast love endures forever. Let Israel now say that his steadfast love, his chesed, his loyal love, his loving kindness, endures forever. Let the house of Aaron say, kilolam chasdol, his chesed is forever. Let those now who fear the Lord say, his chesed endures forever. Psalm 89 2, chasde Adonai olam, asherah. I will sing, and this is in the plural, of the steadfast loves, the loyal loves of the Lord forever. With my mouth I'll make known your faithfulness to all generations.
Are you getting a feel for how central this is? Are you getting a feel for how important this is in scripture? Over and over and over. If the translation just says his love, his love endures forever, it's true, but it's not as complete. Loyal love, steadfast love, covenantal love. He's locked in on it. He was locked in on it because of his nature, as a good God. He's locked in on it because he made promises to the patriarchs and to Israel. He's locked in on it ultimately and most fully because of the blood of his son. It is an absolute steadfast commitment based on who he is. And over the decades, as you'll watch, as you walk with him, all his ways are chesed vermet. All his ways are loyal love and faithfulness. All right, so here's what started to open up for me as I just meditated on verse after verse after verse after verse.
Things I knew, but they just started coming together. Micah 7, beginning verse 18. It starts by saying, Miele kamocha, who is a God like you? The name Micah is, micha is short for michayah or michael, who is like Yahweh, who is like God. So his very name is saying, who is who is like the Lord? So he says, who is a God like you? Forgiving iniquity and passing over the transgression of Israel, his inheritance. So hang on, remember what we read in Exodus 34, that he forgives iniquity, transgression. It's the same language here.
It's referring back to Exodus 34, 6. Then it says this, lohek zik la'ad apo. He doesn't hold on to his anger forever.
Why? Kicha feitz chesedu, because he takes delight in chesed. He doesn't want to smash you and crush you. Child of God, my brother, my sister, he doesn't want to smash you and crush you. Even when we deserve anger, he doesn't hold on to it forever, because he delights in chesed. He delights in showing merciful kindness. This is his nature.
This is what delights him. He's looking for a reason to forgive. He's looking for a valid excuse to have mercy. That's why Abraham's appeal to God, to spare a lot in his family, to spare Sodom, as you could find 10 righteous men. He couldn't, so he just spared a lot in his family. God delights when we appeal to him. When Moses appealed, when God was ready to wipe out Israel, and Moses appealed to him, God delights in that, because he's looking for a reason to be merciful, to be kind, to demonstrate his love.
Oh, sometimes we look at it in the opposite way, as if we're in the doghouse. He's just angry and staying angry. He never wants to see my face. No, he wants you to come running to him. He wants me to come running and say, Lord, I blew it. Forgive me, Lord.
I was so stupid. Forgive me. Wash me clean with the blood of your son. He loves to show his kindness and his covenantal kindness. Then it says he'll again have compassion in us. He'll suppress our iniquities. He'll cast all our sins into the depths of the sea.
And then look at this. You will show emet, truth, faithfulness to Jacob, and chesed to Abraham. There you have it again, chesed v'met, loyal love, truth, faithfulness. You'll show it to Abraham as you sworn to our fathers from days of old. Hosea 6 is quoted in the Gospels a couple of times by Jesus when he's telling the religious leaders you don't get it.
Ki chesed chafatsti v'lo zevach. For I desire, the same word we just saw in Micah 7, I desire, I take delight in chesed. God's saying I delight in chesed, not sacrifice.
I don't want you to do the wrong thing and then offer thousands of sacrifices and go on 40-day fasts of repentance. No, I love to show loving kindness. That's what I love when you turn to me. I love to show loving kindness.
I'm not looking for legalistic action. I'm looking for a heart that I can love. And that's what God's saying. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. That's how it's translated in the New Testament.
And the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. This is who he is. This is what he delights in. Jeremiah chapter 9 beginning verse 22. This is what the Lord says. Don't let the wise man glory in his wisdom. Don't let the strong man glory in his strength.
Don't let the rich man glory in his riches. But let him who glories, let him who boasts, boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord. Working chesed, justice and righteousness in the earth. For in these things, I delight. The same word we just had in Micah 7, he delights in chesed. The same word we just had in Hosea 6, he delights in chesed.
Now here in Jeremiah 9, he delights in these things and he delights in those who understand that he delights in these things. What is foundational to his nature? What does he want us to boast about? That we understand and know him. That he works chesed, justice and righteousness in the earth. In these things, chesed, justice, righteousness, chesed, mishpat and tzedakah, he delights in these things. And if we understand that, don't boast in being wise or strong or rich or having a big ministry or being successful. You want to boast, boast in the fact that you understand and know the Lord who works chesed, justice and righteousness in the earth.
You see how foundational this is? You see how emphatic God is about this is who he is? One of my favorite psalms, Psalm 63, a psalm of spiritual hunger. What does it say as the psalmist is longing for God and saying I've seen you in the sanctuary to behold your glory and power.
What does he next say? Psalm 63, 4. And by the way, sometimes in the psalms you'll see they're off by a verse between our English translations and the Hebrew Bible. That's because many times in the Hebrew Bible the superscription, a psalm of David when he was in the wilderness or something, that counts as verse one. In our English translations it doesn't count as a verse. So that's why sometimes you'll see it's a difference by a verse, sometimes two. But Psalm 63, 4 or 3 in your English Bibles, because your chesed is better than life, so my lips will praise you.
Oh, because your chesed is better than life itself. Oh, friends, I don't know if I'm the only one getting blessed by this, but as I've been meditating on these truths for weeks and months and the joy is building up in me about God's chesed, I hope you're receiving something as well. Psalm 23, 6. What does it say?
Ach tov v'chesed yirdefune kol yumei chaya v'shaftib v'vayt adonai l'arch yamim. Surely chesed, surely goodness and chesed will follow me all the days of my life and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord for length of days. This is what chases us. The Hebrews not just follow, it's chase.
In a negative sense it can be used for persecute. Goodness. God's goodness and chesed are going to chase us all the days of our lives. Psalm 32, 10. Many are the sorrows of the wicked, but chesed surrounds the one who trusts and adonai. Chesed, you sovavenu.
Chesed will surround him. Yeah, they're sorrows, they're troubles, they're difficulties, they're hard times we go through, but God's chesed, his loyal love, his covenantal love, his steadfast love, his loving kindness will surround us. And look at Psalm 103. Oh, oh this is good.
This is amazing. Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul, and all that's within me. Praise his Holy name, bless his Holy name. Bless the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul, and don't forget all his benefits.
Then what does it say? Who forgives all your iniquities. Who heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from the pit.
Then what does it say? And crowns you with chesed and compassion. He not only delivers our lives from death, from the pit of destruction, from the pit of sickness and death, from the pit of demonic attack, he not only redeems us from there, but he crowns us with what?
Chesed. The enemy wants to shame us and lie to us and say we're worthless and we're unclean. The enemy wants to lie to us and say that God wants nothing to do with us. The truth is he wants to redeem us from sin, he wants to redeem us from trouble, he wants to bring us into his presence, and he wants to crown us with chesed and mercy, compassion.
Who satisfies your mouth with good things. A lot of dispute about how to translate one word in the Hebrew, so your youth is renewed like the eagle's. Then skip down to verse 8 in Psalm 103. He is rachum v'khanun, the exact same words we saw again from Exodus 34. The exact same words, compassionate and merciful. Erech hapa'im, slow to anger, v'rav chesed.
There it is again and great in chesed. This is going back to Exodus 34, the fundamental revelation of who God is. He doesn't hold on to his anger forever, he doesn't dispute for all time, he doesn't treat us according to our sins, he doesn't reward us according to our iniquities, but as the heavens are high above the earth, so has his chesed prevailed over those who fear him. There it is, chesed yet again, yet again, three times already in this psalm.
As far as the east is from the west, so far as he removed our transgressions from us. As the father has compassion on his children, on his sons, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him, because he knows our frame, he remembers we are but dust. Oh, chesed surrounds us, chesed chases us down, God crowns us with chesed and compassion. His chesed prevails over us, he delights in showing chesed. A couple more verses, when David prays his great prayer of repentance in psalm 51, how does he start? Have mercy on me, O God, according to your chesed, according to the abundance of your compassion, blot out my transgressions. That's the appeal to the chesed, to the chesed, to the chesed of God. When we come and repent, that's the Old Testament expression of his grace, his loyal love now demonstrated in the complete unmerited kindness shown to us through the Savior.
And God has made a blood covenant with you, my friend, greater than the blood covenant with Israel, because that, even though it was an absolute word and oath from God, you can't get any higher than that, but it was only with the blood of bulls and goats that it was established God's eternal covenant with us through his Son is established through the priceless blood of the Son of God, in that sense through divine blood. And the most difficult, painful book to read in the Old Testament is probably Lamentations. Judges might be the darkest in terms of the sin of the people, but Lamentations just lays out the suffering, the pain, and right smack dab in the middle of the book, in the third chapter, what does this say? It says, this, this I recall, I bring back to my heart, therefore I have hope. What is it in the midst of your nation being destroyed that gives you hope? What is it in the midst of horrific judgment because of persistent sin and then the overdoing it of the enemy, the enemy taking God's judgment even too far, but in the midst of the brutality and the suffering and people lying dead in the street and the temple destroyed, what is it that gives you hope? Maybe for you in the midst of real hardship or calamity or nightmare after nightmare and it seems the bottom has fallen out and there's no way back up, your loved one has died, the marriage has fallen apart, you've lost everything, it seems there's nothing left, what is it that can give you hope? For the steadfast love of the Lord has not ceased and it's plural in Hebrew, his chesed in the plural, his loyal loves, his covenantal loves, his lovingkindnesses have not ceased. They're two translation traditions, two textual traditions. One would say it's because of his loyal loves that we are not consumed or as most would translate it as here, for his loyal loves have not ceased.
They're not consumed, they're still here. His compassions do not fail, they are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness and even that word faithfulness, emunah, emunah and emet go back to the same root, faithfulness, truth, go back to the same root.
They are new every morning. Great is your chesed, oh God. I pray that on your best days you walk in the revelation of his chesed. You never forget who he is and his nature and his kindness and his loyal love, his covenantal love, his over and above love and remember where you fall short and you turn back to him, he delights in showing chesed. Remember his chesed surrounds those who fear him and love him. Remember his goodness and chesed will chase us all the days of our lives. Remember he crowns you with his chesed. Remember his chesed prevails over us just like the heavens are above the earth and what gives us hope, his cheseds in the plural they never fail, they're inexhaustible, they are new every morning. May you bask, may you trench yourself in the beauty of the chesed of the Lord.
