Hey, before we get started, we've got a question for you. How can we pray for you?
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We want to pray for you. The prophets are extending, they're offering chesed. Sure, they say that God's angry and you need to repent and come back.
Absolutely. But the reason God is making the offer is he's a God of chesed. He's going to forgive you.
All you got to do is turn around and come back. It's his chesed that leads us to redemption. You realize that he's full of chesed. He shows it to a thousand generations.
Who doesn't want to have a relationship with that God? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott, and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com.
This is Family Life Today. All right, this is an amazing day on Family Life Today because we're continuing this conversation we started yesterday with a man, Dave, actually. He is one of your spiritual heroes. Yeah, he's my buddy now, Mr. Michael Card. He's our friend.
We've been to his house, we've been to his church, which is really just about a mile from his house out in Franklin, Tennessee. And it was epic. It was epic to be able to spend time with Michael Card.
It was such a pleasure because we got to feel and see and hear his tender heart for the Lord. Yeah, and I tell you what, he's got an amazing mind. This dude is sharp. I mean, he's a theologian. He's written over 400-plus songs. Think about that. Yeah. 400-plus songs, a whole bunch of books, and one of those books is called Inexpressible, and it's on the topic of God's hesed love. So we're going to start right there today with Michael explaining why that concept of love is so inexpressible and yet so vital to every human heart. Well, let's talk about it. Okay.
Start anywhere you want. I mean, define it, explain it. I think it has the largest range of meaning of any word in any language. I don't think there's any other word like hesed.
In six different English translations, it's translated 169 different ways. Usually it has an adjective in front of it. So it's not just love, it's covenant love or faithful love.
In 1535, Miles Coverdale made up the word loving kindness. We all know that word. That word was made up to try to translate hesed. But it's just, it's untranslatable. My translation is a sentence. I translate hesed.
It's when the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing gives me everything. That's hesed. God defines himself to Moses in Exodus. He uses it twice. He says that he's full of hesed and that he shows hesed to a thousand generations.
There were two things that got me onto it. There was that passage and I studied Hebrew. I don't ever remember us talking about it. Dr. Vinker, my Hebrew teacher, we never talked about hesed. So I saw that, I think it's Exodus 34, but then there are two Psalms, Psalm 13 and Psalm 69. The Psalms almost always do this, lament Psalms. They'll lament, lament, lament, but you O Lord, and then it becomes praise. Yeah.
Okay. They do that a lot. Well, 13 and 69, it's hesed. The word hesed appears and that's the transition. And in the book of Lamentations, same thing happened because of your hesed were not destroyed and something like that in Lamentations. And that's where the book of Lamentations turned around. And I saw that and I go, what is this word? Have anyone been writing on that word at that point? There wasn't anything popular.
There was a lot of, you know, really boring academic articles, basically. So you started it. Well, hopefully, hopefully I popularized it somewhat, but because it, you know, for me as a follower of Jesus, Jesus quotes, I think, Hosea 6, twice, which has the word hesed. So he's, we hear him say it twice.
A lot of his parables are about hesed, but the cross is basically an act of hesed. I stand in front of the cross and I say, I have no right to expect anything from you. I nailed you there. What do I get? A second chance?
No, I get more chances, more second chances you can, you know, number. He gives, I have no right to expect anything from him, but he gives me everything. I think that's, is what's most exciting to me about hesed is that it really is a category for understanding Jesus.
What does that look like personally for you? You know, I don't know. You know, you think about it all. I mean, I have a tattoo, it's on my arm, which I'm not encouraging people to get tattoos.
But you put it on your arm for a reason. Because I meditate on it all the time. And it really is kind of a doorway into the way he loves me and the love that he has for me. And when you start running it in scripture, there's all kinds of great examples of what hesed looks like. I've got a bunch of notes, in fact, can I read you a parable?
Please. This is from the Talmud. Once his rabbi Yohanan was walking out of Jerusalem, rabbi Joshua following him, seeing the temple in ruins, this is a 70 AD after the temple has been destroyed and it's still smoldering, seeing the temples in ruins, he cried, woe to us, this place is in ruins, the place where atonement was made for Israel's iniquities. And so in some versions of this, it says, we no longer have a means of atonement because the temple's gone. Rabbi Yohanan said to him, my son do not grieve, for we have another means of atonement, which is no less effective.
What is it? It's deeds of hesed about which the scripture says, I desire hesed and not sacrifice. See, that's a Hosea 6-6. I've got a couple of rabbinic stories put up with me. Let me read this one more. This comes from the Midrash, which is a commentary on the Talmud. There's a man who stood before the judge who would send him to heaven or hell. And this is a proper theology, right? This is a parable. I love this. I read this in your book and this is really good. You can choose, but first you can see them both heaven or hell.
A chariot of fire took him to a remote castle floating on a cloud, a great hall, banquet tables. People came in with a fork in their left hand and a spoon in their right hand, but their elbows would not bend. This is hell.
Okay. Cause they got on this banquet and they can't eat. They can smell it. The chariot of fire went to another castle floating in the clouds, a banquet table. People came in a fork in the right hand, a spoon in the left hand, their elbows wouldn't bend.
As he watched, they began to feed each other. This is heaven. The people have made it heaven by acts of chesed. The man went back to the judge who asked him, do you want to choose heaven or hell? He goes, I choose hell.
I will make it heaven by teaching people to do chesed, by feeding each other. Is that not the coolest story? Dave read that to me because we were getting ready. I'm like, oh, it's so surprising.
Yeah. It's well, that's Hasidic Judaism. You know, it's Judaism based on chesed. And I actually asked a rabbi in Jerusalem one time, is that, I said, do you call yourself chesed because you do, because you do acts of chesed?
He goes, oh no, we call ourselves Hasid because we trust God's chesed. It's all about, it's not us doing chesed. We look to God's chesed.
It's really bottomless. Once you start looking at the scripture, there are so many references and so many examples of it. Well, we're listening to an interview we did with Michael Card about this concept of chesed. And I loved when he said, chesed is when the person who owes me nothing gives me everything. It's grace. It's uncanny.
It's unheard of. I mean, the way he said that, I remember sitting there just going, oh my goodness, that is so profound. And it's truly amazing when you take that idea and apply it to marriage, which we did in The Art of Marriage. The New Art of Marriage, which you can get right now, has a whole session on chesed love in marriage. And you do not want to miss that one. So go to familylifetoday.com and order it. Okay. Let's get back to Michael Card talking more about the power of chesed in marriage.
This is really good stuff. And Jesus' definition is my favorite in Luke 6. One of the major translations of chesed is kind, the word kind. Jesus says that God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God is kind to the ungrateful and the, who would have ever thought that, right? But that's Jesus' definition of chesed. And I'm really glad because I'm ungrateful and wicked, but God shows me his chesed.
Why? Because he shows chesed to thousands, like he told Moses. So it really becomes this key to understanding Christianity, to kind of understanding who Jesus is, to understanding what you're supposed to do with your life. We're supposed to do acts of chesed.
You don't wait for somebody to deserve something. It goes so contrary to our culture. It's the opposite. Well, it's the gospel. It is the gospel.
The gospel makes no sense. Why in the world would God, you know, we're his enemies. It's not like he waited for us to convert and then he forgives us. He gives us his forgiveness. It's there now, you know, he dies for the sins of everybody, whether people accept him or not. In fact, I tell people, you don't go to hell because of your sin.
You go to hell for not accepting the forgiveness of your sin. I mean, Jesus absorbed all that. It was the ultimate act of chesed.
So that's why, I mean, chesed is kind of the key for understanding who Jesus is. Now, as you wrote about in trying to live that out in your own life, one of the things I found fascinating, and you write songs about this as well, is you said, I want a bridge from white to black. I want a bridge from people like me, people different like me.
Where did that come from and how did that play out? Again, and I think reconciliation, that movement comes out of this. You don't wait till somebody earns it. You don't do a prison ministry and say, well, as soon as you clean your alcoholism up or your drug addiction, then we'll talk. That's kind of the world's value system.
You'll earn my help. That's not how it works. In fact, it's your neediness that I think it's our neediness that attracts God and Christ to us. He loves us.
It's not on the basis of anything we can do or have ever done. He loves us because he's a God of chesed and he's kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. That to me is just, I love those words.
I don't hear people talking about that, but it's a bizarre thing for him to say that. He's kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. You think, I guess that's the gospel. And we have a hard time thinking we're the ungrateful and the wicked.
Yeah, definitely. Well, I want to earn it. I want to do good works. So God will like me.
What was it? Brennan Manning said, God loves each one of us as if we were the only ones to love. He loves you as you are and not as you should be because nobody is as they should be. I'm thinking we have a hard time as believers doing that in our culture. We have a hard time doing that in our homes. Oh, absolutely. In our marriages with our kids that have turned their backs on us.
How do you apply it to your marriage and to your home and how would you encourage other people to do that? I think when you do hear about chesed, you resonate something then you resonate because this is what we were created for. We're creating God's image. We long for it.
Yeah. And so when you are shown chesed or when you find out about it, there's something in you, a switch that gets flipped. And I think especially with children, if you show your children, because what's everybody going to tell you? Well, they're going to take advantage of you.
If you show chesed, they're just going to take it. I guess certainly there are probably kids who would and spouses who would, but God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. If I can't kind of incarnate that in my marriage, I think that's what marriage does is incarnates chesed. You don't love somebody because they earned it, right?
Or they did something for you or I don't know. But I do think it's the key to marriage. If you show chesed, even if one of them, you don't both have to do it.
If just one person shows chesed, I think a marriage is going to be successful. Me too. Well, talk to that person that's listening. They're like, no, it's not. I've been trying to do that. Yeah. Well, if you've been trying to do it and expecting the other person to change, that's not chesed.
No, that's not chesed. No, you love them the way God loves you. You show them the forgiveness that God shows you. But I do think that's what can transform the most hard hearted person. Is that how it worked out in your home?
I mean, you're on the road. Well, I think maybe part of the reason I resonate with this is that my wife did show me chesed. My mentor, he taught my wife to marry me. She didn't want to marry me. She went to our church.
I would take walks with him and waste enormous amounts of his time complaining. Susan, my wife, you know, she won't go out with me. What can I do, Dr. Lane? And so he sits down with her and big eyebrows. Susan, you need to know, Michael really loves you.
Susan goes, I just don't love him. And Bill, this is what got me my wife. Bill said, of all the men you've known, who have you trusted? And she said, well, I trust Mike. And here's the line. He said, it's more important to say, I trust you than to say, I love you.
Now it still took me like three years, but that, that changed, you know, I'm doggedly like pursuing her, but that changed her sort of direction. And it is true. I mean, love kind of comes and goes, but if you break trust, it's very hard to reestablish trust.
I'm thinking all the moms right now, like, Ooh, as their kids are dating. Absolutely. Well, I mean, you don't see that's true. It's much more important to say, I trust you than to say, I love you. And even with Jesus, I mean, when I'm praying a lot of times, I, you know, I sat, you know, I do love him obviously, but I trust him. I trust him. Yeah.
And you can't trust somebody without knowing their character. Yeah. You have to know that. And she had already seen that in you. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, she knew she was safe. She just wasn't particularly attracted to me. I don't know why I had a beard like this long and, you know, still, I was still a Bible nerd and that kind of thing, but, um, so I don't know what, what her problem was.
And she was a babe is a babe still is a baby if you're listening, Susan. So how long have you guys been married? 42 years. And how old are your kids? Uh, we got four kids. I can't tell the oldest one is 30.
Is it a dad? Three mixed. I don't know the birthdays either.
Okay. The youngest is like 26 Maggie. And then Nathan's like 27 or 28.
Uh, Katie's 30 and Will's 33. Any, uh, years of struggle in marriage. Oh yeah.
See all those years on the road were really hard. And in fact, my retirement, I, I, what I believe I'm called to is really just kind of help her with her flowers and you help her with the chickens and all that world where we live is really the world she always sort of wanted. So you've entered into her world. Yeah.
I'm, I'm trying to be that guy. Cause I, 40 some odd years, she's putting up with me being on the road and being gone more than I was home. I figured, you know, whatever 10, 10 or so years left, you know, you know, it all, you know, it all evens out, but she's a credible mom and she's a marvelous grandmother. It's, you know, it's funny when you see your wife, you know, you, you love somebody and you marry them.
Okay. But then you see, you know, a woman raising children and it just gives you a whole other level of appreciation and love for them. Cause it's this selfless, you know, thing. And then now to see her with the grandkids, I have this whole new appreciation. She's just, I can't say you're a great grandmother.
I can't say that because that's something else, but yeah. So I think an appreciation for Hesse is, is one of the things that I see in my wife. She's not looking for payback. She's very selfless. It's just, she's kind of the ungrateful and the wicked. I think I see that with Dave too, in a marriage when our spouse does something that we feel like I don't deserve that.
Like I, or I was mean or whatever, but they repay you with kindness. It's the most humbling, convicting. It makes you want to be on your face.
It makes you look up like it's unworldly. It's Hesse. Well, that's what's so unique about Hesse. It's got, there's nothing else like, and it is it's kindness and it's love and it's mercy and it's great. It's this big, huge range of meaning.
Like I said, it's, it's got the biggest range of meaning of any word in any language. And, uh, but when it comes into marriage and sometimes you'll hear marriage counselors and it kind of sounds so, the advice sounds so thin, kind of contrived. Yeah.
But no, when you start talking Hesse, especially when you, let's begin with the Hesse that was shown to us by God through Jesus. Okay. If you take that kind of sacrificial love, kindness, uh, loyalty into marriage. Again, I think it can work if only one person does it, but it's awesome if two people do. Let's talk to the person who's, who hears that like, I want to do that. I've tried to do that.
I can't do it long-term. You can't. You go to Jesus. I mean, you have to be the transformation. It's dying to yourself every day and picking up the cross and following him. I don't think there's any other way we get it because we receive it from him, you know? And again, that goes all the way back to God revealing himself to Moses. He says, I'm full of Hesse and I show Hesse to a thousand generations. So don't, don't give me this angry Old Testament God business. The God of the Hebrew Bible is still a God of Hesse. And, uh, you, you see the compassion that he pours out.
I mean, we can, you could go right through that. Hosea is basically a novel of Hesse. The prophets are extending their offering Hesse. Sure. They, they say that God's angry and you need to repent and come back.
Absolutely. But the reason God is making the offer is he's a God of Hesse. He's going to forgive you.
All you got to do is turn around and come back. Paul talks about it. Some Paul usually talks in terms of kindness. Uh, it's God's kindness that leads us to redemption. It's his Hesse that leads us to redemption. You realize that he's full of Hesse. He shows it to a thousand generations. Who doesn't want to have a relationship with that God? Just, just listening to this makes me emotional again. God, the one who owes me nothing, gives me everything. That is amazing.
Yeah. I just got to say, uh, I've experienced this firsthand from God, but in our marriage from you, you have done that with me. That's so sweet. And you have done that with me too. Not like you've done it with me and definitely not perfectly, but I tell you what, for the listener right now who just feels like maybe they've never experienced this in their marriage or family, let me just say today could be the day to take a step toward it.
I would agree with that. So just take a moment right now before God. Read about his Hesse love, maybe in Exodus 34 or Hosea 6-6 and taste and see that God is and see that the Lord is good to you today. That'd be a great moment of reflection.
Don't do it quickly. Hit the pause button, slow down and absolutely take some time to sit in the Hesse love of God. In fact, I'm just going to read Exodus 34 starting in verse six.
It says, the Lord passed before him, that's Moses, and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. I mean, you hear that and it just gives you, it's like a glimpse of the Hesse resilient covenant, never-ending love and grace of God. I mean, that's for sitting, reading over and over, memorizing, meditating on and saying, you are the recipient of that kind of love. And let me just add, as you take some time to reflect, think about that, God is merciful and gracious. He's slow to anger. He's abounding in steadfast love for you and he's faithful to you and he forgives everything. I mean, that's just insane, crazy kind of love.
I mean, we know no human that can do that. Only God can love with Hesse love. Hit the pause button, slow down and absolutely take some time to sit in the Hesse love of God. And here's another action step that you could do in community or especially with your spouse is get the new art of marriage. That's session one is about the Hesse love of God applied in your marriage. And it's a key part of the teaching and you'll learn about it.
Doing it with your spouse or with other couples will literally change your marriage. And then join us again tomorrow as we conclude our conversation with Michael Card. I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to David and Wilson with Michael Card on Family Life Today.
It's great stuff today. And Michael Card has actually written a book called Inexpressible, Hesse and the Mystery of God's Loving Kindness. So if you're new to this whole concept and you're just hearing about it for the first time today, this would be a great book to pick up to dive deeper and learn more about God's Hesse love for you and how that can change all the relationships in your life. You can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com or you can find it in our show notes or give us a call at 800-358-6329.
Again, that number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And just like Dave mentioned earlier, the art of marriage is something that family life offers to you to really transform your relationship with your spouse. The art of marriage is a video series that provides opportunity for you to not only dive deeper with God, but also take what you've learned in your relationship with God as you've grown deeper to Him and turn that toward your spouse in a way that will transform your relationship forever. And as Dave mentioned, session one is all about unpacking the Hesse love of God and really how we can mirror Christ's unconditional love for our spouse, even when it seems impossible, because sometimes I know it can seem impossible. So whether you're looking for fresh small group material or planning your church's next big event, art of marriage is designed to inspire and transform marriages. So you can learn more and preview session one at artofmarriage.com or find more details in the show notes. Now tomorrow, Michael Card is back with David Ann Wilson as they talk about and unpack the concept of forgiveness and embodying divine love. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. Before we end, we've got a question for you. Where are you listening from? And you know that we're from Detroit. The Motor City.
Shelby's in the Philly area. And our Family Life Today headquarters are in Orlando. So we're coming to you guys from all over the country. But what about you? We would love to know if you are in one of those areas or where else you consider home. Text FLT plus where you're listening from to 80542 to let us know. So again, you're going to text FLT plus where you're listening from to 80542. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
