[SERMON] The Unbreakable Covenant: God’s Steadfast Love in Hebrews 3

This sermon explores the profound meaning of the Hebrew word “hesed”—God’s steadfast, covenant love—through the lens of Hebrews 3 and related scriptures. Pastor Cyle unpacks how God’s love is not just an action but His very nature, inviting us into a relationship defined by faithfulness, grace, and truth. Listeners are challenged to respond to God’s relentless love by making Him their true priority, embracing both the comfort and the call to transformation that comes with covenant relationship.

Transcript

 We've been talking about Hebrew, and I like going into the ancient languages and uncovering like the, the hidden truths that are there that maybe we are English languages. Just not great at bringing forth and kind of seeing what that can mean for us and how we can learn something different. But first I wanna ask you if you know what this is?

Six, seven. Six, seven. Who? Who knows what this is? Who knows what this is? All right. It is. Yeah. It's six, seven. All right. Now, um. This is a phenomenon right now. Some of you hate it, some of you love it if like middle school kids love it. There was a Sunday, a couple years, a couple weeks ago where after church you all left.

There were a couple little guys, maybe two, three. How old? How old's your, how old's your son? Four. 4-year-old running around in circles lobby. 6, 7, 6, 7, 6, 7. Like constantly. And I was loving it. I was like, yeah, six, seven guys. It's cool. Um, so. But like if you don't know the phenomenon out west, what's happening is Inn Out burger, they announce every order.

So it's like number 10, number 43. And uh, sometimes this number comes up.

I desperately wanna do that in a local business. Um, just so you know. So any local businesses let me know. Uh, we definitely will do it. But, uh, here's the thing about six seven. Six seven. We told you last week, it's in the dictionary. It's the newest, its newest English word is six seven. Uh, and even in the dictionary, I think it says, it has very word has lots of meanings.

It does, it kind of means more or less so, so unless you ask middle school kids and then they'll give you a whole bunch of different definitions of it. So it really is the English word with many meanings, not just one. The word I'm gonna share with you, Hebrew is similar, that's why, you know, I could take the chance to talk about, um, but there's a word I wanna introduce you today, and this is the word called ed, which is just an English has said so we'll call it has said, but has said is an untranslatable word.

In English because there's no single word that could ever mean this word has said. Um, there's just, you can't pick one English word stick in the Bible and make it make sense. It has a depth to the word of all the variety of meanings that all encompass in that word, that allow it to be really untranslatable by one single word.

And so this is, has said, has said means a lot of things, not limited to this list, but mercy, kindness, steadfast love, loving kindness, loyalty, grace. Et cetera. There is a ton that this word means, and for hasad, Hasad is all of those words, all of those meanings, all at once forever. That's what hasad means.

So all of those things are always in that word. Always, they're not removed. You're not removing What changes definition based on the scenario, the way you're using it. Like other English words? No, it's always has said is all those things when it's being used, and so there's a depth that we miss when this comes up in scripture.

It's translated as just one of the English equivalents, which is what scholars trying to do because they can't just take the word has said, and then when it comes up in a scripture, say, by the way, this word is. Description, description, description, they can't, it wouldn't make sense because all it would confuse you drastically.

And so that's where it's difficult to translate some of the Hebrew into English because you lose the meaning until we could have times like this to break it down. So the fullness of hassad is really covenant faithfulness. Motivated by love has said is a word that describes God's covenant relationship with his children, his people, and that's us.

We're in a covenant relationship with God through Jesus Christ, his sacrifice, his death, his resurrection. Alright, we have a relationship that's, that's what we're under his love. And so in, in the Hebrew times when this was written, God actually had a physical covenant with his people. He made promises to his people of how he was going to love them, and that was the covenant he made with them.

And then they kept the covenant relationship. With him In our modern times, our covenant relationship is marriage. You get married in church with the pastor, you make a covenant before God that you're gonna love this person forever and you should be loving them with the has said love, right? With all those things always encompassed in your relationship for now and forever more.

They used to even have vows that would say now and forevermore like you were pledging to love this person for the entirety of your life. That's hassed. Now in Deuteronomy seven, nine, we see it says no. Therefore, remember the yellow part? Yours? No. Therefore, the Lord your God is God The faithful God who keeps covenant.

And steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations. So God's commitment to his people is, I'm gonna love you, and the thousand generations and beyond, which just really means when a thousand generations is used, it's just infinite. I'm gonna love all the generations and I'm gonna love them with a steadfast love has said, which is all of those things encompassing.

That's the love I'm gonna have for those who are in relationship covenant relations with me, which those who love me back. We're in a covenant relationship. That's God's love. His said is love, bound by promise and then sealed by faithfulness to the promise. God made a promise to his people and that's his love through Jesus.

That's the promise. That's the gift that's fall coming out of his promise. Hey, by the way, I love you so much. My love has has said for you. And what he wants back from us is the faithfulness to love him back in that way has said is the, is the most frequent attribute used for God in the Bible. It appears over 240 times in Hebrew, that means 240 times.

They'd have to describe that whole list of things that it means all in one. They're just not going to, typically, you'll see it, you know, as steadfast love, which is has said so when you see steadfast love in scripture, you're actually seeing that word. Being the description of that amazing covenant love that comes from God and for the, the people in covenant relationship with God, the Israelites has said was, is his head was Israel's anthem.

This was their worship heartbeat. This is how they understood God. We see this in Psalm 1 36, 1. It says in the 1 36 1, his steadfast love endures forever. Forever. In Psalm 1 36, this is repeated 26 times in one Psalm alone, his steadfast love, his said endures forever. His said endures forever. His is said endures forever, because all those things love, grace, mercy, faithfulness, loyalty, all those things are forever with God.

And when you recognize that, it changes things. It changes your relationship because has said is not what God does. It's who God is. That's the difference. God just doesn't choose to, has said love us, God is has said those are his attributes of who he is. So when God says, in our covenant relationship, this is my steadfast love.

No, it's just God being God for you because he is love. God is love. God defines love. The Bible tells us in both the New Testament and the old God is love. God is his said. And so when we have that love in relationship with God, it's God. It's profound. It's powerful, it's deep. God is love. Exodus 34 says, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord.

The Lord. A God, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love has said, and faithfulness, abounding means living in, walking in existing in like God. Doesn't just choose to have said Love you. He is has said love for you. It's powerful, it's deep. The Hebrews understood it. We sometimes lack that because we can choose to show love and not show show love.

We have the freedom to do so. God is has said for his people. He loves this that way. It's why the Jamaicans can, can, can plug a car battery in right and worship when the roof's leaking. The roof's gone. You know, friends and family have died. They don't know where their next meal is coming from. They're, they're, they haven't drank water in days and they can stand there and praise God because God is has said.

And when God has said, you can worship him because he's everything, it's different. And we kinda lack some of this understanding of the depth of that love in our modern context because the reality is love looks different here. Truth without love is harsh. Right. Anyone ever had been offended by somebody 'cause they told you a truth and it wasn't very loving the way they, they shared it.

Anybody would admit to that. No one's ever been offended by anybody. Okay. Okay, sure. None of you are married, so like, okay. See, this is a single church now. Oh yeah. Truth without love is harsh. When you say, when I say truth to somebody, you need to say it with love. I call that fluff. There's times when someone says, Hey, will you read my email before I said, no.

I'll look at it. I'm like, Ooh, you need to add fluff, which really just means you need to add love because yeah, you're saying truth, but you're not really saying it in a way that's loving. You're just saying truth. And if we really love people with a has said kind of love, you need to match. Match that truth.

Also with love doesn't mean you don't say the truth. You just say it a loving way. You add fluff. To it. But what about love without truth is hollow. There's times that we love people and we know we should say something. We know we should tell 'em a truth, but we don't tell 'em. I don't wanna mess. I don't. I don't wanna mad at me, so I just wanna say it, but that's hollow love.

I don't really love you enough. That's hollow love. Here's the truth about me. As your pastor, I will do the right thing for you and love you, whether or not you like it at the end of the day. Amen. But I will do it lovingly. And I actually had someone tell somebody other day who said, Hey, I told somebody you Cyle's gonna do the thing right thing for you, whether or not you speak to him.

At the end of the day, I will because I love people that much. Right? I will, I'll say the hard thing. Recognize that you may not, you may be mad at me at the end, but I'll do it as with as much love and grace as I can. But that's what we are called to do for each other. We're also called to receive that love.

That's what a relationship looks like, A covenant relationship. Love without truth, it's hollow. I always think of American Idol before it like became, you know, kind, kinder, uh, back in the early days of American Idol. When like there would be like this American Idol mom who would say, you are the best singer ever.

And then they would send that that kid out, you know, who's now an adult and they sing and it's the worst singer you ever heard in your life. My mom, I'm the greatest thing ever. They'd have a video montage beforehand and they get up and it's awful. That's a hollow love, right? Because there was a lot of truth that needed to be shared by mom that didn't get shared and you got embarrassed on national TV because of him.

That's hollow love. That's not has said, see, has said, is love filled with truth? And truth filled with love. It's all of those things forever. All of that grace, all that loyalty, all that mercy, all that kindness, all of that forever. Hosea six, six says, this is about God for I desire, steadfast love, I desire has said, and not sacrifice.

Sacrifice. We'll come back to this at the end of the message. I want you to remember this, but for God, he wants your love. He wants your love, not your sacrifice. People always tell me, well, I'll come to church one day when I get my life right. God doesn't ask us that. That's sacrifice to get your life right.

God just wants us to love him back because he is His said. He loves his people. We are his people. We are his creations and all he wants back first is our, has said our love. Just love me. Just love me back, and then we'll talk about sacrifice. 'cause that love will shape the relationship. It'll shape our hearts.

See, the greatest thing that God gives you is not a blessing. It's himself. God does. You can, we can pray, we can ask for all these things, but God's not a genie. He's not here to, to make you rich or to make you healthy or do any of that, like that's not God. He didn't come to do all that. God came to love you.

He created you to love you. That's the gift he gave us. Jesus to love us, not to make us rich, not to give us bigger, bigger houses. We can be blessed through a loving relationship, but that's not the point. God just wants us to love him. I can guarantee that when a hurricane hit Jamaica, they didn't feel very blessed in the moment.

I know they feel blessed now 'cause people have poured out on them, love from all over the globe, but they still know that their God has said he's love. Psalm 63 says, because your steadfast love is better than life. Life truly living has said is better than life. God, his has said it's better than life.

It's better in life. We have to understand that God's love, all of those things that encompass, that has said forever is better than life. 'cause we get to have life everlasting after death. If we're in a covenant relationship with God and has said we, we can live forever with him. That defeats life goes way past, life goes to eternity.

And so we look at the Old Testament and this concept of hassed. We see how it leaks into the new, because the Old Testaments always connect to the New Testament, and we see that Jesus is God's steadfast love just with skin on, because God is, has said Jesus is God. Jesus is has said he's just in human form with us.

Jesus comes to bring grace and truth. The Bible says, I'll give you a verse in a second, but in the, in the Hebrew, in the Old Testament, that would've been called Hasad ment. That was like grace and truth. So when Jesus comes in John one 14, it says the word which is Jesus, the Word of God became flesh full of grace.

Grace and truth has said ve met. Now that would've been in Greek, so it'd been translated from Hebrew into Greek. But it's the same understanding. The Jews would've understood when Jesus comes with grace and truth. He's coming with has said the fullness of that he brings with him. So what does all this mean for you?

Why are we taking time to break down all these Hebrew things? His said is love that runs after you. It is, we know this from Psalm 23, the lady sing, um, Psalm, the P song about Psalm 23. Anybody ever memorized Psalm 23 in their life? Anyone ever heard it before in their life? Right? So there's this passage in here, uh, in Psalm 23, 6.

It says this. Surely Mercy has said, shall follow me? Well, how's it finish? Follow all the days of my life forever. Got it. So in Psalm 23, surely has said, will follow me forever. But that follow it's important. Now there's, there's a, I gotta tell you this, this is a pastor joke. Um, what are the names of God's dogs?

Goodness and mercy. Because they follow you forever, right? It's a dog owner joke. I'm sorry. So gotta do it. But here's the great thing about this. This will, hopefully, this will change your understanding of Psalm 23 that you'll now recognize that word that means so many things is in there at the core of such a loved Psalm that surely has said, shall, it's not follow, it's not the best English word for it.

The best English word is probably pursue or to chase down. God has said, chases us down all the days of my life. God is always chasing you down, pursuing you. There are some translations of the Bible that will say pursue, um, but it follow also means pursue. It just depends on the way we use it in English, but God's has said is pursuing us all the days of our life.

That's powerful. It's different concept. See, because you're held by a covenant stronger than your mistakes. That's, that's the reality. You're held by a covenant. Stronger than your sins. Stronger than your failures. You are held by a covenant with God, a relationship with him. Where His has said who he is is for you.

That's very loud. So said a trumpet and east. Um,

but his has said it is for you, right? Yes, there's a covenant that you have. God gave us Jesus out of His has said for you to experience relationship and love. That is also in return, has said that you love back and forth with God through Jesus Christ, and there's a covenant. And that covenant is stronger than your mistakes.

You having a failure, a mistake of sin is not gonna remove you from a covenant relationship. When my kids mess up, it doesn't mean, oh, they messed up. You're out. Get outta my life, right? I love them. I love them. That's what happens. So, God, even though we make mistakes in life, even though we mess up, God still loves us because that love is bigger than that.

It's so much deeper, it's so much broader, and all he wants from us first is to love him back, and then he'll help you clean up the mistakes. By learning to sacrifice and live for him. And so people always tell me, well, I'll come to church one day when I get up together. We don't need together. What we want is people to come in here, broken in, shambles, falling apart, full of sin.

I don't care if people come in here drunk and high on a Sunday morning. I could care less. I will love them. Same. I don't see your sin. I don't care about your sin. People tell me, well, I don't want you to know my sins. I could care less about your sin. Your sin does not define you. If it does, man, we are all, we're all doomed, we're all sinners, right?

I hope it's not what defines me in my life. What defines me is has said God's love and that I live it and that I receive it. That's what defines us. That's the covenant that God has with his people and hopefully that'll change you. You're not just a bunch of failures, mistakes and sins. You're a God's chosen creature that he created to be in a covenant relationship of love with him.

It's powerful and yes, sometimes you're gonna mess up, but he is gonna love you through it. And hopefully he's gonna make you better through it. Better version of you, because God wants your heart long before he wants your habits. Remember that version, Hosea right? I desire your steadfast love, not your sacrifice.

God wants your love first. He'll clean up your habits. He'll help you walk through your sins, and that's why. Church isn't for perfect people. It's for imperfect people who are broken, who need a God who's bigger, and God who is perfect to love them through their imperfections and make them the best version of themselves.

That's the key. Yeah. He wants us to clean up our lives. He wants us to clean up our habits. He wants us to stop sinning. He wants us to be more and more like Jesus, but it's a process and we have to recognize it starts with love. It starts with just giving your heart. It doesn't. Do you know that people accept Jesus Christ and then they sin?

Do you know that's a thing? They actually sin? Some people accept Jesus Christ. Leave church to sin. It's a thing. Some of you are gonna leave church and sin on the way home. You're gonna get in a fight right in the car. It's gonna happen, but God loves you through it because that's the covenant relationship of her Said.

That's the faithfulness of that kind of love. Hopefully that's what you're, if you're married, that's what the love looks like in your marriage. For my wife and I, our first year of marriage was cats and dogs living together. It was rough. Lot of arguing, lot of bickering. I was a slob. She was a neat freak.

That was rough for her. Not so much. She cleaned up a lot, so I loved it. So she told me I was, she was my mother. Uh, yeah. So, but we do a lot of premarital counseling because. No one really helped us figure that out. We had to figure it out in ourselves. So we tried to prepare our counseling to prepare young couples to say, Hey, you're gonna, you're gonna have like two completely different people living in your house who are usually polar opposites.

And that's tough. Let us help you figure out how we work through it. And, and, and really it's communication, it's love, it's, it's, have understanding has said we'll work through this together because we committed to this forever. That's what it looks like. And so for us as people, I think we need to remember that the greatest thing God gives you is not blessing.

It's himself. People often go to church 'cause they wanna be blessed. Oh, I wanna go. I wanna go to church and God will bless me. God will give me more. Go, gimme, answer my prayers. That's not what church is for. Church is to glorify God. It's literally the reason we gather in here on a Sunday morning is to hassed God.

All of those characteristics we are giving to him. To recognize that he is the God who is, has said love to us. He gives us all day. We gather to glorify him on Sundays. You're not here to learn. I'm sorry. I know you're here. People love when they get little nuggets of truth for them for the week. That is not the purpose of Sunday morning.

That's the purpose of Bible study. That's the purpose of life group. The purpose of Sunday morning is solely to glorify God. To give Him has said that's it. We get it confused. Yeah, it's great if you get nuggets and you can learn things, but it really is to glorify him. That's what we do on Sunday mornings.

Because the greatest gift is God, nothing else. And when we recognize that, hopefully it'll change your heart, change your mind, change your life. You recognize I've been doing this wrong. God just wants your heart. That's where it starts. Then you'll figure the rest of it out. We got people all along the journey with God, some who are more spirits and mature, and they, they have been loving God in a covenant love relationship a long time, and they've really worked on some of their habits and their sins, and they've, they've been willing to make those sacrifices along with the love they have for God.

Some of us are just starting out, and yet you're still making the same dumb mistakes, but you're doing better little by little because as God changes you and shapes you and you're in relationship, people who help and encourage you to do that, you recognize what a said really means. When you receive that love from God and can love it back, that's why we're trying to be so responsive to our community in a ti tough time in this nation and in a tough time in Jamaica.

Why we're trying to love them? 'cause it has said, 'cause it has said, and I know churches get it wrong all the time. I've been watching the TikTok videos where they've been calling churches. They're now calling churches in our area and I just pray. They call me 'cause that's like the Super Bowl for me. Um, they won't, but churches are getting called to area and guess what?

They're failing. They're not helping people who are hurting right now. If you really are a, we are a church of hasad. We love people, we help people, we help each other. So the thing I wanna challenge you with today, I just want you to just take time to think about Hasad in your life. Do you love God with a covenant love?

Is he your number one over everything else? Or do you say the churchy thing? Well, yeah, look, God's my number one priority and then my spouse and then my kids. Every Christian typically says that. But usually when we pull out our, like our financial statements from our bank account doesn't show that God's number one shows.

A lot of other things are number one, when we look at our calendars and we look at our time balance, when we see that, Nope, nope. God's priority down here. Everything else is priority number one. The truth is we say a lot that we love God like that, but we really don't because of sports, because of activities, because of kids stuff.

'cause the world has all these other things to do except love God. Do you really love God with your time, your talent, your treasure in a way that says, I love him and he's number one, and that's the hard question I ask myself a lot. Is God really my number one or have I dropped him down a few, not just as I've gotten other hobbies or other interests or other things, and do I need to reestablish where he's at?

I think that's the thing to ask ourselves today. Do I need to reprioritize my God who has a said so that I'm in that covenant relationship of truly loving him the way he deserves? Or not? That's hard. That's a reality check. It doesn't matter if you've been Christian 40 years, some 40 year Christians need to have a reality check about is God really number one or was he number one 20 years ago?

Now he's like number six and you need to move him back up. So here's, here's my challenge. As we get ready to close a prayer, if you know you're at a place where you're like, I need to do better. I need to accept that God is his set and he needs to be my. My has said my covenant relationship needs to be with him above everything else, and I need to do better.

I'm challenge you. Grab your connection card on the back of your card just right. I accept. I accept I gotta do better. God is number one. He's not here to bless me and give me riches. He's here to love me 'cause he's love and I need to do that back for him. And if that's what, if you know you're at that point, no matter how long you've been a believer.

Or not, just write, accept. Then we'll pray for you this week. Put your name on it so we know who we're praying for. We'll just pray for you. 'cause you know what? I've been there. I've been there. I am always, because I'm, I'm a pastor. I always gotta, when I do these messages, I learn from these things. I just learn like during the week, right?

So I deal with my stuff before I come on Sunday. So I, it's easier for me, right? I already dealt with my stuff. I already prayed through. Is God my priority? You know, am I really living in that covenant relationship every week? We have to think through those things before we get up here and preach them. Do you need to spend time praying and thinking about that for your own life?

If you do, we'll rip these off in a after we pray. But let's, let's pray together and before we pray, I would just say this, if you know that your, your, your life's broken, it's in shambles and you know you need God, and you're like, you haven't made a decision to really follow or choose him number one in your life, do it today.

You don't have to have it all worked out. Remember, I desire your SFAs love, not your sacrifice. Just say, God, I believe I'll figure it out as we go. These people here can help you. I'll help you. But if you're at that place, just sacrifice. Just the sacrifices you make is like, God, I, I'm gonna follow you. I'm gonna live for you.

'cause I'm tired. The way I'm living is not working. It's broken. It's making me miserable. I don't have any joy. I've not experienced the fullness of Hassed, that kind of love in my life. So that's, you make a decision today and say, I'm gonna figure this out. I accept that I need Jesus and my Lord and Savior.

I'm gonna follow him and then know that we as a church will help you walk through that. We'll help you figure it out. You don't have to be perfect, you just have to love God. And we'll figure the rest out as we go. We'll help you. And if that's you during your prayer, just tell God that. Tell him you need him and you wanna follow him and we'll help you figure it out.

Let's pray. Have me Father, Lord. Lord, we just pray. We recognize that you, God, our has said you are that kind of love and you gave us Jesus as a continuation of that, as a fulfillment of that Old Testament promises. Into a new relationship that is with our savior through Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you for the gift that He is and continues to be for us, but we pray that we can love you back fully in a, in a relationship of love.

That looks like a said where we above all of the things we choose you Lord, and we live for you. And we find joy in that. No, we pray that we're kinder. We pray that we're more faithful. We pray that we have more joy and grace and Merc as we understand what his said looks like, and we live it out as we love you and we love others.

Now, if there's anyone here who's just acknowledging right now, they need you. Their life's broken and they need, they need to follow God, try something different. They need to understand that steadfast love that you offer, but I pray that right now they say that and they receive that and let they begin a journey here with us as a church where we can walk through that with them.

Lord, if there's anyone here who just knows that they need to, they need to get their life back on track, they've lost their way. You're not the priority they think you are or they've told them themselves that you are, but you've slipped and it's time to reestablish. Jesus Christ has number one in their life, number one in their heart, number one in their time, number one in their talent, number one in their treasure.

But I just pray that we acknowledge it and accept that and are motivated to change and be moved by your has said. Lord, we just pray and we thank you for your son Jesus. We thank you for his sacrifice and we love you, Lord. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen.