Day: September 11, 2023

JESUS! In Word and Song

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WEEK 43

HOUND OF HEAVEN

The Fall of man and the consequential depravity places GOD’s creatures on the edge of a chasm where a retreat to our original condition is impossible. But GOD has better plans. “We have in Christ a full reconciliation with God, and an advancement into higher favour with Him, than the first Adam had in the state of innocency.”1

Because He shuts us all up in our disobedience and unbelief, it enables Him to provide mercy to us all (Rom 11:32). Thus begins the activity of the Godhead to restore His chosen.

This activity of drawing children back to Him can be fierce—a provoking, prodding or forcing (Acts 26:14), or He can do it gently—as a quiet knocking (Rev 3:20).

[W]e may experience either the ecstasy of underserved love or the acute pain of unrequited love, because we know instinctively that love is the greatest thing in the world. It is in such moments as these that Jesus Christ draws near to us and uses his hand to knock or to goad.2

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow [us] all the days of [our] life” (Psalm 23:6 ESV).

Author, Gautrey points out that the Hebrew word here translated by the mild verb ‘follow’ should be rendered more forcefully; for instance, ‘goodness and mercy have hunted me, haunted me, dogged my steps all the days of my life.’ ‘It is a pursuit, patient but purposeful, affectionate but relentless.’3

“If we love Christ, it is because he loved us first. If we are Christians at all, it is not because we have decided for Christ, but because Christ has decided for us. It is because of the pursuit of ‘this tremendous lover.’”4

“’The Hound of Heaven’ is a striking expression invented by Francis Thompson.”5

When we were running full speed the other direction, he chased us down, subdued our rebellion, and opened our eyes to see our need of him and his all-sufficiency to meet that need. We were not drowning, in need of being thrown a life-preserver; we were stone-dead at the bottom of the ocean. He pulled us up, breathed new life into us, and set us on our feet—and every breath we now draw is owing to his full and utter deliverance of us in all our helplessness and death.6

Ultimate reality is an eternal fountain of endless, unquenchable love. A love so great that it could not be contained within the uproarious joy of Father, Son, and Spirit but spilled out to embrace fallen humans into it. Divine love is inherently engulfing, embracing, overflowing. God made you so that he could love you.7

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ENDNOTES

(43) Hound of Heaven

            1. Horatius Bonar, Words Old and New (Carlisle, PA: THE BANNER OF TRUTH TRUST, 1866,1994) 229.

            2. John Stott, Why I Am a Christian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 2003) 31.

            3. Stott, 16.

            4. Stott, 18.

            5. Stott, 15.

            6. Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021) 27.

            7. Ortlund, 70.

            8. Hal Leonard, The Hymn Fake Book (Milwaukee, WI: Hall Leonard Corporation) 194.

            9. John Stott, Why I Am a Christian (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 2003) 29.

            10. Stott, 30.

            11. Stott, 17.