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The prophet Zephaniah wrote this amazing prophecy: Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! For the Lord will remove his hand of judgment and will disperse the armies of your enemy. And the Lord himself, the King of Israel, will live among you! At last your troubles will be over, and you will never again fear disaster. On that day the announcement to Jerusalem will be, “Cheer up, Zion! Don’t be afraid! For the Lord your God is living among you. He is a mighty savior. He will take delight in you with gladness. With his love, he will calm all your fears. He will rejoice over you with joyful songs.”

What an astonishing thought! The God who created billions of galaxies, the God who needs nothing and lacks nothing, loves His people. He will forgive us. He will defeat our enemies. He will delight in us. He will live with us and rejoice and sing joyful songs over us.

The universe is not self‑existent. Humanity is not a random product of chance operating in a meaningless universe. The truth is that God created us for Himself. All things exist because of God’s will and God’s pleasure – including us, especially us. God created us because He wanted us to exist. God created us because He wanted us to give Him pleasure.

God did not create us because He needed companionship or because something was missing in Him. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit enjoyed perfect fellowship throughout eternity. God created us not out of need, but out of the overflow of His goodness, love and sovereign pleasure.

Human beings were created to have a relationship with God, to be His sons and daughters, friends and companions. He created us to know Him, to love Him and be loved by Him, to enjoy Him and be enjoyed by Him, to delight Him and be delighted by Him.

Many believers understand that God loves us. Fewer believe that God delights in us. They assume that God merely tolerates us now and will delight in us only after we are resurrected and glorified. But the Word of God reveals something much more wonderful.

Our Heavenly Father delights in us because we have been united with Messiah, we are loved in the One whom the Father perfectly loves. At Yeshua’s immersion, the Father declared: This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy. The Father’s delight in His Son is infinite and eternal. And because we are in Messiah, joined to the Son He loves, we are the recipients of that love and delight as well.

God’s delight in us is not merely a future reality reserved for Heaven. Even now, though we are imperfect, our Heavenly Father delights in us because we were made in His image, belong to Him, have been united with His Son and are being conformed to His image. His delight in us will be perfected when we are glorified, but it is not postponed until then.

Psalm 147: The Lord delights in those who fear him, those who put their hope in his love. The Psalmist does not say that God will someday delight in us after we are glorified. He delights in us now as we fear and trust Him.

Psalm 149: The Lord delights in his people; he crowns the humble with victory. Again, God’s delight is described as a present reality. We are still living in a fallen world, still struggling and growing, yet He delights in us.

One of the clearest illustrations of this truth is found in the parable of the Prodigal Son. When the rebellious son finally returned home, he was not yet restored or transformed. Yet before the son could even finish his apology, his father ran to him, embraced him, kissed him, clothed him, celebrated him and rejoiced over him. The father’s delight did not wait until the son had achieved perfection. His delight was rooted in their relationship. In the same way, our Heavenly Father delights in us even as He continues His work of transforming us.

Think of a father watching his child take his first steps. The child wobbles, falls, gets up and falls again. The father doesn’t wait until the child can walk gracefully to feel delight. The delight is there in the trying, because the delight is rooted in the relationship of father and son – not in the performance. God’s delight in us works the same way. He delights in us now.

And it gets better. When God is finished with us, both His joy and our joy will reach their fullness together. The letter of Judah ends with these glorious words: All glory to God, who is able to keep you from falling away and will bring you with great joy into His glorious presence without a single fault. This is fantastic! The great joy we will experience when we finally are brought into God’s glorious presence will be matched by the joy of the One who brings us there.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve experienced the presence of God. In the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, and then later in the Temple, God’s presence was with us. When the Son of God was incarnated and lived among us, the one who is rightly called Immanuel, God With Us, brought the presence of God among us in the greatest way.

The story of the Bible is the story of God pursuing us, at great cost to Himself, in order to be with us and for us to be with Him. And like a woman responds to the pursuit of a man who loves her, we were made to respond to God’s pursuit. Psalm 42: As the deer longs for streams of water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God.

A thirsty deer doesn’t long for money or entertainment, or care what other deer think about him. A thirsty deer is focused on one thing: water. He wants water because water is essential to his life. The longing for water is built into the deer’s nature.  Likewise, we were designed by God to long for Him. That longing for God is part of our nature and we will never be satisfied or content or happy until we find Him.

Augustine spent years pursuing pleasure, philosophy and ambition before finally coming to faith. Looking back on his life, he wrote these famous words: “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in You.” Augustine did not write that as a mere theological idea. He wrote it as a man who had tried everything else and found it empty. The restlessness he describes is the condition of every human soul that has not yet found its way to God. Whether people recognize it or not, the deepest need of every human heart is God Himself.

Psalm 73: Whom have I in Heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on Earth. My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; He is mine forever. The greatest gift in the universe is not what God gives. Asaph, the psalmist, arrived at the place where God Himself is enough, not God’s gifts, not God’s blessings, but God Himself. This is the ultimate goal of the spiritual life.

Jeremiah expresses it this way: Don’t let the wise boast in their wisdom, or the powerful boast in their power, or the rich boast in their riches. But those who wish to boast should boast in this alone: that they truly know me and understand that I am the Lord. The greatest privilege available to any human being is not wealth, power, influence or achievement. It’s knowing God.

If God created us for Himself, pursues us, delights in us, sings over us and promises to bring us into His presence forever, how should we respond? The answer is found in the Shema, the central statement of Israel’s faith, words that have been on the lips of the Jewish people for thousands of years, words that Yeshua Himself identified as the greatest commandment of all: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength.

The God who loves us wants us to love Him – not with a portion of our love. He wants all of our love. Every part of who we are is to be directed to love Him.

With all our heart: The Hebrew word for heart is levav. In our culture we associate the heart with emotion. But in the Hebrew Scriptures the heart is broader than that. The heart includes our thoughts, decisions, desires, understanding, conscience and will. It’s the control center of the inner person.

To love God with all our heart means our thinking belongs to Him. Our ambitions belong to Him. Our plans belong to Him. Our desires are increasingly shaped by His desires.

This kind of love is not merely emotional. It’s intentional. It’s thoughtful. It’s comprehensive. The person who loves God with all his heart seeks to bring every area of his inner life into alignment with God and God’s will.

With all our soul: The Hebrew word for soul is nefesh. Nefesh refers to life itself, the whole living person. In Genesis, when Moses wrote that Adam became a living being, this is the word he used. To love God with all our nefesh means loving Him with our existence. It means surrendering our lives completely to Him, recognizing that our lives are not our own.

This is the devotion we see in Rabbi Paul, who wrote: Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Messiah Yeshua my Lord. Paul understood that knowing Messiah is worth more than reputation, accomplishments, possessions, comfort or even life itself. This is love at the level of one’s very existence, one’s very life.

With all our strength: The Hebrew word translated “strength” is me’od. In most places in the Hebrew Bible, me’od is not a noun. It’s an adverb meaning “very” or “exceedingly.” Literally, the command could be understood as loving God with all our “veryness,” with all our “muchness.” The idea is total, outward, practical devotion. All of our abilities, resources, influence, effort, energy, intensity, enthusiasm – everything we are and everything we have is given to serve and honor God.

Think of an Olympic athlete preparing for a single event that may last less than a minute. Diet, sleep, hours spent daily in training, relationships and finances are all structured around that event. Nothing in that athlete’s life is left untouched by the goal. That’s the picture of me’od. It’s not casual effort offered on the side. It is a whole life organized around loving God.

Levav speaks of the inner person. Nefesh speaks of our life itself. Me’od speaks of everything we can bring to serve and honor God. Heart, soul and “veryness” involve the whole person. God is not asking for a part of our lives. He is asking for every part of our lives.

The message of the Word of God is simple: God created us for Himself. He delights in us, rejoices over us, is preparing to welcome us into His glorious presence, and when that day comes, the joy will be mutual and overflowing.

The world offers countless substitutes for God, but none of them can satisfy the desire of the human soul. Augustine tried them all and came back empty. The psalmist tried them and wrote, “whom have I in heaven but you?” Rabbi Paul came to the place where he considered everything else as loss.

Only God is sufficient. Only God is eternal. Only God is worthy of our highest love.

My question to you this morning is – is this you?

Is your levav, your thinking, your planning, your desires, increasingly oriented toward Him?

Is your nefesh, your life, surrendered to the One who gave His life for you?

Is your me’od, your energy, your resources, your “muchness,” dedicated to Him?

We were created by God. We were created for God. We are loved by God. We are delighted in by God. And one day we will live forever in the presence of God. Therefore let us love Him with all our heart, all our soul and all our strength.

Let’s pray: Heavenly Father, thank You for creating us for Yourself, loving us, delighting in us and pursuing us. Help us to love You with all our heart, all our soul and all our strength. Turn our desires toward You, satisfy our deepest longings in You and teach us to find our greatest joy in You alone. Amen.