How does the unfailing love of God come to us? Through the nail-pierced hands reaching from heaven to earth.
Psalm 119: 41-48 ~ Vav
May your unfailing love come to me, O LORD, your salvation according to your promise; then I will answer the one who taunts me, for I trust in your word. Do not snatch the word of truth from my mouth, for I have put my hope in your laws. I will always obey your law, for ever and ever. I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts. I will speak of your statutes before kings and will not be put to shame, for I delight in your commands because I love them. I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love, and I meditate on your decrees (NIV).
Psalm 119 is an acrostic of the Hebrew alphabet, with eight verses devoted to each letter. This portion of the acrostic is based on the Hebrew letter vav. The pictograph for vav is a tent peg or nail. The translation for the word vav can mean “hook” (as in the hooks used to secure the curtains in the tabernacle), “secure”, or the word “and.”
In Genesis 1:1, the Word says “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (emphasis added). The word “and” between heavens and earth is “vav.” God created the heavens, where He reigns over all creation. He created the earth where He would dwell with man. Then mankind brought sin into the world, which separated us from God. The only thing that could connect heaven and earth was represented in a nail.
God could have used any symbol He wanted for this letter, but He chose the nail. Just as His son Jesus chose the nails. Apart from Jesus we are lost, slaves to sin, forever separated from the God who created us
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6).
God is holy and perfect and pure. In our sinful state, none of us can come into a relationship with Him. But through Jesus and His blood sacrifice on the cross, our sins can be covered, and we can be secured forever to the God who created us. The nails that pierced His hands and feet have connected heaven to earth and made a way for us to know Him and live forever with Him in heaven.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ (Ephesians 2:13).
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross (Colossians 2:13-14).
How do we become connected or secured in a relationship with Jesus?
That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus Is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved (Romans 10:9-10).
Salvation is a matter of receiving the gift of God into our hearts and lives by faith. The grace of God in sending His perfect Son from the splendor of heaven to the dirt of earth to be nailed to a cross is what saves us. The vav connecting heaven and earth.
The Psalmist penned these words over 2000 years ago, probably 400-500 years before Jesus came, and yet he chose these eight verses for vav. Truly, God’s unfailing love has come to us through His Son – His salvation according to His promise. He has connected heaven and earth, not because we love Him, but because He first loved us (1 John 4:19).
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
Jesus is the Divine Hook between us and the Father. He can secure your future as surely as those nails secured Him to a rugged cross. That’s the promise of God.