But hallelujah, what a blessing. Thank you, guys. My, what a blessing. Dr. Ed Moore, we love him. I tell you what, the more I see him, the more I wonder why I do. But anyway, no, I love him. He's such a treasure. He and Sister Nina and Miss Nina, she's recovering and getting better. And Brother Ed and Miss Nina's doing a little better, ain't she? Yeah, she's doing a little better. Praise the Lord. She's got a wonderful husband. She does. Is he back home with her? No, he probably is. He probably is. Got you. Nothing worse than a preacher with no power. Where am I preaching from tonight? Anybody know? I don't know. Gunther got me all mixed up. I'm glad I'm here. I thank the Lord for this meeting. You folks, I know that you spend a lot of time planning and a lot of money on it, but it's one of the best meetings that I've ever been to and still go to, and I thank you for it. And thank you for the accommodations and everything that you've done for us. What would you say tonight if I said I love you? When I was a boy, I don't ever remember my mom or dad either one said to me, I love you. We live in a day when everybody says I love you. Somebody call me on the phone, start to hang up, they say love you. Somebody said love is a many splendored thing. Sometimes it's a confusing thing. What do you mean when you say I love you? Now, I will say my mom and dad didn't say that often. I was probably married before my daddy ever said to me, I love you, boy. You say, well, what a sad thing. No, no, I never doubted it. I think the reason we say it so much now is we don't. We just got an idea, I'm all set, I'm all set. People say to their kids, I love you. They don't look after them, they don't train them, they don't do anything to help them, but I love you. I don't know exactly what that means when people tell me, I love you. Some say, I love you, Pastor. I say, I wish you'd take the knife out of my back before you said that. You know, I had one good friend and he was a good friend. He called me almost every week, if not every week, at least two or three times a month. And I knew when I saw who it was exactly what he was going to say. Brother Moore, I just called to tell you, you're sorry. No good. There's nothing in you that's fit for heaven. He was right. And I mean, he was a friend. We had a great relationship together. Some people tell me that I might smack him upside the head, but not him, because he loved it. I had a friend, pastors in Durham, North Carolina, and he got coming down, me and him got going to meetings and all together. And he said, Brother Moore, I love you. He said, and he got up in my church, said, me and Brother Moore have a Jonathan David relationship. I thought, that's pretty good, isn't it? I grew a beard. He said, now Brother Moore, I want you to understand. In our grandfather's day, a beard was a sign of manliness. And in this day, it's a sign of sorryness. And if you're gonna have that beard, I can't have anything to do with you. It amazed me that a beard cut our love off. I was in one place, and I used the verse. Pastor said, you know, I love you, brother. I really love you, and I appreciate you coming. And I used the verse of Scripture, and it wasn't King James. He really didn't love me. I wonder if God's that way. Don't you wonder if God's that way? I love you, but you grew a beard, man. What's wrong with you? I love you, but your hair's too long. I can't love you anymore. When my mother-in-law died, we found a diamond ring in her house, and I don't know how much the diamond rings were. But the brother didn't know where it'd come from. My wife didn't know where it'd come from. And they said, well, what are we going to do with it? I said, I'll take it. And so I took it. And I wore it to two or three meetings. And you know what? Brother, you're going to wear it? Why are you wearing that ring? I started to say, because I want to, and it's none of your business. But I went to interview. They wanted to interview me for position in ministry and I went and had that ring on. And they hired me, but one of the board members resigned because they hired me and I had a diamond ring on. That's real love, my dear friend. So if I say to you tonight, I love you, exactly what am I talking about? I love you when you're doing what I want you to do. Or, I love you because you're going to give me a check after the meeting. Or, I love you because you give me a hotel room. You don't give me the hotel room. You don't give me the check. I don't love you anymore. I don't understand love in the setting of today. People come to me and say, Preacher, want to get married? We're madly in love. We just fell into love. I'll tell you this, puppy love leads the dog's life. Mark her down. And they'll get married and they'll go through and they'll spend five, ten thousand dollars on the wedding. Three years later they come back and say, whoo, we're going to get a divorce. We fell out of love. And I'm trying to figure out if love is a hole or a tree. Because if you fall into love and it's a hole, you can't fall out of it. And if you go fall in it and it's in a tree, you can't fall in a tree. I don't understand it. People come to church, you know. Ebenezer, where I'm at, it's about 140 years old. On a good Sunday, they may have 20. On homecoming, Lord have mercy, you can't get them in the building. They'll all say, Richard, we really love this old church. Oh, this old church means so much. Preacher, we just love this old church, but they don't love it but one time a year. Some people love God that way. They love him, but now Christmas and Easter and maybe Halloween, because they got a trunk of treats. Oh, we love this old church. Don't make any difference to me, as long as I know God loves me. And Hosea, if you'd like to turn there, Hosea got under a predicament about love. Now, you can talk about love all you want to, but then you have to put it in the crucible of life. What does it mean in life? A young man marries a beautiful young lady, and about 20, 30 years later, she don't look like she did. She don't act like she did, and she won't behave. If you love for looks, in bad shape. Same way with the men. You ladies understand. that handsome strong fella now got a pot belly and he used to dress up clumsy and now he comes just looking like a bum. Do you love him or did you love the image you had of him? When you come to God, do you love him or do you love the image you had of him? I thought if I come to the Lord it'd be this way. That's the way it is in our life. We come to people and we say, man, I love you. And then they do something we don't like. And we say, well, I don't know. Maybe I made a mistake about that. What if God acted that way? Hosea is commanded by God in chapters 1 and 2 to marry a woman that was a harlot. Now, some preachers will say to you, She was not a harlot when he married her, because God promised every Jew a virgin. I don't know. When did David commit adultery? Oh, you say, well, when he got Bathsheba. No, no. He was standing on the rooftop, and he was looking over yonder. And he saw the woman and said, you go get her. According to scripture, it was a finished act. When you look upon a woman to lust after her, you have committed adultery. And you and I today have a chance to look at the world. And there's a lot of people looking at the world and think it's more inviting than the Christ. And no, no, we're not going to commit adultery, but we'll commit spiritual adultery. We'll begin to follow other things. It takes our love away from Christ. It doesn't help us spiritually. And before you know it, somebody says, well, I wonder what happened to them. They backslid. You'll backslid here before you'll backslide there. And if you're going to go away from the Lord, you'll go away from the Lord here before you go away from the Lord there. And so Hosea marries this lady by the name of Gomer, and lo and behold, God told him the truth. I don't know, now, I'm just telling you a story tonight. If you go away and say, well, I was not biblically correct, well, that's all right with me because I'm just going to tell you a story. The story was this. She had two children. Wasn't his. That's bad enough, and she goes to the street. We call it different things today. In the old days, we'd say she was a whore. Today, a prostitute, a streetwalker, whatever. Every man in that little village, now I've lived in the village life, and I know what I'm talking about. You live in a village, everybody knows your business before you know your business. and everybody in the village knew who she was and knew who he was. I don't know how many men, I don't know how often, I don't know anything about that, but I know she gets away, and she gets away from Hosea, and what a life. I think as Hosea walked down the street, somebody say, do you know who that man is? I don't believe I know him. Gomer's husband. Oh, is he? Is he still her husband? Yeah. They haven't divorced? No. Lord have mercy. What kind of man is that? Terrible thing. How would you react to that? How would you handle that? You're a man. and your wife is doing that, or your wife and your husband's doing that. And you would say, now wait a minute, I loved them, but I can't put up with this. I'm just not going to put up with it. And she goes to the depths. She loses everything. She don't have anything left. And her lovers don't love her anymore. I don't know if she's ugly, She's worn out. Nobody wants her and they put her on the auction block. Somebody gonna buy it. They put her on the auction block. Somebody bids whatever. Somebody else bids. Then she hears a voice. Make a bid. She said, I believe I know it. I believe I know who that is. Somebody else made a bid, that familiar voice made another bid. You say, how much did he pay for? Well, you didn't read it in the scripture. But he paid the ultimate price. More than anybody else. for a whore that had degraded his name, that had drug his name through the mud. Glory to God. Takes you to the foot of Calvary. What did the Lord do? He paid the ultimate price for a low-down, dirty, good-for-nothing sinner like me and you. Oh, you say he's talking to Israel. Yeah, he's talking to Israel, but he's giving us his heart. This story is not about Gomer and Hosea. The story is about the love of God for a nation and the love of God for people. Amazes me today we say we love. God says, by this shall all men know you're my disciples, in that you have love one for another. you don't believe, you think the people love you, you do something that's not exactly according to the whole to them, they'll call you every name in the book. And by the way, we're good at talking about getting people saved, but we're not very good at talking about restoring people. The Bible says, if your man erreth, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one, considering yourself lest you fall into it. And I can tell you the story of Hosea and Gomer could be written throughout America today. And nobody else may have loved Gomer. They used her. They burned her out. But they didn't love her. But there's one that loved her. If you think the world loves you, my dear friend, Man, you way out in left field. The world don't love you. They wanna use you. They wanna destroy you. And when they're finished with you, you go on the auction block. And who's gonna care for you? Now, I hadn't even read the scripture. How many of you can read? Read it yourself. He gets her. I don't know. Come on, Gomer. He says, Gomer, we're going home. You ain't going to be like that again, you're mine. You're mine. I said this in Wills, I said he took her and had her fixed up. I was talking about doing her hair and new dress and stuff. I found out in Wills when you said fixed up, you meant spayed her noodle. So what I'm going to say is he put her new dress, give her a new hairdo, and I can see him walking down the street and some old man over here would say, hey, that's Gomer. Hey, Gomer. Me and you could have a good old time. I'm going to say, not on your life. Not on your life. You want to use me. You want to abuse me. But he loves me. And I'm for his. And he says, you're mine, mine, mine for many, many days. Yes. Hallelujah. Thank God. Thank you. Thank God for the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. No, no, no. I'm saved by the grace of God, but I ain't all that good. Oh yeah, I get in things. The thing is, we don't like to admit it, but we blow it about every day of our life. We don't want anybody to know it because if they find out, they're gonna quit loving us. They're gonna set us on the shelf and say, do you realize what he did? Yeah, I know what I did. And I know he has absolutely no reason whatsoever to love me. But he paid the price. And he walks with me. He talks with me. And he tells me I am his own. Do I want to go back to the world? God forbid. Do I want to disgrace his name? God forbid. Can I do it? Might I do it? Sure. But I can't forget his love. Oh, they didn't love me. Fifth of July this year, me and my wife been married 59 years. She has been truly blessed. She's not doing all that well. She forgets a lot. She's even forgot most of her grandchildren's name. But I'll go in. I say, you know me, you Edwin G. Moore, Jr., and I love you. Lord, do you know who I am? You Edwin G. Moore, Jr., and I love you with all that's in my heart. That's a little story, isn't it? Let me ask you this now, and I'm not asking if you're saved. I'm not asking if you love me. Makes a little difference. I hope you do. I hope you think I'm a good preacher. If you don't, I'll give you a dollar to lie to me and tell me you do. But I'm not asking you those questions. I've been challenged. You've been challenged with the messages this week. You ought to have been here this morning and heard Josh. What a preacher he is. I'm asking you, do you love the Lord? And I think if you love him, you ought to live for him. And every once in a while, you ought to just say, Lord, I love you, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. I love you with the depths of my heart. And if I have one message to leave with you tonight, I think I love you. I think I love him. But more than that, My friend, I know he loves you. Hit it there, brother.