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Let me tell you a story. It's not a fairy tale. It's a
true story. It's the story of a preacher. A preacher who ministered in a
land very much like ours. His nation had military might,
political influence, and economic stability. But also, like our
land, his people had turned from the God who had showered those
blessings upon that land. This preacher was well known.
He established a long-lived nationwide ministry. During his tours about
that land, he met a young woman. She was not really what you would
call the religious type. She was from a very poor family.
It was obvious she was willing to do whatever it took to get
ahead, even if that meant compromising her morals. But as the preacher
got to know her, he felt very definitely directed by God to
marry her. I can't explain it or excuse
it, but there it is. He gave his new bride everything
she ever desired, all the things that she had never had, and she
in return gave him three beautiful children, a son, and then a daughter,
and then another son. They seemed to be the perfect
family. Then one day, his wife, the mother of his children, just
up and walked out. She'd found a boyfriend and she
was shacking up with him over the next few months and years.
She was with various other men. Of course, the preacher's life
was shattered. His marriage was over. I ask
you, can you imagine how he felt? Can you feel what was in his
heart? It's important that you feel
with this preacher this morning, for I have just told you the
story of Hosea. Hosea is one of the minor prophets
in the Old Testament. We call them minor prophets not
because they are less important than the major prophets like
Isaiah and Jeremiah, but simply because their books are shorter.
Hosea lived near the end of the kingdom period, during the reign
of Jeroboam II, king of Israel, during the golden age of the
northern kingdom. Probably most of you don't realize
this, but just 30 short years before its demise, before the
northern kingdom was carried off into captivity, They were
a political power to be reckoned with. They reigned over almost
all the land that David had reigned over and Solomon had reigned
over during their reigns. Israel was a very strong and
powerful nation at this point. Her fortress capital, Samaria,
was lavishly decorated with imported ivory. And because of the political
situation, the people of Israel knew almost unparalleled prosperity. Does any of this ring a bell?
What nation does this sound like? But the nation was rotten within.
She had turned her back on the God who had given her all these
blessings. The Israelites at that time were worshipping the
Baals. In fact, the worship of the golden
calf at Bethel, which was originally supposed to have imitated the
worship of Jehovah, had degenerated to the point where it really
was very little different than the worship of Baal. And in the midst of all this
prosperity and all this apostasy, God called Hosea. We don't know very much about
Hosea personally, but his ministry was unique. It was different
than any other prophets because he simply did not preach his
message. He lived that message out before
the Israelites. Let's read the first three verses
of this book, Hosea chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. If you can find it, it's tucked
just after the book of Daniel. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel,
Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah. So, find that. It's the first
of the minor prophets immediately after the book of Daniel. Beginning
in verse 1, Hosea 1 and verse 1, the word of the Lord that
came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham,
Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam,
the son of Joash, king of Israel. When the Lord began to speak
by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go Take yourself a wife of harlotry
and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great
harlotry by departing from the Lord. So he went and took Gomer,
the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a
son." See, I told you. It's a true story. God directed
Hosea to marry a wife of harlotry. That's what verse 2 says. Now,
it's easy to misunderstand God's command here. I do not believe
that God asked Hosea to marry a known harlot. The law of Moses
prohibited priests from marrying harlots, and it's probable that
the same regulation applied to all of God's spiritual leaders
in the Old Testament, including the prophets. Look closely at
verse 3. Excuse me, in verse two it says,
take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry. The same exact words are used
to describe his wife as used to describe his children. If
that phrase means a woman who actually practiced prostitution,
then the second phrase actually has to mean child prostitutes. And we have no evidence whatsoever
that this was the case. Rather, I think that phrase,
a wife of harlotry, describes the character of Gomer. She was a loose woman. She was
someone who would probably, sooner or later, commit adultery. And she would beget children
who had that same loose character. Now, why would God direct one
of His prophets to do such a thing, to marry a woman of such character? Think about what this meant to
Hosea. He knew what he was doing. He knew what the future held.
God told him, this is a wife of harlotry. Sooner or later,
she's going to commit adultery. I want you to pick that kind
of woman and marry her. God gave this direction The end
of verse 2 tells us, because the relationship between Hosea
and Gomer was to reflect the relationship between God and
Israel. Marriage, in its essence, is
a covenant relationship. And when God brought Israel out
of Egypt, they entered into a covenant relationship with God. They,
as it were, became His wife. There was, as it were, a wedding
ceremony there at the base of Mount Sinai. We find the wedding vows recorded
in Exodus chapter 24 and verse 3. And all the people answered
with one voice and said, all the words which the Lord has
said we will do. They entered into that covenant
relationship with God. So the relationship that Hosea
had with Gomer paralleled the relationship that God had with
Israel. Now get what that means, folks. That means up front, when God
chose Israel, He knew She would go into spiritual adultery. God knew up front that the nation
of Israel would be unfaithful. If you go back to the book of
Deuteronomy, you will find that God knew. He said, in the future,
this is what you're going to do, and when you do it, here's
how I'm going to respond. God knew up front. Yet he still
committed himself in love to the nation of Israel. Isn't that amazing? But there's a further parallel
here. I hope you see in your bulletin. I've tried to give
you a little chart there to try to graph out, to try to communicate
visually this parallel. There is a parallel for us as
New Testament Christians. Even though Hosea's message was
specifically aimed at the nation of Israel, there's an application
for us today because we also are in a covenant relationship. The church is called the Bride
of Christ time and again in the New Testament because we are
in a covenant relationship with Jesus Christ. He is our Bridegroom. We are the Bride. In the same sense in which Israel
belonged to God in the Old Testament, the church belongs to Jesus Christ
now. We have that same kind of covenant
love relationship. And get what this means, folks. Christ sets His love upon each
one of us knowing up front that from time to time, we're going
to be unfaithful. It's part of the deal. Because
God's love is a love that cannot be broken. That's what we're
going to discover as we work our way through this story. Now, the story of Hosea and Gomer
continues in chapter 2, if you'll turn over there with me. And let's read verses 2-5. Hosea
2, verses 2-5. Bring charges against your mother.
Bring charges, for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband. Let her put away her harlotries
from her sight and her adulteries from between her breasts, lest
I strip her naked and expose her as in the day she was born,
and make her like a wilderness, and set her in a dry land, and
slay her with thirst. I will not have mercy on her
children, for they are the children of harlotry. For their mother
has played the harlot. She who conceived them has behaved
shamefully. For she said, I will go after
my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my
linen, my oil and my drink. In these verses, God describes
shameless unfaithfulness. Shameless unfaithfulness. These
words apply to both Gomer and Israel. God was picturing the
sins of Israel in terms of the actions taken by Gomer after
several years of marriage. Chapter 1 tells us that she bore
Hosea three children. But then, true to her character,
she went after other lovers. And Hosea was hurt so deeply
that he cut off his relationship with her. Do you see what verse
2 says? She is not my wife, nor am I
her husband. Some interpreters actually believe
that Hosea at this point divorced her. One way or the other, Hosea did
not even regard Gomer as his wife anymore. As far as he was
concerned, the marriage was over. The relationship had been broken
by the actions that Gomer had taken. Now remember, Gomer's adulteries
picture the spiritual adultery that was going on in the nation
of Israel at that time. Verses 8 and 13 here in chapter
2, I'm not going to read them, specifically mention Baal worship. After all the blessings that
God had showered on Israel, Israel pursued other gods. Now I believe, and this is where
I want you to stick with me. You don't hear anything else
I say this morning. I believe God asked Hosea to
marry Gomer so that he could experience, right here, what it was like to watch his
wife commit adultery after adultery after adultery, so that he could
relate, not here, but here, to God's experience with the nation
of Israel. Usually in the midst of a sermon
like this, I ask you to think. But this morning, I ask you to
feel. Feel what it would be like to
know that your spouse was committing adultery openly with not a care
for what it did to you. How would you feel? I want you
to feel that. I want you to try to feel that. See, I believe God was engaged
here in trying to shock the nation of Israel. He told Hosea to do
what he did in order to shock that people. God wanted to shock that nation
as they beheld what was going on in this prophet's life. Can
you imagine what it would be like to see this happening in
the life of a preacher today? Wouldn't it shock you? That's
what God was trying to do. Trying to shock that nation.
Trying to get a hold of them. Trying to get them to feel what
He felt. Viscerally, right here. God didn't
just want Hosea to preach it. He wanted him to experience it. And He wanted everyone who saw
Him and everyone who knew Him to experience it along with Him. Just as each of us would be grieved
and wounded and angry and jealous if our spouse were to do such
a thing, that was God's response to Israel. And that's what He
was trying to communicate. You know, in the early church,
the theologians taught that God doesn't have emotion. You know, they said emotions
change all the time. And, well, God doesn't change,
so God must not have emotions. I don't buy that. I understand their logic, but
I can't agree with it. Because what is God trying to
communicate here? He is trying to communicate His heart. He's
trying to communicate His emotion. But again, what Hosea experienced
reaches even to us as New Testament believers. The Lord Jesus Christ would have
us feel His hurt His grieved heart, His jealousy, His anger
when we are unfaithful. When we allow someone or something
to take His place in our hearts. When we would rather serve some
other interest than serve Him. When we would rather please some
other person than please Him. When we would allow our business,
our job, our career to distract us from daily communion with
Him. When we prefer family or entertainment
to focusing on Him on the Lord's Day. And I could go on and on.
We don't bow down to Baal today, but we are just as capable of
spiritual adultery today as the Israelites were. And when we are unfaithful in
that way, When we lack the love that Christ
deserves, it raises these same emotions in His heart. That's
what this book is intended to convey to us. God complained against Israel
because He had rescued them from Egypt and given them the promised
land, and they still went after other gods. Don't you think Jesus
feels the same way? He looks down from heaven and
he says, I died for you. I paid the ultimate price to purchase
your salvation. How can you pursue others and forsake your bridegroom? I don't think there's one of
us here this morning that would think of committing adultery
in the literal sense against our marriage partners, but we
think so little of the heart of Jesus Christ that we're willing
to do that in our spiritual lives. We're willing to have competitors
for Jesus Christ in our priorities and where our hearts really lie. I've already indicated to you
Hosea's response to Gomer's harlotries. He wrote her off. In the words
of verse 2 here, he said, she's not my wife and I'm not her husband
anymore. I mean, really, there wasn't
much else that Hosea could do. But it's interesting, here, the
story of God and Israel departs a little bit from the parallel
with Gomer and Hosea. Hosea couldn't do anything more,
but God could. Almighty God says, I'm going
to reclaim this nation of Israel. And here in chapter 2, we see
the sovereign God use all of the resources at His disposal
to draw Israel back to Himself. This chapter indicates a three-fold
response of God. three chastening acts that God
took with regard to Israel. And I'm going to try to go through
these quickly. First of all, God disowned Israel. The statement
in verse 2 applies equally to God as it does to Hosea. He said to Israel, she's
not my wife and I am not her husband anymore. This fact gets interesting emphasis
in chapter 1. In chapter 1, God himself named
Hosea's children. And in particular, the name of
his second two children are interesting. Look back with me to chapter
1, verses 8 and 9. Now, when she had weaned Lo-Rehama,
And that is, those are literally the words, no mercy. I like actually the way one of
the other new versions, the English Standard Version, translates
this verse. It says, when she had weaned,
no mercy. That was the name of the child.
She conceived and bore a son. Then God said, call his name
Lo-Ammi, which means know my people, not my people. Call his
name not my people for you are not my people. I will not be
your God. God says I cut you off. I've heard some theologians say
God is a divorced person. Based on this passage. That God
divorced Israel at this point. He said, you're not my people
anymore. You're no longer my wife. I no longer have a covenant
relationship with you. Now you see in your bulletin,
you've got three parallels there. We have Hosea and Gomorrah. Hosea
wrote Gomorrah off. He said, you're not my wife anymore.
God wrote Israel off. He said, you're not my people
anymore. And I believe something similar happens between believers
and the Lord Jesus Christ and His Spirit today. Now listen
carefully or you're going to think I'm a heretic and you're
going to go out of here and say, Pastor Gerard, he's into heresy. When we persist in unfaithfulness
like Israel did, I believe that God's Spirit, who dwells within
every believer, withdraws from us the assurance that we belong
to Him. That we are eternally secure
in His love. Notice carefully what I said. When we backslide into sin and
we refuse to deal with that sin, when there is rebellion in our
hearts and we cherish that rebellion, when there are idols in our hearts
and we refuse to tear those idols down, we don't lose our salvation,
but we lose the assurance of our salvation. When we persist in unfaithfulness,
God withdraws that assurance that comes through His Spirit.
We begin to doubt that we belong to Him and we ought to. You hear
me? I don't believe that any person
can continue in willful rebellion to God and God continue to give
the comfort of His assurance to that soul. I didn't say he
withdraws his salvation. I said he withdraws his comfort
while that person persists in his sin. That comfort is gone. That assurance is not there.
The Holy Spirit no longer whispers, you are mine. And we have no longer the confidence
to go into God's presence crying, Abba, Father. Oh, listen, my friend. No Christian
can go into willful sin and enjoy it. Because his heart will doubt
that relationship. God will no longer whisper to
him, you are mine and I love you. There are times when I believe
that there are people who have so rebelled against God. They
belong to God. They're God's people. They're
saved individuals. But they have so rebelled against
God that they can't tell one way or the other whether they're
really saved because they refuse to repent of that sin. God made two more responses to
the nation of Israel, and they're outlined here in verses six through
nine of chapter two, Hosea 2, verses six through nine. Therefore,
behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns and wall her
in so that she cannot find her paths. She will chase her lovers,
but she will not overtake them. Yea, she will seek them, but
not find them. Then, she will say, I will go
and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me
than now. For she did not know that I gave her grain, new wine
and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared
for Baal. Therefore, I will return and
take away my grain in its time and my new wine in its season.
I will take back my wool and my linen given to cover her nakedness."
In the second place, what God did with Israel is He withdrew
her blessings. He withdrew her blessings. When
God's people mistake God's blessings, He withdraws them. Notice what God says to Israel
here. He said, You didn't realize it, but your prosperity came
from me. He said, I gave you your grain.
I gave you the wine. I gave you the oil. I multiplied
your silver and gold. Look what he says in verse 9.
My grain, my new wine, my wool, my linen. God says it all came
from me. But you thought it came from
Dale. And so you went after him. Do
you know anything about Baal? Do you know anything about Baal
worship? Baal was a fertility god. And the nations that surrounded
Israel convinced Israel that the harvests and the plenty that
they had had come from Baal and that they had better engage in
Baal worship if that was going to continue. God says, you've
got it all wrong. You're attributing this to an
idol. You're attributing this to a
false god. And so I'm going to withdraw those blessings from
you. Hosea teaches us the danger of
mistaking the blessings that Christ gives to us today. You see a person get saved, his
life has been in shambles, drunkard, drug addict. He gets saved and his life turns
around, or her life turns around. And good things begin to happen. There are blessings in the family.
Usually there's financial blessings. This person can now hold down
a job. And things begin to go right. And things begin to move
forward. And it's easy at that point, just like the nation of
Israel did, to say, well, you know, I'm doing a pretty good
job here. I guess I really do have some ability. I guess I
really am a good worker. I guess I really can make a good
way. And begin to set up idols in the heart instead of saying,
thank you, Lord. This is all from your hand. Folks, when we attribute things
to false gods, to idols in our hearts, God withdraws His blessings. God says, I'll teach you who
these came from. They came from Me. You need to be pursuing Me. I need to have the right place
in your heart. And then in the third place,
I like this. God hedged up her way. Verses
six and seven here in chapter two are some of the most amazing
verses in the Old Testament. God said, I'm going to hedge
you up. You want to pursue these false gods? He said, I'm going
to hedge you up so you'll never catch them. You know, I almost
see when I read these verses, I almost see a cartoon in my
mind. You know, it's like this. God puts a hedge that finally
comes and it meets. Can you imagine yourself running
between two hedges? And you keep running, you're pursuing those
false gods, and all of a sudden, what? You can't go any further.
God has hedged you in. There's no way to go. The only
way to go is what? Back. Back to the true God. That's what God says here. He
said, I'm going to hedge you in, Israel, so that you return
to me. Now, how did this literally happen with the nation of Israel?
I love this, boy. Think about the United States.
Think about the United States of America as I make these statements.
Israel was on top of the world politically at this point. She
had a strong army. She had a worldwide political
presence. She controlled territory that
was nearly as large as the territory that King David had controlled
and King Solomon. And within 30 years, she was
in captivity. Wow. God says, I will hedge you in. I will turn you around. And he did just that. Israel
went into captivity, and when she came out of captivity, folks,
she had been cured. You can say whatever you want
about the Jews. Since that day, they worship
only one God. God cared. God hedged in their
way. And they turned back. Now, folks, he does the same
thing with you and I. You set up an idol in your heart
and God will hedge you in. You know how he does that? Why do we worship idols? We worship idols today in the
sense that we give ourselves, we give our time and our effort
and our thoughts and our money to something because we think
we're going to get what back from it? We're going to get joy and peace
and contentment. And God says, I'm going to hedge
up your way. He said, you can put your money
in that, and you can put your time in that, and you can put
your thoughts in that, but I'm going to hedge up your way, and
you will not find that joy, and you will not find that peace,
and you will not find that contentment. We may chase other lovers, but
we will never again be satisfied until we return to the Lord.
You know, some of the most miserable people in the world are Christians
who are pursuing other lovers. Because they are on a path that's
been hedged up. And God is seeking to bring them
back to Himself. by hedging up their way. Now, it's natural to think that
the story ends here, but actually, when I began my message with
that little story that I told you about Hosea, I did not tell
you the end of the story. This story does have a good ending.
The ending is found in chapter three. Very short chapter, just three,
excuse me, just five verses. Quickly, I only have a few minutes,
let's read Hosea chapter 3 verses 1 through 5. Then the Lord said
to me, that is to Hosea, go again, love a woman who is loved by
a lover and is committing adultery. Just like the love of the Lord
for the children of Israel who look to other gods and love the
raisin cakes of the pagans. So I, this is Hosea, bought her,
Gomer, for myself for 15 shekels of silver and one and a half
homers of barley. And I said to her, You shall
stay with me many days. The idea there is indefinitely
from now on. You shall not play the harlot,
nor shall you have a man. So too will I be toward you. For the children of Israel shall
abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice
or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim, Afterward, the children
of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David
their king. They shall fear the Lord and
his goodness in the latter days. Finally, we have a story of unfailing
love, God's unfailing love. God directed Hosea to take his
wife back again, to love her again. So Hosea, it says here,
went and purchased her. And what's interesting is if
you add up the value between the cash and the foodstuffs,
the value was 30 shekels. 30 shekels was the price of a slave. I'm not sure of the significance
of this, but I wonder if at this point the idea isn't that Gomer
had actually sold herself into prostitution and Hosea went and bought her
back. The other idea that may be here is that he actually paid
a dowry for her again. He remarried her and so he paid
a dowry one more time. But in either case, the idea
was this time it's for keeps. This time I am purchasing you
back for myself and you will be faithful to me. That's the point of verse three.
Now again, God asked Hosea to take, I mean, can you imagine
being in Hosea's sandals? Can you imagine? God asked Hosea to take this
difficult step because it reflected his unfailing, unswerving, unchanging
love to Israel. God chastened Israel, yes, but
he did so to turn her back to him. God turned his back on Israel,
but not forever. In fact, there is a sense in
which these first three chapters of Hosea lay out for you and
I the entire program, God's entire program for the nation of Israel.
The first part of God's program for Israel, God brought her out
of Egypt. and married her at Mount Sinai.
There was a covenant relationship. And for a while, that covenant
relationship was what it should be. God blessed Israel and Israel
worshipped God. But there came a point during
the time of Hosea where God got so fed up with Israel following
other gods that He said, no more. And He forsook Israel. God distanced
himself. God divorced himself from her,
as it were. And I believe this speaks of
the current situation between God and Israel. We oftentimes
call Israel the people of God. Folks, I don't believe that. Not today. Not right now. I don't
think the nation of Israel has any more relationship to God
than the man on the moon. God says they're not my people.
I've written them off. What does verse 4 say? He said
there's going to be an extended period of time when there's not
going to be a king or a prince or sacrifice. There's not going
to be anything. Nothing of the former is going
to be during that period. But there's going to come a time
in the latter days, verse 5 says, when they are going to turn back
to God. And God, as it were, is going
to remarry Israel. And they are again going to become
His people. I believe that will happen at
the end of the Tribulation period when God establishes His Millennial
Kingdom. Then, according to verse 5, the
children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God.
They shall fear the Lord. You see how this lays out God's
program for Israel? It's beautiful. But God's love for Israel also
speaks of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ for the backslidden
Christian who might be here this morning. Why does the Lord chasten
you and I? Why does He hedge in our way?
Is He an ogre? No. He's an offended bridegroom who
wishes to bring his bride back to himself. See, God's love never fails. God is the God of the second
chance and the third chance and the fourth chance. There's someone here this morning
far from God, someone with idols set up in his heart, someone
who's rebelled, and God says, I'm the God of second chances. I want to purchase you back and
bring you again into my embrace. I don't know if you have found
this, but I have. I have found that when I have
strayed from God, when my spiritual life has begun to go into a decline,
and I find myself at a distance from God, God not only chastens
me, it's interesting, at the same time, He also draws me with
cords of love. I will find that at that time,
God often comes into my life and gives me extraordinary opportunities
for Him. It's an amazing thing. Not only
does God hedge in my way, but God comes to me and says, I want
you to come back into my blessedness. I want you to come back into
my embrace. And this morning, God says the
same thing to any believer here this morning. who has set up
an idol in his heart, who has rebelled and refused to seek
God's forgiveness, God offers you that second chance, that
third chance, that fourth chance to come back into His embrace.
Can I have every head bowed, please, and every eye closed? I don't have x-ray vision into
your hearts. I don't know what idols there
may be. I don't know if there are things in your life of which
God, the Lord Jesus Christ, might be jealous, have reason to be
jealous, because they take His place in your heart. Would you
take a few moments and would you just ask the Lord Jesus,
would you ask Him right now, are there things in my life of
which you're jealous? Are there things in my heart
that have displaced you? And would you in that silent
moment wait for His answer and then respond appropriately? Let's
take about 60 seconds. You pray and respond.
A Love that Will Not Falter
| Sermon ID | 810514332 |
| Duration | 43:23 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Hosea 1:1 |
| Language | English |
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