Wow, that was good. That was really good. Ever since I've started using hearing aids, I realized how important it is to be able to actually hear the words, you know, because sometimes I don't. And you all know that, right? But, you know, when she sings, I can really understand what she's singing. And that's a blessing to me. Hosea, the book of Hosea in the Old Testament. Hosea chapter 14, that's where we're going to start. Hosea chapter 14. It's a privilege to be able to speak today. I'm hoping that I don't go into one of my coughing fits that's the leftover of this crud that's going around. So if I do, I'm just going to grab the water down here and disappear somewhere and cough a little bit, then I'll come back and we'll finish up. But you all can cough as much as you want. I don't, it doesn't really bother me that much, okay? Because everybody's doing it now. So that's pretty good. Hosea chapter 14, verse 1, O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord. Say unto him, take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously. So will we render the calves of our lips. Calves there meaning like a sacrifice, OK? Sacrifice of our lips. Asher shall not save us, we will not ride upon horses, neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, ye are our gods, for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy. This is what God answers and what God says when we ask and when we return. He says, I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away from me. Dear Lord, I do pray you'll help me to do right by the passage in front of us, by the entire book in front of us here, so that we can understand some of the principles of God and the great love that you bear towards us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. When I was graduating from Bible College, in our final month before we walked, they gave us an exam. This was, I don't know exactly what they called it, graduate record exam or something, I don't know what it was. But it was like how much did you really learn type of an exam. And they were going to ask a whole bunch of questions. Now, if you had taken it in like elementary education, the questions would be about L. Ed. But like if you had taken it in Bible like I had, all the questions were Bible questions. And I remember one question in particular that I missed and it was this question. Who is the weeping prophet of Israel? And I answered, I thought, oh, I got this one. I answered it as Jeremiah. And that was wrong, okay? Jeremiah is the weeping prophet of Judah. The weeping prophet of Israel is Hosea, okay? Most people don't know that. I didn't know it. I went through four years of school there and didn't know it. OK. Now, you know it. OK. So, if we give you that test and that's one of the questions, then you've heard it here and you better get it right. OK. But, you know, we ought to do this. Don't you think we ought to do this? Don't you think we ought to give this kind of an exam at the end of four years? No? Yes? OK. Let's get a few more yeses here. Anymore? No? I see some more nos. Yes? OK. Some of you are like, no. We're going to do it anyway. Did you hear that? That's what he said. Today I am talking about Hosea. And the reason why he would be known as the weeping prophet of Israel, Israel here referring to the 10 northern tribes that, you know, Samaria was the capital. They had their own kingdom there separate from the kingdom of Judah, which was in the south around Jerusalem. But the reason why he was known as that is because he really had a hard job. And it was a very hard time for him to be a prophet to those people. And therefore, it did affect him and it affected him in the matter of being a weeping prophet. And that's not necessarily what I'm trying to say, but I'm trying to kind of set it up here to tell you that Hosea was one that really needed to know the mind and heart of God in order to be able to do anything for God. He really had to experience the love of God himself and he had to understand the love of God or he would never ever have been able to minister to the people that he ministered to during his lifespan. Now, therefore, the basic subject that I'm talking about today, the general subject that we're talking about is the love of God. But specifically, what I would like to bring forward here is how God prepared the prophet Hosea to know and feel and respond to his people with the love of God. The book kind of divides into three different sections. You have section number one would be chapter one through chapter three. And if I can just call that the preparation of the prophet of God. And then chapter four up through chapter 13 is the preaching of the prophet of God. And then chapter 14, what we just read a little bit of there, would be the plea of the prophet of God. Now, I know that makes a nice alliterated outline of the book, but I'm not really gonna deal so much with the middle section there as I'm gonna deal with that first one. Because see, God had to work in the life of Hosea before he could use him to preach. God had to show him exactly what it meant to love as God loves before he could ever have a ministry with anybody. And I think that's an important lesson for all of us to learn. It's one thing for us to go to Bible college and to graduate and to think that we're now somehow prepared to minister for the Lord just because we have some knowledge. But unless we know the heart and mind of God himself, to where we feel what he feels for mankind. We're just going to go out and just make some motions. We're just going to go out and be professional. We're going to do a few things because we're supposed to do them. But as far as really knowing the mind and heart of God and really having God work through us, there needs to be the preparation of heart as well as the preparation of knowledge. And that's what I'm going to take the time to look at Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 primarily on that. Now, let me give you a little bit of background. So with that, would you turn? It says, the word of the Lord that came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, I guess that's how you say it, 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. OK. This tells us exactly when he lived. and the type of ministry that he would have. It is a parallel passage to a couple of other prophets of God that lived at the same time. One would be Isaiah, and the other would be Micah, and there would be some others besides. But these men lived all at the same time. Isaiah worked primarily in Judea, in the kingdom of Judah, but now this man, Hosea, worked in Israel. And there are similarities before the two, but there are also differences. The condition of the nation of Israel in the north at this particular time was very desperate. A lot of bad things had happened. It mentions here about Jeremiah, the son of Joash, king of Israel. Well, I guess you would say he's the last strong king of the northern 10 tribes. He was king for 41 years. And during his time, there had been somewhat of an economic and a military revival, even though he himself was a godless man. There was a prophet at that time that worked during the time of Jeroboam II. And that would be a prophet that you know very well. His name was Jonah. And Jonah worked alongside of Jeroboam II that you have mentioned here. But when Jeroboam died, he left his son whose name was Zechariah in charge. And six months after he became king, he was assassinated. A military man by the name of Shalem assassinated him and was king for one month. And then he himself was assassinated. Then you had another military-type person that came on by the name of Menahem, and he kind of kept control there for a while, 10 years, had his son take over after him. He lasted only two years and was out. And then you had a very upsetting time that hit, and that was during the reign of Pekah. And Pekah was the king there in the north, but he became a confederate with the king of Syria, whose name was Reason. You always see these two guys together, Reason and Pica, Reason and Pica, Pica and Reason, as you read different parts in the Old Testament there. Now, what was going on at that time was that the Assyrian Empire was on the rise and I got a cough. There. And I realized the first time I coughed that I coughed down into the microphone and that's not good. OK. So, we got that one taken care of. OK. But this stuff is really bad. I just don't get it, okay? Okay, so it's just don't get sick if you can't help it. But anyway, going on from there, you had, I know these are just names and I know it's probably confusing to you a little bit, but you'll see where I'm going with this in just a moment. Okay, up in Assyria, you had this really, really strong guy. His name was Tiglath Pileser III, okay? Just Tiglath, call him Tig, whatever you want to call him. But anyway, the Bible sometimes refers to him as Pul because he'd like to take the title of the king of Babylon as well. And in Babylon, he was known as Pulu. But we usually refer to him by his Assyrian name, which is Tiglath-Pileser. Okay, but anyway, I mean, he was so busy conquering other people and taking over and actually forming quite a large empire that everybody in the whole area was very scared of him and for good reason. The Assyrians were now dominating the area like they had before and like they would again. They were now doing that. So then Reza and Pekka, they kind of got together and they said, You know, if we make a unified front, we're going to be able to stand up against Tiglath and the Assyrians. And they looked to the south of them, because one was in Syria, and the other one was in Israel. And they looked to the south of Judah, and there was a king there. And the king was Ahaz. Ahaz was a wicked man. You know, Uzziah and Jotham, they were OK. But, you know, Ahaz was a really bad guy. He did not love the Lord. He was an idolater. He would offer his children in sacrifice to idols. He was not a nice man at all. was king there in Jerusalem. And these two guys came to him. I'm trying to shorten it up as much as I can. Peek on reason and says, hey, join us. We're going to stand up against Tiglath. And he said, no way. He said, I know what's going to happen. Tiglath beats everybody. And so if I support you, you guys are going to get beaten and then I'm going to get beaten too. And said, so I'm not joining your coalition to go up against Tiglath. Well, when that happened, then Rezan and Pekah, they said, what? You're not going to do that? OK, we're coming after you then. And they turned around and they attacked against Judah. So now you have Syria and Israel. In order to get Ahaz off the throne, they are attacking Judah so that they can make a unified front against Tiglat, you got it? Okay, so far, so good. I think you're all still with me. But anyway, so what happened was when they attacked, oh man, it was horrible. I mean, it was a horrific civil war, if you want to put it down to that. Can you imagine this happening? 120,000 men, soldiers, died in a single day of battle. Now, let that sink in a little bit. 120,000 dying in a single day. Now, I know that Battle of Gettysburg was a pretty bloody battle. What was it, 30,000 then? I mean, I don't even know how many. And we could keep going and talking about it, but 120,000 people dying in a single day is a lot. On top of that, as a result of that, 200,000 of the people of Judah were made slaves and were going to be sold into slavery in order to offset the cost of the war. I could talk more about that. It's not my point really. But the point I'm trying to make is that it was upsetting time. And only thing it did was to weaken Reason and Pekah to the point that Tiglath-Pileser was able to walk in and do whatever he pretty well wanted to do. And so you had all the upset that occurred with all of that. Now, it wasn't long after that that you had, you know, Tiglath was off the scene and you had Shalmaneser was the next guy and the Assyrians had taken over so much by that time that they were able to take over even Samaria, the capital itself, and basically besieged it, killed a lot more people and things were just on the way to being just a big mess. That's really what I'm trying to get to in all that story is that it was a big mess. You don't have 120,000 people be killed in battle and a whole bunch of people being displaced from their home and moving this way and that way and then an invasion of a foreign power that didn't care whether you lived or died. They're going to rape. They're going to pillage. They're going to take everything. The economy would be absolutely down to nothing. People would be doing all kinds of crazy things just to survive. Most of them already were idolaters, so it just increased their idolatry as they were seeking after the Baals and the other gods that were there. I mean, conditions when Hosea came on the scene were a mess, and that's what I'm trying to get across to you. They were a mess. How would you like to be called to be the prophet of God to a bunch of people like that? I mean, it would not be an easy thing for you to do. Okay, now that sort of is the background of all of this. So let me cut right on into the main point of what I'm trying to say here. In chapter one, chapter two, and chapter three, it seems like a strange thing is occurring here. That God is telling Hosea to do something that is very weird, if I can put it like that. In chapter 1 verse 1 we read verse 2 says, The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms. For the land hath committed great whoredom departing from the Lord. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Debalaim, which conceived, and bare him a son. And the Lord said unto him, Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. Now, this is just at the beginning of this, and I don't know about you, but first time I ever read this, I thought, really? God told him to take this woman who is a wife of whoredoms and to marry her? What is this? And it really didn't make a lot of sense to me. But I've been thinking a lot of it here lately and really getting into it. And here's what I think. OK, and I'll be able to explain a lot of things here. But here's what I think. I think what's occurring here in chapter 1 and chapter 2 and chapter 3, that God is saying to Hosea, Hosea, I'm going to use you to minister to these people. I'm going to use you to tell them that they can turn back to God. But for you to be able to minister to these kind of people, you're going to have to know the love that I have, the great love of God, and you're going to have to experience what I'm experienced whenever I love somebody. Because you see, whenever God loves us, is it not true that he's loving people that are sinners, people that are children of whoredom? Not exactly, but you know what I'm saying? It's like when God commendeth his love towards us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. God so loved the world, the world in all of its sin. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You see, God already loves us with a very unique love and he was going to have Hosea experience in his own personal life that same kind of love by virtue of this relationship he had with this woman by the name of Gomer. Now, follow me very carefully here so you can see how this develops as it goes through these three chapters. The first thing I would have you see here is the beginning of his love. The beginning of his love for who? The beginning of his love for Gomer. And the parallel here is gonna be between the love of God for Israel and the love of Hosea for his wife, Comer. These two are going to be intermeshed and side by side all the way through these three chapters. It says there in chapter one, verse two and verse three again, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea and the Lord said unto Hosea, go take unto thee a wife of Hortums and children of Hortums. At that time, that's what Israel was. Israel was a land of whoredoms. You had the worship of all of these many idols. The thing you need to know is that when they worshipped those idols, they did it with all kinds of sexual, crazy, parties, orgies, whatever you want to call them. It was a very debauched, very depraved things that they did. And they did this in the name of getting the blessings of their fertility gods that they were seeking for the blessings to come. She was a woman of her times. She was an Israeli woman. It does not necessarily mean that she was a bad woman, but she was a woman of her time. It does not mean that she already was a woman of whoredom at the time when he married her. It just meant that that's what she was from. She was from that particular group. You see, somebody like Hosea, who would have been a young man that's trying to serve God and wanted to be God's servant, he would probably have a very hard time finding a good girl in Israel. It's not going to be an easy thing. And so I can just imagine he had said to himself, then I won't get married. OK. Some of you say that to yourself sometime. And you just say, you know, I don't think I'm going to get married. You know, there's nobody decent around here. Well, I'm going to tell you, you should lift up your eyes and look from the field so they are white all ready to harvest. OK. But the thing I'm saying here is that, I mean, this guy really had a kind of a hard way to go. And so God directed him. to go on ahead and marry her. And may I say that the indication would be here that it probably was pretty good right at the beginning, because they had a child. And the child's name, and there's a certain way that you have children. And there was this child born, and they named him Jezreel. And Jezreel is a good name. I mean, it meant God scatters, not scatters like trying to just make a mess of things, but rather it had to do with the fact that there would be fruitfulness, like scattering of seed, broadcasting of seed like that. The Valley of Jezreel was called the Valley of Jezreel because it was a very fruitful valley and a place where if you scattered the grain and you planted the grain, there could be a good harvest that would come. This was a good name for a boy. This was a good name that indicated that their marriage was a good marriage and things were going along very well. And so that was the beginning of the love that they had. And in order to marry Gomer, Hosea would have had to do the first thing that you do whenever you demonstrate true love. Love, the real thing, is a choice. It's not just a warm fuzzy feeling because she was in front of you in the lunch line in the cafeteria and turned around and said hi. That's not what it was. It was a choice. He chose Gomer and he tried to make a life with her. The second thing I'd have you see here as you go on down is not just the beginning of his love, but the breaking of his heart. And this is where you start seeing and understanding more of God's heart. God has chosen to love us. God has chosen mankind to have a relationship with us. But we have broken his heart. And Hosea's heart was broken because of what Gomer did. Now, it tells us as it goes on down here in verse six, and she conceived again and bear a daughter. And God said unto him, call her name, Ro-lo-ru-hama. For I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle. nor by horses, nor by horsemen. And it says there that she had a baby. And the baby's name, the second baby's name means not pitied, not having received mercy, not wanted. You see, this child was not wanted by her mother. That's why God said the name like this. There's prophetic meaning, I understand that. But this child was not wanted. You read on down to verse eight. Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bare a son. Then said God, call his name Lo-Ami, for ye are not my people and I will not be your God. And without reading the rest of the passage here, let me just stop and say, the meaning of this child's name is basically meaning not mine. In the case of Hosea, it wasn't his child. OK? Now, what this indicates is that in the relationship between Gomer and Hosea, there had come a change. And that change was that Gomer was starting to look outside of the marriage for satisfaction, both emotionally and economically and other ways. Look, like I said, these were hard times. These were times in which people did not have money. There had been destruction. There had been all kinds of poverty. There had been famine. And as she, as a mother, looked around, she would have seen all the destruction that is there, and she thought to herself, I don't want to live like this. I don't want to live in poverty. I don't want to live in this kind of trouble. And for whatever reason, she turned away from her husband, and she started going towards these others. I imagine that the second child was Hosea's child, but she didn't really want it. And the third child was not his child at all. And it just was within just a little bit of time there that the whole thing just broke up. She left the home and went a different direction. You see, it broke his heart. I mean, can you imagine? It broke his heart to be told that these children, that last child is not his own. It broke his heart. It breaks God's heart when we walk away from him. It breaks God's heart when he sees the way the world is acting now and doing craziness and going off in all different directions and refusing to acknowledge him as the one that loves us and cares for us so very much. Hosea still did love his wife, but she was breaking his heart. Love is not just a choice. Love is an exercise of endurance. You say, what? Yeah. All right, right now, you are young people. You're in Bible college. Relationships between boy and girl are exciting, interesting, fun. Many of you are getting married here within the year. I'm looking at the calendar in May and June, and it's like packed. with all of these weddings and things that are going on. That's wonderful, it's great. But I've been married a while and I've been a pastor for a while and I've seen and I've experienced and I know that marriage is something that has to be worked on every day. That pressures come, temptations come, failures come, people do stupid things in their marriages It is possible that all these beautiful, beautiful hopes that you have may someday be dashed, just like they were in the breaking of this man's heart. There was a young couple that my wife and I knew when we were first married. No names, no places, but we knew them very well. We shared a house. We rented an apartment upstairs. They rented the rest of the house downstairs. So we knew them very well. And they had a baby. The baby that was born had some issues. I think it might have been autism. It might have been something else. It's hard to tell. And the wife in that relationship became very emotional about the fact that she did not have the perfect child born to her. and it affected the marriage. And there was, they went along, they would have their problems, they would try to talk it out, they would do this and do that, but still there were problems that were there. And then she went back to work. And when she went back to work, then there was this man at work that made her feel good about herself. And one of these at work type of affairs began, an emotional affair to start out. And then it ended up being a full, you know, a complete affair that was out there. And it was causing additional strains on that marriage. And about that time, then we moved away from the area. But then after a few months, we heard the news. The news was that that couple, the having an affair couple, so it would be this, our friend's wife and the guy that she's with, they hatched a plan to kill him, hatched a plan to kill her husband and paid for somebody to come and kill him. And it got discovered by the police and it was a sting. And the thing just went down and then she was arrested, he was arrested for attempted murder and she went to jail. And I mean, you talk about something breaking a man's heart, that broke his heart. And I thought, oh Lord, what is he ever going to do? What is she ever going to do? He's got that baby to raise. He's lost his wife. I mean, she got 30 years. I mean, it was horrible. I thought, Lord, Lord, can anything possibly good come out of this? But then after a while, I heard that he stayed by her. He didn't abandon her. He stayed in there. And that brings me to the third point, and that's the beauty of his passion. The breaking of his heart led him even with his feeling of rejection and everything, to nevertheless not turn his back on his wife. And God does not turn his back on us. That's what I want you to see here more than anything else. That is the love of God. He does not turn his back on us. He still stands there with his arms stretched out, ready to receive us back unto himself. And Hosea ended up, by the grace of God, being in that same type of a position. In chapter two, as you get into chapter two, and in verse 14, and I know that I'm skipping over some of this here, and I have to for the sake of time, but it says in chapter 14, Okay, back in chapter 2 verse 1 to 13, it describes all the things that she did, how the gomer had gone after this one and that one, this lover and that lover and did it for the corn and the wine and the silver and the gold and all of this and how that there was the idolatry part of it and the like. And I'm not going to take the time to look at that, but what I'm wanting you to see in verse 14 of chapter 2, what are you going to do about that? Therefore, behold, I will what? Allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her her vineyards from thins, and a valley of acor for a door of hope. And she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi, meaning my husband, and shall call me no more Ba'ali, which means my master. For I will take away the names of the Balaam out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name. And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beast of the field and with the fowls of the heaven, with the creeping things of the ground. And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me forever. Yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord, and it shall come to pass in that day that I will hear, saith the Lord, I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth, and the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel, and I will sow her unto me in the earth, and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy, and I will say unto them which are not my people, thou art my people and they shall say thou art my God. I know this is looking somewhat at what God is feeling and what God is planning and hoping and doing, but it also parallels exactly what was going on in Hosea. Hosea, even though he had lost his wife as she had gone into this life of chasing after other men and chasing after her lovers and going for the money and abandoning her family and doing all of that, nonetheless, Hosea continued to love his wife. And God continues to love us. Notice some of the ideas that are in this passage. The fact that he allured her, then he comforted her, Then he sustained her and restored her to the point that she could even sing again like she'd never sung for a long time. That she could be accepted and betrothed and flat out blessed. The beauty of the passion of the Lord. The beauty of the passion of the man that God was making into a prophet that would understand the love of God. He was learning it by learning how to deal with Hosea, with Gomer, I mean. I can just imagine during those days that when Gomer was acting so crazy, how many times did Hosea go after her and say, come on back, don't do this. It's okay. And she refused. How many times it says that he provided the things that she needed, probably without her knowing. He made sure that she was taken care of, even while she was sinning. And yet, you know, come on back, come on back. How often would he have done that? Trying to allure her, trying to comfort her and sustain her and to bring her back into restoration. But she would not. She just kept on going deeper and deeper and deeper. You see, true love not only is a choice, and true love is not only an exercise of endurance, but true love is also a strong commitment to acceptance. This is my wife. I made a pledge to God for better or for worse, for rich or for poor. I will stand by this woman till death do us part. That was the mindset that Hosea had. My friend that I just told, I gave you the story about there, did he do that? Yes, he did. I cannot imagine what the first meeting was like when he visited the prison and had that opportunity to meet his wife face to face after she had tried to kill him. I cannot imagine what that was like. But I do know this. He allured her, and he comforted her, and he sustained her, and he restored her. He accepted her. He betrothed her to himself again, and he blessed her. Say, how do you know that? A few years ago, I got thinking about them, and I thought, you know, I'm going to look them up on the internet. I found them. They were on a vacation on a boat out of Florida, the two of them. She was out of prison. They were starting all over again. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? He went by his vows. Even when it was hard, he stayed by his vows and he won her back. Our God has made a vow that he will love us. He is love itself. He stands ready to save us. Man, this has nothing to do with a Calvinistic approach to the Bible, does it? He is going to love to the uttermost, which brings me to the fourth point, the buying back of his bride. That's chapter three, a lot of us know chapter three in the book of Hosea. Then said the Lord unto me, go yet, love a woman, be loved of her friend, that would be Hosea, get an adulteress according to the love of the Lord towards the children of Israel who look to other gods and love Phlegons of wine. So I bought her to me for 15 pieces of silver and for an omer of barley and a half omer of barley. And I said unto her, thou shalt abide for me many days, thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man, so will I also be for thee. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, without an ephod, and without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. and shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days. God said to him, okay, now it's time for you, Hosea, to go buy her back. You see, she had gotten so low that she had, nobody wanted her, she had become a slave. in order to pay off her debts and stuff. She had been sold and she was now a slave and not a very good one at that. The price that he paid was the lowest price for a slave in those days. She was on the auction block and she wasn't worth anything in the eyes of the world. But in the eyes of her husband, this was his opportunity to get her back to himself. And so he sacrificed. Yes, he sacrificed. Do you think that Hosea had a lot of money that he could just arbitrarily go down there and pop up and, you know, throw some money there and say, I'll buy her? He probably had, because of the way the times were, he probably had to sacrifice much just to pull together the little bit of grain and the little bit of money to be able to pay for her at all. It was a sacrifice of his reputation. It was a sacrifice of his person. People thought he was crazy for doing such a thing as that. Who would want her after all? But because of the great love that he still bared towards her, Hosea stepped forward and he loved his wife enough to purchase her, to buy her back. And don't you know that's exactly what our God has done? When the Lord Jesus Christ came and he shed his blood on that cross, he sacrificed himself in the ultimate demonstration of his love in order to buy us back. He paid the price of our salvation. You see, true love not only is a choice, Not only is something that demonstrates itself with endurance, not only is based upon acceptance, but true love at its very heart of heart is sacrifice. Sacrifice. That is the love of God. Okay, now so if I can put it all together for you here, don't you see that these first three chapters, I know there are things prophetic in them, but I also know that what God was doing in the case of Hosea, he was building into Hosea an understanding of the very mind of God himself. This is how I love Hosea. I love like this. Now you can preach. And he goes on ahead in chapter 4 and says things like, hear the word of the Lord, ye children of Israel, for the Lord hath a controversy with you. He goes on and says about how his people are destroyed, how his people have taken counsel all the way. Hear you this, hear, come, let us return, chapter 6, unto the Lord. For he hath torn, but he will heal us. He could preach now because he knew the heart and mind of God. This brings me to application. And so I will make application now. Okay. Application number one is regarding love itself in general and for you. If you will take it to heart, you that are beginning a relationship, and you're going to have to work on this relationship for a long time, it's not all warm, fuzzy feelings. It's not all just, you know, she smiles nice, she smells nice, she thinks I'm the greatest thing ever walked on the face of the earth. My ego is so built up every time I'm with her. I think I'll marry this girl and it'll be happy, happy, joy, joy, happy, happy, joy the rest of my life. Gotta work at it. Marriage has to be worked at. Love has to be worked at. Application number two. Many of you at this particular time in your life are looking forward to a ministry. Some of you, when you get out, are going to be looking at particular positions that might be open to you. You might think to yourself, well, this is what I have in mind. I would like to have, and I would like to do. See, I'm not even going to name any of them. Okay, I'm hoping that there'll be enough money that we can do, and that my wife will have, and many of the girls are probably thinking to themselves too, you know, I hope this guy I'm marrying that he'll be able to give me, you know, like that. Okay, and we can talk whatever we want to about that. But anyway, when you get out into the ministry, you find out that there's a lot of hurting people out there. And what they need is not a professionally trained graduate from Bible college, which is a good thing to get training. But what they need more than anything else is somebody to come in and love them like God loves them. That's what they need. My third application would be in chapter 14. And this is an individual application for each one of us. Oh, Israel, put your own name in there. Return unto the Lord thy God, for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. There is not a single one of us in this room that hasn't failed God. We have. We have fallen. What do you do about that? Sometimes people get the idea they can't come back to God. Oh, I've blown it so bad. I'm such a mess. He will not accept me. No, no, no, no. God will accept you. So the invitation is, take with you words. Don't take anything else. Just take with you words. Well, don't I need to do this or don't I need to do that? No. Take with you words and turn unto the Lord. Say unto him, Lord, please take away all iniquity and receive us graciously. I'll serve you. What does he say back to you? Verse 4. I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely. That's what he would say. Now you take that and apply it to your own heart. Been in the pastor long enough to know sometimes a person will say, man, you know, pastor, I thought I got this thing right, but then I turned right around and did it again. And I asked God to forgive me, and then I turned around and I did it again. I just kind of gave up. How many times can you turn to God? How many times can you ask Him to forgive you that He will not forgive you? How many times can you take words and say, Lord, please forgive me? I mean, is there a limit? No, no limit. He will forgive and He will help you and He will restore you and He will build you when you come to Him. The message today is multifaceted, I understand. It's what I had to preach, I couldn't get away from it. What I'm trying to say to you is let God love through us the people that he puts in our lives, be it in our family or in our ministry, and also let God love you. because the love of God is vast. Dear Lord, please take this and use it as you see fit in our lives. In Jesus' name.