Well, it's great to have you here tonight. I hope that you've been blessed by our worship so far. We're going to worship a little bit more in singing after the service tonight. And we just want you to know this is our new callous service. We're trying some new things to engage and to reach the people of Santa Rosa Bible Church and the people of Santa Rosa. And we hope that this is a service that connects with you and that you are blessed and also that you are transformed by God as you come and worship on Sunday night. And throughout the next 12 weeks, we're going to be unpacking one of the strangest books in all of the Old Testament. It's the book of Hosea. And as you heard from the scripture passage tonight, it confronts us with a pretty awkward situation, if you will, right at the beginning of it. And our heart and our aim throughout the study of the book of Hosea is for us to see how even as God would confront us and show us our sin and show us our spiritual adultery, that he would also show us how great his love is and that we would see from his word a love that will not let us go. So that's our aim and our hope throughout this 12-week series through the book of Hosea. And we hope that you connect with us this way. You'll notice on the back of your bulletin, and I'll say a little bit more about this, there's some discussion questions. And we want to encourage you after the service throughout this week to plug into one of our catalyst groups. And there'll be a table right outside in the foyer after we're done tonight. They have some friendly people who are part of our Catalyst groups. They'll have information about when those are, where they meet, what times, all that great information. Come and plug in with the Catalyst group. Have a meal with some great people who love Jesus. Talk about Hosea together and get plugged in in that way. But let us get into Hosea tonight. We'll move through this text together. Marriage is one of the things that is very profound in our culture. It's highly valued and yet at the same time it isn't. It's something that's looked on with a special sacredness. And yet, by the way our culture treats marriage and the way that it responds to marriage, it doesn't. We're kind of schizophrenic, if you will, about the idea and the concept of marriage. In fact, that's why studies have said that young people, teens and people in their younger 20s have delayed marriage so much later in life than past generations. It's something that we just we don't get. It doesn't make sense to us anymore. It's sacred, it's holy, and yet it's not. You see this sacredness and this unsacredness in the midst of even politicians' lives these days. And I can't count, I started to count them. Untold numbers of politicians are bailing out on their marriages because of various things, sexual impropriety, all this sorts of adultery and that kind of thing. And as you read the news, you see it happening over and over and over again. Representatives like the guy in New York and other places, even our own former governor, it was revealed. Sexual immorality all over the place. And that's something that the public just doesn't tolerate, right? When we hear that kind of stuff, there's an outcry from the public that, hey, they should resign, they should quit, they should leave public office. It's that oddity of there's something sacred and yet something not sacred about marriage. What is it? We don't like adulterers, to be honest with you. And adultery in the public sphere, it just bothers us. It's something that we don't want to put up with. In fact, I don't know if you saw it this week. Pat Robertson on the 700 Club, talked about marriage in such a way that just, it broke my heart to say that, and he was talking about people, couples that one spouse has Alzheimer's, he was saying, you know, it's fine if they go ahead and make sure that that person gets cared for, but then divorce them and lead a different life with somebody else. He was advocating spiritual adultery. He was advocating marital adultery. And that's something we just, we don't wanna tolerate. We don't believe. What do you think about how God views marriage? And particularly, what if I was to tell you that God has a struggle with us over his marriage to us? That might be an interesting concept for you to say, wait a second, I'm married to God? If you call yourself a Christian tonight, you're part of what the Bible calls the bride of Christ, the people of God, his church. And God has some very serious things to say about spiritual adultery. He has some very stern and yet gracious things to say to us as people who would, on one hand, say that we love God and that we want to follow Him, and at the other hand, we would bail out on Him and abdicate our vows and live in a manner of spiritual adultery. Tonight, in Hosea chapter one, we want to unpack this idea of spiritual adultery and particularly the idea of what are the results of it? As you read through Hosea, you see in the first three chapters this very curious story of a family that God assembled and put together to display to the nation of Israel just what they were doing to Him. It's the oddest family, in my opinion, in the whole Bible. And in chapter one, we see God confront his people confront Israel with their spiritual adultery. He just comes out and he says, this is what you're doing. This is the result of what you're doing in your relationship with me. Next week in chapter two, we'll see God displaying it and God unpacking like, okay, here's how it's manifesting itself in our relationship. Here's how you're showing me you're committing spiritual adultery. Here's what it looks like. And then in chapter three, in our third week, we'll unpack and see how God uses Hosea and his family as a sign, as a symbol of God's extravagant grace and love towards us and how he pursues us and goes after us even though we have committed great adultery against him. But tonight we're gonna, it's gonna get a little heavy here. Tonight we're gonna go with the confrontation of spiritual adultery. how God comes to Israel, his people, and even how he would come to us and say, here's what you're doing to me. Here's the results of your adultery, your abandonment of a life with me, and this is how it's playing out. So look with me tonight, if you have your Bible to Hosea 1, we're just gonna unpack this together. Now Hosea, we read in 1.1 here, that the Lord gave this message to Hosea, the son of Bari, during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah. And Jeroboam was son of Jehoash, was king of Israel. Now this just gives us the content of the book or the context of it as far as what the setting is. Hosea was written probably between 750 and 722 BC. And you see by this list of kings that Hosea lived in the northern part of the divided kingdom. Israel at that time was not one nation. In fact, shortly after the death and the subsequent reign of Solomon's sons, the nation of Israel divided into two parts, two kingdoms. There was the northern kingdom, Israel, which Hosea was writing to and which he was sent to, and the southern portion of Judah. And what was interesting about these two portions is that Judah, for the most part, had good kings. They had faithful kings that were honoring God and keeping his word and teaching and commanding the people. But the northern part, They were completely the opposite. For the most part, Israel's kings, the Northern Kingdom's kings, were wicked men. They introduced Baal worship to the people of God. They set up high places in these towers where people could go and sacrifice to whatever God they thought was profitable, or whatever God would help them get their thing, or whatever God would help them do what they wanted to do. And there was myriads of them. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had really gone after and masked what are the nations doing? They begin to ask the question, what's everybody doing? What's their thing? And from that, they begin to say, hey, if that works for them, it's gonna work for us. Very pragmatic, very idolatrous, and yet they played the game with God. They played the game with Yahweh. They continued to worship. They even built up their own temple in Syria. They built their own place of worship for Yahweh all around Israel. And they began this syncretistic game of, we can worship Yahweh God, and we can worship Baal, or whatever you wanna name the God. They began this dualism that God finally sent Hosea to say, enough is enough, you're adulterers. You're playing the whore with me, and I'm not going to take it anymore. So the northern kingdom, written around 750, Hosea actually probably had a ministry, you can just see by these four kings of Judah, and then the one king of Israel. It was a span of about 30 years of Hosea's ministry, right up until 722, when the Assyrian invasion came in northern Israel and completely wiped out the people. Economically, Israel was, at the start of Hosea's ministry, a very profitable and What's the word? They were doing fine economically. There was a lot of jobs. There was a lot of food in the land. People were doing great. Everything was fine. There was a level of prosperity in Israel at the beginning of Hosea's ministry. And yet throughout Hosea's ministry, as the decline came, and as God spoke, and as the people rebelled, By the end of Hosea's ministry, the nation of Israel, the land, the northern kingdom, was taken into captivity, dispersed all over the world, and gone. Wiped off the map. So this is a serious time for Hosea to be ministering and a serious message that he would be giving. In fact, we find in verse two what Hosea was talking about and the people that he was speaking to, he was doing it with his family. Look with me there. When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, go marry a prostitute so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods. So this is exactly why Hosea was sent. God saw his people, who claimed him by name, and he saw the way they were acting, and he couldn't believe it. And so he commands Hosea, he gives this very awkward and unique command to him, and he says, Hosea, go marry a prostitute. Marry someone who has a bend towards unfaithfulness in marriage. Find a woman who's not gonna be faithful, who probably isn't even faithful now, and go marry her. In fact, this text, the way verse two reads, it's meant to jar us. Three times, no less, in this verse, God uses the word hortum, or prostitution. He just says, go marry a prostitute, because my people are prostitutes, and have children of prostitution with them. It's just meant to jar us. This is how God felt about his people. He looked at them and he said, you're committing spiritual adultery. You're betraying me. And this is how this prophecy, this book begins, with a confrontation. God calling out his people. on spiritual adultery. In fact, let me just stop here for just a minute and identify, we're gonna be talking in the next few weeks about this issue of spiritual adultery. What is it? Tonight, I just wanna give a simple definition so that you can kinda put this in the back of your mind and say, this is what spiritual adultery is, this is what it looks like, and so then, as we begin to follow this, you can begin to evaluate your heart and say, is this me? Is this where I'm at? This is how I would define spiritual adultery. Spiritual adultery is the replacement of God as the source of our life, security, and ultimate pleasure with other empty sources of life, security, and ultimate pleasure. Spiritual adultery is the replacement of God. It's the exchange of God as the source of our life, security, and ultimate pleasure for anything else, for any other empty source. What spiritual adultery is and says is it says that God isn't sufficient enough. I need Jesus plus something to make me satisfied, to keep me secure, to provide good for me, to save me, to give me life. I mean, I like Jesus. This is how spiritual adultery talks. I like God. but I need something more. He's just not enough. And so it's an exchange or a replacement of God and his glory and his goodness for empty sources, for empty things. So we get this command here from verse two. Hosea gets this command. Hosea, go marry a prostitute. Some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. because this is gonna show Israel how they've treated me like a prostitute. I don't know about you, but if that was me, if God was speaking to me and giving me that command, it'd be a hard one to swallow. In this drama here, God is showing us his greatness. And he's picked a man who is going to play the part in this drama, as it were, of Hosea. Oh, I'm sorry. He's picked Hosea to display God. He's picked a man who's gonna be faithful and is going to display the glory of God. In fact, that's exactly what Hosea does in verse three. So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Dibalam. Hosea went and did what God commanded. In this drama of Hosea and Gomer, and their children, let's get our roles here right. God is displaying himself through Hosea and Hosea's faithfulness and his goodness. And Gomer is displaying the unfaithfulness of Israel. And by extension, by application, Gomer might be displaying us. Pretty heavy thought here. And just one to think about tonight. Could we be spiritual adulterers? Could we be people that say we love God, that say we're with Him, we're for Him, but yet our lives, by the way we live them, display another reality? You might ask the question, well, how do I know? How would I know if that's really me? How would I really know if there's spiritual adultery going on in my heart? I think you'd know pretty well and pretty quickly. But God's word here gives us some clues on how we can see some results. In fact, that's what God does, and this drama unfolds. What you see in the rest of this chapter is his children. Kids are produced, and God turns the focus off of Hosea and Gomer and their marriage. He'll pick that up again in chapter three, but he focuses in on the kids. who are a result of what's going on in their marriage. Three children are mentioned in verses three, I'm sorry, verses four down through nine, and they show us, by the way that God names them, they show us what the result of spiritual adultery really is. They show us what the sign is of our rebellion and our whoredom even with God. And so I wanna look at these children just as these children were a result of Hosea and Gomer's marriage and Gomer's unfaithfulness. So they give us a clue and an indication of our own spiritual adultery. So three kids here, the first one is there in verse four. These are all results of spiritual adultery. The first one is this, that spiritual adultery unmasks our best works as our deepest failures before God. Spiritual adultery unmasks our best works as our deepest failures before God. So Hosea married Gomer, this is verse three, the daughter of Dibalam, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son. It's a great thing. They're married. They're enjoying the benefits of their marriage. And from that union comes a child, a son, a firstborn. That's a great thing. And God names this child in verse 4 and He says, Hosea says, And the Lord said, Name the child Jezreel, for I am about to punish King Jehu's dynasty to avenge the murders he committed at Jezreel. In fact, I will bring an end to Israel's independence. I will break its military power in the Jezreel valley. Now each one of these children is a sign. They're a billboard, if you will, to the nation of Israel's own independence and Israel's own spiritual adultery. And so looking here with the firstborn who was faithfully conceived in a good way, God points down and he says, name that child Jezreel. Two reasons why. First of all, Jezreel in the Hebrew sounds very, very close to Israel. It's a word play and Hosea in his book here is doing this all the time. He will use words to play off one another. He will create a pun to turn another phrase. And so here he does it with the firstborn son, Jezreel, Israel. It's a reminder of who you are. And he says, name this child Jezreel, but there's a second reason to it. And the second reason is there at the end of verse four. He's about to punish Israel for what happened and in the way it happened in the Jezreel Valley. And you might be like, what is that about? A little Old Testament history here. Jezreel Valley is talked about in two places in the Old Testament. In 1 Kings 21, we find that Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, murdered a faithful Israelite who owned a vineyard in Jezreel. Ahab wanted the vineyard. He couldn't have it. It wasn't his. So what did he do to get it? The guy who owned it, he murdered him. Sent out a hit squad, took in some snipers, he was out, and then he just claimed the vineyard for himself. This is mined. It was a beautiful vineyard in the valley of Jezreel, but yet a wicked thing happened. So already Jezreel Valley has a name for itself, and it's got not a good one. Later, though, in 2 Kings 10, and this is the part that God specifically speaks on, King Jehu, who wasn't the king at that time, but he went into the very same city, and he slaughtered everyone there that was associated with King Ahab, including King Ahab. Jehu's march into Jezreel at that time was a bloody, violent conquest. And God had sent Jehu to assassinate Ahab, but he hadn't sent him to assassinate and commit the great travesty and the great murder, the great slaying that occurred there. It was a sin in which the way he did it. And Jehu's dynasty, the way it went on from there on out was nothing less than a terribly violent reign and regime. This was a king that loved blood and he loved murder. And so God looks at Hosea and Gomer's son and he says, name him Jezreel because I want him to be a symbol to the people of just how bloody and wicked and violent they have been. I want them to know and to be reminded that in the way that they have destroyed others, in the way that they have murdered, in the way that they have gone in violently, I'm going to do the very same thing to them. Jezreel's name is a reminder to Israel that God's judgment is coming. In fact, in verse five, he promises, I will break its military power. I will break the bow of Israel in the Jezreel Valley. What a huge statement. It's as if God is just placing a name and saying, watch this name, watch this place. Just like that thing went down 50, 100 years ago, it's gonna come down again. I'm gonna break Israel. I'm gonna break their power. I think in some ways it might be similar to one of us naming our firstborn child Hiroshima or Nagasaki. A great victory and yet at the same time a very violent, devastating attack. It was a symbol to God's people. Now think with me here for just a moment. In this family of Hosea and Gomer, They have their firstborn son, their first child. And I'm sure that they were happy. I'm sure that there was a lot of joy. Here's the first. Here's the best. That was something that was deeply thought of in Hebrew families, that the firstborn was also the best. He was the good one. He was the one that they could lift up and say, this is a great thing. And now God is pointing to him and pointing and naming this son and saying, he's also a symbol of your greatest failure. Israel. He's a picture of how devastating the blow is going to be. You see, that's what spiritual adultery results in. It looks like you and I taking our best works, our best deeds, and coming before God and saying, these are great things, these are good works. We might categorize them in means or spiritual disciplines that we practice to to get God's recognition, to get more favor with God. Think about your prayer life, or your scripture reading, or your attendance at worship services, or your good works, your helping old ladies across the street, or your giving, or your kindness to your neighbors. Think about those things. We commit spiritual adultery when we take those good things and we say, you know what? These are earning God's favor. I'm being a good boy because Look how good I am. Look what good things I've done. And what God is saying here is that your very best things, your very first things, the things that you're so proud of, really, in his eyes, are completely the opposite. They're deep failures. Anytime that we try and come to God with our own works as our own merit, like God, I've done something good to earn your favor. God, I've been kind to you. I've worshiped you. God, I've read 10 chapters in the Bible today, so you should love me. Anytime we try and use that as a means to get God's grace, it's really spiritual adultery. We're using God as a cosmic ATM machine where we can just think we can go to God with the code, punch it in, and he'll dispense to us whatever we want. He'll give us whatever we need, and all because we have a card. That's our spiritual adultery here. That's our spiritual adultery. When we would take our very best things, the things that we think we've done so well, and hold them to God and say, look God, you owe me now. That says that's your biggest failure. Scripture in other places calls it self-righteousness. Our own attempts to make much of ourselves, to glorify ourselves, to exalt ourselves, and to make God our debtors. Let me remind you that God speaks in his word and says he owes no one anything. We can't make God our debtors. Romans 11, who is given a gift to God that he might be repaid? Answer, no one. No one. Spiritual adultery results when we take our very best things and they reveal themselves to be our very worst things. And that's what spiritual adultery reveals itself as. That's one of the results of it. That God unmasked our best works as our deepest failures before God. When Israel heard Jezreel, they were reminded of what they thought was a good thing. And yet God was saying it was a place of destruction. The name Jezreel itself means God scatters. God scatters, and here in this place, in verse four and five, God is telling them, by the name Jezreel, I will scatter you. You've lived in prostitution, you've lived in spiritual adultery, I'm going to scatter you and break your bow. Not only does spiritual adultery unmask our self-righteousness, what we think is so great about us, but the second thing is that spiritual adultery unplugs us from being recipients of the mercy of God. Look with me at the next child in verses six and seven. Soon Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. Let me just stop right there. What's interesting here in verse six at the beginning is that unlike verse four, or unlike verse three where Hosea is mentioned as the father. Here in verse six, Hosea is not mentioned at all. Gomer becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter. The implication of this is that Homer, that Gomer, they're too close, Homer, Hosea, Gomer. Gomer has gone out and played the whore. She has lived up to her calling and what she was doing. She has been out prostituting herself again and has illegitimately conceived a child. Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to Hosea, name your daughter, and the Hebrew is lo rahama, not loved, or no mercy, as some translations have it. For I will no longer show love to the people of Israel or forgive them. This has to be a devastating name. Imagine you're a father there in your house and your wife has conceived a child illegitimately and that child is now in your home, living with you. How are you gonna feel about that kid? God looks to Jose and he says, okay, this one's name is no love, no mercy. It's as if God is just wiping his hands of Israel and saying, not my kid. Not my child, no love to them. I think for most of us, if you're compassionate, you'd say, I couldn't do that. I couldn't have a child in my home that was going to live with our family and say to them, I'm not gonna show you any love. not loved, and yet that's exactly what God is telling Hosea to name the second child, this daughter, no mercy, because I'm not gonna show mercy to Israel anymore. Now some of us, that might, wow, that might be a hard thing to swallow here. We have an idea that God would never stop, never, never, never, ever stop loving people and being kind to them, but here, God's telling Israel, My love is coming to an ending point. It's stopping. This word mercy or loved in the Hebrew, one commentator says that it signifies a warm compassion, a compassion which goes the second mile, which is ready to forgive sin, to replace judgment with grace, and yet God says, no more. All done. No mercy. So how do we reconcile this? Here God is saying, no love, no mercy to you, and yet we have this view and this vision that God always loves, always forgives, forever and ever and ever. I just wanna show you. I'm pointing out to you that the Bible talks about and reveals to us a day when God's mercy will end. In fact, Peter hints at this in 2 Peter where he warns that those who mock God will be judged. Those who scorn him and refuse him, they will judge. But as it is today, God is being patient, God is waiting, and God is being merciful so that we would repent. That's why we have today. Understand and know this, today you live under God's mercy. Today you live, just in this planet, just in this world, under God's grace and his mercy. And he extends his patience to you, even in your adultery, even in your rebellion, even in your wickedness. God is saying, I'm being patient with you today while it's still called today. But know that a day is coming when his patience with us will end. and he will come, the living Lord Jesus will return, and he will judge the living and the dead. And those who have rebelled and refused and hardened their hearts against him, they will hear no mercy, no love. That's what God is saying to his people here. Do you think that God in some way is just trying to win them back? Israel, love is ending, it's stopping. Come back, repent. I think for us, if we were to hear that in our own lives, it would devastate us, it would destroy us. But it's the result of spiritual adultery. God will bring an end to his love towards those who reject him time and time again. Paul says in Romans 2, do you suppose, oh man, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? Do you presume on God? Do you just look at him and say, well, today is today and I'll just wait? I'll have tomorrow, I'll have the next day. Some of you young people might be saying, you know, I'll get serious about God and my walk with Him when I'm like 60. Then there'll be time. You're presuming upon His kindness. You're presuming on His mercy. And there will come a day where He will say, no mercy. Spiritual adultery unplugs us from being recipients of the mercy of God. It disconnects us from that mercy and that love. God is a way of showing Israel and kind of sparking them to jealousy and to faithfulness, to repentance in verse seven. He turns it though and he says, I will show love to the people of Judah, the southern kingdom. I will show love to them. Israel, your day is coming. Judah, I'm gonna continue to love them. I will free them from their enemies, not with weapons or in armies and horses and chariots, but by my power as the Lord their God. A day of no love is coming for those who continue to refuse him. But for those who continue to walk in faithfulness, those who would repent and embrace him, his love goes on and on and on. Are you reaping the results of spiritual adultery? Do you feel it in your heart that God's love is coming to an end for you? You keep pushing him back and refusing him and hardening your heart And he's saying, don't play the harlot with me. No love is coming. The first result is that our spiritual adultery unmask our greatest victories as our worst failures. And the second thing is that spiritual adultery reveals or unplugs us from being recipients of the mercy of God. The third one, though, is the worst. Spiritual adultery unnames us from being the people of God. Look at verse eight and nine. Again, after Gomer had weaned, no mercy, or lo rahma, she again became pregnant. Again here, no mention of Hosea. Gomer has gone and done it again. Her adultery, Her unfaithfulness is just prevalent. She became pregnant and gave birth to a second son. And here again, God steps in and names this child. Verse nine, the Lord said, name him Lo-Ami, not my people. For Israel is not my people and I am not their God. The third result of spiritual adultery is that it unnames us from being the people of God. How terrifying here. The last child is another child of unfaithfulness, and once again, God steps in and says, this is a picture, Israel, of how you've been to me, and I'm done with it. You are not my people. I'm unnaming you. You have pretended, you have practiced, it has been known and broadcast to the nations that you were mine, and yet in this day, no more. You are not my people, I'm done. You've abandoned your vows to me, you have been unfaithful, you have played the harlot, you have worshiped other gods, you have murdered, you've been violent, you've been such a poor representative of me, and so it's done. Not my people. Unbelievable. And yet here, another set of data from God. that a day is coming when he will clarify who his people are, who are his. See, for us, this could be a matter of spiritual apostasy. In the church, that's how it's revealed today. People that have claimed to be gods and have claimed to be Christian all their lives, and said, yeah, I'm a believer in Jesus, but yet their deeds and their lives have really revealed something else. Jesus put it like this in Matthew 7. He said, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. You aren't my people. depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. I mean, these are terrifying words, and these are words, Jesus' words, about spiritual adultery. They're words about our apostasy. Can we play the game with God enough and make it look like we've got it going on, make it look like we're religious, make it look like we've got things going on right, and yet a day comes when God says, you're not my people. You haven't truly been faithful to me. You haven't worshiped me. You've loved me and everything else. You've gone after me plus something. That's what God is confronting Israel with right here. It's over, it's done. You have rebelled against me. You've chosen your own way. You haven't glorified me among the nations, not my people. And I am not your God. Let me just say and ask tonight, are you a spiritual adulterer? Are you playing the harlot with God? Is your life such that you are reaping the results of spiritual adultery? You can look at these things and say, I do feel in my heart that that I've been playing the harlot with God, I do feel a sense of his conviction about my sin, his discipline on me. I do feel a sense that maybe I've been playing a game with him. God is laying all his cards on the table here to Israel and saying, let me just lay out how serious this is for you. This isn't some game. It's not some trite thing. You've rebelled against me. You're not gonna be recipients of my love. You're not my people. And why does God do all of that? Why does God come and confront Israel with this? If for nothing less than to win them back, to show them his grace. God is patient, and through this text, he is saying to you and I tonight, we who are Gomer, we who are the spiritual adulterers, he's saying I love you, and I'm gonna chase you down. I'm gonna get you back. You see, this text doesn't just end there. No love, no mercy, not my people. Breaking your power. The text doesn't end in that way. Verse 10 gives such a great turn to this text. In one word, yet. For all of our adultery, for all of our rebellion and our walking away on God, grace turns everything. And here's how God does this. He responds with his grace. Yet the time will come when Israel's people will be like the sands of the seashore, too many to count. Then at the place where they were told, you are not my people, it will be said, you are the children of the living God. Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite together. They will choose one leader for themselves and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be, the day of Jezreel, when God will again plant his people in his land. In that day you will call your brothers, Ami, my people. And you will call your sisters, Ruhama, the ones I love. Grace changes everything. And here God comes to spiritual adulterers and he says, one more time, here's grace. Here's how I'm responding to you. There's three things here that God reveals about his response of grace to our adultery. This is how God answers our adultery. Very briefly, first of all, God's grace remembers and renews promises made. God's grace remembers and renews promises made. There in verse 10, you see God saying to Israel, you'll be like the sands of the seashore, too many to count. That's just a recollection in God's mind of the promises that he made to Abraham and to Jacob, that Israel would be his people, that they would be as the sands of the seashore, as the stars in the heaven, a multitude upon a multitude. God is remembering this promise and he's renewing it with them. He's pointing to his future grace and saying the day is coming in which I will remember this promise even now and I will renew it with you. Grace will respond to your spiritual adultery. Now how does that work for us? What promises do we have? He doesn't abandon them. Scripture tells us that anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. He offers that as a promise and says, if you call to me, if you place your faith and trust in my son, I'll save you. Places like Joel 2.32 and Romans 10 tell us that. Jesus tells us in John 3.16 that all who believe in him will not perish. They will have everlasting life. Those are the promises that God renews and reminds us of. If you look tonight and you say, I have been a spiritual adulterer, I have been walking away on God, I'm reaping the results of it in my life, let me hold grace forward to you and remind you that God keeps his promises, and his promises are so good. All who call to me, I'll never cast out. I'll never leave you or forsake you. Anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved. Whoever believes in the Son will not perish, but have eternal life. Do you know those promises? God remembers them, and you might be, this passage might devastate you. I'm an adulterer, and God says, yeah, there's grace. Come back to me. I've made glorious promises to you, and I'll keep them. Let's renew them right here. Let's get it straight right now. Not only does grace remember and renew promises made, but God's grace redeems and remakes a fallen people. There in verse 11. There at the end of verse 10. Then at the place where they were told, you are not my people. At that very place where God said, no, we're done. Valley of Jezreel. When Assyria invaded, 722 BC, and the nation was done, Assyria came in, took over, took the inhabitants of Israel and scattered them all over the known world. They were done, they were not his people, they were gone. At that place, God says, it will be said, you are children of the living God. Then, verse 11, the people of Judah and Israel will unite together as one people. They will choose one leader for themselves and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be. Here God is promising and saying, you're a fallen people, you're a scattered people, you're no people. And yet, I'm going to redeem and remake you. I'm going to make you mine again. I'm going to restore you to me. promises you'll be children of the living God. And notice there in verse 11, they will unite and they will have for themselves one king, one leader. That's the Lord Jesus Christ. He's promising, he's saying a day is coming when my grace will fall upon you again. and you'll be renewed and redeemed as a new people, and no longer having kings of this earth as your king, you will have a new leader. That leader will be the Messiah, the Son of God, Jesus. He will be your king, he will be your leader, and you will be my people again, a new people for me. That's what the church is today. We are God's new people, redeemed and restored in him by his grace. What an amazing promise. See, God's redemption is so good. We're estranged. We're at war with God. We're rebels of his. We're spiritual adulterers. And he comes in and he says, let me show you grace. Let me show you how much I love you. I'm gonna lay down the life of my son for you. I'm going to have him die in your place for your sin, to remake you, to restore you, so that you will be my people. You will be new. God's grace triumphs over our rebellion and adultery. In fact, he even goes so far as to say, and I love this at the end of verse 11, what a day that will be, the day of Jezreel, when God again will plant his people. Remember I told you the name Jezreel means God scatters. He used it negatively to speak of the first son. God will scatter you among the nations. And here God's grace comes in and says, I'm going to scatter you in a different way, like a farmer in a field, replanting, restarting. So I'm going to scatter and plant you here again. You may look at your life and say, I've been unfaithful. I've been rebellious. I've walked out on God. I've played the harlot. I need grace. I need help. And God offers it and says, I give it. You're broken, you're lost, you're people-less, you're nameless. Repent and turn to me. My son has paid for your adultery. My son, in his body on the cross, has died for your sin. Your greatest failure, which you trumped up and made it look like was your greatest victory, Jesus took that, that failure upon himself and his greatest victory, his greatest moment was also his greatest failure, not failure, but greatest weakness. It was his death when he exchanged your sin for his righteousness and took your failure and gave you his victory. God says, I will make you my people. I will redeem and restore you and replant you. God's grace remembers promises and renews them. God's grace redeems. And God's grace reconciles and restores us. Look at chapter two, verse one there. In that day you will call your brothers, me, my people. And you will call your sisters, the ones I love. Everything is reversed with God's grace. When once God said, you're not my people, you're not loved, now God turns around and he says, you're reconciled to me, you're restored. Now no longer are you not my people, now no longer are you not loved, but today you are loved. Today you are my people. That's what God's grace does. That's how good it is. Peter spoke of this in 1 Peter 2, 9 and 10, and he uses Hosea's very words. He says, you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now, did you catch that? Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. This is God's promise of his grace for us, that if we would repent and turn from our sin and embrace Jesus as our Savior, he offers to us reconciliation, he offers to us redemption. He says you were no longer a people, but now today you are my people. God's grace reconciles us to himself and it reconciles us to one another. Look around this room for just a moment and see that there are a diversity of people, young and old, wealthy and poor, handsome and not so handsome, child and adult. We're different people and not people that are really attached to each other in any way. Yet were it not for the grace of God and Jesus Christ, were it not for his kindness to us in sending his son to die for us in our place, we wouldn't know one another. And God has reconciled us to him and now he has brought us in together as one people, his people. and said, I'm gonna show you grace, I'm going to show you mercy. Spiritual adultery tears down, it results in everything that would destroy a relationship with God. Just as marital infidelity destroys a marriage and a relationship, so our spiritual adultery destroys, it capsizes, it turns over our relationship with God. And some of you here tonight, myself included, have to look and evaluate our hearts and say, Am I playing the harlot? Am I gomer? Have I, by the way I've been living my life, been a rebel against God? Have I refused Him? Let me tell you tonight that God's grace is there. And He says, yes, you have been adulterous against Me. Yes, you have preferred other things against and over Me. Yes, you have been adulterous to Me. and that I love you. And my love will not let you go. My grace, it will go after you, it will restore you, it will reconcile you, it will renew you. And so my question for you tonight is will you receive his grace? Have you received it? Will you go back to him with your adultery and say, here it is God, I'm coming clean. restore me, renew me, rename me, remake me. He has every ability to do that because of the work of his son, Jesus. God has every bit of power to take you back, to call you his people, to love you, because Jesus has died for you. Will you repent and receive his grace by faith? That's a love that will not let me go. That's a love that God displays to Hosea, to Israel, to Gomer, and to us. Let me pray. God, your grace is great. It's amazing. And you hold it forward to us who are spiritual adulterers. We've played the harlot. We're gomer. And we refuse and rebel against you time and time again. Oh Lord, tonight, would you call us back to yourself? Would you let us see the glory of your son, Jesus, and would you renew us and remake us? We come with repentance and faith and say, God, we need you, we need your grace. Would you be so kind as to visit us again and renew us once again? for your glory and for our good. We thank you for your love that will not let us go. In Jesus' name, amen. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.santarosa.org. or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.