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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.
Love That Confronts Spiritual Adultery
Series Hosea
| Sermon ID | 92011020160 |
| Duration | 53:48 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Hosea 1:1 |
| Language | English |
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