is going to use in this picture of pointing us towards Jesus Christ. He was a early prophet to the northern kingdom. And along with him and Amos, they would be the last ones to prophesy to the north before the fall of Jerusalem in 722. Now, what's interesting about Hosea, though, is that God gives him the most unique assignment given to any prophet. That in the message that Hosea is to bring to Israel, God not only gave him the words that he wanted him to prophesy, but then he gives Hosea the assignment of not only do I want you to go and speak to him, I want you to live out the message that I'm going to send them. He is going to be the living parable. He's going to be the the greatest object lesson in all of the scripture. And the message is essentially going to be this, that just like faithfulness is expected and required in marriage. that God calls his people to be completely faithful to him. And that faithfulness to God is to be in response to his covenant faithfulness to us. And that's what we'll see worked out in Hosea one through three. The first three chapters of work is a summary for the rest of the book. And we'll be looking in different places. And I want to show you several things. But let's pray before we dive into God's word. Right. Father, we come this morning and we we ask that you would give our hearts just attention and focus as we think about you and your word. Father, I pray if there are distractions or things in our lives or sin that we haven't dealt with yet, Father, that you would lead us to do that so that we can hear you and see you as clearly as your word will communicate yourself today. Father, I pray as we think about these things and we think about Christ and we think about the gospel, Father, that our our hearts will be moved with affection for you. That it won't be something that we take for granted and that we can just go on from. But Father, that you would let us dwell deeply about what you've done for us in Christ. About how undeserving we are. And Father, I pray this morning that while we're looking in the Old Testament and we're looking at Israel and her unfaithfulness, Father, that you would help us see that it is a picture of us. That our hearts are weak and frail. That left to ourselves, we wander. We choose other things. We love other things more than you. So, Father, we pray that you would show us those things and where we need to repent or where conviction needs to take place. Father, we ask your spirit to do that. And we thank you that your faithfulness towards us is unquestioned and that your love for us seen in Jesus and in the cross, Father, conquers all other things. So this morning, Father, we pray that you would help us to think well about your word that you would help us to think well about you and that all that we do this morning would be done to the praise of the glory of your grace. And we ask it all in Jesus name. Amen. First thing I want to show you this morning as we walk through Hosea is I want to show you the picture of God's pursuit of his people, the picture of God's pursuit of his people. And this is going to be Hosea chapter one. I just want to read a couple of verses. Look at verse two in chapter one of Hosea. When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, the Lord said to him, Go and take yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry for the Lord, for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord. So he went, he took Gomer, the daughter of Dibling, and she conceived and she bore him a son. So now we have we have Hosea as a prophet. He's been given this assignment. He is a prophet to Israel who is in the midst of rebellion and unfaithfulness. And God has said it's time to deal with that. So here's what I want you to do, Hosea, as a prophet. You've got a message and you're going to go call Israel out on her unfaithfulness. And you're going to do it both with your words and you're going to do it with your life. So I want you to go and I want you to go take a wife. This is a terrible, terrible job. Go and pick an unfaithful wife. Go find a woman who is in harlotry, who is unfaithful, who has many lovers, and you go and you make her yours. Go and pick an unfaithful wife. Go and pick an unfaithful wife. Go and pick an unfaithful wife. Go and pick an unfaithful wife. Go and pick an unfaithful wife. And verse three tells us Hosea did it. He goes and he he takes he takes Gomer and not only with the assignment to be in this, what we would consider to be a terrible, terrible marriage. I mean, thankfulness and trust at the human level are the greatest parts of marriage. They open the door and allow all the blessings and all the good of marriage, all the intimacy of marriage to function and to take place. This is a marriage that never had faithfulness, that never had trust, that never had that kind of intimacy. And so he said, let's go and do this, but I don't want you just to marry her. I want you to have a family with her. And so he goes and he takes Gomer and they have a son and they named the son Jezreel. And so he goes and he takes Gomer and they have a son and they named the son Jezreel. But if you go down in the text and you continue to look at verse, notice that in verse three, it says, and she conceived and she bore him a son. She bore Hosea a son. But as you go further, look at verse six, and then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. But there's something subtly missing from that phrase, isn't it? In verse three, we see that she bore Hosea's son. In verse six, it says she conceived again. There's no mention of Hosea. Most commentators agree that the child conceived and born in verse 6 and the child conceived and born in verse 8 were children that Hosea would take in, but these were not Hosea's children. that this parable is being lived out before them, that Gomer's unfaithfulness, even after Hosea goes and takes her as a wife, continues. And she has children with another man or maybe multiple men. And so God is putting him in this situation that is just unparalleled from our understanding of what marriage and faithfulness should be. They have three children and each of them is going to describe a situation or a sin that Israel is struggling with. Look at verse four. So they have a son and they name him Jezreel. But look at verse five. On that day, God says, I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. Jezreel was the child that showed the sin of Israel's pride. They'd become prideful. They'd forgotten God. They didn't need God anymore. So one of the things is God's bringing judgment through this marriage of Hosea and Gomer to Israel is going to be I'm going to deal with the pride of Israel. The second child, this daughter that's born is literally named No Mercy or No Forgiveness. This is in response to they had dried up the mercy of God with their willful rebellion and their willful, intentional pursuit of evil and sin. And the third one is going to be literally named Not My People. And this is because the my people was God's covenant term for his people. And what they had done is they had taken Baal and become Baal worshipers. And so in their choice of worshiping this false God, of moving into idolatry, God saying the covenant has been broken. You are now not my people. And so they have three children. All of them are a judgment against Israel. So God is making his case against Israel through Hosea. Now, here's what he's saying. He is going to pursue them. He is going to pursue Israel. He's going to pursue unfaithful Israel. Despite her unfaithfulness. And this is the beginning of how we're seeing the gospel and Hosea come through that this is exactly and I pray this morning that our hearts would be really sensitive towards this. This is exactly how God came to us. God's pursuit of us did not come after we were already spiritual people. God's pursuit of us did not come after we were already church going and saved and made good. But God's pursuit of us, according to Romans 5, came while we were yet sinners. Christ died. And so we see this picture coming that the same way that God pursued Israel is the same way that he's going to pursue all of his people, that he will come after us. And we were all unfaithful. We were all find ourselves in the exact predicament that Gomer illustrates of Israel. And that leads us to the second thing I want to show you this morning. And that is the picture of the life of spiritual adultery. That is what he's accusing them of. They had committed adultery spiritually with God. And here's the reason I think this is so important for us to catch this morning. I don't know if there's a more emotional issue than the one of unfaithfulness within the marriage covenant. We think of it, and if we've never experienced it, we immediately go to hurt and pain. If you've ever gone through that and experienced that, you felt the hurt and the pain. There is betrayal. There is just absolute pain and hurt. And so God uses that as an image, maybe sharing His heart with us in this passage more than in many places in the scripture of what does it do to Him when His people look at Him and say, I'd rather have another. And it doesn't you know, no one really wants to talk about that. We are unfaithful. You know, we'd rather say that we're struggling with sin or that we fell into sin or that we've just not made up our minds about Christ or one of these things. And what the Bible says is, call it what you want, but it is adultery. It is spiritual adultery. And chapter two, verses one through 13 gives us a picture. And we'll come back to that in a minute. But turn with me, if you will, to chapter 13, verse six. We're going to be looking so throughout Hosea here. So I want you to look at this chapter 13, verse six. And he says, as they had their pasture. They became satisfied and being satisfied, their heart became proud, therefore, they forgot me. What is the sin that Israel's done that God is saying I've got to deal with? He he provided and he satisfied them. And out of that satisfaction, they looked and they said, I don't need God anymore. And as we think this morning, here's what I'm pleading with you to do is don't write this off as Israel. Right. Israel is a picture of the heart of all of us. The sins that Israel committed in the Old Testament, they are the sins of humanity. They are a picture of our depravity. Within every one of us this morning is the tendency that once we are satisfied, we don't need God anymore. They became satisfied, they became proud, and in that pride, they forgot God. And so, He begins to deal with them. Look in chapter 4. You want to know what's going on? What is this spiritual adultery? What does it look like? When He gives some verses, and I'll just read them. You can follow along if you will, or write them down. Chapter 4, verse 1. For the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, because there is no faithfulness, or kindness, or knowledge of God. Chapter 4, verse 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because they have rejected knowledge, I will reject you. They have forgotten the law of God. Chapter 4, verse 12. My people consult their wooden idols and their diviner's wand informs them. A spirit of harlotry has led them astray, and they have played the harlot departing from their God. Go to chapter 8. Look at verse 3 in chapter 8. Israel has rejected the good. Verse four, they have set up kings, but not by me. They've appointed princes, but I did not know it. And with their silver and gold, they have made idols for themselves. Chapter eight, verse twelve, though I wrote for him ten thousand precepts of my law, they are regarded as a strange thing. As for my sacrificial gifts, they sacrifice. But the Lord has taken no delight and now he will remember their iniquity and he will punish their sin. Fourteen for Israel has forgotten his maker and built palaces instead. Idolatry, the forgetting of God, the moving away from God, the picking leaders that God would not have them pick, the rejecting the law and the knowledge and the Word of God. All these things are what is happening. And we see this in chapter two, this life of spiritual adultery. Look at verse two. It's the warning. Contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Let her put away harlotry from her face and adultery from between her breasts. So God's saying, get rid of it. Here's the warning. I'm sending Hosea. Hosea, here's your message to Israel. Here's your message to the people of God, both those who are in the covenant and those who were believing as well. Here's the message. Stop the unfaithfulness. God is a jealous God. He's the only being in the universe where jealousy is a righteous thing. If God is not jealous for his own glory, then that means there's something out there worthy of glory more than himself. So God's jealousy is righteous. Yours and mine is petty and sinful. But God says, I'm a jealous God, I'm rightfully jealous, it's part of my nature, and I will not tolerate unfaithfulness from my people. Look at verse 5, chapter 2, verse 5. Here's God describing what has happened for their mother. talking about Gomer, who's a picture of Israel, for their mother has played the harlot. She conceived them and has acted shamefully, for she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. She's acting shamefully, she's pursuing her lovers, she's pursuing these people, she is in pursuit of unfaithfulness. And this is an important principle for us to catch. This did not come to her. The tendency was in her heart to pursue after these things, to pursue after the ones that would give her pleasure, that would give her what she needed, that she would find her provision in other places. Look at verse eight. For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used to worship Baal. She didn't recognize God as the provider. It's the pride. So look at verse 13. Chapter two, verse 13, God says, so I will punish her for the days of the bales when she used to offer sacrifices to them and adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry and follow her lovers so that she forgot me, declares the Lord. There's a warning versus five through eight. Make the case. And then verse 13 says there's consequences. In other words, God says unfaithfulness will be dealt with. He's being patient. He's been patient all this time, and now he's sending Hosea to live out this parable. And it reminds us, doesn't it, of what we looked at last week, Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 5, that they became worthless because they pursued worthless things. What we pursue is the indicator of the health of our hearts. And Israel is in pursuit of worthless things. And they became worthless and they became unfaithful. Let me give you a definition of spiritual adultery. It is when we pursue other things more than we pursue God. It is when we go other places for what God has promised to provide. And it is when we give God, when we give to others the worship that only God deserves. It is when we pursue other things more than God. There are other places for what God has promised to provide. And when we give something else, the worship that only God deserves. We are in danger of being unfaithful to God, it demonstrates itself. Here's a profile, if you will, of spiritual adultery. It is two faced. It says one thing and lives another. It is wandering. It is a wandering heart. that says, I'm always looking for something else. I kind of believe God, but I'm looking for other things. I'm kind of satisfied by God, but I kind of want to get it over here. It's unfaithful. It's forgetful of God. It is the, what have you done for me lately? We forget all the works of God in the past, in our lives, in the lives of all the people, in the lives of the scripture. And God hasn't been near to us or he hasn't done something or he didn't deliver us. So we begin to wander. It is the pursuit of evil. All the while, still trying to maintain a religious frat. You know, what's interesting when you look at Israel and you look through the prophets, whether it's Isaiah, Jeremiah, here in Hosea, other places, if there is one consistent thing about Israel, it is that despite how sinful they became, they never stopped the sacrifices. They never stopped worshiping publicly. They never stopped going to the temple. And that ought to scare us to death about how easy it is to maintain this with a heart that is far from God. Their heart was far from God. Jeremiah summed it up in chapter two, verse 13. He says, My people, they've done two things wrong. They have committed two evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain of living water. They've walked away from me. And instead, they're building for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that hold no water. That is the heart of the spiritual adulterer is that we forsake God. We leave him. And instead, we choose something that compared to him is broken and insufficient. But for the moment, it satisfies us. And this is where Israel found itself. Number three, but we see the faithful rescue of the unfaithful. This is where the picture of the gospel comes clearly through Hosea. I love the passage that we're about to look at. Chapter two, verse 14 through 23 explains it. And then it's illustrated in chapter three. Follow along as I read chapter two, verses 14 through 23. Therefore, behold, I will allure her. I will bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. I will give her her vineyards from there and the valley of a core as a door of hope. And she will sing there is in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. It will come about in that day, declares the Lord, that you will call me my husband and no longer call me my bail. For I will remove the names of the bales from her mouth so that they will be mentioned by their names no more. In that day, I will also make a covenant for them with the beast of the field, the birds of the sky, the creeping things of the ground. Notice it's kind of a repeat of Eden. It's a repeat of the creation. And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land. I'll make them lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever. Listen to this. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and injustice and love and in compassion. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you will know the Lord. It will come about in that day that I will respond, declares the Lord. I will respond to the heavens and they will respond to the earth. And the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine and to the oil. And they will respond to Jezreel. I will sow her for myself in the land. I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion. And I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people. And they will say, you are my God. Listen to what He's going to do. God is going to pursue Israel in her unfaithfulness, just like He pursued us and our sin by the coming of Jesus Christ. Notice the passion and the love. He says, I will go out to her and I will speak tenderly and I will allure her. It's literally the idea of wooing her. I will show her my goodness. I will speak tenderly. He says, I will show you hope. Notice where he's going to do that. It says in the valley of a core will become a door of hope. You remember the valley of a court as they came out of the promised land. The first time they demonstrated their unfaithfulness to God is when Aiken withheld and stole and was dishonest from God. And God said, no longer will there be any hope there. And he says that will be made right. I will make that a door of hope to you. You will be I will be your husband. Notice that we're getting the covenant marriage terms that the New Testament is full of. I will be your husband. I will give her safety. God didn't have to do any of this, by the way, right? We understand this as not only he could have made things right and just without being this way of the love and the affection and the tender and the pursuing. What we're seeing here is the heart of God is looking for that which has gone astray. The heart of God is looking for those who should love him and don't. And he is going to reveal himself in a powerful way. Notice that he said, I will betroth you. I will engage you. And then he uses nothing but covenant terms. I will betroth you in righteousness, in love, in justice, in mercy and in faithfulness. This isn't going to be some poor covenant. This isn't going to be some conditional engagement. This isn't going to be a shaky betrothal. This is established in my name. And notice the restoration that will take place. Look what he says. They will respond to Jezreel. That's the name of his son, the one that represented the pride of Israel. Verse 23. I will have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion. I will give mercy to no mercy. And I will say of those who were not my people, you are now my people. That is new covenant language. If you didn't catch that, that they will become the people of God. So how would this happen? How is God going to make right the unfaithfulness of his people? Well, let's look at chapter three. One of the shortest chapters in Hosea. Look what he says. Now, again, this is a real story with real people. So put yourselves in this story. Because it's a heartbreaking story. And if it hurts our hearts, which I think is the intended purpose, because it's to show us the heartbreak of God when we're unfaithful. Look what he says. Then the Lord said to Hosea, go again. And love a woman who is loved by another man. Love a woman who is loved by another man and she is an adulteress. It's not just that she commits adultery, it is that she is an adulteress. And even as the Lord loves the sons of Israel, though, they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes. But the picture we get here is that God gave Hosea this assignment, go and take a wife and have children. So God, he speaks to Hosea, Hosea goes and he takes a wife and he takes Gomer. And she is an unfaithful woman. And he has a son with her that at some point she leaves and goes and continues to be unfaithfulness, to be unfaithful to him. So God says, now, listen, go get her back. Go get her again. Hosea, your heart is broken. Hosea, you're in a terrible spot. But you go love her who loves someone else and is a lover of others. In other words, we're getting a picture a little bit of who she is. She doesn't just sin. She is a sinner. Your and my nature isn't just that we are unfaithful or that we do unfaithful things, but it is at our core we are unfaithful. And we need something to fix that. Look what he says in verse two. So I bought her for myself. So I bought her for myself for 15 shekels of silver and a Homer and a half of barley. What does that tell us? Hosea spent everything he had. He spent all his money. To the point of I don't have any more money, but I can give you some barley. I can give you some food. I can give you something else. I will give everything that I have to redeem and buy her back. It is such a picture of the gospel. God has a cattle on a thousand hills, gold, silver, all the wealth, all the money in the world mean nothing to God. And we were separated. And what did he say? I'll give he who did not spare his own son, but graciously gave him for all of us. Listen. If God's going to give Jesus Christ to pursue us in our sin, there is nothing that will stop His pursuit of His people. So He goes and He loves her again. It isn't just that she's left and she's living estranged and she's by herself. He goes and she is with another man. She is loved by another man. She is unfaithful and it is open and it is flaunting and she has rejected Hosea. And so he goes because God told him to go and he buys her back. It's the picture of redemption. And he spends all that he has to bring her back to him. Here's what God is telling us. God is going to pursue his people with love, the very same assignment That we're looking at here and we're saying, gosh, can you believe? I mean, we always talk about if I get too serious with God, he's going to send me to Africa. Listen, Africa looks pretty good compared to Hosea's assignment, right? I mean, Hosea got the raw end of a terrible deal. But, you know, it's the same assignment given to Hosea is the exact same assignment that the father gave the son. The exact assignment where God said, listen, they're unfaithful. I need you to go and buy her back. I need you to take a wife and she is a wife of unfaithfulness. I need you to go and buy her back and redeem her. It's the same message and the same assignment that God the Father gave the Son. He said, listen, they have gone astray. They are sheep without a shepherd. They are lost. They are wicked and they are depraved. They are enemies of mine. Go and bring them back and redeem them and do whatever it takes. And there was one way for that to happen. It was the cross here in Hosea. We see the gospel. We see that this is the cross of Christ, that Christ did this for us. But. It's only the beginning or it's only one part, and that leads us to number four, and that's the plea of God and the plea of God is to come back. The plea of God is to come back to me, to reject unfaithfulness. I want to show you several passages as we walk through Hosea. Turn with me if you want to Hosea chapter six. Chapter six, verse one, come, let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us, but he will heal us. He has wounded us, but he will bandage us. He will revive us after two days. He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord for his going forth is as certain as the dawn and he will come like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth. Turn to chapter 10, verse 12. So with a view to righteousness, reap in accordance with kindness, break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the Lord until he comes to rain righteousness on you. Turn to chapter 12, verse six. Therefore, return to your God, observe kindness and justice and wait for your God continually. Turn to chapter 14, I want to end here. The book closes with a plea for repentance and return. Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to him, take away all our iniquity and receive us graciously that we may present the fruit of our lips. What a great plea for repentance, isn't it? Assyria will not save us. We will not ride on horses, nor will we say again, our God, to the work of our hands, for in you, the orphan finds mercy. And now God speaks, I will heal their apostasy and I will love them freely. Yet are you getting a picture of the heart of God here? They could not have done anything worse. Spiritual unfaithfulness and infidelity to God is as low as we can go. As low as the people of Israel could go. And he comes and he says, if you'll do this, I will heal you. I will love you freely and my anger will turn. Look at verse 5. I will be like the dew to Israel. He will blossom like the lily. He will take root like the cedars of Lebanon. His shoots will sprout. His beauty will be like the olive tree. His fragrance like the cedars of Lebanon. Those who live in his shadow will again raise grain and they will blossom like the vine. His renown will be like the wine of Lebanon. Oh, Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I'm like a luxuriant cypress. From me comes your fruit. Therefore, whoever is wise, whoever is wise, let him understand these things. Whoever is discerning, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right and the righteous welcome them. But transgressors will stumble. It's a great closing to this book, because basically what God did in chapter 14 through Hosea's message is here's the deal. You've been unfaithful and there's nothing worse than that. You have rejected me. You have chased after others. You have pursued evil, wickedness, sin, your own pleasures. You have forsaken me, forgotten me. Your hearts are hard towards me. And you have found your affections and pleasure in everywhere but me. But if you'll repent, if you will turn, that will be wiped clean. It won't just be, well, come on, and I'm a little begrudgingly going to take you back. It is I will love you freely and my anger will be gone. Unless we think this is just a problem for Israel, the New Testament reminds us of this as well. I'm just going to read, you can write this down, but James chapter 4. Spiritual adultery, as we said, is not just an Israel problem, it's a human problem. That the longer we walk with God, the more often we're going to see that our hearts, like the Old Hymn says, are prone to wander. C.S. Lewis described it that we are half-hearted creatures. Our problem isn't that we want too many things. It is that we are too easily satisfied with the things of here. We settle for earthly things and pursuing earthly things, and we become earthly, we become worthless, we become evil and wicked. And look how James describes it. Verse three of chapter four, he says, You ask and do not receive. Because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. Now, listen to the word he uses in verse four. By the way, this is to believers. Verse four, you adulterous. Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility towards God? He brings the same parallel of unfaithfulness and adultery from Hosea into the New Testament, into the people of God. Do you not know that your friendship with the world is hostility towards God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the scripture speaks to no purpose that he jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell within us? If you're with us today and you're not a Christian, if you're not a believer in Christ, Then what we've seen from Hosea and from James is this, and it's very clear, and this is what the Bible says. But you've set yourselves up to be an enemy of God. You have set yourselves up to be a friend of the world that is controlled by the evil one. And what the Lord is saying, and I pray clearly this morning to you, is that God is willing and he is calling you today to come to him. to repent of your sin and to repent of your pursuit of worthless things and of this world and come to Him who loves you enough to send Christ to come and take you home. I mean, that is the message that we see if you are not a Christian this morning, that you are in the position that Gomer represents, that Israel represented of choosing things that are less than God. And God said, I love them enough. Go get them and bring them back. They don't know any better. They don't know what they could have. They don't know what it's going to cost them. They need me and they don't even know it. And this morning, if you're here, maybe for a long time, you thought you were a Christian and you thought you were a follower of Christ. But James makes it very clear. Friendship with the world is a sign that you are an enemy of God, not a child of God. And yet, God says, if you'll turn and you'll come, my anger will be turned. And my love will flow freely. If you're here today and I pray that you're listening and you're a believer. Jose's message is especially important for us. And that is that God's love towards us is righteously jealous. God's love towards us is righteously jealous, and our hearts are inclined towards spiritual adultery by loving the world. And the profile given earlier to Israel is the same for us, that if you find yourself able to come here on Sunday and act and look spiritual, and yet your heart is far from God, that's a problem. If you find yourself in spiritual wandering, that you're always looking towards other things to satisfy and to bring you pleasure. If you are forgetful of the works of God, if you are pursuing things that are not pleasing to God, if we are forsaking Him and instead trading Him in for things that are broken and don't work, we have to see that we ourselves are putting ourselves on a path to being unfaithful to God. And so the call for repentance goes to us as well. If we see that, it isn't to just shrug that off. It is to say, I need to stop and see that God's love extends to us, that He isn't trying to limit us. He's trying to show us the futility of that pursuit rather than Him. I pray this morning that we would all examine and see where God leads as He exposes our hearts. Let's pray together. Father, we ask you to work this morning. I pray if there's people here today who don't know you. Father, that they would not miss the picture of a heartbroken husband pursuing his unfaithful wife time and time and time again and offering hope and love and restoration if there's repentance. So father, would you clearly open their hearts and clearly show the truth of the gospel that you love them. You love them in their sin and you will love them with the love of your son. If they will place their faith in you and come to you. And father, for those of us today who know you. Father, we confess how easy it is to find ourselves in friendship with the things of this world and at odds with you. Father, I pray against our church and believers today who would follow the path of Israel and in our pride say, that's not me. That we would follow the path of Israel and forget you. We would follow the path of Israel and choose other things or try to substitute you. That our hearts would never be satisfied in You, but always looking for something else. Father, if that is the case, would You show us Your glory? Would You show us Yourself? And would You lead us to repentance so that we can walk with You? Lord, we ask You to do that in our church. We ask You to do that in our homes. We ask You to do that in our marriages. Father, that You would be supreme. That You would be preeminent in all things. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.