God's Love

I hold it true whate'er befall. I feel it when I sorrow most. Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. These words that we repeat often seek to offer comfort in the face of loss. Oftentimes they're spoken in memorial, and in that context, they remind us to take pleasure in having our lives, having been enlarged by the love, the relationships that we've experienced, and that the joy and the pleasure that we receive from those relationships must outweigh the pain of now losing them. However, a lot of times we also hear them applied to romantic relationships. And in that case, I just am not sure I buy it. I'm not sure that that's actually true. Love lost by death is very different than love lost by indifference or by betrayal. Whether it's sort of the unreciprocated love among teenagers or whether it's the infidelity within covenant marriages, those kind of experiences shape us profoundly. And particularly in the latter case of adultery, they inflict deeper wounds upon the human soul than maybe anything else we experience in this life. Now, we've been singing about love all morning, so why such a gloomy, dark start to the sermon? It may surprise some of you to know that God Himself is not a stranger to unreciprocated love. In fact, God is the victim in an adulterous relationship. He's been used. He's been lied to. He's been abandoned. Nowhere in the Bible is that more clear than in our text this morning, in the book of Hosea. You can find it on page 751 of your Pew Bibles. If you don't have a Bible, please take that home with you as a gift from us to you. Jose has to be one of the saddest if not the saddest and most painful books in all of scripture It's it's 14 chapters long. We won't have time to read all of it this morning Maybe you'll take the time to do that this week but we'll try to look at as much as we can a fair amount of it this morning and what I hope for us to see as we Walk through the story of Hosea's life as we read these prophecies written by Hosea I hope that you see this morning God's unfathomable love for an unworthy people. Hosea is the story of God's love triumphing over his people's sin. And so as we consider that this morning, I want us to look at four headings. Again, we won't be able to walk through the book like we usually do. There's actually not a lot of discernible structure in Hosea. Their kind of first three chapters are a little bit of narrative. And then the rest of the book is a lot of prophecies that kind of go through the cycles of the relationship. And you'll get a feel for that this morning. But as we structure the sermon, I want us to hear four things. First, an unusual marriage. Second, an unfaithful wife. Third, a means of restoration. And fourth, a faithful husband. So an unusual marriage, an unfaithful wife, a means of restoration, and a faithful husband. So let's look first at an unusual marriage. Hosea 1. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel. So we see here first, we're in a dark period in Israel's history. The kingdoms are divided between Israel and Judah in the north and in the south. We can read the stories about these different kings in the books of Kings and Chronicles, the dates. based on these kings' names, tell us we're somewhere 750 BC, an important date because in Israel, 722 is sort of the date. That's when Assyria comes in and takes over and conquers Israel. So things are on a downward trajectory in Israel. They're a little bit better in Judah, at least for a little while. And so it's in this time that the word of the Lord comes to Hosea. This is how God spoke to his people in those days. Prophets would hear a word from the Lord and pass it on to the people. And by God's grace, it was recorded so that we now have that word here this morning. So let's keep going. Chapter one, verse two. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take yourself a wife of whoredom, and have children of whoredom. For the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. So imagine with me if you're Hosea, you know, fresh out of seminary, eager to do whatever ministry God has called you to. What's going through his mind? Maybe he was gifted in preaching. Maybe he was a passionate evangelist. Maybe he had a heart full of mercy. He's not married. He's single for a reason. Maybe he was hoping for the Nineveh assignment that we heard about last week that was given to Jonah. He was the perfect candidate, right? And so what is God's first word to him, the first word of the Lord to this prophet? Marry a prostitute. Have children with her. It's almost unbelievable, isn't it? Are we really reading this in scripture? Isn't this wrong? Why would God call someone to do something like this? He tells us here in verse 2, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. The Israelites, God's people, are unfaithful to God. His relationship with Him was to be like a marriage defined by fidelity and exclusivity. And so God is calling Hosea to this unbelievable act, this thing that we really can't even wrap our minds around. He's calling Hosea to identify with Him, with God, in a very personal way. Hosea's experience in this marriage would mirror God's experience with his people. And so over the course of his ministry, Hosea would be uniquely qualified to speak to the Israelites. Now, let's get this straight just right at the beginning. You are not Hosea. This book is not primarily a manual about how to love difficult people. It's not how to respond to a betrayal. It's not anything like that. It's about the failure of God's people to respond to his love. And so we can't identify with God until we first identify fully with Israel. So let's keep reading. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Deblaim. And she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, call his name Jezreel. For in just a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel. And I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, call her name No Mercy. For I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. When she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, call his name not my people, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. So here we have a summary of Hosea's relationship, a picture of his life. He marries Gomer, a real woman with a real father, real person in history, and he made her his wife. And she has three children, Jezreel, No Mercy, and Not My People. And God commands Hosea to give them these names. They have significance to demonstrate what he is going to do. He's pronouncing what he's going to do in the house of Israel. So we start with Jezreel, the firstborn. It was a place of bloodshed in Israel's history. It would be like an American naming his child Pearl Harbor or World Trade Center or something like that. It evoked all of these negative images. The word Jezreel means scattered, and the idea is that God is scattering seeds of judgment over the house of Israel. Now, if you'll notice with the next two children, there's something different about them. So in verse three, Gomer conceived and bore him, bore Hosea, a son. But in verse six, she conceived and bore a daughter. And in verse eight, she conceived and bore a son. These are not Hosea's children. There is unfaithfulness in the marriage. So as these children are named, they get more direct, more blunt names. No mercy. Not loved is the daughter. Unloved. Who would name their child unloved? This was an indication of God's changing his heart toward the people of Israel. Once God had come to Israel and said, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy. And it's you, I'm having mercy on you. God was graciously disclosing himself to the nation in a personal way, disposing himself toward them for their good. But now, no more, no mercy. And then finally, the youngest son, not my people, not mine. Is there possibly a worse name for a child than not mine? For Israel especially, this would be the most excruciating, the most painful pronouncement because God is reversing His covenant promise with the nation. The essence of their relationship had been that promise, that commitment to one another. I will be your God, you will be my people. Saying it back and forth to one another like wedding vows, renewing, rehearsing those covenant vows to each other. But no more. God looks upon Israel's unfaithfulness and says, not my people. And so we're introduced here at the beginning of the book to this family, Hosea, his wife, Gomer, the prostitute, and the three children. Scattered judgment, no mercy, not mine. It sounds insane. It sounds insane, but for the duration of Hosea's ministry, he lived as a parable to Israel. Every time they were out in public, they walked before the people as a mirror of God's relationship with Israel. People would see themselves. Every time he called out one of their names, he called out another warning to the house of Israel. Every time his wife, Gomer, would return to her former ways, Hosea himself experienced the adultery and the betrayal that God had experienced as his people turned from him again and again and again. We spend a lot of time analyzing, thinking about how we feel about our relationship with God. I feel close to God today, or I feel distant from God today, or I feel encouraged, I feel disappointed, whatever it is. But I wonder, how much time do we spend thinking about how God feels about us? How does God sound based on just the initial reading of Hosea this morning? He sounds angry. He sounds heartbroken, frustrated, exasperated, all of the above, I think. See, God is a jealous lover. He is furious at his people's betrayal. But that fury flows from the depth of his love for them. If you're married and your spouse cheats on you, wouldn't you be angry? Of course, of course you'd be angry. If you're not angry, if that doesn't provoke you to anger, it's because you don't love your spouse. Well, the same is true about God and His people, both then and now. Brothers and sisters, God is jealous for your affection this morning. He loves you, and He wants your love. He wants it for His glory, and He also wants it for your good. You were made to be satisfied in God, to be captivated by His beauty. And so He can't bear to watch you destroy yourself by pursuing lesser things. His anger is righteous. It is pure. is motivated by his absolute, pure love. And it's his love that has given us these words this morning. The rest of chapter 1 and the first verse of chapter 2 really capture the essence of the whole book. So, verse 10, he says, Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Say to your brothers, you are my people, and to your sisters, you have received mercy. So we see that the story seems, it sounds like it has a happy ending. But we can't make sense of that ending. We can't make sense of this text in context until we've understood the whole story. And so the remainder of the book is that story. Hosea's life as the husband of a prostitute. God's experience bearing with an idolatrous people. We may wonder how their relationship has come to this point, that this is how the text starts, and that's exactly what the book is about. It's a collection of prophecies and sermons delivered by Hosea over the course of his ministry, provided for us, compiled neatly for us to study and learn about the twisted and broken love story between God and his people. And so this brings us to the second point, an unfaithful wife. We have to ask, what's gone wrong in this relationship? How did it get to this point? And the word, the simple answer is sin. Sin has characterized all of Israel's response to God. Now, when we say sin in our culture, it's a very sterile word. We think of a Sunday school teacher kind of shaking her finger, and it sounds like something that we talk about here at church, but it really doesn't have a lot to do with real life. But what we see in the book of Hosea is it's actually quite the opposite. Sin is fundamentally relational. It's a rejection of the God who made us for a personal relationship with himself. And it's true for all of mankind, but it's especially true for the nation of Israel. God had chosen them out, made them his particular people, given them his name, promised himself to them in a particular way and powerful way. And we see in the book that Israel is guilty of committing spiritual adultery. So look with me at chapter two, beginning in verse two. Plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband, that she may put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked, and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst. Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are the children of whoredom, for their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them 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. This is intense language, friends. God is bringing charges against his bride, his people, Israel. They have repeatedly sought sustenance and protection and care and pleasure from things other than God who had promised to provide all of those things for them in abundance. And so we hear things like this, these charges being made throughout the book. So if you flip over to chapter four, one and two, hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel. For the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love and no knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery. They break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Or chapter six, verses seven to 10. But like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. There they dealt faithlessly with me. And Gilead is a city of evildoers, tracked with blood. As robbers lie in wait for a man, so the priests band together. They murder on the way to Shechem. They commit villainy. In the house of Israel, I have seen a horrible thing. Ephraim's whoredom is there. Israel is defiled. God had established His covenant with this people. He said, I will be your God. I will bless you. Now here's my law. You must obey me. And at one time they had pledged to do so on the mountain. All that you've written we will do. We'll follow you. You are our God. But now we see they are blatantly ignoring those vows. Throughout the books, their relationships with each other are characterized by the things we just read about. Sexual immorality, deceit, anger, greed, and violence. By rejecting his word, they are rejecting him. They are rejecting God. They didn't take God's name and his character as something to preserve, but they used it as something to trample on. And so not only do they disregard his word, but they disregard him as their protector and provider. They looked elsewhere for the blessings that God had promised to give them. So in chapter 5 verse 13, we see, when Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound. Or chapter 7 verse 11, Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria. Or chapter 12 verse 1, Ephraim feeds on the wind and pursues the east wind all day long. They multiply falsehood and violence, they make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is carried to Egypt. So we see here in these very practical matters of trusting God to be God, to provide for their needs, to protect them from their enemies. They just simply didn't trust him. They didn't look to him for those things. They looked elsewhere. But what about in their relationship with God directly? How about how they relate to God in that most intimate aspect of their relationship, in their worship? Well, it's not surprising that even in religious matters, there is infidelity. So in chapter four, verses 12 and 13, God says, my people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles, for a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore. They sacrifice on the tops of mountains and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good. Therefore, your daughters play the whore, and your brides commit adultery. Or chapter 13, verses one and two. When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling. He was exalted in Israel, but he incurred guilt through Baal and died. And now they sin more and more and make for themselves metal images, idle, skillfully made of their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. So you see that it's not that the people became irreligious, quite the contrary. They just abandoned the exclusive relationship in their worship of God for a more open relationship with whatever God happened to be convenient that day. Of course, this is scandalous. As scandalous as we can imagine. Throughout their history, God had said, I am God. I am alone, God. Worship me. and yet they continue to turn from him to other forms of worship. The bottom line in all this, all of their deeds centered around one point. God had made himself known to them, and to them uniquely, but they ignored him. They did not know God. So in chapter 5, he says in verse 3, I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me. For now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore. Israel is defiled. Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord. Or in chapter eight, verse two, to me they cry, my God, we, Israel, know you. Israel has spurned the good. The enemy shall pursue them. They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not. With their silver and gold, they made idols for their own destruction. And then down to verse 11. Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they have become to him altars for sinning. Were I to write for him my laws by the ten thousands, they would be regarded as a strange thing. As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins. They shall return to Egypt, for Israel has forgotten his maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities. So I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her strongholds. Throughout the book, we see a people who are completely oblivious to the God that they call their own. Well, what about us this morning? Are we all that different from Israel? Remember, sin is inherently relational. So we all have to acknowledge, all of us here, whether you're a Christian or not, have to acknowledge some connection with God in general. But that isn't enough. God is not interested in an open relationship. He wants 100% of our devotion. So let's just think about your life, just even this past week. How have you sought fulfillment in the things of this world? Your work, your stuff, your relationships, your body, your intellect, maybe not even having those things, but thinking about wishing that you did. How have you pursued rest and entertainment this week? How have you sought to identify with the world by having the latest gadget or knowing about the latest development in pop culture or the latest sports stat? Even for us, what about our spiritual lives? Have you been tempted this week to ignore or dismiss something in the Bible because you don't agree with it? Are you content to have all the right answers in Sunday school but to be a jerk at home or in the office? Did you receive anything this week for which you did not give thanks? Friends, all of our sin is betrayal and adultery against God. Do you see it that way? The last time you were angry or envious or gossiped or lusted or were disrespectful to your parents or told a lie, did you see that sin not as something benign or incidental, but as actually an act of unfaithfulness, of adultery in your relationship with God? Is our sin as repulsive to us as the idea of our spouse's unfaithfulness? Are we as offended when we betray friends and loved ones as we are at the idea of our sin against God? Does the betrayal of friends and loved ones offend us as much as our sin against God? For Israel, it wasn't simply that they broke the Ten Commandments. It was that they didn't know God. They didn't know Him. The foundation of any loving relationship is a mutual knowledge, a shared knowledge of one another. And that's why the Bible uses the term no when it refers to sexual intimacy in marriage. There is an exclusive knowledge at the core of any covenant loving relationship. And Israel had betrayed God by not responding to him and pursuing him. They ignored God. So to think about it in modern terms, if God and Israel are a couple and they went out to a restaurant, they can sit down and God knows exactly what Israel wants, what she's gonna order. Israel has no idea about God. God's always engaged in the conversation with eye contact while Israel is flipping through her phone. For Israel's birthday, she would get a thoughtful gift. God would get a gift card. Now that all sounds silly, but let's be honest, that is a relationship that cannot last. It is destined to fail in its current state. And that's exactly what happened in Israel. So in chapter 13, God says, so I am to them like a lion, like a leopard, I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs. I will tear open their breasts and I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open. Samaria shall bear her guilt because she has rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword. Their little ones shall be dashed in pieces and their pregnant women ripped open. With no more recourse, God's judgment finally came upon Israel. And this really did happen exactly as it's written. 722 BC, Assyria comes into Israel and destroys the people. And so as we consider Hosea's warning to Israel, we all this morning are warned about God's judgment coming upon us because of our sin. See, Paul tells us in Romans that we are guilty of the same crime that they are, not knowing God. He tells us that God has made himself known. His eternal power and divine nature are evident all over the world. But we suppress the truth. We don't honor God as God or give thanks to him. And even worse, those of us who know God more intimately, who are here at church, we have his word, but we ignore it. We're guilty of hypocrisy. And so God's wrath is upon us because yes, God is a furious lover, but he is also the judge of the world. And every one of us is accountable to him. And so the judgment that he promised and then delivered in Hosea is only a shadow of the judgment that is coming upon all of us. And friends, the Bible is clear. There is one way and one way alone to escape that judgment. And it's by faith in Jesus Christ. We see this message throughout the gospel. In Matthew 2, God takes words from Hosea's prophecy. In chapter 11, this beautiful statement about God's love for his people. And he applies them to Jesus. He says, out of Egypt I called my son. And what the gospel writer is telling us in that moment is Jesus Christ is Israel. Jesus is the true Israel. He is the perfectly faithful, completely obedient son, spouse that God had established Israel to be. Jesus came to fulfill all that God had called his people to be. And by his ministry, he was perfectly obedient, even up to the point of his death. But even then, his death was not just an example. His death was a substitute. So 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, for our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. So on the cross, Jesus was executed as a criminal for the crimes committed by God's people, but he also offered his life of perfect righteousness and obedience to all of those who were united with him by faith. So through Jesus, we can actually have the relationship with God that we don't deserve, that Jesus deserves, the perfect unity of obedience and love. As we look back to Hosea chapter 13, verse 14, he says, shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes. When these words were first delivered to Israel, they were mocking. It was God mocking them. They were helpless in judgment and God was beckoning death to come and destroy them. And yet through Jesus Christ, Paul is able to apply these same words and use them upside down to mock death and judgment, saying, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And friends, that good news is the message of the gospel for us here this morning. The message of the gospel is God's love triumphing over his own wrath and our sin. Praise be to God. So how are we to respond to that good news? That takes us back to the book of Hosea. Point three, a means to restoration. A means to restoration. You can go to chapter 14. Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words, and return to the Lord, and say to him, take away all iniquity except what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips. Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses, and we will say no more, our God, to the work of our hands. In you the orphan finds mercy. In order for God's relationship with his people to be restored, there had to be repentance. That's been clear throughout the book. There are sprinkled indictments of sin and warnings of coming judgment throughout. And then there's also been these pleas for the people to repent. And we are told here in these verses what repentance looks like. It involves words and actions. Israel is to go to God and confess her sin. And we see there she's promising both future acts of devotion and love and as well as a change in her behavior. She vows to no longer pursue those acts of idolatry. true repentance is a course correction. It starts with a conviction in the heart, an acknowledgement of being wrong at the very deepest level. Ultimately, it's saying to God, God, I loved this thing, this feeling, this person, this experience more than I loved you. It means seeing the damage that our sin causes, and it means most fundamentally seeing that in our relationship with God, how much it grieves God when we sin. We agree in our mind that the sin is what it is, what God says it is. We don't excuse it. We don't blame shift. As we heard last week from Tim, we own our sin and we hate it. We say, I never want to do that again. By your grace, God, I will apply every ounce of energy I have to avoid doing that again at all costs. We see that in repentance, a change of heart and a change of mind leads to words and actions. So we have to articulate our offenses to God. The New Testament tells us we have to confess our sins to God, not just the first time when we come to him sort of in a general sense, but as part and parcel of our life, as we continue to struggle in faithfulness and fail in our attempts to him. So words are absolutely necessary, but words in and of themselves are not enough. Actions have to follow those words. So it isn't enough simply to go to God and say, sorry, I blew it again. No, we have to act on our sorrow. If we are truly grieved that we have offended the God we love, then we will take steps to avoid offending Him in the same way again. That's what Israel has to do. She has to discontinue those practices of unfaithfulness, of idolatry. It works the same way in our human relationships as well. So imagine a couple of different scenarios. In the first scenario, this is gonna be hard to imagine, a child has hit his sister. And through the discipline process, you sort of try to get the child to finally go to his sister and say, I'm sorry. And the child does it, you know, with his fist clenched, his teeth clenched and says, sorry. He clearly has no regret for what he's done, right? That's not repentance. Those are empty words. On the other hand, picture a husband who's been harsh with his wife, and maybe they have a really bad night, sleep in separate rooms, don't see each other until the next day he comes home from work. And that day he comes home from work with a big smile on his face, flowers in his hands, and, oh, I'm so glad to see you, tries to give her a big hug, that sort of thing, showing sort of over-the-top kindness. That's not repentance either. Repentance involves both words and actions. So friends, there may be some of you in this room who have never actually looked a person in the eye and said, I have sinned against you. I was wrong. Please forgive me. And I just want to say, plead with you this morning to humble yourself. If you can't confess your sin to a fellow sinner like the people in this room, what will you say before a holy God? Likewise, there may be people in this room who don't struggle with confession. You have confessed the same sin over and over and over again. Maybe this week it's crept up again. Maybe you've committed it every day this week. And I would challenge you to take a good look into your heart and ask yourself, do you really hate that sin? You may confess it every day. But if you're not at the same time as you confess it, making war, declaring war against that sin, and making every effort you can to avoid it at all costs, to enlist every means possible to fight against it, can you honestly say to yourself that you are repenting? True repentance means nothing is off the table. It means you will employ whatever means necessary in order to kill that sin for the sake of your relationship with God. To put it in relational terms, can we really say we love someone if we continue to do the things that they hate? So I could do something tonight that would look very loving to many of you. I could go home and cook a gourmet meal for my family, a gourmet meal for my wife specifically. And if it was seafood, that meal would be repulsive to her. She doesn't like seafood. Your love for someone has to be demonstrated by your willingness to conform, to serve, to please that person, to spend yourself for his or her good. And this is exactly what Jesus says in John chapter 14. If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. What God expects of all of us is repentance and faith. He wants us to turn from our life of sin and turn toward him with the hope and the expectation that we will be forgiven. That's been clearly provided for us in the gospel. If you don't have that hope this morning, please come and talk to me after the service. We have to see something here in this text that's critical about love. Real love, true love, corrects. Real love doesn't just sit back passively while someone continues in self-destruction. Just like we don't let our toddlers go out and play in the street, we warn them, we train them, and then we'll physically restrain them if we have to in order to protect them. And so real love risks everything in order to protect the objects of love. And we see God modeling that for us this morning. He doesn't just leave Israel in her sin. He warns her, He rebukes her, He pleads with her to turn from that sin and to turn to Him. Love requires us to say hard things. And love requires change. As we think about that, I don't want us to lose sight of the fact that repentance is even an option. If sin is as serious as it is, as we've been talking about, we deserve to be obliterated. We deserve to be wiped out, dashed, just like God promised to Israel. And yet we see God over and over again pleading for repentance, to turn from sin, to turn to Him. He wants them with Him. He loves them. He pursues them. He waits for them. Friends, what kind of a God bears with a sinful people and continues to offer this kind of mercy? That brings us to our final point, a faithful husband. We can stay in chapter 14 and see how God responds to repentance. So 14 verse four. I will heal their apostasy. I will love them freely. For my anger has turned from them. I will be like the dew to Israel. He shall blossom like the lily. He shall take root like the trees of Lebanon. His shoots shall spread out. His beauty shall be like the olive. His fragrance like Lebanon. They shall return and dwell beneath my shadow. They shall flourish like the grain. They shall blossom like the vine. Their fame shall be like the wine of Lebanon. All through the book, the message has been clear. We are unfaithful Israel. We are Gomer. But God is a God of mercy. God responds to their repentance and healing and love. He fixes the problem. He loves them freely. And you hear in this text the fruit of love. Israel, who seemed so far gone, is now a picture of stability and prosperity. Not desperately seeking to be satisfied, but at rest, at peace in God's love. And friends, this is the effect of love. Love makes the things around it more lovely. We've heard that expression, it just needs a little love, right? That old car or that worn down animal or whatever the piece of furniture you get, whatever, it just needs a little love. It's true. Is it true in your life? Are the people who are closest to you becoming more lovely as a result of your love to them? The closer we are, the more we should see that effect in the people around us. And that means in our families and particularly in our marriages. Is your spouse more lovely because of your love for him or her? When we see that, that's just a glimpse, a tiny picture of God's love. You see, God is the perfect lover. Whatever fulfillment you're seeking this morning, it won't be found in this world. No person or experience or feeling will satisfy you. And in the book of Hosea, we see this judgment coming on to Israelites over and over again in the form of their dissatisfaction, their restlessness. So it says they will pursue but not overtake, seek but not find. There's a hopelessness and a hopelessness there. But the promise we have in Christ is exactly the opposite. Ask and it will be given. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened. Jesus wants to meet our needs, to satisfy our desires and longings, and he does because he knows our needs and desires better than we know them ourselves. How can you be sure of God's love and forgiveness this morning? Listen to God's heart for his people. This is from chapter 11. How can I give you up? O Ephraim, and how can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zeboim? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. This text tells us that God is a God eager to show mercy. And it's the picture we see back in chapter two. So to sort of complete the journey here, we've seen God and Israel as a couple at their wits end. A broken marriage, it's sort of like we've been sitting in on a marriage counseling session. We've witnessed them hashing out all their issues, all the ways that Israel has failed to be the wife that God called her to be, that she committed to be. And here we have God in his mercy, in the depth of her sin, plotting how he's going to win her back. So look with me at chapter two, beginning in verse 14. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyards and make the Valley of Acre a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. God promises to take Israel back to the beginning of their relationship, back to a simpler time. And you can hear the tenderness as he relates to her as his beloved people. And you can see the blessing God is providing for her in abundance. One of the most fascinating things about this, the Valley of Achor. It's a place where Achan had sinned. So right, very early on in the relationship, right as they're going into the Promised Land, there's this sin that disrupts their relationship, that breaks everything. But God is able to redeem that situation from this ominous sign of the unfaithfulness that is to come, to the hope of a deeper and more intimate and more beautiful relationship on the other side. Let's keep reading. And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband. And no longer will you call me my Baal. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and the war from the land. And I will make you lie down in safety. and I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. This is the kind of blessing God's people experience when they are in right relationship with him. Intimacy, exclusivity, security, eternity. And this is precisely the kind of blessing Peter says we experience in the new covenant through the work of Jesus Christ. So in 1 Peter 2, he says, but 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 you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. That's beautiful, isn't it? Brothers and sisters, behold in that text, the mercy of God. Once you were no one, unloved, undeserving, but God has come to us and in Jesus Christ, he's called us out, he's made us his. We had nothing and now we have everything. And it's in light of that and only in light of that that we can start to apply this principle to others. Only when we first see ourselves as God's gomer can we then think rightly about the gomers in our lives. The New Testament is clear. Forgiven sinners forgive. Those who have received mercy show mercy. So let's think about that quickly in three different spheres of life. In your marriage and in your family. There is, without a doubt, more opportunity for sin and hurt here than in any other relationship in your life. And because of that, we have a unique opportunity to represent the covenant-keeping love that God shows to his people. Particularly in marriage, where we're told, we read it this morning, nothing less than the gospel is at stake. When your spouse sins against you, you have the opportunity to love as Christ loves, to sacrifice yourself for your spouse's good. You get to take the hurt and the blame and forgive as you have been forgiven. That makes the gospel real to you, it makes it real to your spouse, it makes it real to everyone who's watching. Marriage is given for nothing less than this purpose, to display the redeeming, redemptive love of Christ for his church. In church, We have a similar opportunity here. If we are going to be faithful to live together as a local church with the kind of vulnerability and closeness the New Testament prescribes for us, then we should expect that we're going to get sinned against. And that's why Paul tells the Ephesians, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. If it's truly the mercy of Christ that's united us together as a body, then it should be easy and regularly applied to our relationships with each other. What about in the world? Are you characterized as being a merciful person? Would your coworkers or your neighbors consider you someone who is kind and merciful or someone who is cold and indifferent? When viewed at a distant, does your life make the gospel look intriguing? Is it warm? Is it desirable? And then to flip that on its head, how do you view the world around you? Are you more likely to scoff at ignorance to judge those who are out there in their sin? Or are you more likely to, in compassion, go to them with the gospel and the hope of a God who showed mercy to you and extend that mercy to others? Brothers and sisters, if you understand the truth of the gospel this morning, that your only hope is Jesus Christ, that you are completely and utterly dependent upon mercy shown to you through Christ, and that's what it means to be a Christian, is somebody to be absolutely dependent on God's mercy in Christ, then let me ask a simple question. How merciful are you? If you're not merciful, do you really know the God who wrote these words? And friends, this is why the gospel is so important. We need to remind ourselves constantly, daily of God's mercy to us in Jesus Christ and make that the standard for how we relate to the people around us. The gospel isn't just how we get in as Christians. It's how we live as Christians. The gospel is Christianity. Whatever happened to old Hosea and Gomer? We can assume that based on everything that we've read this morning, that she was like the nation of Israel and she was unfaithful, that she left Hosea and pursued other interests. We wonder, is their relationship over? Was there any hope? Was there any redemption to be found? Well, we get that answer in chapter three. And the Lord said to me, go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress. even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins. So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a lethek of barley. And I said to her, you must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore or belong to another man. So will I also be to you. So Hosea and Gomer's story is to finish like God in Israel's. Hosea bought his wife. He bought his wife. Can you imagine being betrayed by a spouse, them selling themselves as a sex slave, and you going and buying them back? He brought her back to his house. And notice how the word love is repeated in verse one. It is a posture. It is an attitude. It is action. It is a resolved disposition toward another human being. And the last phrase there, so I will also be to you, is actually better translated, so I will also wait for you. I'm bringing you back into my house. I want you back as my wife, and I'm going to wait for you until you're ready to be that for me, and then I will be ready to be your husband. Can you see the beauty in that this morning? I think we have to ask ourselves honestly, how long would we have waited? If we were Hosea, how long would we have waited? How many times before we gave up? How many times before we went to divorce.com to start our online divorce for only $2.99? That's a real thing. Are we so calloused this morning? Are we so hardened in our sin this morning that we can't see the value of mercy? Are we so blind to our own sin, to our own desperate need for mercy that we can't see to show mercy to others? To see this as a beautiful picture, a devoted spouse waiting, hoping, praying that his love will one day return. Have we, friends, forgotten what love is? Friends, look to Hosea. Look to Hosea and see him waiting for this unfaithful and dirty and sinful wife, hoping and pleading, listening for her to return, longing for her to come and love him once again because he loves her so desperately. Friends, look to Hosea and see a shadow, a shadow, a glimpse of God's love for you and me in Jesus Christ. Jesus too purchased his wife. But the price he paid was not silver and barley. It was his own precious blood. So Paul says, God demonstrates his own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. Jesus purchased his bride. and having purchased her, he waits. The only thing standing between you and God this morning is your sin. All of the things that you love more than God. And so let me plead with you once more, repent. Don't stay in your sin, run to God and he will run to you. Jesus waits this morning, but the word is clear, he does not wait forever. Peter tells us that his waiting is his patience. He's delaying judgment as an expression of his heart, not wishing any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. The day of judgment is coming, friends. But this morning, right now, he waits. And that, friends, is love. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we stand this morning in awe of your love. Father, we are convicted because we see ourselves so clearly this morning as Gomer, as Israel, as an unfaithful and sinful people. And we marvel that despite our sin, you have loved us through your son, Jesus Christ. We pray that you would not allow the display of love in Jesus's death to go unanswered this morning. May your kindness, God, once again lead us to repentance, whether it's for the first time or whether it's afresh today. Make us a people who love mercy because we desperately need it. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ and for his glory alone. Amen. Amen.