Love Beyond The Limits (Hosea April 1, 2012)

Love Beyond The Limits (Hosea April 1, 2012) Most of you know the story of Hosea and Gomer. It is a love story but an ugly love story. A marriage gone wrong. A wife who falls off the rails and sleeps around and a husband who pursues her with a love that goes far beyond the limits. I have heard this book preached and the message is be a Hosea. Love your wife, your husband, other people with a love that goes beyond the limits. That is part of the message but the real message is not be a Hosea Gomer needs you. The real message is You are a Gomer you need a Hosea. While we find it comforting to think of ourselves as noble Hosea loving Gomer in spite of her sin the reality is that we are Gomer adulteress, prostituting, revolting Gomer. 1

Hosea is a book in which the prophet s marriage is used to teach us about the gospel. In many ways, it is very similar to the parable of the prodigal son. Someone who is loved yet throws that love to the gutter, stomps on it only to have even more love shown. The Bible has many ways of describing our sin and how far we are from God. The reason we need many ways is that we struggle to understand the full depth of our sin. We accept we are a bit off the rails. But we deny that we are as revolting and depraved as the prodigal son or Gomer. However, if you ever want to understand the gospel you have to stand before God and cry I am Gomer please love this unloveable wretch. Let me see if I can give you an idea of the depth of God s love. You are a twenty-year-old guy who grew up in a godly home. You love the Lord and love his church. Then you meet this girl. She is gorgeous. But even more importantly she seems to love the Lord with all her heart. You find yourself falling head over heels in love. Before you know it you have popped the question. She says yes and then you are married. The first few months are bliss better than anything you ever imagined. Thank you Lord. But as the honeymoon fades you sense the first inklings of trouble. You feel her heart wandering. But when she says I m pregnant all your doubts are swept away by expectation. Your son is born. But soon after, the doubts surface again. She doesn t look at you the same way. She doesn t talk to you the same way. She finds excuses to be out of the home. Then she is pregnant again. You suppress your questions. A girl is born. But you are shocked. Red hair! No one in your family has red hair. She looks nothing like you. But you swallow your doubts and put on a brave face because you can t even bear to contemplate the thought that she has been unfaithful to you. Things aren t good. Arguments, anger, harsh words. She never goes to church with you. She is always out of the house. Your family and friends are worried you keep telling yourself things will get better they have to. She is pregnant again but you two have lived as strangers so you know this one could not possibly be yours. You are shattered. You hire a private detective. 2

It couldn t be worse. She works as a prostitute and has several lovers on the side as well. It couldn t possibly be true but it is! You feel betrayed on the deepest levels. Your friends tell you get out now. You want to scoop up the kids and run but then a voice says yeah but at least one, probably two and possibly all three of the kids aren t yours just run. Get out. Divorce her. Find a new wife. Anything has to be better than this. But then another voice whispers: Before God and these witnesses, I,... take you,... to be my lawful wedded wife,... to have and to hold from this day forward,... for better for worse,... for richer for poorer,... in sickness and in health,... to love and to cherish,... till death do us part. For better for worse. But then you find yourself asking could anyone ever imagine worse could be this bad? She is not just an adulteress she is a prostitute! You collapse. This is your worst nightmare and you don t know what a Christian man is supposed to do. Stay, leave, love what? This scenario sends shivers up your spine. But let me give you another scenario. You are at Bible college studying to be a pastor. You wake up one night and an angel is there. The angel says: The church in this land is apostate. They mouth worship of the Lord but even those who call themselves Christians really worship money, sex and pleasure. The Lord has decreed that you will be a visual example to the church of their sin. You will marry but your wife will become a prostitute. Your children will be the seed of prostitution. The church needs to know how they have betrayed the Lord. Marrying a wife who later cheats on you is horrific. Marrying a wife when you know that she will betray you is something else again. Yet that is exactly what the Lord asked of the prophet Hosea. Look with me at Hosea 1:1 2: The word of the LORD that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of 3

Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD. Could you imagine what went through Hosea s head when he heard these words? Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom. Why? because you have sinned no! for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD. Because the land of Israel has committed whoredom you have to marry a wife who will prostitute herself. God calls Hosea and says your marriage is going to be a visual picture to Israel of how they are treating Me. They prostitute themselves and aren t revolted by it. Your wife will prostitute herself so they might grasp how revolting their actions are. On one level this seems so wrong to ask a prophet to marry knowing his wife will betray him. Some scholars and pastors have said the Lord would not do this. He would not command a prophet to marry this kind of woman. They have said that this marriage never actually happened. This is just an allegory a story to picture Israel s unfaithfulness. God would not tell Hosea to actually marry under these circumstances. But nothing in this text indicates that this is an allegorical marriage. Everything about this seems to be a genuine marriage the details are too specific and read like history. And we need to remember that God has asked other prophets to make hard sacrifices that were meant to be symbols to a wicked people. Ezekiel was told that his wife would die and he could not mourn and this would symbolize the destruction of the Temple which the people had treasured. So most scholars rightly see this as a genuine marriage. But some have said God would never tell a prophet to marry a woman who would commit acts of sexual immorality. They claim that her sin was spiritual unfaithfulness chasing after other gods. It is pictured as sexual sin only to show how revolting it is. But the narrative reads like sexual sin. Nothing seems to indicate otherwise and we have no right to say worshipping a little idol is not as bad as sexual sin. So if the text says sexual sin prostitution go with that. If this is a real marriage and the sin of Gomer is sexual immorality the next question is this. Was Gomer a prostitute when they married or did her immorality begin after their marriage? 4

Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom on the surface seems to indicate she was already a prostitute. But when you read the text the impression is that she only became a prostitute later in the marriage. This makes more sense as religious leaders were forbidden from marrying impure wives. And since the marriage pictures Israel we should remember that Israel was spoken of as pure when God first chose her. Jeremiah 2:2 3: Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the LORD, I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown. Israel was holy to the LORD, the firstfruits of his harvest. Even within Hosea, this seems to be the case. Hosea 9:10: Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw your fathers. So it seems best to assume that this is a prophecy. Hosea is to marry a woman who was pure but become a prostitute. Her infidelity is meant to picture Israel s unfaithfulness to the Lord. If what she does revolts you good it shows what we do to God. Brides are meant to be faithful. To find your wife is a prostitute is horrific. But that is what Israel and truth be told you and I do to God. Remember the context here. Hosea is writing to the Northern Kingdom Israel. He is writing mainly in the later half of the eighth century. His ministry covers a long period of time it covers the reigns of many kings in both the northern and southern kingdoms. In many respects this was a golden era. Both the northern and southern kingdoms grew in size, influence and wealth. In fact they almost reached the same size as they were in the days of David and Solomon. There was relative peace and safety. Money was flowing in. The land was again producing abundantly and many people were becoming wealthy, having winter houses and summer houses (Amos 3:15). Building activity was flourishing on every hand. However, Hosea outlines in detail what happened. When there is an army marching toward you the people pray. When there is wealth and safety you don t give a thought about the Lord. 5

Hosea 8:14: 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. Here is the reality when you turn from God you don t just idle along you turn to the world. You turn to sin. That is what happened to Israel. Israel became a hotbed of idolatry in all its revolting forms. And sin and rebellion must be punished. You can read this book and you will see the sin of Israel in all its disgusting rawness and God saying I have to punish that sin. But let me highlight a few texts that will give you the idea. Hosea 10:1 2: Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built; as his country improved, he improved his pillars. Their heart is false; now they must bear their guilt. The LORD will break down their altars and destroy their pillars. Hosea 4:12 13: 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 the 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. They carved idols and asked them for guidance. They practiced ritual prostitution and the horrific sexual acts of the Baals. Men would sleep with temple prostitutes male and female and animals because this was supposed to encourage Baal to grant increased fertility on the land. Hosea 13:1 2: 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, idols skillfully made of their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. It is said of them, Those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves! Israel the people of God were involved in human sacrifices. It is hard to believe. Idolatry, temple prostitution, immorality, human sacrifice. 6

This is not all Hosea talks about their greed, their disregard for the poor, their flaunting of the Law. So here is the picture Israel lived in just as much filth as the nations. Temple prostitutes, human sacrifice, ever form of covetousness and yet they were in denial. They would say we are not perfect but surely we are better than the nations and anyway we are the people of God. Sin blinds us to how God sees us and how seriously God takes sin. Hosea is a book that is raw and shocking. It is meant to make Israel realise how far from God they were and that they had incurred the wrath of God. Hosea 4:1 2: 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. Hosea outlines how the land had become lawless. The rich oppress the poor. Covenants are made with godless nations. In the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery. Every sin you can think of was allowed to flourish. And Hosea 10:3: For now they will say: We have no king, for we do not fear the LORD; and a king what could he do for us? We are mighty. We don t need God. He is not our King. God chose Israel to be His precious people. The people to place His special love on. He called them to be holy as He is holy. He gave them the Law and the covenants. And right from the first Israel went a whoring. The golden calf episode had idolatry sexual immorality pagan rituals and it continued. God sent prophets to warn them. They kept on rejecting the Lord. There were times of repentance and revival but like a dog returning to its vomit Israel returned to her immorality. And now God has had enough. What is stunning when you read the prophets is that this came as a surprise to Israel. It should not they were Gomer revelling in their filth. God wants Israel to know why they have forced his hand. So he paints a picture using Hosea and Gomer. A picture of betrayal on every level. 7

We know greed is wrong. We accept idolatry isn t right. But we don t see them as revolting. But a wife that goes a whoring we know that is sick. God says You are a Gomer. Look again at Hosea 1:3: So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. Hosea married. Marriage is used repeatedly in the Bible as a picture of the relationship between God and His people. God created us male and female. The marriage of a man and a woman is a picture an example a living paradigm of what God created us for. It shows the type of relationship God wants with us. And as a picture of this relationship He gave us marriage. The woman Eve was made to be in a relationship with Adam just as we are made to be in a relationship with God. But this is meant to be a relationship with God as the head and us in submission. God created Adam first as the head over his wife. One of the reasons He did this is to illustrate for us the truth that God is supreme and we must submit to God. Ephesians 5:22-24: Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. A good marriage pictures the type of relationship God wants from His people. But the relationship He had with Israel was toxic so the picture had to be of a bad marriage. We see how bad things were in the children. Notice a few things. The first child Jezreel is specifically said to be the son of Hosea. The second and third child we simply read she conceived. 8

Then in chapter 2 verse 4 the children are called children of whoredom. While we can t be certain it seems likely that the first child is Hosea s and the second and third she conceived by someone else in her immorality. Then the names. First Jezreel Probably refers to the time when Ahab who promoted idolatry murdered Naboth to seize his vineyard in Jezreel. Look at verse 4: 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. This idolatry, murder, lawlessness sets the tone for the rest of the book. This is why God had to act against Israel. Then comes the second child a daughter and her name is No Mercy, for the Lord will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. God s protection of Israel was taken away. Verses 6 and 7: 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 by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. Judah was following down the same path of idolatry and lawlessness. But they were not as bad as Israel yet. God had not yet withdrawn His hand of mercy. In Isaiah 37 we see how God saved Judah without bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. You only have to read on in the prophets to see that Judah followed Israel and finally God withdrew His hand of protection from her as well but not in the days of Hosea. Then the third child Not My People For you are not my people, and I am not your God. This should have shocked Israel to the core of her being. God has rejected them as His people. He is no longer their God. Humanly speaking the story would end there. Wives who leave their husband prostitute themselves that is the end divorce relationship over done. But God is not a man. The Rabbis discussed just what a wife had to do to merit divorce. Rabbi Hillel said that a man may divorce his wife if she failed to please him. The example given was if she spoiled a dish she was cooking for him. Rabbi Akiba went so far as to say that a man may divorce his wife if he should find another woman who is more beautiful than his wife. 9

In fact if a wife committed adultery let alone prostitution she would be stoned. But here is the amazing thing with God while Israel betrayed Him desecrated the relationship the love of God not only forgives but plans to reconcile. Here is one of the great examples of grace. Look at Hosea 1:10 11: 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 for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. This is the father of the prodigal son running to forgive and restore. In Ezekiel, the prophet lays out the sin of the people. Sick, vile sins. But, the love of God plans to restore His people in the last days. Ezekiel 11:17 20: Therefore say, Thus says the Lord GOD: I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. Ezekiel 36:22 28: Therefore say to the house of Israel, I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. Romans 9:25 26 says this: As indeed he says in Hosea, Those who were not my people I will call my people, and her who was not beloved I will call beloved. And in the very place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God. In one sense everything you need to know about the book of Hosea is there in chapter 1. We are Gomer. We fully deserve to have our relationship ended. But God says I will love again. I will restore you. You will be My people again. In chapter 2 we find an outline of Gomer s adultery which is really the adultery of Israel. 10

Verse 5 she has played the whore and acted shamefully. This is in spite of the love of God. Verse 8 I gave her grain and wine and oil. I lavished her with silver and gold. And how did she repay that kindness she used them to worship Baal. Because of this verse 13 I will punish her. But that is not the end. The love of God leads Him to win back His people, wash her, and make them His people. Just listen to the language of grace and love. Hosea 2:14 23: Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor 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. 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 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. And in that day I will answer, declares the LORD, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel, and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, You are my people ; and he shall say, You are my God. God will woo His people and they will respond. Those who were not His people because of their sin will once again be His people. Then comes what many have called the greatest picture of divine love in all of Scripture. In chapter 3 God says to Hosea Go again and love a woman who is lived by another man and is an adulteress. Gomer has left Hosea. She is in the bed of another. And God says love her go to her and win her. I do a lot of marriage counseling. Much smaller breaches of trust arguments financial troubles flirtation and there is a struggle to forgive. If there is adultery even with true repentance it is hard to forgive. 11

Here is Gomer a prostitute unrepentant reveling in her sin and God says go love her again. How do you love a woman who betrayed you at the very core of your relationship? Violated your trust. Spurned your love. How do you love a woman who has prostituted herself around town at your expense and is continuing to rub your nose in it? This is agape love. It can only come from above. It loves in spite of. It is a decision to love in spite of feelings. It is a choice to act in love. Only God could enable Hosea to love like this because only God really loves like this. This is a picture of God s love for you. Hosea 3:1: 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. This is the love of God not just for Israel but for us. Romans 5:8: But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. We spurned God. We played the harlot with the world. We fall short of His glory. We nailed Christ to the cross. And yet He still chose to love us loved us enough to send His Son to die for us. Hosea 3:2-5 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech 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. For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days. This is a picture of the gospel. Hosea chose to love Gomer, bought bought with fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. God chose to love us and bought us with the life of His Son. Hosea bought Gomer and said you must not play the whore. 12

Jesus bought us with a price and we are to glorify Him in our bodies. We are to be holy as He is holy. The passage speaks of David the king who redeems Israel this is Jesus who redeems us. But you will never understand the gospel till you understand that you are a Gomer. A faithless prostitute. Spiritually bankrupt. You don t deserve mercy but because of His love you receive it. This is spelled out in the rest of the book. Hosea 4:1 2: 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. Then comes chapter after chapter outlining the sin of Israel the need to punish that sin and yet ultimately the love of God will restore His people. Chapter 4 verse 5 they rejected the Lord so He rejected them. Verse 10 they seek satisfaction in sin but don t find it. They try idolatry and sexual immorality and greed and nothing satisfies. Chapter 5 because of their sin I have to punish them. Verse 9 Ephraim shall become a desolation. But this shall not last forever. Hosea 5:15-6:3: I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me. Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth. God will cause His people to turn to Him and He will heal them and raise them up. The Lord then talks about how He longs for them to turn to Him now but they do not they seek after the nations and the gods of the nations not Him. Again and the again the Lord reiterates His love for Israel only to see it spurned. 13

Read through these chapters. The sin is gross. It makes you sick just to read it. But then comes these incredible words. Hosea 11:8 9: How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? 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. I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. The only reason God can love us and not come in wrath is because He is God. He has a divine love that can love us in spite of our treachery. Israel deserves nothing but wrath. She deserves to be wiped from the face of the earth. But because He is God and not man the Lord can love in spite of sin. He will not come in wrath. Hosea 13:4 5: I am the LORD your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior. It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought. Despite your sin I am your God and there is no salvation apart from Me. I will save you. If Israel is to be saved if we are to be saved God must do it. There is no salvation apart from God. Hosea 13:14: 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? God is the only one who can save His people from the power of Sheol. If He does not save no one will be saved. And finally we come to chapter 14. One of the most incredible sections in of all Scripture. To grasp how magnificent this is you really need to read this book. The vile sin of Israel. Idolatry, ritual prostitution, human sacrifice you name the perversion it is there. Humanly speaking God should wipe them from the face of the earth. Make them like Nineveh. Turn them to dust. But His love reaches out. 14

Hosea 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; say to him, Take away all iniquity; accept 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. 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, and 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. O Ephraim, what have I to do with idols? It is I who answer and look after you. I am like an evergreen cypress; from me comes your fruit. 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 upright walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them. I will cause My people to turn to Me. I will heal them. I will take away their apostasy. They shall dwell under my shadow and I will protect them and they will flourish. The book of Hosea is the gospel. Gomer is us. Vile, putrid, reviling in her sin. Deserving of being whipped, shamed and stoned. Instead she was treated as chaste, loved, restored, cherished. God placed his love on her and once again made her His. This is us. We who deserve nothing but hell are loved, forgiven, washed, adopted and saved all by the blood of Jesus. Hosea the name means salvation. It is the same root word as Jesus. Unfortunately we are often like Israel. We think we are bad but not really bad. We are the Pharisee saying I m glad I m not like that tax-gatherer. But unless you understand you are the tax-gatherer you are Gomer and your only hope is for God to love us in spite of our sin we are lost. But Gomer also tells us that there is no sin that is unforgiveable. The love of God can wash the vilest clean. When we trust Christ His blood makes our sins which are scarlet to be whiter than snow. 15

That is the lesson of Hosea. If any here tonight don t know Christ realize that the love of God is available for you to make you His and wash you clean. I would love to share that truth with you. And while the main point of this passage is not telling us to be a Hosea that is a valid secondary point. In marriage indeed in all our relationships we should choose to love when humanly speaking we want to come in anger. If your wife or husband lets you down remember Hosea go and love in spite of sin. Forgive as Christ has forgiven you. Love covers a multitude of sins. You can only love this way with the power of Christ in your hearts. So this week think about Christ think about Gomer and thank the Lord for the Love that saved wretches like you and like me. 16