Let's open our Bibles to the
book of Hosea, Hosea chapter 2. I forgot to mention this in our
prayer time, but Cyril is having a shoulder replacement surgery
this Friday. And he asked that we would remember
him in our prayers. So as the Lord enables you, to
pray for him. And we'll take just a moment
now and and pray for Brother Cyril. Let's pray together. Our
Heavenly Father, thank you for enabling us and teaching us to
come before thy presence and lay our petitions before thee.
Thank you for giving us the grace to pray for one another. And
Lord, we do pray for Cyril, and we ask that you would comfort
his heart as he waits on thee, and pray, Lord, that you direct
the hands of the physicians and that the surgery would be successful
and you would give him a good recovery. We ask it in Christ's
name. Amen. Hosea chapter 2. By nature, we all come into this
world as idolaters. Gomer is a picture of God's church,
his bride, and Hosea is a type of Christ who, in love for his
bride, redeemed her to himself and delivered her from her harlotry. It's what we have a picture of
here. We come into this world fashioning in the darkened imagination
of our own hearts a God that is not God. We make him to be, the scripture
says, altogether such as ourselves. And by that, I understand that
we set ourselves up on the throne of God and the God that we fashion.
Whether we fashion that God in some sort of religion or whether
we fashion it outside of religion, we have in our imagination A
God that can't save unless we let him. A God that is dependent
upon us to do something in order for him to be able to save us. That's a definition of idolatry. We've looked away from the God
who is and we've found for ourselves a God that we pretend to worship
And I believe that's the description that's being given to us here
in the book of Hosea. The one thing in common that
all false gods have is that they depend upon us to do something
in order for them to be able to save us. And man by nature,
man by nature worships himself. And if the Lord doesn't redeem
us, we will be content with that God. If he doesn't stop us and
reveal himself to us and shame us for our idolatry, We
will go to our grave having made a covenant with death and we
will go to our grave believing the lie, believing that that
God that we have imagined to be will go to our grave believing
that he is God. Scripture says in 2 Thessalonians
2 that God sends man a strong delusion so that they believe
the lie. The Lord has to deliver us from
that delusion. And I believe that's what we
have a picture of here in the book of Hosea, and particularly
in chapter 2. In order for us to be saved,
The Lord has to sovereignly, irresistibly, lovingly, he has
to do a work of grace in our hearts by his spirit, and he
has to give us a spirit of repentance. He has to change our minds about
who we think God is. And he does that by revealing
himself by his word. And then he has to give us the
spirit of faith that we would believe what we would not by
nature believe. This is exactly what Hosea chapter
2 is revealing. Such a precious, glorious picture
of our Lord stopping his people in their in their self-destructed
life and saving them by giving them repentance and faith. I've titled this message God-Given,
God-Given Repentance and Faith. Some will hear the gospel and
not believe it. Some will hear these verses and
believe that it is an admonition to clean up the outside of your
life. And like the Israelites of old,
they will read these words and hear these words and commit themselves
to do them. Lord, we'll do that. We'll keep
that law. Others, by God's grace, will
see that this spirit of repentance is not about worldly sorrow. It's not about coming to some
understanding of a sinful lifestyle, and a sorrow for a particular
sin, or even for a separation from that sin. This is a story
about the sin, the sin, the sin of idolatry, the sin of unbelief,
which is the cause of all our sins. Repentance, as we see revealed
in Hosea chapter two here, is not cleaning up your life or
cleaning up the outside of the cup. It is having a work done
in the heart that causes us to change our God. to change from
the God that we have manufactured in our own imagination and to
believe on the God who is. This is true repentance and this
is true faith. Repentance and faith are necessary. God-given repentance and faith
are necessary if we're to be saved. And it's the heart of the gospel. When the Lord began preaching
after coming back from the 40 days in the wilderness, being
tempted of the devil, the scripture says in Mark chapter one and
verse 15, that Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel
of the kingdom of God saying, The time is fulfilled. The kingdom
of God is at hand. Repent ye and believe the gospel. Repent ye and believe the gospel.
Now, those who don't have a work of grace done
in their heart will think, okay, I can do that. I can repent,
I can change my way, and I can make a decision. I can commit
myself and accept Jesus. I'll do that. When the Lord said repent and
believe the gospel, he was telling us to do something that
we can't do. He was demanding something that
we have no power to accomplish. And that's very important that
we understand that. Because what God requires, God
must provide. We don't come to God with our
faith, we come to him for faith. We come to him for a spirit of
repentance. Lord, I need you to, I will deceive
myself and think that something I've done on the outward appearances
is going to be repentance in faith. When Paul in Acts chapter
20 met with the Ephesian elders and he reminded them that he
did not He did not hold back anything
from them. He summarizes his entire ministry
by saying this, I've testified both to the Jews and also to
the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord
Jesus Christ. So he summarizes his whole ministry. Towards the end of his life,
he tells these elders, you're not going to see me again. He
knew he was going to be arrested. He knew he was going to be martyred. But he summarizes his whole life's
work by saying that I did not shun the whole counsel of God. And I went to the Jews and to
the Greeks, and I preached repentance toward God and faith toward the
Lord Jesus Christ. If we're to have repentance toward
God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, if we're going to be delivered
from our idolatry, if we're going to be united to our husband and
saved from whoredom, which is an unfaithful union with a man
that we're not married to, then the Lord's gonna have to give
us repentance and faith. He's gonna have to change our
mind, that's what repentance means, about who God is, about
who we are, and about how it is that the Lord saves sinners. Because our minds naturally don't
believe, they don't think, they don't, they don't, They don't
agree with what God has said. Hosea chapter 2, you remember
in chapter 1 when the Lord told the prophet Hosea to go and marry
a wife of Hortem? That's a picture of Christ coming
into this world and taking to himself an unfaithful wife. It's a picture of the covenant
of grace, where the Lord was united to a wife that would be
unfaithful to him. And she's gonna have children,
and she has her first son, who he names Jezreel, which means
to be scattered, and God's people are scattered throughout all
the world. She gives birth to a daughter,
And the daughter's name is Lo-Ammi, which translated means, not my
people. And by nature, the Lord is going
to say to us, you're not my people. I'm not in the state in which
you're in. And then she's going to give
birth to another son. And his name is going to be Lo-Ammi. which translated means no mercy.
And then we get to chapter two, the low is missing. The low has
been taken out. So now the Lord is appealing
to his children and calling them to himself. And so he says, Say
ye to your brethren, am I, and to your sisters, Rohamah. Say to those who I have already
said are not my people, that they are going to be made my
people. In the new birth, they're going to be made my people. And
those who had not obtained mercy are now going to obtain mercy. This is the means by which the
Lord gives faith and repentance. The preaching of the gospel.
Take unto them words. What words? The words that God's
given us. We take the word of God and we declare it and God
takes that word and he makes it effectual to the hearts of
his people. He makes it irresistible to them. He gives them He gives
them the ability to have what they thought was true changed
to what now they know is true. He gives them faith to believe
what he has revealed. And so this is the way in which
the Lord gives faith and repentance. Say unto your brethren. Sometimes we get accused of not preaching the gospel or not believing
that the reprobate can be saved. Well, we don't believe the reprobate
can be saved. But we don't know who the reprobate are. We preach the gospel to all men.
We issue the outward call to all men. But while we do that,
while we preach, we know in our hearts that only the brethren
are gonna hear. So yes, in a sense, we're only
preaching, we're like sheepdogs looking for God's sheep. We know
that the reprobate's not gonna listen, they're not gonna believe,
they're not gonna be brought to repentance, they're not gonna
have faith. So in a very real sense, yes, we are preaching
to our brethren, we're preaching the gospel to God's people. And what do we say unto them? Plead with your mother, plead. Now here the whole church is
being identified as the mother of these children. So there's
a word that goes out to each individual Child, and then there's
a plea that goes to the whole church. And here's the Lord's
command to us, that we're to, well, Paul said in 2 Corinthians
5, knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men,
we persuade men. And at the end of that chapter,
he said, now we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did
beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead be reconciled
to God. So we're pleading with God's
people, we're pleading with the brethren, we're pleading with
the church, knowing that this is the means by which the Lord
is going to convince his people, is going to give them repentance
and faith. Tell her that she cannot be saved as long
as she remains in her idolatry. She cannot be saved. Reminds me of Isaiah chapter
40 when the Lord told the prophet Isaiah, comfort ye, comfort ye
my people. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem,
the mother, the church, the body of Christ. That's who we're preaching
to. We don't know who that is, but
we know that that's who we're preaching to. And you remember
Isaiah, the Lord told him, you're gonna preach and they're not
gonna listen. And then Isaiah said, well, where do I begin
this message? What do I start with? And what did the Lord say?
Tell them that they are grass. Tell them they don't have anything,
they don't know anything, they can't do anything. Tell them
to give up on this idea that they can somehow make a contribution
to their salvation, that they can do something that will obligate
me to save them. That's idolatry. That's harlotry. That's putting ourselves on the
throne of God and making God dependent upon us for him to
be able to save. Tell them that they're grass.
What can grass do? Nothing. It's a good place to start, isn't
it? Plead with your mother. Plead. For she's not my wife, neither
am I her husband. Let her therefore put away her
whoredoms out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her
breasts. Is there a sense in which every time we're We're tempted every time we're
prone to wander, every time we are enticed by sin, that we are
committing spiritual adultery, looking away from our husband,
certainly there is. But in the context of this whole
chapter, the Lord's talking about conversion here. And that's what
I want you to see because that this chapter ends with such great
comfort because though believers spend their entire redeemed,
regenerated, I should say, life dealing with their flesh and
being tempted by sin, the one thing that a believer cannot
do is go back to their idolatry. They cannot go back to a works
gospel. That's clear in the scriptures.
If they leave us, if they go away from us, if they go back,
it's because they were never of us. For had they been of us,
they would have remained. This chapter, I believe, is not
talking about the daily struggles with sin. I believe it's talking
about regeneration and the Lord saying to his church, in the
state that you're in, worshiping the God you worship, you're not
my people. Put away your idolatries, put away your idols. And I love
it in Isaiah, the scripture says they cast their idols to the
bats in the caves. They cast them away into darkness. Look at verse three. lest I strip
her naked and set her as in the day that she was born, and make
her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay
her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon
her children, for they be the children of whoredoms." So the
Lord's saying, you're going to die naked. The Lord's either going to strip
us now, or he's going to strip us in that day of judgment. You know, no one gets in the bathtub with
their clothes on. If we're going to be washed by
the blood of Christ, well, you might leave your socks on. No,
you don't. You take every pair of clothes off before you get
in a bath. And the only way that we're going
to be cleansed by the blood of Christ is to be stripped naked,
taking away all our clothes, all of our covering, all of our
fig leaves, all of our righteousness. Everything has to be taken away.
And if the Lord doesn't do that now for us, we will find that
in the day of judgment. For the mother hath played the
harlot, verse 5. She that conceived them hath
done shamefully. For she said, I will go after
my lovers, that they give me my bread, and my water, my wool,
and my flax, my oil, and my drink. This spirit of idolatry, this
spirit of false worship that we've all been delivered from.
Yeah, it doesn't matter. We all imagined a God that needed
us to do something in order for him to be able to save us. We all set ourselves up on the
throne of God. That's how we come into this
world. And we, until the Lord gives
us a spirit of repentance and gives us faith in Christ, we
look to those things We look to our works, we look to our
religion, we look to our confessions, we look to those things to provide
for us the blessings of life. She thought that those lovers
that she had were the ones that were given to her, her flax and
her mink oil and her drink. Verse six, therefore behold,
I will hedge up thy way with thorns and make a wall and they
shall not find her paths. Here's what the Lord does when
he brings his people to repentance. He causes them to be completely
dissatisfied with that hope that they had. He sets a thorn about
them and doesn't allow them. Who would ever go back to that?
We can't go back. We don't want to go back. And she shall follow after her
lovers, but she shall not overtake them. And she shall seek them,
but she shall not find them. Then shall she say, I will go
and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me
than now." The Lord Jesus was made our husband
in the covenant of grace before time ever began. Here's the same
spirit of repentance that God gave to the prodigal when he
was feeding the swine and eating the food that the swine do eat.
And he came to himself. He had a change of mind. Well, how'd he get that change
of mind? God gave it to him. How are you and I gonna get a
change of mind? We're gonna have to be hedged up? And then the
Lord's gonna have to limit us so that our attempts to overtake
that are stopped. And then he causes us to say,
I've got to have my first husband. For she did not know the blessings
that we did the grace that we had before grace and the blessings
that we enjoyed before the Lord was pleased to convert us. She did not know that I gave
her corn and wine and oil and multiplied her silver and gold,
which they prepared for Baal. She didn't know that the blessings
of life came from me. Therefore, while I return and
take away my corn in the time thereof and my wine in the season
thereof, and they will recover my wool and my flax given to
cover her nakedness. I'm going to make her so unhappy
and so dissatisfied. I'm going to make her just to
have a spirit of repentance over what she's doing and where she
is. And she's not going to be able to find any contentment
there. Therefore will I return, I'm
sorry, verse 10, and now will I recover her lewdness in the
sight of her lovers and none shall deliver her out of my hand.
Once I put my hand on her and call her out of that false gospel,
call her out of her imaginary God, not only is she gonna hate
them, but they're gonna hate her. She's gonna hate that that she
was looking to. and they're going to cut her
off. I'm going to expose her lewdness in the sight of her
lovers. And I will also cause all her
mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her solemn feasts, all those religious activities, all
those things that she was doing in order to try to save herself
She's not gonna be able to do them anymore. I'm gonna cut her
off from them. And I will destroy her vines
and her fig trees, where if she hath said, these are my rewards
that my lovers have given me and I will make them a forest
and the beasts of the field shall eat them. What a blessing. If I don't do
this for her, she's gonna stay right there and she's gonna be
content. The reprobate is completely happy, but child of God, however long
you were in a false religion, however long you had created
for yourself a false God, you look back now, You were never
satisfied. You were always kicking against
the pricks. You were always looking for something more. You were
never content. Why is it that your religious
friends were completely content and still are? That's God's work, isn't it? And I will visit upon her the
days of Balaam, when she burned incense to them, and she decked
herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after
her lovers and forgot me, saith the Lord." I saw her when she
was still in her blood. Prophet Ezekiel talks about the
child that's been born and cast out. And now is your day of love,
your time of love. Therefore, behold, I will allure
her. I will persuade her. I'm going
to draw her irresistibly to myself. And I will bring her into the
wilderness and speak comfortably unto her. I'm gonna take her
out of that life that she lived, that
comfort zone that she had, and I'm gonna take her into the wilderness
and it's just gonna be me and her. And I will give her her vineyards
from thence. and the Valley of Achor for the
door of hope." Now, what is the Valley of Achor? You remember
when Joshua brought, Moses has died on the east side of the
Jordan. Joshua's brought the children
of Israel across the Jordan. And the first city was the city
of Jericho. And all the spoils of the city
of Jericho were to be dedicated unto the Lord. And Joshua made
that clear. You don't get anything. It all
goes into the treasury. It all is to God's glory. And
there was a man by the name of Achan. And he kept to himself,
the scripture says, 200 shekels of silver, a wedge of gold, and
a goodly Babylonish garment. And he hid it in his tent. And no one knew about it. And
so Joshua, after the victory of Jericho, leads the children
of Israel to go against the city of Ai, which was a much smaller
settlement than Jericho, thinking, we'll just steamroll these people. This won't be a problem at all. The children of Israel were defeated
by the people in Ai. And the Lord revealed it to Joshua
that there was sin in the camp. And Achan was identified. And Achan had taken that wedge
of gold and that 200 shekels of silver and that Babylonian
garment and hid them in his tent. And when Achan was identified,
they went in the tent. They found the things. Achan
and his entire family were stoned to death. in the Valley of Acre. We are not saved by silver and
gold, but by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
however beautiful that Babylonian garment might have been, it is
not the white robe of righteousness that we get from Christ. What
happens? Here the Lord's saying, I'm going
to lure her to myself. I'm going to take her out in
the wilderness and I'm going to stone all of her idols in
the Valley of Acre. And I'm going to cause her to
see in that Valley that she's not going to be saved by silver
and gold. She's not going to be saved by the things of this
world. She's not going to be dressed
and cover her nakedness with a Babylonian garment. Look at the rest of verse 15.
And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, and in
the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. And it
shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me
Ishi, my husband, my husband. The Lord is your husband, Isaiah
said. Oh, what a faithful bridegroom
he is. What a faithful husband he is.
No longer shall they call him Baal, which just meant Lord. Everybody says Jesus is Lord,
but oh, he's my faithful husband. He's taken me into the Valley
of Achor. He's exposed my idolatry for
what it was. He's done for me spiritually
what Joshua, the Lord Jesus, did to Achan for his idolatry,
and he's made it in my heart to call him my husband. For I will take away the names
of Balaam out of her mouth, and she shall no more be remembered
by their name. I can't identify with that false
gospel anymore. Any suggestion of works or free
will saving me, any suggestion that God needs me to do something
in order for Him to be able to save me, that's all idolatry.
He's taken all that away. And in that day, will I make
a covenant with Him and with the beast of the field and with
the fowls of heaven and with the creeping things of the ground.
And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out
of the earth and I will make them to lie down safely." They're
gonna beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into
pruning forks. They're gonna drop their weapons.
They're going to drop their fist. They're no longer going to say,
I'm not gonna have that man reign over me. They're gonna rest in
Christ. and in His glorious person and
in His finished work, they're gonna trust Him. Why? Because I'm going to give them
that spirit of repentance, causing them to identify and to turn
from that idol worship, that harlotry, and I'm gonna give
them rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is faith and repentance.
This is God's work. And I will betroth thee, verse
19, forever unto me. Yea, I will betroth unto me thee
in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in
mercy. Loving kindness is grace. That Babylonian garment's not
going to be sufficient. I'm going to make it. I'm going
to strip her naked and I'm going to expose her lewdness, but then
I'm going to cover her. We cannot be covered until we're
first stripped. Until we're first brought to
see that all of my thoughts about God
were wrong. All of my thoughts about me were
wrong. All of my thoughts about what God required for righteousness
and for justice was wrong. Now I know that Christ is my
only righteousness and that he's the only one that satisfied God's
divine justice by the sacrifice that he made on Calvary's cross.
God has given me repentance and he's given me faith. And here's
how, child of God, that you know you're a believer. Repentance
and faith. You see, what we're reading here
doesn't apply to everybody. It doesn't apply to everybody.
And if we apply this just to temptations of sins and outward
appearances and all those things, we would have no comfort. But
to realize that the Lord is talking about our conversion here. And
we can say, yes, the Lord's done this for me. He's brought me
out and it doesn't matter if your religion before conversion
was some sort of organized man-made religion of a ceremony or whether
it was materialism or atheism for that matter. Your view of
God was wrong. We come into this world not needing
our understanding to be tweaked We need it to be completely changed. We need to be turned. Completely the opposite from
where it was. I will betroth thee unto me. Look at this in verse 19. In
righteousness, yes, Christ is on my righteousness. In judgment,
yes, the Lord Jesus satisfied God's justice when he shed his
blood and put away all the sins of his people once and for all. In grace, yes, I don't deserve
this. In mercy, yes, the Lord has withdrawn,
has withheld from me that which I do deserve. And I will even
betroth thee unto me in faithfulness and thou shalt know the Lord.
When I do this for you, you're going to be faithful to me the
rest of your life. You're not going to go back to that other
husband. That's why this can't be just talking about just our
temporary dealings with flesh and with the world and with sin.
This is talking about conversion. Child of God, you can't go back.
You cannot go back. You can't tolerate that anymore. That, you've been taken to the
Valley of Achan. Your idols have been slain. And
you're gonna be faithful. By God's grace, you're gonna
be faithful to the gospel the rest of your life. And if you
find yourself not being, not believing the gospel, and somehow
going back to a free will works gospel, then You can only make
one conclusion. I never really was converted
to begin with. Those who have had this work
of grace done in their hearts never, ever, ever go back. They can't. They don't want to. Verse 21, and it shall come to
pass in that day that I will hear, saith the Lord, I will
hear the heavens and they shall hear the earth and the earth
shall hear the corn and the wine and the oil and they shall hear
Jezreel and I will sow her unto me in the earth and I will have
mercy upon her that had not obtained mercy. And I will say unto them,
which were not my people, thou art my people, and they shall
say, thou art my God." I will be thy God, and thou shalt
be my people. And that's our confession. And
that's our confession. Repentance, God-given repentance
and faith. The scripture says the Lord,
the Lord does not repent of the gifts that he gives. He doesn't
take them back. If he's given repentance and
faith, that's forever. That's forever. Can't ever change. Whatever struggles we have in
this world, that cannot be taken back. Our Heavenly Father, thank you
for this picture of our salvation. Thank you for being our Hosea.
Thank you, Lord, for delivering us out of our harlotry and making
us to have our minds changed and our hearts renewed. Thank you for giving us faith
in Christ. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. 226, let's stand together.