Let's turn to Hosea chapter 2.
We'll get back to Matthew. Hosea chapter 2. We'll look at
Matthew another day. The passage I'm going to read
to you, preach to you from this, the meaning of it is given to
us in chapter 3. And I want you to look there
first, chapter 3. I'm going to give you the end from the beginning.
And here's the meaning of the passage right here. This is the
picture. Verse 1, Hosea 3, 1. Then said the Lord unto me, Go
yet, love a woman, beloved of a friend, yet an adulteress. According to the love of the
Lord toward the children of Israel. You see that? This woman we're
going to look at represents God's Israel, God's elect, the children
of Israel. And he says to his prophet Hosea,
go yet and love this woman according to the love of the Lord toward
the children of Israel. Who look to other gods and love
flagons of wine. In 1989, the Lord had given me
faith already, but I heard a message that Brother Henry Mahan preached
from this chapter, from these verses, called Sovereign Unchangeable
Love. And that was about the clearest
I'd ever heard the gospel preached. And I got that tape and I listened
to that tape and Melinda and I listened to it when we were
dating and we listened to that tape so much that it broke. It broke. And I want to preach
that to you this morning. God says here that what He is
showing us is a picture of the love of God toward the children
of Israel. God loves His people everlastingly. End of Romans 8 tells us who
shall separate us from the love of God? Nothing. He gives this long list of things. Nothing shall ever separate those
God loves from God. God ever set His love on you
and set His affection on you, He never stops loving you. All men will stop loving. We'll
switch from one to the other and go back and forth and over
here and over there and all these different loves we have. We love
other gods, God said. We love flagons of wine, God
said. We have all these other idols
in this world that we look after and we look to. We're drunk with
this world, drunk in our sin. And yet, if God set His love
upon us, He did it freely. He did it by His grace. Not based
on anything in us and therefore, Nothing we can do can change
the love of God toward His people. Nothing. And that's what we're
going to see pictured here between Hosea and Gomer. We read in chapter
1 verse 2, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. Hosea means deliverer. It means
deliverer. It's the same word as Joshua.
Same word as Jesus. His name is Jesus, for He shall
save His people from their sin. And that's who we have pictured
here. In Hosea, God's prophet, we have a picture of the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now look what he tells him. Verse
2, he says, And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee
a wife of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms. For the land hath
committed great whoredom departing from the Lord. So he went and
took Gomer the daughter of Deblahim. Now that's a strange command
coming from God to his prophet to go down to a land of whoredoms
and take a wife from this land of whoredoms. And that's a picture of God the
Father commanded His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Hosea,
before this world ever began. He said to His Son, go down to
a land of whoredoms, to children of whoredoms, and take a wife. And our Lord Jesus Christ, from
before this world was ever created, took us to be His bride. He took God's elect to be His
bride. The best commentary on what the
Lord commanded Him is found in Ephesians chapter 1. You know
it, I'll just read it to you. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as He has
chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world. That's what we
have pictured in chapter 2. We have God before the foundation
of the world choosing a bride for His Son. He chose a people
for His Son. Elect people. Chosen people. A people chosen by God's grace.
He chose them for His Son. And His Son entered covenant
to redeem that bride. To love that bride. He vowed
to love that bride. When you vow, you're not vowing
based on, if the person I'm marrying fulfills their vows, then I'll
fulfill my vows. No. You're vowing to God, I will
fulfill my vows. Doesn't matter what the other
one does, I'll fulfill my vows. And our Lord Jesus Christ took
His bride from before the world was made, all God's elect, and
He entered in covenant with the Father to love her and lay down
His life for her. Here's what He did. He said over
in chapter 2 verse 19, I will betroth thee unto me forever. We don't use that word betroth.
That's an old English word. It means a spouse. I'll espouse
thee. It's kind of what we call an
engagement, an engagement. But with God and in old times
this was a legal binding espousal. When you entered into this it
was an honorable thing. You had kept it. And here's what
Christ promised the father concerning his bride. He says about that
bride, I'll betroth thee unto me forever, yea, I will betroth
thee unto me in righteousness and in judgment and in loving
kindness and in mercies. He's saying I've espoused you
to me and I'll come to where you are and I'll take your sin
and I will go to the cross and I'll put away the sin of my bride
so that righteousness and judgment is honored. God's righteousness
is honored. Here's what the gospel's about.
The gospel's not about you being saved or me being saved. That's
just a benefit of it. The gospel is about God being
holy and revealing His holy and righteous character. God Almighty
is holy and can have nothing to do with the sinner. That means
everybody that sins has got to die. That's what righteousness
and judgment means. God is righteous and he shall
judge in righteousness. The soul that sinneth, it shall
surely die. Are you a sinner? Well, I don't
know if I'd say, okay, then you're a sinner. You're a sinner. If you don't
think you are, you sure surely are. We're all sinners. We send an Adam. And we come
forth from our mother's womb speaking lies. Estranged from
the womb. We go astray as soon as we both
be born. We're like the poison of snakes
is under our tongue. We're like the deaf adder that
shuts up their ears and won't hear the charmer charming ever
so sweetly. We won't hear the gospel. We
won't hear anything truth about God. So we gotta die. We gotta die. Judgment of God
demands we have to die, and everybody's going to die. You're either going
to die in your sins, rejecting Christ, or we're going to die,
or we already died in Christ. And those God chose to be His
people, His bride, Christ came forth, and in judgment and in
righteousness, He went to the cross and laid down His life,
and He died in place of His people. And he said here in verse 19,
and in loving kindness and in mercies will I espouse you to
me. Whenever Christ laid down His life for His people, He justified
all His people. And He justified God. He declared
God just. God's law was upheld. It was
honored. It was poured out. And therefore
now God is just to show mercy to His people. This was all done
in Christ at Calvary. He said, I'll espouse you to
me in judgment and righteousness and in loving kindness and in
mercy. He's the only place where justice
could be upheld, poured out, and all his people die, and at
the same time God show mercy to his people and justifies in
Christ Jesus. On the cross, when he said it's
finished, that's what he meant. He made justice and mercy kiss
in harmony. And then look at this, he says
in verse 20, I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness,
and thou shalt know the Lord. In other words, I'm gonna never
leave her. I'll never leave her. I'll be
faithful to this bride, and I'll come, and I'll make her to know
me, and she'll see what I've done for her, and I'll make her
to fall in love with me, and she'll be with me forever, and
I'll never leave her. I'll be faithful to her. That's
what Christ vowed to God before the world was made. So go back
over here now to chapter 1. And so he went, verse 3, and
took Galmerth the daughter to Blam, and she conceived to bear
him a son, and she bore him a couple of kids, but then she went back
to practicing the ways of her people. Now I picture this whenever
Hosea took Gomer to be his wife. Gomer was a young girl and she
hadn't grown up and started practicing the ways of her people yet. This
people were, this was a land of whoredoms. That's a picture
of us and our land. We're all adulterers and adulteresses
before God, were sinners before God. But she hadn't quite grown
up and started practicing that yet. Not saying that children
born into this world are not sinners, they are sinners, they're
born in sin. And as soon as they be born they
go astray, speaking lies. But what I'm saying is, this
picture, she hadn't started practicing that and what that's a picture
of is when God chose us it was before us yet Adam had sinned
in the garden and we had become started practicing the whoredoms.
But now she's gone back she grew up she went to a whoredom when
Adam sinned in the garden he represented all that would be
born of him. And all his people died in him,
sinned in him. And then we're born of Adam's
seed and so we come forth into this world with a sin nature
and so all we will do is what our nature dictates for us to
do. A cow eats green grass because
that's its nature to eat green grass. He can't do anything but
what its nature dictates he should do. A dog, a buzzard eats roadkill
because that's its nature to do that. It doesn't go out there
and graze in the field with a cow. That's not its nature. And a
cow don't do what the buzzard does. You are governed by your
nature. I'm governed by my nature. Whatever
my nature is, that's what I'm going to do. And we come forth
into this world with a sin nature. Depraved. Doesn't know God. Doesn't want to know God. Can't
know God. And we do what our nature dictates
we should do. And that is, all we can do is
sin. As brother Rob read from Romans
8, the carnal mind is enmity against God. It's not subject
to the law of God, can't bow to the word of God, and neither
indeed can be. And so they that are in the flesh,
the way you come into this world, you cannot please God. Well, verse chapter two, he pleads
with the mother. He says, verse one, say ye unto
your brethren, Amai, and to your sister, Reuhaima, 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. 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'll not have mercy upon her children, for they be the children
of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the harlot. She that
conceived them hath done shamefully. For she said, I'll go after my
lovers that give me my bread, and my water, my wool, and my
flax, mine oil, and my drink. That's a picture of you and me
by nature. We come forth from our mother's womb and we grow
up in sin and rebellion against God. And the fruit that we bear,
just like she bore some children, they were illegitimate children.
And the fruit that we bore while we were in our sin was sinful
fruit. It was dead fruit. It was not
pleasing to God. Now you might have taken on religion.
Some of us took on religion and some of us turned over a new
leaf and we cleaned up our act and we started looking impressive
to men. But there's a heart problem. If the heart, if you haven't
been born again, then that heart is still the same old wicked
heart. Go to Psalm 58. I've been sitting
here quoting it. Look at Psalm 58. Let me show
you this. Listen to this question God asked.
Now, Paul in Romans 3 quoted this chapter and applied it to
every sinner, Jew and Gentile, all of us. Now listen to this
question. Verse 1, Do you indeed speak
righteousness, O congregation? Do you judge uprightly, O ye
sons of men? We like to think we do. We'll tell our side of the story
and it sounds righteous and just. But listen to this. Verse 2.
Yea, in heart you work wickedness. Why are you speaking that which
sounds righteous and just and may look righteous and just to
other men? God says, but in your heart you
work wickedness. You work wickedness. That's all. That's all. You weigh the violence
of your hands in the earth. We weigh it out. Well, I guarantee
if you ask an unregenerate sinner, do you think God will receive
you? Well, my good outweighs my bad, I think. We try to weigh
it out. You meet God trying to weigh
out the violence of your hands, you will come up wanting. It's
an unjust balance. God judges in perfect righteousness
and God looks on the heart. He doesn't see as man sees. God
looks on the heart. And so nothing we ever did while
we were in our whoredom was ever pleasing to God. Well, you think
that's going to make this righteous husband, this faithful husband,
Christ Jesus, is that going to make him leave his bride? Is
that going to make him refuse his bride? He knew the land she
was in when he chose her. He knew what her people were.
He knew what she's going to be. He chose her anyway. He didn't
choose her based on that. He chose her because of grace. Unmerited, demerited favor. He chose her because he loved
her. The cause was in him, not in her. And so when she went
back to her hordos, he never stopped loving her. What's he
going to do with her? Verse 6. Hosea 2, 6. Therefore, behold, I will hedge
up thy way with thorns. and make a wall that she shall
not find her paths. And she shall follow after her
lovers, but she shall not overtake them. And she shall seek them,
but shall not find them. Then shall she say, I'll go and
return to my first husband, for then was it better with me than
now. For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and
oil, and multiplied her silver and her gold, which they prepared
for Baal. Therefore will I return, and
I'll take away the corn in the time thereof, my wine in the
season thereof, and I'll recover my wool and my flax given to
cover her nakedness, and now will I discover her lewdness
in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of
my hand. This was, we came into this world,
we didn't know God, we went through all our days not knowing God,
And anytime we accomplished anything in this life, we patted ourselves
on the back. Thought about what a good job
we've done. We bragged on our lovers and we glorified our love.
All my lovers have been good to me. And Lord Jesus said, she
didn't know. I'm the one that gave her the
corn and the oil. and the wine and the flax. You
picture Hosea every day he was going down to her door and he
was leaving this stuff at her door every day, every day. Everything
she needed he was providing it for every day. And she'd open
that door and she'd see those gifts there and she'd say, my
lovers did this. And Hosea said, she didn't know
I was the one doing it for her. That's me and you. We praised
ourselves. We looked to the works of our
hands. We thought about how wise we were and how cunning we were
and how we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and everything
we had in this world, we did it. We were commending our lovers
and all the while God was providing it for us. Did you know that
if God doesn't provide for you right now, you can't take your
next breath? Whenever Saul was riding on the
horse going down to Damascus with letters to kill God's people,
God was giving him the breath to breathe. God gave him the
horse to ride. God moved the hearts of the people
to give him the letters to go down there and have permission
to kill His people. You can't do anything without God's permission. I can't either. But there's going
to come a time, if we're His, this is what's going to happen.
He's going to hedge up our way. He's going to hedge it up with
thorns, so that we can't go any way the way God would have us
to go. Maybe God's hedged up your way,
maybe you feel like it really was with thorns, that's why you
ended up here this morning. If you're here this morning,
I guarantee you it's because God hedged up your way and brought
you here this morning. You might have come here for
some other reason. You might have come here for a vain reason,
but you're here nonetheless, and God brought you here. Wouldn't
it be something if today's the day God's going to discover to
you your lewdness? What's He going to do? He's going
to take away everything from her. He's going to take away
all that He's been providing for her. He's going to take it
away. What's going to have to happen to us? We're going to
have to be made to see we're sinners. We're going to have
to have all our works stripped away. All our fig leaf coverings
got to be stripped away. Everything we thought was pleasing
to God has got to be made what it is in our sight. Lewdness. Something God won't have. God
won't have my works and your works. God won't have anything
from you and me. We're sinners and He's holy God. He sent His Son. That's who He's
pleased with. He's going to have His Son glorified,
not you and me. And so He's going to hedge up
His bride made up of all these elect sinners. He's going to
hedge up each way of each one and bring us to Christ. He's
going to make us see what we are and see we need Christ. And that's what He does here.
Look, He says, Verse 11, I'll cause all her mirth to cease,
her feast days, her new moons, her sabbaths, all her solemn
feasts, all her religion. I'm going to turn it, I'm going
to turn it upside down. I'm going to make her religion
stink in her sight. I'm going to make it vanity in
her sight. And he says, and I'll destroy her vines and her fig
trees where she has said these are my rewards that my lovers
have given me. And I'll make them a forest and
the beasts of the field shall eat them. He's saying I'm going
to make everything that she thought was good, I'm going to make her
see it's all vanity. Every bit of it. So she can't
get any joy from it anymore. You ever been there? If you know
him, you have. If you know Christ and you rejoice
and cry, there came a time when God made you see there wasn't
anything you could get joy in in this world. Not in your works,
not in any pretended goodness in you, not in anything. God hedged you up and took away
your vain joy. It's got to happen. It's got
to happen. We won't come to Christ until
we're a sinner. We will not need a physician
until we're just so sick we die. We're dead. We've got to be made
to see that. Verse 13, I'll visit upon her
the days of Balaam wherein she burned incense to them and she
decked herself with her earrings and her jewels and went after
her lovers and forgot me, saith the Lord. That's what we did. We forgot Him. for our vain gods."
Oh, people don't mind. They don't mind that Jesus said,
most of the Savior, he just can't. That's Balaam. They don't mind
that Jesus said, He just don't want to offend your will, because
your will is just so powerful, it's so much, and He just don't
want to offend your will. That's Balaam. That's a man worshipping
himself. That's a man looking at himself
and saying, Well, I've got to be the end reason why I'm saved. No, that's you wanting the glory
in yourself. That's me wanting the glory in
myself. That's Balaam. That's a false god. That's idol
worship. Verse 14. But when he does this,
watch this. Therefore, behold, I will allure
her, and I'll bring her into the wilderness, and I will speak
comfortably to her. I'll speak comfortably to her.
Whenever he brings you down, takes away all your earthly joy
and all your earthly mirth and everything that you were rejoicing
in, that's when He's going to start speaking comfortably to
you. You're going to find out He's being gracious to you. That
which you thought was just so horrible and just so deadly and
just so terrible, you're going to find out it's God being very
friendly to you, speaking comfortably to you. And I'll tell you something
as believers, we don't stop doing this either. We don't stop going
after our lovers. Oh, Christ reigns and He rules
in the hearts of His people in that new nature and He won't
let you, He won't let you run away from Him. But it's not because
we don't try. We have an old nature in us and
we're just like a truck being driven down the road that's out
of line. And if you don't hold on the steering wheel, you let
it go, it's going right in the ditch. And if God doesn't hold
on to us, we're going right in the ditch. And every now and
then, to show you how you need him to hold you, he'll take his
hand off and you'll go back to your lovers. And he'll hedge
up your way. and take all your mirth away
and speak comfortably to you. He does this over and over for
His people. It's called growing in grace and knowledge of Him. It's called growing to see yourself
more sinful, more sinful, worse, worse, worse, and seeing Him
better, better, better. That's true sanctification. Seeing
yourself as thoroughly condemned and ruined more and more and
more. And seeing Him as all your righteousness
more and more and more. So then what's He going to do
now? He's brought us down, He's taken away all our joy and He's going to
speak comfortably to us. Now where are we going to be
when He does this? Well, Gomer was brought down to the
slave block. When He took everything away
from her, she just couldn't pay her debts and she couldn't pay
what she owed. And so in those days when you
could not pay what you owed, they would sell you into bondage,
into servitude. Well you know, that's a picture
of us. We couldn't pay God what we owed
Him. We couldn't pay the law what
we owed the law. And so we've been sold into bondage. We sold ourselves, God said.
He said, your sins have separated you from your God that He will
not hear you. We did that ourselves. And here's Gomer, she's on the
slave block, and people are bidding, but they're not bidding very
much, because nobody wants her, she's just a whore. Nobody wanted you either, for
the same reason. Nobody wanted me. Not worth anything. And look at this, chapter 3,
verse 1. Then said the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman, beloved
of her friend, yet an adulteress. According to the love of the
Lord toward the children of Israel. Is he talking about that land
over there that was recreated around 1950? No. He's talking about his elect
Israel. God's Israel. Jew and Gentile. male and female, rich and poor,
educated and uneducated, from every walk of life, from every
tribe, kindred, tongue, nation on this earth, God's got an elect
people, that is Israel, that's who he's talking about. He said,
go love this woman, Gomer, to show my people how I love my
people. Go show this in type how I love
the children of Israel. who look to other gods and love
flagons of wine, who do what Gomer did. So, verse 2, So I
bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for a homer
of barley, and a half-homer of barley. Our Lord Jesus came forth,
these rebel sinners, these harlots that we are, and He came forth
anyway. And He walked under the law and
fulfilled the law for His people and went to the cross and was
made sin in the room instead of His people. God took the sin
of His people and made Christ to be the sin of His people so
that before God's holy law, He became the one worthy of God's
justice instead of His people. And God poured out wrath on Him. You want to know what Calvary's
cross is? That's the wrath of God poured out on all His people. That's what that was. That was
judgment being settled for all his people. That was justice
being satisfied for all his people. Christ paid everything we owed
and he bought his bride. And then, but we didn't know
it. We still didn't know it. Remember, he said, I not only
betroth thee to me in judgment and righteousness, and in loving
kindness and mercy, I'll also do it in faithfulness, and you're
going to know me. So he came to Gomer, verse 3,
and I said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days. Thou shalt not play the harlot.
Thou shalt not be for another man. So will I be. So will I also be for thee. What's this gospel about? What's
this business of preaching? Why do y'all come and have to
hear this gospel preached? Well, the first time God saved
you and I who believe, He made us to see this is what He did
for us. He came to us and He said, you're
going to be for me. And I'm going to be for you.
And you're not going to play the harlot anymore. And there's
only one thing that has constrained the heart of a sinner to not
want to play the harlot anymore. And that's the love of Christ
for worthless harlots like you and me. You reckon she ever left
him again? She didn't go back. Anytime she
thought about it, she thought about where she was and what
he did and how he loved her and how he paid the price for her
and brought her home. And she said, I'm going to stay
right here. I'm going to stay right here. Brother Henry closed
that message with a story that he had read and I'm going to
give it to you. There's an old preacher named A.J. Gordon up
in Boston back before the turn of the century. He's coming down
the street one day and he saw one of his boys that was from
the Sunday school class, a little boy walking down the sidewalk.
He had an old homemade birdcage and he had two little frightened
birds in that cage. And Mr. Gordon got to where that
boy was and he said, son, what are you going to do with them
birds? He said, I'm going to play with them a little while.
When I get through playing with them, I'll feed them to the cat. Mr. Gordon said, what would you
take for them? He said, Mr. Gordon, you don't
want these field birds. There's a bunch like them out
there in the field. A bunch like us in the field, isn't there? He said, no, I want them. He
said, Mr. Gordon, they ain't worth nothing.
He said, I know they're not worth anything, but I want them. What
do they cost? He said, it costs you $2. Two dollars for these worthless
old field birds. You want to part with your money
for these worthless field birds? Mr. Gordon said, I know there's
others like them. I know they're not worth anything, but I want
them birds. Here's two dollars. The boy handed
him the cage. Mr. Gordon took off down the
sidewalk. Mr. Gordon just stood there holding
that cage, watching the little boy walk off. Every now and then,
the little boy would look back and say, what a fool preacher. Paid $2 for that worthless field
bird. Little boy went around a corner. Mr. Gordon took that birdcage
and he held it up, opened that door. He said, I loved you and I bought
you and now I'm setting you free. He hit that cage. And he said, I could hear him
singing, redeemed, redeemed. That's what Christ did for his
people. That'll make you want to be a
better husband. That'll make you want to be a
better wife. That'll make you want to pay what your friends
owe. That's a constraining gospel
right there. That'll make you want to honor
Him. That'll make you want to be faithful. The law won't do
that. I could sit here today and whip
you with the law and scolded you with the law and promised
you rewards if you'd keep the law and you might walk out of
here feeling pretty bad and you might try it until this afternoon
and as soon as some enticing sin come along you'd be off doing
that. This message will stay with you
because the Spirit of God stays with you and makes you want to
honor Him. Oh, you'll still sin. You'll
still sin. But this message, this is why
we keep coming back to hear this message. Every week He constrains
us with His love and with His grace, every week. I pray God
will bless that.