Alright brethren, let's turn
to Hosea chapter 1. Our subject this morning is the
greatest love story ever told. The gospel of God's love for
His people is the greatest love story ever told because God's
love is in Christ Jesus only. It's in Christ only. God's love is nothing like the
love you hear religious folks talk about. They say things like
that God loves everybody, He wants to save everybody, but
it's dependent upon the sinner to at least cooperate with God. They speak of God loving you
today, but tomorrow His love changes based on sin, your sin. They speak of God loving somebody
and then ceasing to love them. For instance, a man who dies
in unbelief. They say God loves him while
he's living, but when he dies in unbelief, God stops loving
him. But God's love never changes. It never changes. Because God
loves in Christ. And because He loves in Christ,
God's love is sovereign. That means He chose whom He would
to save. God's love in Christ He's not
only sovereign, it's unchangeable. God's love never changes. It's
everlasting love. God's love in Christ is redeeming
love. Those He loved, He came and successfully
redeemed from our sins. God's love in Christ is irresistible
love. He's able to draw His people
and bring His people to believe on Him. He's able to do that.
His love's covenant love. He enters a marriage covenant
with His child. David said, He made with me an
everlasting covenant, ordered in all things in sure, and that's
all my salvation. And God's love is certain. He will save His people. Scripture
says, Israel, that's all His people, Jew and Gentile. Israel
shall be saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation. Jeremiah
said, the Lord appeared of old to me saying, I've loved you
with an everlasting love and therefore in loving kindness
have I drawn you. It's an everlasting love. And
we see that pictured here in this great love story between
Hosea and Gomer. Let's just read it and then we
will go back and look at it. Let's start with verse 2. The
beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. Hosea means salvation,
Savior. Christ's name is Jesus for He
shall save His people from our sins. So this is the Hosea picture
of Christ here. Now verse 2 says, 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. Go to this land where there is
nothing there but harlots. Take a bride. Take a bride. Verse 3, So he went and took
Gomer, the daughter of Deblahim, which conceived and bare him
a son. Gomer here is a picture of Christ's church, his bride. She bare him three children and
then she left him. She probably divorced him. She
went after her lover. She probably married again and
divorced and remarried and divorced and probably had a few in between. Hosea chapter 2 now verse 1.
Say ye unto your brethren Ammon and to your sisters Rehema. God
says to Hosea, say this to your brethren. These are Hosea's legitimate
children. These are his children saved
by grace. This is a picture of the church.
God says to Christ and Christ says to us, say this to my lost
bride. Preach this to my lost bride.
Verse 2. Plead with your mother, plead,
for she is 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 will not have mercy upon her children, the children she bore,
when she was, after she left Hosea, married again. Those children
are illegitimate children. He said, I won't have mercy upon
her children, for they be the children of whoredoms. For their
mother has played the harlot. She that conceived them hath
done shamefully. For she said, I'll go after my
lovers to give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax,
mine oil and mine drink. 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, then, shall she say, I
will go and return to my first husband. For then it was better
with me than now. For she did not know that I gave
her the corn, and the wine, and the oil, and multiplied her silver
and her gold, which they prepared for Baal. Therefore will I return
and take away my corn in the time thereof, and 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
mine hand. Verse 11 says, I will cause all
her self-righteous religious mirth to cease. Her feast days
and her new moons and her Sabbaths and all her solemn feasts. And
I'll destroy her fruit, he says. I'll destroy her vines and her
fig trees whereof she 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. I'll visit upon her
the days of Balaam wherein she burned incense to them and decked
herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after
her lovers and forgot me, saith the Lord. Therefore, behold,
I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness, and I'll
speak comfortably unto her." And so she was brought down by
the Lord, by what Hosea did. She was stripped naked. She was
bankrupt, in debt she couldn't pay, and she's brought down to
a slave block. She's going to be sold into slavery
now, because she can't pay her debt. Chapter 3, verse 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. This whole thing is a picture
of God's love towards His elect, towards His spiritual bride.
And He says, and that bride looks to other gods and loves flagons
of wine, just like every other sinner in this world. Yet God's
going to have mercy on that bride, because she's His. He loves her
in Christ. He views her in Christ. He sees
her righteous in Christ, so He's going to have mercy on her. Look
at verse 2, So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver,
and for a omer of barley, and a half omer of barley. And I
said unto her, Thou shalt abide for me many days. Thou shalt
not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man,
so will I also be for thee. Now let's go back to chapter
1. First of all, God's love in Christ is sovereign gracious
love, sovereign gracious love. He told Hosea to go to this land
of Horeb and take him a bride. Take him a bride. There wasn't
anybody there righteous. Everybody there was a sinner.
Every one of those women there were harlots. That's all they
were. That's all that existed in that land. Well, that's what
God did in eternity. He chose a people sovereignly. who He would, not based on any
good or evil in us, not based on our works. Scripture says,
for the children being not yet born, having done neither good
or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might
stand, not of works, but of Him that called us. That's why He
chose whom He would. So we couldn't boast that there
was something in us that made Him choose us. He chose His people
and He gave them to Christ before this world was ever made. We're
bound to give thanks to the Lord. Paul said, always on your behalf
because God has from the beginning chosen you to salvation. And
Christ at that point entered the covenant to save His bride.
An unbreakable, everlasting covenant. He entered to save His bride
from our sins. He knew what we would be. He
knew what we would become. Look there at Hosea 2 and verse
19. I will betroth thee unto me forever That word betrothed
is an old English word for engage or marry. He says, I'll do this. Yea, I will betroth thee unto
me in righteousness and in judgment, and in loving kindness and in
mercies. I will even betroth thee unto
me in faithfulness, in faithfulness. And thou shalt know the Lord. They shall all be taught of God.
See, when he says here in righteousness and judgment, be turning to Romans
7. I want you to see what this means. See, when we sinned in Adam,
when God's bride sinned in Adam, we broke this marriage covenant
with Christ. Even though we didn't even know
about it, we broke it. We broke it. And we went after
our lovers. We came into this world going
after all our lovers, our false gods, our sins, and all our so-called
good works were our lovers. And we went after them. So we
committed adultery against Christ, against God. We were now married
to the law. We were the wife of the law now. ruled over us like a tyrant husband,
like a mean husband, telling us you're not perfect, you've
never done anything perfect, you'll never do anything perfect,
there's no good in you, there's nothing about you that's any
good. That's the kind of husband the law was to us. But Christ
came and he did what he agreed to do. He had to die the death
penalty in place of his bride to free us from that first husband. To end that relationship to that
first husband, satisfying the law, making us righteous and
holy in justice. Righteousness and judgment, he
said. I betrothed thee unto me in righteousness and judgment.
He had to fulfill that law so that now we can lawfully be married
to Christ. Now look at Romans 7 and verse
2. That's what Paul is saying right here. Verse 2, The woman
which hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband so
long as he liveth. But if the husband be dead, she
is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if while her
husband liveth she be married to another man, she shall be
called an adulteress. You see, she has a marriage vow
to the law, to her first husband. And because she's united to him,
she's still married to that first husband, even if she divorces
him and goes off and marries another man. Until that new first
husband's dead, and she's dead to that first husband, then that
relationship still stands. And before God, she's still married. And if she goes to another man,
she's committed adultery. That's so in our marriages in
this world. That's God's law. That's God's
law. And here's the picture of it,
brethren. It's a beautiful picture. It's telling us God's covenant
of marriage to His bride, Christ's covenant of marriage to His bride
never changes. Though we played the harlot,
though we went away in adultery, it never changed the fact we
were still married to Christ. So he came and satisfied that
law, satisfied justice, and ended that relationship with that first
husband for all his people. Now look at this, verse 4. Wherefore,
my brethren, you also are become dead to the law by the body of
Christ, that you should be married to another, even to him who is
raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto
God. And dare we not go back to that
old husband now? Dare we not go back and try to
stand by his grave, by his cemetery plot, and pine away for him to
be ruling over us again? What wife in her right mind would
do that if she had a husband that was a tyrant? Why would
she leave a good, loving, righteous, and just husband to go back to
that husband? We follow Christ, obeying Him. Now look here, He
said also, I'll do this in loving kindness and mercy and faithfulness.
You see, that's God's righteousness. That's what He sent Christ to
declare, His righteousness. How can righteousness and judgment
and mercy and love meet together in harmony? The only way is for
Christ to go to the cross. and be the substitute for his
bride, for all his elect people, and put that sin away. And when
he did that, and now scripture says, mercy and truth are met
together. Righteousness and peace have
kissed each other. And that's his righteousness,
that he might be just and the justifier. That his law might
be honored and he be a merciful savior. That's the righteousness
of God. That is the gospel. That's what's
not being preached. in our day. You take that out,
you got no gospel, period. So that's the eternal covenant
that can't be broken. Christ's bride is still married
to Christ and He still loves His bride even though we sinned
in Adam. Now you see how different God's love is from the love that's
being spoken of in this world today? Herein is love, not that
we love God, no sir, but that He loved us and sent His Son
to be the propitiation for our sin. Alright, secondly, Because
God's love is in Christ, He never fails to draw His bride to Himself. He never fails to draw His bride
to Himself. Now, He said there in verse 1,
Say ye to your brethren Amai and to your sisters Ruhema. I
said to you, this is a picture of the church. I don't have time
now, but if you'll read Hosea 1 later, you'll find out at their
birth, their names was Lo-Amai and Lo-Ruhema. It meant the opposite
of what it means now. Now it means they've obtained
mercy and grace from God and He'll never leave them and He'll
never forsake them. These are children called by His grace.
And God says to Hosea, now you tell them to plead with their
mother. And see, God through Christ tells
us, you preach this to my lost bride. And He says there verse
2, plead with your mother, plead, for she's not my wife, neither
am I her husband. Sinner, let me tell you something.
If you're His, He's speaking that to you. And this I can tell
you, you haven't been faithful to God, and I haven't been faithful
to God. We've played the harlot. We are the adulterous. And that's
the message we're to preach to His people. All flesh is grass.
There's not a good thing in any one of us. We're all dead in
sin by nature. It takes God to give us grace.
He calls us to repentance. Look here. He said, let her therefore
put away her whoredoms out of her sight. But will we do that? If He leaves us to ourselves,
will we do that? You can preach repentance all
day long until God works grace in the heart. A man will not
repent. But He has power to make us repent. He says, verse 3,
lest I strip her naked and set her as in the day she was born.
He's got the power to do that. And Christ is going to do that
to every single member, every single elect person that makes
up His bride. He's going to do that. He shows us here that He is going
to condemn our false conversion. He is going to condemn any false
converts we may have been or took part of in vain religion.
And He is going to condemn all our so-called good works. This
is our religion. This is our false religion whereby
we thought we were righteous by nature. Look here now with
me at it. He says, verse 4, I will not
have mercy upon her children, You see, children are fruit.
And all the fruit we brought forth when we were dead in sin
is dead fruit. Because it's of another one other
than Christ. It wasn't produced by Christ.
It was produced by us looking to ourselves. And He said, I
won't have mercy on those children. They'd be children of whoredoms
because their mothers played the harlot. She conceived them
shamefully. She said, I'll go after my lovers.
See, she conceived them illegitimately. by means other than her first
husband. And he said, those aren't legitimate
children. And so, no convert that's made,
trusted in his will or his works, and done anything by his ability,
Christ hasn't had mercy on him. He's not saved. Period. That's
just fact. And any of our works and things
we've done and looking to, he said, I'm going to reveal to
my bride, that's all dead works. That's all it is. That's what
most religion has done in our day. But this is the good news,
and keep this in mind, even though we plagued the harlot because
we were his, and he entered in that covenant before we were
ever born, he entered into that covenant in eternity, and therefore
that marriage covenant stands. He will not let go of his people. He's going to seek and save his
bride. Alright, look here. Then the
Lord is going to bring us to see our sin and our utter need
of Him. He says, verse 6, Therefore behold,
I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and I will make a wall
that she shall not find her paths. And then she will say, I will
go and return to my first husband, for then was it better with me
than now. You see, the only way you are going to repent, and
I am going to repent, is when God hedges us up. He is going
to make it so you don't have a choice. If you're His and one
day is going to come where He's going to head you up to Him so
that you don't have a choice. You can run after your lovers
and He's going to turn you right back to Him. And once He starts
doing that, He'll always do that. And the fact is, He's always
done it. Even when we didn't know Him, He did it. Look there
in verse 8. She didn't know I gave her corn and wine and oil and
multiplied her silver and gold, which she was praising Baal for.
All the days we thought we were were good in our self-righteous
religion and we thought we were working good works and all that.
Well, we were just dead in sin. Christ was constantly coming
to our doorstep and giving us oil and wine and wool and flax
just like Hosea was doing for Gomer. And you know what we did? We praised our idol. You know
who we praised? Ourselves. The Jesus this world
calls on, I've told you this before, the Jesus this world
calls on is nothing but their own will and their own works.
It's an idol. It's an idol. But in time, Christ
is going to show us that. He's going to take away our fig
leaves, our righteousness, verse 9. Therefore will I return and
take away my corn. I'm going to take away my wool
and my flax to cover her nakedness. Verse 10, Now will I discover
her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver
her out of my hand. You see, what does that mean,
I'm going to discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers? Well,
you just imagine if you were stripped absolutely naked in
front of all these people that you had been been committing
adultery with and praising yourself with and exalting yourself over
and claiming you were righteous and holy and religious all along.
Imagine if you were stripped completely naked physically and
stood in front of all that host of people and made to see you're
just a common harlot. Wouldn't you be ashamed? That's
what it means. I'm going to make my people ashamed
of their sin because it's all against Christ. That's what's
going to make us see the shame of our sin when we behold it's
against Christ. Look, then he's going to show
his bride our religion and our good works is vain. Verse 11,
he says, I'll cause all her mirth to cease. And this is all religious
stuff. Her feast days, her new moons,
her Sabbaths, all are solemn feasts. Our free will works religion. He said, I'm going to bring that
to nothing to my people. Isn't that mercy and grace? And He shows us our fruits of
vanity. I'll destroy her vines and her
fig trees. She said, this is my reward.
Isn't that just like religion? My lovers gave this to me. It's
my reward. That's just like religion. Dead religion. And do some work,
and who gets the praise for that work? Oh, they give lip service
to that idle Jesus, that idle God that can't do anything without
them, but because He can't do anything without them, You're
going to pat yourself on the back and say, this is my reward. This is my reward. Christ said,
I'm going to make my people see that that's not so. It's all
just dead, dead, dried up, withered vines is all it is. And he said,
here's why he's going to do it. Verse 13, at the end there, he
says, because she went after her lovers and forgot me, saith
the Lord. See, that's what everything is
that you do and I do when we were dead in sin. Everything
was going after our lovers and forgetting God. I'm talking about
sins, immoral, just base sins. I'm talking about in your very
best righteousnesses. Every bit of it was forgetting
God and going after our lovers. Every bit of it. It takes Christ
to make His bride see that. Make you and me see that. You
know how the first way Christ said that the Comforter is going
to comfort His people? Look there at verse 14. He says,
Behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness
and speak comfortably to her. Look over at John 17. I think
we have time. I may not have written that down
right. Let me make sure. John 17. Nope. I knew when I read that
that we didn't write it down right. I believe it's John 7. Let me go back and see. Well, I wrote it down wrong.
Let me just give it to you. He said, I'm going to give you
another comforter. But he said when he's come, speaking of the
Holy Spirit, He said, this is the first way He's going to comfort
my people. When He's come, He will reprove
you of sin because you believe not on Me. See, all this that
we've been talking about right here, that's the beginning of
being comforted by God. We first have to be made to see
we're nothing but sin. Before we can be clothed, we've
got to be stripped. Before He's going to raise us
up, He's going to bring us down. Because until you see your need
of salvation, you won't cling to the Savior. And so He's going
to make us see our need of salvation. He's going to make us see it's
all in Christ. That's how before we can be saved,
that's got to happen. You know Titus 3.3? Let's go
ahead and look there. Titus 3.3. I know I have that
right. I haven't done that in a long
time. I've written down the wrong one. Titus 3.3. Titus 3.3. He says,
We ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived,
serving different lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful
and hating one another. There was our lovers right there.
All that was our lovers. And we went and married ourselves
too. Verse 4 says, but after that, you know what we're talking
about? We're talking about God's love.
We're talking about the greatest love story ever told. But after
that, the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared. Not by works of righteousness
which we've done, but according to His mercy He saved us. By the washing of regeneration
and renewing of the Holy Ghost which He shed on us abundantly.
through Jesus Christ, our Savior. Every bit of this brought to
us by Jesus Christ, our Savior, the Son of God. Alright, now
let's go back, Hosea chapter 3. Now let's see, here's our
last point. God's love is in Christ Jesus alone. And so therefore,
I'm going to show you three things about this love. We've already
looked at one of them. First of all, because His love
is in Christ, it's unchangeable. It cannot be destroyed, no matter
how we sin. Look here in verse 1. Then said
the Lord unto me, Go yet, love a woman, beloved of her friend,
yet an adulteress. And this is according to the
love of the Lord toward the children of Israel who look to other gods
and love flagons of wine. You just think of this now. After
all the contempt all the contempt that we showed to Christ, all
of the utter betrayal with which we betrayed the Lord Jesus Christ. We spit in His face. We spit
in His face. We cannot enter into just how
base and what an abomination our sins are. We really can't. We committed adultery. This is
a pretty good way to describe it though. Because husbands and
wives, we can relate to this. You just think about your spouse.
If your spouse spit in your face, run you through the mud, just
declared how they just couldn't stand you, and they left you
and divorced you and went out and married another and began
to commit adultery. And that's what it is. We're
going to see that in the next hour. Would your love for them
go unchanged whatsoever? We don't really need to talk
about our love, do we? Our love's not much. A whole
lot less than that. and we'll stop loving. Or we'll,
on the day of our wedding, we'll be there, love's in the air,
and we're making our vows, and we're saying everything, and
oh, making promises to in-laws and outlaws and everything else,
everything we're gonna do. But then the feelings get hurt
and the heart gets broken. I don't love him anymore. Not God. Not God. Go yet and love this woman even
though she's nothing but a whore, just an adulteress. Go love her. And that's what Christ does.
That's what Christ does. This is the Scripture. Listen
to this. I love this. Romans 8.39 says nothing, nothing
shall be able to separate us, to divorce us from the love of
God which is in Christ Jesus the Lord. Nothing. It never could
and it never will. Nothing. That doesn't make us
want to sin. That makes you want to love Him
and obey Him. Listen to this Scripture. Ephesians
2 verse 4. But God, who is rich in mercy
for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, Listen to this. God commendeth His love toward
us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. See what I'm saying? Unchanging. And then here's the second thing.
In Christ, His love is redeeming love. He successfully redeems
His people. Verse 2. So I bought her to me. I bought her to me. That's what redemption is. Christ
buying His people to Himself. I bought her to me. I paid the
price. Fifteen pieces of silver, an
omer of barley and a half omer of barley. You just imagine Comer
there on that slave block and she's naked. Selling herself
into slavery. That's what we did in Adam. That's
what we did by all our sin. We sold ourselves into slavery
under the law. We could not pay the debt we
owed. Couldn't. And you just picture her there
now, stripped naked, and she's, oh, she's a shame. Can't you
just imagine how ashamed? And there standing all around
her is all her lovers. You reckon anybody want to step
forward among those lovers and bid on her and buy her, pay off
her debts? They know who she is. And to
them, she's just a harlot. They don't want to have a thing
to do with her. But there was one in that crowd that never
stopped loving her. And Hosea stepped forward and
he said, I'll pay the price. What's the price? I'll pay it.
And he bought her. He paid the price. And when he
paid that price, she became his purchased possession because
he paid the price. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
went to Calvary's cross and He paid the price, brethren, all
His people, all His bride became His purchased possession. He
bought us to Himself. And He's going to redeem us from
the curse of our sin nature. He's going to redeem us out from
that bondage and make us know it and make us cast our care
on Him in love. Can't you imagine when He did
that for Gomer? Can't you imagine just how her
heart just overflowed? because he loved her like he
did? That's what he does in the hearts of his people. He makes
your heart overflow, seeing his love for you. And that's how
he constrains you to cleave to him and never leave him because
he effectually works that in our hearts. And that's what we
see next. His love, God's love in Christ is covenant, everlasting
covenant love. This is the word He speaks into
our hearts. Verse 3, 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 also be for thee. See, He said I'm going to do
this. I'm going to betroth you to Me in righteousness and judgment,
in loving kindness and mercy, and even in faithfulness. And
when He makes you see that loving kindness Righteousness, meat
and harmony on Calvary's tree, and He makes you see His faithfulness,
that He never would leave you or forsake you, even when you
were just an adulteress. He speaks in your heart, and
He gives you a new heart, and He makes you willing. And He
says, now you're never leaving Me. He says this, I'll give them
a heart to know Me, and I'm the Lord, and they shall be My people,
and I will be their God. For they shall return unto Me
with their whole heart. You reckon Hosea ever left, I
mean, Agomar ever left Hosea? No. And neither, not one of God's
children are ever going to leave him. That, my friends, when God
heard Henry Mahan preach that message, and I think the Lord
had already saved me, but when I heard him preach that message
sometime in the late 80s, God had me hook, line, and sinker.
And I just said, that's the greatest love story I've ever heard. That'll
make you love your wife so much more, and her love you the same.
Alright brethren, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we
thank You for this Word. We thank You for Your mercy and
Your grace. Lord, how we do thank You for
Your unchanging, covenant, sovereign, gracious love in Christ alone. Thank You that He redeemed His
people. Thank You that He's successfully calling His people and making
it known. And He will not lose one. Lord,
we have such a good hope. We have such a good hope because
we have such a great Savior. Oh, forgive us our doubting.
Forgive us our unfaithfulness. Forgive us for not seeing that everything we
have, You've given it. for not being sacrificing everything
for you. Lord, we thank you. Forgive us
our sins in Christ's name. Amen.