All right, now I have at least,
I say at least, two messages entitled Unconditional Love. Tonight's part one and you'll
be glad that this is just part one. Two messages at least entitled
Unconditional Love. And obviously what I'm going
to talk about is God's sovereign, unconditional love towards his
elect people, his chosen people. I know one of your favorite hymns
and one of my favorite hymns, we don't hear it very often,
maybe, I don't know if we could sing this as a congregational
sometimes, Joe, you have to learn it, I guess, and we'll have to
get into it, but it's called Hail Sovereign Love. You remember
that hymn? I won't read it all, but just
listen to the first two verses of Hail Sovereign Love. It says,
Hail Sovereign Love, which first began the scheme or the plan
to rescue fallen man. Hail matchless, free, eternal
grace that gave my soul a hiding place. And of course, you know
that hiding place is Christ. Second verse says, against the
God who built the sky, I fought with hands uplifted high, despised
the mention of his grace, too proud to seek a hiding place. Isn't that just a great description
of God's saving sinners, the kind of sinners that God saves?
who deserve nothing but God's wrath and God's condemnation,
God's just judgment against our sins, and who have earned nothing
but God's wrath? Well, obviously, we have a great,
a masterful, and a beautiful picture of that kind of love,
divine love, sovereign love, unconditional love, of God to
his people, sinners, sinners who deserve nothing but God's
hatred. But out of God's free, unconditional,
sovereign choice, electing love, he loved us with an everlasting
love. And we see that pictured here
in Hosea, the prophet of God, who married the prostitute, Gomer. Think about that, that's an amazing
thing. And you know, the words that seem to indicate the theme
of this whole book, as we see this great picture, are these
three words. Sin, because Gomer was a sinner,
and that's what we are, sinners saved by the grace of God. And
judgment comes into play here because Gomer, not only was she
just unfaithful to her husband, Hosea, but she broke the law. She broke the covenant law of
marriage. And the penalty for that is death.
And that's what we are under in Adam, the judgment of God,
the wages of sin is death. But then the third word comes
into play there, the theme of this, and that's love. But it's
not just any kind of love. It's godly love, it's divine
love, it's sovereign love, it's unconditional love. Now this
love is not a feeling. This love is not an emotion. This love is not a poem on a
Hallmark card. This love is the power of God's
love, not only to set his affection and compassion upon a sinner,
but also to save that sinner from their sins in a way that's
consistent with his justice. This love is a choice, and that's
why we call it electing love. Look back at chapter 1 of Hosea
in verse 2, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea,
whose name means Savior. 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.
This was a choice for Hosea that God made. And here we see a picture
of the everlasting covenant of grace before the world began
wherein God the Father chose a bride for His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ. Chose a bride for His great prophet,
the Lord Jesus Christ. God chose a people. And His choice
of His people is the choice of love, divine love. And this love
has no consideration for the worthiness of the objects of
that love, for we are unworthy. You see, it's not that God looked
down through a telescope of time and foresaw who would be worthy
of his love. If that's what he did, he would
have found this out, that no one was worthy of his love and
therefore no one would be loved. But God created this world, created
his people for the purpose of his love. He chose us before
the foundation of the world and gave us to his son. Just like
the Lord here gave Gomer, the fallen one, the failure, the
one who is consumed with sin. gave her to Hosea, the Savior. And He says, you go, take unto
you a wife of whoredoms. That's love. That's the kind
of love that God has for His people. We read it in 1 John
chapter 4 and verse 10 there. Herein is love. And the Holy
Spirit was quick to add by the Apostle John, not that we loved
Him. God, this kind of love is not
a reaction. This love is the first cause
of all things, as God is the source and originator of all
salvation. Herein is love, not that we love
God, but that He loved us. Why did He love us? We only know
the reason is within Himself, but it's for His glory in the
exaltation of our salvation by Christ. That's all we know. So
herein is love, not that we love God, but that He loved us and
sent His Son to be the propitiation, the sin-bearer, the sacrifice,
the satisfaction for our sins. That's the kind of love we're
talking about. It's the kind of love that the Apostle Paul
described Back in Romans chapter 5, let me read you these verses.
In verse 6, he talked about for when we were yet without strength
in due time, that's God's time, Christ died for the ungodly. He didn't die for people who
deserved God's love. You see, the love of God is proven
and shown and manifested in the death of Christ. And so he died
for the ungodly. So as Christ didn't die for the
worthy, God didn't love the worthy. Christ died for the ungodly.
And he goes on to say in verse 7, for scarcely for a righteous
man will one die. That's one who deserves it. Yet
peradventure for a good man, some would even dare to die.
That's somebody who deserves it. But you see, that's not us.
That's not Gomer. Isn't and he says in verse 8,
but God commendeth his love Toward us in that while we were yet
sinners Christ died for us While we were yet sinners Not while
we were worthy Not because God foresaw that we would believe
at some time in the future. No, sir. He goes on, verse nine,
and listen to this. It gets even better. It says,
much more than being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved
from wrath through him. For if when we were enemies,
we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more
being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. When we were
enemies, God loved us. Unconditional, sovereign love. Jude, in his short epistle, wrote
this in verse 21. He says, keep yourselves in the
love of God. Keep yourselves in the love of
God. Now let me tell you what Jude did not mean by that. He did not mean, now people get
busy, work hard to try to earn God's love and keep it. That's
not what he meant. When he said, keep yourselves
in the love of God, he tells you exactly what he means in
the rest of that verse. He says, looking for the mercy
of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. How do you keep
yourselves in the love of God? You keep your focus and your
mind and your heart upon Christ who died for an ungodly sinner
like me. You keep your mind upon the kind
of love that God expressed. Unconditional love. No conditions
on the sinner. You see, religion today always
wants to put conditions on the sinner in order to be saved or
to maintain salvation or to earn some kind of a mercenary promise
of rewards or to earn God's love. But you see, that's not grace.
That's not the kind of love that's illustrated here in Hosea and
Gomer. Not at all. Not at all. Here,
you think about it. Here's Gomer, a wife of Hortens. As I told you last time, there
are arguments among scholars over whether or not Gomer actually
was a prostitute before Hosea married her. But I want to tell
you something. Whether she committed the act of prostitution or whoredom
before Hosea married her, which I believe she did, because God
told her. He said, go marry a wife of whoredoms. I'll tell you this
much, it was in her heart. Because that's what we are. We're
sinners by nature. It's not just what we do. Sin
is not just, the law of God doesn't just forbid what we do or don't
do. It also forbids the thought of
sin. the covetousness, the inclination,
the desire, the motive. It's a heart matter. And her
sin was essentially unfaithfulness to Hosea, just like Israel's
sin. You see, he illustrates here
through this marriage union his relationship with the nation
Israel. They were unfaithful to God.
But my friend, listen to me now. What were you, what was I before
God saved us? We were unfaithful. Unfaithful. We had been betrothed to Christ
before the foundation of the world. We were his bride in that
sense. Before the foundation of the
world. And yet we fell in Adam. And when we fell in Adam, we
fell in Adam under condemnation and we deserve nothing but death. And then when we were born into
this world, born dead in trespasses and sins, we lived a life of
unfaithfulness until God brought us to a saving knowledge of Christ. Spiritual whoredom, spiritual
adultery, idolatry. Hosea was the husband of an unfaithful
wife who had left him and sold herself out as a harlot. And
again, this is an illustration not only of Israel's unfaithfulness
to God, but our own unfaithfulness in our fallen Adam and in our
sin against God. Hosea here is a type of Christ. As we read through these verses,
and I'm just going to go as far as time will allow me tonight,
and we'll pick up Sunday night where I leave off. But Hosea
is a type of Christ. Remember what his name means.
It means Savior. He's the Savior. And Gomer, whose
name means failure, whose name means consumption, consumed with
sin, she's a type of Christ's bride, fallen sinners, chosen
of God in electing love, sovereign love, unconditional love, who
don't deserve the love and cannot earn the love, but whom Christ
was sent to this earth to come where we are and take into union
with himself a sinless humanity, body and soul, and walk this
earth and redeem us from our sins." You're going to see in
chapter 3 how Hosea had to go down and redeem Gomer from off
the auction block of bondage and slavery to get her back.
He had to pay the price. And our Lord, our Savior, paid
the price for us. As we stated, we're under bondage
of sin. He paid that price on the cross
of Calvary and the price was his precious blood. It was his
very life. That's why he was made sin. He
who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of
God in him. Look at verse two of Hosea chapter
two. It begins with a charge brought. God brings a charge. against
Gomer. And this in essence is a call
to repentance. Listen to it. It tells us of
Gomer's great fall and Hosea's purpose of love and grace concerning
her. And it says in verse 2, plead
with your mother, plead. Now that word plead there does
not mean beg. That's what you would normally
think when you hear a plead, plead with somebody. If you plead
with somebody, you're begging. That's not what that word means.
The word literally means contend. It means charge her. It's like
a court of law. It's a legal term, really what
it is. And what he's saying here to
his children, the three children that she bore him, bring charges
against your mother. That's what he's saying. See,
this is a legal scene here it starts off with. She had broken
the law. She had broken the law of marriage.
She was guilty and deserving of death. The law said that a
woman was bound to her husband until death. And Gomer had been
unfaithful to her husband. She had committed adultery. She
had committed harlotry. She had broken the law. And the
law says the wages of sin is death. Bring charges against
your mother. And he says, for she's not my
wife, neither am I her husband. What he means literally here
is she's not playing the role of his wife. She's not acting
like a wife should act. and therefore he cannot be the
husband that he should be. You know they say, we say this
in the marriage vows, that the marriage union between a husband
and wife should reflect the relationship between Christ and his church.
And what's happening here is Hosea and Gomer's marriage is
not reflecting that except in one way. Christ is the savior
of sinners. This is the kind of people that
Christ is married to. Those who, like Gomer, are spiritual
harlots, adulterers, and fornicators. That's what it is. See, that's
who He took unto Himself. And you know, I thought about
this when I read that little passage in Jude that I just quoted
to you. Keep yourselves in the love of
God. Listen, I hope that in going
through this book, and these verses specifically, that we
can come to a greater, greater, greater appreciation for God's
love for us. You think about that. What kind
of love? Oh, what love that song says.
Amazing love. This is amazing grace. Hosea
would have been well within his rights to just put her away and
say, you all have her, bring her up to the courts and sentence
her to death and get rid of her. Society probably would have thought
more of Hosea if he had done that. But you know Hosea couldn't
do that? He could not do it. And you know
why he couldn't do it? Because of verse two of chapter
one, the Lord told him, you go, take unto you a wife of whoredoms.
This is the Lord's command. This is a covenant, you see.
And that's why Christ could not let go of his bride, because
it was a matter of a covenant. But you know what? And here's
the thing about it. And I want you to notice this,
Hosea, is not only doing this because of a commandment that
the Lord gave him. He's doing it because he loved
this woman. Now you might say, well, how
in the world could he love somebody like that? Well, before you get
to thinking too much on that issue, just think about yourself.
How in the world could God love somebody like me? Or like you? Christ loved His sheep. He did it by commandment of God.
He said, I came to do the will of my Father. But you know what? He did it willingly and lovingly.
In fact, John chapter 13 and verse 1 makes this statement.
It says, He loved His own, His own people. unto the end, unto
the finishing of the work. And he proved it because he made
this statement. He said, I'm going to die for
their sins. I'm going to the cross. I'm going
to give my life for the sheep. And he said, no man takes it
from me. I give it of my own. He gave
it willingly. Hosea loved this woman. He loved
Gomer. Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners of whom I am chief. But now she wasn't playing
the part of a good, godly wife. And he says, verse 2, let her
therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight and her adulteries
from between her breasts. See, just as Gomer forsook her
loving husband and went after her lovers, you and I went astray
from our God as soon as we were born. We come forth from the
womb speaking lies, the scripture says. Like Gomer, we're all by
nature adulterers and spiritual harlots. He says it's as though
Hosea had granted her a bill of divorcement because of her
adultery and harlotry. But even though Hosea loved her,
there was a matter of law that had to be settled between them.
Bring charges against your mother. And I'm going to tell you it's
the same with us. God loves his chosen people. But the law must
be satisfied. And that's why God's love, and
this is the kind of divine love we need to keep ourselves in. God's love does not ignore justice. It doesn't confuse justice. It
doesn't deny justice. It doesn't set justice aside.
God's love is perfectly consistent with His holiness, His righteousness,
and His justice. And that's why we read there
in 1 John chapter 4 and verse 10, herein is love, not that
we loved God, but that he loved us and did what? Sent his son
to be the satisfaction, propitiation for our sins. Sin had to be paid
for. Justice had to be satisfied.
Look at verse 3. Here's a picture of God bringing
about conviction of sin here. Lest I strip her naked and set
her as in the day that she was born, expose her for what she
is, make her as a wilderness, desolate, no fruitfulness, and
set her like a dry land and slay her with thirst. You see, that's
God bringing about conviction of sin in us, exposing us for
what we are, and showing us that all we can produce is sinful
flesh. Look at verse 4. And I will not have mercy upon
her children, for they be the children of whoredoms. All the
flesh can produce is what? Flesh. Didn't Christ tell Nicodemus
that in John chapter 3? You must be born again from above
by the Spirit. That which is of the flesh is
flesh. And that's what he's saying there.
You see, the fact that she had children, that didn't do them
any good or her any good. It wouldn't help her at all.
But look at verse five. He said, for their mother hath
played the heart of it. And listen to this now. This'll
break your heart. This'll bring a sinner to repentance
if God the Holy Spirit is pleased to open our eyes and our ears.
She that conceived them hath done shamefully, for she said,
I will go after my lovers that give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Now, Gomer, she
was well taken care of here. She had a lot of good things.
She had bread, she had water, she had wool and flax, oil, drink. She had all those things that
are necessary to sustain this physical body. But who do you
think gave them to her? Who do you think was keeping
her in all of this and with all the sustenance, everything she
needed physically? She said, I will go after my
lovers who gave them to me. But it wasn't them who gave them
to her at all. It was Hosea, verse 8 says, for she did not
know that I gave her corn and wine and oil, silver and gold. She didn't know. She was ignorant.
Isn't that us by nature? Before God brings us to a saving
knowledge of Christ, every good thing that we had that we thanked
God for, we were thanking an idol. Because I want to tell
you something now. Go by this biblically now. Biblically, before you knew by
the power of the Spirit, the saving power of God's grace and
love in Jesus Christ, you may have said God, but the God that
was in your mind was and is an idol. That's what our Lord said. No man cometh unto the Father
but by me. I'm the way and the truth and
the life. If you don't know Christ, you don't know the Father. Now
that's so. And I know people get mad at
me for saying that, but that's just what the Bible says. You've
taken up with God. If you don't know Christ, you
don't know the true and living God. Now you may know some things
about God, and they may be some right things. You may know there's
one God, but the devils know that, scripture says. You may
know that he's a powerful God, he created the world, you may
know all that, but until you know the God of redemption who
justifies the ungodly through the blood and righteousness of
the Lord Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, Until you're brought
to faith in Christ and repentance of dead works and idolatry, you
do not know God. And everything that you attribute
unto a God, the God without Christ, in your mind, that's idolatry.
I know that's hard to understand. But you're just like Gomer. That's
what I was. Attributed to an idol. That word
Baal, look back at verse 8. It says, she did not know that
I gave her corn and wine and oil and multiplied her silver
and gold, which they prepared for Baal. You know what Baal
was. Baal was an idol. Do you know
what the word Baal means? It means master. In fact, it's
used in a good sense over in verse 16. Look at verse 16. It
means Lord and Master. He says, It shall be in that
day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishai, which means
husband, and shalt call me no more Baalai, Master or Lord. Now we do call him Lord. We call
him our Master. But that's talking about a relationship
That's different. In other words, a loving relationship
between a husband and wife as opposed to a legal relationship
between a master and a forced slave. But the name Baal means
master. You may have said master. You
may have said Lord, Lord. What did the Lord say in Matthew
chapter 7 of those who came to judgment and said, Lord, Lord,
have we not prophesied in thy name? And he said, depart from me,
ye that work iniquity, I never knew you. You remember when they
brought Peter and I think it was John up on charges after
they had healed an impotent man. It's recorded in the book of
Acts. Brought him up before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high religious
court. And they asked him this question.
They said, in whose name, in whose name did you heal this
man? Upon what authority did you do
this? Now let me show you exactly what
I'm talking about here. Follow with me here. Now Peter
spoke up. He could have said, we healed
this man in the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and he would have spoken the truth. And they would have said
amen to that, brother. Because they claimed to believe
in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Just like Peter. But Peter didn't say that. You
know what he said? He said, we did it in the name
of Jesus of Nazareth whom you crucified and slew. And what'd they do? Put him in
jail. Kill him. Stop him. We command that you preach no
more in that name. They claimed to believe in the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, claimed to worship and serve
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but they would not have
this man, Jesus Christ, to rule over them. Now let me ask you
this question. Did they really believe in the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? No, sir. Abraham, Christ said,
saw my day, and he rejoiced. He was glad. Isaac is the child
of promise and that promise is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Jacob
was the sinner saved by the grace of God in Christ. So you see
Gomer in saying this, she's showing her idolatry. She said it's my
lovers who did this for me. Now ultimately every good gift
and every perfect gift is from God. But the heart of man will
not reach out to God and worship God and confess the true and
living God until the Holy Spirit brings him to see his sinfulness
and the glory of Christ and the power of his blood and righteousness
to save us from our sins. Look at verse six. Here is the
hedge of unfulfilled desire. Verses six and seven. The hedge
of unfulfilled desire. What are you talking about? Listen
to it. Hosea says this, he says, therefore, the Lord says this
through Hosea. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with
thorns and make a wall. I will wall up a wall, build
a wall, that she shall not find her paths. She's not gonna find
her way. She's gonna be lost. That's what
he said. And she shall follow after her
lovers, but she shall not overtake them. She has a desire for her
lovers. but it's gonna be an unfulfilled
desire. And she shall seek them, but
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. All the lovers and idols that
Gomer would pursue would not fulfill her ultimately. She'd
be left desolate. This passage here kind of reminds
you of the prodigal son, doesn't it? when he was out there feeding
on the husk of the swine in the pigsty, and he said, I'll return
to my father's house for it was better than what I got now. You
see, this is like the woman with the issue of blood. You remember
she spent her life going to different doctors, trying to find a cure,
and she came away worse off than she was before. That's a picture
of man in false religion, works religion, trying to get fulfilled,
trying to find peace, trying to find salvation by his works,
and it will not wash, will not heal you, will not cure the sin
problem. And remember what she did? She
went into the, pressed into the crowd and said, if I can just
touch the hem of Christ's garment, I'll be healed. Only Christ will
fulfill the desire of a convicted sinner. That's what the Lord
does for us. For a child of God, that is God
hedging us about to bring us to our senses and force us back
to him. That's why the psalmist wrote,
blessed is the man whom thou choosest and calls us to approach
unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts. And we shall be
satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even thy holy temple. You remember Christ in John chapter
7. He stood in the last day, the
great day of the feast, and he cried, if any man thirsts, let
him come unto me and drink. You see, the Holy Spirit gives
God's people, God's elect, a thirst that can only be quenched with
the water of life, Christ, the fountain of life. He gives us
a hunger that can only be filled with the bread of life, Christ.
And until then, he'll hedge us about with unfulfilled desires
all the time, forcing us to understand that nothing will fulfill us
but Christ. That's what Hosea was going to
do for Gomer. That's why Christ said, Come
unto me all ye that are laboring heavy laden, and I'll give you
rest. You won't find it anywhere else if it's Holy Spirit conviction. And then look at verse 8. Here's
Hosea's provision for Gomer. He says, For she did not know
that I gave her corn and wine and oil and multiplied her silver
and gold, which they prepared for Baal. Think about this. If you're a
child of God today, A sinner saved by grace. Let me ask you
this question. How long has God taken care of you? How long has
God provided for you? How long has God protected you? Always. Isn't that right? Even
when we didn't know Him. Even when we were His enemy,
He loved us. The Bible says in Jeremiah 31
verse 3, The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea,
I have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore with loving kindness
have I drawn thee. Now let me ask you this, how
long did we fail to seek him and trust him and serve him and
worship him? For some it was longer than others.
How long did we, like Gomer, attribute all the good things
that God blessed us with to an idol of our imagination? A God
who couldn't really save. A counterfeit Christ. When we
were ignorant of the true God, ignorant of Christ and His righteousness. Notice here it says, all these
things which they prepared for Baal. They made Baal. They took the good things that
God gave Gomer and used them for idolatry. How much of that
do we see in modern day society? People taking all the good things
that God gives and using them for their selfish purposes and
idolatry even. Now, what that does for me and
for you who know Christ is that heightens the magnitude of God's
unconditional love towards us. Isn't that right? Look at verse
9. Now, here's some tough love.
You've heard of tough love? They tell mamas and daddies now
that teenagers need a little tough love sometimes. Well, here's
tough love. And what this represents, as
I read through these verses, it represents the conviction
of sin that God brings his children to that leaves us with no hope
and no refuge and no help but in Christ. That's what he does
here. Look at verse nine. He says,
therefore will I return and take away my corn in the time thereof,
take away my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my
wool, my flax given to cover her nakedness. Gonna expose her
shamefulness, you say. And now will I discover her lewdness,
that's her foolishness, that's her sinfulness, in the sight
of her lovers. She's gonna expose her for what
she is. And none shall deliver her out of my hand. Nobody can
stop this. I love that. Listen, what we're
seeing here is this tough love that brings us to conviction.
It is the invincible calling of the Holy Spirit that nobody
can stop. Not even the will of man can
stop it. You know why? Because God's gonna
make his people willing in the day of his power. None shall
deliver her out of my hand, the Lord says. Aren't you glad that
nobody can deliver you out of God's hand? Boy, I am. I don't want deliverance out
of God's hand. I want deliverance out of Satan's
hand. I want deliverance out of the law's hand. I want deliverance
out of my own hand, but I don't want deliverance out of God's
hand. Well, nobody, Christ said it this way. He said, my sheep
hear my voice. I give unto them eternal life and they shall not
perish. He said, my father, he said,
none shall pluck them out of my father's hand. And then look
at verse 11. You see, that's the ground of
our salvation and assurance right there. God's sovereign hold,
powerful hold upon us. He will not let us go. He wouldn't
let Gomer go. He says in verse 11, I will also
cause all her mirth, her happiness, merriment to cease. He's going
to bring us to sorrow over sin, poor in spirit. her feast days,
her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. You
know what that represents? False religion. He's gonna show
us that even our religion without Christ, without grace, without
truth, is an abomination in the sight of God. We're not only
gonna repent of our immoralities, our sins, but we're gonna repent
of our dead works, and our idolatry, and our religion without God. He says in verse 12, and I will
destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she has said,
these are my rewards. That word rewards literally is
wages. She said, these are my wages
that my lovers have given. She's talking about what she
earned. She said, I've earned all these
things. I deserve all these things. Well, he's going to bring her
to see she didn't earn anything. You don't deserve anything good,
but wrath. He says, and I will make them a forest and the beast
of the field shall eat them, you see? He says, and I will
visit upon her the days of Balaam, idolatry, wherein 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'm gonna bring that to mind.
He's gonna bring her to see her idolatry and her adultery. And she's going to have no help
and no hope but Christ. Well, look at verse 14. Now,
here's Hosea's drawing Gomer with love. And this is covenant
language. Listen to this. He says, Therefore,
behold, I will allure her. I'm going to allure her. I'm
going to bring her and bring her into the wilderness and speak
comfortably unto her. Hosea loved her. Hosea allured
her. Hosea brought her. And Hosea
spoke comfort to her. You know what that is, my friend?
That's the story of Christ and His church, right there. His
bride. He loved us when we were all
together unlovely. He allured us with His grace
and His mercy preached out in the gospel and the power of the
Holy Spirit. It's the goodness of God that led us to repentance. He drew us with cords of love.
God's love in Christ. God's unconditional love. God's
sovereign love. God's undeserved love. Unearned love. He brought us
to Himself. We didn't come of our own free
will. It wasn't decisional regeneration or anything like that, but he
brought us. Just like David went and had
his servant go down and fetch Mephibosheth, God had his son
come down and fetch us. Brought us into his family, his
kingdom, his palace, set us down at his table, cleaned us up,
clothed us in his righteousness, and fed us at his table all the
days of our life. He brought us. And then he spoke
comfortably to us. What did he say? Your sins are
forgiven. You have a righteousness that
answers the demands of God's law and justice. You know what
that is? That's amazing sovereign love,
unconditional love, amazing grace. Would you choose such a woman
as Gomer for your bride? You wouldn't and I wouldn't either.
But God chose us. And His reasons are within Himself
and for His glory in Christ. And it's an amazing thing. Let
me read verse 15 and I'll close and we'll pick up there next
time. He said, I'll give her vineyards from thence and the
valley of Acre. That's the valley of trouble.
It sounds kind of strange, but He says, I'm going to give her
the valley of trouble for a door of hope. I'll elaborate on that
next time. It says, and she shall sing there.
He's gonna put a new song in her mouth. You know what the
new song that's in our mouth is? Worthy is the lamb that was
slain. And in the days of her youth,
as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came
up out of the land of Egypt. We'll pick back up there next
time.