Well we're turning for a little
while to texts from here and there in the Bible and this week
I want to turn you to Hosea chapter 2, Hosea chapter 2 and especially
verses 14 and 15 and I've given the message, the title A door
of hope. Recently, in the mornings, Christine
and I have been reading the Minor Prophets, so-called. They're
not minor in terms of the message, it's fully the message of inspired
scripture, of gospel grace. But there's a recurring theme,
and it's a theme, you know, you start to read them and you think,
oh gosh, this is dreary, over and over again. Sin, judgment,
abandonment of God, a punishment for it, condemnation, but there's
always a message of gospel grace. Always a message of gospel grace.
And Hosea, at 14 chapters, is one of the less minor ones in
terms of length. But the pattern is similar. There's
over and over again referral to the history of Israel and
Judea committing idolatry with the world. Idolatry? Adultery
with the world. Adultery is faithfulness from
a true husband. God was the true husband of his
people, and yet they committed adultery. They committed spiritual
fornication in departing from the Lord. But all of the messages
of these prophets, what is it for us today? Does it just talk
about the history of Israel two and a half thousand years ago?
They all allude to God calling his elect multitude out of this
world into his glorious kingdom of righteousness and peace, his
everlasting kingdom, his triumphant kingdom. Israel, in its repeated
departure from God, you read the Old Testament, you read these
prophets again and again, Israel which was the people of God,
you know, Paul asks the Romans, what advantage then is there
in being a Jew? Much in every way, for, why,
of all the peoples on earth, God gave to them the revelation
of his gospel grace. He revealed to them the truth
of the gospel of His grace. He gave them the scriptures.
He gave them the prophets. It was from them that the Messiah,
the promised seed of the woman, came to redeem His people from
the curse of the law. Much in every way were they blessed,
and yet, despite it, despite having that clarity, it just
shows how frail is human flesh, how sinful, how easily it departs
from the blessedness of fellowship with God. how Israel in its repeated
departure from God, it pictures the generality of mankind in
the world, of unbelief, and of rejection of the rule of God. the people, they get their just
dessert. God does punish them with exile,
with being subsumed into the Assyrian Empire. But God is gracious,
and will have his kingdom populated with redeemed, justified, sanctified
sinners. And how does he do it? Not by
anything that those sinners do. not by anything that those sinners
are able to do, by turning over a new leaf or choosing for themselves
to follow Him, no. They're redeemed, justified,
sanctified by grace alone, by the gift of God alone, by the
gift for no other reason than that God is God and He can do
as He will. Our text this morning is verses
14 and 15, but I just quickly want to read again verses 14
down to 23. Just follow with me in Hosea
chapter 2. And I will give her her vineyards
from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope. And
she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as 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,
that's the loving husband, and shalt call me no more Bali, that's
the strict, legal, harsh, stern husband. For I will take away
the names of Balin, that's the false god of the pagans around
them. I will take away the names of
Balin out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by
their name. And in that day, this day of
grace, I will make a covenant for them, with the beasts of
the field, and the fowls of the heaven, and the creeping things
of the ground. And I will break the bow and the sword, the instruments
of war and battle, and the battle out of the earth. And I will
make them to lie down safely. What does Psalm 23 say? He makes
me to lie down in green pastures by the still waters. And I will
betroth thee unto me forever. Is that not what God did with
his people? His elect multitude before the beginning of time
betrothed to Christ the Son, betrothed unto the day of the
marriage supper of the Lamb at the end of time. Yea, I will
betroth thee unto me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness,
and in mercies, not as the false kingdom of this world, the kingdom
of Satan, which promises utopian paradise without any reference
to the justice of God. I will even betroth thee unto
me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord, and it shall
come to pass in that day. 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. Do you remember that was the
name given to the children? of Hosea and Goma, the prostitute
wife that he was told to take, I will have mercy on the one
that was named No-mercy, and I will say to them which were
not my people, one of them was called, you're not my people
anymore, I will say to them which were not my people because of
their sin and departure, I will say to them, thou art my people,
and they shall say, thou art my God. That's a picture of heaven. You know, as Jesus prayed in
John 17, I pray that they, his people, might be with me where
I am, and might behold my glory. So at the start of this section,
in verse 14, we have the word, therefore, therefore. and then
it follows with words of grace, therefore. Normally, the therefore
connects with what has gone before it. Such and such a thing, because
of this, well what goes before it was nothing other than a litany
of condemnation against them for their spiritual adultery
in departing from the Lord. It was punishment coming for
them departing from the Lord. Stephen read it to us earlier
in chapter two, also in chapter one if you read there. Therefore,
Behold, I will allure her. I will do gracious things to
her. It seems utterly illogical. But that is the grace of God
to human reasoning. Illogical. Human reasoning, religious
human reasoning, thinks that God can only reward me if I do
something good to Him, something good for Him, something good
in His direction. But the message of Scripture,
the true message of Scripture, that is revealed by the Holy
Spirit through the ones He raised up to write the Scriptures, the
message is this, that God is a God of absolute pure grace,
a God of mercy and grace. So by looking at this, with Holy
Spirit enlightenment, we see something of how God graciously
calls His people out of this world today. into the kingdom
of His dear Son, and how He speaks to us in the godless days that
surround us, in this world around us. That's the purpose of it.
It's no point just teaching you a history lesson of a people
that is no relationship to you two and a half thousand years
ago. This is for God to speak to His people, a message of sovereign
grace and particular redemption, of mercy, of mercy and grace. Think about the historical context
then with me for a moment. The historical context is that
the kings of Israel had been Saul in the first place, just
over a thousand years before Christ came. After the judges,
you know, they came out of Egypt and then after the judges, There
was King Saul, but Saul departed from the Lord and the Lord removed
him and raised up David. And you can read in 1 Samuel
all the history of him being called and brought into the throne
of Israel. And it was a period of great
blessing, albeit David was a sinner. The sweet psalmist of Israel
with whom God had made a covenant, 2 Samuel chapter 23 verse 5,
had a broken family because of his sin, what his sin had done.
Nevertheless, He was the sweet psalmist of Israel to whom God
had revealed truth, through whom God spoke to his people. And
the kingdom was a glorious kingdom for 40 years. And then came his
son Solomon, whom God blessed with wisdom and gave him the
right to establish the temple. There'd been just a tabernacle
to that day. And he reigned for forty years, and then there was
his son Rehoboam. And Rehoboam acted very foolishly
and very unwisely, and basically what he did led to the split
of the kingdom of Israel. The twelve tribes were split
into the ten tribes of Israel in the north, and the two tribes
of Judah, Judah and Benjamin, around Jerusalem. And in the
north, a man called Jeroboam led Israel into false religion.
They said, we don't need Jerusalem, we don't need your temple, we
don't need your priesthood and your sacrifices. We'll do our
own thing. And they raised up their own
version of it. And of course, it was false. And why was it
so wicked? You read in the Old Testament
again and again, the sins of Jeroboam. What were the sins
of Jeroboam? Saying that there's a way to
God outside of Christ. Is that not the religion of this
world? You know? And when you say, oh, but they
all talk about Christ. No, they don't talk about the Christ of
the Bible. They talk about a Christ of their own imagination. This
is an idle Christ. As Jesus said, don't believe
them when they say to you, here is Christ, there is Christ. You've
got to examine it. You've got to try the spirits,
whether they be of God. Is it the true Christ they're
talking about? No, this is Christless religion. And it's Christless
because it had its alternative to Jerusalem. It had its alternative
high altar and place of sacrifice and priests to do... It was false. It was false. And God punished
them because of their falsehood. and they're going away. They
ended up as the Samaritans, you know, in the time of Jesus. The
Samaritans were viewed by the Jews in Jerusalem and Galilee
with contempt. They were the mongrel people
who had intermingled with the Assyrians. God's judgment was
that they were captured by the Assyrians. They were overrun.
They were intermingled with them. Nobody could remember which tribe
he came from any longer in the line of truth. because it was
from the tribe of Judah that the lion of the tribe of Judah
came, the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Now
to illustrate this, God told his prophet Hosea to marry a
prostitute, to marry an immoral woman who made her living out
of selling her body to other men. And when they had children,
he was told to name them, no more mercy, you're not my people. And in verse 11 of chapter 2,
let's read three verses, 11 to 13, the punishments that were
coming on them, I will cause all her mirth to cease, there'll
be nothing to be happy about. her feast days, her new moons
and her sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts, and I will destroy
her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, these
are my rewards that my lovers have given me." You know, her
idolatrous behavior, her going after false gods, had given her
the rewards of the evil nations around them. And I will make
them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them.
And I will visit upon her the days of Balaam, wherein she burned
incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and
her jewels, and she went after her lovers. And forget me, saith
the Lord." Assyria, that great empire, would rise up and would
consume Israel, the ten northern tribes. would take them into
captivity. Judah in the south was taken
into Babylonian captivity later. But first, Israel in the north,
for its idolatry, was taken into Assyrian captivity, and intermingled
with the peoples, and became a mongrel people in Samaria. The Samaritans, a word of contempt
by the Jews 500 years later. Is this not, if you think about
it, an exact parallel to this world from the time of the fall,
when Adam ceded his viceroyship of the kingdom of God, which
was this creation, over to Satan's rule? He handed it over, and
ever since then, this world has been in the hands of Satan. departing
from blissful communion with God which they had in Eden, enticed
by Satan, As we read in Revelation 13, he's the dragon. Revelation
13 pictures Satan as this great big red dragon. And his two beasts,
the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth. Speaking
of the empires of the world, world government, and all of
the technological wizardry that totally mesmerizes the minds
and the desires of human beings. And reaping the results of that
departure from God. Deserving of every judgment. deserving of every judgment.
You know, we get what we deserve when we walk out on God. We have,
as God says via Jeremiah, in Jeremiah chapter 2 and verse
13, he says this, My people have committed two
evils. They have forsaken me, the fountain
of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns
that can hold no water. The things that we do ourselves,
they don't satisfy. We are made in the image of God,
for God. And by nature, all of us, as
people in this world, all peoples, since the fall, and that includes
all of us, God's justice is absolutely strict and justified. We deserve eternal condemnation. All men, all people deserve eternal
condemnation. We deserve eternal separation
from God. We deserve condemnation to hell. That is our just desert, for
the holiness of God cannot tolerate the sin of us. We think, oh,
well, there's degrees of sin, and so there are, and there will
be degrees of judgment, but be in no doubt, there is none righteous,
no, not one. They're all gone out of the way,
every one of them. But, but, but, or as verse 14
puts it at the start, therefore, therefore, yeah, God is gracious
and merciful. Despite every single one without
exception deserving condemnation to hell, God is gracious and
merciful. Does anybody hear this out there
in this world, in this fallen world? Psalm 103 verse 8. God is holy, absolutely pure,
and all of us are condemned under his justice and righteousness.
But listen, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger,
and plenteous in mercy. He saves out of mankind as a
whole a people, a people for His glory, whom He loved before
time. What, was there anything special
about them? No, Paul tells the Ephesians in Ephesians 2. You
and me, if we're believers today and destined for heaven and with
a door of hope open to us, heaven, we are children of wrath even
as others nonetheless. We're no better than anybody
else, no better whatsoever. There's plenty of philanthropic
effort in this world that is a lot better than we do. We're
no better than any others, but if we're objects of grace, God
will show us that he's loved us with an everlasting love from
before the beginning of time. And why did he love a people
with everlasting love from before the beginning of time? What was
his objective? It was to qualify a multitude
that no man can number, that they may be with him where he
is and behold his glory. And through Scripture, like Hosea,
the Holy Spirit reveals God's purposes of grace and calls those
whom He has redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. We're going to be
having communion to remember the broken body and the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, which paid the price of justice
for the sins of His people, that we might be accepted in the Beloved,
that we might have a door of hope open to us, a door that
brings us into the very kingdom of God. We're sinful, we're evil
compared with God. We deserve condemnation. Our
situation is hopeless. And God says in verse 14, therefore,
I will be gracious. And how does he say he will be
gracious? Look what he says there. Therefore, behold, you know,
he said all these terrible things. They're deserving of judgment.
Therefore, I will allure her, I will allure her, I will entice
her in a loving way, I will draw her in a loving way. You know,
it's like, you know, the fisherman goes and puts allure on the end
of his line, and the idea is to make the fish want to come
to that bait. You allure the fish with your
bait. Well, God says, I will allure my people. In a loving,
gracious way, I will draw them. His people whom He loved from
everlasting but who had gone past recovery. Don't think that
there's any hope in self of recovery. They'd gone past recovery, you
and me, in the fall, in sin, in hell-deserving rebellion against
God. God will allure these people
to return to Him. How does He allure? What is it
about the lure that God uses? Well, think about this. I can
think of a couple of things. First of all, he allures with
a sight of Jesus and who he is. He allures that soul that needs
to be forgiven with a sight of Jesus. Jesus said in John 12,
32, I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto me. Yes, it's the lifting up on the
cross, but it's the preaching of that lifting up on the cross,
that portrayal of Him dying for the sins of his people that they
might be the righteousness of God in him, which will draw,
which will allure his people. Can you remember when you first
heard the gospel? Are you a believer in the Lord
Jesus Christ? Did you hear these words of grace
preached? Did you see the scriptures opened
up? Did the Holy Spirit pour his grace into your heart and
quicken you and make you alive and cause you to see that which
you hadn't seen before? And did he draw you to the Lord
Jesus Christ? You see, in Gospel preaching,
that's what happens. God allures his people from their
state of rebellion and sin. As Paul says to the Galatians
in chapter 3 and verse 1, he says, you who before whose eyes
Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you.
How was Jesus Christ evidently set forth among them, before
their eyes? By Paul preaching. The words
he preached, were seen by the eyes of faith given by the Spirit
of God. You know, you're saved by grace
through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of
God. And they saw the Lord Jesus Christ crucified among them and
for them. This is an allurement of God
for his people. They're taught by God. This is
how God allures his people. In John chapter six and verse
45, we read this. as it is written in the prophets,
and they shall all be taught of God. God the Spirit comes
and allures by the teaching of the truth of God, so that once
you've seen it, you cannot understand how anybody can not see it. You're
allured by that sight of the Lord Jesus Christ, taught of
God. Every man therefore that has heard and has learned of
the Father comes to me. But, but, who comes? Look at
verse 44. No man, no man can come to me
except the Father which hath sent me draw him, allure him. I will allure her, says God.
The Father which sent Christ allures his people to come and
to see the Lord Jesus Christ and to come to him and to be
taught of God. as it is written in the prophets,
to be taught of God, and to learn of the Father, and therefore
to come to the Lord Jesus Christ, to come to that lure, that gracious,
glorious lure that God sets up for His people. And He allures
His people with His word. Have you got a Bible? Have you
got a Bible? Of course, yes, this is where
we get our truth from, from the Word of God, allured with God's
Word. 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5. Sorry, have I got the right,
hold on a minute, where have I gone? 1 Thessalonians, chapter
1, I'm sorry, and verse 5, right? Paul is writing to the Thessalonians,
and he says, our gospel, you see, we came to Greece, to Thessalonica,
and a foreign country to us, and we came and we preached.
How they preached, I don't know. Gift of tongues, gift of languages,
whatever it was, for them to preach in the Thessalonical language,
the Greek language, the dialect of that area. And our gospel
came unto you, not in word only, Oh yes, it came in word. Paul
stood up and preached. Silas stood up and preached.
It came in word, but not just in word, but also in power, and
in the Holy Ghost, for God himself, by his Spirit, empowered the
word spoken by Paul, and in much assurance, as you know what manner
of men we were among you, the gospel came in power. And when
it did, look down at verse 9. For the witnesses all around,
they themselves show of us what manner of entering in we had
unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living
and true God." The words spoken, the words came with power, and
the God Himself, by His Spirit, opened the hearts of those who
believed. Those who heard had their hearts
opened. Do you remember the woman Lydia
in Philippi, the cellar of purple, by the river, gathering for prayer,
not knowing the truth. And as Paul preached, what do
we read? The Holy Spirit opened her heart that she might believe
the truth. What manner of entering we had
unto you, how you turned to God, from idols to serve the living
and true conversion. That's what it is. It's a turning
around. Has God's Word allured you? Has He allured you? You know,
His redemption is a particular redemption. It's particularly
for that multitude that He chose in Christ before the beginning
of time. especially the word preached as allure. I love the
way that some people that I know via Facebook ardently, ardently,
almost daily, more often than daily, I can think of one, I
won't name him, he might listen to this and he'll know who I
mean, but virtually every day he posts an internet sermon. Because why? Because it's the
preaching of God's word that will allure. God will allure
His people, out of their Satan-induced fall, out of the Adam fall in
Eden, He will allure them with the preaching of the Gospel of
Grace. So He posts sermons that preach the truth as allure to
those that God is determined to save. And then, has God caused
his doctrine to gently fall on you? You know, we read of, my
doctrine shall drop as the rain. It'll come up like the dew. You
know, when you wake up on an autumn morning, and whereas it
was dry, all of a sudden the grass is covered with a dew.
Well, it's like, this is the truth of God. It's a lure. He
says again to the Thessalonians in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2
verse 10 that, well he actually puts it in the negative about
those that do not receive a love of the truth, but it's the love
of the truth that is the saving thing. It's not just knowledge
of the truth. Oh, you say, I know the gospel, I can pass an exam
on the gospel. Yes, you might well know it.
Do you have the love of the truth? It's the love of the truth that
displays saving grace, not just the knowledge of the truth. So
many people have got a knowledge of the truth. Do you have a love
of the truth? a love of it, a desire to know
more of it, a desire to, you know like the angels, they desire
to look into the gospel of grace because they find it so eternally
fascinating, is just too light a word, I can't think of a better
word, but do you know what I mean? They just, it's their eternal
fascination is the grace of God. The Word of God preached is God's
power unto salvation. That's what Paul says in Romans
1, 16. It's the power of God unto salvation.
And it is a great divider of mankind. You see, when somebody
preaches, you see some people embrace it, and love it, and
love the truth, and love the Christ of the truth, and cleave
to Him, and come to Him. But it's a great divider, because
the preaching of the cross, as Paul tells the Corinthians, is
to them that perish, foolishness. The preaching of the cross is
foolishness, rubbish, nonsense, want nothing to do with it. But
unto us, which are saved, it is the power of God. The power
of God and the wisdom of God. God will draw, He will allure
His people out of adultery with this world. But where will He
allure them to? Now I'm going to be quick because
time is flying more than usual this morning. But He will allure
them, look, and bring her into the wilderness. And I'm going
to be very brief about this because I think I've said plenty about
it before, especially in connection with the Revelation studies.
The wilderness is speaking spiritually of separation from the world.
In Revelation chapter 12, I'll just read this for you. When
the devil comes to try to destroy Christ as he's born from the
woman, and he accomplishes his purpose and goes up into heaven
and returns to God and to his throne, in verse 6, what happened
to the woman, which is the church, which is the people of God, symbolically? What happened? The woman fled
into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God. This wilderness, this separation
from the world, is God's place for His people, whom He has saved.
And what does He do? He feeds her there, a thousand,
two hundred, and threescore days, the perfect time before He comes
again for them. And then in verse 14, To the
woman, the dragon is furious because he's defeated. The accuser
of the brethren is furious. But to the woman, the church,
the people of whom we're speaking, the people allured of God. To
the woman were given two wings of a great eagle that she might
fly into the wilderness. Do you know what those wings
represent? I think we can safely say by comparing Scripture with
Scripture, these are wings of faith, wings of faith to lift
up. You know how this great big bird,
the eagle, this big chunk of meat as it were, and it soars
above the earth as if it's no weight at all, because it's flying
great wings of an eagle into her place where she is nourished
for a time and times and half a time from the face of the servant,
exactly the same time as the 1260 days spoken of earlier. Separation from the world is
what this is about. Out of the world's thinking,
Away from the pleasures of sin, you know what we quoted about
Moses in Hebrews 11, that he shunned the pleasures of sin
for a season, that he could have everything he wanted in Pharaoh's
palace in Egypt, but he shunned that, he rejected that. Why?
because he sought the reproach, the insults, the opposition that
would come when he sided with Christ. You say, Christ hadn't
come then. Oh, the Gospel of Grace was there. It was Christ
that he followed. It was Christ that he saw in
that Paschal Lamb. It was Christ that he saw in
that Passover Lamb. Yes, this separation from this
world, this wilderness, is a separation from the pleasures of sin for
a season. It's also a place of trial and
affliction, for God puts his people through trials and afflictions,
and things that don't go. the way you would always hope,
because He does it to chastise, to teach His people, to wean
them off this world, to set in their hearts a hope of the bliss
of heaven and of glory. He puts us in a place of trial
and affliction, Where there are few friends of this world, yes,
it's nice to be courteous and polite and sociable with those
that live around us, but you know, having moved into a new
area just short of a year ago, looking around, how might you
integrate with the community? Well, I'm afraid that so much
of it involves integrating with false religion, integrating with
that which, quite honestly, the child of God doesn't want anything
to do with, not because I am holier than thou, don't stand
near me, but because it just is not something that is attractive
to your soul. Few friends. It's a place of
temptation. You know, the wilderness was
where Christ went to be tempted of Satan for 40 days. It's a
place of temptation. It's a trial, as Israel went
through the wilderness and were tried again and again. It says
in Psalm 106 verse 14, they the Israelites in the wilderness,
their wilderness, lusted exceedingly. It's not a comfortable place
to settle. It's a place where you're yearning for your heavenly
home. It's a place where there's no water or food except from
the rock and manna from heaven. A place that shows us our true
poverty. a lack of the righteousness that
God requires we find in that wilderness. We have hunger and
thirst there, but do you know what Jesus said about those who
hunger and thirst for righteousness? Blessed are they, for they shall
be filled. So what does, what God does to
the allured soul in the wilderness? He says, I will speak comfortably
unto her. I will give her her vineyards
from thence and the valley of Acre for a door of hope. He speaks
comfortably. He speaks as in Isaiah chapter
40. As in Isaiah chapter 40 and verse
2, speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her that her warfare
is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received
of the Lord's hand double for all her sins. Her warfare is
ended, she has peace with God. Enmity with God is what we are
by nature, but being justified, Romans 5.1, being justified by
faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
The warfare is over. We're pardoned from our iniquity
because She's received double for all her sins. I think that
means, like when you look in a mirror, you see a double of
yourself. It's the payment that Christ made in His death on the
cross perfectly mirrored the sins of His people, and paid
the debt of those sins. That's why I think it's talking
about that. It's not a generality that you can pick up and take
and use if you want to. It's specific, it's particular.
So that being freed from sin, there is no condemnation. This
is what he's done. He speaks comfortably and he
gives vineyards in the wilderness. Fruit in a seemingly fruitless
place, God draws into the wilderness to untangle from the world, and
there His Spirit bears His fruit in the lives of His people. It's
the fruit of the Spirit of God. Love, joy, peace, patience, patience
in trials, godly sorrow for sin, thankfulness and praise to God
for salvation, denial of self, all of these things are the fruit
of God's Spirit. and he gives the valley of Achor
for a door of hope. The valley of Achor is speaking
of Achan. If you go back to the battle
of Jericho in Joshua chapter 7, One of the Israelites, a man
called Achan, they were told that they were to utterly destroy
it, apart from those that were in the house with Rahab, where
the scarlet cord was let down. They were to utterly destroy
it for its wickedness and its evil. And Achan found a goodly
Babylonian garment and some gold and silver. It was known as the
accursed thing, and he coveted it. And so when God had told
the people, you mustn't have any of this stuff, Achan took
it and hid it in his tent. And sin was there in the camp,
and things went badly for the Israelites, and they sought God,
and God says, there's sin in the camp, and they found it,
and it was Achan who the lot fell upon. It revealed him as
guilty, and he confessed, and he was taken down. It sounds
very harsh, but this is it. He was taken down into the Valley
of Achor, He was taken down there. That's why it's called that,
because it was that valley in which they stoned him. All Israel
stoned Achan to death. There, in that valley, was what
appears as the very door of hell. The very door of hell. The way
into eternal condemnation. But do you know, that very door
into the condemnation of hell is turned into a door of hope. You know when a Christian in
Pilgrim's Progress was burdened with sin, that great weight on
his back, and it's weighing him down and he's so sorrowful at
it, and he looks and he sees a great cavern and it's hell
gaping open to him, down below him. And there at that very point
where his soul would have dropped down into hell, he looks and
he sees the man Jesus. dying on the cross of Calvary
to pay the penalty for that sin and the burden is taken off and
rolled away down into that hell and off his back because Christ
in his broken body and his shed lifeblood has saved him from
his sins and therefore that which was the gaping door of hell becomes
a door of good hope, of good hope. Now our Lord Jesus Christ
himself of God, and God even our Father, which hath loved
us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through
grace. Comfort your hearts and establish
you in every good word and work." It's a comfort, is this door
of hope. In seeing Christ there, the one in whose face we see
the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, we see redemption
accomplished, we see Him alone as the way, we see Him making
His people, the righteousness of God in Him, and thereby It's
a door of hope that we are assured of heaven, not a maybe hope,
but a certain hope. That which is the Valley of Acre
is revealed as the door into heaven itself in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And then finally, very briefly,
the response of the one allured. The response, in that day you
shall sing when I allure you. As in the days of her youth,
as in the day when she came up after the Passover out of Egypt
into the promised land. Sing, sing unto the Lord a new
song. Psalm 96, one and two. Sing unto
the Lord all the earth. Sing unto the Lord, bless his
name. Show forth his salvation from day to day. Joy and gladness,
release from captivity. Cattle. In the spring, I used
to watch, it was about April, when I lived looking over some
fields at the back, and the day came when the farmer, Mr Gibson,
when he used to let his cattle out that had been indoors all
winter, and I can still remember it now, how they used to go bounding
up the fields with great, great, great delight, released from
captivity. You see these great animals jumping
like their little tiny lambs up the fields, because they'd
been released. This is what it's talking about.
This is the singing, the release from the condemnation of the
law. Thus says the Lord via Jeremiah. Jeremiah 2 verse 2, I remember
thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals.
It's that kind of joy. When thou wentest after me in
the wilderness in a land that was not sown. In his own time,
God will allure each one of his blood-bought people out of the
world into his wilderness, the place prepared for him. And there
he will, as Paul writes to the Colossians 3 verse 2, set their
affection on things above and not on the things of the earth,
with a good hope of heavenly bliss. Look at verse 23, just
to close. I will sow her unto me in the
earth, and I will have mercy on her that had not obtained
mercy. And I will say to them which were not my people, Thou
art my people. And they shall say, Thou art
my God. That's heaven. That's the good
hope. That's the door of hope. Amen.