May the Lord bless you in doing
so. We look forward to hearing you. Good evening. Let's open our Bibles, if you
will, tonight to the book of Hosea. Start in chapter one. I don't know how many of you
have read through the book of Hosea before, but this is certainly
a book that is filled with grace. The name Hosea is the same name
as Joshua and the same name as Jesus. It means Savior. And it's
my hope tonight that the Holy Spirit will allow me to declare
unto you and make this story real as it was to me, as the
Lord made it to me. So first I'll say, have you ever
found in your own experience that the Lord has brought you
along a road that you just didn't understand? A series of events
in your life that seemingly are unexplainable. You think, how
did I get here? I never pictured it going this
way. I just don't understand the Lord's purpose and what he's
doing. Well, to the old in faith, these are probably all too familiar
words, but to those who are new in the faith, soon enough your
time will come. I think often I wish I knew what
the Lord's purpose was in bringing me through all these things.
I find, though, that it's only when I'm brought low, only when
I'm bent over by the weight of the thing, it's only then that
I remember, oh yes, This is how the Lord works. This is how the
Lord increases my faith. This is how the Lord saves. The
heat of the trial is not to be worthy to be compared with the
gold that shall remain. And what we're going to look
at tonight is the story of Hosea and Gomer. And we're going to
follow the road of someone you may find that you know the way.
So we'll start reading here in verse 1 of chapter 1. The word
of the Lord that came unto Hosea the son of Berei in the days
of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah kings of Judah, in the
days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel. The beginning
of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said unto Hosea,
Go, take thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms, for
the land hath committed great whoredom in departing from the
Lord. So you remember what I just said
before when I talked about a road that you go down that you never
really picture you'd be going down before. Consider Hosea right
now what he's just been told. Hosea was a prophet of the Lord. Can you imagine what his thoughts
were when the Lord said, go take a wife that's a whore from a
far land? He feared the Lord. He rebuked
Israel. He was, at this time, as far
as we know, the only one that spoke and wrote for the Lord.
And now, you're told to go marry a wife of whoredoms. Now, what
we do know of her, of Gomer, is that she was from a corrupt
people, a people that had no love for God, people that were
idol worshippers. Maybe it was one of the Baals
or Molechs of the scriptures, but that's not necessarily what
an idol worshipper always has to be. An idol worshipper comes
in many different forms. It could be whatever I love and
whatever I esteem more than the Lord God, that which exalts the
creature and not the creator, that which serves self and not
the Savior. It's what you love and what you
esteem greatest in your life. And now the Lord says, you go
marry one of those people, Hosea. You take her into your home,
you introduce her to your friends, and you have children with her.
You can imagine what this time, what is he thinking? He's probably
like, Lord, what are you doing? You know, I speak in your name,
I'm representing you as the prophet of the Lord, and now you're telling
me to go take this woman into my home? What shame, what embarrassment,
how bewildering this must have been to him. Now we don't know
that she was a prostitute yet, but we certainly know that she
had grown up in a culture where this was commonplace, where this
is what was known. She was from a godless and a
corrupt people. And apart from all these things,
apart from what it appeared from the outside, apart from how shameful,
how embarrassing, and how contradictory it would seem this would be,
Hosea obeyed. He obeyed the Lord's Word despite
the appearances. You see, faith believes God. Faith doesn't rely on what is
seen. If you will, turn with me to
1 Corinthians chapter 6. When we look at this, we have
to think how far the hand of Hosea had to reach down to pull
this woman out of the land that she came from, out of this land
and out of this people. Why this woman? Why her? Why
Gomer? Why not someone else? She wasn't
seeking Hosea. She didn't know him. She didn't
love the Lord. She was a sinful woman. She had
no business being shown grace from Hosea. Now if we'll start
reading in chapter 6 verse 9, know ye not that the unrighteous
shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Be not deceived, neither
fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor
abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the
kingdom of God. So all things being considered,
the deplorable person that she was and where she had come from,
she had no right to be with him. And by all rights, she should
have been passed by. But what sayeth the scripture?
In verse 11 it says, and such were some of you. Do you find
some commonplace here when you see this that you don't understand
why the Lord reached down and he pulled you out of where you
were? This is what happened with Gomer. how thankful I am for
the work of the Father and His predestinating love. This is
the only way that I would have ever been chosen. because God
hath from the beginning chosen you unto salvation." Consider
this, if God didn't choose anyone, no one would be saved. There
would be no reason. When we look upon Gomer and see
her, there's nothing in her that we can see and say, well, she
would deserve to be saved, or there was something particular
about her that would cause Hosea to leave his land as a Jew to
go over to outside of the people that they weren't even supposed
to mingle with and take her as his wife. No, there was nothing
other than the Lord saying, Hosea, you go and get her. The Lord
said, you have not chosen me, but I have chosen you. I have
chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.
And it hates you because it hates your Lord. Before I formed thee
in the belly, Jeremiah, I knew thee. The Father chose a people
in Christ. Now, I don't really understand
what all that means. That is too high for me to understand,
but I believe it. What I do know, and what we can
discern from this, is this. Only those who were in Christ
were chosen. How I desire to be one of those
people, because this I know about myself. I was not seeking God,
and I did not know, and I did not love, and I did not need
God. until being shown that I am a
sinner. And I say, am a sinner, not was
a sinner, because I never have gotten beyond it. And somebody
might be thinking, well, wait a minute. God won't have anything
to do with sin. God hates sin. God will punish
sin. And that's right. And apart from the scripture
telling this, we wouldn't believe it. In Romans 5, 8 it says, but
God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us. He loved me first before sin,
and because He does not change, He never stopped loving me. Therefore,
Christ had to die for us and to put away our sin. Without
the work of the Father choosing Him a people, all would be lost. This is the only hope you have.
This is the first thing that God does for you, election. but
it's the last thing you'll ever really know. It's the last thing
you'll ever know and be sure of. There may be days when you
are sure of it, and there may be days where you question, I'm
not even elect at all. It's the first thing that it
is done for you, but it will always be the last thing we ever
really truly know. But what we do know is belief
is our only evidence we'll ever have in this life. You cannot
know that you're elect and then believe, because you'll never
believe, because you'll never really never know that you're
elect. You must believe, and that is your evidence that you
are elect. And he says unto Hosea, Go, take
thee a wife of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms. And if
you're of one of Christ's, this is how he found you. And anytime
we read here of Hosea and Gomer, this is the same picture of Christ
and his people. So when we see this story, it's
the same picture as that throughout the whole story. He took her
as his bride, and then what? Well, verse 3 says, so he went
and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblam, which conceived, and
bare him a son. So the Lord said to take this
woman as a wife and have children with her. And therefore he did,
so it says, and notice the language, it says, she bare him a son. Now go on down to verse six,
it says, she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And now
go on down to verse eight, and when she had weaned Laruhamai,
she conceived and bare a son. And God said, call him Loatmamai,
for you are not my people, and I will not be your God. So what
we notice here, if you notice the language where verse 3 it
says, she bare him a son, but in the other verses she did not
bare him a son, although she had children. So she has turned
and went the way of her people at this point. So pick up in
Hosea chapter 2 verse 1, say ye to your brethren, am I, and
to your sisters, Plead with your mother, plead, for she is not
my wife, neither am I her husband. Let her therefore put away her
whoresomes 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." So
Gomer here got tired of playing house. She went back to what
she knew, what became natural to her. And this is what it pictures
what religion does to people. It takes people who are one way
and forces them to try to be another way. You can't do this.
You can't drink this. You can't do this. You got to
do all these do's and don'ts. And this is what happened to
Gomer. She was taken out of her natural state and put into something
that was unnatural to her. This is not maybe where she wanted
to be. Maybe she didn't want to go with Hosea. But the Lord
told Hosea to go get her and bring her. So she put in this
state and now she's turned. And this word in chapter 2, verse
2, where it says plead with your mother, that says rebuke. It's
to grab by the hair, listen to me to what I'm saying. You are
not my wife. Why, though, after all this,
after the kindness of Hosea, would you abandon your children?
abandon your husband, and then to become a prostitute? Why would
you do all this after all the kindness you've been shown? It's
easy to look at her and think, what is wrong with you? You've
been taken out of some idolatrous, terrible land with these people
and brought to somewhere that somebody that's treating you
well. Even when we're attempted to look at her this way, I say
to you who have received grace, who have received grace and who
know it, Why then have you sinned against the God who loved you
and who gave himself for you and who redeemed you? When I
look at that and see myself in that light, I can't look at her
and say, why did she turn the way she did. My guess is that
Hosea was a loving husband. She was taken as his wife, given
to only one man to care for the needs of her children. She had
responsibilities. There were rules. There were
work. It was hard. She thought to herself, I just
want to be happy. This is not what I signed up
for. I find that how much of our own corruption is brought
out in selfishness in the pursuit of happiness. What is pictured
here is the utterly depraved state of our nature, our slavery
to sin. So Gomer started out one way. She was brought into this marriage
that tried to control her a certain way, and she eventually said,
I've had enough of this. I'm going back to doing 1 and
0. So this is the story of us when we look at ourselves as
sinners. Maybe we've come to know the gospel. Maybe we believe,
but yet we find we still sin. Why? Why do we still sin? We're
in slavery to sin. We never get beyond it. As the
dog who goes back to his vomit and the sow that was washed,
and has gone back to the mire. Gomer has gone back to the way
of her people, what she knew by nature. No amount of rules,
no amount of system of checks, no seemingly happy state can
ever overrule our simple nature. Just give it time if you haven't
seen it yet. The law couldn't. The law just
exposed it. Turn over to Romans chapter 7.
Look at how Paul responded. Romans 7 verse 7, what shall
we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but
by the law. For I had not known lust, except
the law had said, thou shalt not covet. But sin, taking occasion
by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of coveting. For
without the law, sin was dead. For I was alive without the law
once. Before the law was, I was fine. But when the commandment
came, when the law came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment
which was ordained to life, so the commandment ordained to life,
just do this and live. The commandment ordained to life,
I found to be to death because I couldn't do it. For sin, taking
occasion by the commandment, deceived me and by it slew me. Shackling people with law and
with works just fuels our sinful nature because we can't do it. Why? Because it's not what we
want to do. Otherwise, no rules and no law
would be needed. See, we're all rebels at heart,
and Gomer here is no different. The only reason in my experience
why I haven't done this and worse is that the Lord's hand has restrained
me. I just haven't been caught. He's mercifully prevented me
and hitched me about to keep me from myself, what I would
do if I could. By all accounts of the law, what
was Gomer? She was guilty, guilty before
the law. What did the law have to say
for adultery? Death, stoning to death. So by all accounts,
where do you then stand before the law of God? Do you have any
good works to bring before him? James 2.10 says, for whosoever
shall keep the whole law and yet offend in one point is guilty
of all. So good and bad things don't
mean anything if you violated it just once. If you've broken
the law, you're guilty. I'm certain somewhere there's
someone sitting in jail, someone that had never been arrested
before, never committed a crime, never had anything against them,
but a certain amount of circumstances led them to commit one murder,
just one, never done anything before but just one murder, and
they served the rest of their life in guilt and in prison. So you still go to jail even
for just one murder. That's what James is saying here.
If you've offended in one point, You've broken it all and you're
done. Gomer was after her happiness and how many families, lives,
relationships, businesses have been broken to pieces all in
the pursuit of filling the black hole in my corrupt heart in the
name of happiness. She could see no need for Hosea,
so she left. We in our spiritual blindness
see no need for God. This is a result of the death
and the fall. We question he even exists. So
when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit, it said that in the day
you eat of, you shall surely die. Well, Adam ate the fruit,
he didn't die immediately, but his spirit did. He didn't feel
it, but his spirit did. His body, the flesh didn't die,
but his spirit. So in our spiritual death, we
can't see God, we can't commune with God apart from him revealing
himself. Well, in verse 5 of chapter 2, It says, For their
mother hath played the harlot, she hath conceived them and have
done shamefully. For she said, I will go after
my lovers, they give me my bread and my water, my wool and my
flax, my oil and my drink. So all these things, the bread,
the water, the wool, the flax, these are all things that she
needed. So the bread and the water speak of provision, so
this is speaking of the word as our food and the Holy Spirit
as our providing force. The wool and the flax are a covering,
so being washed in the blood of Christ, being under the blood.
The flax actually is linen, what they made linen from. The fine
linen, clean and white. So these two things speak of
something that she needed for provision and something that
she needed for a covering. And she said, I'm going to go
after these other people to get these two things that I need.
So Gomer walked so far contrary to what she was supposed to.
She left her family, she left her husband, she was an adulteress,
she was a prostitute, and she was selfish. And she had no need
for Hosea. She said, My lovers give me all
these things. I don't need you, Hosea. I'm gone. Well, in verse
8, it says, For she did not know that I gave her the corn, and
the wine, and the oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they
prepared for Baal. Wait a minute. You mean this
whole time he was the one giving her all this? Yes, every night,
even after she had left and become this prostitute, he would follow
her to wherever she ended up that night, and he was watching
her this whole time, following her. leaving her the things that
she needed, stuff so she could have food, clothes so she could
clothe herself, money so she could buy things. All this time
she thought that she was the one providing all these things,
and she wasn't. It was Hosea. Why, Hosea, after all this, after
all this time, would you do this? It's because he still loved her. She needed these things to take
care of herself. All this time it was Him providing
for her needs despite what she had become. And this crushes
me because I've considered the Lord's faithfulness to me, His
provision to me, His love to me, His care for me. And yet
I still doubt Him. I still willfully sin against
Him. I still find myself walking away from Him, and He's never
even failed me once. Just as Gomer, we deserve to
die for what we've done. Yet God still loved us. He considered you. He considered
what you need. He cared for you. He healed you. He gave you strength to live,
to sin against him one more day. And yet God would sacrifice his
son, his only son, for me? To let him endure this sinful
world and be rejected from the very people which he came to
save, nailed to a pole to bleed out and die. There are no words
for this. Our crimes condemn us. He still
loved us, and he ordered all the good and all the bad to one
end, the salvation of your souls, which calls to question how precious
we must be in his sight that he would do that despite what
we are. Well, in verse 9 he says, therefore, after all the things
that she didn't know I provided for her, therefore I'll return. and take away my corn in the
time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will
recover my wool, my flax given to cover her nakedness." Well,
I'm going to take it all away in the Lord's appointed time
and in the Lord's appointed day. He could have taken it away from
the beginning and the same effect wouldn't have happened. It's
all in the Lord's time and in the Lord's providence what this
has happened. All refuges will be taken away and you're going
to be given no hiding place. In verse 10 it says, And now
I will discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and
none shall deliver her out of my hand. I will also cause her
joy to cease, and her feast days, and 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, 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
decked herself with her earrings and her jewels and she went after
her lovers and forgot me, said the Lord. What I thought, all
these things are now against me. So Gomer's had everything
turned against her now. Everything is not going her way.
It was for a while. What I thought made me happy,
now I will find ruin in. Verse 7, it says, and this is
not necessarily all in chronological order the way the story is told,
but she said, I will follow after her lovers and overtake them,
and she shall seek them and shall not find them, and she shall
say, I will go and return to my first husband, for then it
was better with me than with now. How she lamented the loss
of benefits once they were taken away, saying, it'd be a lot better
if I'd just go back to Hosea. Whatever I had before I didn't
like better than this. Yet, having lamenting the loss
of benefits and seeming punishment for her circumstances, there
is no true repentance here. You see, loss and punishment
never produce true repentance. True repentance glorifies God.
People complain in the trial for the problem, but as soon
as the trial's gone, that's forgotten. We know there was no true repentance
here because she never returned to Hosea. She never had a true
love for him. or else she would have. She endured
many years of a hard life. The years had taken a toll on
her in this life and profession she was in. She was now weathered
and worn and all used up. Things turned against her. The
flower has faded. She didn't make money for her
masters anymore. Nobody wanted her. And as far
as her masters were concerned, they said, you know, she used
to be our prize. She used to make all this money
for us, and now she's doing nothing. She's used up. We have no use
for her. We may as well just sell her
as a slave and get what we can out of her. There's no other
use for her. I'm not sure, humanly speaking, that there's a lower
point than that of being a slave. You have no rights, no opinion,
no personality anymore. All those things are taken away.
Slaves were auctioned like animals, naked, so you could see what
you were buying. So you can imagine her standing up there, up on
the slave auction block. I imagine up there reality began
to set in, come to set in with her, that she really realized,
I never pictured myself being here. I didn't see it working
out this way. What happens after this? Who's
going to buy me? What are they going to do to
me? Where will I go? And she looked onto the crowd, looked
around in the crowd, and I'd say she saw an older but familiar
face in Hosea. I'd say that struck a chord with
her heart, which made her to cry out, what a selfish, wasted
life I've lived, all to end up here. I had it good before, now
look at me. Yet, this was all according to
God's purpose and God's plan. When we see His face, who He
is, His goodness, His glory, His holiness, His perfection,
it's only then that we truly can see ourselves for what we
are, sinners. We can say with Job, I heard
of you before with the hearing of the ear, but now my eye seeth
thee, and I hate myself. And that's how she felt this
time when she looked into the eyes of Hosea. I hate myself
for what I've done. I hate myself for what I am. I'm a sinner. It's all I can
do. I'm ashamed to even be seen by God. I'm ashamed to even be
seen because it's been this way all along and I didn't even know
it. This is what Adam and Eve, our first parents, experienced
after they had eaten the fruit. They realized they were naked
and they had been naked all along and the first thing they did
was cover themselves. Shame and embarrassment that
we didn't even know was there. Well, is there love after adultery? In Hosea 3.1, Then said the Lord
unto me, go yet again and love a woman, beloved of her friend,
yet an adulteress. How, Lord, how can I love this
woman again after all we've been through? How can I love her?
Keep reading. Love a woman beloved of her friend,
yet an adulteress, according, this is how, to the love of the
Lord towards the children of Israel, who look to other gods
and love flagons of wine. You see, this is what true love
is, the love of the Lord to the children of Israel. This is not
love like you and I have. You and I, the love that we have
can come and it can go, but the love that he has, it never changes,
it never fades, it never grows cold. So Hosea says, I bought
her to me for 15 pieces of silver and for an omer of barley and
a half omer of barley. Hosea bought back his wife, and
if you and I are one of the Lord's children, you too have been bought
with a price, his life. You've been bought from the slavery
of sin to freedom in Christ. You've been bought from death
unto life. You're alive in Him. You've been
bought from the law to free grace. I imagine that her heart at this
time smote her, standing on the brink of slavery, torment, pain,
uncertainty, abandonment. And he said, I'll buy that one.
And he paid the full price. And so did the Lord when he bought
you. Standing before a thrice holy God with a mountain of sins
condemning and demanding death, he bought you. It was almost
over, but he saved me. But God, who is rich in mercy,
for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were
dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace
you are saved." Hosea watched her. Hosea sought her out. He gave her her provisions even
when she didn't deserve it. And now he's bought her back
and he's taking her home all because he loved her. If you
ever see the face of the Redeemer, who he is, and what he's done
for you, you will love him. You will find your true happiness
in his presence. When the Lord is near, I have
no wants. I am perfectly content. He is
all I need. The idea that people have of
heaven is some place to escape to other than the mess that's
in this life. Heaven is not just another place.
Heaven is being in His presence. Heaven is being with the Lord.
What joy! What peace! He found me. I was lost, but now I'm found. And one day He'll take me home.
And this is what Gomer experienced. Is there love after adultery?
Well, can you name one thing that Gomer did to keep Hosea's
love? Name one thing that she did.
She didn't do anything to keep Hosea's love. And because of
that, you and I need to quit worrying about what we're doing
and how we feel as to whether God loves us. God's love is found
in Christ. And if I'm united to him, then
he loves me too, just like Christ. When Gomer and Hosea got home,
do you think anything was different? Do you think it went back to
the way it was before? I'm pretty sure that breakfast was on the
table the next morning with a smile on her face. Because in verse
3 it says, and I said unto her, thou shalt abide with me many
days. Thou shalt not play the harlot,
thou shalt not be for another man, so will I also be for thee."
He's saying to Ugomer, you're not going to play the harlot
anymore. Now, I know me. If I were in this situation as
Hosea, I would be pretty distrustful and I would be ready to set out
a lot of really hard rules when we got home. Yet, none are given. Why? My friends, the Lord's work
and the Lord's promise is that there will be one day no more
sin. It will be put away. We will
have a new nature which will enable us to be faithful. We
will have a perfect love and a perfect righteousness. Gomer,
the rest of her days was changed. Things that she desired before,
she'd seen them. She no longer wanted them anymore,
for she saw there was only misery in them. She had found her happiness. Her happiness was found in Hosea,
just as we will find our happiness in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
there will be no rules and no laws, because the law is not
made for a righteous man. There's none needed. We're free
from it. There are no rules. This time,
it's what I want to do. It's not what I have to do anymore.
If it was what I didn't want to do, it would be a law. But
because He's put the inward law in my heart, His Spirit, this
new nature, I, through Christ, am able to keep the law. And
so there are no laws because there's no sin. It enables me
to be faithful. It enables me to believe. It enables me to love the Lord
as I want to. Anyone who says grace without
works, grace is just a little bit too free. It'll lead people
to sin. They've never seen the Lord.
They've never seen Christ because my life is not mine anymore.
I've been bought with a price. My desire is to live for Him
who loved me and who sought me out and who bought me and will
one day bring me home. Christ Jesus came to save sinners
and if you're one, You come to Him. He is all you'll ever need. Do you think Gomer needed Hosea
the rest of her days? I do. And you will need Christ
only if you ever see His face and come to know what grace really
means. I thank God for His grace and
for His love that never changes. Is there love after adultery?
Well, only if it is after the love of the Lord toward the children
of Israel. May the Lord allow us to have
that be in our own lives.