Good evening. I guess as you
know my text is Hosea chapter 2, so at least put your marker
there to start with. But I'd like you to turn over
to Luke 12 and read a couple verses to open before we get
into this part of the message. Luke 12, we're going to start
in verse 42 and read through verse 46. Luke 12, verse 42. And the Lord
said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his Lord
shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of
meat in due season? Blessed is that servant whom
his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so doing. Of a truth I say
unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.
But, and if that servant say in his heart, my Lord delayeth
his coming, and shall begin to beat the menservants, and the
maidens, and to eat, and drink, and be drunken, the Lord of that
servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at
an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and
will appoint his portion with the unbelievers." Now, when we
read this passage, to whom much is given, much is required, and
what will be exacted, this is a frightening passage of scripture
when you see this, that when his Lord comes, shall he find
him doing? And one thing is certain, that
the Lord is coming. And shall I be found doing? Well,
when I kind of got to thinking about it, I'm not really sure
that there is a good time when I would feel comfortable for
the Lord to see what I'm doing. So I see more unfaithfulness
in me than faithfulness. And the title of my message tonight
is, Is There Any Hope for the Unfaithful? Unfaithful, if we
kind of define what the word is, and you can start turning
over to Hosea chapter 2, this is where we'll pick our message
up. Unfaithful is that which is not true. And when we think
of what unfaithful is, we think typically of the marriage covenant.
So someone that goes outside of the marriage covenant then
they're said to be unfaithful to those to whom they're espoused
to. So unfaithful, that word in Luke
chapter 12 verse 46 when he said he'll appoint his apportion with
the unbelievers, that word unbelievers is the same word as unfaithful. And that's only found one time
in scripture, just in that verse. And so that kind of caught my
attention with regard to what it is to be unfaithful. So unfaithful,
we'll look at how it's depicted in the marriage covenant in Hosea
2. Hosea was told to take a wife
of whoredoms. The Lord told Hosea, you go and
you marry a prostitute and you take her in and her children.
And by all standards, this harlot is one who is unfit to be a wife. This is not who I would choose
to be my wife or whom I think probably Hosea had in his mind
as to who he would choose to be his wife, but the Lord told
him to take a harlot, someone who is unfit to be a spouse.
God said, you unite yourself to her, and if God looked here
upon us, upon what we do, faithful, unfaithful, Is there anyone here
who would be fit for marriage to his son? Well, I think if
you answer honestly, you'd say that you're not worthy of that.
But Hosea took her in as his beloved bride. He loved her and
he cared for her. But in Hosea 2, chapter 2, verse
2, starts off by saying, plead with your mother. Plead, for
she is not my wife, neither am I her husband. Let her therefore
put away her whoredoms out of her sight and her adulteries
from between her breasts. So plead here, you're not my
wife. You've left the marriage covenant.
You've been unfaithful, this wife who was a harlot. You've
sought out other things. How must I appear to God if I'm
honest I've not been faithful, despite all the good that he's
shown unto me. No more than Hosea could reform
his whore into a wife, shall you utterly lay down your old
ways that you claim to love God." We can't lay down our sinful
nature, even though that's what we are in our flesh. We try to
be something else. He's trying to make this prostitute
into a wife, but yet she can't do that because that's not what
she is. So we can't lay down our old ways. So if we claim
to love God, then why do we sin against him then? Because our
nature is sin. That's all we can do. We can
try to be something else, but ultimately we fall back into
what our nature is. Good intentions don't mean anything
here because God demands absolute perfection, a perfect righteousness. That's all he will accept. There
is no good intention and then a short delivery of that. We've
broken our marriage covenant. The Old Testament law says that
we're to be killed for that. And this says here, plead, in
verse two, two times. And this is the Lord saying this.
You plead. And when I started looking at
that, I was thinking, you know, it doesn't, from what I understand
and feel like I've had revealed to me of the Lord, that the way
this word is used here, it didn't make sense. The Lord pleading
for somebody to turn, When I looked up that word plead, it revealed
something, I think, a little bit different than the way I
read it and kind of the way we assume. Plead, the way it's used
here, is not this poor person saying, please, please do this.
You know, you've got to turn from this. You've got to change.
You've got to do differently. That's not what it's saying.
Plead here, what all the old writers said about it, was grabbing
by the hair, grabbing somebody by the hair and pulling it back.
And it's holding somebody there saying, you're not listening.
Do I have your attention now? And so that's the way it was
presented. And so this is more than just saying, please turn
from this. This is saying, you're not my wife right now for what
you're doing. And neither am I your husband.
You've loved other things and you've been unfaithful. How we
feel about those we claim to love is seen by how we treat
them. Well, what do your actions say?
I've heard your words, but what do your actions say? And so her
actions have said that really she didn't love her husband because
she's been unfaithful to him. Well, he also says in verse two
that you put away your whoredoms out of your sight and her adulteries
from between her breasts. So her whoredoms are what she
sold herself to. She's a prostitute. She sold
herself into these things. Out of her sight, we can look
at that as the desires of the heart. That's what you don't
have. You see something, you want it. It's what you sell yourself
into. And remove the adulteries from
between your breasts. You think of that as it's an
embrace. It's what we love. We're taking it and we're bringing
it in close, that which we desire and which we can obtain. But
it turns out that this is what has made her unfaithful. And
in verse 3 he says, "'Plead with your mother that she turn from
these things, 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 I slay her with thirst.'" So this stripping
her naked This is God exposing sin. This is saying, you've got
a lot of jewels on, you've got your pretty dress on, you've
got these things that we build ourselves up to look like something
else. But it turns out that what's underneath is utter corruption. And this is what he's saying
is, you turn from these things, I'm going to expose it. and I'm
going to show you for what you are. And you're going to have
to see that, because I think we hide behind what these outer
garments are, and that becomes who we are, these outer garments.
But these things, these wear old, they fall off, we lose them,
and then we've still got what's underneath. And that's what he's
saying that you're going to have to deal with. So I'm going to
strip you naked, you're going to be exposed, everything revealed,
there's no secrets. And there's two things with this. Whatever it is that he is exposing
here, this sin, it's either going to become permanent or you're
going to flee from it. We see that in the scripture
with Pharaoh. The Lord told him how many times,
let my people go, let my people go. I'm going to do this, I'm
going to do this. Pharaoh hardened his heart. He didn't flee from
it. He had every reason and thing
in front of him to show him that God was against him and what
he was doing, but yet he hardened his heart. But the woman in adultery,
when she was exposed, she was caught. Now, maybe she wasn't
as sorry and as forlorn over what she was doing before she
was caught, but once she was caught, they couldn't stand before
the Master. She couldn't continue in what
she was doing. And so whenever we have something like this,
it's either gonna become permanent or we're gonna flee from it.
Lay it down. And he says, I'm gonna make her
as a wilderness. You're gonna be a dry land and
I'm gonna slay you with thirst. Wilderness being desolate, no
life we can see. Dry land, said I'm gonna slay
you with thirst. It won't be lack of water that
kills you here. This is not taking you out in the desert and leaving
you. This is referring to a spiritual famine. This is something that
I greatly fear, where I have no communion with God, where
He doesn't hear me when I pray, where I come to hear the Word
preached, and I don't hear anything. It seems other people will press,
but I'm not. A famine can affect a whole people,
or it can affect just an individual. And He's saying, I'm going to
slay you with thirst. In verse 4, And I will not have
mercy upon her children, for they be the children of whoredoms.
No mercy on your children. You might not care for yourself,
but there's no parent that wouldn't care whether the Lord had mercy
on their children. Might not care about our own
sake. We can set ourselves aside and act like we don't care, but
not your children. Every parent cares about their
child. These are her children being the children of whoredoms.
They're not brought forth after the right order. And they're
bastards, and so therefore they have no inheritance. And in verse
five he says, for their mother hath played the harlot. She that
hath conceived them hath done shamefully. For she said, I will
go after my lovers, and give me my bread, and my water, and
my wool, and my flax, and my oil, and my drink. For their
mother hath played the harlot and done shamefully. She has
no remorse, no repentance. There's no, I'm sorry, she's
been unfaithful. She says, I've used you for what
I could get, and now I'm moving on. I'm gonna go back to my lovers
who gave me all these things. There's no commitment, because
it says lovers. She's got all these different people she can
go to. It's not one person. She's left her husband. He was
the one person that was supposed to be her lover. We can't have
God and the things of this world. If we're espoused to God, then
be with God. But if you're espoused to the
things of this world, then that's what you're with. You can't have
both. And so this is what she's trying to do, is have this husband
that she can forget and come and go from, but also have these
other things that she loves and wants. Turn to what I love. Forget God. I have the things
I enjoy. I'll live how I want to live.
I'll pursue my desires. How far will you go? And I think
we have to look at each of ourselves here. How far will we really
go if God allows us? Well, we'll go as far as the
Lord allows us to go, because it's only his hand that restrains
us. And may we never forget that. When someone decides to go on
their own way, what they're saying is, is that they're unsatisfied.
I'm not satisfied with what I have, not satisfied with God's providence,
with His way, His Christ, and His salvation. I don't want that
stuff. I'm going to go my own way. I've
decided I don't want that. Well, the unfaithful and the
unbelieving, that's how we're being towards the one who has
provided all along the things that we had, but yet we couldn't
see it. We're blind to that. We think,
well, I'm going to go my own way and get my own things, but
it doesn't work that way. We just can't see it and we're
blind. God might just let us alone and let us do as we desire. Leave you alone, pursue folly,
to fall into temptation, to be deceived. Why? Why would the
Lord allow us to do that? Because we strayed from Him.
His way is what's right. And I said I didn't want that
and I wanted something else. So we sought our own way. Which
got me to the point where I was thinking that if God didn't choose
a people, Before we ever were, no one would ever be saved because
we would all turn unto our own ways. We would never follow what
God's way was. I turned to my own way. Thank
God for election. Election is the only reason that
God will save someone. It's because you were chosen
before and he must save you. Election is required. Election
required Jesus Christ to come into this world because he chose
a people. And so therefore, the only one
who was capable of redeeming them, the Lord Jesus Christ,
it required that he come into this world to die for their sin.
Election required sin to be paid for the people God chose so that
God could show mercy and be just doing it. It's not just that
God could show mercy, but he must be just in showing mercy,
and that can only happen if sin's put away. And that happened with
the Lord coming. For someone not to love election
and the God of election, you don't realize you're really a
sinner. If I don't love election, this is the only thing I've got
going for me, is election. Outside of that, I've got nothing.
I don't really realize that I'm a sinner if I've got something
outside of election or election and. We do things for those whom
we love. And if you love me, you'll warn
me if I was doing something dangerous, even if it meant offending me
or hurting me. To save my life, you would do
whatever you had to do to say, stop, don't do that, because
obviously I don't see what I'm walking into. Well, God chastens
and God corrects those whom he loves. And this differs greatly
from punishment because in punishment there's no love. Punishment is
only the law. Punishment's cold, punishment
is unbending, and there's no love in it. It's just violation,
punishment, and that's it. There's no care as to whether
anything happens to the person other than exacting punishment
upon them. Chastening though, chastening,
what we're about to read here, is for correction. Chastening
is for instruction, for reproof. It's to teach us out of love,
though it may feel harsh at the time when we're going through
it. It may seem like punishment, but it's not, because it's used
for the purpose to teach us something. And that's what verses 6 through
13 are of this text. These are given as a chastening
to his unfaithful bride, to remove all of her idolatrous delights,
to close off her paths that she would go in, that are away from
his paths, to take away that which is unprofitable and contrary
to God and faithfulness to her husband. For the purpose, and
this is the big point of this, the purpose behind chastening,
is that she might find her all in him. With that being said,
compared to this harlot, wherein do we differ? The only difference
between me and this harlot is that she's been caught, and I
haven't. Her husband caught her The Lord
caught her in what she's doing and is exposing her. The only
thing that separates me is that I haven't been caught. She's
not been faithful to her husband. Well, if we really believe ourselves
a sinner, we'll see that we also have not been faithful. We judge. I think with regard to looking
at this woman, we whisper. We say, I heard she used to be
a harlot. You see, you watch her for a
while and you see, well, you think she's being unfaithful
to her husband now? Even now? You know, these things go through
our hearts and through our minds. This is wicked. We judge and
thereby we reveal our inward pride. Not knowing that God is
using this chastening to empty her. This chastening of exposing
her in this manner. Yet we look at it from the outside
and say, look what she's doing and I'm not. This is to bring
her to complete reliance upon Jesus Christ. However low the
arm of electing grace must reach to pick up this harlot, it must
go even lower to reach us in our self-righteous pride who
are judging, not knowing God's work. That hit me pretty hard in seeing
that. You know, I can look at something,
I have no idea what God's doing. I have no idea where His hand
is, and I form an opinion, but yet He's using all of that for
a purpose that I can't see. All I see is just maybe what
I would perceive as the negative effects of what they're doing,
and I'm not. He's doing this to bring home one of His children,
and it's only God's grace that hides my sins and hasn't exposed
me. The Spirit of Christ does not
keep sinners away. it welcomes all who have a need
of him. So let's look at the work of
God in chastening his bride here in verse six. Therefore, because she's done
all these things and hasn't turned from her ways, I will hedge up
thy way, her way, with thorns, and I'll make a wall, and she
shall not find her paths. So he's going to hedge up her
way with thorns. So you can imagine a thorn-walled
path. You've walked in maybe gardens
where they have big bushes and they have a path you can only
go on. Well, you imagine a big thorn-walled path. You're not
going to go through the thorns. Now, you might be able to see
through them to where you want to get to go, but you're not
going to be able to get to go through them. You see, we're
going to have to go the way the path goes. And so what he's doing
is hedging her way so she can't get to what she wants. See, we
would destroy ourselves and others if God gave us exactly as we
desired. And I'm thankful for what he
gives me, but I'm more thankful for what he's withholding from
me, because I don't know where I would be today. We're to walk in the path that
God provides us, even if it's thorn-walled paths. It's still
his path. His ways are such that she shall
not find her paths. And I thank God that there's
no choice in this path. We just walk in the one that
we're given. And so that's what the Lord is giving her here.
And in verse seven, he says, she shall follow after her lovers,
but she shall not overtake them. And she shall seek them, but
shall not find them. And then shall she say, I will
go and I will return to my first husband, for then it was better
with me than for now. So she's gonna follow after these
lovers, she's not gonna find them. She's gonna see everything
is out of her reach. The Lord says, you're gonna seek
them, but you're not gonna find them. Everything that you feel
like is gonna fill that black void in your heart that you think
that you're gonna go after, you're gonna get just close enough you
can't get it. And what he's showing her is that there is no fulfillment
at all outside of Christ. There's no provision, no happiness,
nothing that is lasting. You might feel it for a temporary
time, but there's no lasting fulfillment outside of Jesus
Christ. This plan's not quite working
out the way I thought," says she. She says, this is not going
the way I thought, so it's getting worse, so I'm just going to go
back to the first husband that really I didn't care about that
much, but I'm going to go back to him. And I kind of had thought,
you know, even in all this, even after she was unfaithful, had
forgot him, had went her own way, had by all means and measures
forsaken him, she knew that she could go back to him and that
he would accept her back. In verse 8, she says, for she
did not know that I gave her the corn, and I gave her the
wine and the oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they
prepared for fail. So what she was saying over here
in verse 5, I'll go after my lovers that gave me these things.
He's saying that she didn't know this, but I was the one that
gave it to her the whole time. Everything that you thought that
you were going to get from the things you desired and pursued,
it's not going to be there. You're going to get there, and
you're going to find it's empty. How faithful of a husband have
we who know the Lord Jesus Christ? How faithful has he been to us?
What have you ever lacked? Well, things may not have been
bountiful at all times, but you've never gone without. The barrel
of meal and the cruise of oil, they never failed. It never appeared
that it was totally full and then you could eat and drink
sumptuously, but it was always there when you needed it. So,
we have a faithful husband that gave to her knowing that she
would misuse it. How faithful is he? In verse
9, the Lord says, therefore, after she's going to come back
to me and think she's going to get all these things, will I
return and I'm going to take away my corn that I gave her
in the time thereof and my wine in the season and recover my
wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness." So in taking
these things away, what these represent, the corn is God's
blessing. This is the bounty of the harvest,
the corn in its season. So he's going to take away his
blessing from her. The second thing is the wine.
I looked up the word wine. It actually reads new wine. So this is the new wine. This
is the spirit. Revelation of the gospel. He says, I'm going
to put you in a spiritual famine. I'm going to take away my bounty. The wool and the flax, wool is
a covering. But so is flax. I didn't realize
that. Flax is what they make linen
from. So you have to start with flax to make linen. The wool
and the flax represent the outward and the inward covering. The
wool comes from the sheep, the sacrifice, the blood. This is
going to be the outward covering. But the soft, fine linen, clean
and white, arrayed with the righteousness of Christ. He said, I'm going
to take that from you. All this is going to become stripped away
from you and you're going to have none of it. In verse 10
he says, I will discover her lewdness in the sight of her
lovers, and none shall deliver her out of my hand. He's going
to expose her sin. And I will cause all her mirth,
her joy, to cease, her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
and all her solemn feasts. He says, the things that you
once loved and enjoyed in, I'm going to take them all away.
And you're going to see, really, what these things are worth.
And in verse 12, he says, I'll destroy her vines and her fig
trees, wherever she has said, these are my rewards that my
lovers have given me, and I will make them a forest, and the beast,
the field shall eat them. So when you look at this, this
thing of the fig tree and the vine, these aren't things that
just grow wild and produce fruit. These are something that has
to be pruned, tended, and taken care of in order to produce the
best fruit. The fruit, which she describes
here, these are the rewards of her labors. These are her works
as a harlot. This was her pay, came in the
form of, in this case, of vines and the fig trees. This was what
she was paid with for her service. These fruit trees and the vines,
if they're not cultivated, they're going to grow over and then the
fruit is not going to be produced. And when you have no fruit, it's
just going to get overgrown. And he says, I'm going to put
a forest there. It's going to be spoiled and wasted just by
animals, something that really has no discernment at all. It's
going to trample it down and destroy all that you trusted
in. All your works have come to the point where now they're
meaningless. These are what you considered
at one point the things you put on a pedestal, your rewards.
This is your pay. And so now he says, I'm going
to destroy even that too. And in verse 13 he says, I will
visit upon her the days of Balaam wherein she burned incense to
them and decked herself with her earrings, jewels, and went
after her lovers and forgot me, said the Lord. Now this thing
of the days of Balaam, I believe we'll see a little light on this
in Judges chapter three. So if you will, turn with me
over there. I'd like to look at that. So Judges 3 verse 1, he says,
now these are the nations which the Lord left to prove Israel
by them, even as many of Israel that had not known the wars of
Canaan. So as they came over, these are the Israelites who
basically had not fought in any of the battles, but he left these
nations there for the purpose to make them have to learn to
fight. Only that the generations of the children of Israel might
know to teach them war. at the least such as before knew
nothing thereof." So the ones that weren't born when the wars
were going on. Namely, the ones that he left,
the five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites and the Sidonians,
the Hivites that dwelt in Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal Hermon
until the entering of Hamath. And they were, so the purpose
of the Lord leaving these here is this, in verse 4, they were
left there to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would
hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded
their fathers by the hand of Moses. This was to prove whether
or not they were going to be faithful or not. And so what
happened? In verse 5, the children of Israel
dwelt among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites,
the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And they took their daughters
to be their wives, which they were commanded not to do, and
gave their daughters to their sons and served their gods. And
the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and
forgot the Lord their God. and they served Balaam, which
is Baal, in the groves. So he left these heathen nations
here to prove whether they did what they were supposed to, and
what did they do? They didn't do what they were supposed to.
They forgot the Lord, they married into them, they served these
false idols, Yet the Lord was the one that delivered them out
of Egypt, walked them all this way, crushed all these people
before him, but well, we'll forget them and jump on to Balaam and
sacrifice the groves. So in verse 8 it says, therefore
the anger of the Lord was hot against Israel, and he sold them
into the hand of, and this is a mouthful so bear with me, Chushan
Rishethonim, king of Mesopotamia. and the children of Israel served
Chushan Rishethamim eight years." And so, this is the Lord's chastening. here to the children of Israel
for selling themselves into these, you know, marrying and serving
Baal and forgetting him. So he said, I'm going to sell
you into their lands. You're going to be slaves in
their land and you're going to suffer because of it. This is
the Lord's chastening upon them. And so look, this next part is
what really drew my attention. But when the children of Israel
cried unto the Lord, The Lord raised up a deliverer, and that
word deliverer in my margin says Savior, to the children of Israel
who delivered them or saved them, even Othniel, the son of Kenaz,
Caleb's youngest brother. So the spirit of the Lord came
upon him and he judged Israel, went out to war, and the Lord
delivered Chushan Rishithim, king of Mesopotamia, and his
hand prevailed against him. So it seems here that in the
Lord chastening them, he chastened them until they cried and remembered
the Lord. So he put these peoples here
just for the purpose of proving whether they would be faithful.
And they were unfaithful, but yet in him chastening them, they
called out to God again and remembered. He's the one that delivered us
before and I'm gonna go back to where the one who delivered
me the first time. And I looked this up, and this
is a blessing to me, and it said, when they cried out, the Lord
raised up the Savior, Othniel. So the name Othniel means Lion
of God. And Othniel was Caleb's nephew. And what tribe was Caleb? Caleb
was tribe of Judah. So you have the Lion of God,
the tribe of Judah that saved them out of these troubles that
they were in. So what a picture of Christ we have in this man
that was raised up when they were sold into this slavery and
the Lord chastened them. If you go back to our text, Hosea
2. So these are the days of Balaam.
The purpose is that the Lord set these peoples here to see
whether they would be faithful. They weren't, and so he chastened
them. It's just another picture of chastening, the days of Balaam.
So, we're sold into sin, just like the Israelites here were.
We're guilty before the law, we're deserving death, deserving
punishment for being unfaithful to our spouse. And just like
this harlot who was unfaithful, if she would have got her way,
she would have left forever. Things would have worked out
the way she wanted, but he didn't give her that. It was within
his right to cast her down and to enforce the full punishment
of the law, which would have been taking of her life. Just
like in Judges 3, she forgot the Lord when things were at
their worst, they cried unto the Lord, and so here does she. He provided a door of hope, unmerited,
undeserved, to an unfaithful people and to an unfaithful harlot. So in verse 14, when it seemed
like things were at their worst, when the hand of the Lord would
strike her down, he says, therefore, behold, I will allure her, and
bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.
And I will give her her vineyards from thence, the valley of Achor,
for a door of hope. And she shall sing there as in
the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out
of the land of Egypt. So you see here, this allure,
this is to entice her. It seems like he would strike
her or exact some punishment on her, but he says, no, he speaks
comfortably unto her. This speaking, speak comfortably
is the same words that are used in Isaiah 40, when it says, Comfort
ye, comfort ye my people, speak to the heart of Israel. This
is the same words here, where he's speaking comfortably to
her. He's saying, it's all right. He's like, I'm not here to, you
know, strike you down. He's like, I'm here to draw you
near. And he said, I'm going to bring you into the wilderness.
Just like he drew Israel out from Egypt into the wilderness,
he led them, he fed them, he delivered them, he spoke to them,
and they communed with him. Communion with God he supplied
all their needs and that's what he's showing her right here by
taking But she can't see it until he takes all this away. That's
the point of this chastening He has to strip all this away
and leave her where she has no joy nothing to fall back on no
plan B I'm I'm basically at the mercy of someone who by all rights
to strike me down and The valley of Achor, he says
he'll give to her. The valley of Achor was the man
with the Babylonish garment and the silver that he hid, and the
Lord's hand was against Israel because of that. And they found
out, you know, the Lord said somebody's got something. They
found him and they killed him and his house. But it wasn't
until that happened that said the Lord turned from his anger.
And so that's what he's saying when he says, I'll give unto
her the valley of Achor. Before I was angry, he said,
I'm not your husband. But now he says, I'm going to
turn from my anger. Everything's all right. I'm going
to commune with your heart. And he says, you're going to
sing like when you came up out of Egypt. And you know, Egypt
representing sin and bondage. You're free, you're liberated,
you're not a slave anymore. You can imagine what feeling
it was after probably living your whole life as an Israelite
under Egyptian slavery that one day you're set free. Nobody owns
you anymore, you don't have to make bricks, you don't have to
serve somebody else for nothing, you're getting out of there.
So I mean, this is for the believer, the one day will come when we
truly from our presence are free from sin. Now, the new man, Christ
in us, is free from sin. It cannot sin, just as my flesh
can do nothing but sin. There are two spirits there,
and one's flesh, one's a spirit. And so he said, you're going
to sing, because basically you're going to see one day that sin's
not going to be there anymore. You're not going to be chained
to it. And he says in verse 16, it shall be at that day, saith
the Lord, thou shalt call me Ishii, which is my husband, and
thou shalt call me no more, Beli, which is my Lord. So the husband
loves his wife. The husband protects his wife.
He desires to be with his wife. He is communion with his wife.
This word belies, Lord, signifies master over, no real communion.
It's just someone that there's no affection, not like a husband.
So he says, in this day, once you're free from all these things,
from sin, from bondage, my anger's turned from you, you're going
to see me as who I am, because you're going to know me as your
husband, because you're not going to have the sin. There's no more
reason for anger. It's not like what you thought.
So in verse 17 he says, I'll take away the names of Balaam
out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their
name. How I long for this day, to take away the name of Balaam
out of my mouth. And what that means is, here
we live with sin. It's always present with me.
I see it in everything that I do. And I hate it, but yet I still
do it. Well then, why do you do it if
you hate it then? It just shows how depraved I
am. It shows that I'm completely
helpless to it. I can't do anything but it. Well,
what's it say? He says he's going to take it
away. No more sin, not anymore. It won't be there. It's been
taken away. So he's going to take it away,
and this to me was such a comfort. Not only is he going to take
it away, he says it's not going to be remembered anymore. We
know our sin and we remember it and we punish ourselves for
our sin, things that I've done years ago. If it comes back up
in my mind, it puts me down, weight around my neck. I start
thinking about it and this happened something years ago, but yet
I've got this noose around my neck. It's the remembrance of
sin, the remembrance of past sin. He said, I'm going to take
that away. You're not going to even remember it. That's how
satisfied God is with the work of Jesus Christ. Not only is
He going to take it away, He says, I'm going to strike it
from your memory altogether because it's not there. He satisfied
everything that I required for all those to whom I gave Him.
In verse 18, he says, in that day will I make a covenant for
them. Not with them, he says, I'm gonna
make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with
the fowls of heaven and the creeping things of the ground and I will
break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth and
will make them to lie down in safety. This is the Lord saying,
these are mine. There's nothing gonna do you
any harm. You're gonna lie down safely. I created all of this
and things right now, you know, It seemed to us in disorder that
we can't lie down and safely be yet in that day He's gonna
say these are mine touch not mine anointed and do my prophets
no harm So there will be no harm come to any of God's people You're
gonna lie down and safely safety and these this verse 19 here
you talked about this six things that six wedding beliefs, wedding
gifts for the believer. It's kind of what I call them,
the six things he gives us here in verses 19 and 20. And I will
betroth thee, so this is to a spouse, so we are espoused unto our Lord,
unto me forever, yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness. I will betroth thee unto me in
judgment, in loving kindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth
thee unto me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord.
So these six things jump right out at you. I mean, this is easy.
He betroths us forever. There's never a change, and there's
never an end. It's never going to be forgotten,
and there's always going to be with Christ, united and accepted
in Him. That's never going to go away.
The second thing, righteousness. I'm going to betroth thee unto
me in righteousness. All that the Father is pleased
with in His Son, Jesus Christ, you'll be one in the same. He's
gonna give you his righteousness, the righteousness of Christ,
the holy and undefiled nature of Christ that does not sin.
Third thing he's gonna give you, judgment. The law has nothing
on you, not today, not tomorrow, not for your past. That's not
even remembered anymore. He said he's stricken sin even
from your memory. You've been made free from sin and death
by Jesus Christ. And He took your sin and He made
it His own. All those whom the Father gave
Him. If Christ died, you must be saved. Because He paid the
cost so that none would be lost. So that by Him paying that cost
of sin, there's no more debt that can be required. The fourth
thing that we're given. Loving kindness. And this kind
of confused me here because you see loving kindness and in mercies. And so usually in the Old Testament
here, the word mercy and loving kindness are one and the same.
They refer to the same thing. So mercies and mercy. So I looked
it up. Loving kindness here does mean
mercy as it's used in other areas. And it said this is the zeal.
It's described as a zeal towards one in love. So this is what
He's going to give us. The Lord thy God is a merciful
God. He's desirous of showing mercy unto His people. And where
it says, mercy's here, this also can be written, manifold or tender
mercies or compassions. In Lamentations, that verse we're
all familiar with, Lamentations 3.22, where it says, it's of
the Lord's mercies that we're not consumed. That's the loving
kindness. that we're not consumed because
his compassions they feel not. The compassions there are his
mercies. That's what it's saying here.
So the last thing he gives us, and remember, is there any hope
for the unfaithful? He says here, I'm gonna betroth
thee unto me, even in the one thing that I can never do, and
that's be faithful. He said, I'm gonna make you faithful.
Faithfulness, the whole story. Unbelief, unfaithful. He says,
I'm going to make you faithful, and therefore you're going to
believe. Because those words, they're one and the same. If
we believe not, yet he abideth faithful. He cannot deny himself.
And so we will be given faithfulness. How I greatly desire to be faithful
in preaching, in being a husband, in being a father, in being a
friend, in being one who believes the gospel. I want to be faithful. And the Lord says, I'll betroth
thee unto me in faithfulness. I'm going to make you faithful.
All I know here is unbelief and unfaithfulness to Him, but He's
gonna take care of that too. I don't even have to provide
that. In the last few verses here, He says, in that day, or
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 it just real. And I will sow her unto me in
the earth, and I will have mercy upon her that had not obtained
mercy. And I will say to them which
were not my people, thou art my people. And then they're going
to say, thou art my God. That's the faithfulness that
He betroths unto us, is that we believe in Him. We believe
in God and He makes us by wedding Himself to us, His people, and
therefore we say, Thou art my God. How I desire to be among
those people, the unfaithful that He makes, that He betroths
to be faithful. Now I'm glad He does it that
way, where He takes all the pressure off of me. He's marrying me.
I'm willing to be saved wholly and completely by His grace where
there's nothing from me. You know why I feel that way?
Because He made me to desire it. And that's the only way I
would have felt that way. He had to make me that way or
else I wouldn't. The Lord chastens His bride here
to purify, to perfect her faith in Him. I don't desire chastening,
but I do ask the Lord to do for me what is required to make me
faithful. and I'm trusting him to do it.
That's all.