I think the one thing that God has laid on my heart more than anything else over the summer is the basic desperate need we have for Him. From what is going on in the middle east, the terror alerts to the busyness we have in our lives and the frantic pace we live in – I was just reminded how much we as people need God in our lives and in our world and the frantic pace we run at. I was reminded again of how much I need God. How much we as people need God in our lives and in our world. I think sometimes we are going at such a fast pace that we can miss the small still voice of God reminding us of His love and care for us. Reminding us that He has this world in control. I know in our lives in our family we are always going at one hundred miles an hour, just as you are. Lori told me recently as the school year was winding up she took our daughter to preschool for one of her last preschool classes. She pulled up ten minutes early, which for us is kind of rare. Emma looks around and says, “There are no cars here. Did school get canceled?” Lori said, “No, we’re early.” No lie, my five year old says, “What’s early mean?” Some of you know what it means to live life at a pace where we are asking, “What does early mean?” In the midst of all of that it’s so refreshing when you can let your soul catch up with your body a little bit and hear again from God. I hope over the next several weeks we can do that together as we dive into this series, Beyond Boundaries – experiencing God’s radical love.
How many of you are fans of love stories? Do you like love stories out there? All the ladies get their hands up. Guys are like, “Oh great, love stories.” There are some great love stories out there. There’s Romeo and Juliet. There’s Gone with the Wind, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast. These classics – Titanic, Rocky, Gladiator. I had a guy last night – I asked people what are some love stories out there? One guy was yelling Star Wars. Love stories capture us and draw us in. What I want to do with you over these next several weeks is I want to go back to a book of the Bible that was one of the most profound and most amazing love stories in the Bible. Many of you will have never heard of it. I’ve never heard this book taught in a church setting but it’s very powerful. It’s the book of Hosea. It’s tucked away in the Old Testament of the Bible. Hosea was a prophet. He spoke for God. The book is about his relationship with his wife and children, their love for one another. It’s also a mirror picture of God’s love for us. We’re going to learn some awesome things as we look at this book together.
Hosea lived about 755-715 BC. He had this unique role as a prophet of God. That was a big, big deal. Particularly in Old Testament times. Let’s pick it up in the book of Hosea, Chapter one, beginning in verse one. Here we go: “The word of the Lord that came from Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, Kings of Judah and during the reign of Jeroboam, son of Jehoash and King of Israel.” Now it says, “The word of the Lord came to Hosea.” He was the son of Barrie. It reminds me of a time when I was in college and I had a Hebrew professor. He knew the root meanings of names. He would always tell people what a name means. Our class would stay around after class and he would say, “Pick a name.” Joshua – and he would say, “Strong and courageous.” They would get inspired. I’m standing in line one day after class because I want to find out what my name means. This is going to be cool. I get up there and he says, “What is your full name?” I said, “Judson.” It means, “Son of Jud.” I’m waiting… what else? That’s it. Just great. That’s inspiring. All we really know of Hosea is that he’s the son of Barrie. We don’t know much about his life beyond that except that the little bit the book reveals. He’s the son of Barrie. His name has a very profound meaning. His name means “salvation” in the Hebrew language. He was bringing the word of the Lord to the people of Israel.
The “word of the Lord” is a phrase that is used 438 times in the Old Testament of the Bible. It’s a phrase about God communicating to people through special prophets that He raised up in the Old Testament times. He asked Hosea to do something quite remarkable. You pick it up in verse two: “When the Lord began to speak through Hosea the Lord said to him, ‘Go – take to yourself an adulteress wife and children of unfaithfulness.’” Let’s just stop right there for a minute and rewind. Let’s look at that again. “Take yourself an adulteress wife and children of unfaithfulness.” If I’m Hosea I’m thinking I must have had too much pizza. I need some Tums because I’m not sure I’m hearing God on this whole thing. God basically showed up and said, “Hosea – I want you to marry a prostitute. And you will have children from unfaithfulness in your relationship.” God asked Hosea to do something He has never asked anyone to do, that I’m aware of, in the Old Testament before Hosea and He asked him to do something He never asked anyone to do that I know of after Hosea. This was a completely unique thing. Remember, Hosea had this special role. He was the prophet for God. He was the spokesperson for God during these desperate times. God was looking out and His people, those who were called by His name were denying Him, turning their backs on Him, they were worshiping false gods. They were doing all these things. God was heartbroken about it. God said to him, “Hosea, take yourself an unfaithful wife just like Israel has been unfaithful to me.” Basically what He wanted was Hosea to not only speak His words to the people of Israel but He wanted Hosea to feel the pain that He felt. He wanted him to experience what He felt when He spoke those words.
In fact, He goes on in chapter 1:2 on why He asks Hosea to do this. He says, “Because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery and departing from the Lord.” The people had turned from God and God loved them so passionately and so intensely that He was going to communicate to them a message that was extreme because of the extreme unfaithfulness that He saw in the people’s lives. He says, “Hosea, take to yourself an unfaithful wife.” Hosea goes on and marries Gomer. Now, this is the first time in the Old Testament that the marriage relationship between a man and a wife is fully blown out as a metaphor of God’s relationship to us. You go on through the Bible and you read several times, “Jesus is the bridegroom.” The Bible says, “We are the bride, the church.” There is all this imagery of marriage in our relationship with God. We get to the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible and it says that those who are followers of Christ will be at the wedding celebration of the lamb of Jesus. There is all this wedding imagery. This is where it starts in the Old Testament. This is really where it gets blown out – the relationship of Hosea to Gomer and God’s relationships to us.
One of the first things we see in it is that substitutes just don’t satisfy when it comes to our relationship with God. We have to realize that the substitutes that we put in our lives that take the place of God just don’t satisfy us or Him. Listen, God wants a personal love relationship with you as an individual. He created you. He loves you. He even uses marriage as a metaphor of what that relationship is about. That’s what He desires for us. Substitutes just don’t work. You can get substitutes in every area of your life. For instance when it comes to food you can go out and get all kinds of substitute foods. This is a box of substitute cereal. You don’t have to buy cereal. You can now get milk in cereal bars. They put the Honey Nut Cheerios on top; they put the milk and the filling in the middle. It’s like a chewy bar that tastes like licorice. It’s not exactly good. It’s not cereal. It’s substitute cereal. How many of you are seafood fans out there? This is just what you have been waiting for – crab-tastic premium imitation crab. What is that? What is imitation crab? I don’t want to know because I think you might be hugging the toilet after you eat this. You don’t have to have eggs and bacon anymore. Who would need that when you have egg and bacon bits powder? Just add water and cook in a skillet. Right… Okay – my favorite is freeze dried vanilla flavored ice cream sandwich – space food. Doesn’t need to be frozen. No need to put it in the fridge. You can put it in the back trunk of your car when it’s 120 degrees all summer long. No big deal. Then you just tear into this thing whenever you want a little snack. It tastes just like an ice cream sandwich. Doesn’t it look like it? Do you want a bite of that?
Substitutes are not the real thing. You can eat that stuff all day long if you want but it doesn’t match up to an ice cream sandwich. In our life we take a lot of substitutes and we put them in the place of God in our lives. Money, for instance is a substitute many people put in the place of God in their life. Money is a wonderful tool. It can be a wonderful thing but it’s a horrible God to worship. You can substitute a relationship into that place where only God should be – first in your life. I’ve seen this happen over the years in the church in a lot of different ways. One thing I’ve seen is people go through a relationship that breaks up, like divorce. It can be really painful. They come and God begins to heal them and put them back together. They are doing well then over time they meet someone else and fall in love. Then they disappear from church for a couple years. They come back in a couple years later and I’ll see them again. I’ll ask, “Where have you been?” I’ve heard this again and again. They will tell me a story of a relationship that started off going pretty well. They met this person and it was growing. They began to put this person in the place where only God should have been. They substituted this relationship for where God should have been. Two years later they are both coming back saying that God has to be in the center of this thing or it’s not going to work. Friends, you can substitute people in that relationship.
You can substitute an addiction for God in your life. You can substitute food – it’s whatever we put above God in our life. He wants to be first. He wants to be primary in our lives. When you look at the book of Hosea, the Israelites had begun to worship other gods. The people who were supposed to be God’s people! They began to worship Bale and these other gods. They would go through the worship practices of worshiping these gods. They were depending on them to provide food for them and take care of them, walk with them. God, the Bible says, is a jealous God. He had enough. Substitutes just don’t satisfy. Hosea marries Gomer. They have their first child, a son. God says to Hosea, “I want you to name this child, Jezreel.” Jezreel means, “God scatters.” He said, “Because I’m going to bring judgment to my people who have turned their back on me.” Then he has a daughter. God says, “Hosea, I want you to name this child, Lo-Ruhamah. It means not loved.” Think about Hosea going around the house calling out to his children, Jezreel – God scatters and Lo-Ruhamah – not loved. Because he says, “I will no longer love these people.” Then He says, “I want you to have a third child. That child is to be named, Lo-Ammi.” It was a son. It literally means, “Not my people.”
You read the first nine verses of Hosea and it’s real encouraging. First of all you are thinking, what in the heck is God doing? Then you are like, “Oh, my gosh!” This guy is having kids and God is telling them to name them these horrible names. This is awful. Extreme circumstances require extreme measures. God is sending a message through Hosea to His people. It’s ultimately a message of how He loves and cares for them. He’s so heartbroken on how they have turned their backs on Him and gone their own way. God brings us into the emotional side of His love for us as people. You’re reading all of this and the first nine verses almost read like a break up letter. God is breaking up with His people.
Now God does it very carefully. He’s doing it very strategically. Today, if you want to break up with someone, you don’t even have to write your own break up letter. You can go online and download one of hundreds of form letters. You can read through to get the right tone that you want and insert name and click send. I pulled up a couple of them real quick that I thought I would share with you. Here are some sample break up notes from the internet if you are in a bad relationship maybe this will help. “Dear (insert name), Roses are red, violets are blue. You are the jerk my mother warned me about and I’m breaking up with you too.” Nice little rhyme. “Dear (insert name), I bet you thought this day would never happen. That I would give you your walking papers and I’d start out on a new page full of promise of the new relationships I’ll have after leaving you. Well buddy, it started last month. Sorry that you are so wrapped up in yourself that it took you this long to notice it. Before you find a new girlfriend get a grip on reality. The world doesn’t revolve around you. Goodbye, Mr. Not-so Wonderful.” There you have it.
We do such harsh things when we break up. I saw a lady on the Today show that’s called the, Revenge Lady. She’s giving tips and advice on how to take revenge. Of course, I’m thinking, “No, no, no.” The all time best is when she said this one woman took some shrimp that had gone bad. When she left the house from the husband she divorced she stuffed the curtain rods with spoiled shrimp. I’m thinking how many thousands of dollars did it take him to figure out that that’s where that smell was coming from. My word! Don’t get any ideas! Don’t tell someone the pastor told you to do it.
We break up and it’s harsh. Human relationships can go back and forth. God is different than we are. Yet in the book of Hosea He allows us to step into the emotional side that He loves us so intensely that there is a pendulum that swings back and forth. There are moments where He says, “You are not my people. I’m done with you.” In the very next verse of chapter one everything begins to change. In 1:10: “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand of the seashore which cannot be measured or counted. The place where it was said of them, ‘you are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’” God swings the pendulum one way and then He says, “You know what? I do love you but you are driving me crazy.” I actually had a girl come up to me after the last service and said, “That’s how I feel right now. That is what’s going on in my life with my boyfriend. I write him off. Then I swing back and say, I like him. I’m done…I love him.” We do that in our life.
God lets us see this picture of Him that isn’t unlike that. God loves us and cares about us so much that He’s willing to communicate that love and care in the Bible. Let me continue on here because this is about the grace of God. Grace is a wonderful, powerful, amazing thing. I saw Bono on TV this last week being interviewed. Bono is sharing in this interview environment the difference between karma and grace. Now karma is how the world works. Karma says what goes around comes around. You wrong someone; someone is going to wrong you. If you do this it will come back on your life. That’s karma. The whole world operates based on karma. But he says the reason why I’m a Christian and the reason I care about Jesus is because Jesus’ message is grace. Grace takes karma and turns it upside down. Grace says that no matter what you’ve done or where you have been or what you have experienced you can be forgiven. You can have a new beginning and a fresh start. He said, “I don’t know about you [this is classic Bono] but I’m holding on for grace because I need it.” As I looked at Hosea as we’ve moved through the first nine verses it looks pretty dark. Then in verse ten there is a shift and grace enters the picture. God extends His grace to His people. What He really wants from us is this relationship with Him.
Not only do we realize that substitutes don’t satisfy we have to then rest on God’s illogical love. We have to rest in His illogical love because God’s love for us is sometimes illogical, sometimes irrational. Why would God love us when we continue to fall or continue to fail or continue to disobey Him? Yet He does. It may not be the most rational love but love isn’t rational anyway. It’s God’s love. It’s God’s tremendous love for us as people. It reminds me of the Bible in Romans 5 it says this: “You see at just the right time when we were still powerless Christ died for the ungodly.” He didn’t die for those who had it all together. He didn’t for the people that were good looking. He didn’t die for the people who went to church every weekend. He died for the guy who cut you off on the freeway and the people who make our world such a difficult place. Like the boss who annoys you and is driving you crazy. He died for the ungodly and that is us. FYI. “Very rarely,” he says, “will anyone die for a righteous man though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die but God demonstrates his own love for us in this while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” That’s so rich. If you have been a Christian for a while don’t miss how rich and profound that really is.
Here is our resume. It says we are powerless, we’re ungodly, and we’re sinners. Imagine putting that on a resume. I’m Jud. I’m powerless, ungodly, and I’m a sinner. Hire me! Can you imagine that? He’s saying that this is the resume of where the human race was at. Even in the midst of all of that, Christ died for us. He died for you and for me. That’s profound, radical, and amazing. We can’t miss it. In fact, you can put your hands together because that is good news. It’s illogical at some level but it’s God’s amazing love. It’s scandalous. It’s a scandalous grace.
I think about Max Lucado when he writes about Jeffrey Dahmer. He says this, “Jeffrey Dahmer murdered seventeen people. When they searched his apartment they found eleven corpses. Dahmer did things that were unthinkable. He ate people’s body parts.” Lucado says, “What disturbs me most about Jeffrey Dahmer is not his ax, not his trail, and not his punishment but his conversion. Months before an inmate murdered him Jeffrey Dahmer became a Christian. He said he repented. He said he was sorry for what he did. He was profoundly sorry and put his faith in Christ. He was baptized. He started life over. He began reading Christian books and attending chapel. Sins washed, souls cleansed, past forgiven – that troubles me. It shouldn’t but it does. Grace for a cannibal. Yet that is how radical God’s grace is.” When we reach out to Him, even if we are powerless in that moment, even if we are ungodly, even if we are sinners He’s willing to forgive us and draw us in.
Friends, there are some of you today – you may have been a Christian for a while but you’ve never really accepted the fact that God loves you as you are. You’ve never really rested in the fact that you already have His love. I know intimately what this is all about. I’ve gotten on the treadmill of human achievement again and again and again. I’ve tried to earn the love of God. Even on break the last few weeks God had to remind me again that He loves me irrespective of whether I do a good message or not. Some are better than others, right? He loves you irrespective of whether or not you perform well at work or whether you have it all together on the outside or if you jump through all the right religious hoops. You cannot earn what you already have. Do you hear me? You can’t earn what you already have. You have God’s love. What I have found is there are two ways to live your life. On one way you continue to try to earn it and achieve it and get God’s love. You work hard for it by doing all these things. The other way is to just accept it and rest in it. Then you respond to God out of the love He has already poured out into your life. When you begin to live over here you are going to fly higher. You are going to accomplish more. You are going to get more done for God in your own life because you have accepted that love than if you lived over here always trying to earn it. Hosea screams to us, “God loves us already.” He wants this relationship with us that’s deep and profound.
If you go on in the book of Hosea you’ll get to 2:1. God has already done the break up letter in the first nine verses. Then He comes back in verse ten and says, “Yet I will extend grace to you my people” because He loves His people. Then you get to 2:1 and we get inspired at this point. It says this: “Say of your brothers, my people, and of your sisters my loved one.” Remember, two verses earlier He says these are not His people. Now He says, “Say to the people, Hosea, my brothers, my sisters.” We’re going to see the pendulum in Hosea swing back and forth and back and forth. It’s not all rosy. You get over in chapter two and again God says, “Are you people ever going to turn to me and realize that I love you and care about you?” We’ll see this happen again and again. But it’s a picture of His love. “Say to them my brothers, my sisters.”
Paul picks this verse up in the New Testament in Romans 9 and he quotes this passage. He says that what Hosea is saying is that God’s love now extends beyond the boundaries and the people of Israel but to all people. To gentiles, to non-Jewish people, who have placed their faith and trust in Him. He says, Hosea is pointing forward to a time when all can come and worship. God’s love extends to all of them. It inspires us to give life away. What I have found is there is nothing more life giving than experiencing and living in the love of God. There is nothing more life giving than that. When you start to share that with someone else you make a huge impact on their life.
I read on the Internet about Hemant Mehta. He’s a guy who wanted to know more about Christianity. He was a student at the University of Chicago. He was twenty-three years old and an atheist. He put his soul up for auction on eBay. He said: “I’m offering you the opportunity, those of you who are Christians to bid on sharing the message of Christ with me and taking me to church.” He said he’d go with the highest bidder and donate the money to something else. He was having fun. This guy, Jim Henderson, got the winning bid. $504.00 to take Mehta to church twelve different times. They went to all these different churches. He paid $504.00 bucks. He said he did it just to share the message of God’s love to him. Not to cram it down his throat. In fact, Mehta is still on a spiritual journey but he said it was life transforming to see all these different churches and to hear about Jim Henderson’s faith and what God has done for his life. Wow – this guy paid $504.00 to share the message of God’s love with a total stranger. That’s pretty cool.
Then you start thinking about what we do at Central every week. We have people all summer that paid more than that to go to New Orleans to work with Celebration church; to give life away, to help other people and rebuild that church. We’ve had people all summer long go. They’ve been on short-term mission trips; traveling overseas, taking risks of faith, reaching out…what are they doing? They are giving life away.
I’ll never forget a year and a half ago after our Christmas services a woman came down front with tears in her eyes. She told me a story. She said, “An hour and half ago I was standing in line at Wal-Mart. I was feeling alone in this town. I didn’t know where to turn. I was at a low place in my life. The woman in front of me in line turned around and handed me an invitation card and said, “Why don’t you go to Central. There is one more service left that starts in about half an hour.” She said she checked out at Wal-Mart and got her stuff. She said she drove over here and sat through the service. She came down with tears in her eyes. She said, “It’s been so meaningful for me. God has spoke to me in my life. Jud, tell the people who invite people, thank you.”
I told this story last night. No lie, she got up, she was here, and walked up to me. We started a conversation. I said, “Have you been here this whole last year and a half since the first time you came?” She said, “No, someone else invited me this weekend and I just came.” I grabbed her and said, “Don’t think that’s a coincidence.” Again, it drives home the value and importance of giving life away.
That’s why we are launching a Summerlin campus in a few weeks, on September 10th. I said it before – it’s not about making Central bigger; it’s about making God’s kingdom bigger. It’s about taking this love and passion He has for people and allowing people to experience it in an accessible way. We are so excited about the Summerlin launch. If you want to be a part of that team and volunteer and serve, you can still get involved down at information Central in the lobby. You can ask questions and get feedback if you live in that area. It’s just a few weeks away. We are counting down now. It’s going to be awesome. But that weekend, September 9/10 we’re going to launch a new series called “The Game of Life.” I want to challenge you to give life away in the next few weeks before we launch that series. In fact, we have some boxes at all the exits. They say, “The Game of Life – where will your life lead you?” We’ll talk about work life, social life, and spiritual life – just life in general. We’ll look at the book of Proverbs that’s so rich in wisdom. Here is the goal: forty thousand personal invitations from the Central family to the Las Vegas community between now and September 9/10. Can we do it? Absolutely we can do it. I almost made it fifty. But pulled it back a little. Here is what we have…we have eight thousand boxes with five invites in each box. When you get the box, they are at all the exits and they are free, I want to challenge every one of you to get one. I’m doing it. I’ll tell you how it goes. I’m going to be inviting people and sharing with them. Who knows what God can do when you make a simple invitation? In the box is a little guide on how you can pray for people, creative ways you can invite people. This will give you some great tips and information on how you can do that. In a gallop survey thirty-four million Americans said, “I would go to church if someone invited me.” I think out of thirty-four million you and I probably know some of them. I want to challenge you to do this. It’s not about Central growing larger – it’s about God’s Kingdom growing larger. It’s about the simple fact of when a human being comes into contact with the love of God it can change their life for the better. True?
Brenda Manning tells this story of an Irish priest who is walking in the countryside one day. He comes upon a peasant who is sitting crouched over next to the wall. At first he thinks he’s sleeping but as the priest gets closer he realizes this peasant is actually praying. He says to him, “You must be very close to God.” I love the response this peasant, poor peasant says, “Yes, I am. In fact, He’s very fond of me.” Friends, He’s very fond of you. I hope as we explore this book that His love will sink into our hearts at deeper levels and challenge us and motivate us to live the kind of lives He desires for us to live.
