Tough Love: God the Father
Hosea 2:16 and 2 Corinthians 13:14
We’re in the second week of this month’s series on the Trinity. Last week, our emphasis was on a God who demonstrates his nature as a God of unity. There is one God who celebrates diversity as three distinct persons…the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father. This one God in three honors equality in that all three persons are equally God and only one God. God celebrates diversity in his creation, His children and calls us in our diversity to unity. The mission of Jesus is to tear down the walls that divide us. Whatever nation, ethnic group or culture we come from, Jesus came to show we are one family and to reconcile us together as children of God. That’s how our mission fits into the nature of God: “Connecting diverse communities to a lifestyle devoted to Jesus.”
In Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth, we see the role each person of the Trinity: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit will be with all of you.” Paul reveals the Trinity has 3 functions. In God the Father, we experience love. In Jesus the Son, we experience grace. In the Holy Spirit, we experience God’s presence of God.
Today, we’re focusing on God the Father whom Paul says is love. We all need love to develop and be healthy. But God’s love is not the soupy, sentimental kind of love. It’s tough love. Tough love provides boundaries, discipline and accountability in life to get us to do what’s best for us and others and to help us become what God created us to be. Tough love includes two things: law and grace. What happens if a person grows up without law, boundaries, discipline and accountability? You become selfish, self-centered and undisciplined as a person. Everybody needs law in their life. But tough love needs to be balanced by grace. Every single person needs to know that they are unconditionally loved and accepted, that you are created in the image of God and God will always be there for you. Jesus said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” There is nothing you can do to be separated from God’s love. Law without grace will lead to rebellion. Some of us grew up in homes with a lot of tough love but no grace and so our image of ourselves and other people has been distorted because our self-esteem has been crushed. If you grew up in a home that had all grace and no law, you become self-centered! There has to be a balance between law and grace and we find that in God’s love for us.
Many of us do not understand what love is. When we think of love, we equate love with a feeling and thus it’s sentimental. First, love is not sentimental; it’s covenantal- commitment. In Hosea, we get a clearer understanding of tough love. God is a God of covenant and that means commitment. He equates his relationship with you and me to marriage. In Hosea 2:16 God says, “On that day, you will call me ‘my husband; you will no longer call me ‘My Baal’; you will no longer call me ’my master.” Any Baal is a false god or any idol you have in your life that you give yourself to other than God. When you replace God with something other than God, that is a Baal. When you call God Lord or Savior, it means you’re making a commitment to Him.
What’s the difference between covenantal love and sentimental love? When you first meet the love of your life, it’s all about the passion and feeling. Your mind and heart races when you think of them. That may lead to dating seriously and even becoming exclusive. You may even live together but that’s not the same as marriage. Once you’re married, everything changes. Marriage is an act of binding, “until-death-do-us part” commitment. A lot of us are still living with God but we’re not totally committed to Him. We come to worship to talk about and even experience the love of God but we never really make a commitment to live for God in every thing part of our lives. Love is covenantal – it’s a binding, “until-death-do-us part” commitment.
Second, love changes who you are. When you marry, you change your name. It changes your whole identity. And “two become one.” It was an adjustment for me when I got married because I worked whenever, and however late I wanted to. So when I didn’t come home after 5:30, Giovanna would call me and ask, “Where are you?” I was used to just going where I wanted to go and doing what I wanted to do, and now those decisions had to be made mutually, together. The difference between sentimental love and covenantal love is that there is a legal binding agreement and that means obligations. You can feel in love, you can hang out, and you can play together. But get married and all of a sudden her debt is my debt and my time his her time. When the gynecologist sends me a bill with Smith on it, you know you’re not who you used to be! Love changes who you are and what you do.
Third, love is sacramental. That is, it sets you apart. You’re blessed and made holy by God. You set yourself apart only for God and because of that it makes you holy. Hosea 2:20 “I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD.” Love is not sentimental. It’s sacramental. You signify this with a ring but a covenant in the Bible was always made with blood. When people in biblical times entered an agreement, whether it was marriage, land sale or another agreement, they used blood to seal the covenant. They would use an animal based on what they could afford, from an inexpensive pigeon to a goat or a cow. They would cut that animal apart and walk through the pieces of that animal in a figure eight. As they walked, they would repeat “Let this be done to me and more if I ever forsake the vows of this covenant.” It was a blood oath, unto death. And so God, relating to humankind through their understanding of commitment, always used blood to signify covenant.
Fourth, love is exclusive. Look at verse 17: “For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth.” “Her” refers to God’s people. In this context, we, as the people of God, are the woman. Whose name changes? We, as the people of God, take on God’s name and identity. “I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth and they shall be mentioned by name no more.” Before Giovanna, I was dating Nikki, and she and I even got engaged. But I know better than to ever mention Nikki’s name again out loud in my house. Love means exclusive devotion set apart to one person as long as both shall live. That takes a lot of hard work. Love is work; it is not feeling.
In any covenant there are mutual responsibilities and obligations. Look at verse 18, “I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, the creeping things of the ground and I will abolish the bow and the sword and war from the land and I will make you lie down in safety.” Here’s God’s promise for you: provision and protection. Because I made you and claim you as my own, I am making with you this binding covenant: I will provide for you.’” In other words, God will provide food and clothing and I will protect you and keep you safe and well, as long as you live under my covering, as long as you live under my commitment.” But God provides much more. He provides peace. As your pastor, there are two problems I see you come to me for: problems in your relationships and anxiety. The reason so many people are anxious is because they see themselves as independent from God. And because they see themselves as independent from God, they do not realize that the nature of God’s love for them is not sentimental, it is covenantal and that God’s promise is provision and protection. When you realize that God has covenanted with you, what do you have to be anxious about? As long as you live under that covenant, he will give you what you need: provision and protection. That’s an incredible promise on God’s part.
But, there is a condition. Any covenant is based in faithfulness and trust. Look at verse 20, “I will take you for my wife in faithfulness.” This is where it gets difficult for us because faithfulness and trust mean boundaries, moral absolutes and accountability. Any covenant relationship deals with moral absolutes. Open marriages do not work. There is a legal responsibility. Adultery is grounds for divorce. It’s the same with God. We are bound in our life by moral absolutes. When you break that covenant with a human being, we call it adultery. In adultery you violate another person. When we violate God, when we cheat on God, we call it idolatry. The words are very similar. Idolatry is adultery against God - a violation.
We have all played the whore with God. For all of us have sinned and fallen short of the covenant of God, looking to other things to be god, our source of security in our lives, whether it be possessions, money, other people or influence. And the consequence? Look at Hosea 4:10: “They shall eat but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have deserted the LORD to give themselves” How many people do you know that have this gnawing hunger in their heart and they don’t know why? They have a great family. They have a nice home. They have a nice job. But there is a gnawing hunger, an emptiness, in their heart. Do you see the consequence of adultery against God? “They shall play the whore, but not multiply.” What does that mean? They are not going to prosper. They think they’re going to be happier operating outside the moral boundaries or will of God, but they’re not prospering. You’ll never know the grace of God as long as you’re trying to play outside the will of God. You’ll never know the blessings of God. That’s why we’ve got to deal with tough love before we get to grace. You’ll never know the grace of God and the blessings of God as long as you’re trying to operate outside the will of God. Why will they not multiply, why will they not prosper? “Because they have forsaken the Lord to devote themselves to whoredom.”
The result is brokenness, brokenness of relationship and brokenness of covenant. Covenant is exclusive devotion. God’s promise toward you, “If you stay faithful. “. . . I am going to provide for you everything you need. But if you break that covenant, you will eat and not be satisfied. You will not multiply.” What happened when Adam and Eve broke covenant with God? The first thing they experienced was shame. They hid themselves from God and then they denied their sin. So many people talk about grace. But until we get back to dealing with violation of boundaries, moral absolutes and exclusive devotion, you’ll never know the grace. You’ll never know the grace as long as you’re trying to live outside of God’s will. I know a lot of you love the Lord. You know that you’re saved. You trust God for your salvation. But you’re not experiencing the blessing because you’re living outside the will of God in an area of your life. This will be the case until you deal with the sin in your life.
Love is tough: it’s a demanding commitment, it’s exclusive and it changes who you are. Their’s obligations and responsibilities. It changes not only who we are but how we are to live. This is what God’s love calls us to. We belong to God and live for God’s purpose.
Craig Barnes tells of when he was a child, his minister father brought home a 12-year-old boy named Roger, whose parents had died from a drug overdose. There was no one to care for Roger, so my folks decided they’d just raise him as if he were one of their own sons. At first it was quite difficult for Roger to adjust to his new home! Every day, several times a day, I heard my parents saying to Roger: "No, no. That’s not how we behave in this family." "No, no. You don’t have to scream or fight or hurt other people to get what you want." "No, no, Roger, we expect you to show respect in this family." And in time Roger began to change. Did Roger have to make all those changes in order to become a part of the family? No. He was made a part of the family simply by the grace of his adoptive parents. Did he then have to do a lot of hard work because he was in the family? You betcha!. It was tough for him to change, and he had to work at it. But he was motivated by gratitude for the incredible love he had received.
Do you have a lot of hard work to do to become a son or a daughter of the heavenly Father? No, God has already adopted you into God’s family? Do you have a lot of hard work to do now that you’re in the family? Certainly. But you make those changes because of the amazing love that made you a son or daughter. And every time you start to revert back to the old addictions to sin, God will say to you, "No, that’s not how we act in this family.” That’s the love of God in the Trinity.
