Advent # 4 Resource - Christmas Is Not Your Birthday, Mike Slaughter, Abingdon Press, 2011
A Love Story
Christmas is a love story. John frames it that way. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16, NIV) But, God’s love story is not about roses, candlelight, and romance! It’s more like blood, sweat, and tears. His is a bold love, offered in the face of rejection, persistently. It’s a story of pursuit, an amazing account of just how far He would go to reach out to people who not only ignore Him, but actually love other things more than Him.
The love story of Christmas was foreshadowed in the tawdry lines of Hosea, written 7 centuries before the birth of Jesus. It’s as scandalous as Desperate Housewives, as full of drama as a Jerry Springer show! In the story of Hosea, God illustrates His love for people who turn their backs on Him.
TEXT Hosea - PB 1395
The nation of Israel was enjoying a booming economy. Jeroboam had reduced the tax burden that Solomon had laid on the people. They were not at war, spending their treasure to field an army. Life was good. But, the soul of the nation was rotten. The sense of security that enveloped the people was a false one. A disaster was looming unless the people turned to the Lord and allowed His love to reach their hearts. He said that He would save them, if only they would seek and follow Him.
Tragically, they did not and within 15 years of Hosea’s death, Israel entered a time of upheaval. Four kings were assassinated in succession. They became a weak and fragmented nation . In another 20 years or so, the nation was reduced to ruins by the invading Assyrians. Many who survived the invasion were scattered to slavery across the Assyrian empire!
If only Israel had listened to the love song of the Lord. If only they had paid attention to the amazing love story of Hosea.
READ Hosea 1:2-3
What an assignment for this ancient preacher. “Hosea, go marry a woman who will not be faithful to you! Your marriage will be an object lesson in front of the nation about the way they are living and my persistent love.”
We are not sure if Hosea actually married a prostitute, which the most literal reading of the text implies, or if his wife became unfaithful to him shortly after they were married. It was tragic marriage, one that had to cause everyone involved a great deal of pain. Gomer involved herself repeatedly with other men. She left Hosea and returned as her affairs brought disappointment. "She’ll go on the hunt for her lovers but not bring down a single one. She’ll look high and low but won’t find a one. Then she’ll say, ‘I’m going back to my husband, the one I started out with. That was a better life by far than this one.’" (Hosea 2:7, The Message)
The couple had two sons and one daughter. Hosea named them for their mother’s sins.
His first son he named, “Jezreel” which means depending on context-
“God scatters” or more positively, “God plants.”
His daughter he named, “Lo-Ruhamah” which means- “Not loved.”
And his last son he named, “Lo-Ammi” which means - “Not mine, or not my people.”
But as the story unfolds, we learn that even her children were not sufficient reason for her to leave her sin. She left once again, sinking into an awful life of depravity, eventually becoming a prostitute offering herself for sale. Once again, Hosea is given a tough assignment.
READ Hosea 3: 1- 3
Can you imagine that kind of love- finding your wife, the mother of your children, in a cheap brothel, paying for her, and bringing her back home? Though it is a story of sad degradation, of great pain, and ugly sin. Hosea’s love for Gomer, his wife, is a revelation of the deep and persistent love of God for His people.
This is us! Keep that in mind. How easily we forget the promises we make to God in our time of desperation. How easily some walk away from their first love, from the promise they made when they were baptized into the family of God, from the joyful newness of they find when they respond to Christ in faith.
And God’s love pursues them.
READ Hosea 2: 16-17, 19-23
Did you note the change in the names?
This is the story of God and those He created. We were made to love Him, to find life in Him, to belong exclusively to Him. But sin entered the world and broke our relationship.
People become enthralled with things other than God. They chase wealth with a religious fervor. Pleasure becomes a god to whom health, wealth, and reputation are sacrificed. Money, sex, food, power all become lovers to whom people give themselves. Like prostitutes, degraded and abused, life is stolen and a slavery befalls those who have abandoned God. But, He does not abandon us!
This is the amazing, often overlooked, story of Christmas. God came to buy us back from that slavery. He came to restore our relationship to Him. The Bible says that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8, NIV)
Even though we talk about it all the time, do we really understand the love of God?
In many people’s hearts there resides an excessive pride, a lack of any real sense of sinfulness, which erases any real or deep appreciation of His love. Our pride, which is part of our sinful nature, is fed by our culture of self-esteem and entitlement. “I deserve this.” is our mantra! This pride and its cousin, a sense of selfish entitlement, makes the Scripture’s statements about sin all but incomprehensible to many, perhaps most, Americans. Ask many of us about the choices we have made and you will hear something like this in reply: “We don’t sin, we make mistakes.”
The first chapter of Romans explains when we make the deliberate choice to ignore the evidence for God’s love that exists even in the Creation we slip deeper and deeper into depravity and sin. Delusion takes over and guilt gradually erodes until a person can live in the most depraved way without feeling any sense of guilt. We read there that "they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen." (Romans 1:25, NIV) "Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done." (Romans 1:28, NIV)
Still God loves!
He pursues us to the lowest places, holding out the offer of forgiveness. He not only invites us to return home, but as we see in the story of Hosea, to become intimately in love with Him once again. He will not hold us at a distance, reminding us again and again of our past sin. If we admit our sin, seek His forgiveness, He forgives and forgets!
Key Q.- Have you accepted the scandalous love of Christ?
About 90 years after the birth of Jesus, John, now an aged apostle, reflected and wrote these words of astonishing promise: "To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:12-14, NIV)
∙ Will you, by faith, accept His offer of love and return to the Father’s house?
∙ Will you let the life of the Spirit take root in you, producing rich harvest of spiritual fruit?
∙ Will you who were once outside of His love, be renamed, ‘my beloved’ by your Father?
∙ Will you who were once outside of His family, be drawn in and called ‘a child of God?’
Part of the assurance we gain from being restored to His house, from knowing His love, is the trust that He is at work on our behalf, working to bring good out of bad, bringing His comfort to broken places in us. In repentance God’s greatest blessings can be known. Hosea’s sermon closes with these words of promise.
"Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them. The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them." (Hosea 14:9, NIV)
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There is a horizontal - that is, person to person - aspect to this message. The Bible says that ‘we love because He first loved us.’
Key Q. Is the love of God scandalously given to you and me, unworthy and undeserving as we were, allowed to work powerfully in us so that we love others in a way that defies the common ideas of justice?
Are we risking love only for those with whom we are comfortable, or only towards those from whom we have reasonable expectation of a return?
Let’s commit to praying that God’s love for us inspires love in us. Make it an active love like His.
He pursued the world that ignored even rejected Him!
I would like to challenge you to think of a person who consistently hurts you, or perhaps someone who has disappointed you in the most profound way.
Now, will you pray for them?
Now will you seek to forgive them, whole-hearted, releasing any debt of bitterness, opening the door to relationship once again?
Hosea’s love is a model for us! Reconciling to his wayward wife, taking her shame on himself, risking hurt yet again, had to be incredibly difficult, but he was willing to do so because God called him to it. So are we! Loved so amazingly, we love. True Christian love is scandalous. It is irrational. It is amazing. It is full of grace.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." (John 3:16, NIV)
Amen.
