Hedged In, Love Hurts
PPT 1 Title
PPT 2 Text
Hosea 1:1 The word of the LORD which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
Hosea 1:2 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD."
Hosea is perhaps the most tragic and painful love story in the bible, and yet it is also the most wonderful. Today I am going to wrap up our series on spiritual hedges so that will take up part of what I have to say, but we can’t ignore the story of Hosea and Gomer, and God and Israel in the process.
If you remember spiritual hedges are barriers of protection (Job) a means of promoting fruit and prosperity (Isaiah 5) and today from our lesson a means of bringing alignment with God’s plan.
So let’s begin with the story in front of us and we will move on to see how God uses this story to bring people into alignment with His plans and to show us His feelings towards us.
We begin with a video, I need to warn you this may be painful to watch, it is a church’s adaptation about the love and betrayal of Hosea by Gomer.
PPT 3 Video
Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXvW6qywlP0&pbjreload=10 (Hosea Love story Part 1)
PPT 4 text
Hosea 1:1 The word of the LORD which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
Hosea 1:2 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD."
Hosea 1:3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Hosea was a prophet for more than 60 years to 4 kings of Judah and one king of Israel. (Divided kingdom)
Early, in fact the first prophetic word God gave him, was not to any of those kings but to himself. I assume he was in his late teens or early twenties at this time. In his physical prime of life. And we can also assume that like most young people love, and dating and girls were on his mind. Also, that he was a prophet so early in life, he probably was a very zealous believer. So what God tells him to do, was way out there in left field. (As in this aint’ the God channel) If Hosea had asked me what he thought God said, I would have said he is not hearing from God.
And yet He was. Hosea was chosen by God to have a miserable married life. Not because God disliked him, most likely the exact opposite, He knew He could trust Hosea with one of the most painful assignments He would ever give anyone. He has been in heaven for the last 2700 years so I think he has quite gotten over it.
He was simply to be a living parable of the love of God and the infidelity of Israel.
A lot of scholars try to clean up the story saying Gomer wasn’t a prostitute when he married her, that she had cleaned up her life, but that isn’t what the text says.
It says marry a prostitute and have kids that are the result of adultery. (Some of them weren’t his!)
How could God do that to someone? Jesus did something very similar. After a night of intense prayer He chose 12 disciples (And God only knows how many times he prayed about that, before that night). One of them He said, have not I chosen you and yet one of you is a devil. Jesus was assigned to have his betrayer right beside Him throughout His time on earth. He had a thief on the team who was stealing from monies collected to give to the poor. Sometimes the best of people get assigned the worst of people, but it is not so they can bring you down, it is so you can bring them up.
Jesus admits in His prayer in John 17 that He lost Judas, and I believe that even as He has scars on His hands and Feet, He has scars just as real in His heart for Judas, and satan, and others that will never be saved. God is not willing that any should perish. Even the Gomer’s and Judas’s and satan’s of this world.
Hosea and Gomer have a son that is theirs, and then she has two more children that the bible calls children of harlotry, most likely meaning children she had as a result of returning to a life of prostitution.
Then God tells Hosea to go buy her back from the pimps and have her as his wife again. He uses her as an illustration of what Israel had done to God, and how God will now step into the situation to turn things around.
PPT 5-7 text
Hosea 2:2 Contend with your mother, contend, For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; And let her put away her harlotry from her face, And her adultery from between her breasts,
Hosea 2:3 Lest I strip her naked And expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, Make her like desert land, And slay her with thirst.
Hosea 2:4 "Also, I will have no compassion on her children, Because they are children of harlotry.
Hosea 2:5 "For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.
Hosea 2:6 "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.
Hosea 2:7 "And she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, I will go back to my first husband, For it was better for me then than now!
So we have a flagrant adulteress, a heart broken husband, and God who says this is my story with you.
So what does the good shepherd do? He says I will hedge her way in with thorns and make her realize it is better with me than without me.
I will frustrate her plans, she won’t be able to find satisfaction, she won’t be able to get back with her other lovers, I will box her in. She will be so miserable she will wake up.
I will take the joy out of her sinful life
Song by one direction: “Everything that kills me makes me feel alive.” (See my blog on this song: http://fireonyouraltar.blogspot.com/ you will have to scroll down,) This song has over a billion views on youtube. It is a song about the pain of pleasure, Christians would say it is a song about the pain of sin. From the beginning of the bible to the end we see God using every hedge and thorn at His disposal to bring people to Himself.
Adam - thorns, weeds
Abraham - Abimilech gets sick none of his wives or maidservants are having children it makes him realize taking Sarah is the source of his trouble.
The book of Judges a repeating pattern of thorns and redemption and the ultimate example is the prodigal son who ate pigs food and couldn’t satisfy his hunger.
Paul turns people over to the devil for a whopping.
In the book of Revelation speaking of a evil seductress God says:
Revelation 2:22 Behold, I will cast her upon a bed of sickness, and those who commit adultery with her into great tribulation, unless they repent of her deeds.
Finally, the great tribulation is one of the last attempts by God to turn people around. They repented not.
Many people respond to a hedge of thorns. I did. Perhaps it would be a smart way for you to pray for lost family members.
God explains why He does these things in Hosea 11:
PPT 8 text
Hosea 11:8 How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me, All My compassions are kindled.
Hosea 11:9 I will not execute My fierce anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath.
All my compassions are kindled, my heart is broken for you, and because of that I will hedge your way in with thorns.
But that is only part of His one two punch. God uses a hedge of thorns to bring people into alignment with His purpose and plans.
PPT 9- 12 text
Hosea 2:14 "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Bring her into the wilderness, And speak kindly to her.
Hosea 2:15 "Then I will give her vineyards from there, And the valley of Achor as a door of hope. And she will sing there as in the days of her youth, As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt.
Hosea 2:16 "And it will come about in that day," declares the LORD, "That you will call Me Ishi And will no longer call Me Baali.
Hosea 2:17 "For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, So that they will be mentioned by their names no more.
Hosea 2:18 "In that day I will also make a covenant for them With the beasts of the field, The birds of the sky, And the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, And will make them lie down in safety.
Hosea 2:19 "And I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In lovingkindness and in compassion,
Hosea 2:20 And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD.
Hosea 2:21 "And it will come about in that day that I will respond," declares the LORD. I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth,
Hosea 2:22 And the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine, and to the oil, And they will respond to Jezreel.
Hosea 2:23 "And I will sow her for Myself in the land. I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, And I will say to those who were not My people, You are My people!’ And they will say, ‘ Thou art my God!’
So God made it hard, but then He makes it much better. But that is not the best that life is easier, the best is that God reconciles and is able to love His wayward sons and daughters.
PPT 13 video
Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXvW6qywlP0&pbjreload=10 (Hosea Love Story Part 6)
Close: If your way is hedged in with thorns, God is doing it to get you into alignment with His plans and purposes. He is here this morning to restore and heal you....
