Michael A. Murdock
Clearing The Path; Minor Adjustments That Clear the Pathway for Major Life Improvements #1
Based on a series from LifeSteps.org
April 27, 2003
“The Unconditional Love of God”
Hosea 14:4
Introduction
During a revival a certain man came into the meeting and sat in the back row. The next night he moved halfway toward the front. The third night he was sitting in the front row. The fourth night he broke out in prayer, "Lord, fill me!" Over to one side there was a woman who knew the man well. She cautioned the Lord, "Careful, Lord! He leaks!"
*A fisherman who was out of fellowship with the Lord was at sea with his godless companions when a storm came up and threatened to sink their ship. His friends begged him to pray; but he demurred, saying, "It’s been a long time since I’ve done that or even entered a church." At their insistence, however, he finally cried out, "O Lord, I haven’t asked anything of You in 15 years, and if You help us now and bring us safely to land, I promise I won’t bother You again for another 15!"
Many of us who have accepted Christ as our savior are sometimes prone to wondering if as the song goes, that God can actually save a wretch like me. Often we may only call on God when we’ve reached the end of our rope and there seems to be no other way to solve our problems. Just as the world around us grows cold and lifeless as the winter comes, so may we experience times of winter in our own spiritual walk with God
Yet for the Christian we should never fear the lose of our salvation, because of the enduring power of God’s unconditional love for his redeemed, that reaches out to us even when our love for Him grows cold.
In the book of Hosea we see this love played out in Hosea’s relationship with a prostitute and then in God’s response to His people, Israel.
Turn with me to the book of Hosea, chapter one in the Old Testament.
I. God’s Picture: Unconditional Love
A. Hosea marries a prostitute
“Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because this land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord. So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim…” (Hosea 1:2,3)
-God commands Hosea to marry a prostitute named Gomer as an example of God’s love for an adulterous people.
-Now you can imagine that with a name like Gomer, not to mention her occupation, she probably wasn’t the most desirable women for a preacher’s wife.
-Call her a tramp, a harlot, a gutter snipe, , whatever derogatory term you could think of because this woman, Gomer, was one of societies outcast, looked down upon by the “morally good” people of society, a woman of no value except for the men she serviced.
-How could anyone love a person like Gomer? And yet Hosea takes her off the streets and into his home and shows her love and kindness. He makes her is wife, someone who is important and a valuable part of his life.
-Not only does Hosea take Gomer to be his wife, but he makes a home for her illegitimate children as well, children born of her harlotries.
-Like Hosea, Jesus takes us, a rebellious and sinful people, he loves us and invites us in. Jesus ask us to be his bride, He takes away our rags of filth and gives us garments of white.
B. Hosea’s children
-An then the “happy couple”, I use that term loosely, have three more children.
-Now, before I give you children’s names, let us look at what was happening with God’s people during this time.
-Hosea preached during the time of the divided kingdom with the reign of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hesekiah kings of Judah in the south and Jeroboam II king of Israel in the north. (Hosea 1:1)
-Hosea’s ministry took place in the last days just before the Northern Tribes of Israel were taken into captivity by the Assyrians.
-Jeroboam II had followed in the footsteps of his father Jehoash, in promoting idolatry.
-And so God is angry and prophesy against his apostate people, a people who are turning their backs on God’s mercy, again the Word of the Lord is spoken through the names of Gomer’s three children.
1. Jezreel (Hosea 2:4)
-Means that “God sows or scatters”
-This name in the Hebrew sound very similar to the word “Israel”, which means to strive against God.
-Thus the message being spoken is that those who were striving against God, God’s people, will be scattered, but there is a sense of hope that they will also be replanted to grow again.
-The Northern tribe is warned that they will be taken into captivity and scattered if they do not repent of their wicked ways.
-For the Christian this means, when we hang on to sin in our life or try to mix a worldly life with a Christian life, that we should not be surprised when life gets tough and we experience pain in our life.
2. Lo-Ruhamah [Lo-roo-ha-mah] (Hosea 2:6):
-Means that “no mercy or abandoned”
-God warns his people that he will not hold back the Assyrians, that God will allow evil to befall them, that his hand of mercy will be removed from their lives.
-When we back slide or drift away in our relationship with God we may find ourselves feeling abandoned by God and alone with our troubles.
-In these times we may say that God does not care.
*As a teenager in High school one time I had stayed out till about 6 a.m. just hanging out with my friends. When I got home, my mom was really angry, she had been worried that something happened to me. I hadn’t called to tell her I would be out so late, because time had just slipped away. And so when I got home we had a big argument. I left home and drove off in my car, mad at my mother because she didn’t trust me. My parents were divorced at that point in my life. I didn’t go far, just down the street behind the church, where she wouldn’t find me. I would show her. I would really make her worry. I climbed in the back seat and hid as a police car drove by, probably looking for me. I remember how lonely I felt and how far away from the ones I loved. My own anger and inconsiderate actions had driven me away from the very person who cared about me the most.
3. Lo-ammi (Hosea 2:9):
-Means “not my people”
-God warns the people that the depths of their rebellion will ultimately separate them from God.
-Not that the Lord would cease to be their God, but for his people in captivity, it would seem to them that God has given up on them.
-That is what sin does it drives a wedge between us and God.
-The adversary, Satan, would like nothing more then to separate us from the love of God, to draw us away from the one who loves and cares for us.
-God was trying to teach Israel that He loved them, even though they were unworthy of His love, and unworthy of a relationship with Him. God wanted to heal them, but their spiritual adultery was keeping them from seeing God’s unconditional love.
II. God’s Problem: A Backslidden Child
A. God’s people are Unfaithful.
-As a Christian, what happens when we sin? What happens when we have received the gift of God, salvation through Jesus Christ, and then we mess up, we fail, we return to the pattern of our past sinful behaviors?
-Can we lose our salvation, once we have accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, having been immersed in water our symbolic burial with Christ and having been raised from that water to a new life, can we once again fall into that old life and become rejected by God?
-Before I give you that answer, let’s look at some more of what was happening during Hosea’s ministry.
-Jeroboam’s great, great grandfather Jeroboam I had cleansed the land of Baal worship, and had established the towns of Bethal and Dan as worship centers to rival that of Jerusalem.
-Then he built two Golden Calves in order for the people of the Northern tribe to worshiped the Lord.
-Sound familiar, it was the same thing that had happened back at Mount Sinai, when Moses brought down the Ten Commandments for the first time and broke them when he saw the people worshiping God in the form of a Golden Calf led by Aaron.
-Yet like the Northern tribe that saw no wrong in mixing idolatry, worshipping the golden calves, with worshipping the Lord; we slide back into sinful behavior even though we have been set free and have become children of God.
*It is like being in a prison cell and the door is wide open, or having your hands and feet in chains, but in one of your hands you hold the key.
-Sin is bondage, it is self-destructive, it makes us feel guilt and pain, it pushes God out of our lives. Sometimes even though we have been set free from the bondage of sin we return to our past patterns of behavior and are again ensnared by sin’s deceit.
[Read Hosea 2:2-5]
-Hosea finds that his wife Gomer, has been cheating on him, that she has returned to the only life she knew, that of prostitution. It may even be that his last child is not his own.
-In the reflection of Hosea’s life, we see God when he reaches out with all his love, placing himself upon the cross, suffering humiliation for us, just to bring us home, to clean us up and make us his bride. And in return for that love He is betrayed.
B. God chastises his people.
-But what of Gomer. Why has she returned to her sinful past? Why has she turned her back on the only person who has shown her love and kindness?
-I think we all know the answer, because many of us have wrestled with slipping back into patterns of behavior that we know are wrong.
-It may be that we find ourselves living for the pleasure of the moment, unable to see the joy of eternity.
-It may be we have not yet learned a better way of life, that we have not yet put God on the throne of our life and allowed his ways to become ours.
-It may be that we simple have slipped, that we made one mistake, and the shame and guilt of that one mistake has put us in a downward spiral, that because we screwed up again, that God could never love and he could never forgive us, and that we might as well give in to the wickedness that is consuming us.
-Gomer never realized just how good she had it, how blessed she was to be Hosea’s wife.
“She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold –which they used for Baal.” (Hosea 2:8)
-Gomer had not realized that everything she wanted in life, the reasons for which she sought out prostitution to fill those needs were all provide by her husband Hosea.
-God had provided for his people Israel, the very silver and gold they had used for idolatry. But God’s people did not honor him, they were unfaithful.
-God has set us free from guilt, free from the burden of self-destructive sin, free from the pain that sin brings.
-The same God who loves us while we were unlovable, who ransomed his life for ours.
-And yet we too turn our backs upon him, whenever we return to the bondage of sin.
*When a child does wrong we punish that child, not to inflict harm upon that child, but that our child might learn and return to us.
[Read Hebrews 12:5-11]
-And although we may not understand or see God’s plan, we can be confident that his discipline is done out of love and not in a desire to hurt us but to prosper us.
“Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. [God will place obstacles in our life’s path to disrupt the enjoyment of our sins]
She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; She will look for them but not find them. [God will make sin unfulfilling and frustrating, we will never be satisfied with our sin]
Then she will say, “I will go back to my husband as at first for then I was better off than now.” (Hosea 2:6,7)
C. God seeks to restore his people.
-God’s chastisement, his discipline is meant to lead us back to Him, to bring restoration.
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” (Hosea 2:14)
-Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom before we will start listening to God, or return to him. God leads us into the desert many times in our life, that he may transform our hearts, because often it is these trials that force us to make changes in our lives, but those of us who refuse to be changed find ourselves still in the desert, crying out why God?
“There [in the desert] I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor [valley of trouble; the valley were Achan had been stoned for disobeying the Lord] a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. In that day, “declares the Lord “you will call me my husband [Ishi]; you will no longer call me my master [Baali]. (Hosea 2:15, 16)
-Gomer would be restored, not to the point where she was Hosea’s wife, just before she had returned to her sins, but that she would be restored to the purity of her childhood, before she had ever known the pain and guilt of prostitution.
-God wants to restore the joy of his people back to the time that they took the first steps of freedom from the bondage of slavery in Egypt.
-God wants to restore your life, completely, to remove the shackles of guilt and pain that you experience from the many times you have failed in life.
III. God’s Promise: Restoration
A. God calls us to genuine repentance.
-Too often our repentance is short lived, we return to God long enough to feel good about ourselves and then return to our rebellious lives.
“What can I do with you Ephraim? What can I do with you Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears. Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets, I kill you with the words of my mouth; my judgements flashed like lightning upon you. For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God, rather than burnt offerings. (Hosea 6:4-6)
-God is saying; what am I going to do with you? Your love for me comes and goes like the morning dew. I keep having to slap you in the face with my words. Do I have to put up a big neon sign for you to get the message. I desire mercy, I want you to acknowledge me as your God in the things you say and do. Don’t just give me lip service.
-The reason people keep back sliding or falling back into rebellious behavior is they never allow God to make those changes in the way in which they live their lives.
*Like a child that puts on a new dress and then goes back out to play in the mud.
B. We accept the responsibility for our actions and be changed.
“Return, O Israel, to the Lord, your God. Your sins have been your downfall!” (Hosea 14:1)
-This is the deal: As a Christian you are free from the bonds of sin. Jesus paid upon the cross every sin you have committed or will ever commit for the rest of your life.
-The forgiveness of sins is a gift, something you can never ever earn, buy, or pay for. It is freely given to you by God.
-If we think that we must live a good life to earn that status of being God’s child then we cheapen the actions of Jesus and his death upon the cross.
-Jesus said upon the cross “It is finished,” and there isn’t one word, hyphen, or comma that you can add to what Jesus has done for you.
-If you are not a 100% sure that you are going to heaven right now, then you better ask yourself if you really do know Jesus as Lord and Savior.
-Because if you accept the gift of salvation, if you believe that Jesus is both your Savior and your Lord, then there is no doubt that you are heaven bound without.
-Because it is not about you being good enough, but it is all about what Jesus has done for you. Just like Hosea’s love for Gomer was unconditional so is God’s love for us.
-What then of my sins?
-Paul says, “Shall we go on sinning that grace might increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Rom. 6:1,2)
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9)
Conclusion
-Even though as a Christian sin has no reign over my life and it’s effects can in no way jeopardize my place in heaven, sin does have painful effects here and now in our lives.
-Why allow the hurtful affects of sin, that draw you away from God, that make you ineffective to share the love of God with other, why allow the guilt of sin to bring you down. Sinful action has awful affects in our lives, both in consequences and our relationship with God.
-But you know what, sin will never separate you from God’s love for you nor can it cost you your place in heaven.
-The only sin that can keep the Christian from going to Heaven is to deny Jesus Christ and turn your back on the one who saves you.
-As long as you accept his gift, it is yours to keep.
