Love Her Again

The third chapter from Hosea 3. The Lord said to me, Go show your love to your wife again,! though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.

Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes. So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethic of barley.

Then I told her, You are to live with me many days. You must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you. For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol.

Afterward, the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings. In the last days.

Mary, an adulterous wife. This one command from God would have been a painful one for this teenager, older teenager, man of marriageable age, to have heard.

It would mean at once death to all of his dreams of having a happy marriage, happy family life, and instead to embrace what would have had to have looked like utter torture and shame of an unfaithful wife and living with her illegitimate children.

Now, why would God ever say that to his prophet? Well, he tells us, chapter 1, verse 2, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord, Hosea 1, 2.

Your marriage, Hosea, is to be the stage on which my relationship to Israel is clearly seen.

And when your wife leaves you for other men, Israel will have a vivid picture of their own vilest adultery in departing from me, her rightful husband and Lord.

Now, we need to remember that Hosea is a public figure, by which I mean he was a prophet of God, a leader in Israel. And the world does not let the marital woes of public figures go unnoticed, does it?

And when Hosea's wife plays the whore, you can be sure that that was known from Dan to Beersheba. All throughout the land.

Every tabloid, every newspaper, the talk of the town, the conversation in every salon, over every coffee table. Can you believe what Hosea's wife did to him?

And God would not miss the opportunity at that critical point to make the message known to Israel. I told Hosea to take a whore as a wife.

Because that's what I got when I married you. Now, it had to be one of the hardest commands this young man ever faced.

And yet, he obeyed it. He married Gomer. And sure enough, she became unfaithful to him. And sure enough, she gave birth to children of other men.

And finally, after at least five years, we don't know exactly how long, but because of the three children and waiting until she was done weaning one before she had the other, we know it was at least five years she finally left him to go after her other lovers.

Now, you're Hosea. Your heart's been ripped out and stamped on. You have known betrayal and rejection, shame and embarrassment.

Every time you go out of the house, it seems like every eye is on you and every mouth is talking about you. And she probably cut and ran, leaving you with the kids, as that caliber of woman usually does.

But somehow, by the grace of God, you've managed. You've got on with your life. You've tried to pull it all together. Taking care of these children, two of which are not your own.

Getting on with your work as a prophet. And perhaps thinking, I'm doing all that I can do. I've done all that I could be asked to do.

And it's just then that God comes and says to you as clearly as He said something to you the first time, you're wrong. That's not all there is for you to do.

There's something more for you to do because I have something more to communicate to Israel. There's a whole lot more for you to do because I want to communicate to her via your marriage not only that she has played the whore and been unfaithful to me by going after her idols, but I want you to communicate something else to her.

I want her to know for sure that I still love her. After all she's done to me, I still love her.

And so the bombshell command falls. As clearly as the Lord had said the first time, go marry an adulterous wife, it comes again the second time saying, go love your wife again.

The word show is not in the original. It's just go love your wife again. And with that, the old wounds are reopened and all the emotions of pain and rejection and embarrassment came flooding in all over again.

how can I love her again after all she's done to me? And besides, doesn't God know that she's gone? She's not even here for me to love again.

Yes, God obviously knows that because his word is go love your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.

you see, the adultery was ongoing. Not a one night stand, but a habit, a way of life. She's presently living with another man.

God knows it and still he says, go love her again. I don't know which command was harder. Go marry her, go love her again.

again. It's not just go live with her. That would be hard enough. It's not like some people who find other people difficult in their lives and say, well, okay, I'll put up with her, but I won't love her.

No, the word is go love her again. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites.

though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes. Now, this command is echoed to every husband in Ephesians chapter 5, isn't it?

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Now, that's hard enough when your wife's faithful. But when she's an adulteress, continuing in her adultery, the difficulty factor goes right over the top.

And that's the command to Hosea. Now, if this kind of love seems impossible to you and out of reach, it is. Because, after all, it's God's love.

It's supernatural. It's not natural to love someone who treats you this way. It's not natural to love her again.

we'd rather give up and not waste one more ounce of love on her. But it's the kind of love that God has for his own people when they run after idols instead of him.

And so Hosea is being called upon to demonstrate God's love. The kind of love he has for us as people when we are going on in our sin and on in our backsliding and going on putting other God substitutes in his place in our lives.

So it's my absolute privilege this morning to lead us in a study of God's love for his elect people. The love of God for his chosen ones.

and that we get to see several different qualities of this love in chapter three. The first thing that we see is that God's love for his elect is unfailing love.

Go love her again. Hosea loved her before her fall. He is now to love her after her fall. Indeed, he is to love her in her fall.

Indeed, he is to love her out of her fall. His love is to outlast her adultery and to win her back.

Because the Lord's love outlasts Israel's idolatry, which is spiritual adultery. The Lord says to Israel in Jeremiah 31.3, I have loved you with an everlasting love, therefore have I drawn you with loving kindness.

The reason I go on drawing you with loving kindness is because I set a love on you that is everlasting. You can offend me, you can sin against me, you can put other things in my place, but you can't ever get outside of my love.

Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken, nor my covenant of peace be removed, says the Lord who has compassion on you.

Now hear me carefully. There were individuals within Israel in any given generation who were damned eternally for their sin and unbelief.

Because as Paul tells us in the New Testament, not all Israel is Israel. If you can follow that, not all within Israel were the true bride of Christ.

But God's love for Israel was such that he never gave up on her, he never stopped loving Israel, and he always preserved a remnant from within her.

And that's the kind of love he has for all his elect. Unfailing love. We know the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, and it tells us some things that love is and love is not.

Things that love does and things that love does not do. And it says it always perseveres. It never fails. Well, that's God's love.

Never peters out, never grinds to a halt, never runs out, never shuts down. I've had other people's love toward me shut down. shut down fast. But I've never had Jesus' love for me shut down.

It's unfailing love, never ending love. And it's wonderful to enjoy the security of knowing that you are loved by God, your creator and judge, with an eternal love.

That simply means there will never be a time in all eternity when he does not love us. Now, do you know that love?

Do you rely on it? Dozens of places in the scriptures, many of them in the Psalms, that talk about the unfailing love of the Lord and our response to it.

Do you hope in it? Do you trust in it? Do you meditate on it? Do you take comfort in it? Do you plead it in prayer? Rise up and help us, redeem us because of your unfailing love.

Do you give thanks for it? It's no small thing to be loved unfailingly. It should change the way we live every day. How priceless is your unfailing love?

Well, that's the first description. We see that in Hosea chapter 3. God's love for Israel is unfailing. That's why Hosea must love her again.

Secondly, it's gracious love. What I mean by gracious love is that it's given to those who deserve the opposite. Human love says, I love you if you love me.

I love you if you treat me a certain way. It looks for a deserving object. That's natural love. But God's love says, I love you even though you don't love me.

Even though you turn your back on me and love someone or something else instead of me. That's a whole different kind of love, isn't it?

He loves Israel in spite of her idolatry. That's gracious love. Do you know God didn't have to love Israel? God didn't have to love you as a sinner, but he chose to.

It is a gracious thing to be loved by God. We've seen already in this study of Hosea, haven't we, just how offensive idolatry is to God.

When we put something else in the place that God alone should have, we've seen how offensive it is. It's like your spouse running out on you. That's what the whole book is about, showing us our idols from God's perspective.

It's like your spouse committing an adultery and then saying to you, but don't take it personally. Well, I'm sorry, there is no way to commit adultery without slamming your spouse because you're saying I found something better.

At least for the moment, you're not as good as. You'll find that running right through every unfaithful situation. So, we find the offensiveness to God when we have our other things in his place.

We can't say, but don't take it personal, God. I just enjoy myself in this activity. I don't have any time for you, but don't take it personally. What do you mean don't take it personally?

Of course he rejection. They're a slap in the face of God. I found something better for you than you.

And consider the inequity of it all as we find here in verse one, the last half. Here on the one hand you have God loving Israel. Amazing. God loving Israel.

And over here you have Israel loving raisin cakes. What's wrong with this picture? Raisin cakes for which she thanks Baal for all her produce and used in her worship of Baal.

But me she forgot. The Lord says. Oh the trivial things that we exchange for God. Yes the raisin cakes in our lives.

And yet God still loves her even while she's loving her raisin cakes and her other gods. She had done her best to cause God to stop loving her. But he loves her still in place.

And he says I love you still. I love you still. I love you still. One slap after the other in the face of God. And I love you still because I don't love you because of some good way you're treating me.

I love you because I love you. It all comes from me. It's self-fed and self-kindled love. And that's why I still love you. I love you freely.

Now I wonder doesn't that shed a whole new light on 1 Corinthians 13 when it says love is patient. It bears all things.

All things. All insults. All betrayals. All rejections. Could we bear from one another what he daily bears from us.

Yet our glorious friend and brother loves us though we treat him thus. Though for good we render ill he accounts as brethren still. Dear believers that's how God loves you.

On your best days on your worst days and that's how Hosea is to love his wayward wife with love that's unfailing and love that is gracious. But then thirdly we see that God's love for his elect is initiating love.

Initiating love. Could we go to your house for a minute? And let me ask you what happens in your marriage when there is a breakdown in the relationship because of no fault of your own?

In other words it's their fault. Do you wait for your guilty spouse to make the first move toward reconciliation? I mean I'm perfectly willing to forgive but they're going to have to take the initiative in restoring the relationship.

After what she's done she's going to have to come back crawling to me. Now that's the question do you wait for her to make the first move?

If so well that makes sense because that's natural love. That's the kind of love we have. It can rise no higher than that. But never confuse that with God's love.

That's not God's love. And that's why God doesn't let Hosea play the waiting game. Because he's to love Gomer like God loves Israel.

So God's word to Gomer is go. Do you hear the initiative in that word? Go. You leave where you're at and you go to where she's at and you love her.

Go love your wife again. I know she's not home. I know that she's not even on her way home. I know she's not even thinking about you. I know she's still seeking other lovers and still in love with her adulterous ways that she is right now living with another man.

But my word to you Hosea is not wait for her. It's go to her and love her again. There's no love like this.

This is God's love. And love her as I love the Israelites. This is a little tutoring session between God and Hosea. You go love her again and love her as I love the Israelites though they turn to their other gods and raisin cakes.

Hosea the whole last half of chapter two you saw how I loved Israel when she forsook me forgot me and ran after her beloved idols.

I didn't sit and wait for her to come crawling back to me in repentance. I went to her. I led her out into the desert and there I sought to allure her to win her back to woo her seeking to recapture the heart that no longer loved me but loved idols and I made sweet promises to her there and I spoke of a new day of a new safety of a new blessedness a new prosperity in the land if only she would return to me now Hosea you do what I did you go and love her again though she's far off from ever seeking you you've got some work to do in recapturing her adulterous heart brothers and sisters if God waited for us to love him first before he loved us he would never ever love us because left to ourselves we're so in love with ourselves and sin and our idols that we never ever would forsake them to seek him no one ever comes to him unless he's drawn by previous love the reason we love him is because he first loved us first

John 4 19 why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come it was the same love that spread the gospel feast that sweetly drew us in else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin when we had no interest in him he loved us again and again and again God did not sit in heaven when his race fell in Adam and just wait for them to come calling back to him in repentance never would have happened no God took the initiative and he sent his one and only son to recapture the heart of his straying ones and to bring all his elect back to himself!

God love love God is initiating love always always always taking the first step and Hosea is given that kind of an assignment you go love her again unfailing gracious initiating love and his response to God's command is just as swift and direct as the first command Hosea go marry an adulterous wife we read so he married Gomer Hosea go love her again we read in verse two so he bought her isn't that beautiful if that's what you want Lord and in a day of such unfaithfulness here was a man that marched to his God's orders so he bought her that leads us to the fourth mark of

God's love it's costly love no we don't want to run right away to the price paid for her I want you to think of in how many ways Hosea paid think of how costly this love was to Hosea not just financially but in every way I believe that his first step in loving her again was that can I say he lovingly stalked her he found out her whereabouts and places that she was often found in shopping or wherever she was going and he hung out there just in the hopes of having a few tender words with her how awkward that first meeting was but he would not be put off by her indifference by her cutting words he kept pursuing her dogging her steps in love popping up out of nowhere there he is again he keeps coming to me with these kind words wooing me promising me better days a new relationship urging me to return to him come back home and make a new start that will have no end between you and me

Gomer wouldn't want him to know but life with her other lover was not everything it was cracked up to be these other lovers are never what they claim to be and to say that she was disappointed in love would be to say the least so at some point in this alluring process she agrees to come home she concludes I will go back to my husband at first for then I was better off than now chapter 2 verse 7 told us that how long did he pursue her how many days did he endure her slaps on the face we don't know much motivated by love for him as just greed it's better at home than it is out here that's where she's at but there's still an obstacle in the way isn't there he has to buy her did that shock you when you heard that he has to buy her verse 2 so

I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and about 10 bushels of barley now we're not sure that she now became a slave we know that 15 shekels of silver was only the price of about half the price of a slave but perhaps that's all Hosea could afford on his profit salary we don't know and to have to make up the rest of it with barley ten bushels of which he had may show us just how difficult it was for him to scrape!

together the price demanded by her lover for her release it's his own wife for crying out loud he's got to buy her the humiliation as he counts out 13 14 15 shekels 8 bushels 9 bushels 10 bushels to the man she was living with and he goes home with the prize gomer she's not a prize yet but he loved her still with a costly love not just in cash silver and barley but in all the humiliation that he bore and the new testament leads us to the cross for another transaction of the jilted husband praying the price to redeem his adulterous bride and it says look my soul look that's what it costs to redeem you from your sin your idols your other lovers he redeemed us not with silver and barley as

Hosea did but with his own precious blood we all like sheep had gone astray we turned each one to his own we all like gomer had gone astray we had turned each one to his we all like israel had gone astray we had turned each one to his own way and rather than judgment it says and he and the Lord laid on him the suffering servant of Jehovah he laid on him the iniquity of us all of our love for our sin he laid it all on him and he bore the wrath that should have been ours what a love what a cost and don't think this didn't hit the rumor mill of Israel when Hosea brought his own wife back home and people started saying all over again can you believe what

Hosea did he loved her he went and bought her he wooed her and brought her back home and God would not miss the teachable moment to say through his prophet that's how Jehovah still feels about you Israel as you're pursuing as fast as you can your idols he loves you still he loves you with an unfailing love fifth this love of God is a demanding love verse three Hosea speaking then I told her after he brings her home you are to live with me many days you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man probably including Hosea at this point and I will live with you so he brings her home and he sets up this probationary period of many days a testing period to see if she had learned her lesson and changed her ways is her love renewed for

Hosea and not just for better things or will she just take the better offer coming along next he requires her to make a clean break with her adulterous ways to no longer play the harlot and if so then he would live with her again with all the privileges of the restored marriage relationship and all the blessings that belonged to that relationship but until then the full privileges were withheld now Hosea did not stop loving her when he made these demands of her these are the demands of love this is all part of what it means to go love her again these are as much for her good as they are for Hosea's good what a corrective this is to the popular notion of

God's unconditional love a term that is so terribly abused in our own day when someone rebukes or corrects another the retort is often well you don't love me unconditionally!

like God does as if to say that he loves me just as I am without any agenda to change me he's content to love me and leave me as I am folks not in a million million years that's nowhere near the love that God has for his elect you don't see it in Hosea treatment of Gomer you don't see it in God's treatment of Israel yes he loves and accepts you unconditionally in the sense of as you are you come to him with your sin and all you don't clean yourself up first and make yourself right for him right out of the arms of another lover he loves you as you are but let me tell you something dear believer he loves you so much that he will not leave you in the arms of another lover he loves us that much to deliver us from our own self destructive ways and his love demands that you repent and change your ways that you obey him now as your husband his love requires you to make a clean break with your sin there's discipline in his love with real teeth in it it's not all alluring it's not all tender pleading he has a tough love as well as a tender love and we'll see that in this book of

Hosea his love can be like a lion fangs just as sharp his love is far tougher than this soft generation of American Christianity knows and I put myself right in the ranks this book will show us frightful things that God will do to discipline his errant wife the ends to which his love will go to sanctify his stubborn bride his love will discipline you if you don't change and his love will discipline you until you do change his love is jealous love it refuses to share your heart with another will settle for nothing but an undivided devotion to him and all the while he's disciplining us and all the while we're straying and rebelling he's loving us he's loving us because the

Lord disciplines those he loves and punishes every son he accepts that's the mark of sonship that's how you know you're one of his elect bride he comes after you he won't let you remain as you are and so the reason Hosea has this testing period of many days before he receives Hosea back or Gomer back into all the privileges of marriage is because that's the way the Lord did it with Israel that's the way the Lord loved Israel verse 4 he explains that the reason I set these demands on your love verse 4 is because for the Israelites will live many days without king or princes without sacrifice or sacred stones without ephod or idol you see Israel's shallow temporary repentance was well known to Hosea and to all the prophets it was well known to God

God disciplines Israel away they go to exile their enemies the land fruit goes kaput everything going and they cry out to Lord oh Lord we return to you save us God saves them but their love was like the morning dew that was quickly gone and they're quickly back to their idols and that cycle keeps going on and on through the judge in the desert during the period of the judges during the early period of the kings and finally God says that's it that's it we are going to have this probationary longer period of time to prove your heart a time of testing a time of purifying a time of withheld blessings and the many days marked for it will actually turn into hundreds of years things deprived were both good and bad but the good had become so corrupted by the bad that they're all to be deprived from

Israel the kings they will be without kings now the northern kingdom of Israel had set up rival kings to God's Davidic kings that he had chosen and those kings had led the people away into idolatry and so the northern kingdom was destroyed and away into Syrian captivity they went and there were no more kings in Israel but even the southern kingdom would later go into Babylonian captivity and that would turn into Greek captivity and Roman captivity and they would go centuries without a king until he came to whom the scepter belonged this period this probationary period without kings without sacrifice or sacred stones here's a mixture of good and bad the daily sacrifices in the temple you won't have that anymore because they had mixed their Baal worship with them and their sacred stones their idolatrous he's going to shut down the whole temple worship will will and be destroyed and you'll be without ephod or idol the priest had their ephod by which they consulted the lord to see what his will shall we this or shall we that and they would consult the ephod it was the way that

God communicated but they had turned it all into magic they didn't love God and his will they wanted to find out if the ephod said what we want to hear then we'll obey as for these household idols they use them to seek their guidance and so the Lord says all of it you're going to be deprived of it all for many days as he doggedly lovingly pursues Israel during the times of the exile Assyria Babylon Greek Roman the intertestament period between the old and new testaments this period of probation and though the time of testing is undefied it just says many days it is many it's long but it was limited it's not forever it's going to come to an end for some point Israel would truly return to the Lord and then these conditions of deprivation would end and true blessing would return and that leads us lastly to

God's love being conquering love conquering love for God's love would conquer and recapture the hearts of Israel and everyone who knows Christ this morning knows what I'm talking about when I speak of a capturing love a conquering love the love of Jesus has conquered you you are held in its grip the love of Christ constrains me to no longer live for myself and my idols but for him who loved me and was raised from the dead for me he has this irresistible love that conquers the hearts of all his elect notice verse five speaks of this conquering love afterwards after this period of probation the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king!

They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days several clues as to when this will be fulfilled notice it's afterwards after this period of testing there will come the fully restored relationship between God and his bride notice as well that it would be marked by the Israelites returning and seeking the Lord they had forsaken the Lord and gone after their idols this day will be marked by them turning returning to the Lord and seeking him now though something of this happened when they returned from their Babylonian exile and came back to Jerusalem yet all of it was not fulfilled then there were still no kings and so we're better to think of this being fulfilled this prophecy being fulfilled in the days of Christ the Messiah when he comes and indeed there is a reference here to

Christ when he says they will they will seek David their king that was a catch word a word that they used for the coming Messiah David their king Ezekiel 34 23 and 24 I will place over them one shepherd in that day my servant David will tend them and be their shepherd I the Lord will be their God and my servant David will be prince among them king among them and they'll live in safety and live in a fruitful land and so on Jeremiah 23 the days are coming when I will raise up to David a righteous branch a king who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land in his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety and the name by which he will be called is the Lord our righteousness who would that be that's the Lord Jesus Jehovah!

the Lord our righteousness and we remember God had promised David a son who would sit upon his throne forever and ever well all this was preparing Israel for the coming Messiah so that when Messiah comes the angel comes to the Virgin Mary and announces his upcoming birth it's in terms of David the king for the angel said to Mary the Lord God speaking of the one to be born and conceived in her womb by the Holy Spirit the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Israel of Jacob forever his kingdom will never end and notice as well the reference in the last days when will this happen in the last days that's a reference to the time of Christ that starts at his first coming and that ends in his last coming and those years between indeed as we're living even now are part of the last days as they were viewed by these

Old Testament prophets looking forward to the last days when Messiah comes and these restoration prophecies that we find at the end of chapter 1 at the end of chapter 2 and at the end of chapter 3 of Hosea all are pointing for the time when Christ would come that period of the last days between his first coming and second coming and what did we see when he came the first time after he paid the price for his church's redemption and was ascended into heaven and there sat upon David's throne what do we see we see him gathering his bride where were the first people in the bride of Christ drawn from from the Israelites 3,000 of them in one day Pentecost there in Jerusalem the church swelled these are Jews and as the gospel goes out to the nations where did they go to the synagogue first and often it was these Jews of the dispersed

Jews that believed on Messiah they were returning to the Lord with trembling and to his blessing in the last day his salvation blessing and then it also included the Gentiles isn't that what we've Israel in Hosea 1 and 2 are applied to the church not by some theologian over in Geneva but by the apostle Paul and the apostle Peter that God will show his mercy not to the Jews only but also to the Gentiles and in a place where God has said you are not my people the Gentiles there they will be called the children of the living God Peter says the great period of restoration and great number of descendants to Israel as the sand of the seashore it will include converted Jews it will include converted Gentiles who all come to God through Jesus that promised seed who would bring blessing to the nations so then if you belong to

Christ then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise folks what's that saying is that we're part of the fulfillment of these things we're part of Israel returning and seeking the Lord we're the wild branches grafted into that stock we're part of them and so when the gospel is preached Hosea is alluring his adulterous bride to come home when the gospel is preached Jesus Christ is alluring his adulterous bride to come home have you come home this prophecy will be fulfilled last and most fully when Jesus Christ returns again at the end of the last times and what do we see I saw a new heaven and a new earth and

I saw a new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride dressed for her husband wearing white linen which was given to her to wear and then forever the bride and the husband would live forever happily ever after in that marriage relationship and I will be your God and you will be my people and then God will dwell with his people and there will be no more tears and he'll wipe away every tear and no more curse and no nothing but fruitfulness for the old order things is done away behold I'm making all things new you see the promises that Hosea is speaking of will be fully fulfilled in the gospel and in the Lord's return for his bride his love has conquered them and now he opens the blessings of his salvation to them come enjoy what

I have prepared for you that's what his love has won for his bride will you be there in that day have you come trembling back to him confessing your sin and casting yourself on his mercy you too doesn't matter how long you've wondered you too will receive this rich welcome from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ his love is like no other unfailing gracious initiating costly demanding conquering love of God in Christ come and taste taste and see just how good it is let's pray our God we thank you for this picture of your love found a long time ago in Hosea and we thank you that it is nonetheless true today as it was then thank you that you're still calling your bride home thank you for working in our hearts to save us from our own destructive way bring others today to see beauty in this love of

Jesus and to return to him we ask for his eternal praise and for our eternal good amen let's sing of that love in our closing hymn number 73