The Price of Redemption: Hosea 2:14-3:5

We are in a sermon series on the book of Hosea.

You'll find it the text this morning printed in your bulletin.

If you'd like to read along there, or it's also in the Pew Bible, page 704.

Before I read the text, I'd like to give you an update, one more prayer request, a huge prayer request that we've been praying for, many of us for quite a while.

Pastor Garrett Kell at Delray Baptist Church and his wife Carrie, their daughter Eden, many of you have been praying for Eden for a long time.

Eden came home after 51 days Friday.

After suffering multiple serious seizures and what doctors say almost unprecedented recovery, we just praise God for his healing hand on Eden.

Continue to pray as she's got more work to do and recovery to take place.

But we want to thank God and acknowledge what he has done.

The book of Hosea, as I said, we started a sermon series a couple weeks ago, picking up in chapter 2, verse 14, reading God's holy word.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her, and there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Acor a door of hope.

And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal, for I will remove the names of the Baals from their mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more.

And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and creeping things on the ground, and I will abolish the bow, the sword, in war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety, and I will betroth you to me forever.

I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.

And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel, and I will sow her for myself in the land, and I will have mercy on no mercy, and I will say to not my people, you are my people, and he shall say, You are my God.

And the Lord said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man, and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lectic of barley.

And I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days.

You shall not play the whore or belong to another man.

So will I also be to you.

For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods.

Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

This is the reading of God's holy, infallible, and errant word.

Let's pray that the Spirit does his work in our hearts now.

Father, thank you.

We thank you that you are the great storyteller.

Lord, no one tells a story like you.

We thank you for your story of creation, even sin, the fall, redemption, and one day consummation.

We thank you, Lord, for inviting us into your story.

We thank you that you know the story of every single person in this room.

You know us.

And yet you pursue us and you love us.

Oh, Holy Spirit, drive home these truths in our hearts in new ways.

This day we ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Hosea, the title of the sermon series is Love, God's Love That Pursues.

Nobody pursues like God.

This passage in front of us today has been called by some, including James Boyce, the second greatest love story in the Bible.

Second only to the story of Calvary, where Jesus went for the remission of our sins for the redemption of our souls.

God's love, pursuing love, demonstrated, lived out in Hosea's life in a very real way.

Very painfully, very purposely.

Hosea the prophet is commanded by God to take as his wife a woman of adultery.

Her name is Gomer.

God said, I want you to go and I want you to marry her.

I want you to take her into your home.

I want you to take her into your life.

I want you to show her what it's like to love.

So the Hosea goes, depicting God's relationship with Israel and us.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I think many of you have.

And if you don't see that, you're going to miss the story.

And it's a great story.

Depicting God's relationship.

We all have pursued other lovers, have we not?

Other than the God who created us and redeemed us.

Yet, as we've seen the last several weeks, our God is a jealous God.

He wants you for himself.

He wants me for himself.

The God who says, you can't marry me and date around.

You see, the more we understand the love of God that pursues us, we stop dating around.

We stop falling into the arms of other lovers.

We stop settling for false intimacy.

That's why this church is here.

To demonstrate, to live out, to teach, and to preach this radical gospel, the radical love of Jesus that pursues us.

He is a jealous God.

I've called you, APC, I've called you into the same definition of marriage, earthly marriage, into a permanent, exclusive, intimate relationship with me.

May I say that again?

I've called you into a permanent, exclusive, intimate marriage with me.

This is what a relationship with God was designed to be.

Marriage.

Let me just give an application before we dive into the text.

In our congregation with many singles, I want to say to you, singles, there's much to learn from here as well.

I'm your husband in a way that no other husband on this earth or wife in this earth could be to you.

And I know it's painful.

It's painful for singles, some singles more than others, in that state of singleness, but God wants you to know that He is your husband in a way that no earthly husband or wife could be.

To the marriage among us.

No marriage, no matter how good or bad, can ever approximate this marriage that Rob read about from Ephesians 5 earlier.

Marriage is a pointer to the real marriage.

Marriage is a pointer to the real bridegroom.

Praise God.

This is waiting for all of us in full one day, but he wants us to taste it here and now in this life.

He says, My love for you will far exceed whatever intimacy you may experience in this life, in this marriage.

And it seemed to me that it's been many years, probably too many years, since I've quoted C.S.

Lewis from the weight of glory, but if ever there was a perfect Sunday, it might be this.

He says, your desires, God would say to us, your desires are not too strong, but rather too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us.

Like an ignorant child who wants to go around making mud pies in the slum, because he cannot imagine what it is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are too easily pleased, are we not?

This sermon series is about making mud pies in the slum, which we all have done.

Maybe we're doing right now, I don't know.

And we just can't even imagine the fullness and the goodness that God is offering us.

He's inviting us into the depth and the breadth of a marriage relationship, an intimate relationship.

And how would we ever know, except by faith in the promises of God, He's offering us more, He's inviting us all into a deeper, more intimate relationship with Him.

That's what this sermon series is about.

Far from seeing our search for pleasure as too much, instead of banning sexual imagery from religion, God rescues and raises it up to portray the deepest and the most satisfying relationship that we can imagine.

God doesn't take sex away from his created world, God restores it into the beauty that was intended.

God says, I will take that and raise it.

That's the love story between God and his people.

So for the next few minutes, we're going to talk about the desert, and then we're going to talk about the marriage, and we're going to talk about the price.

The desert, this is where Pastor Josh left off last week.

Verse 14.

Therefore, behold, I, God Himself, it's in the emphatic.

I, God, will allure her and bring her into the desert, into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.

Every one of us have had our desert experiences.

You may be in the heat of the desert right now.

God knows.

Perhaps you know.

That Hebrew word to allure refers to a tender, even seductive speech.

It's almost provocative language.

Frankly, it is erotic language.

Literally, so that I can speak to her heart.

This is a Hebrew idiom.

I will draw you to places you would never go yourself.

Why?

So that I can get your attention, so that your heart will stop and slow down enough that we can have the conversation I've been waiting to have with you.

Because you've been too busy, frankly.

You've been too preoccupied.

You've been chasing false lovers, and you've been too easily satisfied.

So God says, there's times I have to take you, my bride, into the desert so that I can get your attention.

That's what's going on here.

God is inviting his people into a romance.

Have you ever considered the Christian life a romance?

Dare you?

Does that just seem like it's over the top?

He is.

And unless you understand that, unless you understand that these are God's love letters to us, is there law in these letters?

Absolutely there is.

To show us what it's like to go into the arms of false lovers, to not go to the one whose arms are open always to us.

So why does God allow us?

Not just allow.

Why does God allure us into the desert?

Yes, to get our attention.

He takes us there not to punish us.

And for some of you, you're gonna have a hard time with this.

He doesn't take us into the desert to punish us as much as to reveal to us where our hearts are.

He wants to reveal to us our hearts, and he wants to reveal to us his heart.

His heart is good, his heart is full of mercy and compassion.

But when you're in the arms of another lover, you're not going to experience that.

What's in our hearts?

Many times, everything but love for God.

Demanding this, disillusionment.

I can't seem to find God.

God doesn't seem to be there for me when I need him most.

Many people give up on the search.

Many people give up on the romance with him.

Many people come to a different conclusion.

There's nothing there for me and him.

What keeps us from listening to God?

Disappointment in life.

Disillusionment.

Our fears?

Our shame.

We're going to see that this morning.

If we are not willing to feel the pain of our longings, we will continue digging cisterns in the language of Jeremiah.

Oh, I love the call to worship from the children this morning.

You know, that was more than sweet.

That was true.

Jesus is calling us.

Jesus wants us.

Thank you, children.

If we're not willing to feel the pain of our longings, we will continue digging cisterns, looking for water.

Jesus says to us, he said it throughout the Old Testament, he says it throughout the New Testament, and he would say it today.

Put down your shovel.

Put down the shovel that you have in your hands, looking for something to satisfy you at your deeper longings.

You're not going to find it.

Jeremiah said to his people, There are two sins my people have committed.

They have dogged cisterns for themselves, and they have forsaken me, their true and living God.

He's inviting us back into the romance.

But he says, You can't experience my love and you can't experience my mercy if you're holding on to the shovel looking to find meaning on your own.

Whatever it may be, it's not just about sex, it's about power.

Are you power hungry?

Do you lust for power, especially in this city?

It may be security.

Are you living for security?

Are you just grabbing hold with white knuckling the things and the people around you because you just need them?

Too much, maybe.

Hosea addresses all of us.

Whatever the false intimacy may look like, put down your shovel, drink from my well, Jesus would say.

Jesus knows how to provide an oasis in the desert.

That's what this verse is saying.

Jesus knows how to meet you in your desert when you've given up all hope and provide the very water that you need.

He's done it countless times.

He knows how to do it with you.

If you'll open up, if you'll open up your mind, your affections, your heart, your emotions.

It's been said self-worship leads to self-despising when our idols are exposed as flawed.

That's true.

Oftentimes we don't even know the self-worship that we're caught up with.

It just does.

God uses our longings to expose who or what we truly worship.

Whatever satisfies us, whatever touches us most deeply is our God.

And the God of God says, I alone want to be your God.

Self-worship does lead to self-despising when our idols are exposed as flawed.

There's always a death.

This is one way that you'll know that God is at work in your heart.

There's always a death.

It's always a painful experience when you find out and you discover where you've really been looking other than to Jesus, and you know that He's going to take it, He's going to strip it away from you, not to harm you, but to give you real life and to give you real joy.

It's a painful death.

It's a necessary death.

But isn't it consistent with what Jesus said on many occasions?

If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross.

Are you willing to die out of your love for Jesus?

Are you willing to put down that shovel as you see what you're holding, what you're holding on to, what I'm clutching?

Painful?

Yes.

Liberating?

Yes.

Real freedom.

Jesus is calling us all into real freedom.

This morning.

Chuck DeGrode put it like this: our idols are touchstones of the transcendent.

They give us a sense of control, of access, of intimacy and connection.

It would be easy to point a finger at Israel if we didn't have a hundred different ways ourselves of manufacturing our sense of security in our own lives.

We go shopping for shopping therapy or chocolate therapy.

We find the transcendent in a bottle of alcohol or any moment of false intimacy through pornography.

We seek security and wealth and academic credentials and reputation.

When left unsatisfied, our longing for the transcendent leads us to a frantic search for a more expedient way.

We long for something that we can touch, taste, see, and control.

Isn't that true?

Little do we even know, oftentimes, when we're doing this.

Something I can control.

I want a God that I can call up at a moment's notice.

I want something that'll just make me feel better inside.

Even it's for a moment.

God says, I've got something better for you.

I want to speak tenderly to you.

As Pastor Josh said last week, the alarm bells are to get our attention, to wake us up from our spiritual sleep, to make the The valley of Acor.

In the Hebrew, that means the valley of trouble.

If you're in the valley of trouble, into a door of hope.

God wants to give you hope.

He wants you to live your life with real biblical hope.

Not something that you gin up.

It's something that He offers.

May the God of hope, Paul said, fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him.

May you overbound and overflow with hope.

Do you remember how that ends?

Through the power of the Holy Spirit.

You can't do this on your own, no matter how much Bible you read.

It doesn't happen automatically because you read your Bible.

It doesn't happen automatically because you come to church.

It only happens through the power of the Holy Spirit, using the Word of God, using the character of God, and all of a sudden you begin to see in new ways how much He loves you, how much He wants you.

And you say to yourself, Why am I working so hard to try to control my life with these idols?

The message, excuse me, the marriage, chapter 3.

Listen to these words.

Go again.

Those are two of the most difficult words in the Old Testament, I think.

He's talking to Gomer, excuse me, Hosea.

Hosea, I want you to go again and find your wife who's sleeping around.

I want you to go find her, who is loved by another man as if he didn't already know that.

Was that painful to hear?

I think it was.

Go again and find love this woman who is loved by another man who is an adulteress.

Listen to the next words.

Even as the Lord loves the children of Israel.

Talk about two more words.

Even as Hosea, your love for Gomer, although real, although painful, pales by comparison to my love for my people.

Find your wife, buy her back, take her back.

The word betrothed is used three times here in the previous verses.

Betroth.

Ephesians 5.

Jesus says, I will marry you.

Have you ever heard that before?

That's Ephesians 5.

Jesus says, I want to marry you.

I want you to take you, I want to take you to myself.

I will cherish you like no one else can cherish you.

I will love you.

I will pursue you.

I will forgive you like no one else.

Jesus is calling us to that marriage, a new beginning.

But you have to go to the slave auction block to find your wife.

You know, we've all been on that slave auction block.

I don't know if you know that.

That's where Jesus found you.

That's where Jesus found me.

Sold into sin and miserable.

Then he gives us really the dowry back then in that culture, the bride price, if you will.

Five qualities of God are mentioned.

These are God's gifts to us, the very character of God.

God is all of these to us, and by grace, this is what he's imparting to us.

He's teaching us, he's training us how to be a faithful spouse.

What are they?

First of all, righteousness.

God says, I'm going to give you my righteousness.

And it's going to cleanse you.

And you're going to be righteous in my sight, and you're no longer going to be guilty.

I'm going to forgive you.

What a dowry price.

Justice.

Mishpat.

In all of his dealings, I will be just with you.

I will never ever treat you unjustly.

Other people will.

Life will.

I will never treat you unjustly.

And there will be times where you may feel that.

But it's not true.

Thirdly, steadfast love.

This is our favorite word, Kesed.

It implies the love and the loyalty which partners in marriage covenant contracts have toward one another.

Let me paraphrase this.

This is God's super glue.

That's why you're not going to get away.

This is God's super glue.

Sometimes we try hard, don't we?

Sometimes we try hard to get away from the one who loves us.

And we look and we fall into the arms of other lovers.

And he says, come back.

I'm not going to let you, I'm not going to let you get that far.

Steadfast love.

Two more qualities.

Compassion, the warmest of all the terms for mercy.

Heartfelt compassion.

It would be one thing if God said, I'm going to do all of this for you.

I'm going to do all of this for you.

Because I want to.

I'm going to do all this for you because I promise I would.

Okay.

I'm going to I stay, I keep my promise.

I didn't know what a mess you were going to be.

Of course you did.

I didn't know what a mess you were going to be.

But I said I would do it.

I'll do it.

Is that how you see God?

Now this attribute of God tells us you don't know how much I want you.

You don't know how the lengths I will go to because my heart is stirred for you.

I want you like nobody else you know wants you.

And fifthly, faithfulness.

Dependability.

He's faithful when we are unfaithful.

But it's this growing, my growing understanding of his faithfulness that draws me closer to him.

How about you?

Betroth.

Derek Kidner says this verb, a new beginning with all the freshness of first love.

Take that home with you.

A new beginning.

It could be today.

You may have been a Christian for decades.

As the gospel becomes a power in your life, as the truth of God pierces your heart today, this can be a new beginning with all the freshness of first love.

Man, that's powerful.

But then we close with the price because we're back to the auction block, the slave block.

Scholars are pretty sure that this is probably how it happened.

God tells Hosea to go back.

It's probably downtown.

There's a slave auction going on.

Very likely Gomer has her eyes closed.

She's naked.

You see, the bidders want to see all that she has.

Her eyes are closed.

Her eyes are closed.

She's standing there naked in the city.

And she hears men bidding on her.

Five shekels.

Six, seven, eight, ten.

And then she hears a familiar voice.

Is that the voice of my husband?

Is he actually here?

Is he actually bidding for me?

I think she must have opened her eyes.

That is my husband.

Surely her thought was, Hosea, what are you doing here?

And can we not say that this morning?

Can we not say that?

We've all been on the slave block.

We've all been enslaved to sin.

Jesus, what are you doing here?

You know, when you're at your worst, you most need the hug from Jesus.

When you're at your worst, when your idolatries are being exposed, and you feel guilt and you feel shame, that's when you need Jesus' hug the most.

Surely we know what I'm talking about, don't we?

I know it.

I think you know it.

The price.

So I bought her.

It's like it takes my breath away.

So I bought her.

With all of her shame, with all of her guilt, and all of her unfaithfulness to me in the marriage.

I bought her.

At this point, Hosea owned her because he paid the price.

She was his property in that culture.

He could have done anything he wanted with her.

He could have killed her out of revenge.

But that's not the husband.

That's not the husband of this story.

I didn't buy you to kill you.

I didn't buy you to destroy you.

I didn't buy you to take all the joy out of your life.

I bought you so that I could show you real joy and real peace and real forgiveness.

We are going.

There are people who want to take control of you.

There are people who want to abuse you.

There are people who want to take everything that's good from you.

Jesus said that the enemy came to steal and to kill and to destroy.

And you better wake up if you don't believe that.

You better wake up.

He's out to get you.

You better understand that there's somebody that wants you more than him.

His name is Jesus.

1 Peter chapter 1, verse 18, you know it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without defect.

1 Peter 1:18

Paul says in Titus chapter 2, Jesus who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own.

Titus 2 · chapter mention

He's talking about you, Christian.

And for those of you who are not yet Christians, do you know he wants you?

He wants you.

John Dunn, in one of his more famous poems, take me to you, Lord, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, shall never be free or chaste unless you, some of you know it, ravish me.

You were created to be ravished by God, the love of God.

And some of us hardly know what that even means.

But believe it, take it on the basis of God's word that you were created to be known and loved and delighted in and ravished.

Let the love of God ravish you in new ways.

May the Spirit of God open your eyes and open your heart to receive the love that He's offering you today.

The story is told.

It's been a while since I've told this story.

It's one of my favorite stories.

I can't verify its authenticity, but I'm going to tell you a story.

Abraham Lincoln was at a slave auction block one day.

And there was an African American woman, a beautiful woman that was on the block.

A woman that had been abused, misused, mistreated.

And the story goes that Lincoln went up to her and bid on her and paid the price for her.

And she wouldn't even look him in the eye.

He said, Young lady, you're free to go.

You're free to go.

And she finally made eye contact with him and said, What do you mean I'm free to go?

You mean I can go wherever I want to go?

He says, You can go wherever you want to go.

You mean I can do whatever I want to do?

You can do whatever you want to do.

You mean I can say whatever I want to say?

Yes.

Well then I will go with you.

Yeah, that gets me every time.

Then I will go with you.

Would you go with him?

Today.

Would you go with him?

Because he bought you.

He paid the price of your redemption.

He set you free.

Let's not date around.

Let's not settle for false intimacy.

Why would we when we have this kind of marriage proposal from the greatest husband this world ever knows?

Would you pray with me?

Oh Father, we come.

Sinners saved by grace, we come.

We come into your arms.

So this morning we want to fall back into your arms.

We want to say, then we will go with you.

Wherever you lead us is better than where we would go.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jesus.

That the price of our redemption was not with silver or gold, but with the precious blood.

Your precious blood.

Sold to my son for the price of his blood, the Father says to us.

Accept our praise, accept our gratitude, accept our love for you.

We love you because you first loved us.

Thank you.

Thank you, Father.

Thank you, Son.

Thank you, Holy Spirit.

Amen.