Hosea

Hosea Chapter 1 The word of the Lord that came to Hosea the son

Hosea 1 · chapter mention

of Beery, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah,

kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash

king of Israel. When the Lord first spoke

through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go take yourself a wife

of whoredom, and have children of whoredom, for the land

commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.

So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of DIB Lame, and she

conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, Call

his name Jezreel. For in just a little while I

will punish the House of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I

will put an end to the Kingdom of the House of Israel.

And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of

Jezreel. She conceived again and bore a

daughter. And the Lord said to him, Call

her name no mercy, for I will have no more.

I will no more have mercy on the House of Israel to forgive them

at all, but I will have mercy on the House of Judah, and I will

save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow, or

by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen.

When she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son.

And the Lord said, Call his name, not my people, for you are

not my people, and I am not your God.

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand

of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.

And in the place where it was said to them, You are not my

people, it shall be said to them, children of the living

God. And the children of Judah.

And the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they

shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from

the land. For great shall be the day of

Jezreel. All right, let's turn to chapter

3. 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 15 shekels of silver and an Omer and a

lethic 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 a king

or Prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without effort or

household gods. Afterward the children of God,

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 word of the Lord. What's going on?

Poor City family and friends, it's good to be with you.

My name is Tanner, the lead pastor here.

And at Poor City. We love God's word, y'all.

God wrote this book through a bunch of different authors over

time, but it's telling one story.

And sometimes what's helpful, helpful with a big story like

the Bible, is to zoom in on some details, like microscopic.

And sometimes it's helpful to zoom out and read a little

longer sections at a time to get more of a feel for the story.

So today we start a series called 12 Prophets, which will

be a book a week for 12 weeks. OK, so this is like a sermon

that is an overview of the entire book of Hosea.

We won't be in Hosea every week. Are you all with me?

And through this, my hope through this genre is we just

see God's passion. It's more of a poetic genre,

which is difficult for some of us, but there's a lot of beauty

in it. And I hope the intimidation

factor goes down and the beauty just comes to the surface.

And my prayer for us is that we will walk out of this as God's

people in a new and fresh way, just belonging to him and

displaying his goodness to our to our friends and neighbors,

and that more people will come to Christ and we'll just be more

fully devoted to his goodness. Amen.

So pray with me just over the series and we'll dive into this

great book of Hosea, our Father, we love you.

Thank you for your word. God, it never returns void and

every genre has value. Lord, this story today is

powerful. What a powerful, powerful image

of your love for your people. God, this word still speaks to

your New Testament church. So give us eyes to see, ears to

hear, Lord, what we know not right now, would you teach us

what we have not, would you give us and what we are not, would

you make us. Let the words of my mouth and

the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

And everybody who agree with that said, Amen.

All right, y'all. One of my favorite movies that

I've been thinking about this week in preparation for this is

called Diary of a Mad Black Woman by Madea.

OK, the Madea, it's in the Tyler Perry.

I love the Madea movies. Now, this is probably the most

serious of all the Madea movies. And if you've seen the movie,

there's an intensity to this one, OK, Basically, you have a

relationship where the woman is in love with her man and he

could not care less. He's arrogant.

He is mean to her. And just as the audience, you're

watching it, cringing just throughout the movie because you

see what's coming. He's playing her and it reaches

a climax at the moment, the movie when she comes home and

her closet is full of new clothes.

She is so duped that she is like putting the clothes on and

squeezing them and like, oh, Charles, you finally like, thank

you. He walks into the room and

you're like getting chills at this point and she's like thank

you so much I can't believe you did this.

And he laughs. He says those aren't for you.

And another woman is standing outside and he says you got to

get out right now. And he picks her up and kicks

her out the house. Now there's something about that

emotionally, y'all, and just how she is just devastated, just

utterly blown away, heart ripped out.

There is something about that experience that God understands.

He understands what it's like to be cheated on.

He understands what it's like for him to love more than he's

loved back. Marriage is intensely intimate,

and what the book of Hosea gives to the Bible, what it

contributes, is what we always kind of knew deep down but

didn't really have words for, is that marriage really is about

God and his people. He gave it as a gift to people

to reflect his relationship with his people.

We see that even more clearly in the New Testament and in Hosea.

Hosea has a message. So many of the prophets are

speakers. They're talkers of the truth.

But even more than Hosea has a message, his life is the

message. You're going to go love somebody

who don't love you back. And by doing so, you are

preaching through your life to my people what I am like to

them. So he makes him the prophetic

message. Are you with me?

So in this book, God is just going to open up his heart, His

heart of pain, His heart of being overlooked, unappreciated.

But what's unique and different about God than about any movie

we can wrap our mind around is God is not going to respond with

pettiness and with just moodiness for moodiness sake.

What God is going to do is put his heart out there of pain.

But his love is so powerful. He loves the unlovable until

they love him back. That's God.

God is so good that He can warn you and eventually say, have it

your way then and even use the have it your way then to bring

you back to him. You see what I'm saying?

He's going to send them into exile and still bring them back.

And you know what we're going to have to do as we walk through

this 12 profit series over the coming weeks.

We're going to have to take everything we read together.

That's going to be the beauty of what we're going to do and the

challenge because God is intense in these books and intensity is

good. We're going to see his heart

poured out maybe in ways you've never seen it.

And we've got to hold it all intention because you're going

to not like some things we read. And it's going to be like, whoa,

OK, we're going to talk judgment Day of the Lord, hell, all of

it. And we're going to talk amazing

passages of love and justice and things.

MOK was quoting from Amos. You didn't even know was from

Amos. OK.

And we love it when we hear that, but we've got to hold that

attention with what God says about reality in other ways.

Are you all with me? We got to let His words speak

and we got to take God as He really is.

So my prayer for today is that God's passion for you, for his

people as a collective bride would shine through.

And you would walk out of here wanting to be in covenant

relationship with Him and committed to Him and seeing that

He wants to flow His love through you to the other people

in your life who though they are unlovable.

So once were we, so are we. And as we allow Him to do that,

He will even get to them through us to get there.

We're going to take this story in four turns.

We're going to talk about the marriage symbol, the cheating

symbol, the opportunity to turn back, and then lastly, the power

to turn back. If you are ready, let me hear

you say I'm ready. OK, point #1 married to God, the

symbol of union. This is what verse two said in

chapter 1 when the Lord first spoke through Hosea.

The Lord said to Hosea, go take to yourself a wife of whoredom

and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great

whoredom by forsaking the Lord. So just to be clear, what God is

doing is telling a man named Hosea OK in the the 9th century

BC to go marry a woman named Gomer who had a reputation of

loving other people. OK.

And what this metaphor does is it really gives us two things.

First, the marriage metaphor captures God's story.

Somebody say story, OK, What we've got to understand is that

God has wed himself to his people.

God uses other images to describe his relationship to his

people in the Bible, right? So like in Chapter 11, verse

one, here's a famous one that gets quoted in Matthew 2.

When Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt I called my

son. So marriage is not the only way

that God he uses in a metaphor to describe how he's related to

his people. He calls them his son.

He calls them his vine that he planted in a field you might be

aware of. But from the beginning, what

this book is teaching us is that marriage was one of the the the

symbols. God wanted people, his people to

think of how he relates to them. So when you look at the story of

the people of God in the Old Testament, when he calls them

out of Egypt, it's like he is betrothing himself to them.

Like they are united to one another.

And the the covenant, if you will, the marriage ceremony

takes place at Mount Sinai. OK, this is where the 10

commandments happen. There's a covenant that goes

down and he's like, y'all are my people.

And honestly, the the marriage gift, if you will, is that they

get the law. The gift they get is to have

God's law is to get to be God's people is the gift.

I bought you out of all people on the earth, I bought you.

And if you go read chapters like Deuteronomy 6-7 and eight, why'd

you choose us? Because you chose us.

There was no thing they did to make them the bride.

It was just you, my bride. Why?

Because you my bride. Why am I your bride?

Because you are OK. Are y'all with me?

So he just chose them. And the reason this, this symbol

is so beautiful, y'all is it shows that what God's after at

his core is relationship. He's not after a business

transaction with his people. He tells them all the time.

I chose y'all, I bought y'all. I gave you my law because I love

you. Because I'm me, I chose you.

So this isn't about earning your statuses, bride.

This is just describing what it's like to be in relationship

with God. It's a lover and a lover.

It's passion, it's love. It's not transaction, it's not a

business partnership, it's not a performance.

It's just a genuine relationship.

The second thing this metaphor does is it just shows us God's

passion, just passion. If any part of us thinks God is

just up there and don't care, this book hits US right in the

face because he is like a spouse.

This is what he says in chapter 2 verses 16 and 17.

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 Baal's from her mouth and they shall be

remembered by my name no more. Hey, quick plug, some of y'all

are like, what's a Baal and should I say Baal or Baal?

Welcome to the, you know, scholars and seminary people

love to be like he said, Dale, it's ball brother.

Well, listen, in this series you do have some learning to do, OK,

And we're going to try to do that in little ways.

We've already done kind of a primer podcast I encourage you

to go listen to and there's different things we're going to

try to do to help you come into understanding all the history

around it. But in short, OK, the people of

God were going through the motions of what God gave them to

do at Sinai, but did not give a RIP about the Lord.

So they could say, oh, we're married to you, we love you.

But their hearts were actually with Baal.

And for now, what you need to know is that was the God of the

nations. But when God put his people in

the promised land, one of the things that was just assumed all

along, he said in Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 28 was but if I

drive the nations out and put you in and you become them, you

got to get out. Are you with me?

So if you become the nations, the land is going to spit you

out. OK.

So to use our our movie from the beginning, OK, as the audience

in that movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, we see who that guy

really is, but the woman is duped.

Are you with me? This is the moment I just want

you to hear. God is not duped.

He's not naive. He sees his people's heart don't

care about him. He sees they love what the

nations love. When they get in trouble, they

scramble to get help from anybody but the Lord.

And he's grieved by that. And all these conversations

about exile and judgement as you read these books week over week

are just God's way of saying, I see, and I'm begging you to

reconsider and to change. So yo, marriage is the symbol

that we're given here. Marriage is the symbol of the

New Testament. We read in Ephesians 5 that

Christ is wed to his bride, the church.

So I just got to say real quick, like if you still don't really

get the point of like church or being a member of a local

church, yo, God does see a relationship with individuals

and all of us get to be married to God through Christ, right?

But part of the joy is being a part of the collective bride.

He's talking about the people of God as a whole, not just

individuals. Are you with me?

So the concept of like solo Christianing just as foreign to

the Bible, OK. And in a lot of ways, it's why

we're gathered here today. It's because we're the bride and

he wants to gather with us as a unit.

OK, so let's move on to talk about the symbol of cheating on

the Lord. Cheating on God is the symbol of

faithlessness, chapter 3, verse one.

And the Lord said to me, go again, love a woman who is loved

by another man and is an adulterous even as the Lord

loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods

and love cakes of raisins. So one of the things scholars

like to do is they like to debate, was she an adulterous

type woman before they got married, but then not after?

Or was she only one after? And I think the answer is yes.

Like, I think the point of the illustration is that even upon

being married, she was unfaithful, right?

And now you continuing to love her despite her faithlessness is

what I'm doing to my people. That's kind of the whole point.

But it's funny how many books have been written on that

concept I just showed you. So what I want to do is I want

to talk about this cheating symbol and, and stepping out on

your, your spouse, so to speak, of what the people of God were

doing to the Lord. But I want to be really clear

how that applies to you based on whether you're a Christian or

not. OK, to put it bluntly, the

people cheating on God are the Christians in the room, right?

The people cheating on God are the ones who are the people of

God or the, the, the ones who think they're the people of God.

We are the adulterous party. Are you with me?

If you are not a Christian? It's kind of like God has

offered himself in marriage to you and you just reject the

proposal. Does that make sense?

You're not really cheating. You are rejecting totally.

Are you with me? You're invited into covenant

relationship with the Lord. That's what it means to know

Jesus. To be full of the Spirit is to

be in union with God through Christ.

So Christians in the room, this applies most totally in the

passion to us because we are the covenant people of God.

And if you are not a believer, God is offering himself to you,

and a lot of what we're going to say still applies.

So all of what I'm about to say applies to both groups, but in

different ways. And hopefully now you understand

that based on that analogy, here we go.

First, sinners are false lovers. That's what the cheating imagery

gives us. We are false lovers, you all.

To sin is to love the wrong thing.

Human beings love. That's what we do.

Your heart was designed to love. So to sin is to love the wrong

thing too much. One of the things, if you're

just getting around the Bible, we're going to constantly say to

you, this is not religious space, religious conversations.

We're having human conversations in this room because your heart

loves whether you ever attend church again or not.

The questions you got to be processing is what was I

designed to love and to be in alignment with?

That is what you were designed for.

And to step out of alignment with that is silly and it leads

to a lot of pain. But that is what sin does.

So if you have this category that to sin is just to break a

contractual law and it makes you a bad person.

That's true. But it's also that you are

choosing lovers for your soul that you are not designed to

give your soul to. Are you with me?

And that process of heartbreak is part of what makes life so

miserable. There was a guy in the 5th

century, a dude named Augustin. He wrote a book called

Confessions. OK, And I might encourage you if

you're a searcher of, of Christian truth right now, just

truth generally, that could be a great book for you.

Y'all over almost how many years ago Math somebody 1600 years

ago, this brother wrote down basically when I was chasing

women and chasing the bottle and chasing these things.

Now I know I was chasing God. I had a hole I was trying to

fill with things that can't fill it.

Are you with me? That is the best image of what

sin is. It is US throwing ourselves at

false lovers. It's stepping out over and over

and over, forsaking the one who could actually fill us eternal

water itself to go get a sip of Sprite and be thirsty again.

That is one of the best illustrations of what the human

soul is doing when it sins. It's not just that you are a bad

person breaking laws, it is that you are responsible for your

your own misery by chasing after lovers that cannot satisfy you.

But that's not all that sin is. Sin is also twisting.

The second thing I want you to see in this metaphor is that

sinners are twisters, OK? We twist God, OK?

And to really appreciate this, I got to do a little history,

right? So just put your learning hat on

for like 2 minutes. It's going to be dope, I

promise, OK? The best way to help you

understand this is that the prophetic books are kind of like

on one column and on the other column happening at the same

side time as the historical books.

So imagine like things are happening.

The prophetic books are the commentary on what's happening.

Are you with me? It's like if you ever like have

seen a video where somebody is a commentator on a video.

So you're watching a video of a person side by side to a video,

press and play on the video and then they comment on the video.

Have you ever seen that? Well, the the video is the

historical books and then the person commentating is the

prophetic books. Are you with me?

And then we are the ones pressing play.

But you got to know that the historical stuff is happening

and the person is being like, can y'all believe this?

So think of the historical books like a trashy reality TV show

that was the people of God that I'm about to explain to you.

And then the prophetic books are God pressing pause and being

like, I see what you're doing. I see what you're doing.

Are y'all with me? Like that's God's way of being.

Like, I see all this. Let me explain to you just how

bad it was. OK, historically, there's a 200

year spiral that's falling apart that Hosea is riding at the tail

end of. OK, at around 950 BC, the

Kingdom is united. All right, David hands it off to

Solomon. Solomon hands it off to his son

Rehab Olam. And around 9:30 BC, the Kingdom

of God splits. I'm about to show you a map.

Check this map out. OK, Now you have Israel in the

north, Judah in the South. That's easy to remember because

I comes before J. That's how I remember it.

Israel in the north, Judah in the South.

OK, and you'll notice on this map there's all the different

prophets and where they are located when they do their

ministry. All right, now just to show you,

this happens in 9:30-ish, what I'm about to explain to you.

So imagine 200 years after that, the first king in Israel was a

dude named Jeroboam, OK? He was not of the Davidic line,

the David line, the the God's King line goes with Judah in the

South. OK, so up in Israel, Jeroboam

gets this idea. If I don't put my stamp on my

reign right now, they're all going to go back to the David

line. So I got to do something.

So what he does is he says, let me get 2 calves, 2 false gods,

OK? And he puts one of them at Dan,

which is so far north it's above what our map can show you.

And the other one he puts in Bethel, which if you could see

Bethel, look all the way to the bottom of the green right above

where it says Jeremiah. That's Bethel.

Let me break down for you what he's doing.

No matter where you live in Israel, all the way up to the

top or the bottom or anywhere in between, you can come worship a

false God and not have to go down to Jerusalem where God

requires us to worship. So he what he did, y'all was he

created a new system and he said, this is what he says.

These are your gods who brought you out of Egypt.

Pay careful attention to what I'm about to say.

He didn't say we're done with Yahweh.

He twisted Yahweh into a system of his own making.

Are you with me? He took the story of God.

He took all of it. He took all of the truth and he

just reapplied it in his way. He built new altars, He built

new systems of worship. And he could say, we're doing

the same thing. I've just made it more

convenient for you. Don't go to Jerusalem.

Don't worry about going down to Judah.

And so you can see, This is why you can put that map down.

This is why Israel falls sooner than Judah.

Judah will fall to the Babylonians in 586.

Israel will fall in 722 to the Assyrians.

Judah doesn't get corrupted quite as fast.

And honestly, part of why the prophetic books are written,

some of them like Hosea, is to beg Israel to change because

your sister Judah is being tempted by what y'all are doing.

Are you with me? Like please stop showing them

how to be cheating on me because that's what y'all doing.

So hopefully what that gives you a sense of is that sinners have

this propensity in church. I need y'all to listen to me.

They're not Christians. This won't make as much sense to

the false lovers. Make sense to them.

What's unique to us Christians in the room is we take the real

thing and just twist it into our version of the real thing.

We aren't the ones who say I'm out with the Lord, bump it, I'm

gone. So we think we're better than

everybody and we're self-righteous, but we have

created systems of our own making all the time.

We become our own purity police. We become our own priest.

We give ourselves the benefit of the doubt on things.

We don't compare ourselves to God's word.

We compare ourselves to other Christians.

We compare ourselves to our neighbors, to our lost friends,

and we become a God unto ourselves.

And we don't look at it like we built a false calf.

But the main issue in the Bible for people who call themselves

followers of Yahweh, of Jesus, is that they build the whole

thing and it looks like the real thing, but it's their thing.

So sinners are false lovers, but sinners are also twisters, which

leads us to the opportunity we have.

Y'all, the whole reason this book was written to plead with

them to turn back. It's not too late.

Turn back. And what can be confusing when

you read a prophetic book is in one sentence God will say it's

over and the next sentence will say it's not over.

OK. And it's like he's talking out

of both sides of his mouth, but he isn't.

But let me just bring you in on how that feels.

Look at Chapter 11, verse 5. They shall not return to the

land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king because they have

refused to return to me. So what God is saying is that

the world power of Assyria is going to come throw down.

Y'all are too far gone to not go into exile.

So they will go into exile in 722 BC, but that doesn't mean

that God is done with them. Look at chapter 14, verses one

through 4. Return, O Israel, to the Lord

your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.

Take with you words and return to the Lord.

Say to him, Take away all iniquity, accept what is good,

and we will pay with bulls the vowels of our lips.

Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses, and

we will say no more our God to the work of our hands.

In you the orphan finds mercy. I will heal their apostasy.

I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them.

So what God was doing was giving them over to what they wanted.

And that means exile. It means this year is going to

take you over. But even as that happens, he's

hoping that they cut themselves to the heart and turn back to

him. Are you with me?

He's the parent that warns and warns and warns and warns.

And then eventually he's like, OK.

But even in the OK and give over, he's pleading that that

process brings them back. Are you with me?

But turning back is not casual, y'all?

It's not just like, ah, this didn't work out.

Assyria set us up, didn't he? The Lord saw that one coming.

Maybe the Lord will take us back.

It's more like a violent turning back.

It's a turning back of the heart.

I want to show you one of my favorite verses in the book that

gets this idea of of turning back to the Lord.

Chapter 10, verse 12 says this. So for yourselves, righteousness

reap steadfast love, break up your fallow ground.

For it is time to seek the Lord, that He may come and reign

righteousness upon you. Somebody say break up your

fallow ground. Yeah.

And other translations say unplowed ground.

I heard one teacher give an illustration of what that means.

So I want to give it to you because it helped me.

He basically said, imagine you have 100 acres that you are

farming and getting crop out of, and it's producing.

You got workers, you got a system, OK?

And then through neglect or whatever it is, you fire a

worker. You can't keep up.

Now we're down to 90, OK? And over time, the 90 becomes 80

all the way down to where you're only using 20 acres.

Those 80 over time, the more time goes by, become rock hard,

no longer fertile. You're not planting, you're not

producing. Excuse me, That 80 is fallow

ground. The 80 had potential that

because of your neglect has been wasted.

Are you with me? It is the potential it had but

is now lost. And you're operating on the 20

and it going to act like there ain't the 80 that you wasted.

Are you with me? So I want to be very clear.

This is where the connections are for the New Testament

church. This is where the connections

are for Port City Church in the series.

Y'all. This series is not a guilt trip,

it's a field trip. OK Jesus calls us the salt of

the earth and the light of the world.

That is our identity. That's who we are.

No amount of us walking in good works in these things is going

to make God love us more. So should we just sit back and

Netflix and chill till the Lord comes back and maybe go to a

Bible study once a month? No you know what I mean?

Like the the idea is break up the fallow ground means tap into

the potential you have with the Lord.

Not some of performance for the Lord, but what God intends to do

in us and through us for the good of others.

Think about the potential of the 80 acres, y'all, and our passion

for Jesus, our love of people are just turning our hearts up

and telling them and plowing them to say, Lord, please make

my life more than Netflix and chill.

And the goal of all that, y'all, is that we would become who we

made us to be. That we would host people at our

tables that we disagree with, that we would give money away,

that the poor would thrive, that our city would thrive.

That's what's at stake. Our neighbors are what's at

stake. God's glory is what's at stake

and our joy is what's at stake. And to get there we have to

break up the fallow ground. And if I'm honest, y'all, when I

hear about the potential and you hear motivating stories and

maybe somebody who lives in a different context and does

extreme things for God, what we can do is we can look at

ourselves and wish we were more and we like the idea of it.

And we have a pull ourselves up by the bootstraps kind of self

pity party. And if we're doing good, we get

private one. If we're doing bad, we feel bad.

I just want to say what the Lord has in mind with break up the

fallow ground is deeper than that.

It's even deeper than feeling bad.

It's deeper than just conviction for conviction's sake or

showcasing how bad we feel. And, and you know, walking

around weeping and things like that, you know what we're

talking about. Honestly, it looks like the

apostle Paul's life. I don't know if the apostle Paul

encourages you, but he encourages me because he was a

Sinner. But it kind of shows us what

life is possible like in Christ. I just want to give you one

example of his life that just blows my mind every time I think

about it. In Romans Chapter 9, we're not

Romans 9 · chapter mention

going to turn there, but at one point in Romans 9, by the way,

he quotes the book of Hosea. So I encourage you to go read it

later. But one of the things Paul's

doing there is he is talking about the Jewish people as a

whole and how they are rejecting the Lord in general.

Obviously there's always exceptions and his heart is just

broken. He's like, yo, they don't care

my brother, they don't care my brothers.

According to the flesh, they don't see who Jesus is.

They're blinded. And he says it's just an

astonishing statement, says I wish that I could be cursed so

that they could be brought in. I wish I could be cut off that

they might find life in Christ. I wish I couldn't see so they

could see. Why do I bring that up, Church,

When we read the New Testament, do you get the sense that we're

just some moping around? We don't really love the Lord

the best we can hope for. I just wait till we get to

heaven. Or do you get the sense that

full of the Spirit, the church can actually walk in newness of

life is actually possible. Not that that means we're

sinless, but when you read Paul's life, you get the sense

that we can actually live with Jesus.

It's possible to go from continually breaking the Lord's

heart to actually sharing his heart.

Paul enter God's heart. He shared in his sufferings.

He was a participant in grace. This is the New Testament

church. It is not like woe is me, I'm a

cheater on the Lord at all times.

Yes, the New Testament church is sinful, but we have given

ourselves over to the Lord's heart and full of the Spirit

breaking up the fallow ground, we are Co reigning with Him for

the good of our city and the glory of God and our own joy.

Are you with me? So y'all, if that weren't

possible, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

That's the new covenant. That's what makes Christ better

than the old covenant. That's what makes the new

marriage better. Amen.

So let's talk about that point #4 behold our Redeemer, the

power. We need y'all to do this takes a

different kind of power because if we're honest, y'all, what we

can do when we hear about intensity and loving the Lord a

lot is we can just start to step outside of ourselves and stare

at ourselves and berate ourselves and make pledges and

and start to just New Year's resolution.

This thing of how we're going to be better and our attention

ironically goes on to ourselves. Do y'all see that we don't like

ourselves? Maybe if I try harder, I like

myself. Maybe if I'm like that person, I

like myself and our eyes just go down.

Well, if we're honest, when we look at ourselves, what we see,

what we hear is I should be a Hosea, but I feel like a Gomer.

I feel like the spouse who is still stepping out on the Lord

and y'all, that's because we still kind of are right?

Let's read Hosea 3 one through 3 again and the Lord said to me,

go again. Somebody say again love a woman

who was loved by another man as an adulteress, even as the Lord

loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods.

I love cakes of raisins. I wish I could go deep on the

raisins thing. Y'all come to equipment.

We will talk about raisins. OK?

So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a Homer an olefic

of barley. And I said to her, You must

dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the horror or

belong to another man. So will I also be to you, y'all,

The point of the book of Hosea isn't about Gomer's life change.

It's about Hosea, right? It's about how God chases down

Gomer's. The point of the book, yes, we

got some ground to plow, y'all. We've got some things to change.

But the point of the book is this the imagery of again, words

like again, just jump off the page.

So I bought her for 15 shekels. This is an image of Hosea going

to one of the lovers and paying them to get her back, which

obviously points to what God is doing with Assyria and then

using like he's he's the payment price.

But it points to the truer and greater Hosea, who is Jesus, who

would pay for us with his own blood.

He did not buy us because we're first round draft picks who are

going to be faithful, right yo the the New Testament teaches us

that though we are faithless, He remains faithful.

Guys, we have a Redeemer who will not stop buying us, who

will not stop paying the price, who will not stop chasing us,

who will not stop cleansing us. This is not about your

willpower. This is about his redeeming

power as you behold him loving you.

When you're loveless, you will become one more who loves those

who are loveless. You will say things like Paul,

not so much as you just bootstrap yourself towards Paul,

but as you see the Christ that Paul saw, as you see him, you

will become like him. Paul never lost sight.

He says I am the chief of sinners, I'm the chief Gomer.

He never lost sight of that. He was not like, what are y'all

doing in Corinth? Y'all a bunch of idiots, you

know, like a little bit. He's like, oh, I got to plow

some ground. Y'all doing some crazy stuff and

some crazy stuff was going down in Corinth.

But he never said it above them. He said it like hey grace,

Jesus, gospel, this whole thing. Okay, so at every turn the power

to be different comes through seeing the Christ who buys you

and makes you different. Y'all?

There's something so powerful about being loved when you don't

deserve it. Ironically, I'm convinced the

power for the church to change is still just the same old

gospel. What we do is we get into the

church, we become Christians, and you just think, now it's on

you. Now it's about you showing how

you looking at Jesus as an example and then in your own

strength going and doing it makes you different.

But y'all, the power to be who God is calling you to be comes

to still being the faithless bride that God keeps loving

anyways. And it's as you keep looking at

that in the face and receiving it that you will become who he's

calling you to be. Are you with me When I was 19

years old, I was a new believer and I was still the worst.

I still am the worst. I'm not and this is not I used

to this is a this is this is what the last 15 years have been

like between me and Jesus. OK, the guy who led me to faith

was a guy named John. John was the man.

John was better than me at everything.

OK, But one day I had a basketball game coming up and

John rebounded for me for 30 minutes straight and did not

shoot once. OK guys, just imagine being my

friend, OK? John is rebounding for me.

He's way better than me at basketball.

At 1 moment, John gave me a piece of feedback about

something I was doing, and I told him to shut up and give me

the ball. Whoo, y'all, Even as I tell you

that that's an embarrassing story.

But y'all, you know what John didn't do?

He didn't sermonize me. He didn't moralize me.

He didn't lecture me. He kept rebounding for me, and

we went and got some dinner after.

Now, who's the Gomer there? Who's the Hosea?

You're looking at the Gomer. OK, that was the Gomer.

He was the Hosea. But this is what's important,

y'all? You know who John felt like?

John felt like Gomer. You know what was going on in

his head, Lord? I got about this.

Much more patience for Tanner. I love him.

Help me to love him. He's really hard to love, Lord.

But I know you have loved me when I'm unlovable.

So help me to love him when he's unlovable.

So here. Here's what's ironic.

There's not Gomers and Hosea's. You know, the point is, the more

you allow yourself to be a washed but stumbling broken

vessel, who is a Gomer? Somebody's going to look at you

and say you were Hosea to me and you'd be like Father God if you

only knew in my parenting, in my teaching, in my whatever it is

you do. You feel like you're holding on

by a thread, but you're being empowered by a vessel with

endless, unfathomable grace. It is as you allow yourself to

just put yourself in the positions the Lord's calling to

put you in. He wants you in not because you

are sufficient in Hosea, but you are a dependent Gomer.

Somebody will look at you and say you are a Hosea and I'm a

Gomer and you can be like, you have no idea because I'm Gomer.

Does that make sense? This sermon is not about making

you into a Hosea as much as it is realizing you have a Hosea in

Christ. And if we will put ourself where

the New Testament calls us to be loving our enemies, which is so

hard y'all, there's like 1000 things in the New Testament you

don't have the power to do. But as you step into them and

let the Lord love you when you are so hard to love, you will

demonstrate Kingdom power for people who need it.

And they will look at you and say what planet are you from?

And you'll just say it is not me, it's Christ in me.

Amen. If you are a Gomer, pray with

me. Our Father, we love you and I'm

just so grateful that you love us when we're unlovable.

We thank you for the gospel. We thank you that at great cost

to yourself, Father, you sent the Son full of the Spirit, just

like us, yet without sin. At the end of his life, God, he

took death. God took death on a cross, a

violent criminal's death, to purchase us for yourself so that

when we trust you, when we turn to you, when we believe you,

when we let go of our lesser loves, when we just throw

ourselves down for mercy, God, you give it.

So Father, I pray for anyone in here who does not know you that

they would see you chasing them down in your love.

God, please help them to see how much you love them more than

anything else they're chasing can.

And Father, I pray for your church.

May we not feel like we've graduated from being a Gomer.

God, may we just get good at being Gomer.

May we be loved by you. May we be good at seeing that

you're the Redeemer. God, you are good.

And Lord, may we not run into sin so that grace may abound.

God, may we be ones who who throw ourselves into your law of

liberty and love of neighbor God and just trusting that you will

provide the power in the moment of need and God, would people

get saved through our stumbling? Would people get saved through

our loving them when they're unlovable because you love us

when we're unlovable. God do it for your glory.

Save sinners. Strengthen your church.

We pray in Christ's name, Amen.