As you know, we have been walking through a sermon series where we have been walking through the life in the ministry of Jesus, and we’ve been trying to do it chronologically. What we’re doing is we’re taking a harmonization of the Gospels, and then we’re walking through it chronologically. We’ve been about three-fourths of the way through the gospel messages. But this morning, we’re actually going to take a bit of a break from the series in order to reiterate a truth of God, one that hasn’t been specifically amplified in the last two months or so in our series. Really, in our series, we’ve just been circling the Jesus’s rebuke of a bunch of Pharisees. We will certainly get back to that rebuke of the Pharisees. But I felt like it was appropriate for us to just take a moment. In fact, we need to sit in those rebukes. We need to learn from Jesus. We need to find our hearts in those places. In fact, it’s prudent for us to do that. But I also felt like it was important for us to just stop for a moment and take a look at a Biblical subject that is supposed to, the Bible says, compel us and control us and prompt us towards righteousness.
Today, we’re not going to look at anything in the ministry of Jesus. Instead, we’re going to look at something that speaks of the quality of God and the quality of Jesus that I think is best depicted in an Old Testament prophet. But before we do that, I just want to read a passage from the apostle Paul in Ephesians 3. Paul is trying to talk to his people, and he prompts them to have this prayer life. This is his prayer for them. This is Ephesians 3:17. It says this, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love. He says, I want you to be rooted and established in love.”
Rooted means that you’re anchored into love and established means that you’ll continue to grow out of love. May have the power together with all the Lord’s holy people. This is not just for the Ephesians, this is for everyone. To grasp how do you get rooted in love? “You grasp how wide and how long and high and deep is the love of Christ. To know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”
This is the apostle Paul’s prayer for the brothers and sisters in the church in Ephesus, and it’s his prayer for us today, that we would be able to grasp the depth of God’s love, that we would be able to get it to understand a love that he himself says surpasses our understanding. God’s love is the subject this morning.
As I prepared this sermon, my heart and my prayer for us this morning was echoed in Paul’s words. Really, my heart this morning is that you too would be able to grasp the height and the length and the depth of God’s love for you. A love that surpasses your understanding. I have some work to do because my job is to try to help you understand something that God himself says you cannot understand. In order to do that, I grabbed an Old Testament story that I think will really impact us and also help us at least to begin to grasp the depth and the height and the love of God. Today, we’re going to unpack and explore a love story. It’s a bizarre story, but it’s a love story, nonetheless, and it’s the most extraordinary depiction of God’s love anywhere in scripture.
Today, we’re going to turn in our Bibles. We’re going to have a moment to find it to the Book of Hosea. Hosea. You could turn there with me. The Book of Hosea. We’re going to spend most of our time in chapter three, but we’re going to begin by looking at chapter 1, verse 2. Hosea takes place about 750 years before Jesus is born, and in its pages, God’s extraordinary love is on full display. We learned that Hosea is a prophet. This book weaves together both narrative and prophecy, and it weaves it together seamlessly. But this morning, we’re only going to look at the narrative side of this story. You can study out the prophecy side on your own. Hosea 1, starting in verse 2, that’s where we’re going to look. Here we go.
“When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the prophet, the Lord said to him, go marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her.” Hosea’s life is about to become an illustration of the height and the depths and the unsearchable love of Jesus Christ. But it’s going to begin with a strange command. What’s the strange command? It’s right there.
“Go marry a promiscuous woman.” This is Hosea’s task. God calls lots of people to do lots of things. This might be the weirdest thing he’s ever called someone to do. God tells him, I want you to take some time and find a woman who has had other lovers. I want you to find her. She’s an adulterous woman. She has had many lovers. She has been intimate with many. She has shared her marriage bed, well, not marriage bed with many. You go find her and marry her. Hosea agrees. Now, it might be hard to grasp how countercultural this is, considering the looseness of today’s sexual ethic. But in Hosea’s time, being asked to procure a bride who is clearly sexually active would have been a pretty intense ask. This woman would have been a total outcast in society. You might remember, we talked about this a fair bit, but you might remember the story of the adulterous woman. The woman caught in adultery in John 8, or the sinful woman, where we looked at in Luke 7. The idea we talked about then was that these women are cast aside. They are truly the marginalized. Being a harlot would mean that you are the lowest class in society. You are an untouchable. Except for those who are willing to abuse you in the evenings. You’re the lowest part of society. You are a black sheep. You are a leper. You would have been rejected by your family, pushed out of the family home, ridiculed by the culture, abused by the religious leaders.
Let me just make a mention of this also. You would have had zero chance of marrying a man with any stature. But what does God tell Hosea to do? God tells Hosea, a man of prominence, a man of stature, a man who is called by God, God tells him, go find a woman who is part of the lowest class of society. Go find a woman that no one would marry and make her your bride. Love her, cherish her, serve her, protect her, redeem her. So Hosea searches. Her sin would have been public, so she wouldn’t have been that hard to find. But he finds an adulterous woman and he marries her. The Bible says he marries Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Hosea will be Gomer’s redeemer. Gomer will be his wife’s name. He will have her. He will bring her in. The marriage will be a fresh start for Gomer. Gomer will now be married to one of the most powerful men in all of Israel. God’s prophet is now her wife, her husband. She would be wrapped back into the fold of society. She would have been brought in close. She wouldn’t have to be an outsider anymore. She wouldn’t have to be someone that has to hide in the shadows anymore. She could even have children. Gomer has won the lottery. She has been given a second chance.
Well, the story continues. We don’t know a lot about the relationship, but at least for the first two or three years, things seem to be going very well. She has two little boys and a little girl. Honestly, if you looked at that, you ended the story there, you could say, This is an amazing example of God’s love. What would you write? You could write it like this. “No sinner is beyond the reach of God’s redemption.” That would be a story. That would be pretty intense. Like, hey, today, if you’re really, really far from God, you are not far enough that God can’t reach after you.
That’s a story of love? That would be pretty incredible. God gives you a second chance, but the crazy thing is that’s not where the story ends. But again, in some ways, this alone would teach us the depth and the width and the height of God’s love. But some of you would be tempted to think, you know what? Second chances, that’s not so much. I understand the love of second chances. Maybe you gave someone a second chance. You’re like, I got that love. That makes sense. I’m trying to understand an understandable love. Let’s continue in the story.
Two chapter later, the story picks up. We’re going to look at chapter three. Gomer’s children have been weaned. It’s three or four years after Hosea and Gomer’s original betrothal and marriage. In the first verse of chapter three, we find out that the prophet of God, who gave this once promiscuous woman a chance, he finds himself again abandoned by her. It’s like he wakes up in the morning and in the bed he turns over and she’s not there. She’s gone. Where has she gone? Well, the middle of verse 1 tells us she is loved by another man and is an adulterous.
I read a commentator that said that this means that in that moment, she was being loved by another man. She has returned to her promiscuous life. What I’d imagine I heard next would be a rant, a rant of condemnation. An unfaithful wife. You would hear about how unfaithful this woman is, how she ruined her second chance, how she deserves wrath. Adultery was punishable by death, so maybe there would be a declaration about the fact that she deserves death. Look, I gave you a second chance, Gomer. I gave you a fresh start. I put my hope in you. I gave you a chance to actually live like a normal human being and you walk out on me? You walk out back to becoming garbage on the street? How could you? And you have children. Have you thought about your children, Gomer? Have you thought about your daughter? Have you thought about that? How could you? How could you? How could you give up everything for a filthy, horrific, unconscionable lifestyle? That’s the thing I’d expect to hear next because that’s what I would likely do. How could you? How could you? I gave you a second chance and you walked out on me.
But that’s not what happens. Instead, God comes to Hosea and He says the most radical thing, in my opinion, in all of the Bible. It’s the most radical thing in the entire Bible. For Gomer, there should be judgment, but instead of judgment, there is a commissioning by Hosea. Here it is. This is insane.
“The Lord said to me, ‘Go show love to your wife.'” That’s what’s supposed to happen again. “Though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress.” Go find your wife. Go get her. Go out, go out and go get her. Go. You redeemed her, but I want you to redeem her again. Go. Then look what’s after the period. “Love her as the Lord loved the Israelites.” Oh, boy, you see where the story is going?
What we’re looking at this morning isn’t a story that has no application for us. When God says Israel, he means Israel. But he also prophetically speaking about you and me and about his incomprehensible love for the whole world. Go find, go love her as the Lord loves Israel, though they have turned to other gods and loved the sacred raisin cakes. He says, Love her the way that I have loved humanity.
See, just like Gomer, the people I have loved, God is saying, love other things. They love the world, man. They love other things. I redeem them and they love other things. They have children. I bless them. I give them encouragement. I give them strength, and they, too, are harlots. They too are promiscuous. I save them, and they too keep turning to other things in the world. So you, Hosea, do what I have done for Israel for your wife. Go find her. What a heart-wrenching process that must have been. Gomer isn’t just cheating on him. Gomer is a prostitute. What’s that like? What’s that like? What’s it like to look for your wife among the prostitutes? What’s that like? Is you’re going to look for your wife who was a former prostitute who went back to her prostitution. Where do you go looking for her? Where do you look for her? How messy is that search? Where do you even look for a prostitute? The Red Light district? Do you go into a brothel? Do you go on the corner? Do you find some man who has recently abused her and asked where she is? Where do you go?
Well, the story gives us an implication of where he goes or gives us an idea, an illustration or example. I don’t know what the word is. Here it is. I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. You bought her? Wait, I’m sorry. She’s your wife. She’s already yours. What does that seem like? Gomer is back in the sex slave industry. Does Hosea walk up to some pedestal somewhere? Is his wife chained, shackled, standing naked, being sold to the highest bidder?
Can you imagine, right? He walks in and there is your wife. There is your wife. She’s standing there on the auction block, the mother of your children. You can see your children’s eyes in her eyes. There she is. He likely, maybe walks up to the auctioneer because she’s on auction. Maybe she’s the next lot. What was that like for Gomer, by the way? Could you even look at your husband? Imagine the shame. How could she have fathomed that the husband who she left is going to come back to redeem her? How could she even fathom that? Imagine the freedom she thought she was pursuing by living this promiscuous life. My husband is not good enough for me. I’m going to go and find my way out there. I’m going to go live freely. I don’t want my husband. I want sexual satisfaction. I want an adventure. I want something new.
Just think about this. Her pursuit of freedom, ironically, has led to her bondage. I could say that for many of us, too. There she is standing on an auction block, stripped of all her dignity when only a few weeks ago, maybe in a few days ago, she was in a protective home with her protective husband and her family shielded from all that shame. Just imagine what she might be thinking. Why would he ever pay the auctioneer’s price? I wonder, did Hosea have to outbid someone? I’ll give her 15 shekels of silver. I’ll give 15 shekels of silver and a little bit of barley. I’ll give 15 shekels of silver. He’s trying to buy his wife. Other people wanting to use and abuse and rape and pillage her and destroy her. There he is, Hosea, trying to protect her again.
Does he have to speak to the man selling his wife and say, Hey, sir, she’s my wife. That’s my wife. Maybe the auctioneer replies, I don’t care. I don’t care. This is the price. This is the price. Fifteen shekels of silver. Sorry, 15 pieces of silver and five bushels of barley. It’s about six months wages. It’s about the same price as what you would buy a slave for. What is she being sold as? A slave. What type of slave? You can guess. Can you even imagine?
Then the Bible says, He buys her. He buys her. He pays for what is already his. She, in her foolishness, abandons her husband. She, in her selfishness, brings about her own condemnation. Her behavior does not merit mercy. But Hosea, in love, pays the price. Can you just take a moment to think about that? What are you to take from this picture as it relates to our relationship with God? Who are the characters? Who is Hosea? Obviously, he’s God. And no offense, brothers and sisters. Who is Gomer? We are.
This is the story of the gospel. We are his people. While you were still his enemies, Christ died for us and loved us and cherished us and redeemed us. We too have run after the things of the world.
We’ve run after materialism as a thing to fill our souls and fill our hearts and bring us joy. We’ve become selfish. We’ve become self-indulgent. We too have turned to going about to fulfill our own satisfaction and our own needs. We have looked for relationships as the thing to fill our souls and to make us happy. We’ve sought satisfaction through sex and lust and pride and money and money and money and power. Again and again and again and again, we have looked for other things. We have loved other things. We have run to other things. The Bible tells us. Again, we run to stuff. We run to gluttony, we’ve run to pride. The Bible tells us we run to lies, our own deceptions, our own selfishness. We can’t even get enough of the things the world used to offer us. It was killed for a little bit, but then we go back to it, back to it and back to it and back to it and back to it again. Then the Bible tells us that Jesus went on a search for those who were lost. Luke 15, doesn’t he leave the 99 to go after the one?
This is our story. You are Gomer. You are Gomer. You live promiscuous lives. I’m Gomer. I live a promiscuous life. My King, my God, my husband, the Lord has given me so much, and yet my brain, my mind, my eyes tilt towards the things of the world. And to redeem us, there was a price to play. Two thousand years ago, God sent His son to die on a torture tool to purchase what in fact, was already His. Humanity is God’s unique possession, and yet, having chosen again and again to go the other way, we have been possessed by a slavery of sin. We have run away from our freedom and found slavery, run from our purpose and found meaninglessness, run from our joy and found to despair and instead of sentencing us to a life of broken despair and destruction, instead of killing us right on the spot in love, God paid the price by sending His son to be the perpetiation for our sins. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world. He paid the price. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “You are not your own.”
You are not your own. Why? You were bought at a price. This is the depth of love. This is the gospel. Let me just add this. There was an auction then too. When we were up there stripped naked, shackled to a post, and the other bidder was Satan. He was bidding up the price and bidding up the price for your soul so badly he wanted you, but he was outbid by a compassionate, loving, merciful God who gave His son who spilled the blood of His own son to buy what was already His. The auctioneer asked, What’s the cost? It will cost the life of your son. The spotless lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And Jesus says, don’t worry, I’ll pay it. Let me end the story. What was it like when Hosea looked in the eyes of his wife? I would imagine she, no doubt, hung her head, embarrassed. He bought me and I abandoned him. The other man sought to use and abuse her. He sought to rescue me, to love me.
There’s a wonderful promise that comes at the end here in verse 3, it says, Then I told her, you were to live with me many days. Look, he takes the shackles off of her. He takes the ropes that tied her and he brings her down. He looks her in the eyes. This is what I imagine. You’re going to stay with me many days. You must not be a prostitute. Don’t run back. Please don’t run back. Or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way towards you. I will be faithful towards you. Tender words from a woman who just abandoned this man. Tender words. I don’t care what you’ve done. Look, I know you did all this. I don’t care. Just don’t go back. Don’t go back. How amazing is the love of God on display in this woman’s life and in our life also?
We have all been unfaithful, and the Bible tells us that for the son of man did not come to… Sorry, for the son of man has come to seek and save that which was lost. The Bible says he found you and he found me and we were wandering in some of the most deplorable places. Sometimes we can look at this story and go, oh, that woman, she deserves judgment. Oh, that woman is way worse than me. She’s not really all that worse than you.
When God found you, you were in a terrible place. He searched the brothels. He searched the seedy neighborhoods, and he purchased you and he rescued you and he redeemed you. Just as Hosea had searched for his wife, I believe Jesus searches for humanity still today.
Don’t think you aren’t that bad because when he found you, you were not all neat and tidy. You were not put together. You didn’t have it all. You were chained and naked. You were sinful on the auction block. Our gracious God said, How much? And the auctioneer said, The price is the blood of your own son, and Jesus paid it all. All to him, I owe sin has left a crimson stain. He washed me white as snow. When you were at your worst, God loved you.
Church, we are Gomer, and God is our Hosea. Jesus is our Hosea. Let me just say this again. This is the gospel, and this gospel is on a hunt. It’s searching for everyone from every tribe of people, from every class of man, from every race and every socioeconomic background.
The Bible tells us that Jesus is still in a search looking for those who most need Him. Looking for the outcasts, the Gomers in our society to extend grace to the fallen. Jesus went after people, and I’m telling you, you are called, and I am called to do the same. I just want to say something to you. If your life here is a mess, if you come into this room and you’re all messed up, like you were drunk last night, you’re welcome here. Two nights ago, you got all messed up and things were bad, you’re welcomed here.
Why are you here? My guess is you’re here either because someone said, if you come, you can go get lunch with me after and I’ll pay for it. That’s one thing. It also could be the second thing that I mentioned earlier about the husband thing, don’t want to talk about that. The third reason is that you think to yourself, you know what? I need this. You may be messed up, messed up in many ways, messed up in ways that you don’t even want to talk about. But I want to tell you you’re welcome here.
You’re welcome here because we’re messed up too. We’re messed up too. I’m messed up also. I mean, I do the same stuff you do. Maybe I don’t do all the same stuff you do, but I do some of the same stuff. If you’re a disciple here and if you’ve been redeemed, I want to encourage you that it’s your responsibility to bring this beautiful gospel message to the world. What are you doing if you’re not bringing the gospel to the world? What are you doing?
What are you doing if you’re not bringing the gospel to the world? It’s your responsibility. Let’s close out here. I already said that, but I’m saying it again. “For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stone, without ephod or household gods. Afterwards, the Israelis will return and seek the Lord their God and David their King.”
This is a prophecy. We don’t have time to explore all of it, but I want to just highlight the last seconds. They will come, this is the next line I didn’t put up on the screen, “they will come trembling to the Lord and to His blessings in the last day.”
That’s what it says. I love what the NLT says. This is what the NLT, this is the way the NLT puts it, “They will tremble in awe of the Lord and for His goodness.” This is on the heels of Hosea redeeming his adulterous wife. He says there’s going to come a day where people will be in awe of God’s goodness. How good of a God do we have? Well, at the end of days, they’re not going to go, Oh, God was mean and terrible. They’re going to say, Man, He was so, so, so, so good. He was so good that he creates His creation, and they abandon that creation to go to slavery. Then He sends a son to buy them back. He buys them back and He keeps buying them back and he keeps buying them back because he is a very, very good God. Here stands Hosea, having just purchased his harlot wife back, and he promises, Hey, there’s going to come a new day. There’s going to come a new day when even the most unmarriable will find a place in God’s kingdom. We’ll find a place in God’s kingdom. How are we supposed to respond to this kindness, this goodness of God?
I want to tell you what Romans chapter two says. It says, “Do not show contempt for the riches of His kindness.” You think to yourself, Well, God is good. You go, Who cares? He’s so good that I could just continue to sin the way I’m sinning. Do not do that. “His forbearance and his patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to leave you to repentance.”
God’s kindness is trying to transform your life. Church, we’ve been called to be changed because of how much God loves us, to repent because of how much God loves us. The motivation is supposed to be the love and the mercy and the kindness of God. Again, I mentioned this, but if you’re visiting here, I just want to encourage you. Look, maybe your story is really, really, really strange. Maybe you even grew up in some religious institution. Maybe you prayed many prayers. You stood up on us. You came to the altar and you accepted Christ 100 times. You’re here today and you’re like, Look, I just want more in my faith. Maybe I don’t know what decision you have to make next, but I just want to encourage you to make it, to have the courage to make it because of the kindness of God, because of the kindness of our God.
And if you’re enslaved, I believe God will buy you back. But he wants you not to just come as you are and stay as you are, but to be changed forever because of his kindness. In a moment, we’re going to sing a song that I love. It’s called How Deep the Father’s Love for Us. We’re going to sing it together and then I’ll come back and pray for communion for us. But as we do it, I just want to remind you of the verse I read in the beginning. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the Lord’s holy people to grasp how wide and how long and how high and deep is the love of Christ and to know this love and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you too may be filled with the measure of all the fullness of God.
Let’s sing the song together.
You go to church on a Sunday morning or you just, I don’t know, you try to do the right thing or something like that. In some ways, we just strip a little bit of it. All of us are tempted to strip a little bit of the real message. The message is the cross. The message is your death. The message is your resurrection. That’s the message, God. It’s because of that that we get redeemed and we get a new life and we get a new chance. Then we turn to left and to the right and everywhere else, and we just want to tell the whole world about it because we have found ourselves to be so redeemed.
Lord, I just pray that I never lose that gratitude. Father, I want to apologize for the times when I do lose the gratitude. Lord, I pray that for a general repentance for our whole church. I pray for repentance from desiring the things of the world. I pray that we’ll just not seek those things, but that we’ll love the Lord, Jesus Christ with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul and all our strength, Lord, that we’ll then learn to love the world as ourselves.
Lord, we just want to say thank you for today. Thank you for this time. Thank you for the communion where we take the bread and the juice as this sacred memento of what it is that you did. God, I pray that as we eat the small piece of bread that represent your body, that we remember the body that was tortured on our behalf. As we drink the little bit of juice that we’ll remember the blood that was spilled instead of our blood being spilled. Thank you for paying the price. Why should I gain from this reward? I cannot give an answer, but this I know with all my heart the wounds, your wounds have paid my ransom. Lord, we just want to say we love you. We thank you in Jesus name, Amen. Amen.