Scripture Reading

I will read what we looked at this morning again though from verse 14 just so we understand the context in which this passage is taking place here today that we're going to look at. So Hosea chapter 2 beginning at verse 14. This is the restoration of Israel as God's essentially divorced bride. Therefore, behold, I will allure her, will bring her into the wilderness, and will speak comfort to her.

I will give or display her vineyards from there, and the valley of Acre as a door of hope. And she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up from the land of Egypt. And it shall be in that day, says the Lord, that you will call me my husband and no longer call me my master. For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, and they shall be remembered by their name no more.

In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth to make them lie down safely. I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, in loving kindness and mercy.

I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. And it shall come to pass in that day that I will answer, says the Lord. I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth. And the earth shall answer with grain, and with new wine, and with oil.

And they shall answer, Jezreel. Then I will sow her for myself in the earth. And I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy. Then I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people.

And they shall say, you are my God. Then the Lord said to me, go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans. So I bought her for myself for 15 shekels of silver and one and a half homers of barley. And I said to her, you shall stay with me many days.

You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man. So too will I be toward you. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.

Amen. Well, let us pray together.

Opening Prayer

Our Father in heaven, again, we come before you and we thank you that we can have this time again on your Lord's day to worship you together and to examine your word together. And Father, we pray that now would be a time where we can hear from you through the preaching of the word. And Lord, we know that's only possible when you are here with your Spirit to fill us and to bless each one of us. And we appeal to you, Lord, for the power of the Spirit in preaching your word. for the power of the Spirit in applying it to our hearts, Lord, that you would give us attentiveness and help us to push aside all the distractions of the busy lives that we live and to sit and focus and hear what does the Lord have to say to us today.

And Father, we ask that if there be any here among us this afternoon who are not in Christ, that the power of the Spirit would work mightily in hearts. And that sinners would see the Savior in all His glory, with His arms open, saying, come unto me, all you who labor, and I will give you rest. And that they would flee in faith to the Savior for their salvation. And Father, above all, we ask that you would be glorified here and now.

And it's in Christ's name that we ask this. Amen.

Introduction

So for those who are not here this morning, we looked at the second half of chapter 2 in Hosea, and God is restoring Israel, the nation that was His, His special people. He had taken them from nothing. We read that again today in the consecutive reading in Deuteronomy. nothing and he had he had planted them in this beautiful paradise uh of the promised land and he had given them a law that they needed to follow but they violated that law they broke that law and therefore god exiled them and they were cut off that relationship was broken and no longer were they his people, he said, and no longer did he have that compassion towards them, but he was gonna make a way of reconciliation, and he does so first by alluring them. In verse 14 of chapter two, he allures them, and what he does is he shows them what he could offer them, this abundant life that he could offer to his people, and they would respond to that in faith, And then they were betrothed.

That was the legal ceremony where they legally became, that relationship was restored legally. And then after that, God takes them and he plants them in this land that he promised them, that he showed them through the door of hope. He gave them a glimpse of the life, abundant life that he could offer. After this betrothal ceremony, he goes, he prepares, he builds this kingdom that he promised us of abundant life, and then he takes his people, and he plants them in the land, and they dwell with him forever there.

Well, we saw how all this points us to the gospel. As I said this morning, when we look at these texts like this, we're not looking through a window to see how God is interacting with Israel as a nation. We're looking in a mirror to see how God is interacting with us as his people, as image bearers. And because we have broken his law, we were taken, Adam and Eve, formed out of the dust, planted in this beautiful garden, life with God, they're given a law to obey.

But they violated that law. They were exiled out of that garden and back into the wilderness, the barren wilderness, cut off from God, no access to God. But we saw how it's teaching us about So this passage is teaching us about ourselves. We have access back to God.

There is a way in which God has provided for us. He offers us eternal life through the gospel, through the word here, that you can have this life, this abundant life, back again. What you had and what you lost by virtue of your sin, you can have it back again. And by faith, and by grace, we accept that offer.

We're betrothed. We're legally his. Justified, we call that. Justified, legally God's, and then we are planted in the land.

So we're looking in a mirror. We're not looking through a window at political Israel. We're seeing how does this apply to us? Well, that's, if you know much about, or anything about the book of Hosea, you know this story between Hosea and his wife, Gomer. and she was unfaithful to him.

And we have the same story being played out in this relationship between Hosea and his bride, Gomer. He takes Gomer, he brings her into his household. Things start off well. but then she becomes unfaithful, and we'll see how that story takes place. But we have to, and we'll see how that story is gonna, yes, it was there to teach Israel about what they were doing to God, but ultimately it's teaching us about what we've done to God.

And today we'll see that, the reconciliation of that. So Hosea had married Gomer, things started out fine, they had the child together, named Jezreel, Things were good. They had the intimate knowledge of one another. Things started out well.

They had a child. But then Gomer left him. And she went for, after other gods, or other lovers, I should say, sorry, other different lovers that she went with, played the harlot with, committed fornication with, she had children as a result of those. relationships, and in the beginning of chapter 2, essentially we see a court case where Hosea files for divorce, and he says, I'm going to remove my compassion, my protection, my mercy, is what our English translations say there, that I'm going to remove that mercy from you, but that's all, everything in that word is what a husband ought to be towards a wife, the care, the protector. the one who watches over, and he says, I'm going to remove that from you. Because why?

Lo ami, that you are no longer my people. Again, remember, this is also taking place, or pointing us to God and Israel's relationship. So we have God cutting off Israel, but Hosea has cut off Gomer. He has divorced her, and he's left her on her own.

Well, today we all see the restoration of that relationship in chapter 3. God tells Hosea that you are to take this woman back, you're to restore this relationship, and we'll see how that points us to the gospel again here. So,

Unconditional Love Displayed

in the first two verses, we have this display of unconditioned love, I might say. In verse 3 to 4, we have a call to fidelity, and then verse 5, the promise of consummation. So, verse 1, The Lord says to Hosea, go again and love this woman who's loved by a lover and is committing adultery. So Gomer here, she's described as a woman who's been loved by somebody else.

And she's an adulteress. The Hebrew Bible literally just, the King James tells us, says lover. Here she's loved by a lover. It just literally means she's been loved by someone else.

She's violated herself by having relations with someone other than her husband. And God says, you need to take this woman back. You need to go and love her. She's, from his perspective, unlovable, unworthy.

And God says, you need to go love her. She's been unfaithful to him, not just once, over and over again. But take her back, Hosea. Why?

Why does Hosea do this? Look at the second half of the verse. Just like the love of Yahweh for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.

God's Love for the Unfaithful

God says, do this, just like the love that I have towards Israel. The love that I display to Israel, that I have for Israel, is the same love that you need to show to this woman. Israel, they're unlovable. They've violated my covenant.

They have committed spiritual adultery over and over and over again. They had the audacity, we might say, to go after other gods, to go and serve other gods after all that Yahweh had done for them in rescuing them out of Egypt and bringing them into this promised land, yet they dare to go after other gods. They looked to other gods, it says here, and it tells us they loved the raisin cakes of the pagans there. It's an interesting reference there.

There's not much indication in the Bible about what these raisin cakes indicated, although there's a reference in Isaiah. But there's something to do with playing a part in the religious worship of the false gods. Some think that maybe perhaps it was an aphrodisiac. which could be true, seeing as there was a lot of fornication involved in Baal worship, especially. they would go, for Baal worship, they thought that, they believed that Baal was the god, the fertility god, that Baal could offer life. He could offer something better than Yahweh did.

He was the one who gave life, and the way, because he was the storm god, which meant he brought the rain upon the land, and when the rain came, then the crops would grow, and they would have this abundant life. So they attributed this to Baal, And the way that they did that, there was a lot of fornication involved in the worship, because they thought they would go down to the temple, they would fornicate with the priests and the priestesses there, male and female prostitutes, working at the temple of Baal, and that would please Baal, and then he would send the rain upon the land there. So that's probably what's indicated here by these raisin cakes. Something to do with that, the part and parcel of the fornicating debauchery of Baal worship.

But God says here, in spite of that, in spite of that wickedness, I still love them. In spite of the fact that they violated my covenant. They justly deserve to be cut off forever. That was the terms of the covenant.

You break the law, you are cut off forever. Justice, it was completely fair, completely right of God to cut them off. But he says, in spite of that, I still love them. And we have to ask the question, how can that be?

And the answer is because God's love is not conditioned by something outside of who He is. I know that's a pretty heavy statement.

Love Unconditioned by the Sinner's State

His love is not conditioned by anything outside of himself, because God is infinite. We would all agree to that. God has no limits, no bounds. Nothing can limit Him.

Nothing can change Him. Nothing can condition who He is as a God of love. Nothing can change that. So His love cannot be limited.

His love cannot be changed. His love cannot be conditioned by something outside of who He is. We have to realize this. Every single one of us has broken God's law.

Every single one of us has violated the terms of that covenant. God made the covenant and told Adam, the day that you eat of that tree, you will surely die. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, indicating the knowledge of good and evil that he had written on his heart. He violated that when he, by his sin, violated that the terms of the covenant.

Every single one of us has done that. We've sinned against our Creator. We've gone after other gods, maybe not Baal, maybe not Moloch and Marduk, those gods, but we've served other things. Most likely it was just ourself that we were serving, but we've done that.

We've fornicated. We've lied. We've cheated. We've stolen.

We've coveted. We took His name in vain. We broke Every single law that God has and we've done it over and over and over we are just like Gomer We're just like Israel. We there's there is the same now outwardly that looks different for every every person young people You might think well, I'm not I haven't done that much, you know, very very bad things.

That doesn't matter It's because it's coming from the heart that is against God and a heart that is sinful towards God we've all we're all there but God loves you and A love that is not conditioned by what you've done in violating His law, but by who He is. Now, I know sometimes we get a little bit nervous when we think of a sinner, an unsaved sinner, and saying, God loves you. But the Bible tells us that God has a special love toward mankind as His image bearers, that He willing to accept those back who are his. Turn to Titus chapter 3 for a moment where we see that.

Titus 3 verse 4, But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. In verse 4, it tells us the kindness and the love of God our Savior towards man. Love towards man, in the Greek, is one word. Philanthropia.

We still use that word today. Philanthropy. Love for man. God has a love for man.

And what do we need to understand from that?

God's Philanthropia Toward Man

Never has there been one sinner who's too sinful to be a recipient of God's amazing grace and to be a recipient of God's love. There has never been one sinner whom God says, you're too sinful for me. You have sinned too much. You violated my law too much, and you are not, and I won't, and you cannot be a recipient of my love.

God, God, Does not say to anybody you need to first go and make yourself a little bit better make yourself a little bit more lovable so that I can love you know his love his kindness his mercy his goodness does not depend on the state of The sinner they can't because of who he is it is it is unconditioned love Unconditioned love love that and a love that was willing to do whatever was necessary to restore that relationship and Because God's unconditioned love does not mean that he takes you back and that there aren't conditions to be met, that he just takes you back and pretends that nothing happened. There are conditions to be met, but they're covenantal conditions that have to be met. Violating the covenant had consequences that needed to be met. That's what, We need to understand here, when we violated that covenant, there's consequences.

And the Bible tells us that when we sin against God, the wages of sin is death. The wages of sin is not clean yourself up, not make yourself a bit more lovable. The wages of sin is death. When you've sinned, the condition that needs to be met is death.

And that's what God was willing to do, to pay for those consequences Himself.

The Price of Redemption

Back to Hosea. chapter three, verse two. So God has told Hosea, go find this woman, love her in the way that I would love Israel. So, verse two, I bought her for myself for 15 shekels of silver and one and a half homers of barley. It says here he bought her.

We gotta ask the question, well then, what happened to Gomer that she needed to be bought? Now remember what I said earlier. Hosea had told Gomer, he says, I'm gonna remove my compassion from you. I'm gonna remove my protection from you.

The mercy, the love. You're no longer my wife. Removing that from you. And Gomer didn't want it anymore either.

She thought she could find it elsewhere. Turn back to chapter two, verse five. Their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has behaved shamefully And she said, I'll go after my lovers who give me, so they give me my bread, and my water, and my wool, and my linen, my oil, and my drink.

She thought, they'll take care of me. They'll protect me. And I'll go to them. They'll provide for me.

What Hosea is no longer willing to provide, I'm going to go find that in my illicit lovers. But as soon as Hosea removed his protection from her, they turned on her, and no longer did they love her. Verse 7 of chapter 2, if you're still there, she'll chase her lovers, but she will not overtake them. She'll seek them, but she'll not find them.

She'll say, I thought you loved me. I thought you were, I thought you loved me, these four illicit lovers, but she won't find them. Instead, they will, they will turn on her. And it doesn't tell us in that chapter, but at the end of chapter four we see that.

There's other places as well that indicate that her illicit lovers turn on her. We know specifically that's what happened to Israel. Look, turn to Lamentations, chapter one. Lamentations comes after Jeremiah, chapter one.

The first verse. following how lonely sits the city that was full of people how like a widow is she who was great among the nations the princess among the provinces has become a slave and she weeps bitterly in the night her tears are on her cheeks among all her lovers there's none to comfort her all her friends have dealt treacherously with her and they have become her enemies Judah has gone into captivity etc there so Israel We know they went after these foreign gods, God gave them over, and those nations whose gods they served turned on them and captured them. Assyria, Babylon, brought her in and turned on her, enslaved her instead. So it doesn't tell us here, but from the context, we can assume, we don't know whoever the lovers were, but we can assume they've turned on her and they've made her their property now. And since Gomer is being compared to Israel, there's a good chance that she had been going down to the Baal Temple and that she had been fornicating there.

She had been going down and fornicating with the male prostitutes and the male priests down at the Temple of Baal. Well, once Hosea removed his love, his protection from her, exiled her out of his household. She wasn't under that care and protection anymore. Those priests of Baal saw that and they took her and they turned on her and now they've made her a sex slave working in the temple there.

Now she's enslaved to the very thing that she was attracted to, enslaved to the very ones that she fornicated with.

Hosea Redeems Gomer from Bondage

We can imagine, Hosea goes down to the temple of Baal, and he says, I'm here for Gomer. And they say, oh, Gomer, we have her. You want to fornicate with her as part of your worship with Baal, so that Baal will bless your land. And he says, no.

He says, Gomer was my wife, and I love her, and I'm here to take her back, to be my wife again. And the answer is, well, that's going to cost you. She belongs to us now. because he loves her. And just like Yahweh told him to, he spends the money to buy her, to redeem her from her captors.

And it tells us that he bought her for 15 pieces of silver and one and a half homers. of barley. Some translations will translate the word lethek, which is translated as a half here, as more of a measure of oil or wine. So he's paying for her with silver, with barley, and with wine perhaps. What's the significance of what he is, of the payment here, this price for her redemption?

Well, previously, through the book, and through the rest of the book, and the rest of the Old Testament, the concept of silver, and gold, and grain, and barley, and wine, it's all part of the abundant life that the Lord offered. It's abundance. It's life. It signifies life. that the Lord provided.

So for Hosea to have Gomer back as his wife, he has to make a payment out of this abundance, out of, we might say, out of his livelihood. But you can see where this is going here. For Yahweh, the Lord, to have his bride for Christ, to have his bride back, it cost him not his livelihood, not material goods, it cost him his very life. Remember what I said, covenantal conditions, the wages of sin is death, life must be given, and Christ was willing to do that.

So we see here,

Sin Enslaves, Christ Redeems

our sin has earned us death, the very thing we were attracted to. When, in the Genesis narrative, when Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree, indicating to us a violation of the law of God, they saw that fruit. It was pleasurable to the eyes, and it was good to taste, and it was just gonna, it was so attractive, it was gonna fulfill something more. It promised something other than what Yahweh was offering, and they took it.

But what happened? The very thing that we were attracted to now, and looked so promising, and looked like it was going to fulfill some sort of gratification to us, instead turns on us, and now it holds us in its grasp. Now we're enslaved to sin. We're enslaved to sin and the demands of sin, and our sin demands the payment of death to free us from its grasp.

Life must be given, and that's what God provides in Christ. The payment to free us from the bondage of sin, the thing that we went after and turned on us and enslaved us. God provides that payment on the cross. God himself.

We saw that this morning. Briefly, we looked at that. But God himself in the person of the son, having assumed human nature, taking our sins upon himself, paying in full the payment of his life so that we could be released from the bondage of sin. Don't ever lose the wonder of that, brethren.

Don't ever grow cold to that gospel message that Christ did that. in our place condemned. He stood in our place. Again, think of Hosea. Think of Hosea going down to the temple of Baal.

Where's Gomer? She's in some dark, dirty room in the back somewhere. There she is. She's stripped naked.

She's exposed, she's dirty, she's enslaved in the sex trade as a result of her own actions. But he loves her, he loves her so much in spite of the mess she's gotten herself into. And he pays, he pays of his livelihood to have her back for himself. Again, that's what Christ did.

Christ came into this broken world of darkness and there he finds us, naked. stripped bare, exposed, dirty, enslaved to the very sin that we chose and that we went after. But he loves us. He loves us so much in spite of what we got ourselves into. So much that he's willing to give his very life so that he can have that relationship restored and his people back.

Greater love hath no man in this than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends, Jesus said, John 15, 13. it's just exactly like what he said in chapter in uh in verse 15 of chapter 2 uh sorry not verse 15 um verse 19 that he would he would he would do this he would purchase his bride in this incredible act of justice and and and righteousness but yet loving kindness and mercy that that in order to redeem his bride, to purchase his bride for himself. Justice and mercy, that's what meets at the cross there, so that we can be freed from the power of sin. No longer forced to work in the spiritual sex trade.

We've been freed from that. He purchased us. He bought us out of that. And there's then, if we understand that, there's massive ramifications for how we live our lives after that.

If we've been freed out of that, we've been redeemed by the life of our Savior out of the sin that we were enslaved to, broken free of that, well then, Why would we go back and dabble in that again? Why would we go back there?

Call to Fidelity

Look at verse three. And he says to her, you shall stay with me many days. You, sorry, you shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man.

And so too will I be towards you. So he buys her, takes her back. She's his. Again, she's under his care, under his protection, she's part of his household, his kingdom, we might say.

But not right away is that relationship back to what it was at the beginning. It's not consummated right away. There's a time. before it will be consummated. There's one English version that I would probably never recommend, but it translates this verse this way.

You will have to remain faithful to me, although it will be a long time before we sleep together. Now that's not necessarily as literal as the text might be, but that's what's being indicated in this verse here. You will have to remain faithful to me, even though it will be a long time before we sleep together. So she's not in bondage anymore.

She's freed from that, but she's not to go back and dabble in that harlotry that she was saved from and rescued from. She needs to be faithful to her husband until that marriage is consummated, until they are together again. Look at verse 4. For the children of Israel, now we're back to the nation of Israel again, they will abide for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim.

So now we're looking at Israel again and the analogy pointing us to ourselves. So even though Israel is going to be restored back to the land again, it's going to be a very long time before they are with their king, with their leader, with the son of David on the throne with them again. And it says here there's going to be no sacrifice or sacred pillar, no ephod or teraphim. There's some parallelism. going on here.

Sacred pillars and teraphim, those were divination tools. Those were things that were part and parcel of worship of the foreign gods, interaction with the underworld that was connected to that worship of these false gods. So they're not They're not to engage in that type of worship. They're not to try and communicate with the underworld, with some spiritual being other than Yahweh, their God.

They are to remain faithful to Yahweh. But there's also, he says here, there's also not going to be any sacrifice, and there's not going to be any ephod. Those two things were part of religious worship for the nation of Israel, they provided communion and they provided an intimate access to God for Old Testament Israel. And God says, you're not going to have that now.

You're not going to have that unique, intimate relationship that came via the sacrifice and via the ephod with me. right now. You're not going to have that anymore. But they still had the law. They still had the law and they knew what was required of them to be faithful.

Just because they did not have these other ways of communication with God, they had the law, they knew what was required to be faithful. And having been freed from the slavery that they were in, they were to live according to that law.

The Betrothal Stage and Faithfulness

That's where we are right now, brethren. That points us to ourselves. Our relationship with Yahweh is not consummated yet. We saw that in a lot more detail this morning.

The relationship is consummated when we enter glory with Him. When He comes and returns for us at the end of the age, we might die before that happens and we enter what we call the intermediate state. But that final consummated state is when Christ returns to this earth, he takes his people and he plants them in the earth and they dwell with him. The veil is removed, they see him face to face and we dwell with our king in the new heaven, new earth.

That's the consummation. Right now we are in this betrothal stage and what is required of us is faithfulness. We have his word and we know what is required of us. We are to live according to that until he returns.

We're to be faithful to him and to him alone. We're not to go dabble in the very sin that we've been rescued from. We would think it horrible and atrocious for Gomer, after such an incredible and amazing act of love, that where Hosea would go and purchase her from such a wretched situation, we would think it atrocious, horrible, if she would go back, willingly go back to the temple of Baal and fornicate there again at that temple. Well, we should think it horrible that after an amazing act of love, where Christ gave of his very life to rescue us from that sin, that we would go back to that again.

That's why we're called to holiness. It's not legalism, brethren. Having been saved from that, we are to be Faithful. We would not say it's legalism for, you know, for Gomer to not go back and work at the whorehouse again and say, oh, Hosea's gonna love you anyways.

Of course not. She belongs to him again. She needs to be faithful to him. Well, we belong to Christ.

We are to be faithful to Christ. But here's the thing, though. We know that every day we do sin. Every day we return to the whorehouse of sin.

And it doesn't tell us here, but we can imagine. Gomer, after this, she goes back down to the temple of Baal, and Hosea goes again. He goes down there, and he brings the receipts. And he says, she's mine.

I've paid. I've purchased her. She doesn't belong here anymore. And he takes her home again, and he cleans her up.

Every single day, we do the same thing, brethren. Every single day, the story is repeated. we end up at the whorehouse of sin. Christ shows up, and he brings the receipts. He says, paid in full.

Those receipts say paid in full. Behold my hands and my feet, and see the prints of the nails there, and see the hole in my side, the receipts that he has paid in full, and we are his. We no longer are held captive at that whorehouse of sin. His compassions fail not.

They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Lamentations 3. God, we sin.

We end up at the whorehouse of Baal. It's not okay. There's no one saying that's okay. We ought not to.

Yet we do that. Yet Christ comes every time. and says, they are mine. I don't say this so that you go out and sin. I say this so that you know when you sin.

You have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, who will love you, and he will take you back, and he will be faithful to you in spite of your unfaithfulness to him. That is our Christ. And one day he's coming, then he will take us to glory with him into his kingdom, his household, and we will dwell with him forever. And then there will be no more sin there.

There will be no more opportunity to sin and to violate that relationship.

Promise of Consummation

Verse five, the consummation. Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days. After their restoration, Israel went, they went back into the promised land and they lived a long time without a king on the throne, many days, many years. And unfortunately, what happened when David, their king, David's greater son, Christ, when he came there, they rejected him and they killed him.

And they faced their final judgment because of that. Now does that mean that this prophecy wasn't fulfilled then? Does it mean that God was wrong or that God was not true to his word? No, it's because the Old Testament tells us that this Messiah, this son of David who was coming, he was going to usher in a new covenant, a new relationship.

He's going to usher in the covenant that this covenant is pointing us to and he's going to And as we've been seeing all along here, that was God's plan. The plan of that old covenant and of God's relationship with Israel was to bring in the new covenant and God's relationship with His true bride, the church. That's, so it's not that God was unfaithful to his promises. It's that this promise was ultimately fulfilled in the Messiah, in Christ coming and ushering in this new covenant here.

That's where we, and that's where we find ourselves today. Now, awaiting the arrival and the return of our Messiah. He came, he redeemed his bride from slavery. He betrothed her.

We saw this morning, he promises, he guarantees that he's going to come back. Nothing's going to hinder that. He's going to come back and he's going to, now he's gone to prepare a place, but he's coming again. It's been many days. 2,000 years ago, he left us to go and build this kingdom.

And he's building it right now. And he's preparing it, but he's coming back. It's been many days, and we don't know how many more days it will be before he returns. But till then, verse 3, be faithful to him.

Be faithful to him as we await his return. and let us pursue holiness. Let us, like a bride, adorning herself for the bridegroom to return with anticipation. Let us adorn ourselves with good works and sanctify, sanctification, cleaning up our lives. Yes, we do this by the power of the Holy Spirit, absolutely, but we adorn ourselves.

We are excited for His return and in the anticipation of his arrival. This morning we saw that we are to be encouraged by the fact that we're betrothed to the Creator. Nothing can separate us from that. So we're to be encouraged, but we're to be excited as well at the thought of going to dwell with him in this glorious new Eden-like creation that awaits us in paradise with Him, but here we see also that we are to be faithful to Him while we wait.

Don't go dabble in the very thing for which He died to save you from. Spurgeon, I think it's Spurgeon, says don't trifle with the, I should have wrote it down instead of trying to quote it from memory, but don't trifle with the very thing that slew your best friend. And that's what we need to understand here. We are to be faithful to Him, but let us live for Him and let us never forget that amazing act of love and compassion, faithfulness, where justice and mercy met at the cross, where Christ purchased us for himself.

Application

And an unbeliever, if you're not in Christ here now, and this goes for children, youngest to the oldest, if you do not believe, you do not belong to this kingdom, you are still apart from him, But I hope you see what a good and a loving and a merciful God this is. He's offering full and free salvation to those who are enslaved in their sin. He says he offers that he will free you from that. And that, as we saw this morning, that he will not just free you from that, but give you abundant life in glory.

God loved. He's a God of love. He loved the world. God so loved the world in John 3, 16.

God loved the world in this way is probably the better translation, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. I hope you don't find yourself here today comfortable and happy to be enslaved in sin, happy to be like maybe Gomer, happy to be working at the whorehouse of Baal. I hope you don't find yourself Now, like that, I hope that you see that this is bondage. I hope you have a desire to be freed from this, so that you might have this abundant and eternal life with Him.

And the way to be freed from that, the way to be rescued out of that, is simply to look to Him for salvation. Trust that He will save you, and He will. That we can't save ourselves, we need to be freed from this, but we can't do it. We're held in bondage because of that, because of the demands of justice.

But he says, look to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other. then you will get to experience the infinite goodness and the love of God for an eternity of bliss and glory with Him. That's what eternal life is. That's what makes eternal life so amazing. It's not the beauty of the palm trees of Eden, of a new Eden-like paradise that we live in.

What does the hymn writer say? The Lamb is all the glory of Emmanuel's land. We're there with Him, experiencing an eternity of the infinite love of God. But if you choose to remain in your sin, if you think, you know, there's no need to be freed from this.

I'm happy to just be here. This doesn't really feel like bondage. And you need to realize there's a time coming when that opportunity to be rescued is no longer there. And the end of that bondage leads to the absence of any goodness. that there might be.

Any of the goodness that God is offering right now, even the goodness of life as you know it now, there's so much goodness here. There's joy, there's friendships, there's happiness, there's good food, there's so much goodness here yet. But there's a time coming when any goodness of God is removed, and you're forever separated from that goodness, forever separated from anything good, and you will only face bad wrath, the wrath of his anger against your sin and for the rejection of the Savior. Think of the Israelites.

The Messiah came and they rejected him and they perished in the most, as a nation, perished in the most horrific way in 70 AD when the Romans descended upon Jerusalem. You can read the account in Josephus. Horrible, horrible things that are unimaginable, unimaginable. Millions and millions of people thrown into the fires of Gehenna in the valley of Hinnom there, their bodies burning and smoldering.

Well, what did Jesus say? Hell is worse than that. The fire never burns out. The worms, the maggots never, never die.

It's continual, eternal death that awaits those who reject the Messiah. Heaven Heaven is described in the Bible as no sadness, no crying, no pain, no sorrow. It's pure bliss. Well, hell is the opposite of that.

It's the removal of anything good. It's only sadness, it's only crying, only pain. only sorrow, it's pure, it's terror. Hell is real. Hell is a place that you go to experience what the absolute absence of any goodness looks like.

Right now, as I said, you experience a lot of God's goodness, but in hell, There is no goodness. The world says hell ain't a bad place to be. The world says all my friends are going to be there too. But that is an utter lie.

There's no such thing as a friend in hell. Because a friend is a good thing. In hell there is no Goodness. Understand that.

Make no delay. Flee to the Savior while there's hope. Stop playing games. You're gambling with your soul, your life for eternity.

You're thinking that God somehow deserves to give you one more day to live, and then another day, and then another day. You don't deserve that. Stop gambling with your eternity. Today is that day of salvation.

Trust in Him. Look to Him. and He will deliver you from the bondage that you're in. Realize you are in bondage that leads to absolute destruction. Look to Him.

He will deliver you from that. Then go on your way rejoicing. Your relationship with your Maker has been restored, and you're bound for glory. Be excited, be encouraged, and be faithful.

Let's close there in prayer.

Closing Prayer

O Lord, we thank you for this passage of Scripture again, and what a glorious display of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ that we find here in the life of Hosea. Lord, I pray that you would take this message and that you would press it on our hearts, that we would be encouraged, we would be excited, and that we would be, again, given a new resolve to walk in holiness, to be faithful to you, Lord, while we await your return where we get to go to enter into glory with you. Lord I pray that that if there be sinners here who are unsaved that are still in that in the bondage of sins in the whorehouse of sin Lord that you would that you would press it upon their hearts to see that reality that that that there is utter destruction coming their way but today there is the offer of rescue from that and that they would see that Christ is that only way and that they would trust in him and Him alone to free them from their sin, Lord, and that You would draw them to You, and that they would come willingly, having been made willing, and that You would save them to the uttermost, and that they would leave here, go on their way, rejoicing for your sins have been forgiven. Lord, it's in Jesus' name we pray this.

Amen.

Scripture References

• Isaiah 45:22
• Hosea 2:5; 2:7; 2:14; 2:19; 3
• Lamentations 1:1; 3
• John 3:16; 15:13
• Romans 6:23
• Titus 3:4