1. "Unfaithfulness is a form of lying. Unfaithfulness is quitting doing what you had pledged to do. It is deserting."

2. "She loved the wrong people. And that's the way it is with all of Israel's idols. None of Israel's blessings came from the Baals. Didn't matter how much they worshiped them, how much they gave up for them, none of their fertility, none of their prosperity came from those gods. They were treating their undertakers like they were their cooks."

3. "This world's approval is as sturdy as a tissue. It's as long-lasting as ice in July."

4. "For each one of us, the most important attribute about us, more important than anything you can write about yourself in a college entrance exam, more important than anything anyone is going to write about you in your obituary, is how you are related to God himself."

5. "You would think after the end of such a complete recounting, even of the embarrassing sins of Gomer, of the people of Israel, what we have presented is an airtight case for divorce. So having presented publicly such a case, you would expect that marriage to be as dead as a crucified body in a stone cold tomb."

6. "God is the source of His own love. We must not look beyond Him for some more basic motive. We are the undeserving objects of God's electing, saving love."

7. "Pride should find a Christian church and a Christian heart a very uncomfortable place, one that is a very hostile environment to survive in. Because we are humbled by the fact that our unfaithfulness has been answered by His faithful mercy, by His love."

8. "One way you can tell God is saving you is because you just start thinking about him all the time. You just can't get him out of your mind."

9. "See, that's how the Lord, the real God, differs from the fake-o ones who just want your money. The real God is alive and he loves you. He's made you with a purpose. He's made you in his image."

10. "Because God is a just God, the adulterers had to be purchased and the price paid. Whatever that cost exactly was, it shows us that as freely as Gomer may have experienced this mercy, it cost Hosea."

Observation Questions

1. According to Hosea 1:2, what specific command did the Lord give to Hosea, and what reason did God provide for this unusual instruction?

2. In Hosea 1:4-9, what are the names given to Hosea and Gomer's three children, and what do these names signify about God's relationship with Israel?

3. What does Hosea 2:8 reveal about Gomer's (and Israel's) understanding of where her blessings—grain, wine, oil, silver, and gold—actually came from?

4. In Hosea 2:14-15, how does God describe His intention to restore the relationship with His unfaithful people, and what imagery does He use?

5. According to Hosea 2:19-20, what qualities characterize the new betrothal that God promises to His people, and what will be the result of this restored relationship?

6. In Hosea 3:1-2, what does God command Hosea to do again, and what cost did Hosea pay to carry out this command?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why do you think God chose the intimate imagery of marriage and adultery to communicate Israel's spiritual condition rather than using more abstract theological language about covenant-breaking?

2. The sermon identifies three levels on which Hosea's story operates: historical (Gomer), analogical (Israel), and personal (us today). How does understanding these three levels deepen our grasp of what God is communicating through this prophecy?

3. In Hosea 2:13, the climax of God's accusation is that Israel "forgot me." Why is forgetting God presented as the ultimate expression of unfaithfulness, and how does this connect to the other sins described in the chapter?

4. The sermon notes that Hosea 2:14 begins with "Therefore"—the same word used to introduce judgment in verses 6 and 9—yet leads to restoration instead of punishment. What does this surprising turn reveal about God's character and the nature of His mercy?

5. How does Hosea's purchase of Gomer in chapter 3 foreshadow the work of Christ, and why is it significant that mercy is shown to be costly rather than free to the giver?

Application Questions

1. The sermon warns against "Sheilaism"—creating a self-authored religion by mixing personal preferences with selective spiritual truths. In what specific ways might you be tempted to customize your faith according to your own comfort rather than submitting to God's revealed Word?

2. Hosea 2:8 describes how Israel credited false lovers for blessings that actually came from God. What good things in your life—relationships, career success, health, financial stability—might you be attributing to sources other than God, and how could you cultivate greater gratitude toward Him?

3. The sermon describes how God "allures" His people and draws them into intimacy with Himself. Have you recently experienced God drawing your attention and affections toward Him? What practices might help you respond to His pursuit rather than resist it?

4. If mercy restores relationships, consider a relationship in your life that has been damaged by unfaithfulness or broken trust (whether yours or another's). What would it look like to extend or seek mercy in that situation this week, even if reconciliation seems impossible?

5. The sermon emphasizes that our relationship with God is "more important than anything you can write about yourself in a college entrance exam" or "anything anyone is going to write about you in your obituary." How does this truth challenge the way you currently measure your identity and success, and what concrete change might you make in response?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Ezekiel 16:1-14, 59-63 — This extended allegory of Jerusalem as God's unfaithful bride parallels Hosea's imagery and shows God's determination to remember His covenant despite Israel's adultery.

2. Ephesians 5:22-33 — Paul explicitly connects marriage to Christ's sacrificial love for the church, showing how Hosea's marriage imagery finds its ultimate fulfillment in the gospel.

3. Romans 9:22-26 — Paul quotes Hosea 2:23 to explain how God's mercy extends to Gentiles who were "not my people," demonstrating the ongoing relevance of Hosea's prophecy.

4. 1 Peter 1:17-21 — Peter describes redemption through the precious blood of Christ rather than silver or gold, echoing the costly purchase that Hosea made for Gomer.

5. Revelation 21:1-7 — This passage depicts the ultimate restoration of God's relationship with His people as a bride adorned for her husband, fulfilling the hope expressed in Hosea's prophecy of eternal betrothal.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Significance of Love and Marriage as Foundational Human Experiences

II. Introduction to the Book of Hosea and Its Historical Context

III. What Undermines a Relationship: Unfaithfulness (Hosea 1-2)

IV. What Restores a Relationship: Mercy (Hosea 2-3)

V. The Gospel Message of Christ's Redemptive Love

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Love is one of the most widely known, highly treasured, eagerly sought for experiences in life. And to try to define love, though, we find our limits. We argue through what appear to be simple statements about love. Love is love.

What would seem to be a tautology, that is a statement that says nothing, salt is salt, light is light, in fact today carries an argument. Pushing back against a majority understanding in human history and around the world today, about the goodness of homosexuality and the oppression and evils of assuming heterosexuality is simply right. This particular battle is so pitched, even bitter, that everything from nuclear families to globe-spanning religious bodies are dividing over it. You may have such experience in your own family or in one you know of. And as for the more public battles, simply ask your Anglican friends for this year or your Methodist friends from last year.

More individually, love from family and friends is usually a person's most treasured Personal experience, parental care, sharing the joys of your children, shared concerns for other family members, all radiate out from that human love that generates so many others, the love of a husband and wife. That's why for me, the challenging circumstances that my wife and my mother are facing right now are so mentally and emotionally difficult and draining, it's because I love them so much and because they've loved me so much. Along with God's love, these are the loves that have defined my life. Who would I be if my mother, Anne, and my wife, Connie, did not love me as they have and as they do?

I assume you're sitting there agreeing with me. Whether you are currently a teenager, or retired, or living alone, or in the midst of a large family, you know what I'm talking about. The love of those nearest to you is easily among the most fundamental experiences in your life, and that's why you treasure them.

As you do. That's also of course why these same relationships can generate so much pain. Like the troubles we may have with our bones or our heart or our brain are so much more difficult than the troubles we may have with our skin or with our hair. They are deeper in. We depend on them more fully and completely.

How they function shapes our experience every moment of the day. The most difficult matters as a church that we deal with in everything from pastoral time and effort to simply our members listening and talking to each other. The most difficult matters are troubled marriages. We see trials and tragedies. We see tremendous triumphs, majestic quiet perseverance, sterling daily faithfulnesses.

Marriage is such a deeply rooted institution in the way God has made us. Why else would it be so basic to our beings that it could rearrange our native orbit around our parents and cause us to divide off and become a new kind of center of gravity? I remember when Connie and I first started having Christmas at our house and stopped trying to figure out going to her parents or my parents' house. It's part of this natural evolution that happens. It's a concern for this central experience and especially what we do when it goes wrong that brings us with special interest to the book of the Old Testament prophet, Hosea.

Today we're beginning a brief series in one of the earliest and one of the longest books of the 12 as they're called, the Minor Prophets. We begin a series in the book of Hosea. So if you want to just go on and open your Bibles there to this book, you'll find it beginning on page 763 of the Bibles provided. This book is unusual even among the minor prophets for a few reasons. First, it is longer than most of them.

Hosea has fourteen chapters. Among these books only Zechariah is as long. Hosea is also one of the earliest of the minor prophets. Along with Amos and Micah, they prophesied during the time that Isaiah was was prophesying. They were prophesying when there were still two kingdoms.

Before the northern kingdom Israel fell to the Assyrians in 722 B.C. This may be why it's always placed first in the collection of the 12 minor prophets. So you have the major prophets, you know, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and then the first of the 12, the minor prophets, Hosea. And that also brings us to a third unusual thing about Hosea. It focuses on the northern kingdom of Israel.

Rather than on the southern kingdom of Judah as most of the minor prophets do. Most of the minor prophets are from the southern kingdom of Judah because that's all there was. The northern kingdom, as I mentioned, fell in 722 BC. But one of the three older prophets, Micah, focused on Judah even before Israel fell. But the other two old ones, Hosea and Amos, focused on the northern kingdom, on Israel.

They prophesied to those ten tribes who had followed Jeroboam in rebelling against Solomon's son a couple of hundred years earlier, sometimes called Samaria because of its capital city, sometimes called Ephraim because that was the most prominent and long-lasting tribe, kind of like Judah was in the south. Israel was a nation that was beset with troubles from the very beginning. And the decades before Jeroboam II, who reigned while Hosea was prophesying, were tumultuous. They went through king after king. The nations seem to be in a free fall.

And that's where we find it when we join the book of Hosea in our study this morning. The first three chapters have all we know of Hosea's own history combined with some prophecy. Hosea is prophesying, as they say, in the second half of the eighth century, so that would be the 700s B.C. We don't know exactly when. Assyria is the great empire of the time, just north of Israel, always nibbling away at her borders, always threatening to strike her in her very heart.

So while Isaiah and Micah are prophesying down in Jerusalem, Amos and Hosea are called by God to prophesy in the waning days of the northern kingdom. And what does God have to say to His people? Well, I think we can best get at it all by beginning with a close-up, if you will, with just one word. If you look there in the first chapter, verse 3, it's that word took, as in took as his wife, married. And on a human level, that's what this book of Hosea is all about.

A man took a woman.

A man married a wife. Now, if we pull back till we see the man and the woman, we can stop and ask who they are. Oh, the man is Hosea. We see that in verse 2. Who is Hosea? Well, we're told in verse 1 about his father.

We're told his father's name and the time in which he lived. The most important thing we're told about Hosea is that he's told to marry this woman. That's the most important fact about him. We see it there in verse 2. All right, who's the woman?

Well, there's more controversy over this. Her name is Gomer, which I don't notice a lot of parents using his names for their daughters. We know that from verse 3. Her father's name was Diblaim, but it's her character that draws our attention most. Let me read to you from Hosea's own words, Hosea chapter 1.

The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, 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 to 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 Diblaim, 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 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. So we're told immediately what this book is. It's right there in verse 1. Look up in verse 1.

The word of the Lord that came to Hosea. And then we have this historical account of God's instruction to Hosea, Hosea's obedience, and what followed through most of the rest of chapter 1. And then the book fades into this prophecy with the Lord speaking through Hosea to the Israelites as if Israel were their mother and the Lord their father. The only other time Hosea is talked about clearly is in this very brief chapter 3. If you look at 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 turned to other gods and loved cakes of raisins. So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech 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.

Hosea never talks about himself again in his prophecies. It's only in these two portions of chapters 1 and 3 that he refers to himself. So what's the significance of the actual man, the prophet Hosea? Throughout the book Hosea and Gomer, Real characters in history seem to stand for God and Israel. Other times, God and Israel are directly personified, like in chapter 2.

And then sometimes all the images are dropped and God talks directly to and about Israel and about Himself. As revealingly, I think, as in any other book of the Bible. It's very interesting that we've just been in the end of Revelation. Where we get this? And now if you're gonna look throughout all of Scripture to find someplace else where you find this intensity of the intimacy of the personal relationship of God to his people, I think you would turn to this book of Hosea.

Hosea's prophecy seems mainly a menacing one of coming judgment foretold. Over 100 times in this fairly brief book you find the little phrase, I will, I will, I will, as God tells about what he's about to do. The punishment that he'll inflict on Israel. Look again, just here, we've seen it even chapter 1, starting verse 4. 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 no more have mercy on the house of Israel to Israel to forgive them at all. Well, friends, if you look then at chapter 2, this large chapter in between chapters 1 and 3, you'll see the first 13 verses of chapter 2, the Lord uses an image of Israel as His wayward wife as He tells of the punishment that He will inflict on her. You see this in chapter 2 starting there at verse 2. In the ESV it's all the text that they've presented as verses. Beginning in verse 2, Plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband, that she put away her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.

Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of whoredom. For their mother has played the whore, she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.' Therefore I will hedge her way up with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. And she shall seek them, but shall not find them.

Then she shall say, 'I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.' and she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand, and I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, 'These are my wages which my lovers have given me.' I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall devour them. And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot Me, declares the Lord.

How is it that God became the attacker of His people? And what does this have to do with love?

Well, thereby hangs a tale, a tale which shows a relationship being undermined, but also shows a relationship being restored.

The first question I want us to consider then is, what is it that undermines a relationship? And what are we seeing particularly undermine this relationship? Well, it's pretty straightforward, even from what I've read. What undermined this relationship was unfaithfulness, unfaithfulness. We saw in chapter 1 verse 2 the way that word whoredom was repeated and repeated again as typifying Gomer and in some sense her children and even the very land itself.

Unfaithfulness is not the only way a relationship can be undermined. There are as many ways a relationship can be undermined as it can be strengthened. But unfaithfulness undermines a main support, even the essence of a relationship. Unfaithfulness is a form of lying.

Unfaithfulness is quitting doing what you had pledged to do. It is deserting. We find echoes of this in this chapter, really on three different levels that we need to understand if we're going to understand the book of Hosea. First, the historical level. We see Gomer's unfaithfulness, this historical figure.

But second, by analogy, we're to understand God's condemnation of Israel's unfaithfulness to Him. Gomer stands for the unfaithfulness of God's people. But three, yet there's more because this ancient unfaithfulness shows those of us who are redeemed and yet not fully sanctified, still sinners, helps us to see something of our own unfaithfulness to God. So you see three levels that Hosea is operating on. And as you read through the book during the rest of this year, you need to remember all three of those because they're all three there.

There's a simple historical level, these are real characters, Hosea and Gomer. But also the analogy, what God was saying to Israel at the time in the eighth century to his people, warning them of their unfaithfulness to him and what results that would have. But then also as Christians reading this today, we have to think, what is the Lord saying to us about our own relationships? About our relationship most fundamentally to Him, and then also as we see it played out in those closest to us. This is how we're to read and understand this book.

In marriage here we see unfaithfulness is epitomized by adultery. Probably the question I've been asked most this past week is, Whose kids are these in chapter 1?

It's a good question. Thank you for those of you who emailed it to me. You can make arguments for the father being Hosea, especially there in verse 3, because it seems to imply that the son was presented to him as if he were its father, but the other ones are less clear. And an argument can be made for their father being someone else. I actually think the unclear paternity is simply another artful way that God in this prophecy is leading the prophet to communicate the reality of Gomer's unfaithfulness and of Israel's unfaithfulness, their spiritual adultery.

They don't really know who the dad is. The book doesn't make it clear. Gomer may have known, Hosea may have known, maybe they didn't know. We certainly don't know. We've seen that in the Lord's long message there in chapter 2.

Look again at chapter 2, at verse 2, Plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband, that she put away her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts. And then down in verse 10, Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand. What's led up to this? Tragic sin. Well, these chapters of Hosea present to us a toxic combination of what seems to be a willful ignorance of God's ways, a wrong devotion to others, and ultimately, Gomer's forgetfulness of the Lord Himself.

Get Gomer's adultery in mind and consider it through each of these lenses. To commit such adultery, Gomer had to act in willful ignorance of God's way and God's will. God has revealed Himself clearly. We know the seventh commandment, you shall not commit adultery. Clearly teaches we shouldn't do that.

But this ignorance of God's will combined with apparent ignorance of God's ways of generosity and loving support. And so we see here in chapter 2 verse 8, She did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, the oil, who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.

To commit such adultery, Gomer had to act in wrong devotion to others. Look there in verse 5, chapter 2, verse 5. For their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully, for she said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. ' So in her passionate, misguided devotion, she pursued the wrong lovers.

Look again at verse 7. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them, and she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Her wrong went all the way to wrongly worshiping other gods, breaking the very first commandment. You shall have no gods before me. We see in verses 8 to 10 that Gomer had entrusted herself to the wrong people.

She thought that all she had was from the people who were worshiping Baal or from Baal. So God will take it all back to show, to expose her in her error. As he puts it in chapter 2 verse 10, I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand. You see, the people Gomer went to, they didn't really love her. They weren't really her benefactors.

She loved the wrong people.

And that's the way it is with all of Israel's idols. None of Israel's blessings came from the Baals. Didn't matter how much they worshiped them, how much they gave up for them, none of their fertility, none of their prosperity came from those gods.

None of their fields' fertility, none of their own nation's prosperity. It all came from the Lord. Everything they sacrificed to Baal was from the Lord.

They were treating their undertakers like they were their cooks.

They got nothing good from these idols. And God said that He would not let them live in their illusions much longer. That's that note of coming judgment that there is in Hosea.

My friend, I wonder how much you've been trusting in the wrong people.

As you look around at your own life, have you looked to others to benefit you? Who really just want to use you to benefit them?

Have you mistaken those you look up to online or at work or in the wider world as those who should be most followed and emulated and praised by you? Who should be constantly in your imagination or your social media feed or in your comments to others? Who is your heart taken up by as the ones you care most greatly about, as the ones whose approval you would most treasure? Oh, be very careful, friends. This world's approval is as sturdy as a tissue.

It's as long-lasting as ice in July.

For each one of us, the most important attribute about us, more important than anything you can write about yourself in a college entrance exam, more important than anything anyone is going to write about you in your obituary, is how you are related to God himself.

Look again at the Lord's message here back in chapter 1. That's what the Lord was teaching through the children and through their names.

Verse 4, 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, and 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 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 horsemen or 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. We'll look over in chapter 2 verse 11. Where Hosea mentions her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, all her appointed feasts. Friends, these aren't called the Lord's Festivals, but Gomer's own. She had manufactured her own religion and followed it.

Some of you will remember Sheiliasm. It was a coin termed about forty years ago by Robert Bella. In his celebrated book, Habits of the Heart, in which he noted the way people claim to be spiritual but not religious. They, in effect, pull together their own mix and match religions, taking this bit from one and that bit from another, whatever they feel serves them. And Bellah noted in this one interview with this woman he called Sheila, and it stuck as a name for the kind of self-authored religion.

That seems Gomer here had, and that the ancient Israelites practiced at the time, and that is still too popular among people today, even among those of us who call ourselves God's people or Christians. God is opposed to it all. It involved Gomer in gross misdescription of God's gifts as if they were the results of the kindness and generosity of others. Look there in chapter 2 verse 12. And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, 'These are my wages which my lovers have given me.' Can you believe it?

In the very things God in His real and genuine love and grace to her gave her, she misascribed.

And this wrong devotion to others reaches its climax, of course, supremely in Gomer's worshiping false gods. Look there in verse 13. And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with a ring and jewelry and went after her lovers. These false rival gods are called lovers because the Lord knows that they present themselves to Gomer as all sweetness and light, all about what they give and distracting her from what they take. And this unfaithfulness climaxes in Gomer becoming forgetful of the Lord himself.

Look at how this long case against Gomer concludes there in verse 13, and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the Lord. That's the ta-da in the whole condemnation. That's where you get to the grand explosive final disaster. And forgot me, declares the Lord. I'll tell you, this tragic story really does fill out the very personal nature of sin, doesn't it?

In this description of sin, it's not, here's 37 statutes and regulations, and you actually broke 11 of them. No, it's very much tying Gomer's action, and really the action of the people of Israel, directly to God. Into what they are or are not doing to God himself. We begin to see why the intimate sin of adultery is such an accurate depiction of the more public sin of idolatry. Look again at chapter 3 verse 1.

And the Lord said to me, 'Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress. And then he becomes explicit about the sermon he is preaching to his people through this terrible example, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods. Sadly, Gomer was not alone in her sin. Gomer is not even the most important audience for this book. The most important audience for the book was the nation of Israel.

It seems like the nation of Israel, the ten tribes of the north, had themselves become eaten up with such evil idolatry so that they were unfaithful to the Lord. They were willfully ignorant of God's ways, wrongly devoted to others and ultimately, just like Gomer, forgetful of the Lord himself. Her adultery, sadly, real, stood for this just as real and widespread unfaithfulness in their idolatry. God's patience would finally end for the northern kingdom and the soon coming armies of Assyria and those tribes would be wiped away. Away and remixed back into the nations whose gods they worshiped, whose ways they followed, whose lives there looked like, who they thought really were their friends and their benefactors.

Friends, the prophets in the Bible, major and minor, from Elijah and Isaiah to Hosea and Malachi, testify eloquently against idolatry.

The idolatry that again and again arises even among the people of God. I wonder how we as a church have taken the blessings of God and misascribed them to other sources. Have we thought that decades of apparent prosperity have come from the wealth of our city or the location of our building? Or the skill of our staff, or the generosity of our members?

As Paul asked the Corinthians in the passage we considered just last week, what do you have that you did not receive? If you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

Well, friends, we could keep going on this point. But we've got four more sermons to do that in as we keep going through the book of Hosea. I want to turn, having considered what undermined their relationship with the Lord, now to the other thing we should consider from these chapters.

Of course, God was satisfied with none of His people's unfaithfulness. So He calls Hosea to instruct the children to plead with their wayward mother. You see that verb there in chapter 2 verse 2. It's at the beginning of that versified long section in chapter 2. Plead is the language used there in 2:2.

It's language that's both legal and personal. It is the language that would be used in legal pleading that would issue in a divorce. But it's also language that could be used personally to appeal for a change. And that's the thought that turns our minds to this other question about love, about relationships. We've considered something of what undermines a marriage, a relationship, unfaithfulness.

Now, another question, every bit as important, what restores a relationship? And the answer that comes resoundingly from the Lord through his prophet Hosea is this: Mercy.

Mercy restores a relationship. You remember mercy?

Getting something better than you deserved?

And in this story we especially see three great truths about this mercy, three great truths. One, we see that mercy comes from God.

Two, we see that mercy changes us. And three, we see that mercy is costly.

Mercy comes from God. Mercy changes us. And mercy is costly. Let's look at each of these ideas here in Hosea. First, mercy comes from God.

This is a very brief point. It is fundamental. We see it in the first words of our book where we see the word of the Lord that came to Hosea. This saving message in Hosea's name means salvation or deliverance. This saving message may have been spoken and written by Hosea, but he didn't come up with it.

Can you imagine a book beginning with none of what's written here are my ideas. I didn't come up with any of this. Well that's how Hosea begins. These chapters are not the work of the Israelite Committee on the Composition of Scripture or any such group. These are the words of God.

It is God Himself who comes up with this idea of being merciful to one who has been as sinful as Gomer has and as sinful as the Israelites have been and as sinful as we have been.

So chapter 2 begins, say to your brothers, 'You are my people, and your sisters, you have received mercy. Hosea understands himself to be among the Israelites, one of them, and here are the tidings of mercy that he has been commissioned to bring. Chapter 3 begins with the Lord's instruction to take as his wife an immoral woman, whether this is Gomer or Gomer again, or another woman. This repeat of the command to lovingly commit himself to such a one is again a picture of God's initiative in mercy towards his unfaithful people. This command for mercy needs no earthly authority.

It has the heavenly authority of God himself, the one true God, creator of heaven and earth behind it. He is the one who has commanded Hosea to act in this mercy.

Mercy comes from God.

Number two, second, mercy changes our condition. You see in these three chapters, three pairs of recounting of unfaithfulness on the part of Gomer or of the Israelites, and then a declaration of God's mercy. So just look down at the three chapters, see this briefly. Chapter 1, after the three children have been given names reflecting God's judgment on the people, we then come to read, starting in verse 10, 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. Say to your brothers, 'You are my people, and to your sisters, 'You have received mercy. '

And then if you look in chapter 3, the other short chapter at the end of this beginning section, the Lord commands Israel, Hosea rather, to take the adulteress. And then we read in verse 4, For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God. And David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to His goodness in the latter days. You see you have this A, B pattern: A, the problem; B, the solution.

A, the problem; B, the solution. In chapter 1, in chapter 3. But it's here mainly, bigly, in chapter 2. Chapter 2 is sort of the main part here. And you can see that chapter 2 in the middle is the story really behind both chapters 1 and 3, whether they represent the The same story are two different but similar ones.

The point of the people's disobedience on the one hand, but of God's mercy on the other is represented clearly and powerfully. And I think will be helped by appreciating the structure of chapter 2. So look down at chapter 2 and I want to point out the six stanzas of the chapter. There are three stanzas of condemnation, followed by three stanzas of unexpected, even shocking mercy. Look at your Bibles with me for just a moment.

Those three stanzas of condemnation we've already considered. They begin at verse 2 with that plead, and then the next two therefore's. You see, just let your eye look down to therefore beginning verse 6, and then the therefore beginning verse 9. So the three stanzas of condemnation in chapter 2 are verses 2 to 5, then verses 6 to 8, and then verses 9 to 13. So you see that.

Those are three repeatings of the unfaithfulness and explorations of that.

Now you would think, and here's really the, if there's a kind of pop in the book of Hosea, here it is. Here's where you would think after the end of such a complete recounting, even of the embarrassing sins of Gomer, of the people of Israel, What we have done is presented an airtight case for divorce. It even began with words like that in verse 2. So having presented publicly such a case, even prosecuted the case, we could say, you would expect that marriage to be as dead as a crucified body in a stone cold tomb.

But then, In chapter 2, verse 14, we come to this dramatic point. It's like the but God in Ephesians 2:4, or the but now in Romans 3:21. And Hosea comes to this surprising climax and conclusion. The stone is rolled away, as it were, but the marriage, thought to be dead and gone by the sins of Gomer, by the sins of the people of Israel and their idolatry, comes forth. The relationship is alive.

The three stanzas of hope and mercy are those beginning with the therefore, then at the beginning of verse 14, and then the two end in that day. You see there in verse 16 and verse 21. See, the good thing about bringing your own Bible, you can just mark them up. And then you've got those things. I've got notes from great sermons I've heard preached in my Bible, 'cause I don't rely on the one they have here for you, you know?

I carry my own around. Yeah, it's a little inconvenient because you carry it, but you can make notes in it. Helps you remember things. You could be marking this down in your own Bible. You can mark it down in our pew Bibles if you want, because what I'm telling you is true and good.

But these six stanzas in chapter two are how you can understand it. Those three, the plead, the therefore, the therefore, that's the argument for the divorce. And then the shocker, there in 2:14, that therefore, where you get a whole different conclusion than we were led to expect. And that's then repeated again as two more stanzas, and in that day, verse 16, and in that day, verse 21. So the three stanzas of mercy are verses 14 and 15, verses 16 to 20, and verses 21 to 23.

Now understanding this, this is good for you to take away and think about this week. Just grab that chapter two. And look through those stanzas of condemnation, and then look through those stanzas of hope, of promise. And as we work through them, we are brought to adore God in His mercy. This first one, verses 14 and 15, we see that mercy loves with a divine love where divorce has been deserved, mercy was instead announced.

Verse 14, Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards, and make the valley of Achor a door of hope, and there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. Oh, my married friend, there was a day before your spouse had treated you wrongly. There was a reason why you initially went to that person. The Lord is saying that in His mercy, He will treat the Israelites not on the basis of their sins of idolatry, but He will go back to their even more basic position as those made and called by Him in His image.

Why would God do this? Were the Israelites worthy of this?

Friends, God is the source of His own love. We must not look beyond Him for some more basic motive. We are the undeserving objects of God's electing, saving love. And this should humble us?

Look at that phrase, I will allure her. Wow. He knows his charm is irresistible. Taking her into the wilderness isn't like taking her through trials, like wilderness, like that sense. It's like wilderness back when they first got started, when there was nothing else around.

They didn't have the whole nation to worry about. They were just getting started. They didn't have many things yet. The apartment was bare. It was just them.

That's what that takes them to the wilderness. That's the significance of that. And he will charm, he will allure. He knows he will accomplish what he sets out to do. You and I don't deserve to have Jesus be a fountain of life, as we were just singing about a moment ago, or to have a hope of eternity with Christ.

Friends, this is not due to our faithfulness, but to his mercy. Pride should find a Christian church and a Christian heart a very uncomfortable place, one that is a very hostile environment to survive in. Because we are humbled by the fact that our unfaithfulness has been answered by His faithful mercy, by His love.

There's His gracious love. Mercy of God like this should cause us to be grateful. I wonder if you'd come today thinking like, you know, with everything going on, maybe you don't like the cold weather all of a sudden, maybe you don't like the government shutdown, maybe you've just had a relationship breakup, maybe you came thinking like, I am grumpy with a reason today. I am justifiably hopeless. Well, friend, here's a Scripture Here's a portion of God's Word that intends to give hope to the most hopeless people here this morning.

Read this story of Gomer and realize that God was going to show mercy on Gomer because he was going to show mercy on Israel. And why was God going to show mercy on Israel? Because he was giving testimony of how good Israel was, of how deeply deserving they were.

He's going to show what He's like, who He really is, that the weather is coming from Him and His character, not from us and our deserts. Read this story of Gomer here and realize that we are Gomer. Read and reread this chapter 2 as the story of God's gracious love to us, of His choice to save us because of nothing based on us. And note how he would do this. He would bring her into the wilderness.

He would bring her to be alone with him. Friend, one way you can tell God is saving you is because you just start thinking about him all the time. You just can't get him out of your mind. You were just a good old secular Joe six months ago who maybe even thought of yourself as a Christian, but you didn't really do anything about it. You weren't clearly now looking back, you realize you weren't a Christian.

But now, all of a sudden, the last few weeks and months, it seems like you're kind of looking forward to going to church. You're curious about the Bible. You want to know what God is really like, what he says. You find him on your mind all the time.

Friends, that sounds like the kind of work I've seen God do in heart after heart.

People here. I've seen them do it in my own life. This is often how we begin to experience is drawing love.

And mercy does even more. It reclaims. It reverses the wrongs. Look there at verses 16 and 17 in chapter 2. In that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband.

And no longer will you call me my Baal, for I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. Mercy replaces wrong worship with right worship, forgetting the Lord with remembering the Lord. The Lord mercifully causes Gomer to repent while in her sins. I love that. Look back in verse 7 of chapter 2.

She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. She shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then. Than now. My Christian friend, wasn't it like this with you when the Lord awoke you from your spiritual slumbers, when he came and he gave you the new birth so that you would begin to love him in yourself as his very own?

This mercy looks for reasons to love, not in the beloved, the Christian, but in the lover, the Lord. Verse 16 is just so cool. It's where the Lord says that we will call him my husband. And I love how strong God's love is here, how jealous. You can see there in verses 16 and 17, no more would he be called by the wrong name of the Baals.

You know, God's love is better. You see, translationally, you need to know Baal or the plural Baalim can be translated husband or master or Lord. It's a more hierarchical arrangement. Whereas ishi, this other word that's used, the ESV here is my husband, this is more tender word. It means well beloved.

This is why up in verse 14 the Lord said he would speak tenderly to her. That's the language of affection. See, that's how the Lord, the real God, differs from the fake-o ones who just want your money.

The real God is alive and he loves you. He's made you with a purpose. He's made you in his image. This is the language the God of the Bible speaks with his people. And this true love is jealous like we see here in verse 17.

He's going to get their false names out of their mouths. He's going to put his name in their mouth. And then the next stanza we see this mercy restores the relationship. Verses 18 to 20. Chapter 2, verse 18, and I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the creeping things of the ground.

I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know The Lord. Oh, God blesses the people by blessing the land.

He gives them rest and safety. He gives them a home with himself. Again, friends, it's just like that Revelation 22 we were just in, you know, 20, 21, 22. It's like that heavenly city with him forever. And notice that it's not the Baals who will bring his people into a place of safety.

It's the Lord himself. It's their creator. And God there clearly states his plan to wed again the people forever in righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy. The old marriage of salvation by works, which never really worked, is succeeded by a new one marked by righteousness, justice, loyalty, honesty, permanence, and mercy. And so by his faithfulness, we shall come to know the Lord.

That's know personally, relationally, really. How good an illustration of our relation with the Lord are our marriage is meant to be. Where unfaithfulness is replaced by faithfulness. And what unfaithfulnesses remain are to be met with mercy, mercy which can restore a relationship. And this point, really struggled with this, I must interrupt the sermon to give you a word from our sponsor.

This is the great message of Hosea. But I pastor a real church full of 800 sinners in 2025. And there are some Christians who with good intent take the book of Hosea and this incredible story of reconciliation and bludgeon other Christians and sometimes even themselves, meaning that in any time you're in a relationship when somebody has been unfaithful to you, you must do what Hosea does. And listen, I've spent all the time talking about Hosea and God's love. I'm gonna go right back to it, I promise.

But pastorally, I did not think I could legitimately tell you this message without pointing you, if you're in a relationship where you feel you are being mistreated, and particularly the kind of mistreatment that Jesus talks of, the sexual immorality that breaks the covenant, Jesus himself talks about that in Matthew chapter 19. And the pastors of this church stand willing, able, desiring to talk to you, to pray with you, not promising we can fix anything, but that we can pray with you, we can love you, we can try to give you counsel. So I don't want to cast any shade on this extraordinary message of reconciliation, and we're going right back to it. But because we're whole people, I just got to say, God's Word has something else very significant to say to us on this topic. And I have seen Christians with the best motives in the world misuse this glorious message and eclipse, as it were, put their hand over the mouth of Jesus.

Say, don't listen to nobody says that and keep talking about the example of Hosea. And I just wanna go like, mm, the Lord has his own reasons. We trust him. Now back to this main message, which is the message all of us have experienced as Christians. This mercy in the face of our unfaithfulness.

The verbal exclamation point of all of this is this final stanza in chapter 2, verses 21 to 23. Look at these last three verses in chapter 2. And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel and I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on no mercy. And I will say to not my people, you are my people.

And he shall say, you are my God. Here we see his mercy reconciles sinners to God. Here we find two long sentences stretched across three verses. The first one begins in verse 21 and ends in verse 23. It uses the image of their reunion with God, echoing joyfully all around creation from heavens to the earth.

And then the last sentence there in verse 23 reverses the judgments made in the naming of those kids in chapter 1. God's intention is clearly to renew faithfulness with his people and to bring them to knowing him as their God. And I will have mercy on no mercy. And I will say to not my people, you, are my people. And he shall say, you, are my God.

What a blessing God has in store for his people. If you and I have begun to experience the truth about God, if we have begun to live as Christians, we can know that the very God who has begun that merciful work in us will continue it steadfastly and forever. Friends, when I read this passage and was working on this, I kept thinking again and again about some of the last words we'd looked at in the book of Revelation, chapter 22, verse 4, which says, They shall see his face. This deeply intimate relational language of the knowledge of God. So you see what restores a relationship?

It's mercy. It comes from God. It changes our condition.

One last thing to notice about mercy, and it comes in chapter 3, in the account we see there of Hosea.

Isaiah's going to have to go and bear a cost. Mercy costs. It's that simple sentence in verse 2 of chapter 3. The Lord tells him to go marry this adulterous woman, and he says, so I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley.

Because God is a just God, the adulterers had to be purchased and the price paid. Whatever that cost exactly was, it shows us that as freely as Gomer may have experienced this mercy, it cost Hosea. The parallel truth with us, it's what we sing about in the gospel again and again and what we relish, that our debts were so deep as to leave us forever undone. And yet God, in His mercy, in Christ has paid them all. His mercy is more, more than anything that we could ever need.

One of my favorite preachers of the 20th century was James Montgomery Boice. He was the pastor of 10th Presbyterian Church up in Philadelphia. If you've never listened to any of Jim's sermons, you should go online and find them. Superb preacher, clear as could be. Handled Scripture so well.

He said, the third chapter of Hosea is, in my opinion, the greatest chapter in the Bible because it portrays in concise... because it portrays the greatest story in the Bible, the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for His people in the most concise and poignant form to be found anywhere. Our study of Hosea's story has already shown that it is a pageant of the love of God for Israel, indeed for His people in every place and age. But when we ask where in the whole of human history Is that love most clearly seen? The answer is obviously at the cross of Christ.

It is that cross and the work accomplished on that cross that is portrayed in this chapter. Hosea 3 shows us God's work of redemption, the work by which the Lord Jesus Christ delivered us from bondage at the cost of His own life, portrayed in Hosea's purchase of his fallen wife from slavery. You could just say that was a preacher's fertile imagination. But then when you start reading the New Testament, you start reading the teaching of Jesus and his apostles, you realize that Jesus did teach exactly that. We see Jesus saying that he came to give his life as a ransom for many.

Paul said that Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. As Peter taught Christians, you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. Friends, the good news for you, if you are today trapped in your sins, if you do not know God and know that you don't know Him, there is hope for you, not because of the moral reformation you've undertaken yourself, but because of God's love in sending His only Son to live a life of perfect purity and holiness and love and rectitude and justice and mercy. And then to give up that life on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice in the place of all of us that would turn from our sins and trust in him. God raised him from the dead, accepting that sacrifice.

And so he calls you to come into this newness of life that God has for you with Him through Christ.

Friends, that's pretty much the sermon.

We'll have more time to look at the other chapters of Hosea. But I just want you as we finish up today, I just want you to think of how you were when you walked in this morning. Were you confident? In your most important relationships, prospering?

I assume in a group this large there are many people who would say yes to that. I thank God for that. But are you concerned maybe about someone else's unfaithfulness? Maybe about your own?

How that's endangered everything?

And if so, are you wondering, is there a way back? How will reconciliation come? Through strict accounting and reparations?

Or will the relationship be restored by mercy?

What relationship to you is more important than your relationship with God?

Lord God, you are the Watcher of men, the Searcher of hearts, from whom nothing can be hid.

All of our desires and loves, all of our lusts and unfaithfulnesses, all of our hopes and dreams, all of our fears and failures are known by youy.

O Lord, where would we be today apart from youm grace? Allure youe people today.

Speak tenderly to each one. We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.