1. "Every storyteller, every scientist knows that how something ends gives us crucial information about the nature of the thing that is ending. So what about love?"

2. "Friend, you realize that you can be blessed and lost. You're being blessed in no way suggests any special relationship with God because blessings fall on all, the just and the unjust."

3. "How self-deceived were these ancient rich people. They really thought that because they were doing okay in the world that God couldn't see anything wrong with them. They thought that because their house was nice, God didn't care about their oppression of the poor people."

4. "Friends, if you start telling lies, you'll start believing lies. The irony is both tragic and typical that the sin that promises life really brings death."

5. "Sin will always lie about its benefits. And sin will always lie about the cost it will extract."

6. "What a pathetic public tragedy is a dictator or a despot. The most pitiful thing is he punished anyone around him who told him the truth he didn't like. He only wanted flatterers. You become a cartoon, a caricature of a human being. You trade wisdom for folly."

7. "Friend, we do that in our own sins, in our defensiveness, in the way we ignore Scripture, in the way we ignore the truth. We silence the very means that God has built to protect us from our own mistakes."

8. "God is not finding the basis for His love in us. He is not looking in that shallow pool to find a reason for loving us. His love comes from inside himself. That's the source of God's love for us, Himself alone, nothing in us."

9. "Some of us here have walked a few more steps, and we're almost certainly a few steps closer to the grave. Why don't we find our joy declining as we get older? Because we have this hope over death and hell."

10. "What the first Israel should have done, just like what the first Adam should have done, the second Adam, the second Israel, the true Israel, did for us."

Observation Questions

1. In Hosea 11:1-4, what specific actions does God describe taking toward Israel when they were young, and how did Israel respond to being called?

2. According to Hosea 11:8-9, what does God say about His heart and compassion, and what reason does He give for not executing His burning anger against Ephraim?

3. In Hosea 12:7-8, how does Ephraim describe himself, and what does he claim about his labors and any iniquity found in him?

4. What does Hosea 13:1-2 say happened to Ephraim after he incurred guilt through Baal, and what kinds of objects did they make for themselves?

5. According to Hosea 13:4-6, what does God declare about Himself in relation to Israel, and what happened to the people's hearts after they grazed and became full?

6. In Hosea 13:14, what two things does God say He will do regarding Sheol and death, and what rhetorical questions does He ask of death and Sheol?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that God describes His relationship with Israel using the imagery of a parent teaching a child to walk and lifting them to His cheek (Hosea 11:3-4)? What does this reveal about the nature of God's love?

2. In Hosea 11:8-9, God says "I am God and not a man" as the reason He will not destroy Ephraim. How does this statement help us understand the source and basis of God's compassion toward sinful people?

3. The sermon identifies "forgetting God" as the heart of Israel's sin (Hosea 13:6). How does the text show the connection between material prosperity and spiritual forgetfulness, and why is this pattern so dangerous?

4. How does Hosea 13:14's promise of ransom from death connect to the broader message of Hosea about God's persistent love despite Israel's unfaithfulness? What does this suggest about the ultimate scope of God's redemption?

5. The sermon explains that Jesus is the "true Israel" who fulfills Hosea 11:1 (as quoted in Matthew 2:15). How does understanding Jesus as the faithful Son who succeeded where Israel failed change our reading of God's love throughout Hosea?

Application Questions

1. The Israelites convinced themselves that their wealth meant God had no problem with them (Hosea 12:8). In what specific ways might you be tempted to interpret comfort, success, or blessings as evidence that God approves of all your choices? How can you guard against this self-deception?

2. The sermon describes how we can "silence the very means that God has built to protect us from our own mistakes" by ignoring Scripture, friends, or conscience. What voices of truth have you been tempted to dismiss recently, and what concrete step could you take this week to listen more carefully?

3. God's love for Israel came from within Himself, not from anything in them (Hosea 11:8-9). If you struggle with feeling hopeless about your sin, how might meditating on the source of God's love—His own character rather than your worthiness—change how you approach Him in prayer this week?

4. The sermon challenges husbands, parents, and leaders to reflect God's kindness to those in their care. Identify one specific relationship where you hold some authority or influence: what is one practical way you could demonstrate "cords of kindness" (Hosea 11:4) to that person today?

5. Hosea 12:6 calls God's people to "wait continually for your God." What does it look like practically for you to "wait for God" in a current situation where you are tempted toward anxiety, impatience, or taking matters into your own hands?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Exodus 4:21-23 — This passage records God's original declaration that Israel is His firstborn son, providing the foundational context for Hosea 11:1 and its fulfillment in Christ.

2. Deuteronomy 7:6-11 — Here Moses explains that God's choice of Israel was based on His own love and faithfulness, not Israel's merit, reinforcing the sermon's point about the source of God's love.

3. 2 Chronicles 30:1-12 — This account of Hezekiah's invitation to all Israel for Passover demonstrates God's gracious and merciful character during the same historical period as Hosea's prophecy.

4. Ephesians 2:1-10 — Paul describes how God made us alive in Christ while we were dead in sin, showing how Hosea 13:14's promise of ransom from death finds fulfillment in the gospel.

5. Matthew 2:13-23 — Matthew's account of Jesus' flight to Egypt and return explicitly quotes Hosea 11:1, demonstrating how Jesus is the true Israel who fulfills God's purposes where the nation failed.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Introduction: Understanding Love Through Its Limits

II. Careless Sinners Need to Be Reminded About the Goodness of God

III. Hopeless Sinners Need to Be Reminded About the Love of God

IV. God's Love Fulfilled in Christ, the True Israel

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Richard Shenkman, the founder of the History News Network at George Washington University here in DC, observed about love that couples have been marrying for love for a long time, but not before 1750. Not until then did magazines begin emphasizing the romantic love that was to be the heart of an ideal marriage. Further, not until then did couples begin considering the loss of love A reason for divorce. Prior to 1770, not a single one of the dozens of divorce proceedings in Massachusetts mentioned loss of affection as a ground for the separation of partners. But during the last 25 years of the century, some 10% of 121 suits for divorce named loss of affection as a ground.

In our series through the book of Hosea, we have been looking at this question of what is love? And we've been considering that in one form or another. That question and its answer interests every person here, from parent and child, to husband and wife, to one friend to another. Our personal histories are full of answers to that question, what is love?

Of course, one way we know about something is by taking it to failure. So it was pointed out to me this last week that one former CHBC intern, Parker Smith, gets millions of views online for his videos about seeing what caliber of bullet various materials can take, from Play-Doh to encyclopedias, up to the door of a Tesla Cybertruck. Now, of course, it's entertaining, but we do also learn something significant when we learn how much weight something can bear, what its outer limit is that it can take so it can be used for this purpose or that. Every storyteller, every scientist knows that how something ends gives us crucial information about the nature of the thing that is ending. So what about love?

In Hosea, we've seen God instruct the prophet to love an unlikely object of his love, a prostitute. God instructs Hosea to marry her and then to be faithful to her, even when she is not faithful to him. In doing that, Hosea becomes a living display of God's love to to His unfaithful people, Israel. So what have we been learning about love in Hosea? Is it an example of what Paul writes of in 1 Corinthians 13, love never fails?

Or in our chapters today, Hosea chapters 11 to 13, do we see the end of love, the end of people's love for God?

Or the end of God's love for His people. And either way, what does that mean for our relationship with God today?

There are two groups especially that could learn important truths about God and His love from these chapters. While all of us here today are sinners, there are different kinds of sinners and different lessons about God supplied from Hosea here for each one. And the first one is this. Careless sinners need to be reminded about the goodness of God. Careless sinners need to be reminded about the goodness of God.

Let me explain what I mean here by careless. I don't mean sinners that don't care about their sin, but they don't care about what God thinks about their sin. I mean those who neglect God's warnings. Who pay no attention to what God has said is sin. Careless sinners in this sense, we see in our verses, need to be reminded of the fact that God is not morally neutral, unconcerned, ambivalent.

So look at Hosea chapter 11, Hosea chapter 11. You'll find it beginning on page 769 in the Bibles provided. I've mentioned in earlier studies of Hosea there's sort of three levels we're looking at this text at. There's the historical level of the marriage of Hosea to Gomer. That level is now sort of done.

That's not really what we're looking at. In these chapters we're very much looking at the second and then the third level. The second level, the point of the book, God's relationship with his unfaithful people. And then there's still the third level that we have to ask for us today. So what does this mean for us?

What does this mean for our relationship with God today?

So here we see how Israel again and again experienced God's goodness, God's grace, but they spurned God's grace. They seemed to care nothing for it. Chapter 11. Beginning of verse 1, When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away.

They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up by their arms. But they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.

They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels. My people are bent on turning away from Me, and though they call out to the Most High, He shall not raise them up at all.

If you've come to church this morning thinking that people are naturally good or even naturally morally neutral, Hosea disagrees. Really the whole Bible would disagree at that point. This book teaches us that there is something wrong with us. Really, the whole Bible suggests that we are naturally depraved in every aspect of our being, even in our religious thought. You might think that religion could get a special pass from God, a kind of no-go, not a sort of problem-free zone, but that's not so.

From the very beginning, we see that sin specifically messes up people's relationship with God. Remember when Adam and Eve first sinned, what did they do? When God came to them, they ran away to hide. That pretty much says it all. From fleeing in the garden to fleeing from the garden, the Bible is one long story of people all made in God's image, taking even his good gifts, his love and spurning God and his gifts.

People talk all the time these days about being blessed. But friend, you realize that you can be blessed and lost.

You're being blessed in no way suggests any special relationship with God because blessings fall on all, the just and the unjust. Scripture is clear about that. That's the way these ancient Israelites were. And that's us by nature too.

Apart from God's grace changing us and giving us new life in Christ. Look again here at verse 5. God would bless the people of Israel, even fed them tenderly, but we read here, They have refused to return to Me. Left to themselves, they would rebel against God and backslide from the ways that He had shown them to live and love. And through spurning God's grace would come a host of other problems, other sins, like, for example, it appears prominently the sin of deceit.

Look again at our passage starting in chapter 11 there in verse 12.

Chapter 11 verse 12, Ephraim has surrounded me with lies and the house of Israel with deceit. But Judah still walks with God and is faithful to the Holy One. Ephraim feeds on the wind and pursues the east wind all day long. They multiply falsehood and violence. They make a covenant with Assyria and oil is carried to Egypt.

The Lord has an indictment against Judah and will punish Jacob according to his ways. He will repay him according to his deeds. In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he strove with God. He strove with the angel and prevailed, he wept and sought his favor. He met God at Bethel, and there God spoke with us.

The Lord, the God of hosts, the Lord is his memorial name. So you, by the help of your God, return, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God. A merchant in whose hands are false balances. He loves to oppress. Ephraim has said, Ah, but I am rich.

I have found wealth for myself in all my labors. They cannot find in me iniquity or sin. So from their surrounding the Lord with lies to their lying to each other in the marketplace as they tried to rip each other off, they were marked by deceit.

They were careless about God's command not to bear false witness against each other. It's interesting to see how they understood themselves. Look there in chapter 12 and verse 8. Ephraim has said, Ah, but I am rich. I have found wealth for myself.

And one result of their own prosperity was a kind of inebriation where they thought that their wealth hid their sins. Look there in verse 8. In all my labors they cannot find in me iniquity or sin. How self-deceived were these ancient rich people. They really thought that because they were doing okay in the world that God couldn't see anything wrong with them.

They thought that because their house was nice, God didn't care about their oppression of the poor people by cheating them through false balances and taking advantage of them. It was as if those who are being taken advantage of, if they didn't notice it, then it didn't really happen or it didn't really matter. But God is always there as a witness to your actions and mine. If no one else knows the truth and understands the truth, God always does. If you're here this morning as someone who is comfortable in this world's goods, be very careful.

That you do not mistake that as the Israelites did for assuming that meant that God has no problem with you. Don't let your money make you morally careless because it certainly doesn't make God unconcerned.

Wealth does not excuse lying.

Pay attention to chapter 12 verse 6 here.

Repent, love others, be honest and fair in all your dealings with others. As he puts it there in 12:6, Wait continually for your God. That's a great phrase. If you want to clean the deceit out of your speech, remember that God hears every word you say and is not deceived by you at all. And the longer you go on in deceit, the worse you not only make it for others, but for yourself as well.

Care about what the Lord thinks of your false balances.

But the ruling sin which gave rise to spurning God's grace and being so deceitful was the sin which the book of Hosea has been primarily written about and which we have noticed, no doubt, these last two weeks as we've gone through the bulk of the prophecies of Hosea. And that's written to call them to repentance for the sin of idolatry. We see this in every chapter of Hosea. This is what Hosea's marriage to an unfaithful woman depicted. Look again here in chapter 12, beginning at verse 9.

Chapter 12, beginning at verse 9.

I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt. I will again make you dwell in tents, as in the days of the appointed feasts. I spoke to the prophets, it was I who multiplied vision and through the prophets gave parables. If there is iniquity in Gilead, they shall surely come to nothing. In Gilgal they sacrifice bulls.

Their altars also are like stone heaps on the furrows of the field. Jacob fled to the land of Aram, there Israel served for a wife, and for a wife he guarded sheep. By a prophet the Lord brought Israel up from Egypt, and by a prophet he was guarded. Ephraim has given bitter provocation, so his Lord will leave his blood guilt on him, and will repay him for his disgraceful deeds. When Ephraim spoke there was trembling, he was exalted in Israel, but he incurred guilt through Baal and died.

And now they sin more and more and make for themselves metal images, idols skillfully made of their silver, all of them the work of craftsmen. It is said of them, those who offer human sacrifice kiss calves. Therefore they shall be like the morning mist, or like the dew that goes away early, like the chaff that swirls from the threshing floor, or like smoke from a window. But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt. You know no God but me, and besides me, there is no savior.

You remember what Baal was supposed to be?

Baal was supposed to be the god of fertility and life. He's supposed to be the one who gives productivity and fruitfulness. And yet what do we see here in chapter 13 verse 1? Israel incurred guilt through Baal and died.

Friends, if you start telling lies, you'll start believing lies.

And don't fail to notice what they were sacrificing there in chapter 13, verse 2, one of the most chilling verses in the whole book. Humans. The irony is both tragic and typical that the sin that promises life really brings death.

It is both tragic and typical that the sin that promises life really brings death.

There's some question about whether this is really the best way to translate the Hebrew here in verse 2. So the ESV has it, obviously the NIV also. But even if that's not what's meant here, we know that elsewhere there was the sacrifice of humans in the worship of Molech at the same time condemned in the prophet Isaiah. Beloved, please understand that sin will always lie about its benefits. Sin will always lie about its benefits.

And sin will always lie about the cost it will extract.

Now, if you say, okay, if it's so important to know if something is sin, how can I find that out? The answer is read your Bible. Come to church. Let your conscience be informed and educated by God's Word and God's people. Learn what spiritually suicidal acts you even today may be involved in.

It is typical of sin to anesthetize us to it and to make us senseless and careless about it.

Kids, especially you all who are early on in life, find out what's worthwhile. Idols are not worthwhile. False gods are harmful waste.

Do not pursue false gods. Think of what false gods you're tempted to pursue. Ask your friends, ask your teachers, ask your parents to help you figure out what you might be especially tempted to pursue. Because not all kids are the same. Some kids are more tempted by one thing, some kids by another.

Up in chapter 12 verse 1, the Lord used the image of pursuing the wind. What a telling image of idolatry, chasing empty air, an absolute pointless use of time. Friends, how much of your time is spent staring at a computer screen or a telephone, sorry, a phone.

That sounded old, didn't it?

Staring at a screen wherever you find it. And how much of that is worthwhile, or is it really just chasing empty air?

Whether it's social media or devotion to sports or wanting to be a part of the in crowd, it's all just chasing the wind, a kind of worthless, even harmful, idolatry. You were made to focus on loving God getting to know Him, letting Him get to know the truth about you. That's what your whole being is made to be consumed by. And you'll find when it is, it's fruitful in your own life and in the lives of those around you.

And that really brings us to the ugly heart of the Israelites' sins of Hosea's day, because the heart of their sin is that they were forgetting God. They were forgetting God. Look at Hosea chapter 13 verse 5.

It was I who knew you in the wilderness, in the land of drought. But when they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up, therefore They forgot Me. So I am to them like a lion. Like a leopard I will lurk beside the way. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs.

I will tear open their breasts, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open. He destroys you, O Israel, for you are against Me, against yout helper. Where now is your king to save you in all your cities? Where are all your rulers, those of whom you said, 'Give me a king and princes'? I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.

The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up. His sin is kept in store. The pangs of childbirth come for him, but he is an unwise son, for at the right time he does not present himself at the opening of the womb. I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from death. O death, where are your plagues?

O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes. Though he may flourish among his brothers, the east wind, the wind of the Lord, shall come, rising from the wilderness, and his fountain shall dry up, his springs shall be parched. It shall strip his treasury of every precious thing. Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God.

They shall fall by the sword. Their little ones shall be dashed in pieces. Their pregnant women ripped open. Friends, again, these are severe images, but they're severe images to show that the things that even they in their carnality could still realize are so deep and painful gets them closer in touch to the truth about their own sins and how serious they are, how serious God's penalties will be. Here in verse 9 we see the craziness, that suicidal insanity that sin brings us to.

You are against me, against your helper. I mean, it's like the drowning man pushing away the lifeguard. It doesn't make any sense. It's like the person who's used to flattery rejecting the only honest counselors they have. What a pathetic public tragedy is a dictator or a despot.

As a guy who did my doctoral studies in English Reformation, I often had occasion to read about Henry VIII, and he was an extraordinary character. And he was always pitiful. And the most pitiful thing about him is he punished anyone around him who told him the truth he didn't like. He only wanted flatterers. He only wanted flatterers.

The children's tale, the Emperor's New Clothes, you know the story. They may make a joke of it, but it is no laughing matter when you've trained your own ears only to hear things you like. You become a cartoon, a caricature of a human being. You trade wisdom for folly.

I remember sitting in Dupont Circle with my friend Harry in 1993. I'd gotten to know Harry through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Harry was apparently a very sincere Christian. He'd been involved with Assemblies of God and with InterVarsity. And he wanted to have this long conversation with me and he explained to me he had decided to follow a gay lifestyle.

Now this is back in 1993 where that was not as commonly said as it is now. And I listened to Harry carefully, I loved Harry, and after listening to him for probably maybe an hour, I just had one question for him. I said, Harry, how will you know if God is against you. Harry had taken out all the ways he could hear anything contrary to what he wanted to hear.

Friend, we do that in our own sins, in our defensiveness, in the way we ignore Scripture, in the way we ignore the truth. We silence the very means that God has built to protect us from our own mistakes. If you're here and you're not a Christian, you realize silencing a friend or silencing a parent, silencing your conscience may make you more ignorant of what they think, but it will never make you more right.

At the very center of our sin is always forgetting God, as he has revealed himself to us in His Word. The basic command in the Bible is what? Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, your mind, your soul, your strength. Again and again throughout the Bible is repeated this call to love or to remember.

It's the same thing, to love the Lord, to remember the Lord. And yet, what is the heart of sin here? It is forgetting him. His people forgot him. Surely that's the center of all of our sin.

Careless sinners need to remember the Lord. Remember that he is good and that he will judge all evil and sin.

But there is another kind of sinner here that the Lord addresses through Hosea other than the careless sinner. And that is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It's the hopeless sinner. It's the one whose conscience misfires in another way, is overly condemning, perhaps of others, perhaps of themselves. And here, So far as such folks from being careless, they agree with God about their sins.

On the other hand, they wonder if there's any hope for them. So just like careless sinners need to be reminded of the goodness of God that He will judge so hopeless sinners need to be reminded about the love of God that He will forgive. The Lord has loved and chosen Israel. Their past history bore witness to it. Look there at chapter 11 again, at the very beginning of our passage, verse 1.

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. When we look back to Exodus and we see how Moses was told to represent the Lord's call to Pharaoh, this is what he says in Exodus 4:22. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, 'Let my son go that he may serve me.' why has the Lord loved Israel like this? Why has He made Israel His son? Deuteronomy 7, For you are a people holy to the Lord your God.

The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all people, but it is because the Lord loves you.

What a privilege, what an honor that the Lord would look on any of the fallen sons of Adam and call us his, his daughters, his sons. This relation is not caused by our merit, but by His grace. And news of God's grace dispels hopelessness, just like light dispels dark. Hopelessness is so often rooted in our own searching assessments of ourselves and our own situations, our own sin. And as long as that assessment is true, how can we have any basis for hope?

Well, the answer is found not in what you and I can do now, but in what God has already done in the past. Here on history's pages, in His own word, God has shown us how He has decided to set His love in mercy and in grace upon the sinner Jacob and his sons, and how through blessing them He will bring the blessings promised through Abram's seed to the whole world. On the pages of Scripture, we see page after page of proof that God is a compassionate Father. I wonder how much you and I bear a family resemblance to Him in this. In Exodus 22, we see some practical examples of how tender God was to His people, how kind He had taught them to be to each other.

Exodus 22:25, we read, if you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, You shall not be like a moneylender to him, you shall not exact interest from him. If ever you take your neighbor's cloak in pledge, you shall return it to him before the sun goes down, for that's his only covering, and it's his cloak for his body. And what else shall he sleep on? And if he cries to me, I will hear, for I am compassionate. Friends, this passage has just been incredibly interesting to study.

One of the interesting things is to realize what's going on at the same time down in the southern kingdom of Judah. Well down in the southern kingdom of Judah, you've got a very good king, Hezekiah, which is why Judah gets off comparatively lightly in some of these addresses. And there, about the same time, in 2 Chronicles 30, we read an amazing account. So amazing, I'd like you to turn there with me.

2 Chronicles 30. Normal rule in a sermon, don't have people turn to a second text. Keep them in the main text. But occasionally, however, there is one that is just so interesting and applies so well that you know the eager beaver Bible students will want to know about it. And this is one of those.

2 Chronicles 30.

Starting in verse 1, Hezekiah, that's the king in the southern kingdom of Judah at this same time, Hezekiah sent to all Israel and Judah. Very interesting. He didn't just send to Judah, he sent to all Israel and Judah. That's the northern and the southern. This is something that had not been done for 200 years at this point.

To Israel and Judah and wrote letters also to Ephraim and Manasseh. That's the northern tribes that had left them 200 years earlier. That they should come to the house of the Lord at Jerusalem to keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel. For the king and his princes and all the assembly in Jerusalem had taken counsel to keep the Passover in the second month, for they could not keep it at that time because the priests had not consecrated themselves in sufficient number, nor had the people assembled in Jerusalem. And the plan seemed right to the king and all the assembly.

So they decreed to to make a proclamation throughout all Israel, from Beersheba to Dan. So that goes beyond the borders of Judah. It takes in the borders of Israel as well. That the people should come and keep the Passover to the Lord, the God of Israel, at Jerusalem, for they had not kept it as often as prescribed. So couriers went throughout all Israel and Judah with letters from the kings and his princes, as the king had commanded saying, 'O people of Israel, return to the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, that he may turn again to the remnant of you, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria.

So Assyria destroys the northern kingdom in 722 BC. But 11 years before that, in 733, there had been a kind of winnowing. They'd come in and they'd taken some people out of the northern kingdom. Maybe this is written after that, but before 722. Do not be like your fathers and your brothers who were faithless to the Lord God of their fathers, so that he made them a desolation, as you see.

Do not now be stiff-necked as your fathers were, but yield yourselves to the Lord and come to his which he has consecrated forever, and serve the Lord your God, that his fierce anger may turn away from you. For if you return to the Lord, your brothers and your children will find compassion with their captors and return to this land. For the Lord your God is gracious and merciful, and will not turn away his face from you, if you return to him.

God had again and again shown himself merciful and compassionate, and he was showing them that again through a prophet in Israel and through a king in Judah. He was reaching out to his people with the same message.

But, friend, a worldly heart can cause you to miss all that God has told us about his concern for people who are not powerful or beautiful or clever or rich. I think one way God in his kind providence prepared me to spend a lifetime in places like Duke and Boston and Cambridge and Capitol Hill was by having me be brought up in a small town in Kentucky, having four older ladies around me, two of whom were pretty wealthy by this world's standards, and two of whom were pretty poor. The two of whom who were pretty wealthy were very wealthy, and they neither one of them were Christians. They had very rich lives by this world's count. The two other women that I have in mind, older relatives, all in the same small town, were both strong Christians.

Both knew a lot of suffering in their lives. Both relied on the Lord. And both had a richness of faith that 65 years later is left in my life as a testimony that the things those two rich ladies had, I have no interest in. None. I've seen the end of that kind of life and I don't want it.

But what those two poor ladies had, oh, I want that. I want that with all my being. What a kindness of the Lord in his providence to prepare me in that particular way. Friends, can you find providences in your own life where God has prepared you for blessings and for trials that he's let you undergo? He is a kind and a compassionate God.

I wonder how God has distinguished you and his love and favor in your own mind. From the success and power of the world, kids do not be deceived by the things the world says are successful. The world does not understand this at all. People make money off of you by convincing you that whatever they sell is what you need. Don't miss the fact that we're all sinners, but that God has provided a savior for us because God is compassionate and merciful.

But God's past love has showed itself not merely in His initial gracious choice of the Israelites, but He kept showing it to them in their history. And the Lord led Israel from captivity to Canaan in love. Look again back in Hosea chapter 11 at verse 4. I led them with cords of kindness and with bands of love. I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws or lifts a little child to the cheek, as the NIV renders that.

And I bent down to them and fed them. So there was yet more demonstration of God's sovereign love than His initial selection of His people. It was leading them through the wilderness and finally into the Promised Land itself. It was giving them water from a rock and manna, from Moses to Joshua, from correcting them to leading them to conquer Canaan, the Lord the Lord had shown His love for His people. The Lord reminded the people through His prophet Hosea that He had blessed them, that He had shed His grace on them time and time again.

And He would not have that history tragically wasted by ignorance. And those blessings squandered by forgetfulness. So He reminds them here in chapter 11 verse 2 that He called them. And then chapter 11 verse 3 that He taught them to walk. And taking them up by their arms, as it were, when they were only young toddlers.

Every page of Israel's history was printed with God's providence.

Christian, has not this been the same with you and me? When have God's compassions failed us? How many arguments do you have from your own life story of God's kindness? Not simply the goodness which we all enjoy in the provisions of nature around us, but His specific and gracious provisions for us in everything which we've needed spiritually, even through times of the greatest suffering. Think of how you could gossip positively about God's faithfulness to others after the service today or over lunch in such a way that God will be thanked.

That's what we've intended to do this week, isn't it? To notice those blessings, to catalog them in our minds, to speak them out loud to others so that God is further praised for past blessings, for those faithfulnesses that he's already shown and blessed us with.

I think one of the greatest sins that we join together as members of a local church to help each other combat is forgetfulness. When we see a brother or a sister torn up over this or that situation, we can remember times when the Lord has helped them, times when that prayer was answered, times when we saw the Holy Spirit working through them in love, and we can bring those to mind. Helping and provoking each other to remember God's goodness to us in specific ways can help to combat that thanklessness or discouragement. I think one way, Caleb, that you helped us is in writing that book. I think you brought back stories of God's faithfulness long ago done, but you set them alive sort of amidst this again.

So Celestia Ferris is once again, her faithfulness is bringing fresh thanks to God. Agnes Shankle's courageous stand is bringing fresh thanks to God. John Compton Ball for leading away and building this building that we're still using this morning. We have fresh thanks to God for that man who was lost to us because of our ignorance. So when we read what's gone on before, history tells us, yes, of many of our sins, but history also tells us of reasons we should be thankful.

And so God compounds in His glory through our thanks for things already done in our past. Brothers and sisters, read biographies. With an eye to thanking and praising God for the good that He's done through those who've gone before us. Bring fresh thanks to Him for those acts of His mercy.

Kids, what this means for you very practically is that you should respect those people who rear you, who love you. You should care for them. You should thank God for ways that they have cared for you. Was it only adults at your table on Thursday? Who had matters to praise God for?

Did no children say anything? I think kids are great ones to speak up with what they can see from where they're sitting that they thank God for very sincerely. Try to think of something you can tell your friends and family that you're thankful for. Tell them after church today when we're headed home. Parents, are you working hard to show their kids that same kind of leadership with cords of kindness, as the Lord said he used here with Israel, I pray that your home will be filled with those invisible bands of love as you work to ease the burden of the young and feed those in your care.

Again and again we're exhorted in the Bible to remember, because when we remember we use God's actions yesterday to help us trust him today. Even as God first promised to remember His covenant with Noah, so should we remember the Lord and His works of salvation in all that is past. Not just His initial choice of us, but His continued providence. The part of our passage which draws the most comment, however, is not about God's past love, but it's about His present love. Look again in chapter 11 of Hosea verse 8.

Where we read that the Lord's compassion grows warm and tender. Let's look at these verses 11, beginning at verse 8.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; My compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. They shall go after the Lord. He will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west.

They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord. Friends, this is some of the deepest self-revelation of God's love that we have in Scripture. We hear God talking about his own feeling of compassion toward his people.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over to Israel? And then he mentions Admah and Zeboiim. These are two cities of the plain along with Sodom and Gomorrah that were destroyed in Genesis 19. And he's saying he's not going to do that.

He will not treat his people like that. And as you work through this in the midst of this whole series of prophecies that Hosea gave on how the Lord would punish his people for their sins, you see in this that there will be some, a remnant, who survive, who will know God's faithfulness even as they repent and trust in him because of God's compassionate love.

Husbands, God has presented you with such an amazing opportunity to reflect God's kindness to your wife today.

I have some very specific ways in mind. I'm going to try to reflect God's kindness to Connie today. Husband, can you get some things in mind that you will do today to reflect God's kindness to your wife? You realize you are her greatest tutor about what God is like. You have a role in her life that no one else has.

If your wife were interviewed right now and she were honest, would she say that you're doing a good job incarnating the kindness of God in your leadership and service of her?

Furthermore, parents, how would your kids say you're doing?

In representing kindness to them. Whatever authority we have is not to be used for self-protection, but to express God's love and goodness in the here and now. It's striking that we got to see all the elders standing up here praying for Alberta. Part of the authority in this church is invested in the elders especially. And I wonder if our fellow members imagine You and me, Mr. Elder, do they imagine us to be kind?

Is that the reputation we have as the elders and pastors of this congregation?

Spurgeon, in his book Lectures to My Students, has many pithy words of wisdom for elders and pastors. I appreciate his practicality in this one observation. He said, you, must be able to bear criticism. Or you're not fit to be the head of a congregation. And you must let the critic go without reckoning him among your deadly foes, or you will prove yourself a mere weakling.

It is wisest always to show double kindness where you have been severely handled by one who thought it his duty to do so, for he's probably an honest man and worth winning.

Brother elders have clear and careful and compassionate thoughts about those we've been called to love and lead. You may be one who reads through a book like Hosea and sees all the sins that the people were involved in as they turned away from the Lord. Sins like lying and refusing to engage with God as He's called us to, leaving His book unread, His table unattended, His people ignored, His Spirit quenched. And even a modicum of self-knowledge may help you to see and acknowledge your own faults too. But all this may make you all the more unbelieving of His love.

You may think, How could such a good God love someone like me? But just then the very genius of this passage hits us. God is not finding the basis for His love in us. He is not looking in that shallow pool to find a reason for loving us. His love comes from inside himself.

Did you see that? When he's thinking about what he will do with Israel, he doesn't look at Israel and consider more carefully, oh, but they were pretty good here, they weren't so good here. He looks inside himself. That's the basis for his love and grace to us because of what God himself is like. Look here in chapter 11, verse 8.

God is finding His love for us based in Himself and in what He's like. He's looking to His own heart, His own compassion. That's the source of God's love for us, Himself alone, nothing in us.

That's why we can sing, Thou who art God beyond all praising, all for love's sake becamest man, stooping so low, but sinners raising heavenwards by thine eternal plan. How else could God keep loving and using us as a church like He does? You realize as a pastor, I am informed every day of insufficiencies in our church. I've had 31 years of a blessed relationship with this church. There'll be very few days in which I did not encounter either by somebody telling me or me noticing insufficiencies in our church.

It's the nature of a human institution, certainly any human institution I'm involved with. So why does that not end up discouraging me or discouraging you? You certainly have noticed some of the same things as you've found the disappointment here and discouragement there. It's because we realize that our hope is not fundamentally in each other. It's in the Lord.

The God who saved us, the God we sing about, the God we tell each other about, God's persevering patience with us is one more proof of his love today. Still one more aspect of that love we must notice in this passage is God's future love. Here we see that the Lord will ransom them even from death itself. Look in chapter 13, verse 14, the first part of it. That's what it's saying there.

I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from death. O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting?

Here through Hosea, the Lord speaks about death and the grave, and then to death and the grave. About death and the grave, the Lord informs us that He shall ransom them from the power of Sheol and redeem them from death. Who's the them that are being ransomed and redeemed? Well, it's clearly those who have been under the power of death, under the power of the grave. Well, who are they?

That's all of us. We read in Ephesians 2, you, were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked when you followed the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Well, that sounds like everybody. Well, so then who is redeemed from this? Who is brought out of this?

Who is ransomed from the grave? Well, you just keep reading Ephesians 2. But God, being rich in mercy, just like Hosea, looking God inside himself, what is he like? Being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. It's like we just sang in and Can It Be.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And that's not your own doing. It's the gift of God. It's those who have been united to Christ by faith in Christ.

Christ leaves death defeated, the victory is His, because Christ is risen from the dead, trampling over death and hell. We are one with Christ. Oh friend, if you do not know what it means to be forgiven of your sins by God, this is how a good God, a holy God, can justly forgive you for your sins. Because Christ has suffered in the place of all of us who would ever turn and trust in him. And God raised him from the dead.

He ascended to heaven, accepted the sacrifice, and calls us all to repent and to trust in him. We can know that newness of life because of what God has done in Christ.

So we see here, if you're careless, you need to learn the truth about your own sin. But if you're hopeless, you need to learn the truth about the love of God in Christ. Come by faith. Rise up with Christ and victory. The victory foretold here through Hosea.

This is the future love that there is for us in Christ. Brothers and sisters, this is why we don't worry about tomorrow like some people do.

He holds tomorrow safely in His hands. We can rest in God's master plan. He knows the end from the beginning. We can trust Him completely. For the believer in Christ, there is hope even beyond death.

Praise God. Again and again in this congregation we see people go to the edge of life and then go on over into death with hope beyond the grave. Because of the hope we have in Christ. Friends, here in chapter 13, verse 11, the Lord referred to the king he had taken away with him from them in his wrath. He's talking about King Saul.

But do you remember what the Lord said to David in 2 Samuel 7 about David and his descendants? He said, My steadfast love will not depart from him as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you.

And that's fulfilled ultimately in Jesus Christ, the Son of David, and then in us as we are united to Christ by faith. This is how we can have the joyful confidence that the Lord reigns over death and the grave. Some of us here are a little bit older than others of us here. Some of us here have walked a few more steps, and we're almost certainly, statistically at least, a few steps closer to the grave. Why don't we find our joy declining as we get older?

As we face more and more of life's physical infirmities? As our steps literally grow more feeble and our days grow fewer, why don't we find our joy running out? Because we have this hope over death and hell. As we saw in our study of Revelation earlier this year, death itself is finally to be defeated. As the Apostle John was shown in Revelation 20, then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.

One of the great things that unites us as a church is our hope that we have in life beyond death. We sing of it in our hymns and our carols. We rely on it in our hearts. We share it with each other as we talk and pray. We know that the Lord's blessings on His own cannot be confined to the narrow limits of this life.

My Christian friend, you should not be hopeless. So as we conclude this morning, we should simply marvel at the fact that God brings us all these blessings of His love, all the hope He brings to those who are feeling hopeless through His Son, Jesus Christ. Which brings us back to the first line of our passage for this morning, chapter 11 verse 1.

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Of course, the Lord here in Hosea's day was referring to Israel as his son. Remember, that's what he called Israel back to Pharaoh in Exodus chapter 4.

When we get to the New Testament, we find an angel of the Lord appearing to Joseph in a dream in Matthew chapter 1 and telling him, Joseph, son of David, Do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And later, when Jesus' public ministry begins, he's baptized by John the Baptist. And do you remember what the heavenly voice says? This is my Son, in whom I am well pleased.

And then Jesus immediately goes into the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days. And you remember all of those temptations from Satan turned on his being God's son. Every time Satan tempted him, he began, since you're God's son, then this is the conclusion, every one false and misleading use of Scripture. You see in all of this how Jesus is repeating the steps of Israel, God's firstborn. As he tells Moses to call him back in Exodus 4.

And as the first Israel went through the Red Sea, Jesus Christ, the second Israel, the true Israel, went through the waters of baptism in the Jordan River. The first Israel was led through the wilderness for 40 years and was tempted and fell many times. The second Israel, the true Israel, Jesus, was led into the wilderness for 40 days. And was tempted. But there where the first Israel had sinned terribly with the golden calf or with worshiping Baal of Peor, there Jesus said to Satan when he was tempting him to worship wrongly, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, you, shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.

What the first Israel should have done, just like what the first Adam should have done. The second Adam, the second Israel, the true Israel, did for us. So it's no wonder when Matthew recounted Joseph's taking Mary and the baby Jesus down into Egypt to escape Herod's murders, and then he recounted Herod's death when they were then free to return in safety to their home in Galilee, it's no wonder that he would see in it a fulfillment of this statement that Hosea began our passage with. Matthew 2:15. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, Out of Egypt I called my son.

That was the way of Egypt. That was the way of Israel. That was also the way of Jesus Christ, the true Israel, the incarnate Son of God, the only begotten of the Father. And it is in this Israel that you and I should find our place today by faith. If we would, on the one hand, not be careless about our sins, but regard them as God does, but if we would also not be hopeless in them, but have our hopes set on God and on His full love for us in Christ, extending even beyond the limits of this life.

Friend, do you have that hope this morning?

Let's pray.

Lord, as we endure the hectoring assaults and blandishments from Black Friday and Cyber Monday, Lord, we pray that yout would teach us the truth of youf claims, of youf truths, of youf attractions. Of those things that yout've truly made us for. Lord, help us to be sensitive to youo own character, you, own holiness. And Lord, fill us with youh love and with a confidence of it in Christ. Lord, we pray that yout would take our thoughts captive.

And so, Lord, make us a blessing and an honor to youo own name. We pray through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.