A portion, sorry, I left my notes over here. If you'll turn to this page of notes, what I'm going to do is reread that chapter 3, right after the break starts with verse 1. Let me read this and then we'll pray as we look together to God's Word. The Lord said to me, go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes. So I bought her for 15 checkles of silver and about a home or an ethic of barley. Then I told her, you were to live with me many days. You must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you. For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephid or idol. Afterward, the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last day. Lord Christ, we ask that you would meet with us now, that you would take your Word and apply it to our hearts, help us to understand it, to know what it is that you're saying about who you are and who you've made us to be. Lord Christ, we do look to you in your name we pray. Amen. On the other side of this, you'll see some notes to kind of help us following along through this passage. And remember, we're looking at this whole book of Hosea. This is our third week in Hosea, and we hope to be in this book for a total of 10 weeks together. And the first three chapters of this book of Hosea are really dealing with the illustration, the specific thing that God calls Hosea to do in Marion Gomer a prostitute as a way of demonstrating, as a way of showing intangible ways God's love relationship with His people is real. And we've got here a summary of the whole book. The whole book is all about God has the right to divorce His people, even though He will discipline her severely. He will always love her and eventually redeem her to complete faithfulness. So these first three chapters deal with that illustration, with the picture of what that looks like. And then the rest of the book takes that picture and gets into the nitty-gritty and specifics of why that picture fits. Why that's an accurate picture of our simpleness and of God's redeeming love. And so in this last half of chapter two in verse, or whole of chapter three, we get these three things kind of worked out. First, the banquet, the bouquet of promises. And we're calling this particular passage, this sermon, that of courtship and redemption. It is this picture of God wooing us to Himself, of courting us. And as a good shooter does, he brings things to this woman that he's trying to woo. But not just a bouquet of flowers, he brings this bouquet of all these blessings that we'll see, born out. But then we have this bizarre language of him buying his bride, who's been put on the slave market. And we see that God is not just wooing us to Himself, but that he actually purchases us. He buys us as his bride. And then we'll see how all these things point us to the wonder of what he's doing. But it's not just that he's loving us, but that love transforms us. It redeems us. It changes us from where we are to the bride that he's making us to be. So that's where we're going in looking at these verses today. Let's look at this first thing of the bouquet of promises. What are those flowers that God brings in this courtship? There are five things that are given here in verses 14 to 23. The first flower in this bouquet is a second accident. That is a renewal of the work that he did in bringing his people out of Egypt. We see this in verses 14 and 15. He says, therefore, I'm going to allure her. I'm going to woo her. I'm going to chase after her and win her heart. I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There, I will give her back her vineyards and make the valley of Acor a door of hope. There she will sing as in the days of her youth as in the day she came up out of Egypt. So there, he explicitly ties it to that coming up out of Egypt, the accident. Now, you may be here having gone to Sunday school and hearing 8,000 flannel board presentations of the accident. Or you may be here and go, is that the thing like the Prince of Egypt video saying they came out of Egypt? I don't have any idea what that is. What he's doing is tying this. He's saying, I've already done the work of bringing you up and setting you up as a special people to myself. I took you out of slavery in Egypt. You know, those pyramids that you toiled and labored and sweated as slaves to build. I'm going to bring you, I already brought you up out of Egypt into the promised land. And so what he's saying here is what I've done before I'm going to do again in this image of Hosea, Mary and Gomer, a prostitute. Remember we talked last week of all the scars that Gomer had in terms of living this life of prostitution, of chasing after every other lover instead of being faithful to her husband Hosea. And God's saying, I'm going to woo you back to me. It's not just a new honeymoon, but it's an even better honeymoon than what they had to begin with. Now, there are a couple things here. Look at their in verse 15. He says, I will give you her back her vineyards and we'll make the valley of Acora, the door of hope. You come to kind of things like this and you go Acora, okay? What is that all about? What he's referring to is something that every is or light would have kind of shuttered about. Oh, Acora. It's like looking up some of Napoleon's relatives and saying, oh yeah, that's a great time. That's just like Waterloo. It's filled with horror. It's filled with shame. Why? When the people were coming up out of Egypt and God said you're going to go into the Promised Land and I'm going to give you victory. And everywhere you go, I'm going to drive out the people from before you and give you their houses, their cars, their everything. You're going to have all this stuff that you haven't had. That you didn't have to work for. And so the people as they begin, right? They're very first place. They come to Jericho. God says, okay, here's the battle plan. March around the city. But they do it. And they follow God's plan and the city falls. But God says, no, everything that you take in spoils to be given unto me. But remember that one person, right, takes a little and hides it under his tent. And as a result, the next place they go to it, I, the next city, they go to Israelites are slaughtered. They lose. What's going on? It was the sin of one that had consequences for the whole. And that valley where they were defeated stood as this scar for the whole people. It's not just, you know, oh yeah, that was, that was a real bummer in our history. But grandfathers and grandmothers were lost there. They're, you know, the families that, that God is talking to had personal connection with them. Remember what we talked about last week? God transforming those scars of our own stupidity and turning them into memorials, testimonies to God's goodness. That's what he's saying. I'm going to, I'm going to do for what I, for you, what I did in bringing you out of Egypt. And even the, even the failures that you experienced there, like at the Valley of Acor, I'm going to turn those from failures into victories. I'm going to turn those into occasions for rejoicing instead of occasions for shame. And the second rose in this bouquet of promises that he brings in verses 16 and 17, is the eradication of the bales. But it, okay, bales was a false God. It was a God that was worshiped all around the promised land, okay? He was the, the God that, that was worshiped by the people there as being the one who, who gave them plenty. He was the God that gave harvest. He was the one who conquered over the, the horrible God of famine and drought. And so the people had been unfaithful instead of, of just worshipping God, Yahweh. They had said, what, okay, we'll worship Yahweh, but, but bales pretty good too. And then more and more they were, they were worshipping bales. And there's a word play that he uses here, that he talks about, he says, in that day, in verse 16, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband. You will no longer call me my master. What's going on there, if you've got an older translation, it uses more specifically the, the language of, of the text, that is, the, the word, um, husband is Ishi, but the, the word for master is Bailey. It's, it's a word play on the bales. Okay, catch the imagery. He's using this graphic language of saying you've been unfaithful to me. You've gone out and sought all of these other lovers instead of loving me. And so now, I'm going to bring you back. There's going to be a new and better honeymoon, right? But what's the fear? Well, if you've had many different lovers and you go to that wedding night with your, with your new husband, right? What, what's going to happen if, if I have that incredibly embarrassing thing happen of in, in that moment, I cry out the wrong name. Okay, it's, it's, it's, it's pretty great, but it's, it's very earthy. It's real. It's, these are things that God uses to show us. You see, they've, they've followed after false God. And so even as they're coming into worship, they've got all that false stuff in their minds and in their brains. And so even as they, as they gather, we say, gosh, that's, that's pretty bizarre. I'm sure glad we know it. I have any of that problem. Don't we? We come in from all the other stuff. And instead of following after the Lord, even as we gather here in worship, the way that we tend to relate to one another, the way that we tend to pray is colored by all those false ways that the world leads us in. But the promise that rose that God is saying is I'm going to remove that name from your mouth. You don't have to be afraid of it in the moment of passion crying out the wrong name. I'll remove the name from your land so that you can only speak my name. The third rose in that bouquet is safety for man and beast. In verse 18, we see him giving this promise. In that day, I will make a covenant with them with the beast of the field and the birds of the air and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle, I will abolish from the land so that all may lie down in safety. He's saying in the land that I've given you, you've experienced all the fear that you might be out plowing your field and a lion comes and devours your children. You may be out walking with your wife and across the plan comes a band of soldiers that burns your house and wipes you out. You say I'm going to remove all that, there's security, there's safety, there's peace, that I will bring you as your husband. The fourth flower in this bouquet is a new betrothal and marriage. As we saw in chapter 1, it tells Hosea, go and marry Gomer. Then we see her unfaithfulness in this downward spiral of greater unfaithfulness, leading to a divorce. And yet God is now saying, go back to her, woo her back, re-marry her, take her as your bride, because that's what I'm going to do for my people Israel. And then verses 21 to 23, we see this incredible language of the wealth of blessing and what God is going to do. In that day, I will respond to Claire's the Lord. I will respond to the skies and they will respond to the earth and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and oil. They will respond to Jezrio. I will plan her for myself and the land. I will show my love to the one I called not my love, one. I will say to those, not my people, you are my people and they will say, you are my God. What's he doing? He's using the same kind of language that we see in marriage, right? You go to a wedding. They say, in the presence of these witnesses, we join you together as man and one. And God says, I'm going to come as God and take you as my bride. And I'm going to call to creation itself that the sky and the earth, that the grain and the oil, that everything in creation, all of these things that I've used to bless you. I'm going to call them as witnesses to show my great love for you. So he presents this bouquet of flowers to woo us back to himself, to show us the wonder of his love for us. And the passage overflows with the hope of these promises, but it even gets better than that. The second thing that we see is not only this bouquet of promises, but the purchase price. You see, the reality is that Gomer, representing Israel, representing us, had not just gotten herself into a place where she needed to be wooed back. She needed to have her love rekindled. And if she needed to go to a little marriage counseling and work through some of those things, no, she was on the slave block. She couldn't, even if she says, oh, what beautiful flowers. She couldn't go home with Hosea. She was being sold. And so God commands Hosea, go show your love to her and buy her back. But you see, it's not like God telling Hosea to go and purchase a mail order bride. That's how we tend to think. There's the slave being sold, going by her back as your wife. Like Hosea is thinking, you know, gosh, I've got these kids to take care of. I've got to do something to help make food so while I'm out plowing. It's not a matter of Hosea's need. It's not a matter of God's need. It's not God saying, you know, gosh, I just, I'd like some friends. I'd like some people that can worship me. God shows us through this image that everything about Hosea, everything about Israel, everything about us, is not anything to do with God needing us. It's God coming to find us who have been unfaithful and purchasing us back. We see that Hosea redeems her from slavery and from death. Now, in terms of the culture at that time, it would have been very common in terms of that culture reasonable. If Hosea had gotten word, you know, his friend Fred came and said, hey, Hosea, you never guess who I saw down at the marketplace being sold. It's government. She finally got what was coming to it. And so Hosea goes down and says, okay, I know what I'll do. I'll buy her back so I can take her home and kill her. The culture of the day would have said, hey, she's your slave. I mean, if you want to waste the money, you know, it's not like she doesn't deserve it, but that's not what Hosea does. Hosea goes and buys her back to bring her home as his bride. Now, you know, we look at these kinds of things and say, what's going on? In verse 1, it says that they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cake. Does God have a thing against raisins? You know, what's going on? What's the bad thing about raisin cake? What that is is in the Near Eastern culture, when you were trying to have a baby and couldn't, the fertility kinds of things that you would do, you know, you didn't have in vitro fertilization. What you would do is you would look to trinkets and tokens, things that were believed to help. And oftentimes, things with seed in them were considered helpful in fertility. So, you know, a raisin cake would be both an acradiziac as well as a fertility health. But it was used in pagan ritual, so that instead of people going to the Lord and saying, Lord, you're the one that I need to trust for these children. They'll go, give me some of those raisin cakes. Maybe that'll work. And they chase after those things. And it's led Hosea, in this case, to the slave block. And verse 2, it says, so I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and about a Homer and a ethic of barley. Well, what's a ethic? And what's going on? The equivalent here is 30 pieces of silver. Now, you might remember 30 pieces of silver as the amount that Judas was paid to betray Christ. But it's not like that is the first time that 30 pieces of silver shows up. In fact, what this reference is is back to in Exodus, where God is trying to lay down the law and protect people from being used and abused as slaves. And so he set this price of 30 pieces of silver to say there is value in life. Now, that's not God saying that slavery is okay at all. It was him in that culture protecting those from being just treated as mere objects. 30 pieces of silver, he mandates that is the price for buying back a sling. And so Hosea goes and buys back gomer for the equivalent. Now, it's really interesting. The commentators will go all over the place on this. Why does he not just buy her for 30 pieces of silver? Why is there this break? 15 pieces of silver and then the equivalent in terms of the barley that would be 15 pieces of silver to buy. Why does he do it half in coin and half in food? The thing that makes sense to me is that there's been this whole litany of all the things that gomer is looking to. And she's looking to the false lovers. She's looking to all these other things instead of recognizing that it's been Hosea providing for her all along. And so Hosea comes and says, do you know where your silver comes from? Who wasn't your lovers? I was the one giving your lovers that money to give to you. Do you want to know where your food came from? Your barley came from? I'm the one who was giving it to you. It's a way of showing the inclusiveness, everything from your silver to your food, everything is what I have provided for you. And so he comes and purchases her out of slavery and death. And it's a picture of what Christ has paid for us. So the reality is our sin leads to our slavery and death. And there has to be a price paid for that. Gomer could not simply say to Hosea, I'm sorry, I really blew it. And Hosea said, it's okay. Come on home. No, there was a slave master who was there saying, well, she's mine. You wonder back, it's going to cost you. And it gives us a picture of Christ and his purchase for us. It's in the text in verse 5 of chapter 3 that says in talking about all this wonder of how God is going to bring his people back to him and marry them again. So after that, Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. What's going on? This is hundreds of years after David has lived and died. How are they going to come back and seek after the Lord? Okay, well that makes sense. How are they going to seek after David their king? But see, if you look at what the scripture says, David was the king, never just for David to be the king. God raised up David as the king in opposition to Saul to point forward to the son of David who would come and be our true king. So even within the text there is this pointing forward to the Davidic king, to the one who would come and reign Christ himself as our king. And first Peter has put this way, you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers. But with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish. I see in the same way that the scripture mandates, this is the price, 30 pieces of silver for a slave. The scripture also tells us for your sin the wages are death. The price for our faithlessness is no less than the blood of Christ. And so he comes to redeem us, to purchase us out of our slavery and death in our harlotry. But notice also what he purchases us for. He purchases this in order to make us faithful to transform us from faithlessness to faithful. In verse 20 he says, I betrothed you in faithfulness and you will acknowledge the Lord. And then we just saw in verse 5 after the Israelites return and seek the Lord their God, David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord to his blessing in the last day. God is going to change us. He's not just going to woo us to himself. Here are the flowers. He's not just going to buy us back and say you no longer have to go and serve those foreign lovers. But you're my beloved, you're my bride. And I have made you, I have paid for you. I have wooed you to myself to transform you, to redeem you. And so we see that we're transformed by his love. We see this that you will acknowledge the Lord. That's really the crux of what God is saying is wrong with gomer and with Israel and with us. In the last week we saw in the passage that we have forgotten the Lord. So he's going to take us from forgetting him to remembering him. He's going to take us from having, praising these other false gods to praising him. Why? Why does he do that? Why does he make us acknowledge him? It's because of how he betrothed us. That's more of an old English kind of word. We talk about getting engaged. That's what vitrothal is. There's an incredible picture of this in the movie Forrest Gump. I'm always using movie illustrations, but they just help because it's picture. In the movie Forrest Gump, there is Forrest who loves Jenny. In his words, they're just like peas and carrots. He has always loved, always loved Jenny. And she abused as she was by her father. Messed up as she is in taking acid and everything else continues to run from Forrest's love. In that scene where she has come back and is there in his house. And she's going up to bed and Forrest finally gets the courage enough to come and betroth her to ask her for her hand in marriage. Of course, he does that in a very simple way as Forrest Gump. Jenny, will you marry me? Forrest, you don't want to marry me. You can see the frustration after years and years of her running from him. Forrest says, I am not a smart man, but I know what love is. Chasing after her, asking her, will you marry me? And God picks that imagery, that intimacy to say, I will betroth you to myself forever. And if the contrast with the first marriage, he brought him out of Egypt. He said, you will be my people and I will be your God. And they were faceless and ran away from him and he divorced them and sent them into captivity. But he's saying, I will betroth you again forever. How does he do that? Look in verse 19. He says, I will betroth you in righteousness and justice. I will betroth you in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness. You see, God brings to the marriage what we can't. All we have to bring is our own faithlessness. All we have to bring to the marriage is our own heart that will constantly seek after other lovers. But God says, I will not leave you there. I will come and bring into the marriage what you can't. My righteousness and justice. Is there a purchase price for God marrying us? Yes. It's the blood of Christ. Why? Because God is just. But he doesn't just satisfy his justice in the death of Christ on the cross. He satisfies his righteousness in that he gives to us his right, his righteousness. Scripture says that he puts it on us like a robe to cover us. He comes and he betrothes us in love and compassion. He sees our need and he meets it. And he betrothes us in faithfulness in every way in which we are faithless. Christ has been faithful. Christ has endured the same temptations that you and I face. And in every point to which we failed, he is succeeded. So how does he do it? How does he change us from being faithless to being faithful? He brings all this to the wedding. But how does he do that in changing our hearts? You see, in forest gum, there is forest pursuing her. And finally, in the end, being able to woo her to himself that they are married. But she's got a fatal disease. So his love, while it's wonderful, and transforms her last few months into joy instead of sorrow, it's powerless to overcome her death. The wonder of what Christ has done for us is that he loves us with even a greater love, pursues us even more doggedly than for us does. Jenny, and his love comes in and not simply makes our life happier.
He comes in to our disease and heals us. He takes us out of death. What is the covenant promise? What is the thing that God is redoing, that he's redeeming? It's that promise that has been there all along for us to dwell with him. And he to dwell with us. The beauty of that picture of Hosea and Goma. As he says, go and love her again. Take her back as your bride, purchase her, and she will love you. God doesn't just clean us up and bring us in and say, okay, now you're respectable. But he changes our hearts. He makes us more and more ever so slowly, maddeningly, slowly at times, to want him more than we want, other things. And while the beauty of forest love gets us teary and moves us, the power of God's constantly chasing love transforms our hearts and makes us new creatures. It's a beautiful image of love, but it's not a fairy tale. It's not just this picture of Hosea and Goma. It's the reality of what Christ has done. Praise be to God, let's pray. Lord, we do praise you and thank you for your transforming love, that you cord us and woo us to yourself, that you don't leave us on our own on the block in slavery's market. But you woo us and purchase us to change us and transform us. Holy Spirit, we praise you and ask that you would do that enough in Christ's name. Amen.