Experiencing the Depths of Grace – Part 3

Hosea, Gomer, and Us!

The Book of Hosea, Chapters 6-14

Introduction (Romans 5:6-10; 1Timothy 1:15; Luke 19:10)

A. We have spent two weeks already looking at some of the hardest truths so far about GRACE

That is directed towards wicked people, THE WOST KIND - not good people at all
That it doesn’t quit
That it doesn’t have limits
That it is not natural – it is not something we just do naturally
That it only works in response to humility! Hard truth. The work of God is only limited by our response to it. You can’t earn it, live up to it, or keep it. It is a gift!

B. And we are all in need of such grace!

C. Listen to Romans 5:6-10

Rom 5:6 For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
Rom 5:7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
Rom 5:8 But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Not for good people, or for other people, but US)!
Rom 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood (the loss of it when he died on the cross), we shall be saved from wrath through him.
Rom 5:10 For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.
That’s GRACE at work! Isn’t all of that awesome?! It is to me!
When we should experience His justice and wrath for what is in both our hearts and actions… (And by the way, we will if something doesn’t change about us)… God wants us to experience His grace. Invites us to repent and receive the forgiveness He already has paid for!

D. In simple words, Grace is God seeking us, finding us neck deep in sin, loving us, redeeming us, washing us, changing us, and bringing us back to Himself, CONSTANTLY!

1Timothy 1:15 Paul knew who and what God saved on the road to Damascus! Do YOU?
Jesus did not come to SEEK and to SAVE broken people, but rather lost people (Luke 19:10) – useless people – people so far away from God there otherwise would be no hope! Background

A. Remember, we are looking at grace through the life of a godly man named Hosea, a prophet in Israel, amongst people who had no time for God, or for the Law, or for preaching, or for righteousness – through his heart, his eyes, his efforts!

B. It is this man, whose very name meant “Jehovah Saves” who ends up experiencing just a taste of what God has to endure every second of every hour of every day throughout the whole world!

C. In one word, Hosea had to experience the awful hurt of an adulteress wife, and still love her through the awful sin of her adultery against him!

Message - The Depths of Grace

A. How Far, How Low will Grace Go?

It goes looking for the unworthy (1:2)
- Gomer was already a whore, an harlot – selling herself to the lusts of those around her
- Gomer was not interested in Hosea, in marriage, in a family, in a home
- Gomer never knew real love
- Yet Hosea spent time with her, drew her, and proposed to her, married her (became committed to her), and loved her
It loves when none is returned (2:2)
- Gomer never really returned Hosea’s love
- Her desire was for the streets, the passion of adultery and lust
- She was bored with Hosea
- Her heart never returned Hosea’s love
- Yet Hosea loved her
It seeks again and again when we have walked away (3:1)
- Gomer had three children, a home, a husband
- But Gomer snuck away and went back to her old life
- Back out to her old lovers, old ways
- Didn’t come home night after night – didn’t intend on ever coming back
- And so, Hosea went out after her – broken, devastated, humiliated, burned, hurt
- Oh how he must have wanted to punish her, hurt her like she was hurting HIM
- But God commanded Hosea to LOVE an adulteress woman – a woman who loved other men – and not just ‘A’ woman, but his own WIFE!!! Draw her back again!

Love HER again!

Love a woman such as she is. Yet an adulteress

Love her like God loves!

As Christ loved the church

God wouldn’t let Hosea quit on Gomer!

i. Grace YEARNS for, and waits for someone’s return – never quits expecting

The prodigal son’s father

It buys us back – redeems us (3:2)
- Gomer was with her “lovers”
- But she was ruined. Abused, weak, a piece of trash, thrown from one wicked man to another to do with as they pleased
- She had lost her beauty, her glory, her joy, everything, at the hands of her “lovers”
- And that is where Hosea found her, and bought her back
- Not worth much to anyone
- But still worth everything to Hosea
It accepts our baggage that we bring with us when we do return (3:2; 1:2)
- Gomer had bastard children
- Gomer had diseases
- Gomer had scars and hurts that went so deep
- Gomer was numb
- And Hosea loved her anyway, and took everything that was wrong with Gomer, and accepted it all back into his life
Puts up with being mocked, rejected, ignored, and especially abused by the very people it is meant to affect and save (4:6; 8:12) – ignores it and presses on anyway
It restores the relationship (6:1; 14:4)
- Carefully, almost meticulously, Hosea worked at restoring their marriage
- He did most of the work restoring it
- Washing her
- Staying committed to her
- Healing her wounds and scars and hurts
- Forgiving her - constantly
- Helping her to change – not just expecting it to happen naturally!
- Redeems the guilty from the consequences

i. Reverses the reaping

Restores the relationship, over and over
Regenerates what is dead

It has the future in view, not just the past (1:10,11)
Is Completely Impossible Without God (1Peter 5:10)
- A work of God – remember the name Hosea – Jehovah saves
- Is against our nature The hardest thing you will ever do is to have grace

It was hard for GOD!

But grace is part of God’s nature

Why did God ask Hosea to do all that? (Hosea 2:1-5)

Why Did God Use Hosea This Way? What God Meant By Hosea Seeking and Marrying an Harlot

All so that everyone can see themselves for who THEY really are!

The people needed to see just how awful THEIR sin against GOD was! Too often, we miss what God is saying in the Bible because we don’t see ourselves and our sins.

The book of Hosea describes God trying to get people to see ourselves, our sin, and the amazing grace that God extends towards us!

I think you will be quite surprised just how we truly are

THEY, Israel, as a nation, had played the harlot on God! Stepped out on God
What an awful thing to expose! They really did not want God

They had gotten bored with God, and left God, totally abandoned Him just like an unfaithful wife walks out on her husband!

Didn’t love God, just played along. Just numb.

They had no interest in staying with Him, and loving Him

They loved other gods, other things, even themselves – just not Him

Gave all their best, their talents, their money, their time, and their heart most of all to others besides the One who mattered!!!

They were all a generation that had grown up without God!

Just like today!

Adultery is
- When a man removes his affections from his own wife, and sets them upon another woman
- She is an adulteress that loves not her husband, but places her love upon another man Flirting, being happy with someone else but cold towards your husband or wife

Spending the majority of your time AWAY from your wife or husband, and with others

So, such men and women are adulterers and adulteresses, who, instead of loving God, whom they ought to love with all their hearts and souls, set their affections upon the world, and the things of it. Your TV and the movies, the nakedness, the perversion

Your hobby

Your friends, especially unsaved friends

Your sport and team

Your computer games

They are very hurtful to the God we claim to love and follow
Can anyone else see that?

Adultery a Spiritual Problem (4:12; 5:4)
- Israel’s problem was a SPIRITUAL problem
- Not a problem with their environment, their upbringing, their education, their economy, their genes
- A problem in the most important part of them – their spirit
- They were filled NOT with the Spirit of God
- But were filled with the spirit of whoredom – a demonic spirit driving them away from God
It was a Heart Problem - Left God again and again (3:1-f)
- Our friendship with the world, our flirting, our attention, our affections…
- Israel as a nation and culture loved this present evil world (Gal 1:4)
- Test: How do YOU see this generation, this present world? Getting better, or evil?
- Loved its religions, its spirituality (4:12-13)
- Loved its government
- Loved entertainment (3:1; 4:11)
Their sinful nature – born this way (Mark 7:20-23; Gal 5:19-21)
- Manifests itself in any of 25 major ways: Drunkenness, lust, hatred, drug addiction, witchcraft, blasphemy, pride, homosexuality, paedophilia, murder, stealing, lying, depression, anger, wrath…
- AND adultery
- It all is from a heart that is born wrong (Mark 7:20-23)
Layer upon layer of problems – not just one problem (7:1-ff)
- They FIRST Forgat God (2:13; 4:6; 8:14; 13:5,6 … Rom 1:21)
- Did not know God (4:1, 6) And that ignorance would destroy them

Like being ignorant of how to drive a car

Like being ignorant of the power of drink!

Was “joined” to idols (4:17) – not just dabbling in them
They refuse to frame their doings (5:4), their lifestyles to turn unto the Lord… Refused to force themselves to schedule time for worship, prayer, Bible reading, church, ministry, tithing and giving…
Sought help from false powers (5:12-14) demonic powers
Never were broken. Always proud. The people never really mean anything they say towards God (6:4,5) They would “return” but not to God (7:14-16)
Rejected God’s law (4:6; 8:1, 12)
Hardened their hearts (7:2-8) like in a bakery

And the people needed to hear just how much trouble they were in with God (Hosea 8:7; 10:13)
- As a faithful husband or a faithful wife used to be able to do!
- Nowadays, it seems no one really fears the consequences of adultery It is part of most every TV program

Unfaithful love is the only kind of love that seems to get all the attention in movies

They will lose everything God ever gave them! God warned that he would Strip them of all their beauty, outward riches, and even of Himself!
What a dangerous situation
Fear God ladies and gentlemen, FOR YOUR CHILDREN’S SAKE!
Compare Laodicea in Rev 3:14-19 Throughout the Bible, there is only ONE theme…
God faithfully loving unfaithful, unworthy people! (11:8,9)
Quite lying to yourself that you are so good and so faithful to God
If the truth be known, we are all as an unclean thing.
And WHY God loves any one of us is beyond comprehension! The Flipside of Grace – Grace has TWO Sides

Grace is much greater than love – much more important to have than just love
Grace goes much deeper than love every will (Dt 33:27)
Grace is a combination of love, with justice. Forgiveness AND righteousness
- God will punish the sin (9:15-17)
- AND, yet, God will bring her back (2:20)
- Grace does BOTH!
- JUSTICE only does one – judge and condemn and punish sin
- Love only does the other – forgive the sin and forget about it
- GRACE does BOTH!!!
Grace is the best of all words! Because it handles all the worst problems
- Of how to judge someone’s wrong
- And yet still love and forgive them
- Of how to chastise and punish someone and yet restore them
- Grace never acts as if it is ignoring the adultery, and just pretending like nothing wrong had ever happened
- Yes grace is kindness, unmerited kindness, unfailing love, even unconditional love. It has boundless forgiveness
- The flipside of grace is that it not only loves, forgives, washes, and starts over constantly…
- But that it also makes us face our sin, and brings it out into the open, and rebukes the wrong, and calls for repentance
Such grace is impossible except from God!
If you ever want to experience the effect of the grace of God, instead of the wrath of God, humble yourself, and return to God, and abhor yourself and your sin, and you will know what has been waiting for you all along! (James 4:6)
- Remember, Grace never stops loving, but it calls for a decision to come home!
- You can’t save the prodigal son until he decides to repent and come home
- And you can’t save a drunkard, a drug addict, an adulterer, until they decide to repent, and come back to God! The Invitation

Remember the woman caught in the very act of adultery? (John 8:1-11)

That was Israel!
- And Christ forgave her
- She could go home and sin no more like that ever again!
- Because of grace!
And that is you, and me!
- Christ offers anyone forgiveness – the worst of us!
- But our sin must be exposed – like hers was, like Israel’s was
- Our pride must be cast away
- Our desire must only be Jesus
- And we can walk away forgiven, free, and restored The Plea – over and over again
Hear (4:1)
Hear this (5:1)
Come let US return! (6:1)
Hosea joins in the plea
All the way to the very last verse (14:9) The Need – for Mercy, not for more ceremonies and sacrifices (6:6)
No more fun and games (9:1)
Rejoice not for joy
Humble ourselves
Come back home! The Healing of Grace (Hosea 6:1; 11:3; 14:4)
Grace forgives – wrath condemns
Grace heals – justice destroys
The whole book of Hosea shows BOTH God’s wrath, but also His unfailing, unchanging love toward sinners
And the only way that sinners can experience God’s love is because of God’s great GRACE The Warning
Judgment is coming
God is against you (5:14)
Sown the wind, they shall real the whirlwind (8:7)
You have plowed wickedness, and will reap the consequences (10:13)
You will be left alone – the worst thing to happen to someone!
When we fail grace (it cannot ever fail us) we will face God’s righteous wrath for our sins against HIM! Oh that men would seek mercy today! Conclusion

Are you like Gomer?

Naturally uninterested in God
Always going away – backsliding?
Hurting God like an unfaithful wife or husband would hurt YOU!

B. Did you know God loves you even though He has been hurt?

With an everlasting love, and draws you to Him, again and again and again – constantly going after you like a good shepherd?
He seeks us, and waits for us to want to seek Him back!
Today, you can be born again! Changed! Saved from the just and righteous wrath of God He had to pay an awful price for your sins, and your unfaithfulness!

How about the rest of us who ARE born again, saved… but not growing? Apathetic? Backslidden?

Maybe not enjoying God Himself, or His words, or His will for your life?
Not really different than you always have been – no heart for Christ, for the Bible, for soul-winning, for Church, for God’s people
Things SHOULD change when you get saved!
Things WILL change, when you follow, and match your actions to Christ’s! Do you have someone you are having trouble loving and staying committed to? God’s grace can change everything. But you have to let it first work in you and on you!