Hosea

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HOSEA THE ALLUREMENT OF LOVE

PETER JEFFERY

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‘Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.

Hosea 2:14

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The Bible is full of illustrations and parables which God uses to convey to us the wonder of his love and grace. None does this better than the story of Hosea and Gomer. The prophet’s message is lived out in his own domestic life. Hosea is told by God to marry a prostitute named Gomer. She bears him two sons and a daughter. Then she leaves him and goes back to her lovers and prostitution. She sinks lower and lower in the moral cesspool of the day and finally is sold into slavery. All the time Hosea’s love for her does not waver and he even goes to the slave market and buys her back.

It is a remarkable story but its purpose is to reveal God’s love and grace for his people. The picture is that Israel has been like an unfaithful wife to God. She has says chapter 4 verse 15, committed adultery. She has turned away from God to the

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prostitution of sin and idolatry. Yet God‘s love does not waver and he seeks to bring her back to himself. God’s dealing with Israel in the Old Testament is the same as with us today – ‘God demonstrates his own love for us in this; While we were still sinners, Christ died for us’ (Romans 5:8).

It is crucial that we understand this in reading Hosea. It is not just a story of a man who had an unfaithful wife. It is a picture of how we spurn the love of God and how God’s love and grace seeks to draw us back to him.

SPIRITUAL ADULTERY God tells Israel that they have committed spiritual adultery. He says in Hosea 4, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.’

All this was the result of them rejecting God just as Gomer had rejected Hosea.

John Blanchard says, ‘We need to ask ourselves a serious question here. Are we ever guilty in anyway or to any degree of the same sin? The nineteenth century Scottish divine Thomas Guthrie wrote these searching words: 'If you find yourself

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loving any pleasure better than your prayers, any book better than the Bible, any house better than the house of God, any table better than the Lord's table, any person better than Christ and any indulgence better than the hope of heaven, take alarm: No Christian should read these deeply challenging words without careful self-examination.’ Today we do not talk so much about spiritual adultery we speak instead about backsliding. Perhaps we think it does not sound so serious, but it is exactly the same.

BACKSLIDING Backsliding is the most terrible and pathetic condition a Christian can get into. Most of us, at some time or other, and to some degree or other, are guilty of this. There are degrees of backsliding. There is the obvious backslider, who stops going to church and cuts himself off from all other Christians. Thank God, most of us never experience this. But there are times when our heart and our thinking become worldly. You may never stop going to church, the outward form of religion may still be maintained, but the heart has backslidden.

Backsliding does not necessarily mean that you get drunk every Saturday night. It means that your heart is not right with God. Like Demas, you have 'loved this world' (2 Timothy 4:10). The backslider is the Christian whose heart has gone astray. He has become weary of the things of God - the church, fellowship, prayer, the Bible - and his eye has wandered to the old pleasures of the world. He begins to hanker after and to long for the things that God forbids. Long before his feet wander away, his eye and heart have backslidden.

The whole process is often a very subtle one. No one wakes up one morning and decides to backslide. You just stop praying for a couple of days, or maybe cut out the prayer meeting now and again. On a cold Sunday morning you stay in bed a bit longer and miss the morning service. It is only for this week, you

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assure yourself; you will be there next Sunday morning. This is the beginning of backsliding; it creeps upon you very gradually.

The result of backsliding is that the Christian becomes unfaithful, unreliable, and extremely critical of other believers.

He will very often complain about lack of fellowship in the church, and yet at the same time resent the efforts of other believers to point him back to the Lord.

THE GREATNESS OF GOD'S LOVE Backsliding is a terrible condition to be in. It grieves God. The devil rejoices. But the backslider is still a Christian. He cannot lose his salvation (John 10:28-29); God still loves him. David, who had an awful experience of backsliding (Psalm 51), declares, 'he restores my soul' (Psalm 23:3). God never stops loving his people, and some of the most remarkable passages in Scripture are those in which we read of God yearning over his backslidden people. In these passages some of the most vivid descriptions of the love of God are to be found.

The two prophets who were used by God to express this aspect of his love were Jeremiah and Hosea. Read carefully and prayerfully Jeremiah 3:12-19. Then turn to the remarkable book of Hosea. God sent this prophet to marry the prostitute Gomer (1:2-3), in order that he might serve as an illustration of God's love for a prostitute people who had turned from God's love to idolatry (3:1). Read chapter 14:1-4. This is the greatness of divine love: even in our backslidings God loves us and will restore our souls.

God saves us by his sovereign power, but he does not use this power to prevent us from backsliding. The redeemed soul is a free soul. Before salvation there was only bondage (Ephesians 2:1-3); but redemption sets us free to enjoy and obey God. The Lord wants us to love him with a free heart, but if we go away and backslide, he demonstrates again the depth of his love by

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his willingness to forgive and restore.

RESTORATION Restoration is possible on the ground of repentance. The backslider in his sin can feel sorry for himself. That is not repentance.

Repentance means that you realise that even if you are not found out by others and no one else knows about it, God knows your sin, and you are grieved because you have sinned against this holy and loving Father. Repentance produces a prayer similar to David's in Psalm 5l. God always hears this kind of prayer. Praise God, 'he restores my soul (Psalm 23:3).

There is only one place for a backslider to go, and that is, in a spirit of true repentance, back to his God, who will 'heal their waywardness and love them freely' (Hosea 14:4). He can restore in a moment 'the years the locusts have eaten' (Joel 2:25). The long months or years of backsliding that have hardened the believer's heart can be wiped away in a moment, and the joy of salvation restored. There is no probationary period; it is done at once.

If you have found your spirit beginning to backslide, go at once in prayer to God. Ask him to show you where you first began to go wrong. Confess your sin to him, and ask for forgiveness.

He will forgive and restore.

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REPENTANCE AND RESTORATION We must not forget that the people guilty of the sin of Hosea 4 were a redeemed people. They were the covenant people of God whose history was full of the blessings and mercies of the Lord.

So they had sinned not only against the law of God but also against the love of God. Their sin therefore was more serious than that of the nations around them. Therefore a deep and lasting repentance was necessary.

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On the surface it seems as if this repentance was forthcoming.

‘Come; let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds.

After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” (Chapter 6).

John Blanchard writes, ‘At first glance this seems fine and to speak of a genuine turning to God. Yet vital elements are missing. There is no sense of guilt and no confession of sin, but merely an acknowledgement of the mess and pain that sin has caused. To make matters worse, there is the presumption that in response God will come running and take care of all their problems. The phrases 'after two days' and 'on the third day' are not to be taken literally. They mean that the people were sure that as long as they went through the motions of worship God would respond very quickly. They were equally sure that God's forgiveness was as certain as the rising of the sun and the coming of spring rains.’

God's response was far from what they expected and he began by exposing their superficial approach: 'What shall I do with you ...? ... Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away' (6:4). Although they were using some of the right words God saw that these lacked any real depth and the elements of true contrition were missing. James Montgomery Boice warns, 'we are never in greater danger than when we assume that [God] will always forgive us as long as we go through the outward forms of repentance.’

Repentance has two sides; it is a turning from sin and to God (Acts3:19). For true repentance both these elements are

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essential. A man can turn from sin without turning to God. He may see the value of changing his lifestyle and decide to refrain from certain bad habits. No doubt this will do him good in many ways, but spiritually it will be useless. On the other hand, a man may turn to God and cry for mercy, but have no intention of leaving his sin. His eyes may be wet with tears and his heart as hard as stone.

True repentance involves seeing sin for what it really is; not just a character defect, but a permanent attitude of rebellion against the love and care and righteous authority of God. It is this new understanding of God and of one's own sin that leads to true repentance. There will also be a great desire to break with the past and to live in future only to please God (Acts 26:20). That is repentance.

Repentance does not stop when we are saved. After regeneration we are still sinners and sadly we still break the law of God. The Christian life is a continual battle with sin therefore repentance has to be a daily experience. In fact it is often the case that the believer knows a deeper conviction of sin and a deeper sense of repentance after conversion than he did before. David's prayer of repentance in Psalm 51 is an example of this.

In verses 3-6 he makes his confession of sin and he gives no excuses; it is my transgression, my sin. Sin is our personal responsibility, and even though (as v. 5 correctly teaches us) we are sinners by nature, each separate act of sin is our own deliberate rebellion against the law of God. David had very clearly sinned against Uriah, but here he acknowledges that all sin is against God (v. 4). This is a very solemn thought.

The poison of sin lies in its opposition to almighty God, and when we sin against each other, we are sinning against God. So David confesses his personal guilt (v. 3), his corrupt nature (v.

5) and his rebellion against God (v. 4).

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Confession is an indispensable condition of pardon but God forgives not merely because we confess. David’s hope for pardon rests in the mercy, unfailing love and great compassion of the Lord (vv. 1-2).

Sin pollutes and leaves an ugly stain, so the sinner must be washed and cleansed, and the sin blotted out. Hyssop (v. 7) was a little shrub with which the blood and water of purification were applied under the law of God. So David is asking God to cleanse him by the means he has provided. God’s appointed means to deal with our sin is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember that Psalm 51 is the prayer of a child of God. In other words, here is the repentance of a converted man.

Repentance is necessary throughout the Christian’s life when he is aware of sin in his heart. Have you sinned against the Lord? If so, confess it and pray for pardon.

RESTORATION God loves his sheep and even their backsliding does not lessen that love. Jesus has pledged himself to allow none of his sheep to perish. He is committed to carry every last one of them safely to heaven. He says in John 17 that they belong to God, and God has given them to him so that he might give them eternal life.

He is not going to lose them, and with tender love he follows them in their wanderings, and his eye is on them as much in the wilderness as it is in the fold.

Some of the most remarkable passages in Scripture are those in which we read of God's yearnings over his backslidden people. "'Return, faithless Israel", declares the Lord, "I will frown on you no longer, for I am merciful", declares the Lord, "I will not be angry for ever ... Return, faithless people', declares the Lord, "for I am your husband'" (Jeremiah3:12, 14).

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Hosea was a man called by God to live out his message. He was commanded to marry the prostitute Gomer so that he could be a picture of God's love for his prostitute people. 'Return, 0 Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! ... I will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them' (Hosea 14:1-4).

With such a God as this, why should a Christian ever need restoring? How could a believer ever wander from the Lord, whose heart is so full of love for him? The fact that a Christian does backslide shows clearly the vileness and power of sin...

That someone who has tasted the grace and love of God in Christ, and known the joy of the Lord in his heart, could ever turn away from God and go back willingly into sin is almost unbelievable. Let us be clear, we are not talking about falling from grace and losing one's salvation. Thank God that is impossible, but we are talking of a regenerate soul backslidden and in the grip of sin. There is no greater testimony than this to the power of sin, but at the same time there no greater testimony to the love of God than that he should be willing to have such a person back. If people treated us in the same way some Christians treat God we would never bother with them again.

We would say, ‘enough is enough’. But God is not like us - he restores my soul.

If God was not a gracious God there would be no hope for any of us, but there is mercy with the Lord. When there is genuine repentance there will always be restoration.

PATIENCE God's patience is the control he exercises over himself when his holiness and justice could be bringing judgement upon sinners.

It is the patience of God that enables him to sustain great insults from men without immediately smiting them. Hence the biblical word used to describe this attribute is longsuffering. This is a very descriptive word; for a long time God suffers, or endures,

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or puts up with, the sin and rebellion of man.

God is not long-suffering because he has no choice and can do nothing about our sin. Often we are forced to be patient because circumstances are such that they are beyond our control. We have to grin and bear it. It is not so with God. There is no possible circumstance where he is not in control. God is omnipotent and it is interesting that often the Bible couples God's long-suffering with his power. 'What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath?' (Romans 9:22). 'The Lord is slow to anger and great in power' (Nahum 1:3).

Peter tells us that God's patience with sinners flows from his mercy. 'He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance' (2 Peter 3:9). God takes no delight in judgement, so in his grace and mercy he gives sinners opportunity after opportunity to repent and seek forgiveness.

Scripture abounds with examples of this and perhaps the most striking is the one to which Peter refers in the third chapter of his second letter, the case of Noah and the flood. From the time God announced his intention to flood the world to the time it actually happened was a period of 120 years (Genesis 6:3). Peter says that during this period Noah was a preacher of righteousness (2 Peter 2:5). But the people would not listen.

God was long-suffering in spite of the strength of his feelings.

'The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.' For 120 years he was patient but the people mistook patience for indifference. This is a foolish attitude in man, and Ecclesiastes 8: 11 warns us, 'When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong.' There is no excuse for this because God had warned very clearly in Genesis 6 that his Spirit would not contend with man for ever.

Long-suffering is not endless. Patience will always eventually give way to justice, and the flood finally came. The door of the

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ark was shut and it was too late for repentance. God does not want man to perish, but man is responsible for his sin, and if he will not repent then he brings God's judgement upon himself.

The patience of God is a result of his love and mercy but the holiness of God makes it inevitable that the patience will not go on for ever. He holds back judgement for a while; that is the pattern we see in Scripture. But patience is not tolerance. Even in his patience God is long-suffering. Sin grieves him; he suffers it, but never condones it.

At this point we need to look again at 2 Peter 3:9. Some use this verse as an argument against divine judgement. The AV translates it that God is 'not willing that any should perish'. They argue God's will is sovereign and must be done; therefore none will perish, so all must go to heaven. The NIV translates 'will' as 'want' and the NASB as ' wish'. The comments of Dr LloydJones on this one word are interesting: 'It seems to me that Peter's point is this, that a part of the explanation of what seems to us, to be a delay is God's long-suffering. This we can be certain of, that God does not wish that any should perish (I did not say 'will', I said 'wish', for the word translated 'will' should really be translated 'wish'). Whatever God wills inevitably comes to pass - there is a difference between God willing and God wishing a thing, and what Peter says is that God does not wish that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. God takes no delight in the death of the ungodly; that is why, Peter says, he delays his action. (

DELAY AND JUDGEMENT Though God delays his judgement because of his patience, that judgement will come. The fact that God is patient reminds us that divine judgement is not vindictive. God is slow to anger but he is angry with sin. The eventual judgement of sin is fully justified and God's patience makes man's guilt even worse. It removes any excuse. An example of this is God's dealings with Israel from the Passover onwards. Time after time he demonstrated his love for them, but it was not long before they

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were worshipping the golden calf. That was not a one-off episode because they continually turned to idols. God sent prophets to warn them but these were spurned. God remained patient but at times his judgement fell. The Babylonian exile was one of these times, but even then there was an element of patience as God sent prophets to the people to minister to them in Babylon.

All this served to show the hopelessness of man in sin. Man is always confident that he can cope and sort out the mess he has got into. God gave him century after century to show that he could not. But man is no wiser today. All the patience of God has revealed more guilt and heaped up more condemnation. For 2,000 years the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ has been offered to sinners. Man has no excuse.

Patience and the Christian As Christians we thank God for his patience with us. How many times did we hear the gospel before we were saved? How many times did we reject the Lord Jesus? Peter says that we are to 'bear in mind that our Lord's patience means salvation' (2 Peter 3: 15). And how many times since we were saved has God had to be patient with us? We need to thank God for his patience but we must not take it for granted.

In Isaiah 64 the prophet is praying for the Lord to return to his people. Why does he need to return? Because the sin of the redeemed grieved God and he was angry with them (v. 5), and he hid his face from them (v. 7). Verse 6 says, 'All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.' This is a verse we nearly always apply to unbelievers, but the context makes it clear that it is referring to God's people. The result of this sin was judgement"(see vv. 911). Judgement, in the case of the redeemed, is not condemnation, because there is no condemnation for those in Christ, but none the less the anger of God on our sin can have very real present consequences. Sin needs to be repented of by

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the Christian continually. The patience of God should encourage repentance in us.

'May our meditation upon this divine excellency soften our hearts, make our consciences tender, and may we learn in the school of holy experience the patience of saints, namely, submission to the divine will and continuance in well doing. ' James Montgomery Boice shows us how relevant this to the church today, ‘This is true for vast segments of so called Christianity today.

There is no real awareness of sin and turning from it; consequently the biblical terms lose meaning.

"Sin" no longer means rebellion against God and His righteous law, for which we are held accountable, but rather ignorance or the kind of oppression that is imagined to reside in social structures.

"Jesus" becomes our pattern or example, the highest evolutionary peak of humanity, rather than the incarnate 'God who came to die for our salvation.

"Salvation" ceases to be "getting right with God," as the old theology would say, or even "God moving to redeem us in Christ." Rather it is liberation from the oppression of this world's structures.

"Faith" is awareness. "Evangelism" is helping people to become aware. So it goes! It will always go thus until men and women see themselves as sinners before a holy God, and turn from that sin to God through faith in Jesus Christ.

Until that happens our little "repentances" do not count. We can "repent." We can go through all the rituals of religion- going to church, singing hymns, giving money, serving on church boards, even doing "good" deeds-but it will all be worthless so far as finding God is concerned.’

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BRINGING SINNERS TO GOD The first half of chapter two is a fearful and dark passage.

Gomer has left Hosea – we as sinners have turned away from God. All efforts to restore and reconcile have failed and the threat of judgement is real – ‘I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery. Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She

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said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’

Therefore I will block her path with thorn bushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.’

James Montgomery Boice regarded the story of Hosea and Gomer as the second greatest story in the Bible. His reason for this strong assertion is, ‘No Christian can doubt that the greatest story in the Bible is the story of the incarnation, life, suffering, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the story of Hosea is second precisely because it is an anticipation in pageant form of Christ's story.’

Sinners are not saved by threats of judgement, crucial though this is; what saves sinners is the love and grace of God. Hosea and Gomer clearly reveal this love to us. Boice writes, ‘God said, "Hosea, I want you to marry a woman who is going to prove unfaithful to you but to whom you are nevertheless going to be faithful. You will love her, but she will disgrace your love.

I am asking you to do this because we are to present a pageant to Israel by your marriage. It is going to be symbolic, an object lesson. You are going to play the part of God. The woman is going to play the part of My people. The reason she is going to run away and be unfaithful is that this is the way My people act in the spiritual marriage that I have established with them. You are going to be faithful, because I am faithful to Israel even though she dishonours My name.”

FAITHFUL SERVICE Even though the redemption of Israel was all of God, the faithful submission of Hosea to the will of God was important.

Hosea was to discover that the cost of serving God can at times be great. What must have gone through his mind as God panned out for him the rest of his life? The objective of what God was doing was one of grace and love, but at the time Hosea probably did not see it like that. The priority in Christian service is not

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our happiness and comfort but submission to the will and purpose of God. Service is not always like this but often it is. It is not easy being faithful to the word of God. What must Joshua have felt like when he had to take over leadership of God’s people after Moses?

The task facing Joshua was enormous and he had every reason to be terrified and discouraged, but God urges him not to feel like this because he could be assured of the divine presence. But this presence was not to be taken as an opportunity for complacency and indolence. God's blessing was dependent upon Joshua's obedience to God's will as revealed in the 'Book of the Law' (1:8).

God had given Joshua his orders and also encouraged him with the twin promises of the divine presence and the divine blessing.

Joshua knew that the Lord expected from him a total obedience.

There were two things that needed to be done. One was the immediate task of crossing the River Jordan; the other was the long-term battle to conquer the land. The former might have seemed rather mundane compared with the glamour and adventure of conquest, but there could be no conquest until the first hurdle of crossing the Jordan was behind them. As Christians we must appreciate that in the work of God there are no little commands or big commands. Every command of God is crucial to the ultimate outcome. Even what we might consider to be the relatively easy things that the Lord commands us to do will be impossible without his help. Joshua was to discover this when the Israelites tried to cross the River Jordan.

The Scriptures teach that the believer's next move after hearing God speak is always prompt obedience without delay. The psalmist said, 'I will hasten and not delay to obey your commands' (Ps. 119:60). This is exactly what Joshua did. God spoke, so immediately Joshua set the wheels in motion for the whole nation to obey. It is no use giving lip-service to obedience if we delay doing God's will. Delay is nearly always a result of

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lack of heart for the matter. We are told in Nehemiah that the rebuilding of the walls in Jerusalem proceeded at a remarkable pace and the reason was that the people enthusiastically entered into the labour. Once duty is known it ought to be done.

The threat of judgement is real but so too is the gracious promise of Hosea 2:14. From then on light and hope begin to shine as the way divinity deals with sinners is brought before us.

THEREFORE The first word of the promise is therefore. The Bible is fond of using this word because it shows that God never acts without good reason. There is always purpose in what God does.

Because of this nothing happens by chance in the work of grace.

The sovereignty of God in salvation is a great comfort to helpless sinners.

God is sovereign because he is God. He is not like us, cumbered about with all sorts of limitations and restrictions. Any understanding of God that limits his sovereignty will cause us serious problems in our understanding of his other attributes. Dr Packer points out that 'Today, vast stress is laid on the thought that God is personal, but this truth is so stated as to leave the impression that God is a person of the same sort as we areweak, inadequate, ineffective, a little pathetic. But this is not the God of the Bible! Our personal life is a finite thing; it is limited in every direction, in space, in time, in knowledge, in power.

But God is not so limited. He is eternal, infinite, and almighty.

He has us in His hands; but we never have Him in ours. Like us, He is personal, but unlike us He is great.

There is always this tendency in man to think of God as no more than an extension of himself. In Psalm 50:21, God accuses a rebellious and sinful Israel, 'You thought I was altogether like you.' To think of God as a man, albeit the greatest of men, will always result in limiting God. Jesus' question, 'Who do men say

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I am?' brought forth the answers: 'John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah.' These were high opinions of the Saviour, but fell far short of the truth. Martin Luther once accused the great Bible scholar Erasmus, 'Your thoughts of God are too human.' And that was one reason why Erasmus was never any more than a great scholar while Luther, with his eyes on the sovereign God, was used to set the world ablaze with the Reformation.

Michael Bentley asks, ‘Why did God go to such lengths to get his message over to the people? Why did he not simply use preaching to bring the land to its senses? Calvin concludes that it was because the 'diseases of the people were incurable ... [and] the state of things was almost past recovery’. Therefore God chose Hosea to undergo this indignity so that the people could see how their God was suffering because of the spiritual adultery of his people. ()

God’s ways are not our ways and very often they baffle our sense of logic. God compares Israel to a wife who has broken her marriage vows and become filthy and polluted. In such a case there are many reasons why a husband may say that is the end, it is all over, and I will never have her home again. But God is not a man and he finds reasons why he should forgive and restore the sinner.

We are all sinners and have broken the law of God over and over again. There is reason enough why all the wrath of God should fall on us, but God whom is rich in mercy turns reason against us into reason for us. He sees us in our poverty and bondage and his great love desires to free us and cleanse us and restore us. It is not reason that God applies to us but mercy. So he says I will allure her – not drag her, not force her or drive her, but allure. This remarkable word teaches us that the allurement of love is stronger than all other forces.

Barnhouse writes, "The pursuing love of God is the greatest wonder of the spiritual universe. We leave God in the heat of

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our own self-desire and run from His will because we want so much to have our own way. We get to a crossroads and look back in pride, thinking that we have outdistanced Him. Just as we are about to congratulate ourselves on our achievement of self-enthronement, we feel a touch on our arm and turn in that direction to find Him there. 'My child,' He says in great tenderness, 'I love you; and when I saw you running away from all that is good, I pursued you through a shortcut that love knows well, and awaited you here at the crossroads.' We have torn ourselves free from His grasp and rushed off again, through deepest woods and farthest swamp, and as we look back again, we are sure, this time, that we have succeeded in escaping from Him. But, once more, the touch of love is on our other sleeve and when we turn quickly we find that He is there, pleading with the eyes of love, and showing Himself once more to be the tender and faithful One loving to the end. He will always say, 'My child, my name and nature are Love, and I must act according to that which I am. So it is that I have pursued you, to tell you that when you are tired of your running and your wandering, I will be there to draw you to myself once more.' (

GOD’S LOVE The fact that God is holy makes it impossible for him to tolerate sin. So in effect it is his holiness that makes salvation so necessary. But God's holiness does not save us; it is God's love that saves from the consequences of sin through the giving of the Lord Jesus Christ to be our Saviour.

In John 3 a religious leader named Nicodemus is totally bewildered by Christ's teaching on God's way of salvation. He cannot understand spiritual concepts and interprets them in a literal way that makes them appear nonsense (v. 4). Jesus explodes a theological bomb in his mind when he tells him, 'You must be born again.' This shatters Nicodemus and he totters in utter confusion and misunderstanding.

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Most of us react in a similar way to the gospel when we first hear it, but fortunately for us, God does not leave us there. Man in sin is always in confusion about God and our only hope is that God loves sinners. Verse 16 of John 3 is a thrilling description of God's love.

GOD'S INITIATIVE God's love, like his holiness, destroys the myth that the sinner can save himself. The gospel starts with an activity of God, 'God so loved the world,' and then demands a response from man: 'whoever believes in him ... The order is important. Man is called upon to respond to an action of God. The initiative is God's. If God had done nothing to save us, then we could do nothing. That is why being born again is so essential. If a person is not born again he or she is spiritually dead and cannot understand spiritual truths or respond to the grace and mercy of God. Being born again is God giving new life to a person who is dead in sin. This is a must; without it nothing else is spiritually possible, and it is the love of God that initiates it.

Our response to God would be impossible if God had not first of all shown love to us. John, in his first epistle, spells this out clearly for us: 'This is love; not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins ...

We love because he first loved us' (1 John 4:10,19).

LOVE DIVINE God's love for us is not pity or sentiment, but intensely practical, because it motivates him to deal with our greatest problem. Man in sin is condemned already before the holy God (v. 18). The sinner loves darkness; his deeds are evil; he hates the light (vv.

19-20). This puts him in the position of perishing (v. 16). It is clear from the illustration Jesus uses in verses 14 and 15 (see Numbers 21) that when he speaks of 'perishing' he means the judgement of God's wrath upon sin.

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God deals with sin by giving his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to die for us. Jesus was made responsible for our sin and took its guilt and punishment. On the cross he faced the judgement and wrath of God instead of his people.

That God should love us so much as to do this is staggering. It is love undeserved, and certainly unmerited, and as John has stressed in the verses quoted above from his epistle, it is love that was unsought by us. John also describes this love of God as being lavished upon us (1John 3: 1). 'Lavished' speaks of abundance, and tells us that God's love is no small thing, but a love unimaginable in its beauty and depth. It is this lavished love that enabled God to give his only Son to die instead of helldeserving sinners.

ALLURE God is sovereign and all powerful and there are many forms of power he could exert upon these men and women. For instance , there is the power of affliction mentioned in verse 3. There are times when this is necessary, but by itself it will never bring sinners to God. Then there is the power of shame ( v 10) . God may reveal our shame and guilt to all to humble us. Again this may be needed but it is not enough. Or there is the disillusionment of verse 11 where sin loses its initial joy and God shows us the stupidity of our ways, but even this is not enough to bring sinners back to God. There is a greater power, and it is greater because the allurement of God’s love is irresistible. Men can resist almost anything – pain or shame – but when the full effect of divine love focuses upon them personally, that is ultimate power. This power is seen in Jesus.

There are amazing beauties about the character of Jesus, yet if left to ourselves we never see them. But if once God by the Holy

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Spirit enables us to see Jesus as he is and we begin to realize the wonder of his love in bearing our sin upon the cross, then hearts are melted. By grace we are led as willing captives to Christ. We are being allured, drawn to God. Consider some of the beauties of Jesus. There is his self-denying love. He loved his enemies. He loved poor creatures like us who can do him no good. He is infinitely glorious and we are utterly insignificant, and what is worse we oppose him, yet each of us can say he loved me and gave himself for me. Does this not allure you? God says I gave my Son for you, to save you.

It is not a sense the threat of hell that saves sinners, not a sense of guilt, not repentance nor prayers. God uses all these, but they don’t save a soul. What melts the hard heart is the love of Christ. What allures a person to God, what finally causes the sinner to cry for mercy is the knowledge that God loves him.

But there is more. God allure and takes the sinner ‘into the desert and speaks tenderly to her’. God takes the sinner aside from the hustle and bustle of the world. It is sense of being alone with God. The soul in the desert with God thinks only of God for that moment. He trusts nothing but God. He used to trust his own goodness but now feels he has none. What a clearance of self-righteousness the love of God makes when it touches a soul. We are, in our own estimation, the most respectable people who ever lived until we see Jesus and then we see the truth and repent in dust and ashes.

God takes us alone with himself to speak tenderly with us, and what tender words he has for the repentant sinner…….

I have blotted out as a cloud your sins, I have put your sins behind my back and remember them no more.

Sa far as the east is from the west, so far have I removed your sins from you.

Behold how great is the love the Father has lavished upon us.

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These words we may have heard many times but they never sounded like this before God took us aside and spoke tenderly to us.

This is what saves a soul.

A NEW RELATIONSHIP When God saves a soul what exactly is he doing? Hosea 2:16 answers that question. In that day when he allures us and speaks tenderly to us our relationship to him changes. We are entitled to call God our husband. This may seem a strange title to call Almighty God, but remember the situation in this book of Hosea. Gomer the wife has gone astray but she is loved and restored by Hosea so that she is able to truly call him again her husband.

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It is in this context that the title is used here, but it is not the only place in Scripture that it is used. Isaiah 54:5 tells us, ‘your Maker is your husband; the Lord Almighty is his name.’ In Ephesians 5 the same idea is used to show God’s relationship to the church. The idea is scriptural. It is one owned by God and it is tremendously descriptive. Before this the people stood in awe of God and would never have used such an intimate word to describe him. They had never returned God’s love so they had never dared called the Almighty by such a personal name as husband. But now in Hosea 2:16, God commands it.

One of the signs that a people or an individual truly comes to faith in God is that they have a new name for him. A name which never occurred to them before. They did not stop using glorious names like Jehovah, but now they knew God in a way they never thought possible before. They had a new relationship with the Almighty. He was their husband.

When a person comes to know the Lord, when God allures and saves, then the sinner’s heart is softened and his eyes opened.

His whole relationship to God changes. There is a closeness, a freshness, a reality and intimacy. This is expressed in the new name, the name Jesus exclusively reveals when he taught his people to pray, Our Father etc. This by no means lessens the sense of awe and reverence for God. Husband is a name of love. There is a unique oneness between husband and wife. So to it is with Christ and his church. They are one, joined together by God. Paul uses this idea extensively in Ephesians 5. Jesus is to be to us as a husband and we are to be to him as the dearly beloved bride, loving him with all our heart, mind and soul. It is a spiritual union born in the heart of God and worked out by grace in the heart of man.

Best of all, husbands is a name of indissolvable union. Listen to Ephesians 5: 31-32, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become

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one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church’. It is a great mystery that Jesus should have left heaven to become one flesh with his people, but now that such a union exists it can never be dissolved. There is no possibility of divorce between Christ and the souls he has saved.

It is a union not till death do us part, but for eternity. ‘“In that day,” declares the Lord, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ (Hosea 2:16).

The Hebrew word for master is Baal. This was a name God had used for himself previously (Isaiah 54:5), but the people had polluted this name by using it for false gods. So God declares that now there is a new relationship they must stop using the polluted name.

PERMANENT Verses 19-20 of Hosea 2 show us the permanency of the new relationship. The relationship between Hosea and Gomer was not permanent, no more than any marriage is. So is our salvation like that? Will it last? God says, ‘I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.’

There is a new marriage and this time it will last forever. The New Testament is full of the Holy God and sinful man joined together in indisolvable union. It speaks of the marriage supper of the Lamb; the bride is the church; the groom is Jesus. The New Testament stresses the permanency of this union.

Michael Bentley writes, ‘God's people are going to know the Lord permanently and intimately. He tells Israel that he will bless her with a fivefold gift.

1. Righteousness

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The first blessing is righteousness; this is a gift of God. We have all broken God's laws; we are sinners. Therefore we are not righteous. But in Jesus, and through his sacrifice on the cross, he has taken away our sins and has clothed us in his own righteousness.

2. Justice Secondly, the Lord will bless his people with justice. God's justice takes all the unfairness away from our salvation. It is not fair that God should choose us and save us, but he does, in Christ. Because Christ has taken our guilt upon him, then our salvation becomes just in God's sight and we are justified (made right with God).

3. Love Thirdly, God betroths his people to him in love. This is 'the love and loyalty which partners in marriage or in covenant owe to one another'. God's love for undeserving sinners is something that is so incredible that no one can fathom its depths. We can only fall in wonder at his feet and cry, 'Why have you granted such wonderful love to someone as worthless as me?'

4. Compassion Fourthly, he promises to bless his people with compassion LoRuhamah was not pitied, but now she is going to be pitied. God will have great compassion upon her. On that day the Lord is going to reverse the awful name he gave to this child, and she will experience his great loving mercy.

5. Faithfulness Fifthly, God is going to betroth Israel to him in faithfulness.

Despite the fact that Israel had been unfaithful to God, their gracious God was still going to be faithful to them. It was Gomer's unfaithfulness that put most strain on Hosea's marriage.

Yet, as we shall see in chapter 3, Hosea eventually bought her back again. In just the same way God is going to redeem Israel back. He is going to do that in his faithfulness.’ Notice that in this marriage all the initiative is Gods. He allures.

He speaks tenderly. He gives us the new name to call him. He betroths. God’s love for us is deep and passionate. His love

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swallows up all the deficiencies in us. His love embraces the loveless and hopeless, and ensures there will be no more partings.

The ultimate blessing of the marriage is that ‘you will acknowledge the LORD.’ This is the best ever wedding gift - to know God in all his fullness; to embrace him; to delight in his presence.

James Montgomery Boice regarded Hosea 3 as the second greatest chapter in the Bible. Before we disregard this as an exaggerated claim, listen to his reason, ‘The third chapter of Hosea is, in my judgment, the greatest chapter in the Bible, because it portrays the greatest story in the Bible-the death of the Lord Jesus Christ for His people - in the most concise and poignant form to be found anywhere. Our study of Hosea's story has already shown that it is a pageant of the love of God for Israel, indeed for His people in every place and age. But when we ask, "Where in the whole of human history is that love most clearly seen?" the answer is obviously, "At the cross of Christ."

It is that cross and the work accomplished on that cross that is portrayed in this chapter. Hosea 3 shows us God's work of redemption-the work by which the Lord Jesus Christ delivered us from sin's bondage at the cost of His own life-portrayed in Hosea's purchase of his fallen wife from slavery.

Gomer’s life style had taken its course on her health and beauty and she was no longer the attraction to men that she had been.

She was sold into slavery and God tells Hosea to buy her back.

What a marvelous picture this is of redemption and ransom.

Redemption means to set free from the slavery of sin by the payment of a ransom price.

If man was spiritually free there would be no need of redemption; but the slavery to sin is real. It is not an illusion but the common

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fact about every human being. Sin is a great deceiver. It holds before us endless pleasures but fails to tell of the price or consequence of following its attractions. In Genesis 3 the awful reality of sin is shown to us. Then in the next chapter we see the effects of sin as a man kills his brother. By the time we get to Genesis 6 sin's dominance is seen in every human being: 'every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time' (v.5).

In the New Testament the power of sin comes to its terrible climax when men kill the Son of God. From then on, the New Testament spells out sin's consequences in frightening clarity in passages like Romans 1:18-32. In Romans 7 Paul puts into words the experience of every man and woman: 'We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do' (w. 14-15).

It is from this bondage that Jesus came to redeem L5 The Redeemer Jesus has paid the ransom price that can set sinners free from the bondage of sin and he has paid the price once and for all. Christ redeems us from: • All wickedness (Titus 2:14) • The grip of sin (Romans 6:18,22) • The curse of the law (Galatians 3:13) • The bondage of the law (Galatians 4:5) • Death (Job 5:20) • Hell (Psalm 49: 15) Redemption means to buy out of slavery, but the purchase price to set us free from sin is enormous. The price is was beyond anything we could afford. This is why Peter says that we are not redeemed with silver or gold but with the precious blood of the Lamb of God (1 Peter 1:18-19) Only Jesus could pay that price.

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The ransom price Jesus told us that the reason he came into the world was 'to give his life as a ransom for many' (Mark 10:45). The word ransom is familiar to us when we read of someone who has been kidnapped and a ransom price is demanded to set him free. Jesus teaches us that his death is the means by which we are set free.

He gave his life as the price of freedom for the slaves of sin.

Redemption is a costly business: Peter has reminded us of that, and so too does Paul: 'In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace' (Ephesians 1:7).

The ransom price is the blood of Jesus, or, in other words, his sacrificial death on the cross. We are not redeemed by the teaching of Jesus or by the fact that he could do miracles. It is what he did on the cross that purchased our salvation.

We are not to think that the ransom price was paid to Satan as if he had some right to the payment. It is true we were the slaves of sin, but Satan's power was that of an invader or usurper. He had no rights of ownership. It was God who made us and all the rights are his. So the ransom price was paid to satisfy the demands of God's law which we had violated by our sin. The law demanded that the wage of sin be the death of the sinner.

Christ satisfied that demand on behalf of his people when he shed his blood on the cross. He took full responsibility for our sin. This included its guilt and punishment, and his death is the only payment that is acceptable to God. 'We were created for intimate fellowship with God and for freedom, but we have disgraced ourselves by unfaithfulness.

First we have flirted with and then committed adultery with this sinful world and its values. The world has even bid for our soul, offering sex, money, fame, power and all the other items in which it traffics. But Jesus, our faithful bridegroom and lover, entered the market-place to buy us back. He bid his own blood.

There is no higher bid than that. And we became his. He

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reclothed us, not in the wretched rags of our old unrighteousness, but in his new, robes of righteousness' (James Montgomery Boice).

SEEKING THE LORD From the moment of their redemption from the slavery of Egypt the Israelites had proved to be an unfaithful people. It seemed that they never appreciated the privilege of being God’s people.

Idolatry was almost like a second nature to them. Prosperity

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came and went and they knew times of rich material blessing, but none of this kept them faithful to God. By the time of Hosea nothing had changed. John Blanchard says, ‘He watched with growing grief as he saw the nation's prosperity eating away at its moral and spiritual integrity. The lesson is crystal clear.

Outward success always carries the risk of inward failure and material plenty can mask spiritual poverty. Big is not necessarily beautiful; it may be fatal, as it was in Israel's case.

Hosea's beloved nation had side-lined God while pretending to serve him, and this terrible truth broke the prophet's heart.’

They were a vine that forgot God and existed only for themselves and idolatry increased. They were a people with a deceitful or divided heart (10: 1). They wanted it both ways.

They wanted God and the world. They wanted God’s blessings but without obedience. They wanted the fat of the land but without working for it (v11). Ephrain was a like a heifer that loved to eat the corn but whose neck had never known the yoke.

They loved easy work but rejected God’s discipline. With this vivid picture Hosea reminds Israel and us that there can be no fruit without labour.

Israel was in a mess and had been for some time. But it was no bigger a mess than the church is in today. They’re in and out relationship with God and Baal had left them with total confusion of mind. They had no spiritual understanding of what was right and wrong. It was not just ignorance but a stubborn ignorance. They had been told by God not to up to Beth Aven.

This was originally called Bethel – the house of God. It had been a place of blessing but was now a place where a golden calf was worshipped. God called it Beth Aven – the house of iniquity. In spite the warning they still went there and God said they were like a stubborn heifer.

There is in the church today much too much confusion as to what we are to believe and how we are to behave. Tolerance has become a serious problem. If something is questioned or

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challenged it is regarded as a lack of love. We are told we are not to judge and Matthew 7:1 is quoted at us. But the same chapter in verse 15 tells us to watch out for false prophets. A judgmental spirit is one thing and a love for the truth of God is something else. Several years ago an Anglican bishop described the resurrection of Jesus as a conjuring trick with bones. Is it tolerance to accept that as just another opinion, or is it a failure to take the truth of God seriously? It is not a question of genuiness or sincerity, but a question of do we take God seriously or not.

Referring to Israel, Michael Bentey says, ‘We can easily condemn these people, but are we any better. We may not consort with prostitutes, give worship to false gods, or drown our sorrows in too much alcohol, yet we must make sure that we are not just going through the motions in our religion. We should seek the Lord from the heart. Our love for God must be real; it is too easy to have a sham religion that is undertaken merely to impress those around us, or even to fool ourselves into thinking that we are behaving in a godly way.

Our worship of the Lord must be genuine also. Worship is not just something which we undertake in church on Sundays; the whole of our lives should be given over to the honour and praise of our glorious God. It will do us no good if we merely pretend to worship the Lord. We actually have to come before him in humility and repentance and put him first and foremost in our own personal lives, in our church and community life. Unlike the people of Israel, we should be aware of those around us. It is not good enough to say that we love God; we have to demonstrate to everyone that we have been changed by the wonder-working power of our gracious God and, as a result of our salvation; we are living for the benefit of others. We do not live in isolation; we should be godly examples to others. Paul said of the Corinthian believers, 'You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody'(2 Cor. 3:2). In our day we, too, should remember that we are being

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observed and 'read' by others.’

God’s answer to this state is to get back to basics and to break up the fallow ground (Hosea 4; 12). This is a divine command so it is not to be avoided. The fallow ground is that which was once cultivated and productive but now lies waste. The reference is obviously not to an unbeliever but to the Christian.

In spiritual terms the fallow ground is that which is afraid of the plough. It is too comfortable and sits there always the same. It never changes, in a way it is reliable and dependable, but it is fruitless. It has been said that the last words of a dying church are, ‘we have never done it that way before. We don’t want to change.’

The fallow ground enjoys the blessings of God. It soaks up God’s sunshine, but it is so hard and barren because for years it has not known the plough biting into it. It enjoys to be pampered with rich loads of new and expensive fertilizers. But its all on the surface – a superficial experience because it refuses to let the plough of God’s word bite into it.

The plough hurts, disturbs and turns over. It digs up things hidden beneath the surface. It is uncomfortable but essential to fruitfulness and blessing. The church cannot afford the luxury of fallow Christians. It is time to seek the Lord. To break up the fallow ground. If we are honest we have to admit that there are vast areas of fallow ground in hearts of believers and the only remedy is the plough of God’s word.

Breaking up the fallow ground is crucial, but it is not enough.

There is now a need for seed to be sown. The seed is the word of God and its purpose is not just to impart knowledge but to produce righteousness in the heart of the believer. There is a sowing to others. That is evangelism, but it is not what Hosea is talking about. He is referring to the Christians heart that needs the word sown in it. The real question is not, am I a good witness sowing the gospel seed to others, but is the word being

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sown in my heart?

Righteousness means changed lives and deeper commitment.

Ploughing and sowing exposes sin and deals with it. This righteousness is not the imputed righteousness of justification but the imparted righeousness which is produced in our lives as the Holy Spirit applies the word to us. This sowing is to go on says Hosea 10:12 until he comes. In other words this is an ongoing work. There is no quick fix in the Christian life. Seeking the Lord takes time, but the time to start seeking is now. Israel had reaped evil it is now time to reap the fruit of unfailing love.

Michael Bentley writes, ‘In order to get this rich harvest, God tells the people that they must 'break up your unploughed ground' (10:12). In a literal sense they knew that the land had to be ploughed before it was suitable to sow seed into it. God now told them that their hearts needed to receive the seed of the Word of God. That seed would not take root within them and produce fruit unless the conditions were right.

Their hearts and their thoughts were, at that time, very hard indeed. They had been steeped in sinful ways. They had turned their backs upon the one true and living God. And they had turned aside to false gods. Therefore, they needed to break up the hard ground of their hearts. In other words, they required to be softened, and made willing and ready to receive and obey God's Word. It was high time for them to do this. They had left things far too long. They needed to prepare themselves to receive the Word of the Lord.

In order to bring them to their senses, Hosea issues this clarion call: 'It is time to seek the LORD.' Many people fall into the trap of thinking that there is plenty of time to get right with God. But time is a very precious commodity that is fast running out. None of us knows how much longer we have left to live upon this earth.’

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THE LOVE OF GOD Hosea and Gomer is a remarkable example of the love of God to a totally undeserving people. It remarkable but appropriate because how does one describe something so amazing as God’s love for sinners. The old hymn attempts to so but ends up saying‌

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Could we with ink the ocean fill And were the skies of parchment made Were every stalk on earth a quill And every man a scribe by trade To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry Nor could the scroll contain the whole Though stretched from sky to sky O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure The saints' and angels' song The New Testament grapples with this problem and in so doing produces some memorable passages. John 3:16 is probably the most well-known verse in the Bible and has been described as the Gospel in a nutshell, or the most perfect summary of the Gospel. This is no overstatement because every truth that a sinner needs to be saved is contained in these words of Jesus "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.�

The Gospel starts with an activity of God and leads on to demand a response from man. The order is important. Man is called upon to respond to an action of God. The initiative is God's. If God had done nothing to save us, then we could do nothing. We are so used to thinking of life and society in terms of the activity of man that we find this difficult to accept. Man as the master of his own destiny is a precious belief, yet in so many areas of life it is just not true. Ask the millions who go to bed hungry every night if they are masters of their own destiny.

Ask the prisoners in a hijacked plane threatened with death by terrorists.

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In so many areas of life we are not in control of our own destiny but caught up and subject to forces and pressures, conditions and circumstances beyond our control. Nowhere is this more true than in the spiritual realm and the affairs of our immortal souls. Of man as a spiritual being, Jesus says some very important things in John 3. He says in v. 18 that the sinner is condemned already. That means we are condemned by God and as a consequence we will perish, and perish means eternal judgment in hell.

Jesus is saying this, not some wild-eyed fanatical preacher. And He is not speculating upon what may or may not be, but stating what He the Son of God knows to be true and certain. In vv. 5 & 6, Jesus went even further and said there is nothing we can do about this terrible condition. This is so because of the nature of sin. Man is a sinner, and sin enslaves, dominates, and controls.

It is to this very real problem that the Gospel addresses itself.

It addresses itself to men where they are. It does not pretend that they are anything but sinners. Man has always found great difficulty accepting this prime biblical concept and consequently while they recognize the symptom of sin and seek to deal with those, they never acknowledge the root cause which is man's nature and alienation from God. Sin is the problem and only the Gospel has the answer to it because the Gospel spells out the activity of God in dealing with this massive problem.

God's answer to sin is that He so loved the world that he gave his one and only begotten Son. This is a statement of tremendous significance and of amazing content and consequence.

Paul describes the undeserved nature of God's love for us in the lovely words of Romans 5:6-8, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates

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His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us". God shows love to the ungodly. Ungodly means unlike God. Man was made in the image of God but sin has so disfigured this image that man is now ungodly. He does not love God or know God; he is, says the Bible, an enemy of God, alien and hostile, at war with God. The greatest thing about man, as distinct from all other created beings, is not his brain, but that he was made to know and enjoy God. Sin has robbed us of that. We have no rights or claims.

Man is in a hopeless position but the Gospel says Christ died for the ungodly because God loves sinners, who do not, indeed cannot deserve it!

John in his first epistle, chapter 4 verse 10, brings before us this staggering description of divine love "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins". It is an unsought love.

Ungodly man does not love God, nor seek to be loved by God. Man's nature and mind are so darkened by sin that he is ignorant of God's love and mercy. He takes the blessings of life for granted- health, food, breath, the beauty of creation are never acknowledged as gifts of God. We talk about Mother Nature, while the Bible talks about the Creator God. We talk about the Laws of Nature, while the Bible talks about the will and providence of God. Because we exclude God we do not seek Him. But He seeks us!

In Jesus, God came to seek and save the lost. It was not that we loved Him but He loved us. And what a love! Divine love is not an empty, sentimental pity but it demonstrates itself in an act of propitiation. Propitiation being the word the NIV bible translates as atoning sacrifice and means that on the cross, bearing our sin and guilt, Jesus endured the wrath of God instead of us, and paid fully on our behalf the debt we owed to God for breaking His holy law. On the cross our Saviour cried, "My God, my God

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why have You forsaken Me?" (Matthew27:46). The Holy God forsook His Son because He was our sin-bearer - "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus was "stricken by God, smitten by Him, and afflicted" (Isaiah 53:4). On the cross the Old Testament prophecy of Zechariah 13:7 was being fulfilled: "'Awake, 0 sword, against my shepherd declares the Lord Almighty. "Strike the shepherd ... '''.

The sword was the sword of judgment, and in Matthew 26:31 Jesus tells us clearly that this verse speaks of Him. In other words, at Calvary our Lord made it possible for a holy God to pardon us even though we were sinners and had broken His holy law. God dealt with the problem of sin in the only way that could satisfy His holy justice and enable Him to move in and break the power of Satan in the lives of lost sinners. Specifically by punishing the only man that qualified to be our substitute by virtue of His sinlessness, and the only man who could after enduring the wrath of God equivalent to our being in Hell for all eternity, take up His own life again and rise from the grave, that is a man who was also God Himself.

"How great is the love that the Father has lavished upon us", 1 John 3: l. The word lavished is an extravagant word depicting something overloaded, extreme. Lavished speaks of abundance, and tells us that God's love is no small, carefully measured thing, but a love unimaginable in its beauty and bounty. It is this lavished love that enables God to give his Son for us. Who would ever imagine God doing such a thing for miserable hell deserving sinners?

How is it possible to describe such love? The hymn writer talks of love, vast as the ocean, loving kindness as deep as the flood.

The deep, deep love of Jesus is vast, unmeasured, boundless and free.

The Gospel finds us dead in sin, helpless in its all-consuming power, and offers us this unimaginable love. Many people say,

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"I do not feel dead and helpless." Sadly that is true of many and that is why they have never gasped in amazement at this love of God, undeserved, unsought and unimaginable.

QUOTES USED IN THIS BOOK John Blanchard Major points on the Minor Prophets Lloyd- Jones

2 Peter

Pink

Attributes of God

James Montgomery Boice James Packer

The Minor Prophets

Knowing God\

Michael Bentley

Turning back to God

Barnhouse

The Epistle to the Romans