Jerry Casilum: Hello church family.
Jerry Casilum: It's nice to see you guys.
Jerry Casilum: Hello, it's always funny.
Jerry Casilum: You know, every time I get to preach to a lot of people, I'm reminded of my preaching experience with the homeless people in the past.
Jerry Casilum: I don't know if you guys remember.
Jerry Casilum: We used to have a ministry to the homeless in the Macaulay Mission, and so these guys were like a captive audience.
Jerry Casilum: So these men were waiting for us, they were about to eat and all of them got a coin so that they could give the coin and they would get food.
Jerry Casilum: But they had to listen to the sermon first and after a while I didn't know I was preaching that long, but you hear like drops of the coin Ding, and that's when I knew I had to stop, goodness dear.
Jerry Casilum: So I know that Carol was going to pass out coins, but I don't want you guys to do that.
Jerry Casilum: First I want to thank Pastor Doug and Pastor Micah for giving me this opportunity to speak tonight.
Jerry Casilum: I just want to cite the resources I use.
Jerry Casilum: I use John MacArthur's and famous preachers like Tim Keller and also Doug McMaster's, and so if I sound like a Filipino, doug, you'll know where that's coming from.
Jerry Casilum: Okay, so we're going through the book of Hosea In the Old Testament.
Jerry Casilum: It's after Daniel, before Joel.
Jerry Casilum: If you guys want to turn to that, so Hosea, that so Hosea.
Jerry Casilum: The title of the book is the book of Hosea.
Jerry Casilum: The title is derived from the main character and author of the book.
Jerry Casilum: The meaning of his name is salvation, similar to that of Joshua and Jesus, which means God saves.
Jerry Casilum: So Hosea is the first of the 12 minor prophets.
Jerry Casilum: Minor because it's not like the minor versus the major league.
Jerry Casilum: It's minor because of the brevity, the prophecies, compared to Isaiah and Ezekiel and other Jeremiah and other prophets.
Jerry Casilum: So let's just read Hosea, chapter 1, verse 1.
Jerry Casilum: The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, son of Beeri, during the reigns of Uzziah, jotham, ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and of Jeroboam, son of Johash, king of Israel.
Jerry Casilum: So let's stop there.
Jerry Casilum: Hosea was a prophet called by God, was a prophet called by God and he was actually at the time.
Jerry Casilum: It was like the 8th century, late 8th century, that he preached.
Jerry Casilum: And not much is known about Hosea except in this book that we have, and Hosea 1-1 marks out the time period of his ministry.
Jerry Casilum: They gave the list of the southern kings, the Judean kings, and then they also mentioned Jeroboam II, son of Jehoash, king of Israel.
Jerry Casilum: Hosea primarily preached to the northern kingdom and he was a contemporary of Isaiah and Micah, who also preached about the northern kingdom, but primarily in the southern kingdom.
Jerry Casilum: I wanted to talk a little bit about the division of Israel, why there's a northern kingdom versus a southern kingdom.
Jerry Casilum: Okay, because that's really important as far as understanding the history of what took place regarding Israel.
Jerry Casilum: So the division of Israel into the northern kingdom, which is called Israel, and the southern kingdom, which is called Judah, was a very significant event in the Old Testament.
Jerry Casilum: The split occurred around the 10th century BC, following the reign of King Solomon.
Jerry Casilum: After Solomon's death, his son, rehoboam, became king and, however, his harsh policies and refusal to lighten the heavy burdens imposed by his father led to widespread discontent.
Jerry Casilum: Jeroboam I, a former servant of Solomon, led a rebellion against Rehoboam and the ten northern tribes of Israel supported Jeroboam and declared him king, forming the northern kingdom of Israel of to Ephraim, as we will see.
Jerry Casilum: So the ten northern tribes of Israel supported Jeroboam and declared him king, forming the northern kingdom, and the southern kingdom known as Judah, including the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, with its capital in Jerusalem, became the southern kingdom, also known as Judah, judah.
Jerry Casilum: The split was seen as a fulfillment of a prophecy given by the prophet Ahijah, who had foretold that the kingdom would be divided due to Solomon's sins and idolatry.
Jerry Casilum: The division also had lasting impacts, leading to a separate political, religious and cultural developments in the two kingdoms.
Jerry Casilum: So the book of Hosea is again the sole source of information about the author.
Jerry Casilum: Little is known about Hosea.
Jerry Casilum: We know that he was probably a native of the northern kingdom, since he showed familiarity with the history and topography of the north.
Jerry Casilum: Hosea does address both Israel and Judah, but for the most part he focused on the northern kingdom.
Jerry Casilum: Amos preceded Hosea.
Jerry Casilum: He was a southern kingdom person from Judah, but he spoke against the north.
Jerry Casilum: So Hosea was more of a like, was within the northern kingdom and he specifically knew what was going on.
Jerry Casilum: He was there firsthand.
Jerry Casilum: Hosea, again, was a contemporary of Isaiah, of which we had a good talk this morning and it was really interesting.
Jerry Casilum: A lot of what Micah said this morning will be reiterated today.
Jerry Casilum: So sometimes, when there's coincidence, you wonder.
Jerry Casilum: You know God is definitely there, okay, so again, the references of Hosea's ministry is also found in 2 Kings 14-20 and 2 Chronicles 26-32.
Jerry Casilum: And it records the historical period of Hosea's ministry.
Jerry Casilum: Now again, hosea's ministry started around 755 BC.
Jerry Casilum: Bc to 710.
Jerry Casilum: So that's like around close to 40 years.
Jerry Casilum: You know, actually 45 years that he was prophesying and preaching in the Northern Kingdom and he experienced, under the leadership of Jeroboam, they were enjoying political peace and material prosperity, as well as undergoing moral corruption and spiritual bankruptcy.
Jerry Casilum: And then, after Jeroboam's death, that this is Jeroboam II.
Jerry Casilum: After his death in 753 BC, there was great upheaval in the kingdom, anarchy prevailed and Israel declined rapidly.
Jerry Casilum: After over 30 years, four of Israel's six kings were assassinated by their successors.
Jerry Casilum: The nation's rebellion against Assyria led to the end of the northern kingdom around 732 to 722 BC.
Jerry Casilum: Yet God did leave a remnant, who were the Samaritans of Jesus' day.
Jerry Casilum: So Hosea prophesied about Israel's moral waywardness and her breach of the covenantal relationship with the Lord, announcing that judgment was imminent.
Jerry Casilum: In the book, hosea penned God's judgment against Israel because of its spiritual apostasy.
Jerry Casilum: There was robbery, drunkenness, adultery, murder, and the people were worshiping the Baals.
Jerry Casilum: The Baal simply means Lord.
Jerry Casilum: That name, baal, means Lord.
Jerry Casilum: Baal had many different manifestations.
Jerry Casilum: Primarily, he was the Lord of fertility.
Jerry Casilum: He was the Lord of the wind, the cloud, the earth.
Jerry Casilum: People participated in fertility cults, open sexual acts with prostitutes on top of the earth.
Jerry Casilum: People participated in fertility cults, open sexual acts with prostitutes on top of the hills and, as Micah cited's, crazy.
Jerry Casilum: So along with that, they would erect images of a golden calf.
Jerry Casilum: They were called the calf of Samaria.
Jerry Casilum: And in all this they were still thinking that they were right with God, that they were worshiping this way, but they were still faithful to Jehovah, our creator.
Jerry Casilum: Let's turn first to Hosea 8, 8, verse, 2 through 9.
Jerry Casilum: Hosea 8, 2 through 9.
Jerry Casilum: 2 through 9.
Jerry Casilum: I remember, you know, I came from a Catholic background, and I asked my friends who were, you know, strong Christians.
Jerry Casilum: I told them, can I just stay in the church and worship God that way and still be a Christian?
Jerry Casilum: But, as you know, coming from the Catholic background, they also had worshiping of saints, you know, worshiping statues, and they said, basically, god doesn't want that type of mixture in his devotion to him.
Jerry Casilum: It should be sincere and pure and scriptural.
Jerry Casilum: And so, thank God, they told me that, because I was going to remain in the Catholic Church and God really wants us to worship him in spirit and in truth, and it's got to be according to God's word.
Jerry Casilum: It can't be mixed with any other gods.
Jerry Casilum: And so I wonder if Israel was thinking the same thing, that they could worship God by worshiping other forms of God.
Jerry Casilum: And that's not true, right?
Jerry Casilum: So?
Jerry Casilum: Isaiah 8, verse 2 through 9.
Jerry Casilum: Israel cries out to me my God, we know you.
Jerry Casilum: Israel has rejected what is good.
Jerry Casilum: An enemy will pursue him.
Jerry Casilum: They have installed kings, but not through me.
Jerry Casilum: They have appointed leaders, but without my approval.
Jerry Casilum: They make their silver and gold into idols for themselves, for their own destruction.
Jerry Casilum: Your calf idol is rejected, samaria.
Jerry Casilum: My anger burns against them.
Jerry Casilum: How long will they be incapable of innocence?
Jerry Casilum: For this thing is from Israel.
Jerry Casilum: A craftsman made it, and it is not from God.
Jerry Casilum: The calf of Samaria will be smashed into bits.
Jerry Casilum: Indeed, they sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.
Jerry Casilum: There is no standing grain that sprouts what sprouts fails to yield flower.
Jerry Casilum: Even if they did, foreigners would swallow it up.
Jerry Casilum: Israel is swallowed up.
Jerry Casilum: Now they are among the nations like discarded pottery.
Jerry Casilum: They have gone up to Assyria like a wild donkey going off on its own.
Jerry Casilum: Ephraim has paid for love.
Jerry Casilum: So not only were they in sin by worshiping the Baals and idols, they were also trusting in other nations to protect them and to provide for them, when all along.
Jerry Casilum: God had been the one providing so in the midst of Israel's unfaithfulness.
Jerry Casilum: Yet a major theme of the book is actually also God's immeasurable love.
Jerry Casilum: God gives Hosea a message which would really hit him in the gut, just as God would want us to experience his anguish.
Jerry Casilum: Surprisingly, one of the commentaries mentioned Hosea as like the Gospel of John in the Old Testament, because it does talk about the unconditional, immeasurable love of God.
Jerry Casilum: Okay, so the Lord's true love for his people is unending and will tolerate no rival.
Jerry Casilum: The love of God towards his people is full of passionate emotions.
Jerry Casilum: God's love is a consuming fire.
Jerry Casilum: He's a jealous God.
Jerry Casilum: He's jealous for you and me.
Jerry Casilum: I think about in 2 Corinthians 11, where Paul said that he was afraid for the Corinthians because, like Eve, they would be deceived by the serpent.
Jerry Casilum: Like Eve, they would be deceived by the serpent, and how Paul wanted to protect the church from heresies.
Jerry Casilum: He really had a jealous love that we continue in the sincere and pure devotion regarding Christ, that we would not be led to legalism or some form of idolatry.
Jerry Casilum: And it's very subtle, you know it's very subtle.
Jerry Casilum: I told someone recently that our default as human beings is to be legalistic.
Jerry Casilum: I used to think if I didn't do my daily readings of God's word, that I wasn't right with God.
Jerry Casilum: You know, I used to think that if I maybe gave more to the church, maybe God would, you know, bless me.
Jerry Casilum: So it's almost like, you know, it's what I can do, it's not what God has done.
Jerry Casilum: Resting on what God has done.
Jerry Casilum: So, going back to Hosea, let's read.
Jerry Casilum: Well, talking about God's love.
Jerry Casilum: Again, you know this is our base need as human beings.
Jerry Casilum: You know the love of God and we don't even know it.
Jerry Casilum: You know we look for love in so many different places the love of another person, their affection towards us.
Jerry Casilum: That used to mean the world to me.
Jerry Casilum: I was single for a long time, as you all know, and my emotional life would go up and down depending if I was accepted or not.
Jerry Casilum: But the love of God is what we need as human beings to be unconditionally loved and to be able to give love.
Jerry Casilum: That's what we were made to be.
Jerry Casilum: We were made in the image of God and God is this Trinity community of love.
Jerry Casilum: That's primarily his attribute.
Jerry Casilum: God is love Because of the Trinity.
Jerry Casilum: I mean before we were even created, there was love.
Jerry Casilum: Now, when you consider other gods that are like monolithic, how can there be love?
Jerry Casilum: It's just them until they created man.
Jerry Casilum: But God is love.
Jerry Casilum: There was already love in existence before we were created.
Jerry Casilum: So let's read.
Jerry Casilum: I want us to hopefully get a feel for hosea tonight.
Jerry Casilum: I just want to read um, hosea chapter 1, then chapter 3 and chapter 11.
Jerry Casilum: So, um, before we go there, I just want to say that you know, hosea um was a prophet called by god and and to be a prophet you were called to be a communicator of God's nature and character.
Jerry Casilum: And one would think that if you're going to be communicating God's nature and character, that you would have to be an upstanding individual, an example, you would need to be somewhat above reproach and blameless.
Jerry Casilum: And yet God tells Hosea to do something very radical as a prophet.
Jerry Casilum: And we're going to read in Hosea, chapter 1, verse 2 and 3.
Jerry Casilum: Hosea, chapter 1, verse 2 and 3.
Jerry Casilum: 1, verse 2 and 3.
Jerry Casilum: When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, he said this to him go and marry a woman of promiscuity and have children of promiscuity, for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity by abandoning the Lord.
Jerry Casilum: So he went and married Gomer, daughter of Deblame, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Jerry Casilum: So let's stop there.
Jerry Casilum: So again, I'm sure Hosea was shocked to hear this.
Jerry Casilum: God would instruct him to marry a woman, a prostitute, a promiscuous woman, an experience with her domestic life.
Jerry Casilum: That would be an illustration of the sin and unfaithfulness of Israel.
Jerry Casilum: In wanting us to experience how he feels, god turns Hosea into a living parable.
Jerry Casilum: It was like God telling Hosea you and I are going to give our lives, resources, energy, emotions to someone who will continually reject us.
Jerry Casilum: Have you ever experienced unrequited love?
Jerry Casilum: A continual rejection?
Jerry Casilum: So this is what God is telling Hosea, what he is experiencing regarding Israel.
Jerry Casilum: There will be continual heartache, instability.
Jerry Casilum: We're dealing with someone who has displaced affections.
Jerry Casilum: It's very heart-wrenching when you're with someone who doesn't feel the same way and it's not going to work out.
Jerry Casilum: I remember during a prayer meeting many years ago there was a brother.
Jerry Casilum: He was in the midst of separation and divorce and I really felt for him.
Jerry Casilum: He was pouring his heart out before the Lord.
Jerry Casilum: He was separated from his wife and they might get a divorce and it could just tell the turmoil.
Jerry Casilum: The heart was just so very sad.
Jerry Casilum: He was crying inside.
Jerry Casilum: It was anguish.
Jerry Casilum: He was so despondent and really I know most of us are comfortable.
Jerry Casilum: Thank God we're in stable relationships.
Jerry Casilum: But there's a lot of desperation in the world.
Jerry Casilum: There really is.
Jerry Casilum: There's a lot of anguish in relationships in the world, and so the story goes on.
Jerry Casilum: Hosea takes Gomer as a wife.
Jerry Casilum: Now she's again a wayward woman, okay, a slave to her passions, a woman of ill repute.
Jerry Casilum: She has and had been continually unfaithful to all her lovers, whether she was married to them or not.
Jerry Casilum: And not long after the marriage it seems from you know, read chapter 2 and 3 in Hosea that she immediately becomes unfaithful to Hosea.
Jerry Casilum: She bears him three children, and the last one may not even be his, because God names the child Lo-Ami, which means not mine.
Jerry Casilum: That's in chapter 1.
Jerry Casilum: But then it gets worse.
Jerry Casilum: She leaves him and lives with a man who abused her and doesn't even provide for her basic needs.
Jerry Casilum: And lives with a man who abused her and doesn't even provide for her basic needs.
Jerry Casilum: And behind the scenes Hosea provides for his wife.
Jerry Casilum: In chapter 2, verse 8, god said of Israel she does not recognize that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the fresh oil.
Jerry Casilum: I lavished silver and gold on her which she used for Baal.
Jerry Casilum: And finally we get to chapter 3, where we find Gomer being auctioned in a slave market.
Jerry Casilum: Okay, so again she leaves Hosea, probably gets into abusive relationships and now she's in the slave market.
Jerry Casilum: She was sold to be a slave and people are auctioning for her in Hosea, chapter 3.
Jerry Casilum: She was probably standing there in rags, maybe naked.
Jerry Casilum: The buyers probably wanted to see their merchandise.
Jerry Casilum: So she is at the lowest point of her life where she felt most worthless and in despair as people bid for her.
Jerry Casilum: And then, to her amazement, she hears her husband's voice also bidding for her.
Jerry Casilum: Her husband's voice also bidding for her.
Jerry Casilum: Now let's see in chapter 3.
Jerry Casilum: Let's go to chapter 3.
Jerry Casilum: Let's read chapter 3 together.
Jerry Casilum: Okay?
Jerry Casilum: Then the Lord said to me Go again, show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.
Jerry Casilum: So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and nine bushels of barley.
Jerry Casilum: I said to her you are to live with me many days.
Jerry Casilum: You must not be promiscuous or belong to any man, and I will act the same way towards you, for the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or household idols.
Jerry Casilum: Afterward the people of Israel will return and seek the Lord, their God, and David, their king.
Jerry Casilum: So if you see that in verse 2 it said I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and 9 bushels of barley.
Jerry Casilum: I mean, they were bidding for her and you know, you could hear, probably, the crowd, you know 14 shekels.
Jerry Casilum: And then Hosea says 15 shekels with nine bushels of barley and he bought her.
Jerry Casilum: Did you know that?
Jerry Casilum: That, you know, intriguingly, equates to 30 pieces of silver, isn't that unique?
Jerry Casilum: He equates to 30 pieces of silver, isn't that unique?
Jerry Casilum: He bought her for 30 pieces of silver, which was the going price for a slave at that point, and barley was used as an offering of one accused, accused of adultery.
Jerry Casilum: In numbers, I don't know if you knew that.
Jerry Casilum: So this is like really symbolic of a lot of things in the old Testament.
Jerry Casilum: I don't know if Hosea knew these things.
Jerry Casilum: Um, so, in numbers 515, barley was used as an offering for adultery.
Jerry Casilum: So imagine what she was thinking.
Jerry Casilum: Imagine what she was thinking my husband is ransoming me again, but is he going to, you know, treat me as a slave now that I left him.
Jerry Casilum: Is he going to tyrannize me?
Jerry Casilum: But rather he takes her to a private place and speaks tenderly towards her.
Jerry Casilum: You must live with me many days.
Jerry Casilum: You must not be promiscuous or belong to any man, and I will act the same way toward you, saying I want you as my wife and I your husband.
Jerry Casilum: And then what does she do?
Jerry Casilum: And I your husband.
Jerry Casilum: And then what does she do?
Jerry Casilum: We don't know.
Jerry Casilum: The story ends there.
Jerry Casilum: The story about Jose and Gomer ends right there.
Jerry Casilum: We don't know if she was melted by his love, by his sacrifice.
Jerry Casilum: We don't know.
Jerry Casilum: Did she change?
Jerry Casilum: Or did she laugh in front of his face and left?
Jerry Casilum: Now that?
Jerry Casilum: Now, how's that for a story?
Jerry Casilum: So, therefore, that's why we need to go to her children and find out what happened.
Jerry Casilum: Let's turn to Hosea, chapter 11.
Jerry Casilum: 11, verse 1 through 11.
Jerry Casilum: Let's read together, okay.
Jerry Casilum: When Israel was a child, I loved him and out of Egypt, I called my son.
Jerry Casilum: Israel called to the Egyptians.
Jerry Casilum: Even as Israel was leaving them, they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
Jerry Casilum: It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the hand, but they never knew that.
Jerry Casilum: I healed them.
Jerry Casilum: I led them with human cords, with ropes of love To them.
Jerry Casilum: I was like one who eased a yoke from their jaws.
Jerry Casilum: I bent down to give them food.
Jerry Casilum: Israel will not return to the land of Egypt and Assyria and Assyria will be his king.
Jerry Casilum: Because they refuse to repent, a sword will whirl through the cities.
Jerry Casilum: It will destroy and devour the bars of his gates.
Jerry Casilum: Because of their schemes.
Jerry Casilum: My people are bent on turning from me.
Jerry Casilum: Though they call to him on high, he will not exalt them at all.
Jerry Casilum: Verse 8.
Jerry Casilum: How can I give you up, ephraim?
Jerry Casilum: How can I surrender you Israel?
Jerry Casilum: How can I make you like Adma?
Jerry Casilum: How can I treat you Israel?
Jerry Casilum: How can I make you like Adma?
Jerry Casilum: How can I treat you like Zebuim?
Jerry Casilum: I have had a change of heart.
Jerry Casilum: My compassion is stirred.
Jerry Casilum: I will not vent the full anger, the full fury of my anger.
Jerry Casilum: I will not turn back to destroy Ephraim, for I am a God and not a man, the Holy One among you.
Jerry Casilum: I will not come in rage.
Jerry Casilum: They will follow the Lord.
Jerry Casilum: He will roar like a lion.
Jerry Casilum: When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west.
Jerry Casilum: They will be roused like birds from Egypt, like doves from the land of Assyria.
Jerry Casilum: Then I will settle them in their homes.
Jerry Casilum: This is the Lord's declaration.
Jerry Casilum: So in verse 8, it's really profound.
Jerry Casilum: There it says here you know God's talking about now the relationship with Israel as a father is towards a child.
Jerry Casilum: Before he was like a husband and now he's talking about this relationship that also is very painful to him.
Jerry Casilum: His children abandon him Like a child whom he took by the hand, he loved and cared for Israel, he gave him everything, and now this child has turned away from him, forgetting him.
Jerry Casilum: And then on verse 8, we hear this amazing noise in the Bible God actually crying.
Jerry Casilum: Okay, how can I give you up ephraim?
Jerry Casilum: How can I surrender you?
Jerry Casilum: Oh israel, can you feel that longing of god, like when he was lamenting in luke 13, when jesus cried out oh jerusalem, jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stone those sent to you?
Jerry Casilum: To her.
Jerry Casilum: How often I had wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.
Jerry Casilum: In verse 8 it says I have a change of heart, my compassion is stirred.
Jerry Casilum: Here God says that he's shattered inside, completely shattered.
Jerry Casilum: My compassion is stirred.
Jerry Casilum: This word is akin to an upheaval.
Jerry Casilum: Remember the time where, in the Bible, lazarus died and people were crying and it actually said Jesus wept.
Jerry Casilum: You know, that verse was actually I think someone described it as when a horse makes that noise, like that grunting sound, and Jesus actually cried, looking at the effects of sin, looking at the state of humanity in death, and this is how compassionate our God is.
Jerry Casilum: It's, it's amazing to us.
Jerry Casilum: You know, until we really understand these emotions, until we understand the, the jealousy of a husband for his wife, the longing of a father towards his children who abandoned him and rejected him, longing of a father towards his children who abandoned him and rejected him, until we really go through that, we would not be able to communicate the gospel very well to the world who's hurting as well.
Jerry Casilum: And that's why it's important to experience the emotions involved that God gives us in his word, to really understand and go through them.
Jerry Casilum: That's why I know we're a Baptist church.
Jerry Casilum: It's hard to show emotions, but really I feel like that emotional connection, especially how God feels, will help you to be more God-like.
Jerry Casilum: So God is saying in these passages I am a husband whose wife is unfaithful to me, I'm a father whose children have rejected me and now destroying themselves, and so it's so important for us to share God that way, a very compassionate and loving God.
Jerry Casilum: So what's amazing is that, as you know, god promised that he would not vent his full anger and that he will not come in rage.
Jerry Casilum: But we know that the northern kingdom was sacked by Assyria.
Jerry Casilum: They were destroyed.
Jerry Casilum: But what Micah said today, we didn't compare notes.
Jerry Casilum: God did leave a remnant, even in the Northern Kingdom, and that remnant it said here in the future.
Jerry Casilum: Christ did come back to the Northern Kingdom in the Gospel of John, in John chapter 4, where he met a woman of ill repute in Jacob's well who had lived a life of promiscuity.
Jerry Casilum: And he met her there and revealed to her the way of salvation and drew her back to himself to make her whole.
Jerry Casilum: I don't know if there's a correlation with Hosea and Gomer, with John chapter 4.
Jerry Casilum: You know why would Jesus go all the way in Samaria and meet the woman at the well who also had a past?
Jerry Casilum: Isn't that interesting?
Jerry Casilum: One last thing In verse 4, verse 4, chapter 11, I found this it says that God drew us with human cords of love.
Jerry Casilum: Now what does that say?
Jerry Casilum: God drew us with human cords of love.
Jerry Casilum: Now what does that say?
Jerry Casilum: God drew us with human cords of love, you know, was he talking about how God used Hosea and Gomer as an illustration, as a parable, so that we would be drawn to him understanding his love for us?
Jerry Casilum: Was he talking more about a future time, a more clear demonstration of his love, when God himself actually did become like one of us?
Jerry Casilum: And he has drawn us by human cords of love by hanging on that cross.
Jerry Casilum: In Romans 5.8, it says God demonstrates his love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, christ died for us.
Jerry Casilum: If it were not for Christ coming down and dying for us, how could we really know that God loved us?
Jerry Casilum: Now, think about it.
Jerry Casilum: Think about it.
Jerry Casilum: Let's say Christ never came Okay, we just have the Old Testament.
Jerry Casilum: Think about it.
Jerry Casilum: Let's say Christ never came, we just have the Old Testament.
Jerry Casilum: Could you really know that God loves you so much?
Jerry Casilum: I don't think so.
Jerry Casilum: The human experience is that we grow old, we fall apart, people we love die, we develop a chronic illness, chronic pain and then death.
Jerry Casilum: I don't think that leads to God loving us.
Jerry Casilum: Experience, you know, and I've met a lot of people in the hospital who are hardened by life's blows.
Jerry Casilum: It's very sad Young people having cancer, young people dying early for many reasons.
Jerry Casilum: It doesn't translate to God's love, this human experience under the sun.
Jerry Casilum: You know, to God's love, this human experience under the sun, you know.
Jerry Casilum: But knowing what we know in the Bible, christ demonstrates his love for us, that he became a human being, that he actually experienced the temptation, our emotions, our loneliness, our rejection, the shame.
Jerry Casilum: We can never say that he doesn't understand, that God doesn't understand.
Jerry Casilum: We can never say that anymore.
Jerry Casilum: If you would recognize, be reconciled to your true husband and father and receive Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will be whole again.
Jerry Casilum: No one has ever died for you before until now, until you realize that Christ died for you.
Jerry Casilum: Right, no one has ever died for us before, but Christ was willing.
Jerry Casilum: Christ wants you to receive him, to receive his death, that you would live.
Jerry Casilum: I'd like to end in Hosea, chapter 6.
Jerry Casilum: Chapter 6.
Jerry Casilum: Come, let us return to the Lord, for he has torn us and he will heal us.
Jerry Casilum: He has wounded us and he will bind up our wounds.
Jerry Casilum: He will revive us after two days and on the third day he will raise us up so that we can live in his presence.
Jerry Casilum: Let us strive to know the Lord, his appearance is as sure as the dawn.
Jerry Casilum: He will come to us like the rain, like the spring shower, that water the land.
Jerry Casilum: Let's pray, father, god.
Jerry Casilum: We come before you, lord.
Jerry Casilum: We know that your love for us is so immense, so great for you, so love the world that you sent your Son.
Jerry Casilum: It's primarily your love, father, that created us, that sustains us.
Jerry Casilum: You give the Son and the reign to the righteous and the unrighteous, though they don't know.
Jerry Casilum: They may not know where it's coming from.
Jerry Casilum: But we know you and we're so glad, lord, that you forgive us of our sins.
Jerry Casilum: And though we say we know you, yet we still do sin.
Jerry Casilum: I pray you'd forgive us, father.
Jerry Casilum: I pray that you would cleanse us by the blood of your Son, that you would draw us with this human cord of love, this rope of love, lord.
Jerry Casilum: We pray that we would be melted before you, that we would have such a desire for you continuously and nothing would distract us in this world, that we would represent you and share the gospel in our lives and our deeds.
Jerry Casilum: I thank you for this church, lord.
Jerry Casilum: I pray that we would be like a city set up on a hill, shining brightly for those to see us that, as we love one another, that you would draw people to yourself Again.
Jerry Casilum: Lord, we thank you for the book of Isaiah.
Jerry Casilum: Lord, we thank you for your great love.
Jerry Casilum: We praise you in Jesus' name.
Jerry Casilum: Amen, praise God.