SPEAKER_00: Hosea chapter three verse one to five and the Lord said to me, Go again.
SPEAKER_00: Love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress.
SPEAKER_00: Even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.
SPEAKER_00: So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lithech of barley.
SPEAKER_00: And I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not play the whore or belong to another man.
SPEAKER_00: So will I also be to you.
SPEAKER_00: For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without epod or household gods.
SPEAKER_00: After what the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.
SPEAKER_00: And they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.
SPEAKER_00: This is God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, note on why did I get married?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's got something to do with Hosea, but uh it's it's more we're gonna be looking at what did you expect.
SPEAKER_00: What did you expect?
SPEAKER_00: Uh we're gonna be journeying through kind of Paul Chip's teachings on that, and it's gonna be a good time from two to four.
SPEAKER_00: And also I do wanna reiterate the announcement on prayer.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the evening, so half past six to half past seven in the evening on Wednesday.
SPEAKER_00: So we've moved it from the morning to the evening on Wednesday evening, half past six to half past seven.
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's an hour long.
SPEAKER_00: Um, cool.
SPEAKER_00: So today we are looking at three things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, number one, we are looking at love that pursues the unworthy.
SPEAKER_00: So the sermon title, if you just want to hang some things to the text this morning, is this it's it's love her again.
SPEAKER_00: Love her again.
SPEAKER_00: And we are looking at specifically three things.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, we are looking at love that pursues the unworthy.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, we'll be looking at love that pays the price.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, we'll be looking at love that brings us home.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we'll be today, uh, from verse one to five.
SPEAKER_00: Love that pursues the unworthy, love that pays the price, love that brings us home.
SPEAKER_00: Now, love that pursues the unworthy is basically found uh as we as we go in the journey in verse one.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to say a couple of things and ask this uh poignant question: why do we keep returning to things that wound us?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we keep returning to things that break our hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we keep running back to broken cisterns?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we keep believing that this next achievement, this next relationship, this next salary, this next experience will finally give us what we are longing for?
SPEAKER_00: What the last thing couldn't give us.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, the answer is mainly this.
SPEAKER_00: The answer to the why to that question is that it's it's sin.
SPEAKER_00: And the answer is not as simplistic as just merely sinning, the answer is that we are looking for salvation, it plays itself out in sin, but what we are pursuing is actually freedom.
SPEAKER_00: Every human heart is searching for something to save it.
SPEAKER_00: And when we don't find that salvation in God, we look for it elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: That's the problem, friends.
SPEAKER_00: We look for salvation elsewhere, we look for salvation in relationships, and people, in careers, in money, in comfort, and control, and and we imagine ourselves to to kind of like go into a new project of saving ourselves, and at the end of the road, we find ourselves enslaved by the very thing we thought would free us.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, we keep going back to those things.
SPEAKER_00: We keep going back to those things.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, as we look at chapter three, we're gonna look at this pattern of uh a devastating situation that is uh confronted with a great honesty, a great honesty that kind of unpacks the breathtaking grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: One author by the name of uh James Boyce said it it's uh it's the it's the greatest chapter in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's what he calls chapter three of Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: I I'd look at like chapter three of John, but Boyce is like, no, actually, Hosea is the greatest chapter in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I don't agree with him, but uh, I kind of get why.
SPEAKER_00: Because when we journey into this chapter, we're gonna see something of a great magnificence there.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see God's grace, we're gonna be shocked not more by the uh Jonah's tendencies.
SPEAKER_00: For those who are watching that, we're gonna be shocked by the grace of God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, friends, as we understand chapter three, we need to remember where we've been.
SPEAKER_00: Look at quickly chapter one, verse two.
SPEAKER_00: When the Lord first spoke to um spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go take to yourself a wife of whodom and have children of whodom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That was the the instruction God gave to Hosea, and an unthinkable instruction.
SPEAKER_00: Marry a woman of promiscuity because the land had committed great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And Hosea obeyed, friends.
SPEAKER_00: He he married this lady called Goma.
SPEAKER_00: He loved her, he gave her a home, he he he they had children, they had a covenant relationship, and she left.
SPEAKER_00: She left, friends.
SPEAKER_00: By the time we get to chapter two, Goma has abandoned Hosea for other lovers.
SPEAKER_00: Men who promised her silver, wine, and the finer things in life.
SPEAKER_00: She credited her prosperity to those men, to to not to her husband who actually gave her the provision.
SPEAKER_00: And God said through the metaphor, she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when we arrive to verse 1 of chapter 3, God gives another instruction.
SPEAKER_00: Goma's lovers have used her up, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever glamour that she had, it's gone.
SPEAKER_00: The glamour that she had, the glamour she was chasing, the the the beauty she had, the all that she was attractive about her is gone.
SPEAKER_00: She's being sold.
SPEAKER_00: Likely on an auction block because uh Israel had adopted the tendencies of other nations.
SPEAKER_00: She's being sold like a slave.
SPEAKER_00: And God speaks to the prophet again.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, he said, Marry this woman.
SPEAKER_00: And look how that turned out.
SPEAKER_00: Now God speaks again.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord said to me, Go again.
SPEAKER_00: Love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress.
SPEAKER_00: Even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes, love cakes of reasons.
SPEAKER_00: Two words, friends, go again.
SPEAKER_00: Kill her.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, God says, Go again, love again, pursue again.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, if there are any two words that explain the history of redemption, it's those very two words of going again.
SPEAKER_00: Adam fell, go again.
SPEAKER_00: Israel rebelled, go again.
SPEAKER_00: Kings failed, go again.
SPEAKER_00: Humanity crucified the Son, and God raised him from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Go again is the heartbeat of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of God keeps coming back to people who keep walking away from him?
SPEAKER_00: Before we get even get to Israel's sin, friends, we look at God's heart.
SPEAKER_00: The most shocking thing in this verse is not Gomez's adultery, it's God's command.
SPEAKER_00: Go again.
SPEAKER_00: Beneath, friends, the problem that we're gonna see, which is a heart posture, is is is a is is God responding to that with a go again.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to diagnose the problem as uh verse one says that um this is a metaphor or a picture of what Israel has been doing to God.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.
SPEAKER_00: The Hebrew word there, uh in other words, friends, the the Hebrew word that kind of describes what they are doing, the the idea of turning to other gods is it's a participle, they they keep turning away.
SPEAKER_00: They keep uh turning habitually, so it's a habitual posture of turning away.
SPEAKER_00: They keep going to these other gods, they keep they keep committing themselves to the delicacies of temple worship, of of idolatry worship, of enjoying raisin cakes.
SPEAKER_00: These festival snacks, these pagan shrines that uh have these snacks called uh cakes of raisins, they they keep enjoying that.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, Israel has exchanged the the glory of an immortal God for something you could buy at Woolies.
SPEAKER_00: The question is, what are your raisin cakes?
SPEAKER_00: What are you asking to do what only God can do?
SPEAKER_00: For some of us, our raisin cakes is our careers.
SPEAKER_00: That LinkedIn announcement.
SPEAKER_00: For others, it is a relationship, it is financial security, it is comfort, it is control, it is the curated image you project from Rosebank.
SPEAKER_00: That's your raisin cake.
SPEAKER_00: And for those sitting here feeling morally superior, I don't have raisin cakes.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your raisin cake is your the pleasure of your performance, no, not your immorality, but your respectability.
SPEAKER_00: An idol is a good thing that has become a God thing, as Kayla would describe.
SPEAKER_00: Career is not bad in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: Money is not bad in and of itself, relationships are not bad in and of itself, even ministry is not bad in and of itself.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, it's the pride we have in our theology, the pride we have in always treasuring being right, over treasuring the redeemer.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are here and you are like, man, uh I'm I'm skeptical about this thing.
SPEAKER_00: What what are you talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Why go again?
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: I wanna raise the bar in terms of what God is responsible responding to you, oh skeptic.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll ask you a question respectfully.
SPEAKER_00: So why does every achievement create the need for another?
SPEAKER_00: Why does every success leave you wanting more?
SPEAKER_00: What if your restlessness is not a flaw in and of itself?
SPEAKER_00: Your your restlessness, your desire to overcome.
SPEAKER_00: But but but but this restlessness is not just a desire to overcome, but it's probably a clue.
SPEAKER_00: It's a clue, it's it's it's a pointer, it's it's a a clue to to follow someone.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a clue to say, man, you've designed you've been designed and created for for more.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why you're not satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe your skepticism is like, man, I you cannot really respond with skepticism to this point that man, you do struggle with wanting more.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I can argue all day about theology and whatever, but but but but I you you can't argue with your own heart, with all your own desire for more.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a reason why you're not satisfied.
SPEAKER_00: You created for someone more.
SPEAKER_00: Again, friends, we go back to the text in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: God says to Hosea, go again.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity, friends, is not ultimately the story of people finding God, it is the story of God finding a people.
SPEAKER_00: Before we ever turned back to God, before we ever turned back, Jesus came, friends, in Romans 5, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: It says, God shows his love for us in that while we were still the whore, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
SPEAKER_00: We we did not seek him first, we we he sought us friends.
SPEAKER_00: He walked into the far country, into the slave market of our sin, and he found us there, and he brought us back.
SPEAKER_00: Point two, love that pays the price, alluding to this idea of Jesus buying us back.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 2 quickly.
SPEAKER_00: It says, So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and Homer and a litu of barley.
SPEAKER_00: And I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not play the whole or belong to another man.
SPEAKER_00: So will I also be to you.
SPEAKER_00: Look at go, my friends.
SPEAKER_00: If you could close your eyes and picture the the image there of this promiscuous woman who was chasing after another man.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if we go back to to verse 1, it says, Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man.
SPEAKER_00: She's a married woman with a boyfriend.
SPEAKER_00: That's the picture of another man.
SPEAKER_00: Go, go, go, go buy, go, go find, go, go, go again, love a woman who has another lover.
SPEAKER_00: Love your wife who has another lover.
SPEAKER_00: Now that lover is done with her.
SPEAKER_00: Now that lover is selling her at a marketplace.
SPEAKER_00: The lovers who had promised there were many again.
SPEAKER_00: If you read chapter 2, you'll realize that there were many more men.
SPEAKER_00: The lovers who promised her life have disappeared.
SPEAKER_00: The woman who chased freedom has been enslaved by the very freedom she sought.
SPEAKER_00: What promised her liberation has become a slave master.
SPEAKER_00: And friends, that's the trajectory of idolatry.
SPEAKER_00: The career that was supposed to give you significance now gives you endless anxiety.
SPEAKER_00: The relationship that was supposed to make you feel good about yourself, feel loved now makes you feel trapped.
SPEAKER_00: What you sought to control now controls you.
SPEAKER_00: And now Hosea walks into the marketplace.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet of God standing among the bidders who were looking lustfully at this naked woman who were bidding.
SPEAKER_00: 10 rand, 20 round, going, going.
SPEAKER_00: They were bidding, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine that moment as she's closing in shame her eyes, and then she looks up, hearing the voice of her husband.
SPEAKER_00: She knows exactly who he is.
SPEAKER_00: The husband she betrayed, the husband she abandoned, the husband she humiliated.
SPEAKER_00: She has nothing to bargain with.
SPEAKER_00: No excuses, no beauty, no dignity, nothing.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where redemption arrives.
SPEAKER_00: That's where redemption arrives, friends.
SPEAKER_00: 15 shekels of silver and a measure of Bali is equivalent to the slave price.
SPEAKER_00: In Exodus 21, verse 32, speaks about the price of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: It's 30 shekels of silver, right?
SPEAKER_00: But look again in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: So I bought her with 15 shekels of silver and and barley.
SPEAKER_00: He had to scrape something, put something together to make up the full price of 15 shekels of silver.
SPEAKER_00: He couldn't afford the price.
SPEAKER_00: He's been humiliated, but he he puts together the barley to scrape something together to pay the price, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Hosea redeemed one unfaithful woman from slavery.
SPEAKER_00: But what does Jesus do?
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Peter 1, verse 18 to 19, we hear the price that it says, you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: A lamb without blemish or defect.
SPEAKER_00: The price for our shame, for for our redemption.
SPEAKER_00: The price to clothe our nakedness of the blood of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this fool.
SPEAKER_00: What is he doing?
SPEAKER_00: But friends, the the beauty of this this passage is exactly that.
SPEAKER_00: That God redeems and loves an unworthy people like you and me.
SPEAKER_00: And and undeserving people like you and me, people who are despised.
SPEAKER_00: And the beauty of what Jesus does is that he actually steps on the podium of that shame.
SPEAKER_00: He steps into our nakedness.
SPEAKER_00: He clothes us with his own righteousness and he endures the shame of the ridicule, the mockery.
SPEAKER_00: He stands as the sinner condemned.
SPEAKER_00: And the price says, the irony of the price is 30 shekels of silver.
SPEAKER_00: The new testament, you can go to Judas betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
SPEAKER_00: You can't make this stuff up, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus pursues the one who keeps running from him, who pays the debt for those who spent their lives running up the bill.
SPEAKER_00: Only Jesus can do that, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Now, before we run ahead of ourselves, what does Goma Hosea do?
SPEAKER_00: Hosea buys a bag, right?
SPEAKER_00: He bought Goma at the price of a slave, as I've mentioned.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a sense of like what I'm alluding to with Jesus being bought with um or betrayed with 30 pieces of silver is that there's a sense of what we talk about in the gospel is a beautiful exchange.
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus steps into our shame.
SPEAKER_00: He pays with his own life, with his own blood.
SPEAKER_00: He takes the form of a slave, a form of a servant, so that we become sons and daughters of the living God.
SPEAKER_00: That salvation is free, but it is not cheap, friends.
SPEAKER_00: And we can't cheapen it with our lives.
SPEAKER_00: As Richard Sipps says, there's more mercy in Christ than sin in us.
SPEAKER_00: What happens then thereafter?
SPEAKER_00: Point three.
SPEAKER_00: Love that brings us home.
SPEAKER_00: I liken this picture to kind of like I'm sorry, ladies, if I'm gonna use this word, I I have to be careful here.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of like coma in the colloquial language would be uh likened to wasted goods, spoiled goods, like there's nothing there.
SPEAKER_00: Like I'm freeing you, but actually I'm I'm not gonna touch you, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like there's nothing there.
SPEAKER_00: Look at this.
SPEAKER_00: And I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days.
SPEAKER_00: The slowness of the discipline there, they're going to deal with some issues in their marriage.
SPEAKER_00: You must dwell as mine for many days.
SPEAKER_00: You shall not play the whore or belong to another man.
SPEAKER_00: As if Jose is like, I brought you back, but I know you have tendencies.
SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be intimate with anyone.
SPEAKER_00: That's his point, including me.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: But look again and say, so will I also be to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, look, love, we're not gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna play the long game.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna spend time together for many days.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have gospel conversations.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be disciplined.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be formed.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll be yours.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that part where you're not only mine, it's not like I'm buying you back and I own you.
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm gonna be yours.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna restore you to full intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: She must be weaned off the patterns of her enslavement.
SPEAKER_00: And now, friends, this is a historical point that I'm gonna make because we we we preach expository sermons here and we we don't derive our own ideas and impose them to the text.
SPEAKER_00: There's a sense in which historically, friends, this is what happened.
SPEAKER_00: Israel had to go into exile.
SPEAKER_00: Israel had to go into exile, and and exile, friends, is not a place of abandonment.
SPEAKER_00: The many days of exile is a place of rehabilitation.
SPEAKER_00: The many days are are the days where God is detoxing your soul from lesser loves.
SPEAKER_00: If God has removed something you leaned on, friends, could it be that he's not punishing you but pursuing you?
SPEAKER_00: He says, for many days Israel will live without the structures they trusted.
SPEAKER_00: Both good and corrupt structures.
SPEAKER_00: There will be no king, no sacrifice, no e-pod, no household gods.
SPEAKER_00: God strips everything away until his people have nothing left to lean on except him.
SPEAKER_00: Dare I say some of us need that?
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's tough, friends.
SPEAKER_00: But but but some of us need the seasons where everything we think makes us who we are and stripped away.
SPEAKER_00: A friend of mine, not a friend, a lady I knew.
SPEAKER_00: Um she she was a leader in my high school, kind of spoke at a session in um Auckland Park.
SPEAKER_00: For her it was it was exactly that, it was burnout.
SPEAKER_00: Her her career was moving at a rapid speed.
SPEAKER_00: She she she was she was a director of many boards.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she was a director of a board and she was sitting on many boards.
SPEAKER_00: She, friends, she was she was killing it, she was moving at a rate ahead of her age.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you get me, like the youngest to do this, the first to do this.
SPEAKER_00: She was part of a presidential uh cohort to to fix some situations in the country.
SPEAKER_00: She she was it.
SPEAKER_00: And she got burnt out, she couldn't do anything.
SPEAKER_00: And she said she had to be faced with the reality of who is she?
SPEAKER_00: She's she's she her significance, her ultimate meaning is not derived in her success in her career pathway.
SPEAKER_00: She she had to sit and wrestle with God detoxing and removing all the things that she thought were her source of significance and meaning.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's it's not nice, but some of us need that.
SPEAKER_00: And it's God's loving act to remove the thing you cling to instead of clinging to him.
SPEAKER_00: What happens afterward, friends, is what I call the anatomy of restoration.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it quickly.
SPEAKER_00: Afterward, the children of Israel shall return, number one, seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall come in the fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.
SPEAKER_00: The the anatomy of restoration.
SPEAKER_00: Look at it again, these these verbs.
SPEAKER_00: They will return, they will seek, they will come.
SPEAKER_00: They will return, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Is a is a picture of turning away and and and turning back.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a picture of of repentance.
SPEAKER_00: They will repent, they they will seek.
SPEAKER_00: You turn away from these false gods to to the true God, and you're turning away, and when you turn to, you are turning in in seeking is a picture of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of like if you read Colossians chapter 3 and look at the framework there of repentance or conversion, you see these things, these these these handles to hold on to.
SPEAKER_00: Uh turning away in repentance, turning to in faith to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a casual glance, but a desperate pursuit of God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Longing for God more than you longing for the things you think will save you.
SPEAKER_00: They return, they what?
SPEAKER_00: They seek.
SPEAKER_00: And then they come in the fear of the Lord and to his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: That is friends, worship.
SPEAKER_00: They repent and they turn to God in faith, and they what?
SPEAKER_00: They come to God with trembling, with awestruckness, by by by by his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: They they they they they did they did nothing to earn.
SPEAKER_00: You get what I mean?
SPEAKER_00: Like you you you are turning away from these things that you thought would save you, but have enslaved you, and God buys you back, and God says, I'm gonna make a home with you, I'm gonna spend time with you to detox you, and and you're gonna like turn away from these false gods and turn to me and trust in me desperately so.
SPEAKER_00: And you're gonna worship me.
SPEAKER_00: You you're gonna find your your delight in my goodness, the goodness that I'll shower you with that you did not earn.
SPEAKER_00: That's the the the that's the goodness of God, friends, that that we need to really, really uh uh uh pursue in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: That the passage does not end with God's anger, it ends with God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: After everything, the adultery, the idol, idolatry, the exile, they they come to the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: What kind of goodness is this, friends?
SPEAKER_00: This goodness is the the goodness that pursues the Gomez, the Jonases of our world.
SPEAKER_00: The goodness that that pays the price, the goodness that welcomes the prodigals, the goodness that gives Christ, the goodness that refuses to let sinners have the final word over their own lives.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you fear God's holiness.
SPEAKER_00: Hosea says, fear God's goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Because it is his goodness that will not let you stay enslaved.
SPEAKER_00: It is his goodness that chases you into the far country, it's his goodness that that stands in the marketplace and bids for your freedom.
SPEAKER_00: And after you are the person who feels you you have wandered too far, too ashamed, as it were, too, to too much of a wreck.
SPEAKER_00: Look at Goma.
SPEAKER_00: Hear this, friends.
SPEAKER_00: God does not say, Come to my anger.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Come to my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: The door is not shut.
SPEAKER_00: The God standing in it is the father who runs to the prodigal.
SPEAKER_00: He runs to the prodigal from the far country seeing the prodigal, he runs.
SPEAKER_00: And look at what it says.
SPEAKER_00: It says David their king.
SPEAKER_00: Did you see that?
SPEAKER_00: David their king.
SPEAKER_00: They will come back to what David, they will come in fear to the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.
SPEAKER_00: And it says, and David their king.
SPEAKER_00: David friends had been dead for over two centuries when this was written.
SPEAKER_00: How are they coming to a dead king?
SPEAKER_00: They're coming to their king, friends.
SPEAKER_00: David had been dead for over two centuries when Hosea wrote these words.
SPEAKER_00: And this is not David the man, this is David's greater son.
SPEAKER_00: This is the messianic king.
SPEAKER_00: This is friends, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The latter days began with the coming of Jesus Christ, the inauguration of his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The king has come, the redeemer has come, and one day when Christ returns, friends, restoration that we long for will be complete.
SPEAKER_00: God's goal, friends, is not merely to forgive our sins.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: God's goal is not merely to forgive our sins, it's to restore us to fellowship with Him.
SPEAKER_00: He does not only pardon us from a distance, He brings us home.
SPEAKER_00: The goal of redemption is not simply that your record is clear.
SPEAKER_00: Now you are fine.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, Goma, you are you are free now.
SPEAKER_00: Go do you, boo.
SPEAKER_00: No, the goal of redemption is that you get God.
SPEAKER_00: Not merely heaven, not merely forgiveness, not merely escape from judgment, but God Himself.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, I always quote this.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I have here beautiful eulogy, some rapping group that would say, Lord, if it's my time to go, go ahead and take me home, because I'd rather be with you.
SPEAKER_00: All these finer things in life that we are chasing, friends, they pale in comparison to being ahead by God.
SPEAKER_00: That's the goal of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: And now, friends, we've we've gone through the passage, but how do we then apply to our lives?
SPEAKER_00: Again, I'll say the the first word is return to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What what lesser uh love keeps you getting?
SPEAKER_00: What lesser love in your life keeps getting your best energy?
SPEAKER_00: Your deepest trust.
SPEAKER_00: You need to name it.
SPEAKER_00: There are things that don't deserve your energy.
SPEAKER_00: You need to turn from those things.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you are strong enough to walk away, but because the one who bought you is strong enough to hold you.
SPEAKER_00: Thomas Chalmers, I always quote him again.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of those like sermons where you're like, oh, okay, we're going back to Thomas Chalmers again.
SPEAKER_00: He says, friends, the only way to dispossess the heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one.
SPEAKER_00: Simplified English means that you your heart, as John Calvin would say, is an idol factory.
SPEAKER_00: It keeps latching on to these things.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not, if it's not sexual addiction, it's it's money addiction.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not money addiction, it's the desire to be seen.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not a desire to be seen, it's a longing for comfort, it's the fear of man.
SPEAKER_00: There's always something your heart wants to latch on to for ultimate meaning and significance.
SPEAKER_00: You need to dispossess your heart of these things that your heart easily clings to.
SPEAKER_00: How do you do it?
SPEAKER_00: Not by fear-mongering, you do it by the expulsive power of a new affection, a new love.
SPEAKER_00: You need a new love.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you're like, I love God.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: You you need to you need to love God.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the married people are holding each other's hands.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, we can even idolize marriage, friends.
SPEAKER_00: We can even idolize marriage.
SPEAKER_00: We idolize our independence.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, this there's so much this heart of ours clings to.
SPEAKER_00: But the only power that can dispossess that heart is the power of an affection for the God who created you.
SPEAKER_00: When Christ becomes more beautiful than the idol, the the idol that that that easily grips a hold of you is that grip is released, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Not because you prayed it away, but because something better, friends, has has captured your imagination.
SPEAKER_00: Second friends, we seek the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So the first practical application, which sounds like, what do you mean in your affection?
SPEAKER_00: It means you you muse on God.
SPEAKER_00: I said on Friday, it's a picture of like sitting by a fire.
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's cold today.
SPEAKER_00: What better day to give this illustration?
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's sitting by the fire and warming yourself by that fire and refusing to move away until you warm.
SPEAKER_00: Sitting by the fire of meditating on God's word until your cold heart is warmed up.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's it's it's like a it's musing, it's it's chewing on the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Netflix is an amusement park that wants to hinder you from thinking on God.
SPEAKER_00: Soft life is an amusement thing, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Now again, I always say there's nothing wrong with these things in and of themselves, but there's everything wrong with these things if they become ultimate things in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You need to muse, you need to think on God.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, you need to seek the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I I've said this again, it's practical application.
SPEAKER_00: Not the blessing of the Lord, not the gifts of the Lord, not not not not the things that the Lord gives you, not the the wine, the the grain, the not not the not the softness.
SPEAKER_00: You know, some people uh desire things more than God, and you create that to devotion to God.
SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like it's like you are there for God.
SPEAKER_00: It's weird, friends.
SPEAKER_00: It's like you you're rubbing on this genie or you're approaching God and catching some of our money like I need what do I do?
SPEAKER_00: What do I need to do next to to to progress?
SPEAKER_00: What do I do I need to pray more?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we are fasting, I'm here, or we are doing, I'm here, but you are not here for God, you are here for things.
SPEAKER_00: God says, seek me.
SPEAKER_00: Seek me, seek me, seek him, friends, in in his community and his people.
SPEAKER_00: Seek God.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, All these other things that we worry ourselves about will be added.
SPEAKER_00: Seek first the kingdom, in other words, seek his reign over your life and his righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Seek first to please God.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, friends, come to his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you do feel like Goma, like for real, for real.
SPEAKER_00: Ashamed, convinced that God could never want you back.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Before you ever turn to him, he has already turned to you.
SPEAKER_00: Before you ever sought him, he paid the price for you.
SPEAKER_00: He does not receive you with anger, he receives you with his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: And and to the person who has never trusted Jesus Christ, maybe you walked in here with a lot of skepticism.
SPEAKER_00: You you were curious, you saw uh a thing on TikTok or Facebook or Instagram, wherever you see things, and you're like, maybe let me go, let me go there and just check it out.
SPEAKER_00: You you you've heard the diagnosis of your heart this morning.
SPEAKER_00: You you know the cycle, you know the restlessness.
SPEAKER_00: Hosea says there's a reason behind your restlessness.
SPEAKER_00: You are made for God.
SPEAKER_00: And everything else is but a raisin cake from woolies.
SPEAKER_00: It dissipates.
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna give you significance and meaning.
SPEAKER_00: You need to come to his goodness, you need to come today to the faithful bridegroom.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that he he he he he's he's the greater than Hosea.
SPEAKER_00: He says to you, I will love you again.
SPEAKER_00: I will love you again.
SPEAKER_00: And as our close friends, it's Father's Day, happy Father's Day, yay, you know, like you know, churches like oh Father's Day, oh by the way, but there's a gift uh at the back for fathers, which is a first.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, go so, but some of us know wonderful fathers, some of us have known absent fathers, some of us have known painful fathers, some of us have not known fathers at all.
SPEAKER_00: But Hosea 3 shows us a father whose love is not exhausted by our wandering.
SPEAKER_00: A father who does not merely wait at home, he comes looking.
SPEAKER_00: Even though we've returned to lesser loves, that's the honest truth, friends.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, about every human heart.
SPEAKER_00: That friends, we we we we keep staggering and stumbling over idols and scandalous behaviors.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, but but here's the beautiful truth here, friends.
SPEAKER_00: God, the father, returns for us.
SPEAKER_00: God returns for us.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine Goma walking home.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's silence, I can imagine.
SPEAKER_00: They're walking home, not because she found her way back, not because she she cleaned herself up.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps um Josea had a jacket and and and and covered her shame.
SPEAKER_00: Like, come here, love.
SPEAKER_00: Gabanda covers a shame.
SPEAKER_00: And they they they as they're walking there, she's she's she's she she can't say anything.
SPEAKER_00: She's just like, oh, what grace is this?
SPEAKER_00: An unworthy Okoma is is walking home.
SPEAKER_00: He it did not kick her to the curb, it did not pie her back and like I was born and no, they're going home together.
SPEAKER_00: She was purchased, she was claimed, she was brought home.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Christian story, friends.
SPEAKER_00: One day, every one of us, the people who are Christians and are struggling with addictions.
SPEAKER_00: One day, every one of us will be walking home behind the greater Hosea into a life of without the presence of sin and temptation, not carrying the price of redemption on our shoulders, as it were, but following the one who has paid it on.
SPEAKER_00: On that day, we will discover what Hosea was pointing toward all along, friends.
SPEAKER_00: That the faithful bridegroom never stopped loving his bride, and he never will.
SPEAKER_00: He will hold you fast, for he loves you so.
SPEAKER_00: He's the good, good father, whose love is is eternal, whose love is faithful, whose love is unrelenting, and he keeps working on us.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray first, Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your grace.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your kindness.
SPEAKER_00: After all our wandering, after all our false loves, after all our disappointments.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you still call us to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Oh what grace that we do not come to you, your anger, but to your goodness.
SPEAKER_00: What grace that we see that goodness most clearly in your Son Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Redeemer will pay the price we could never pay.
SPEAKER_00: The true King welcomes prodigals home.
SPEAKER_00: Before we ever sought you, you gave yourself for us.
SPEAKER_00: Before we ever loved you, you loved us first.
SPEAKER_00: Dear Lord, forgive us for the ways we continue to chase lesser love.
SPEAKER_00: Teach us to return, teach us to seek and to come trembling to your goodness.
SPEAKER_00: And as we respond in worship, Lord, help us to marvel at the good God Father.
SPEAKER_00: The good father who pursues sinners.
SPEAKER_00: Not only as a redeemer king, but as our good father.
SPEAKER_00: We pray, Lord, in the name of Jesus for those who don't know you as Father.
SPEAKER_00: Would you draw them to yourself?
SPEAKER_00: Would they see your heart for them?
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, God Father.
SPEAKER_00: Father to orphans, father to the unloved, father to those who are searching for meaning and significance.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, aren't you glad that we can find it in you?
SPEAKER_00: Some of us are dull in our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We don't believe this.
SPEAKER_00: Would you awaken us, Lord, by the power of your spirit?
SPEAKER_00: Make us alive again.
SPEAKER_00: Make us alive again to you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Would you raise our affections to love you more with the love that you pour into our hearts?
SPEAKER_00: In the name of Jesus Christ.
unknown: Amen.