The Offensive Love of God

Zeke, with that song selection, last Thursday, I think it was last Thursday we were talking, and you were preparing the song selection, and I was preparing the sermon, and I didn’t expect you to set the bar that high with Abide With Me, Be Thou My Vision, and It Is Well, and also with Pastor Ron, so thank you.

Our text today comes from the book of Hosea, Hosea chapter one. If you’ll turn to probably the cleanest parts of your Bible, It’s right after Daniel and right before Joel if you’re looking for the book. And our text this morning specifically is Hosea 1.1.

Hosea 1.1, which reads, the word of the Lord which came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, And during the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel.

Let’s pray briefly. Lord, we ask that as we come to your word, that you would edify us, that you would point us to yourself, that you yourself would be our vision, that it wouldn’t be ourselves, but that we would behold you and that by beholding you, we would become more like you. And it’s in your name we pray these things. Amen.

God’s love is offensive. That is, it is naturally reprehensible to us as human beings because it is so incredibly humbling. We have absolutely nothing to contribute to try and gain favor with Him. All our efforts are hopeless and we rightly stand in His judgment. You see, God’s love makes us admit our own spiritual and moral bankruptcy. and admit that we rightly deserve punishment and with open hands received the gift of God, which is salvation. But the problem is that we don’t naturally like to open up our hands.

God’s love requires us to let go of those things that we are holding on to so closely. the sin which is so near and dear to us as well as our own perceived works righteousness we have and are holding on to and admit that they are nothing better than filthy rags in the sight of the holy God. God’s love is offensive because it isn’t transactional, it isn’t conditional like so much of our culture.

In every man-made religion across the world, that is every other religion than biblical Christianity, which teaches us the same message of works righteousness. I heard one man say that there are only two religions in the world. There is divine accomplishment and human achievement. All man-made religion is about human achievement. What you can do to try and earn favor with God by your own efforts. And divine accomplishment is the gospel that all of us have fall short and that only Christ can save.

The world and false religion says the opposite and caters to our inherent pride within our fallen human nature. And it was the same in Hosea’s day as well. God’s mercy and love are demonstrated throughout Israel’s entire history and are seen in his electing, sustaining, warning, that is calling to repent and future forgiveness of Israel. So just to make sure we’re all on the same page, we need to consider the history of Israel to understand the context in which Hosea was written.

So God made a covenant, that is, a treaty with Abram. Abram wasn’t looking for God. It wasn’t as if Abram, just out of the good of his heart, was looking for God. No, God sought him out and promised to make Abram great people, a nation that would come from him, that he would promise him land, descendants, and blessing. That is, everyone that blessed Abram’s descendants would be blessed, and everyone that cursed his descendants would be cursed within the context of this nation. And that in him, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. We as believers know that was fulfilled in Jesus Christ with all the nations blessed. But God doesn’t only affirm that covenant, that treaty with Abram.

He also does with his son Isaac. and with his son Jacob, who then was renamed Israel, which is where we get the name of Israel from. And for those of you who remember, after Jacob has all of his sons, they go to Egypt, and God multiplies their population. In spite of Pharaoh’s efforts to curb God’s promises, faithfulness to Abram, God still grows that population until they’re a massive number and then fall under the yoke of Egyptian bondage and slavery. But then God hears the cry of his people.

He is a faithful God, faithful to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Faithful to give them a land, many descendants, and to bless them. And so what does he do? He raises up a great deliverer, Moses. Actually not so great, only great because of God. And he uses Moses to deliver the Hebrews out of the yoke or bondage of slavery in Egypt. To come to Sinai, the mount, to worship God.

And if you’ll recall from Exodus chapter 19, God tells the Hebrews, that is the nation of Israel, that their role in the world is to be both a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Now the difference between a priest and a prophet is important to note. So a priest is someone that brings the people before God. And a prophet is someone that brings God through his word and revelation before the people.

So the nation of Israel was to bring the people before God, or in other words, to point them to God. by their conduct. That’s why they were a holy, that is set apart, totally other and pure nation. That the nations would see the blessing which God gave them within this context of faithfulness to Abraham. And that they would want to seek after God. And as you all know, Israel never struggled with that at all, right? They were always faithful.

Shortly after that, Moses wasn’t even up for more than 40 days and 40 nights. And what happened? He comes back down and what does he see? He sees a golden calf, right? They had fallen into idolatry. But God still is merciful and gracious and through the intercession of Moses does not wipe out Israel and instead forgives them. And he reveals himself in Exodus chapter 34. He says that he is a compassionate God. He’s a patient God. That He forgives iniquity, but He also will not leave the guilty unpunished.

So then the question at the end of Exodus is, what is God going to do with this people? I mean, admittedly, since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, all have sinned and fall short of His glory. And it says that God will not leave the guilty unpunished, and therefore everyone’s guilty. And the answer then comes in the book of Leviticus. That it’s through sacrifice, through sacrifice and holiness, God would dwell in the midst of his people.

And once you get to the end of Leviticus, Leviticus chapter 26 to be precise, in the end of the book of Deuteronomy, or towards the end, at Deuteronomy 28, God promises blessings for their obedience to this treaty, to this covenant, and promises curses on disobedience.

And if you look at both of those sections, which section do you think is bigger in those? Blessings for obedience or curses for disobedience? Curses. It’s painting the picture that Israel isn’t going to be faithful and that these things are going to come upon them. God’s judgment. But God still is faithful.

In fact, Moses warned Israel at the end of his life, right before they went into Canaan, before Joshua took over and they went to go conquer Canaan, he said this, Deuteronomy 4.25-31, When you become the father of children and children’s children, and have remained long in the land, and act corruptly, and make an idol in the form of anything, and do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord your God, so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today. that you will surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord drives you. There you will serve gods, the work of man’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell.

But from there you will seek the Lord your God. And you will find him if you search for him with all your heart and all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice. For why? For the Lord your God is a compassionate God. He will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which he swore to them.

After this, Joshua takes over, and Israel conquers a lot of the land, but doesn’t conquer all of it, leaving some of the Canaanites in their religion. And as a result, they fell into cycles of idolatry. They forsook this covenant. The curses for disobedience came upon them, and they went through these cycles where they would fall into idolatry, and then they would be under the yoke of a certain nation, and then they would cry out to God, and God would raise up a deliverer in the time of the judges until they had a king. Then the people wanted to be like the rest of the nations and have Saul, not God, as their king.

God used after Saul to demonstrate his power. He used David, a shepherd boy, a young man, to do great things, giving him what’s been known as the Davidic covenant or promise. That is, he would have a descendant whose reign would be forever. But David himself was a sinner, and was succeeded by his son Solomon, who was the most wise and wealthy man of the time, and he was also perfect, right? Two?

No. He fell for the trap of immorality, which led to the spread of idolatry in Israel, leading to the foolishness of his successor, and the split of Israel into the northern and the southern kingdoms, and political instability in the north and south, sooner and later respectively. So Hosea here is a prophet in the midst of this political instability, which led to Israel’s takeover by Assyria. Hosea’s ministry itself took place towards the end of Jeroboam II’s reign, which we see here even in 1.1, in the days of Jeroboam. That’s Jeroboam II. And just listen to the history here for a second.

He reigned for 42 years, and then his son Zechariah took his place. And he succeeded his father for six months before he was assassinated by Shulam. Shulam then reigned for only one month before Menahem assassinated him. Menahem reigned for 10 years and then his son, Pekiah, succeeded him. But then Pekiah was assassinated by Pekah two years later. Pekka reigned 20 years, and then was assassinated by Hosea, not Hosea, who reigned for six years, and then was sieged by the king of Assyria, who eventually overthrew Israel, that is the northern kingdom, three years after.

So you could say, yes, Hosea ministered in a time that was very politically unstable. Since Israel trespassed against God’s covenant and forsook his law, Hosea 8.1, becoming as detestable as the idols with which they worshipped, Hosea 9.10, and were bent on turning away from God, Hosea 11.7, Hosea prophesied that God was going to deliver them up into exile. And as mentioned, that was the king of Assyria that came and brought them into exile. Within this context of this book, Hosea highlights the faithfulness of God and contrast it against the unfaithfulness of Israel.

In fact, if you were to take the whole book of Hosea, you could split it up into two pretty clear sections. You could have chapter 1, verse 1, through chapter 3, verse 5, and that could be described as the metaphor. And then you could have chapter 4, verse 1, through chapter 14, verse 9, and that could be described as the meaning.

Essentially, God calls on Hosea to marry a wife that he knows will be unfaithful to him and to buy her back from slavery after she left him. And ultimately, this is likened Hosea’s unfaithful wife to unfaithful Israel, where the former broke the marriage covenant and the latter broke the Mosaic covenant. God’s anger at Israel’s unfaithfulness is demonstrated in Hosea’s pain towards the unfaithfulness of his own wife. I mean, can you imagine being Hosea?

This wasn’t intended to teach us so much about marriage as it was God’s relationship to Israel because this was a very unusual situation. I don’t know about your experience, but if you ever hear someone in maybe another church context come up to you and say, God told me we are supposed to be married.

That’s, I have one word for you. It’s run, right? Run. I mean, if anyone comes to you and says, God told them this amazing revelation of any kind, run, right? Because God’s word is sufficient. It’s all we need to equip us for every good work. Second Timothy 3, 16 through 17, right? So this is, this is different for sure. It’s an unusual situation.

Hosea has been rightly called the John of the Old Testament, teaching us about the faithful love of God. And though it is written to Israel, can also be applied within the context of the local church. Why Hosea? Why this book? Why the cleanest part of our Bible? It does teach us about the unfaithfulness of Israel, but it also teaches us something important about who God is.

That He is a faithful God and a loving God. and faithful to his promises. So we see in Hosea 1.1 there are really three areas where God’s love is demonstrated that are offensive to our human nature and our unsaved heart before salvation. The first one is that God’s offensive love is demonstrated in his authoritative word. God’s offensive love is demonstrated in his authoritative word.

We read at the beginning of Hosea 1.1, it begins by saying, the word of the Lord. Immediately, this is intentional, the authority of this text is established at the very beginning.

Now, those of us in the 21st century, Fort Collins Bible Church context, in the middle of a sermon, Providence Bible Church, might not find this offensive to us. We expect a word of prophecy to be a word from God. However, this would have been incredibly offensive to 8th century BC Israel and controversial in its context, for it condemned the culture in two different ways. First of all, it condemned Israel’s trust in the strength of foreign pagan armies rather than God. This phrase, the word of the Lord, can be compared to other similar declarations of kings back in that day.

In fact, even 2 Kings 18.28 Before the king of Assyria, or Rabshakeh, representing the king of Assyria, gave his message, he said, hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria. And that was when he was threatening Judah, the southern kingdom, with a takeover after the takeover of Israel. Israel’s trust in pagan armies relied on their own worldly wisdom, which was faulty and did not account for God’s supernatural power and promises. But not only did it condemn their trust in foreign armies, it also condemned their trust in false pagan gods over the living and true God. Israel’s trust in pagan gods was motivated not by a logical reason, even as a recent scholarship has noted, but for the temptation and attraction of an immoral lifestyle.

I mean, if you think about it, polytheism doesn’t make any sense, right? Like, who do you obey if there are lots of gods? Who do you obey, right? And more than that, you can’t have two gods, really. You can’t have two sovereigns, two in all control, all powerful, right? Because that would mean one would necessarily be more powerful than the other.

In the context in which Hosea is writing, the idolatry was Baal worship, which was a polytheistic religion. That means that there were multiple gods worshiped. And it’s just absolute lunacy, and yet it shows that the motive behind it was immorality. You can almost think of Augustine mocking Roman idolatry in his famous book, The City of God, where he was making fun of the man-made categories of man-made gods. You say the dominion of this god is over this place and this place, but what about this other god? Where does one god’s dominion end and another god’s dominion begin?

Because they’re fake, they’re not real. It’s also important to note that people become like what they worship, reflecting the morals of their God. False gods created in the image of man’s sinful nature will only lead to a greater downfall and downward spiral into further sin.

In fact, Hosea, in Hosea, God condemned Israel for becoming as detestable as the things which they loved, Hosea 9.10. Israel was called on to obey God’s law, first of all, out of an obedience that stemmed from love for the Exodus, right? In fact, before the Ten Commandments, God doesn’t start with commandments. He says, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, reminding them of his faithfulness in the past, and that it was to be in light of that, that they were to obey, not for their own righteousness before him. But God’s purpose in those laws was not primarily for health or for other reasons, but instead to be holy, as mentioned before, to be set apart and different from the pagan nations around them. Why was Israel commanded not to wear two different kinds of fabric in their clothing?

Why could they only eat animals that chewed the cud and had a split hoof? Why could they only eat sea creatures that had fins and scales? Why couldn’t they eat specific birds such as eagles and vultures and falcons or plant multiple kinds of seed in a field or even breed multiple kinds of cattle? Sorry, Lee and Lisa. Praise the Lord for the new covenant, right?

Culture is always the product of worldview. And back then, religion and society were intertwined, unlike the common misperception today that you have the secular and the sacred. No, everything comes under worldview. Commands that make unbelievers squirm, such as Israel’s destruction of the Canaanites when they would seek the promised land, had a twofold purpose.

One, it was that they were to obey God in his judgment and using them in his judgment against these nations that hated him. And two, it was also to make sure that Israel wasn’t polluted by the religious cultures of this people. The idolatrous traps that were inherent within Canaanite culture, such as Baal worship. That was why they were commanded to clear the land.

There is a direct connection between idolatry and immorality and false religion and depraved sin. The way that we can apply this to our own lives, I think, is that we see that God’s Word is offensive because its authority demands our obedience, and we do not naturally want to obey or repent of our sin.

Hosea’s ministry was a gift of God’s grace. The threat of judgment was coming, but perhaps even his warning would save some. through repentance because the judgment was imminent and would bring hope in the future promises of the restoration of Israel. And just as it was a mercy to the people in Hosea’s day, God’s word is a mercy to us today. We would be so lost without his word.

So many things, even in common grace, are built upon the word of God, such as justice, right and wrong. Logic. His word is an act of love, but the unregenerate heart hates it. And this hostility is illogical, once again, just like the idolatry. Our hostility towards God’s word is illogical, because it reveals not only how to honor him, but also what’s best for us.

But we still hate it. Why do we hate it? It’s because of our naturally spiritual dead condition, that apart from God’s resurrecting work of regeneration, the changing of our hearts will remain that way. The reason our natural, pre-unsaved selves hate God’s Word is because we love sin more than anything else.

And apart from God’s grace, we’ll remain that way. Through the power of the Spirit changing our hearts to receive the gospel, things will be the same. So the first way that God’s love is demonstrated in an offensive way to our human nature is by the authority of his word. But secondly, God’s offensive love is demonstrated in his exclusive salvation. It’s demonstrated in his exclusive salvation.

We continue reading. The word of the Lord, which came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, Now it’s interesting, there isn’t much that’s known about Hosea or Biri. All that’s known about Hosea is within the context of the book that we have. And no one really knows who his father was, much about it.

However, his name is so significant. Because if you were to translate it from the Hebrew language to the English, it means he saves or he saved. and the implication of the he being God. God saves, God saved. Pastor Ron talked about transliteration a few weeks ago, right? About words from a certain language that aren’t translated, but just brought into our language because they sound similar, not by its meaning. The same with Hosea. Hosea’s name comes from the same root word as does Joshua, which means the Lord saves.

And Jesus, the Lord saves again. Yehoshua and Yeshua. And that those names were important for their ministries as well. Joshua’s name demonstrated the importance of seeking the Lord as Israel’s salvation as they entered the promised land. And actually, his initial name was Hosea.

And it took Moses to change his name in Numbers 13.6 to be Joshua. Joseph in the New Testament was commanded to name his son Jesus because Jesus in his ministry would save his people from their sins.

And Matthew 121 reveals this. Think of the implication of that. Jesus means the Lord saves. He was to be named the Lord saves because he would save his people from their sins. The implication being that he as God the Son is the Lord coming to save the people from their sins. And Hosea’s name is significant as well, because it highlights the message that he preached, that the Lord saves.

The Lord alone is sovereign over the armies of the nations, Egypt and Assyria are not. The Lord alone is sovereign over fertility, over the harvest, and over everything, including salvation, and Baal, and El, and Ashtoreth are not. God is the source, as he reveals in Hosea, of the crop yield and wealth that Israel thinks has come from themselves or from these false gods. And there’s no pronouncement of judgments on other nations in the book of Hosea itself.

The people were condemned themselves by adopting the practices of those other nations, as well as fearing those nations over God and asking them, rather than God, for help. Israel’s solution to the vanity of trusting in those two things then, if they noticed that their gods weren’t doing anything or the nations weren’t any help, was then to work on their own external religiosity, to work on their own surface religion, that somehow they could be right and right their wrongs with good works. Instead, God rebukes their efforts by declaring that he delights in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God, that is the love of God, rather than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6.6, God condemns Israel’s idolatry by saying, Hosea 13.4, I have been the Lord your God since the land of Egypt, and you had not known any God except me, for there is no Savior besides me.

No Savior besides me. But you see, God’s exclusive salvation is so offensive to ourselves naturally, because naturally, in our sinful pride, we want to save ourselves. But if we’re honest, we can’t. Right? We can’t. No matter how much you pray, read your Bible, how much you give to the poor, how much you volunteer, how much you do this or that, and maybe the good deeds that balance out the bad deeds, or no matter how much better you are than your neighbor, all of us have sinned. All of us are guilty before God and can only be saved by His grace through Jesus Christ. None of these things save, only Christ does.

And this is just as much true today as it was in 8th century BC Israel. The external appearance of the lies of Satan have changed. They’ve adapted and they’ve evolved, but human nature hasn’t changed. You look at Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, when they sinned and they were ashamed of their nakedness, what did they do? They tied together fig leaves to create loin coverings to cover themselves, to hide themselves from God. But God was gracious, and He provided them animal skins to cover the shame of their nakedness. If you think of Abraham, right? Abraham, he always did what was right, right? He was never a sinner.

No, no. Rather than trusting God for the promise of his son to come through Sarah, he decided to take things into his own hands, right? And have a child with Hagar by his own efforts to try and obtain the promises of God by his own efforts, which proved futile.

By the time of Jesus’ day, the Pharisees had mistaken the knowledge of God and understanding of Him and salvation to be a works-based righteousness. That somehow, if they’d earned their own salvation, they might be right before God. They had made the traditions of men the commandments of God. And Jesus rebuked them by saying, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you shall not see the kingdom of God. Be perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect. That is, no one’s perfect, therefore repent.

Or if we look in the history of the Church, the Church hit a dark crescendo and the Roman Catholic Church officially apostatized when it pronounced anathema on the doctrine of justification by faith alone in the Council of Trent in the 16th century. But even today, we see this in our culture. Perhaps much of the wokeness we see is an attempt of the fallen man to fill the religious void after the rise of atheism and secularism through a works-based righteousness. That if that rise of atheism and secularism didn’t come, those same people would likely be in something like the Roman Catholic Church, trying to earn their own salvation to justify their existence through their works. Though ideologies change, adapt, and evolve, human nature doesn’t. We are no better off from our own evil, sinful inclinations than the moment sin entered into the world apart from God’s grace and salvation. The Bible proves this truth. History proves this truth. Personal experience proves this truth. I mean, after a week like this week, we have to ask, how did we get here?

How did we get to the point where a 31-year-old free speech advocate got assassinated on a college campus by a 22-year-old radical? Why is there a rainbow flag on the church down the street? Or why is the Pagan Pride Day of Fort Collins, a group that has over 1,800 followers on Facebook, why did they meet yesterday at City Park?

In some ways, it’s ideological, meaning it’s because of beliefs. It’s because of worldview being pushed. But in other ways, it’s anthropological, meaning because of who we are, human nature. It’s partially because of these beliefs and partially because of this human nature.

Because no matter what you do with the worldviews, with the beliefs, whatever, the guilt still remains. Human nature is still the same. We are still sinners. We’re not evolving or adapting or becoming better in our human nature. People try to justify themselves by their own efforts.

Woke legalism is a works righteousness worldview that permeates our culture and must be torn down with the truth of the gospel, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and that we all must repent and believe in him. Since human nature never changes, we need revival now more than ever. We need such a supernatural work of God to hit our country that would be powerful enough to wake Edwards and Whitfield from their tombs. We need a revival that would spread and raise up a generation of Luthers and Calvins, of Bunyans and Spurgeons, of Lloyd-Joneses, of MacArthurs and Sprouls to preach the gospel. Our country and Western civilization, for that matter, as Pastor Ron said, is on a collision course. At this point, it’s either revival or bust.

Not tents, not altar calls, not fake miracles or any other kind of chicanery done falsely in the name of Christ, but an authentic work of the Spirit of God to come upon the hearts of the people, rattling hell’s gates and bringing glory to God. And my fear is that the focus will be elsewhere, that we will look in other places for salvation, whether it be a faulty religious pragmatism or seeking hope in political policies or groups that compromise on important biblical truths that do not in themselves change the hearts of the people. We need to pray that God’s spirit would move so mightily that there would be another great awakening in our country. Other than that, that there is no hope.

That is the only solution. So what we see here is that there are two things already revealed that are offensive to us naturally, revealing God’s love. First of all, it’s his authoritative word. Second of all, it’s his exclusive salvation. But third of all, it’s his guaranteed judgment. We continue reading.

During the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, This list itself demonstrates God’s judgment on Israel, that is the Northern Kingdom, and Judah, the Southern Kingdom’s idolatry. It may not seem like it on the surface, but within the broader biblical and historical context, it is clear that this was a time of extreme political instability for the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And as mentioned before, Israel went through six different kings during this time of Hosea. Very unstable. The surface-level piece of Jeroboam II might have been visible, but a morally corrupted society was what was underneath.

But you see, it’s not only Israel that’s undeserving of God’s grace and mercy, but so are we, right? Basseron, you preached on that last week. Romans 8, right? God’s election of us as believers is completely and totally unconditional. It’s not like God looked down the tunnel of time and saw that we were good in our hearts. No. We all deserve his judgment, just as Israel did. That means that there was absolutely nothing appealing in us that contributed to our salvation when God saved us.

But praise him for his grace, right? God saved us not because of ourselves, but in spite of ourselves. By trusting in Christ, His righteousness is counted to us, and our sin was forgiven because it was judged on the cross, on Christ. As God revealed in Exodus 34, He was a God who was compassionate that would forgive iniquity, but He also wouldn’t leave the guilty unpunished, and that was declared at the cross, right? What was declared in word in Exodus 34 was declared in action at Calvary, right? God’s judgment, though, is despised naturally because of our own entitlement. As we see in Hosea, exile seems imminent and irreversible. Nothing seems to indicate the possibility of reversing Israel’s exile.

Yet there still is hope. All the blessings and promises of restoration of Israel, though they wouldn’t come immediately, are promised for the end days. There’s hope. In Genesis 15, when God made his covenant with Abram, And they split open the animals and they were both supposed to walk through them. Ultimately, it was only God that passed through them in His own revelation of Himself to demonstrate His promises don’t ultimately rely upon the people, but upon Him and His nature Himself. He is sovereign.

Though Israel was to be wanderers among the nations in judgment, Hosea 9.17, there would come a day when God would not execute his fierce anger or destroy Ephraim again, since he is God and not a man, Hosea 11.9. Even with the example of Hosea, it is Hosea that seeks after his wife. She’s in slavery, she can’t do anything, but Hosea out of his faithful love goes and seeks after his wife, as God would do with Israel.

Israel’s idolatrous problem could only be taken away by God’s power alone in His new covenant with them. And because of His sovereignty and His powerful dealings with Israel, this most certainly will still come to pass. Just as much as our own election as Gentile believers, God’s plan for Israel has always been part of His eternal decree and cannot be thwarted, avoided, or destroyed. Hosea has amazing promises in his prophecies that, if you read them, are incredibly encouraging, and I would recommend that.

Hosea 1.10-11, Hosea 3.4-5, but something that stands out more than anything, as it speaks in Hosea 3, it says, Afterward the son of Israel will return, after this time of exile, they will return one day and seek the Lord their God and David, that is the descendant of David, their king. and they will come trembling to the Lord and to his goodness in the last days. As Jacob prophesied in Genesis 49, the scepter would not depart from Judah. God’s promise that one of David’s descendants would have a reign that was established forever would still come to pass as he promised in 2 Samuel 7. Balaam’s oracle that a star should come from Jacob and that a scepter would rise from Israel that would crush the forehead of their enemies would come later. Indeed, the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. Christ would come and conquer sin and death at the cross, and would come again to judge the earth and rule as Israel’s promised king.

So as we close, it’s an important question to ask, but everyone should ask it here. Is God’s love offensive to you? Is it something that you naturally despise? And if so, repent and believe. Christ came for that very reason. None of us could earn our own salvation, but Jesus as God the Son came to earth, taking on humanity, lived a perfect life that you and I, we could never live. Died a death on the cross, paying the price for sin, and was raised on the third day, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, as Pastor Ron has preached on, interceding, pleading for believers, and will come back one day to judge the earth and reign as the future King of Israel.

And so if God’s love is offensive, repent. And Christ promises that if you do, if you turn to Him, He’ll never cast you out. It doesn’t matter how far you’ve gone. You’re never too far gone for Christ. He says, all that the Father has given to me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will never, ever cast out. So if you haven’t, trust in Him. And for those of us who have trusted in Him, this should humble us, recognizing that were it not for His grace, we would be worse than Israel in Hosea’s day because of the sin in our own hearts. Let’s pray.

Lord, we thank you for all the blessings that you’ve given us. Lord, for your word, your authoritative word, which guides our life and helps us understand who you are, the way of salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ, and how we might honor you with our lives. We thank you, Lord, for giving us salvation, a free gift that we receive with open hands and could never obtain by our own efforts. And Lord, we also thank you for your judgment in that it demonstrated your love on the cross. That, Lord, the judgment we rightly deserved was paid for by Christ as he satisfied your wrath on the cross.

I pray, Lord, that if there’s anyone in here who doesn’t know you, that you would draw them to yourself as Hosea went to Gomer, and that you would save them out of your faithful love as is demonstrated in the book of Hosea. We ask for a blessing on the rest of our service that it might glorify and honor you. It’s in your name we pray these things. Amen.