Title: GOD’S COMPLAINT

Focus: God’s complaint against his people Israel calls us to examine our own relationship to God.

Function: To move the people to acknowledge daily that God is our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer—the source of all blessings.

Text: Hosea 2:1-14

Marital unfaithfulness causes deep wounds in a marriage: a cheating husband, for example, severs the bond of trust in his wife; a wanton wife whacks the foundations of her marriage. It takes tremendous grace and a deep love to overcome the pain of marital unfaithfulness and heal the wounds.

And that leads us to Hosea chapter two: God commands Hosea not only to put up with unfaithful Gomer; he also asks Hosea to woo her back and love her deeply. In chapter one of the prophecy of Hosea, we learned that God equates Israel’s unfaithfulness to him as marital unfaithfulness. God sees his relationship with his people through the prism of marriage. And God uses Hosea’s marriage with unfaithful Gomer as a mirror for Israel and for us today. We must look into the mirror and probe God’s wounded heart and amazing love for us.

The overriding theme in Hosea 2:1-13 is the charge or complaint that the people of Israel are unfaithful in their relationship with their covenant God. That unfaithfulness falls in the category of idolatry and ignorance.

For example, Israel’s idolatry comes to the foreground in these verses: (vs. 10) “…I will expose her (Israel’s) lewdness before the eyes of her lovers….” Such language pertains to an adulterous relationship. God’s complaint equals the complaint of a husband spurned by his wife.

Now listen to God speaking through Hosea (vs. 13) “I will punish her (Israel) for the days she burned incense to the Baals.” Here God places his finger on the sore spot in his relationship with Israel. Israel is running after other gods; Israel is flirting with idols found among the nations surrounding Israel. The worship practices of the Philistines have corrupted the hearts of the Israelites: burning incense to Baal, temple rituals with Baal prostitutes, and lax demands from the Baals—these features lure the Israelites away from God’s law, and promises, and covenantal care. So much so that God tells us (vs. 13b) that Israel “decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot.”

Clearly, God makes it clear in his complaint against Israel that Israel’s unfaithfulness falls in the category of idolatry. It also fits the category of ignorance. How does that ignorance reveals itself in Israel? Well, listen to God’s complaint: (vs. 8) Israel “has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold—which they used for Baal” (or idol worship).

God’s people failed to acknowledge God’s daily provisions. They forgot that their material blessings (gold and silver) and their daily food (grain and wine and oil) come from God’s providential hand. Instead of acknowledging God’s creative, redemptive, and especially sustaining care, the Israelites in Hosea’s days turned to pagan gods and idolatrous temple rituals to pray for rain and successful crops.

The Israelites were suggesting in their idolatrous practices that the source of blessings in the “land of milk and honey” goes back to pagan gods rather than Yahweh--Israel’s covenant God. The worship of false gods and the ignorance or failure to acknowledge Yahweh—the God of Israel—for all its blessings make up God’s complaint.

That complaint leads us to examine our own relationship to God today. For just as the people in Hosea’s days were lured by idolatry and paralyzed by ignorance, so we too face similar dangers today.

I want to challenge us tonight with three observations which call for action on our part: #1. Be and become more aware of the gods of our age. Today we face some very obvious pagan practices: the rise of witchcraft, Druid rituals and Satan worship is turning mainstream. This week, for example, I learned that neo-pagan, American soldiers got a worship circle at their Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. On March 10 of this year, the school will officially dedicate a newly built circle of stones. All of this is done in the name of religious equality or fairness.

But pagan forms of idolatry come to us not only in blatant scenes such as Satanic rituals and dark witchcraft. It also comes to us in subtle forms enticing us: in the forms of lust and sexual immorality, for example, or in the form of monetary greed, or in political power snatching in high places.

Each one of us face temptations as Christians. We do well to become aware of our enemies and know their tactics. Reading C.S. Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters is one way to increase self-awareness of idolatry and thus to guard our relationship of trust in God alone. Be and become aware of the idols of our age and the lure of idolatry in our own hearts.

#2. Study the Scriptures and pay close attention to its teachings on the providence of God. We live in a culture and age that celebrates magnificent human accomplishments and scientific advancements. These accomplishments and advancements tend to delude us in thinking that our destiny is entirely in our own hands. For example, 40 years ago, farmers were impressed when they could harvest 80 to 100 bushels an acre. Today, with scientifically altered, hybrid kernels, farmers now are looking at 230 bushels of corn an acre.

It’s easy to loose sight of God’s providential hand today. Therefore, Christians do well to acknowledge the almighty and ever present power of God “by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.” Thus let’s acknowledge God’s hand at work in our lives.

#3. Develop a life of gratitude: It is easy to take the simple things in life for granted: good health, for example, or daily food and drink, or having and going to work, or being able to meet your bills—there’s so much that we easily take for granted. Thanking God for the small and simple things in life will lead to a spirit of gratitude. I confess that I still have a lot to learn in this area of my life. But every day God gives us new opportunities to acknowledge him as the source of all of life’s blessings.

Let’s sing, therefore, “All Things Bright and Beautiful”

Title: GOD’S RANSOM

Focus: The incredible love of God for his people shows itself in God providing redemption.

Function: To encourage the people to bask in God’s love and to put their trust in Christ, the Redeemer.

Text: Hosea 2:14-3:5

Though God is wounded and offended by the unfaithfulness of his people, God’s love for us is indeed incredibly deep. We notice from the text that God charges his people with idolatry and lack of knowledge; he warns them of punishment and tells them to get ready for exile. God’s complaint leads to God’s discipline. But exile into foreign countries and a loss of temple worship in Israel do not signify the end of the story. God’s love is incredibly deep.

In Hosea 3:1-5, for example, we notice that God woos his people back into his covenantal care. And God demonstrates his love and covenantal relationship with Israel by holding before us a mirror. God instructs his prophet Hosea with these words: “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” In other words, God woos back his people, thus showing his incredible love.

But how does God go about restoring his covenantal relationship? The answer is found in Hosea’s act of redemption. Listen (vs.2) “So I bought her (Gomer) for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley.” Hosea, then, bought back his destitute wife using coins and produce. With the purchasing power of money and barley, Hosea redeems (buys back or sets free or ransoms) Gomer from a position of bondage or slavery to her lover or pimp.

Hosea’s act of redemption reflects God’s redeeming actions in the past and foreshadows God’s intention for his people in the future. In the past, God redeemed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm (that is, with his power of pestilence, plagues, and death inflicted on the Egyptians) God set free the Israelites. He did so in the days of Moses; he did so in the days of judges and in the days of the kings of Israel. He will do it again when Israel’s days in exile will be over.

And God will do it in particular at the time when he sends his Son, the Lord Jesus, the ultimate Redeemer. Listen: (vs. 5): “Afterward” (in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, when the exile of God’s people is coming to an end) the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days.” In these words, we see a shadow pointing to the reality of Christ’s coming. For the reference to “David their king” and the reference to the “Lord’s blessings in the last days” point forward—into the far future, also into our days until the final coming of Christ.

Let’s consider God’s love in Christ Jesus. Let’s probe God’s incredible love for us as he sent his Son, the Lord Jesus into the world. From the gospel of Matthew (Mt. 20:28) we learn that Jesus “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” And in Paul’s letter to Timothy we read (I Tim. 2:6) that “…there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all men….” Clearly we must embrace the Lord Jesus as Redeemer, who embodies God’s love and leads us back to God the Father, by reconciling us with the Father.

As Hosea confronts us with God’s redemption or ransom of his people Israel, I wish to emphasize the Bible’s teaching on God’s love for us and on God’s redemption of us today in Christ Jesus.

First of all, take note of the price or cost of our redemption. Two words come to mind: Humiliation and blood. The apostle Paul points to that humiliation when he writes to the church in Philippi that although Christ (the eternal Son of God) is in very nature God, Christ “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Christmas and Lent are the two seasons in the Church that underscore the cost of our redemption: The eternal Son of God descended—took on our human nature, endured and suffered the consequences of our sins and misery, and paid the wages of our sins. How? By shedding his blood. He died that we may live. He is the Lamb of God, and by the blood of the Lamb, we are redeemed or brought back and bought back into fellowship with God. Such is the price or cost of our redemption!

Secondly, take note of the object of our redemption.

In the days of Moses, God set his people free from slavery in Egypt. What is the object of Christ’s ransom? What did he redeem us from? Listen: (Eph. 1:7) “In Christ we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins….” Jesus paid the ransom price to set us free from the guilt and misery of our sins. There is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus—so says Scripture (Rom.8).

Elsewhere we learn that Christ redeems us from the curse of the law. Listen (Gal. 3:13; 4:5) “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus….” The apostle Peter makes the same point in different words as to the object of our redemption. He says (I Peter 1:18) that “…it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ….”

And the apostle Paul puts the object of our redemption in this way, (Titus 2:14) saying that Christ “…gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” How deep the love of God our Father! How incredibly rich and beneficial the sacrificial work of Christ, our Redeemer! Do not lose sight of the object of our redemption.

Lastly, take note of the purpose of our redemption. Paul alerts us to the purpose of our redemption when he said that Christ redeemed us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own eager to do good works. We are bought with a price. We now belong to Christ. We serve him with our whole being. We acknowledge him as our Lord. We are his ambassadors in this world. We now spread God’s heavenly influence throughout our own spheres of influences: our homes, work places, our circles of family, friends, and co-workers. We are no longer ourselves, because the purpose of Christ’s redemption is to be his servants in this world.

I’m not my own; you and I belong to Christ. Bought by his blood, saved by his grace, we now serve him in the power of his Holy Spirit. Thank God for his incredible love—shown and foreshadowed in the days of Hosea, and showered upon us in this day and age.

Glory be to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.