Hosea 11:1-11 The Relentless Love of the Father

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series on the book of Hosea, A Study in God's Relentless Love.

Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

I am Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here and here we are gathered together this morning, gathered together here in this place and in this moment of time to worship our great

God in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, through the direction and power of the Holy Spirit.

I just want to point out something that's really kind of cool when you think about it. God has been pursuing us.

I don't know if you think about it that way, but God has been pursuing us. I can say that with confidence over us corporately as his church, because Jesus came down here to seek and save lost people like we were.

He came to save and rescue his church. And as the old hymn says, from heaven, he came and sought her, her being the church.

So I can say with confidence that Jesus pursues his church. I know that that's for sure. But I also say with a large degree of confidence that he's pursuing you.

He's pursuing you as an individual. And my confidence in that statement comes from your presence here.

You are not in this room by accident. We are here by the design of our

God who is calling us to trust him by faith, is calling us to obey him from our hearts, is calling us to worship him in community, and is calling us to serve one another in love.

This morning, we're going to be looking at an Old Testament prototype of the parable of the prodigal son that Jesus told.

And I consider that Jesus was aware of this account from Hosea when he told that story in the

New Testament. But it's okay if you're not very familiar with the prodigal son. And when I say that, it doesn't mean anything to you, that I can give you a snapshot view of that story.

Jesus told the story of a young man who basically spurned his father and said, in essence,

I wish you were dead, but can I just have my inheritance now? And if you just give me the money, I'd like to run off and live my life because I know better than you, so I'm going to go live my life the way that I want to.

He did so. Father gave him the money. He leaves, and he goes off and squanders all of his inheritance on wild and crazy living, as you can imagine, that somebody, a young man could spend his money.

And he does so, and it devolves all the way to the point where his money is gone, his friends are all gone, he's in a foreign land, he's not doing very well, and has no money to his name.

And he takes up working at a pig farm, which, as a Jew, is a big, gross no -no.

And so, he's working at a pig farm, and he says, and the thought comes to his mind, I wonder how my dad's doing, and I wonder if he would take me back.

And, of course, in that story, the father does indeed take the son back and runs to him and embraces him and forgives him of his sins, and that's the image there.

Now, there's an older son in that story, too. There's not necessarily in this Hosea accounting of this, but that's the prodigal son in a nutshell, the

God who will take us back. And Jesus was aware of the history of Israel with God when

He told that story, and He's very aware of this passage in Hosea 11. And the picture of a father tenderly raising up a son, only to have that son reject him, to then restoring that son back home, is a common theme.

And it's expressed here in our passage in Hosea chapter 11. Hopefully, this week serves as a bit of a reprieve from the prophetic fatigue that you might be feeling and experiencing.

Hosea being a book that's just wave after wave after wave of judgment and indictment and sentencing for sin and kind of heavy things.

But this one is a little bit, it's kind of unique in the middle of this prophetic book. Hosea 11 shines a spotlight on the tender heart of God toward His people, even toward us.

I think that our world has a skewed view of God, and there might be a whole bunch of reasons why, and maybe some of it is what we convey and communicate.

But I think that it's important for us to acknowledge that our God, the Almighty, is not a sadistic, wrathful

God, delighted in death and destruction. And the world kind of thinks of Him that way. But we know, even according to the

Old Testament, God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and mercy. We need that reminder regularly in our walk with God, because it will quite likely be a recurring source of doubt surrounding the life of faith.

How many of you have encountered some things in your life that was like, is God good? Like you've just had to actually literally ask that question, is

God good? That question can sometimes overwhelm us when we suffer loss. Even Satan, by the way, knows this, the evil one knows this, and betrayed a common strategy, betrayed himself really by showing us a common strategy in the book of Job, as he pointed out the blessings that Job had experienced as a likely cause of his worship.

Take everything from him, says the evil one, and he will cease to worship you.

So see if you can trace the movements of God in this text. I'm going to be reading it here in a moment, and I'd encourage you to follow along and listen and see if you can see this.

From God raising up His son Israel, see if you can identify when things take a turn and the son begins his season of rebellion, and then watch the heart of God conflicted as he eventually chooses to restore and to not utterly destroy, choosing to leave a remnant of his people who will in the end respond to his call and come running to him.

All of this study, the sermon series on Hosea, has been talking about God's relentless love.

It's not always comfortable. His love is not always giving us everything that we think we want or everything that we think we need, just like a good father doesn't give cotton candy to his kids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 10 years, right?

Like you just can't do that. You do occasionally, but you don't do it all the time, right? You don't always give your kids everything that they ask for, and there's a good reason for that.

But hear me carefully, church. God does love His people. Amen? He does.

And He will one day roar like a lion in the east and draw all of His people, drawing all of His people to Himself, and we will be home with Him forever.

That's where the text is going to end. So let's open our Bibles or your Scripture journals or your devices to Hosea chapter 11.

We're only going to read 1 through 11. Verse 12 really goes with chapter 12, and we'll talk about that next week.

So Hosea chapter 11, starting in verse 1 through verse 11, recasts God's holy word, what

I am confident that He wants to communicate to us this morning. Follow along and respect it and see if you can get the flow, see if you can see the story kind of recapitulated in this.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can

I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me.

My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger.

I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

They shall go after the Lord. He will roar like a lion. When He roars, His children shall come trembling from the west.

They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the

Lord. Let's pray as Dave and the band comes to lead us. Father, I thank you.

Thank you. I thank you for your grace and your mercy. I thank you for the way that you call your people, the way that you have been so kind.

What we deserve and what is real over our lives as your children is just shocking.

We who deserved your judgment, we who have rebelled against you time and time again, we who have tested the boundaries of your grace, we have tested your mercy time and time again, and you continue to hold us.

You continue to promise a restoration to your children. You promise that a day is coming when King Jesus will arrive with a shout of trumpets, and we will respond.

We will respond as we were designed to and made to, to heed the call of our King and to go to be with Him forever.

We look forward to that day and right now we live in this messy, murky world where just even our own morality confuses us.

The things that we value are not always evident in our lives, and the things that we say we love we have a hard time pursuing, while the things that we hate and despise and know that you hate and despise are often the very things that come out of our mouths and are the very actions of our lives.

Father, I pray that in this intermediate time we would continue to have a life of confession and repentance, while having great delight and joy in the knowledge of our salvation being secured in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice for us.

I thank you that you are a God who pursues your people like a father pursuing a son who's gone astray, but you are eager for us to run back to you.

Father, I thank you for that, and I ask that that would fuel that very nature of that that pursuit, and your relentless love would be the fuel of our worship this morning.

We've got a lot of people who have come here arguing in the car on the way here, some people just heavy loads on their shoulders right now, and difficulties that they faced this past week.

It seems like wave after wave. Some of us carry little petty annoyances in our hands right now.

I pray all everything, everything, everything that would war against you would fade into the background, and we would come to you with hands full of these things, and we would leave here with empty hands and rejoicing because we know that the eternity that you have for us melts away the concerns of the day.

I thank you for the hope that we have that you're going to fix this all in the end in Jesus' name. So the band for leading us,

I'm always grateful for them, and I encourage you to get comfortable and reopen to Hosea chapter 11, and having your

Bible open in front of you is just going to help you to be able to focus on the things that I'm saying are coming from this text. We're taking off these first 11 verses here of chapter 11, and I want to start off by stating what

I think all of us know to be true, and that's that capital G God is not like the lower G gods. Capital G God is not like the gods because the gods are made by humanity.

They're fictional, and they're made up by us, and God is not like humanity in any way.

In our fallenness, we are corrupt in our attempts at justice. We are selfish in our greatest loves.

We are fragile in our egos. We are hypocritical in the stern and harsh and severe nature of our judgment over others.

Do you know what I'm talking about? We can be pretty quick to judge. Anybody? I'm the only one. I think a lot of us would say we can be pretty quick to judge others.

And our text follows the history of God's relentless love in pursuing His old covenant people.

God has been patient with Israel down through the generations, even as they have continued to reject Him and continue to reject

His love, going after the other gods, going after the nations. And in our text, God will speak of His experience using the very common and familiar metaphor of a loving

Father. Now, we're taught by Jesus to pray to Him as Father. We are taught to think of Him through Scripture as Father.

Through the parable of the prodigal son, He is the Father in that story, and the likenesses, we are like the sons in that story.

And again, this passage has the same vibes as that prodigal son's story, and I just give you the reference for that.

A good place to turn for that is Luke chapter 15, verses 11 through 32. Sometime this week, I would discourage you from doing it while I'm talking.

You might miss some of the things that God wants to say to you here, but I would encourage you to go back and read that this week and see the parallels there in Luke 15, 11 through 32, with this account here of God and His Old Testament people in Hosea 11.

This reminds me that God has always been about saving a corporate people together. This Hosea passage is about the people of God, and what

God is doing in the New Testament is about the people of God as well. And the pattern of His relentless love toward a people that are returning to Him is the same in the

Old Covenant as it is in the New Covenant. He pursued them in love, and He is now pursuing

His church, us, in love as well. So our outline follows the historical work of God with His people, and we're looking at the

Old Testament, but man, it is very easy to apply this passage to us here today in the

New Testament era under a new covenant of His grace. But man, there's a lot of parallels here. So the first movement in the text is

God's TLC, His tender loving care, verses 1 through 4. The rebellious years, verses 5 through 7.

And then the promised return, verses 8 through 11. Again, a pretty good outline of the parable of the prodigal son, and a good outline of chapter 11 of Hosea.

So our text begins with God's tender loving care for Israel. The passage contains some of the most tender descriptions of God's love for His people found in the

Old Testament. And it's interesting to find it in the middle of a book that exists to warn them of His impending judgments,

His impending discipline, their impending invasion and exile by the Assyrians. But I just want to point out that this is exactly what sin does.

Sin breaks relationships. It destroys things. It is a wrecker and a destroyer of all love and all good things.

And so how in the world in the middle of this book about impending judgment can God be talking about His love for them?

And it's because He genuinely loves them. But sin is indeed a barrier. Sin wrecks real relationships.

A husband and wife that once stood by an altar and said forever, I've observed them over the years multiple times, fight tooth and nail over resources and the kids as they plunge headlong into divorce.

A mother refuses to speak to her own daughter for years. And some of you could testify to stories that you know about that happening.

I've encountered it myself over the years. And people wave their one finger salute out car windows at complete strangers despite the fact that both of them are having a really bad day, right?

Nobody stops to say, are you having a bad day? I just noticed it. No, no. We just belligerently go through our days sinning and breaking relationship even with those we barely have a relationship with to begin with.

So, we start here with a father -son metaphor in the text when Israel was a child, and you see that there in the text right away in verse 1 of chapter 11.

Israel was a young child and God loved him and called his son out of Egypt. Now, that's a phrase that's actually that calling his son out of Egypt is a phrase that's used in the

New Testament. This is actually quoted in the New Testament Gospels for Jesus. And the

New Testament wants us to notice something that's pretty simple. It's not crazy profound, but there's a parallel at the start of both of the covenants, the

Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Both involved God's care over his son calling him out of Egypt.

In the Old Covenant, he called Israel his metaphorical son out of slavery in Egypt.

In the New Covenant, he called his literal son, Jesus Christ, as a young child out of Egypt where he spent many years in exile with earthly parents.

So, in one sense, Israel was a political exile to Egypt and enslaved there.

Jesus was also a political exile in Egypt and he was brought out just like the Israelites were brought out.

And that's what the New Testament quotes this passage in light of that wanting to draw that parallel.

But, Hosea didn't, I don't think Hosea knew any of that from his perspective. He was writing what he was writing by the direction of the

Holy Spirit and it's obviously used now in the New Testament to clarify some of those other things. But his point of recording this for us is the tender love of God in his response to the cry of his people under the heavy burden of slavery in Egypt back in the

Exodus. And there's some parallels to the Exodus story in this love that God has for his people.

You see, God's love for Israel was shown by his deliverance and rescue of them out of Egypt.

But he loved them before he even did those things. And I think it's important for us to wrap our mind around he did this for them in the

Exodus. But long before that, he chose Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to be the foundation of a people that he said he would love and that he would further bless all the nations through the offspring of these guys.

But consider that God's love and salvation of people flows out of his rescue and salvation flows out of his love.

Where does it come from? What character quality of God most expresses and defines how he saves or why he saves or that he saves.

And it is his love, his love expressed is what causes our salvation.

The very foundation and bedrock of our salvation is found in God's love.

And it's impressive when you think about it because we have rejected him. Humanity as a whole has rejected him, but we've all played our part.

We've all done our things. We've all done this stuff in thumbing our nose at the Almighty. We have all to a person sinned against the

Holy God. And that makes him, it's good for us to think this way, it makes him the offended party in our sin.

Like we have offended him. He is the one who is the victim of our sin. He is the one that we have affronted when we sin.

And yet our rescue starts with his tender compassion and love for us.

How often in your relationships that you're the offended party, the other person has sinned against you, and you're the first one to make the first move.

I just love you. You just go up and give him a hug, right? That's what God is doing here. That's not natural for us, is it?

They sinned against me. How many times have you put your foot down and said, I'm right and you're wrong. But here

God, the offended party extends love and grace to us. And that's where his salvation begins.

Keeping with the theme of young children, verse two tells us that the more that God called them, the more that they ran away.

Look at verse two. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the bales and burning offerings to idols.

The picture and image here is a common picture that I've seen at the grocery store. I've seen it all different kinds of places. I've seen it play out in my own backyard when my kids were little.

Picture a toddler laughing with glee as his dad is chasing him and saying, come back here. And the more that dad calls, what does the child do?

Run faster, try to get away, right? And it's, there's giggles involved in that. And there's sometimes laughter and there's sometimes cuteness.

It's mildly cute, right? Like when you see that it's less cute when it's your own kid. Okay. Right. But it's still mildly cute.

It's a little less cute if the kid is trying to run out in the road, right? Little less cute. And it's even a lot less cute if it's a 20 year old doing the running while dad is pleadingly calling him to come back, right?

Little less cute there. And it even gets much more stern and severe when it is the Almighty pleading and calling with warnings and deep concern for the impending judgment of His people.

Boy, that illustration started cute, but it didn't end that way. They want to run away from Him and He is calling them back to Him because He is where safety is found.

He is the only place of safety for a human soul that has been in rebellion against Him, that is sinned against Him.

He is the only place where reconciliation can take place. And so He calls and calls and calls, but they keep running.

What do they run to? They run to the bails. They run to pornography. They run to alcohol. They run to all kinds of things their own way, doing things their own way, to their own business dealings with the nations and all kinds of things that are grabbing them.

And I want to point out God is not a big meanie in His call when He says to you, come back to Me. That's not meanness.

That is His love. He is a loving Father who knows that our fundamental need is a saving relationship with Him.

Reconciliation with Him is the fundamental need of every human heart. And without heeding

His call and without responding as He calls us to come back to Him, then if we keep running and we keep running and we keep running,

He will eventually let us go into the arms of our other loves to our own destruction.

Have you seen that poll in your life? Destructive things calling to your heart, calling you away from the

Almighty as He says, come back to Me. Don't run so far. There's fast traffic out in that road.

Come back to Me, pleads the Almighty. But He will let us go into the arms of our other loves if we persist.

To be apart from God in the end, to be running from Him in the end, is to be under His righteous judgment, and that is rightly defined as hell.

To be allowed to go our own way as He has pled and pled and pled for us to come to Him.

He keeps calling. They keep running away like the prodigal son. And yet He was the one…

This is beautiful in its pictures of tenderness and love, the tender loving care of the

Father. He was the one who taught them to walk in the first place. The way verses 2 and 3 come together make a poignant statement.

I taught them to walk, He says, and then as soon as they were proficient, they walked away.

Or another way to state that, I taught them to walk, and they walked out on Me. And again, the tenderness of a father holding his young child up by the arms, trying to teach them to walk, is the image of verse 3.

You can see it and look at it there. And then further He goes on, when they fell or face -planted, God says,

I was the one who healed you. I was the one who picked you up and scraped you off. I was the one who…

Back in the… Anybody? I'm old enough to have… I've got the iodine treatment. Anybody?

Raise your hand if you got the iodine treatment. Does anybody even know what I'm talking about? That stuff burns. It's like worse.

I'd rather get in another bike accident than have iodine put on those cuts, okay? Anyways, so I don't know how…

That's not in my notes, but He's the one who applied the iodine. He's the one who gave them the band -aid.

He's the one who has fixed them up. And what parent in this room cannot remember healing and fixing up your kid after they stumbled and scruffed their knee or stayed up all night with them sick?

Those are not fun nights. Most kids don't even remember those nights or those band -aids and often do not give thanks for those things.

And here, He's tapping into something that all of us fundamentally know, and that's that we're not very grateful people. We're not very thankful.

And He says, I healed them. I fixed them. I taught them to walk, and they have not come back to Me in thanks.

And spiritually, metaphorically, God has healed His people, has He not? He has restored them.

He has restored us. He has drawn us close. And His people have not given Him, as of Hosea, have not given

Him an ounce of credit for the way that He has blessed them and healed them. So let's pause here for a moment and just put it into application.

We can do this right now. I love it when there's an immediate thing that we can do from the pages of Scripture.

And right here, right now, in the quiet of your heart, I encourage you to literally do this. Give thanks to God for loving you.

If you've experienced salvation in His Son, Jesus Christ, thank Him for calling you. Thank Him for taking you up in His arms, and thank

Him for healing you. Thank Him now. Thank Him tomorrow. Never get over thanking

Him. And make your entire life an ongoing thank you for rescuing me and calling me into your family.

If He is indeed your Heavenly Father through faith, then our love must begin with thankfulness for what

He has done for us in the past, that gives us strength and purpose in the present, and hope for the future.

Amen? Give Him thanks. Give Him thanks. Give Him thanks. As His people grew,

He says further, there's other things in His tender love that He has offered to His people. He led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love.

Now, the idea of leading people by a leash has made many want to break out of the metaphor of a father and son into an animal metaphor, some kind of farming thing or whatever in verse 4.

And it certainly does indeed use the word yoke in the Hebrew language here, which is a farming implement. But I think that it begins to confuse things if we jump and skip metaphors.

I think God is saying something more profound here in verse 4 about the way He grows and leads His people.

He leads His people with kindness. He guides and leads us chained by His love.

Now, does God capture people? Does God enslave people? Is that a bit of an extreme statement to say

God enslaves people, He captures them, and then leads them by a leash? Church, I would tell you our

God has captured me. Our God has chained me. He has enslaved me. And He has enslaved me to Himself.

But hear me carefully, the leash is His kindness. The chains are

His powerful and unshakable, relentless love toward me. Why am I bound to Him?

Why am I glad to be enslaved to Him? Because the thing that holds me to Him is

His love. It is His mercy. It is His grace. It is His kindness that binds me to Him.

Are you getting it? And I'm convinced that that doesn't seem at all an extreme metaphor if you are

His. If you're His, you're like, I'm gladly His. I am glad for Him to lead me.

I am glad that He doesn't let me go. I'm glad that He holds me firmly on a cord that He will not let me get far from Him.

Amen? I'm grateful for that. The chains that He leads us with, the cords that bind us to Him, are

His unshakable and relentless love and His tender kindness toward us.

Are you being led by His kindness? Are you chained to Him by His love? And are you okay with that?

I believe that if you're His, you'll be great with that. You see, in His love and in His kindness,

He has lightened our load, hasn't He? The truly burdened life is one without freedom in Christ.

But for Israel, He lightened their burdens by literally freeing them from slavery in Egypt, taking the yoke of slavery from their shoulders.

But for us, He has set us free from slavery to sin. Amen? At the end of verse 4, there is a reference to what is likely

His feeding of His people, manna in the wilderness, bending down, stooping down to feed them.

And now Jesus feeds us now in this new covenant spiritually in His body and in His blood. Each week we participate in the

Lord's Supper. And we do so as a reminder of the sustaining work of His sacrifice, of His body for us.

We remember that with taking a cracker and the sustaining gift of His blood shed, and we commemorate that with a cup of juice.

But we're reminded that it is only in our partaking of Him, Jesus, and His saving work that we are spiritually healthy and spiritually nourished.

He has indeed stooped down to feed His people. And those who drink of that life -giving fountain will never thirst again, and those who eat of the bread of life will never hunger again, spiritually speaking.

God's tender, loving care over His people is extraordinary. It's amazing.

It's incredible. And I'm sure you could heap on some adjectives there. It's nearly unimaginable what He has given in order to win your heart and mind.

Do you know that? What He has given to win your heart. It's extraordinary.

And then we rebel. And then we rebel. Verses 5 -6 show the next movement of Israel in the story of their relationship with God's love.

It highlights the rebellious years in verses 5 -7. See, Israel refused to return to the

Lord their God. Look at the end of verse 5 to see it. They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to Me.

They don't want God to lead them, and so they have run to Assyria and Egypt for aid. But God directly states that they will not be going back to Egypt.

No, you're not going back to slavery there. They probably go, whew. No, but you will be in Assyria. Assyria will be your new daddy.

Well, God led them with cords of kindness and bonds of love. I wonder what kind of cords Assyria used when they chained the young men of Israel together and force -marched them across the wilderness into exile.

Do you think they bound them with love? Do you think they bound them with kindness? And church, this is a good point to ask you.

What cords does your sin bind you with? Grace and mercy and kindness and all kinds of frivolity and fun and rejoicing?

I don't believe it for a second. Alcohol is a terrible taskmaster. Pornography and sexual sin is a terrible taskmaster.

Do you know what I'm talking about? The gossip, the gluttony, whatever it is that grabs a hold of your life and won't let go.

Lying. Maybe you're a perpetual liar and that's what draws you in. It does not bind with kindness.

It doesn't enslave you with love. It enslaves you to your destruction.

It is harsh. Their rebellion is made clear by God's tender loving care and their ongoing refusal to return.

And so, he keeps calling. They keep running. Running to pagan gods. Running to foreign nations for aid and protection.

Israel knows better, you know, and they think they know better than their father. What does father really know?

I can figure this out on my own, says Israel. I don't need anyone to tell me what to do.

God, you're not the boss of me. And so, the quite natural consequence of choosing

Assyria over God is that Assyria will come with a sword to rage against the city, and the sword will actually find its way into the city through the bars, the text tells us poetically.

The rebellion of God's people is spoken of frequently as turning away from him. You can see that in verse 7.

My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.

Turning away from God involves often a turn to something else. People don't give up God without something else drawing them.

And the way that verse 7 hits in the Hebrew language has Eugene Peterson in his translation saying this, my people are hell -bent on leaving me.

Like, there's this one focus, got to get away from God. Israel's committed to a trajectory away from the

Almighty, and consider for a minute whether or not a person can pretend to be with God, but actually be running from him.

I don't think that everybody who is running from God looks like they're running from God. Do you know what I'm talking about? You can't see it on the outside, but a person can be running from God, and we wouldn't know it.

And that's why I have to ask you, because I don't really know what's true of you, and there's many of you here. Is the trajectory of your life bent toward God, or are you drawn away from him?

Which is stronger? What's the pull in your life? You see, God is a magnet, drawing or repelling.

He's a magnet. His power and his authority and his call to people is going to have an impact.

In sin, if sin is the operating function of your life, if it is the center of who you are, you will indeed feel repelled by God's holiness and his justice.

Fearing him, running from him, hiding from him, denying him, ignoring him.

But in Christ, the one who is in Christ will be drawn to him. Will be drawn to him.

Now, all of us have sin, so you're going like, what is this push and pull? And you've experienced it. How many of you would raise your hand right now and say,

I've experienced push and pull in my life in regard to my relationship with God and sin? Sometimes pulled towards sin, sometimes pulled towards God.

What's that all about? All of us have sin, and so only those who have Christ will be drawn to him, simply because we know he will receive us back in his love and mercy.

Keep running back to Jesus. If you have Christ, his grace is greater than all your sin.

His draw is more powerful than the repelling power of sin. And in Christ, the

Christian will keep being drawn back into relationship with the Father. Coming back in repentance. Reconnecting through confession.

Not that you've never sinned, but that you are drawn back quickly by that cord of love and that the bonds of mercy and the bonds of his grace and kindness.

Drawn back to repentance. Reconnected through confession. Being cleansed from all unrighteousness, as 1

John 1 .9 tells us. His kindness and love draws his people, while his call repels those who want to remain in rebellion against him.

Do you get it? Some drawn, some repelled. And the difference isn't sin, because we all have sin.

The difference is Christ. We don't all have Christ. But those who have Christ, drawn to him. And this section, spelling out the rebellion of Israel here, ends with a chilling result that needs some explanation, because it sounds a little counter to something

I just said. I'm talking about running to him, running to him, calling out to him, crying out to him. And he says, here, I'm going to, you can cry out to me, but I'm not going to pay attention to you.

What verse is that in? It's in there. It's in there.

Did somebody have it? Oh, verse 7. Yeah. My people, thank you. Thank you for rescuing me.

My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.

What in the world is going on there? I wrestled with those words this week a lot, because I would encourage any and all who are caught up in their sins to run to Jesus.

How many of you would say, you're caught up in sin, run to Jesus. You're caught up in sin, cry out to Jesus. Well, here he says,

I'm not going to pay, I'm not going to pay attention to you. Well, what's that about? And I would say, if you genuinely cry out to him, asking him to save you, that he will.

And I believe that firmly, still, even reading this passage, you go, Don, are you disagreeing with Scripture? Let me explain. We have to understand what's going on here in Hosea, where his people will reach a point of rebellion in which they call out to him, and he refuses to answer them.

And he says, I won't even lift you up. I won't raise you up. I mean, the image is like out of the mire and the crud that your life is surrounded with.

And he's got my attention here. Like, is there a point where I can sin so much that he won't listen to me anymore?

Anybody? I got anybody's attention with that? What is this calling out to him that he will not respond to?

Because I got to know. I got to know because I don't want to get there. And I believe this is calling out is like where Jesus talks about many on their last day will say,

Lord, Lord, look at our resume. Look at all the great things that we did. Look at, we did this and this and this. And he's going to say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity and wickedness.

I never knew you. And that's going to be from people who are seeking forgiveness.

I rather are not seeking forgiveness, but are merely seeking deliverance. Save me from these circumstances is not equal to save me from my sins.

Do you hear the difference? Save me from these circumstances is not the same as save me from my sins.

The content of the cry matters. Crying out, put food in my empty cupboards,

God, is not the same as crying out, forgive my rebellion against you. Hear the difference? Many foxhole conversions are not conversions at all.

They are attempts to apply a pagan transaction with the almighty. What do I mean by foxhole conversion? Some of you might not be familiar with that phrase.

It's, it's the guy on the battlefield who says, if you get me through this battle, I will give my life to you.

Right? You, you change my circumstances and that's transactional. Is that the way that salvation works? Is that the way that God works?

Hey, if you give me this, I'll give you that. Not at all. Now, a side note on that.

God works in mysterious ways and some foxhole conversions actually ultimately result in lead to salvation.

Apparently Martin Luther, not Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Luther, the great reformer back in the middle ages was caught out in the open during a horrendous thunderstorm.

Now back then, I would have thought that would be terrifying. Like middle ages, you're not even sure what the heck is going on. Like thunderstorm, what is that?

Is that the gods are angry throwing stuff at you or whatever. And he's out in the middle of a trip. And I mean, it's kind of scary right now.

Like if you're out on the golf course and like all of a sudden a thunderstorm comes up, has that happened to anybody? And it's just like, okay,

I got to get someplace other than where I'm at right now. Right? And that's the way it was for Martin Luther. And so he was in the middle of the thunderstorm and he fell down on his face with a particularly close bolt of lightning.

And he fell on his face and he bargained with God. And he said, if you deliver me, I will become a monk. And God delivered him and he became a monk.

He actually made good on it. But it was a subsequent work of God in Luther's life, studying the book of Romans as a monk, because God delivered him from the storm, that led him to grace and a new spiritual birth.

But it was subsequent to that, that he came to faith in Christ as a result of reading the book of Romans and actually recognizing righteousness comes from God, doesn't come from ourselves, and accepting that righteousness given to him by Jesus Christ.

God can use whatever he wants to rescue a life, but not everyone who cries out for deliverance from bad circumstances will receive a response from God.

While I'm convinced that everyone who cries out to God and hear me carefully, I'll state this again. I'm convinced that everyone who cries out to God for deliverance from their sins while requesting

Jesus to be their Lord will be raised up. He will be raised up.

And I'm convinced of that. I'll go to the fence on that. That anyone, anyone, anyone who cries out to God and says, forgive me my sins, rescue me from my sins, and be the

Lord, and take over my life, he will respond. He will save. He will rescue.

No one is outside of the bounds of that. But I'm telling you, not everybody who says, save me from this thunderstorm, save me from this windstorm, save me from this, is going to be saved from that.

You know what I'm saying? Rescue me from my sins. That's a good prayer to ask. But in this final description of the relationship between God and Israel, he says, even if they cry out for deliverance from their circumstances,

I will not respond. And I just want to point out, God did respond to the prodigal son and ran to him and embraced him.

But I want to point out the change of heart that is often missed in that account, as if God will just come running to anybody, any sinner who says, oh, my food's run out, and I got to work with these pigs, and I'm not very comfortable with it, and so I'll just go back and get on dad's dole.

That's not his heart. The prodigal son rehearses his speech to his father, and we get it recorded for us in Jesus's story.

And that rehearsal includes these words in Luke 15. Beautiful words of repentance. Beautiful words of coming back.

Father, this is what he says. He's rehearsing. He's literally on the road, walking to be back with his dad, and he's not even sure if dad's going to take him back.

Like, he has thumbed his nose at his father, taken the family wealth, and squandered it on loose living.

And he's on his way back, and he says to his father, rehearsing to himself, father, I've sinned against heaven and before you.

I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.

What we see in this rehearsal and intent of his heart is acknowledgement of sin, repentance, humility, and hope for gracious restoration.

And all of those are part of saving faith. Our God is so incredibly gracious, so incredibly loving, and we see this in verses 8 through 11, where we see an astounding promise of the restoration of his rebellious wayward people, the promised return in verses 8 through 11.

Verse 8 shows God wrestling in his compassion and in his justice. Look at it. How can I give you up,

O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Adma? I'm going to talk about that here in a minute, and Zoboam.

How can I treat you like them? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender.

God is just, and he cannot overlook sin. God is compassionate and finds no joy in the death of the wicked, and we see that tension clearly expressed here in verse 8.

There's a tension that's built, kind of like an emotional interplay in God, and he says, how can

I quit on you, Ephraim? How can I hand you over to utter destruction, Israel? How can

I flatten your cities like Adma and Zoboam? And you're like, oh yeah, now I get it. Oh, you're bringing them up.

Are you serious? Now, you probably don't have a clue, and I didn't really either. I know. I'm like, I've heard those cities.

I just don't know where. Well, you have two. These are two cities in the plain near the Dead Sea that were destroyed along with the utter decimation of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Most of us thought, oh, just Sodom and Gomorrah had fire rained down on them. Nope. Adma and Zoboam as well, and the emphasis is this.

In the complete and utter removal of the people of God, he's highlighting that he does not want to decimate them like he decimated

Sodom and Gomorrah and Zoboam and Adma. You see, of those cities, there's nothing left.

There's not even ruins. There's nothing left of Zoboam. There's nothing, no evidence of Adma.

We know the location. We know the general area where they would have been. There's just no ruins there. There's no evidence that there was ever civilization there.

They're likely, by the way, considered to probably be under the waves of the Dead Sea right now.

Nobody is alive today who can say, my lineage comes through Zoboam. No one.

Not a soul. Nobody survived that. No 23andMe result is going to identify you as a descendant of the

Admonites because there are no descendants of the Admonites. The thought of, and here's what we need to understand about our

God because when we're reading Scripture, we're learning about him. We're identifying who he is, and he's showing us.

He's showing us what he desires to communicate to us here in the middle of a book about his judgment and his discipline of his people.

The thought of eradicating and completely ending the line of his old covenant people causes God's heart to recoil here.

The thought is repugnant to the Almighty who loves them with a tender, loving care even from their youth.

And within his heart, he says, a tender, compassionate warmth is growing there.

For who? For who does his heart grow tender?

For whom is the compassion boiling up in him? For rebels.

For sinners against him. For those who have taken their inheritance and spurned the love of their father and headed off to Assyria.

People who have sacrificed their children to Molech. People who love cult prostitution at the shrines of Asherah more than they love their creator.

And to these, and to these, to people like this, his compassion grows warm in his heart.

In verse 9, we see that he will not execute on his utter destructive wrath.

He will not end the line of his people because he is God and not a man. I'm pretty funny in strange phrase, especially with the way that we conceive of God and we conceive of ourselves.

He says, I'm the Holy One. And while he will indeed come in discipline, he will not come in his completely devastating eradicating wrath.

You see, I am convinced that this statement doesn't, isn't going to resonate with all of us and it's going to actually be a challenge for us to think it through, but we give up and dole out wrath quicker than God.

We give up on each other quicker than God gives up on each other. And some of you are like, oh,

I'm a pretty merciful person. It might not sound right to you. You might have in your mind a conception of God being more angry than you, being more mean -spirited than you, being more judgmental than you, but I'm not convinced.

I'm going to stick with scripture that says, he's not a person like you. He's able to have more patience.

He's able to have more kindness. He's able to have more grace than you. And you go, wait a minute,

Don. I've never judged people. Like I've never rained down fire on people. You think of yourself as more gracious than him.

And yet you will never be patient with anyone. Harry, this is, this is true and not something you've thought about probably. You will not be patient with anyone for more than a hundred years.

You will not be patient with anybody more than a hundred years, because you won't live that long.

And yet God for centuries, exhibiting patience toward generation after generation of his people.

I can be tempted, I'll just betray a little bit of my own personal makeup. I can be tempted to judge people in just 60 second interaction at a restaurant or at Walmart or on the highway.

Anybody with me? Especially those places. The highway,

Walmart or a restaurant where we interface with our culture in such a way that we can cast judgment quickly.

And this is as gruesome as this is to lean into, I want to state it. If any one of us were forced to stand by and observe a single child sacrifice to the terrifying demon god of Molech, we would rightly assign condemnation immediately.

And he saw them all. God observed everyone. He was always there every time.

And yet he says, I know what you were made to be. I raised you up and taught you to walk.

I've healed you and loved you from your inception. And I'll wait just a little while longer with my grace.

Just a little while longer with my mercy. A little while longer hoping that some of you will repent.

As God, as God, the Almighty has a God -sized capacity for patience.

And to that I want to hear an amen. A God -sized capacity for patience.

Have you seen it? Has He been that patient with you? How many times have you confessed the same identical same sin?

Daily, often, regularly. I am so grateful for His patience and His kindness.

God here gives hope for the future of His people in verses 10 and 11. And this has both a near -term and a long -term fulfillment.

His people, God's people, will once again go after the Lord. There's a day coming, according to verse 10, when they will go back after Him.

They will turn away from these sins and they will run to Him. A day is coming, says Hosea, when He will roar like a lion and all

His children shall come swiftly, trembling from the west. And they shall tremble in awe and wonder before Him.

They will fly like birds out of the lands of their exile, like doves flying from Assyria, like birds migrating from Egypt.

And they will migrate home to Him. His people migrating home to Him.

Now, certainly this has in it the image of the return, a very earthy and real return out of exile from Assyria and Babylon under Nehemiah and Ezra and Haggai, these books in the later in the

Old Testament and their contemporaries. And there will be a real return from exile that's pledged and promised to God's people.

But there is absolutely zero doubt that we are meant to experience a bit of a catch in our throat as we read about the lion roaring a call to His people and the people of God running from the west to join

Him home for eternity. Church, a day is coming when

God's people will be swift to respond to His call. Those who have run from Him will run to Him. Israel has refused

His call. The more He called, the more they ran away to worship other things. But there is a day coming, church.

There is a day coming when His trumpet will blare and His voice will call and the lion of the tribe of Judah will have

His kingdom and rule with justice and mercy over His redeemed people forever and ever and ever and ever and evermore.

The prodigal will return from the graves, from the sea, from the land, and those alive will be caught up with Him and they will be home with their

Lord forever. Amen and amen. The story of the people of Israel is recapitulated in us, church,

His new covenant people. He has made us, He has called us, and we have responded.

I hope you have responded. He has taught us to walk. He has sustained us and fed us, and He has healed us.

We are indeed rebels at heart, but He will indeed discipline us. But in His tender compassion,

He will not ever give up on His people. And one glorious day,

He will call and we will respond and we will be with Him in His glorious home forever and ever without sin, without death, without tears, without mourning, without suffering ever again.

This is meant to be life -sustaining, love -inciting fuel for our lives of obedience this week.

Are you thankful for His tender love toward you? Application one to this passage, there's three applications that I could think of.

Maybe God plants something else in your heart, but application one is thank Him. Thank Him as we take the cracker and juice together.

Thank Him for His body broken for us. Thank Him for His blood shed to cleanse us from our sins. Thank Him, thank

Him, thank Him for calling you, for rescuing you, for saving you. Application two is to confess and repent.

Cry out to Him in confession and repentance. When He identifies sin in your life, apologize to Him, confess it, name it, say what it was, and then turn from it and say,

I don't want that in my life anymore. By the power of your spirit, give me strength to say no to that in the future and turn from sin.

And lastly, the last application is trust Him with your future. He is a God of tender compassion toward vile sinners like you and me.

If you've not yet asked Jesus Christ to be your Lord, then I encourage you to skip communion this morning and then make it your bold step to come to talk with me about your desire to be rescued from your sins today, to confess your sins and to say,

I've broken your law and I am a rebel against you and I'm coming home. I'm coming home.

Recast, God loves us, our hearts are rebellious, and His compassion for you and me keeps burning.

So let's seek to walk in loving obedience with Him this week. Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace.

Where would we be without it? It's a scary thought. But you and your mercy have reached down, calling us, training us in your tender love.

You have taken us under your wing and protected us. You have taken care of our greatest enemies of sin and death at the cross and at the empty tomb so that we are now set free to worship you and to love you and to walk with you.

In this relationship of give and take, I know that for many of us in this here and now, things are murky.

Our own motivations are clouded. Our own give and take with sin and that relationship of that push and pull is present at any given moment.

Father, I am convinced that those who belong to you will continue to be drawn to Christ. I pray that that would be real and true even as we have an opportunity to be drawn to these tables right now by this song and the opportunity to reflect on what

Christ has done for us, His body broken in our place, His blood shed in our place.

Father, I pray that right now as we get an opportunity to do this, that thankfulness would flow from us.

Confession and repentance would flow from us and that delight and joy for the future and hope in the future, trust in you for the future of what you have promised to your children.

That one day the trump will sound and the cry of the lion will go out and we will come trembling, even us from the west, and come to be with Him forever and ever and ever.

Our delight and joy is found in that promise and I pray that you would help us to shed the things of this world that draw us down, the sins that so easily entangle us, and run this race with joy with you even this week.