No Mercy and Not My People

The scripture will be in 1 Peter chapter 2, starting verse 9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people for its own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. You may be seated. Last week we went through the beginning of this chapter, well not the very beginning, but verses 4 through 9.

And verse 9 is a natural consequence of what we talk about in verse 4 through 8. And so I wanted to read it last week. But as I was thinking about this week, I wanted to revisit verse 9. And I wanted to go into a little more details in a couple portions of it. And so, I need to qualify a few things first here. So first of all, I try to be pastoral.

And when I preach, I try to tell you what the Word of God says. I try to have the appropriate levels of gentleness toward God's sheep that would be required to help the sheep grow. and I don't want to break a bruised reed if Jesus wasn't willing to do so. At the same time, part of the call to preach God's Word is to tell people things that may be hard for them to hear.

And I've heard that I do that regularly, but I have a sense of going to do that a little more strikingly tonight. And so I just want to prepare you for that, that I don't have anyone in particular in mind. If I say something that stabs you in the heart a little bit, that's hopefully the Holy Spirit speaking to you through His Word and that I myself am with you.

I need to repent of the corruptions that I still carry in my flesh as Brother Jason prayed. But I definitely think that there are some areas here where the people who we would consider to be like good Christians fall short sometimes. So it's real easy to stand up here and say things like gay pride parades are bad. That's real easy for a preacher to do.

And even though most guys in the United States won't do it anymore, that's still low-hanging fruit. I can say things like murdering people is wrong. And very few Christians will stand up and say, well, this is rubbing me the wrong way. But so I want to warn you, there may be some things where I really challenge you, and I don't mean to do it in a way to hurt you.

If anything, it's meant to actually, if it opens any wound, it's meant so that God's word, then the healing balm that comes can heal that wound and actually help you to be stronger for service to God. The second thing I want to point out is that this sermon is it would be rated R if if we were going to read through the passages we're going to read through. and so being a family integrated church I'm not going to shy away from topics that the Bible addresses and at the same time I recognize that there is a need to try to say things in a way that doesn't conjure things for people that shouldn't have that conjured yet and also though we recognize that even the children in the church are supposed to be listening to God's word learning from it and hopefully being protected from sin in their own life by the examples we'll get. So, you'll understand why I said that when we get to Hosea.

Which, if you know the story of Hosea, hopefully you already know, it's a rated R story, it really is. And so we don't want to belabor it. The other thing I won't do, I don't like euphemisms. So, I don't like saying things like, this guy had an affair, and I don't like calling the woman that someone had an affair with a lover. Because if you have an affair with someone, that person's literally a hater.

And so when we come up with these euphemisms to explain things, I think we actually do a disservice to it. And so I'll be careful though and if I overstep somewhere, I apologize. I have little boys in here too. I don't want to say anything I shouldn't. So we'll get to that in verse 10. But verse 9, I just want to go back to that.

So Jesus Christ, the temple, he is where all the fullness of God dwells bodily. We just read that even in the Confession. That was from Colossians 1. And in verse 9, Peter is addressing the people he's writing to, and he tells them they're a chosen race. And if you remember the significance of this, as Peter's writing to at least a somewhat Gentile audience.

It wouldn't have been exclusively Jews, although there's some argument there may have been some Jews. Sorry, I have a dry throat. But for Peter to say this, you have to understand some of the significance of that. And I don't want to turn here tonight, because I have other more important aspects of this sermon, but if you go back and you look at the beginning of the book of Acts, you see that Peter, even after Jesus Christ came and announced all the things he announced, Peter really didn't understand this whole the gospels for the Gentiles 2 thing very well and in Acts chapter 10 is where Peter kind of learns it all and you can go read that yourself and that when the sheet comes down and God says don call anything unclean that I called clean But so for Peter to be writing to this group of people who he had spent his life being separate from, he had gone to the lengths to eat differently from them just so he'd look different.

So just like we all have our little things we do that make us think we're separate from the world, and most of it's just cultural. So we do something a little different than our neighbor. And then if anybody asks us why, we can say, well, because we're Christian, we don't cut our grass that way. There's always something people do that's probably not really commanded by Scripture, but it makes them feel like they're being peculiar.

But Peter tells these people they're a chosen race. And that's really significant for him to say to Gentiles, because Peter was from the chosen race. He was from the Israelite nation that was the chosen people of God. And he had great pride in that. And it was hard for him to accept at first that Jesus Christ came as the Messiah, not only for national Israel, but for all of those who would believe.

That was hard for him to understand, even after years of walking with him. I mean, we like to think that after walking around with Jesus all those years, we would have perfectly understood him. we'd all been the one at dinner that was like, well, I know it's Judas because I've got good discernment because I'm so smart. None of these guys even knew Judas was the betrayer.

And so for Peter to call these people a chosen race is extremely significant. And I don't want you to miss that fact. He calls them a royal priesthood. We talked about the priesthood of all believers, that each and every one of us is a mediator between man and God. Not a high priest like Jesus was. Everybody only needs one high priest, and that's Jesus Christ. is the only one that can do that for them.

But we have a responsibility to one another to intercede. But it also has a bit of a negative quality, and this is a good topic for Reformation Sunday, is that the priesthood of all believers also lets us know that there isn't a special priesthood. There isn't a special little group of people who are priests of God and everybody else is a layman. That's not how it works.

I guess in the evangelical church you could argue that there's officers, with pastors and deacons, and then there's other people that you call laymen, but it's probably not even appropriate. We're all equal in the sight of God. And there isn't anybody that has any spiritual privilege or anything advanced in that sense. There's just a variety of gifts.

And in fact, Paul makes it abundantly clear in the letters that he writes, and Peter will make clear in chapter 4 of this book, that regardless of which gifts you have and which gifts somebody else has, none of them are to be valued above another. You're not supposed to value your own, and you're not supposed to value somebody else's more either. Now, there may be different administrations of those.

You may decide that there are certain people who should get paid to use their gifts. We believe that the Confession actually teaches that ministers should eventually be supported by the congregation, and that they should even have a little extra to do what? Hospitality, right? us. And you don't necessarily do that for the guy that takes care of the flowers and the grounds of the church.

But that doesn't change that both of those gifts, whether it's administrations or helps or generosity or teaching or whatever it happens to be, that doesn't mean that there's any inequality between them. And it's us that creates that inequality. We are the ones that look at one person's gift and another person's gift, both granted by the same Spirit. and we're the ones that decide that one's more valuable than the other and then we create all these little kingdoms and all these little worlds that we have and we ultimately create our own little priesthoods is what we do.

We have our own little group of people who we've decided they have special access to God and we're going to ask them the questions and we're going to let them answer the questions and we're going to listen to them when they talk and that's how you get these people who today, and I'm not going to apologize, That's how you get people like John Piper today, who's like some crazy Christian celebrity. And my joke about Piper is, well, don't waste your celebrity. Because the guy writes an article where he basically says he's going to vote for Joe Biden.

And it's been misinterpreted to think that he says he's not voting for either guy. I think Piper voted for Biden, or he's going to vote for Biden. And he's justifying it because of all sorts of reasons that I can't justify. But there's people who, if you criticize John Piper, they're going to get mad at you, and they're going to tell you, you can't do that.

It's because they have created their own little priesthood, where there's people like John Piper, who wrote a few books, got popular, lots of people, got saved through his ministry, and so therefore he's got some special access to God, or special gift from God that other people don't have, and we should listen to him. And that's not what the Bible teaches. and this is one of the things that was discovered in the Reformation is that the guy that goes to a shoe store every day and makes shoes and does it for the glory of God is doing as much service to God as the you know the priests at the time he's doing more than the priests were right but you know what I'm saying there's a story of a guy that calls out to Martin Luther he says hey I just got saved what should I do and Luther says well what did you do before he said well I'm a shoemaker that's why I got the analogy And he said, well, make a good shoe and sell it at an honest price. It seems simple.

And we're not Lutheran here, but Lutheran said a lot of good things. He also said some pretty funny things. So if you want, what's that website? The Lutheran Insulter website. And you can randomly see insults that he hurled at the papacy and stuff. And some of them are kind of funny.

Some of them are probably a little unholy. Peter tells us we're a holy nation a chosen race a royal priest he says a holy nation he goes to links to tell everybody they exiles they sojourners he going to say it in two verses He going to say Beloved I urge you as sojourners and exiles So this isn't a contradiction. Peter is letting them know they have a national heritage that is spiritual.

The Lord Jesus Christ's kingdom is where they are denizens. That's where we are a holy nation. It's the nation of God. and we seek that city. And so he's telling us we're part of this chosen race. So you've been chosen, you're a special people, you're a royal priesthood, you have access to the king and you don't have to go through anybody else to get there.

And there's none of these blood sacrifices anymore that we do. The one time blood sacrifice that could actually wash away sins actually happened and it really did wash away sins and it only had to happen one time because it was fully sufficient. And so we don't have these additional sacrifices. We don't try to add to what Jesus did. And we're a holy nation.

We're citizens of heaven, but we're here. We're exiles. We're sojourners. But we have an allegiance to a different king. So it's almost as if, you know, maybe a poor example is like when you travel. If you go out of this country, you're still a citizen of the United States.

And you still have, in a sense, an allegiance to the United States. And I like to believe Christians are moderately patriotic. I know there's arguments about some reasons why, why not. But if you go to another country, you're still a citizen of the United States, even though you're in the other country. And that is where you are an allegiant to. But then Peter tells him, he says, you're a people for his own possession.

So you want to be, we talk about possession, like demon possession. Well, we're possessed. We're possessed by God. and he tells us this though that you've been bought with a price by the blood of Jesus Christ God owns you, he owned you before but he actually wouldn't have called you his own before in one sense of that word he owns everything but you weren't his people before but listen to what he says he tells us why God did this and this is where I'm afraid I'm going to strike some people a little bit in their heart he says that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light well who is that? it's Jesus Christ Jesus Christ is the one who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light so you were once in darkness Ephesians says you were darkness you've been called out of darkness you've been transferred from the domain of darkness to the kingdom of God's son and it says that you may proclaim his excellencies And my challenge to you tonight is, do you do that?

I'm not talking about street preaching. But do you do that? Is your life marked by this constant worship of God? Do people look at you and know that you're a peculiar people? Not because you eat your vegetables raw or whatever weird things that Christians in all sorts of subcultures have come up with to make themselves think they're different. I just went up to Amish country the other day and they wear the little white bonnet and it's like they're completely set apart in the way they dress and all the people they sit on the other side of their own restaurant from where the regular people are allowed to sit they're not allowed to eat with us because we're dirty to them so they're completely set apart in a very physical way but I don't know what they believe all I know is they don't want to sit by me but the question is what about you?

Do people that you know, know that Jesus Christ is your God and King? And that you believe He's also their God and King? Do people that you know, know that they're headed to hell? And that they're going to go to heaven if they would believe in Jesus Christ, that He died and He rose again for their sins? Is your life marked by the fact that you proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness? because I'll tell you what, if one of you guys had an injured spine and you went to a doctor and you fixed it, you'd be telling everybody.

If you go to a good burger joint, most of us at least go online and give them a little five star thing so other people know. Lord willing, there's no Wolverines fans in here, they're all Buckeyes fans. I wear my Buckeyes stuff around all the time. and I'll walk right up to a Michigan fan and I'll start an argument with them and I'll do it in fun and sometimes I've had to wonder would I walk up to a person and just talk about Jesus?

I'm willing to go and start what I know is going to be an antagonistic conversation about football with somebody that roots for a different team but am I willing to do that to say the name of my Savior who died for me? The one who called me out of darkness into his marvelous light? Paid the price with his own blood? That's my challenge for you. I'm afraid that that's just not how we're marked.

That's what I'm afraid of. I'm afraid that most people don't know you're a Christian. Most people don't know I'm a Christian. Most people don't care. Most people don't see anything significant in your life that would set you apart in the first place because we all live like the world. We're all compromisers.

We all fail in these ways. You might be doing good in some of them. I might be doing good in some of them. But I just want us to focus a little bit on how far short we fall once in a while. And I want us to think about the fact that we could stand up and do more. And there's just no way that God saved you so that you could just chill.

That you may proclaim His excellencies. And it doesn't mean the same thing for every person. For some of the wives in here, it certainly wouldn't mean preaching. I don't think any woman should preach in any context let alone on the street or in a church I'm one of those people who don't think they should do it in a women's conference or anything like that either so you can argue with me after if that something you want to talk about But I think that there ways that we can promote the proclaiming of His gospel to people as no matter who you are, kid, adult, and I think that that's something that we should all think about more.

So the next verse says, Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy have you ever heard an inside joke yeah so somebody says something and the only reason you know what they're saying is because you've kind of heard the word before so if I said hey we're going to make America great again you would know in this context that I was referring to Donald Trump right because he uses that phrase if I said if I say the phrase love wins, if I said that phrase, a lot of people would know what that phrase means. It sounds a nice phrase, actually. Like love's great and love will win.

Winning's good and love's good. So if love wins, that sounds like a great thing. But because there was a man who was a heretic who wrote a book called Love Wins. Yeah, he wrote a book called Love Wins. Something sounded funny in the verb-subject agreement in that sentence. I don't know why.

But because a man named Rob Bell wrote this book, if I say love wins, if I have a sign in my yard, like one of my neighbors that says love wins, my immediate response is, well, that means something a little different from what maybe I would hope it meant. Because it's a common phrase that's understood. So when Peter says, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people, once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy, it seems like an easy enough phrase but I think that there's depth behind it that you have to know and you have to actually if you were at that time you'd have to know the Old Testament book of Hosea and you'd have to understand that Hosea Peter not only quotes Hosea but Hosea named his children with Hebrew names so let's go to Hosea and this is where we're going to try to be careful but we also have to make some points also if you want to look at Romans 9 real quick at the end of Romans 9 in verse 25 Paul also quotes Hosea he says as indeed he says in Hosea those who are not my people I will call my people and her who was not beloved I will call beloved or beloved.

In the very place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God. So a couple of New Testament authors have found the little book of Hosea worthy of quoting. And, well let's look at it. We'll make some applications here and hopefully 1 Peter chapter 2 verse 10 will become far more meaningful to you if you understand the background behind the words that Peter chose to use than just reading the English text.

So the word of Yahweh that came to Hosea, the son of Berai, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel. So there's two kingdoms. Now Israel's divided. If you don't know all the history of it, You got to do that on your own. We're not going to go through all that. But Israel is divided into two kingdoms.

And Hosea is starting to preach. And it says, when Yahweh first spoke through Hosea, Yahweh said to Hosea, Go, take yourself a wife of whoredom, and have children of whoredom. For the land commits great whoredom by forsaking Yahweh. so the first thing we have to kind of understand here is what does this word whoredom mean it's used three times and the idea is this somebody is committing immorality somebody is willing to go and be with people who are not her husband and the word whoredom implies a lot more than well they just fell into sin one time this is a person who has willingly plunged themselves into immorality with people who they should not be engaged with but so the Lord tells Hosea go and take yourself a wife and this is really interesting there's been a lot of arguments about it and the arguments are interesting because people are trying to do what I try not to do which is try to save God's reputation.

God doesn't need me to protect His reputation. He needs me to proclaim what He said. He doesn't have any problems with His reputation. We're the ones with problems. But people have said, well, God would never have told this guy to do that. So maybe He told him to find somebody that would later get into whoredom, but she wasn't into it when he met her.

I don't buy that from the context some people have said this is just a parable that this whole story of Hosea instead of something that we should read and believe literally happened that we should just suddenly treat parts of the Bible as completely allegorical I reject that as well although I believe there are spiritual things that we discern from Hosea that are allegorical in nature. It doesn't mean that the whole book is false. I believe that God told Hosea, Go take yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking Yahweh.

I believe that's what God told him. And I'll just warn you, if a guy gets up and wants to tell you God said something slightly... Like, you walk out, honestly, at some point. I guess I've never walked out. I've heard a couple of bad sermons and never walked out. But walk out eventually.

Don't let people twist the Word of God. So Hosea's got to do this. And the one thing that commentators do seem to agree on is that Hosea was a prophet, but he wasn't a priest. So a priest would have been forbidden from doing something like this. So although ill-advised, marrying a woman who happens to be a woman of the night, we'll say, is not contradictory to God's law.

It's just maybe a terrible idea, and there's probably going to be some horrible consequences, and it's going to be really difficult to do. But Hosea is told to do it. So he went and took Gomer, so this is this woman's name, Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. So what's interesting is God's angry with the nation here, and he's going to judge them.

Now we're in the old covenant here, and God has covenanted with national Israel, and he has made himself their husband in that sense that we use that term. But there's a sense here that this old covenant is going to get broken, and we already know this from New Testament. But Dibliam, Gomer's dad, this name means something like figs pressed together into a cake.

And most people, I don't think I would have gathered this on my own, but most of the commentators said that this refers to the fact that she was corrupt due to the luxurious nature of the life that she led. So she lived in luxury and blessing and prosperity, and as the result, turned away from the Lord and turned to the luxuries and the joys and stuff. I think that there's application there in the United States.

Some of us spoil our kids a little too much. It's nice to want to provide them good things, but some of our kids need to learn to suffer a little bit. I'm not saying make them suffer in some sinful way on your own, but I think kids need to learn that they can eat the same food two days in a row. They can finish something they don't like. They can miss a fun thing.

They can spend a little more time sitting still listening to the Word of God. But she conceived and bore him a son. So Yahweh said to him, Call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel. And I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. So Israel is going to get punished. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.

So there's significance to this name that God has told Hosea to give his first son. And the way it reads, it says she conceived and bore him a son. I read it as this was his kid. So he marries this woman and this is his kid. A kid comes out and maybe looks like him or something like that we'll say. but she conceived again and bore a daughter. So there's no reference to this being Hosea's daughter.

This to me reads like, okay, she conceived again, and maybe this kid doesn't look like Hosea as much as the other one, if you know what I'm saying here. And Yahweh said to him, call her name no mercy. Well, this is really interesting, because in 1 Peter, Peter says, Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. So now we're starting to get some words in here.

And if you look at some of the other versions, like King James and NAS, some of it even seems more obvious. But so he calls his kid, no mercy. And God says, For I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by Yahweh their God. So he says, I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.

But he's going to save them by his power. So now we have this picture of what's going to happen in the New Testament. That there is going to be a remnant. You have this big nation, Israel, split into two kingdoms. Basically Israel was what we called one, or Ephraim, and the other one was called Judah. And God says, I'm going to save part of it. and it's going to be by my mercy it's not going to be by war and battles and you guys doing good work and things like that but it's going to be by my mercy but when she had weaned no mercy she conceived and bore a son so you have this woman and she's whoring around she's married she's got a husband he's taking care of the kids she's having another child I'm thinking not by him and then Yahweh said call his name not my people and I think it's signified by these names here he says for you are not my people and I am not your God remember I said earlier you're God's possession and I said God owns everything but there's a sense that God God doesn't own you in the loving sense before you become a Christian.

So you become God's possession. You're considered not God's people before you know Him. And God is signifying this by these children of this woman, Gomer. And God gives a promise. God's Old Testament constantly filled with promises. He says, Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. and in the place where it was said to them so this is Romans 9 now you are not my people just calling the name of the kid it shall be said to them Children of the living God.

So somebody's going to go from being not his people to being his people. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, and for great shall be the day of Jezreel. So one day there's going to be a single head that comes, right? Psalm 110, Therefore he shall drink from the brook by the way, and he'll lift up his head, right?

Ephesians talks about the body of Christ. Who's the head of the body? We have this reference here to Jesus Christ will one day come, and he's going to gather together all his elect. And he's going to be the one that, by his mercy, makes these people that are not his people, his people. So we continue. Say to your brothers, you are my people, and to your sisters you have received mercy.

So now there's some people that are being exhorted to plead with this woman. Plead with your mother. Plead, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. That she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts. So there's this pleading. Plead.

Help her. Tell her, get away from this. This is not good for anybody. And it's not good for your children. It's a very natural thing for a man and a woman who get married and have children, for the man to love those kids. And for the woman to love those kids.

It's a harder thing to love somebody else's kids. And praise the Lord for people who are step-parents. I know we have a couple in here. And I was a step-parent temporarily, and then I adopted her, so I'm no longer a step-parent. But I even know what that's like, to raise somebody else's kid. But it doesn't change that it's not the natural way that God designed things.

And it doesn't mean that it's easy. And it takes, I think, a special person to actually love that person, particularly if she was like Goma. But God says in Hosea 2.3, lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land and kill her with thirst. So he's saying, I'm going to punish.

Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are the children of whoredom. So God is referring to the nation of Israel as this idolatrous generation. So idolatry is to God, idolatry is when we worship something other than Him. When we worship a false God that we've made in our image, or when we worship Him wrongly. That's idolatry. And to God, the analogy that he gives us for the jealousy that he has toward those who reject him and worship another God, when he's the one who has done nothing but provide, nothing but give, the analogy he gives us is the analogy of a broken marital relationship, where one of the people in the marriage relationship has decided to leave the person who has been providing and loving and to go somewhere else to get love. and they don't get love they get lusts and I won't even say lusts fulfilled because lusts can't be fulfilled they get temporary satisfaction that never goes away but there's this there's this picture now of God having given the Israelites life he made them a chosen race right? he's the one that picked Jacob out he could have picked Esau right?

God picked Jacob God picked Isaac God picked Abraham and the Israelites are this chosen nation they were supposed to be a priesthood they were supposed to go and proclaim the excellencies of God throughout all the world that was actually their supposed to do thing and they took what they thought was their spiritual privilege and they held on to it as tightly as they could and as they started to enjoy the pleasures that God gave them and all the luxuries that God can provide because He is good and He's created a lot of really good things in this world. And they lost sight of who He was. And they turned from Him.

And their hearts wanted to fulfill what they thought was righteousness with their own righteousness. And they lied to themselves and believed that they had righteousness of their own. It's a horrible lie to think that any of your own righteousness can earn you heaven, that can earn you God's favor. You're not a child of God today if you were just born in this world, you're a child of Adam.

You become a child of God and you're given the right to do that if you believe in the name of Jesus Christ. That's how you become His child. So whether you're His child or not, He's done nothing but give you good things your whole life. The fact that you're not in hell right now means He's been amazingly merciful to you already. If you're experiencing salvation, even more so.

But so God's drawing this picture now, and this is the picture we're drawing, is that there's a husband who has a wife. The wife is cheating on him. And it's not like a one-time thing. It's not like some online fling where they never met, but there was an emotional attachment. This is a woman who is whoring. And this is filthy.

It's disgusting. According to the law and the hardness of the heart of men, he would be allowed to divorce her and say I cannot stay with you you are so abominable to me that for me to have to stay in a house with you for me to have to touch you after all these other men have touched you is just too filthy and disgusting for me to live with I can't look at these children that don't look like me and I even know the guy they look like and I can continue to live like that he would be allowed to do that but Jesus said it because of your hardness of heart that he wrote you this commandment when they brought up that Moses had a commandment that you could have a certificate of divorce. And so God's trying to draw a picture here, and it's not an allegory, it really happened, but God's trying to paint a picture here so that people who read this can understand the significance of what God has done for them.

So people could get some idea in their heart of how filthy angry they would be with Gomer if they were the husband. Or if it was your brother, let's say you're a woman and you're having trouble thinking about it in the other terms, your brother's wife is doing this to him. And what would you tell your brother? The first advice is don't marry her in the first place.

But then after you're married, there's a different story, right? So God's trying to show us something. In verse 5 of Hosea 2, God says, For their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers. There's that euphemism that we talked about earlier, right?

She calls them lovers. Who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns. and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her path. And God's mercy and love, sometimes He actually makes you chasing your sin difficult. Some of you are blessed with the fact that you could never drink more than two shots of alcohol without getting sick, so you never went past that point.

Some of you have been walking toward the sin that you, in your heart, wanted to get to and something stopped you. Maybe it was painful. God hedged up a way of thorns for Israel to keep her from this wickedness we think thorns are bad things and certainly the crown of thorns that our Lord wore was a horrible thing thorns are part of the curse but what a gift that God uses cursed things to try to put people on the right path and what a hardened sinner you have to be to march through the thorns to get to the thing that you're trying to get to.

She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. And she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband. For it was better for me then than now. So the idea here is that people are going to start to realize, hey, I had it better when I was just obedient to God. Oh yeah, maybe it was kind of boring some days.

Maybe I woke up every single day, and I'll just talk from experience here with my wife, she's supposed to wake up every day and cook the same breakfast for the same guy, and then spank the same kids half the time, and try to teach them the same letters. It's not always exciting. It's not like the movies, where the guy grabs the girl and slams her against the wall and then she says, oh, I love you too.

And then all of a sudden they're doing all sorts of fun stuff and then they live happily ever after. That's not real life. Real life is day-to-day grind. It's day-to-day difficulties. It's day-to-day bearing with somebody else's sin. It's day-to-day bearing with even the stuff that's not sin but just annoys you.

It's day-to-day realizing that somebody else is annoyed by you and bearing with your sin. it's waking up every day and reading God's word even though you've read some of it before it's waking up and praying it's memorizing scripture it's going to church every week most of life is not as exciting as Hollywood would have you think that it could be for you I don't see anyone in here who I think was a professional athlete I don't see anyone in here who looks like you ever got close to it frankly, like no offense But I didn't get close either. The exciting things in the world really don't happen to most people. And yet that's what we lust after, and that's what we think about.

But when we really look at what happens in our life, when we look at the things that we chased that at one point may have been very exciting even, at the time, and we see the pain and destruction and devastation it brought to our own life and to the lives of others, some of whom we don't even know, people we damaged their life. or we knew them but we don't really know them. And then some people in your life are damaged because of your choices and they're hurting because of the things you've done. When you think about all that, don't you kind of long for just the mundane?

Like, yeah, I'd like to wake up and just serve the Lord. That's what he's talking about. Verse 8, And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for bail. all the stuff you used to worship your false god came from God. God gave you the money to buy your false idols.

God gave you the imagination to draw the pictures of your god or carve them out of wood or whatever it is. God gave you the creativity. He gave you the genius. He gave you the ingenuity. He gave you the skills, the education, whatever it is that you go and make money that you may end up worshiping. God says I will take back my grain in its time and my wine in its season and I will take away my wool and my flax which were to cover her nakedness so he's basically saying I'm going to leave you to yourself you want to sin why don't you go and really find out what it's like the worst thing that God can do to a sinner is let him enjoy it Psalm 73 Asaph's angry because the wicked are prospering and God's answer is this is their best life now.

Let them enjoy it. Don be jealous of people who are on their way to hell and are enjoying a little bit of fun while they get there The worst thing God can do to a sinner is let them be successful in their sin Let them be content with their life. Let them find some false religion that makes them feel okay. That's the worst thing. And it's one of the reasons why we agitate people by telling them what God says and we question their assumptions and we shake the foundation of other people's faiths that are in worthless idols because it's all vanity. and they forsake their hope of steadfast love when they worship vain idols.

And if you love people, if you want to be a lover, not a hater, you're going to shake people's idols because you love people and you want them to feel the pain of their sin. And for you parents, this is a good one. Your tendency to want to enable your children in their sin because you love them and you don't want them to hurt too bad. And they walk outside without a coat.

And you say, get your coat on, Johnny. And you get their coat for them. And then your kid never learns to wear a coat. Let them be cold. It's an innocuous example. But one day, the thing your kid needs to remember when they go out into the world is going to be way more important than whether they're going to be cold.

And them knowing how to take care of themselves is vitally important. and them learning some of the consequences of foolishness while they're little and still very foolish is going to be important. You can't beat it all out of them. I know we're supposed to use the rod and all that stuff, but some of it you just have to keep teaching in other ways. You discipline people more than with the rod or the strap.

So you teach and you love. But he says, I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her who are out of my hand. And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, these are my wages which my lover has given me.

So he's going to destroy it all, he says. And I will make them a forest and the beasts of the field shall devour them and I will punish her for the feast days of the bales when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the Lord. Now listen. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.

And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Achor a door of hope and there she shall answer as in the days of her youth and as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. If you go online and you type in like jealous husband murders wife in Google, there's just pages and pages. This is the most common thing it seems like. So it's as if the guy walks in on his wife doing the dirty deed with the other guy.

And he's armed with all the weapons in the world to destroy the situation, to take out all of his anger, all of his jealous rage that he has on her, to take out all his jealous rage on the guy that's taking something that's not his. Adultery is a breaking of a covenant. It's stealing. It's lying. You have to break like eight sins to commit adultery, or eight commandments.

It all starts with coveting, worshiping the creature rather than the creator. Greg going on about the Ten Commandments and how you break them all most of the time. But the point is this. It's like the guy walked in and caught everything and he grabbed his wife and he just took her away and he just tried to give her nice things. And he just allures her with tender words.

So whereas the law tells you, hey, because of your hardness of heart, just go ahead and write her a divorce certificate. Be done with it. Go find another woman. God doesn't do that with His people God goes and He speaks tenderly to us and He gives us good gifts and God's kindness is what leads people to repentance and it says here and in that day declares Yahweh you will call me my husband and no longer will you call me my Baal for I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth and they shall be remembered by name no more He's going to lead her back to Himself because of his love.

He's going to take the punishment that she deserves. That's what Jesus did. Jesus paid the penalty that his bride deserved for her adulteries, for her whorings, for her spiritual fornication, for idolatry. Jesus paid the penalty for his bride. He says, I'll make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the bird of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and the war from the land and I will make you lie down in safety.

I will betroth you to me forever. All who come to me I will never cast out. Whoever hungers and believes in me, you'll never hunger again. He who comes to me will never thirst. He says, I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.

So you who are not a people, he's going to call my people. you who had not received mercy he's going to give mercy to he says I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know Yahweh and here's the quote in that day I will answer declares Yahweh I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth and the earth shall answer the grain the wine and the oil and they shall answer Jezreel and I will sow her for myself in the land he says and I will have mercy on no mercy it's really neat when you read the Hebrew but I don't like the way the ESV did it, honestly. He says, and I will say to not my people, it's Lo-Ami and Lo-Rohuma. He says, you are my people.

So he says all the time, these kid names are Lo-Ami and Lo-Rohuma. And at the end he says, and I will call them Ami and Rohuma. So no more negation at the beginning. And he shall say, you are my God. So 1 Peter 2, verse 10. One little sentence. if you're a New Testament red letter Christian you don't even need to read this sentence but if you believe that the whole is the inspired word of God, and it all works together.

And it was all authored by the Holy Spirit. He says, once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. You recognize that what Peter is telling you is that you, individually as well as you as part of this chosen race and holy nation, you were the whoring wife. You were the one that had no hope that you could do anything to be pleasing to your betrothed.

And then as he pursued you, you ran away. and as He gave you good gifts, you pretended they were from the other guys. And you went and did abominable things with other gods. And you stained yourself, and you dirtied yourself in hopeless ways. But with God, all things are possible. And because of His mercy, now we can say, we've received mercy. We don't deserve it.

We're His people, not because of anything we did. but we can rejoice in Jesus Christ our Lord and we can rejoice that today we have that mercy and as the result of that this is where we'll start to get to now as the result again of the good theology we're taught as a result of the indicative statements that God has made about us we will see what are the imperatives that we abstain from the passions of the flesh That we keep our conduct among the Gentiles honorable So now we going to get into the so what. So what do we do now that you've been saved like this? What should Gomer do in chapter 3 of Hosea when Hosea redeems her from slavery, when he buys her out of this?

How should she act? How should she behave towards him? And so ask yourself that same question between you and the Lord. Father, thank you for your word today. We thank you that your word is always true, and we thank you that your word is always relevant, Lord, that we don't have to pick topics that we think are important to talk about, that we can trust you in your providential and sovereign direction of where we are in your scripture, that it will always be helpful to us.

We thank you that your word, although very difficult sometimes to swallow, is deep enough for theologians to swim in and shallow enough for children to wade in. And we know that your Holy Spirit is powerful to use what your word says and even the preaching of your word through weak vessels to use it for your glory and for the good of your saints. And I pray that you do that tonight.

Amen.