(I want to listen to this sermon)

I read an interesting little statement this week. Here it is:

"We don't break the laws of the universe, we break ourselves upon them."

If you jump off the pier you won't float upwards defying the law of gravity but rather you run the very real risk of injuring yourself as you crash into the sea or onto the rocks below.

Now that same principle can be applied to God's law as well. We may well like to imagine that we can break God's law with impunity, that we can do what we like and get away with it, but it is an illusion. Trouble flows of necessity with sin.

And yet there is hope because God has purposed to transform our sad and all too often squalid little lives into something much greater and more beautiful. Just listen to what He says:

2:15 "And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. "

Achor means trouble and so the LORD Himself here promises that He will provide a way of escape out of the place of trouble as He opens a door onto new hope!

Chapter 2 of this Book of the Prophet Hosea is concerned with both aspects of this. Firstly he will describe the trouble in which the people of Israel finds itself – the trouble is real and must be spelt out so that the nation's condition is clearly understood. Only when the seriousness of the trouble is understood will the new door of hope be appreciated and welcomed.

We saw last week that the first section of Hosea came to its climax in 2:1. That climax was  the promise of a glorious future. But that future still lay a long way off as the Israelites were still wedded to their rebellious lifestyle. It is this rebellious lifestyle that must first be addressed.

The parallel between Hosea and his unfaithful wife Gomer and the Lord and His unfaithful "wife" Israel is maintained and lies behind the imagery of chapter two.

The LORD has a case against His wayward people and the pleading of v.2 is not that of desperately imploring the person spoken too to mend her ways rather it is the pleading that takes place in a court of law where the counsel for the accusation presents the charges and brings the evidence to prove the case. The evidence testifies clearly. The ruptured relationship is due to unfaithfulness on the part of the people as they have turned away from the LORD.

But although the "wife" is slowly evidently guilty and deserving of judgment yet the threatenings that are issued are not designed to condemn but to call to repentance!

We see that right at the outset in v.2

"“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;"

Repentance is the immediate goal of the threatenings but not the ultimate goal which is the restoration of intimacy. Repentance is more than merely saying sorry it carries with it a change of heart orientation and a corresponding change of direction in lifestyle patterns.

This whole procedure will not prove to be a comfortable one for the wife and her situation will apparently get worse before there is a resolution of the situation. There are three stages in the procedure that are detailed for us here and each stage is introduced with the word "therefore". We'll look at them in turn.

Gomer had often run to her lovers imagining that it was they who had brought her the material well-being and the satisfaction that she craved.

I wonder whether we too are guilty of enjoying God's good blessings while attributing these blessings to some other source – our own efforts, luck, or something else.

If Gomer were to be brought back to her rightful husband then she must be stopped from seeking solace from her other lovers – and that is just what happens.

2:6 "Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths."

If Israel/Gomer would not set any bounds to her lusts then the LORD must act and He does. He acts in just such a way as to impede her access to her lovers, He acts in order to prevent His wife indulging her lusts to her own hurt!

And yet the return is not immediate! It would seem that the obstacles placed in her way only make her search with greater diligence – at least for a time. At last, frustrated in her fruitless search for satisfaction, she begins to come to her senses and reasons:

2:7b "Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’"

 For those of you who know your Bibles her words will be echoed later by the prodigal son:

Lk.15:17-19 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’"

In both instances wilful ignorance played a great part. Gomer refused to recognise that the source of her well-being was really her husband and instead turned the good things that he gave to bad use.

If Israel will not acknowledge what God has done for her then Israel must learn the hard way!

2:9 "Therefore 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."

Not only will access to the adulterous lovers be blocked off but the enjoyment of material blessing will be withdrawn as well.

Israel hadn't given up on religion – no she was very religious indeed – but the religion that pleased her was a religion that focused upon pomp and externals but was empty at heart! The LORD acts to make this plain.

Do you notice just how Israel's religious practices are described in v.11?

"And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts."

Here was a religion of her choosing – it had little to do with the LORD God at all.

Might that be true of your religion? Are you in danger of concocting a religion that pleases you in our pick-n-mix religious world rather than seeking the truth as God has revealed it?

The reality was being exposed in Hosea's day: as Gomer had forsaken him so Israel had foresaken the LORD. It didn't matter how things were dressed up that was the reality of the situation and it needed to faced. Are we ready to face up to similar realities in our day?

"What a harsh God! What a cruel God! What a kill-joy He is! I always suspected that He was out to make life miserable for us!"

I wonder whether you're beginning to think like this? If you are then you're probably thinking too that you don't want anything to do with such a God.

Well let me tell you that chastenings such as these are never likely to be pleasant but they are designed and calculated to bring us to repentance. Before we jump to any too hasty conclusions let us consider the third therefore.

Having described the first two stages the LORD moves on to speak of the, oh so, positive stage three. And how wonderfully surprising stage three really is. The LORD sets about courting and wooing His bride all over again!

2:14 "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her."

 While threats have been employed and divine power has been displayed yet the LORD aims to convert by means of the constraints of divine love!

The wilderness was the place where the young nation of Israel learnt that God cared for them and was able to provide for them – He promises to draw her to that same place again where the sufficiency of His grace had been so marvellously demonstrated before.

There He will speak tenderly to her – harsh words of recrimination could have been expected but grace speaks tender loving words to the utterly undeserving!

And wonder of wonders this wayward unfaithful wife will heed and respond and the intimacy of relationship will be restored:

2:16-17 "And in that day, declares the LORD, 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."

Love, affection and honour will characterise this newly restored relationship – not harshness and domination – that is the significance of the comparison between "husband" and "baal" in that verse.

The LORD is concerned that all be well in the restored relationship and recommits Himself to a wonderful marriage relationship with His people as courtship gives way to betrothal!

But what will this restored relationship be like?

Well the ideas of wooing and of betrothal speak of a completely new beginning! This is no mere patched-up relationship with old hurts still lurking in the background – here is, in the language of the NT, a relationship where the old has indeed passed away and all things have become new!

How the LORD God delights in making things new!

We read elsewhere in the Bible of the LORD and His love of newness

ü  He does a new thing

ü  He makes a new creation!

ü  He establishes a new covenant

ü  He gives new birth

ü  He gives a new heart and a new spirit

ü  He puts a new song in our mouths

ü  He plans to make a new Heavens and a new earth

In short, in the words of Rev.21:5 "“Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”"

Nor is this all that we are told. The LORD doesn't stop at telling us that He by His determined insistent wooing of His people will win them over and start over with them making all things fresh and new He goes on to give us some description of the qualities which will characterise this restored relationship.

We may briefly consider these characteristics as His betrothal gifts that He freely and generously bestows:

1.       Righteousness – not so much the uprightness of God but the provision of a righteousness for those who need it. Salvation flows from righteousness viewed as God's gift to us.

2.       Justice – this is the fairness of God who will never act in a way that might be interpreted as being unfair.

3.       Steadfast love – sometimes translated in that lovely way of lovingkindness!

4.       Mercy.

Taken together the attributes of steadfast love and mercy emphasise that in restoring His people to a proper relationship with Himself the LORD God focuses so much more upon His own goodness than He does upon the demerits of His people!

What an encouragement this should be to us – Salvation is of the LORD! Whereas the religious mindset wants to focus upon what we must do in order to try to attain our own salvation – a mindset that leads either to a priggish kind of self-righteousness of those who are deluded enough to think they've succeeded or else to the abandonment of hopelessness of those who know they can't! – the mindset of the Lord God is all of grace. How generous He is to us in the Lord Jesus Christ in who all the promises of God are "Yes and Amen"! To the spiritual pauper, the spiritual beggar, the spiritual down and out, are offered the riches of God at Christ's expense!

5.       Faithfulness – of all the characteristics this is perhaps the one that was most obviously lacking in the unfaithful spouse. Grace grants that which we need.

My friends, this morning, are you rejoicing in this wonderful generosity of God? Have you responded to this God who doesn't wait until we've made ourselves deserving but who comes to us with the good news of Jesus Christ at just the moment when we are the least deserving – dead in our trespasses and sins?

Chapter two comes to a close with a repeat of the promises that we first read at the end of chapter one:

 "No mercy" will receive what she needs and that is "Mercy"!

"Not my people" will not remain alienated from the One True and Living God but will be made the very "people of God."

Intimacy will be restored and what a tremendous intimacy it is – this once undeserving, faithless, rebellious, stubborn people will be given new hearts and new lives to respond to God with the declaration "You are my God".

Have you come out of the darkness of life separated from God and into His light which is truly marvellous?

You can today if only you will go to God for mercy in the name of the Saviour He has appointed for the world – the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household."

Amen.