The Relentless Love Of God, Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Some of you, there are probably circumstances in your life that you doubt God's love. I think once in a while when we are the victims of evil, we doubt God's love. We say, how could He love us and allow something like this to happen? But you know, really, if you think about it, you're not really even doubting God's love.

What you're really doubting is God's goodness. Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. One of the most legendary theologians of the last century was the Swiss born German theologian, Karl Barth.

The crown jewel of Barth's writings was his theological masterpiece called Church Dogmatics, 13 volumes, 9,000 pages, six million words. After giving a lecture at the University of Chicago in 1962, during the question and answer period, a young student stood up, and I'm sure to sort of make a name for himself in that setting, asked the great theologian the following question. Could you summarize your life's work in theology in one sentence?

Surprisingly, Dr. Barth simply said, yes, I can. And then he said, Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so. A lifetime of study, one sentence, one truth.

You know, as I thought about that, I thought it's not surprising. I thought of the Apostle John. John lived so much longer than all the other disciples and apostles. They were all martyred in his lifetime.

And John went on 30 years past all of them. And it had been 55 or 60 years before, after he walked with Jesus Christ, that John started writing his Gospels and his Epistles. And there's one central theme to his Gospel and his Epistles that makes his writing different. It's the love of God. Over 100 times in the Gospel of John and 1, 2, and 3 John, he refers to the love of God. After all, it's John who wrote John 3.16.

He remembered those words of the Lord, for God so loved the world. In 1 John, it is John who wrote that God is love. And in 1 John chapter 3 and verse 1, John wrote this, See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us.

And that word see is the word harao, and it means to perceive. Perceive how great a love God has bestowed on us. I believe that one of the great tragedies that occurs among God's people today is that you really don't perceive how great a love it is. So many people, I think, miss the central message of the Bible. God loves you.

He always has, and he always will. In fact, you cannot keep God from loving you. And even if you know this to be true, cognitively, I believe to fully appreciate it, you have to be able to move that from those 18 inches from your brain to your heart. Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher, said that it is the heart which experiences the love of God, not the reason. I know for some of you, there are probably circumstances in your life that you doubt God's love. I think once in a while when we are the victims of evil, we doubt God's love. We say, how could he love us and allow something like this to happen? But you know, really, if you think about it, you're not really even doubting God's love. What you're really doubting is God's goodness. We live in a fallen world.

It's cursed. Not only are people sinful and all creation cursed, but there is free will involved, and so evil has its day. But there's another time, I think, when many of us struggle with God loving us and not only when we are victims of evil, but when we are agents of evil. I can't tell you how often someone will say, I don't know how God could love me because this is what I've done.

Listen. You can have certain acts which will give you consequences in life. There's certainly a principle of reaping and sowing, but I can tell you this. There is never once going to ever be the consequence in your life that God is going to love you less because of what you've done. God did not stop loving Adam and Eve. That was the original sin. I mean, if you think about it, I think even you and I would probably say, you know, I think I can't handle all those 600 laws and commandments in the Old Testament.

I struggled with the 10, but I think I could handle one. You know, don't eat of that tree. You can eat of every tree you want, but not that one. I think I could do that.

I'm pretty sure you couldn't. But the truth of the matter is they failed. And if you remember, then they hid. And then it says that God walked in the garden. Adam.

Where are you? The implication is pretty clear, even after the fall. Adam, where are you? Adam.

I love you. He kept loving Adam and Eve. Think of Noah. God's love for Noah didn't diminish that after he had finished the ark and all that faithfulness for all those decades.

And then when it finally is all over, he gets himself drunk and naked and lays before his sons. And God still loved him. Abraham. After he was called by God when there was a drought in the land, didn't trust God and decided to go to Egypt if he could to overcome the drought. And then when Sarah didn't conceive at the right time, he thought, I come up with my own plan and I'll have sex with a handmaiden named Hagar. And then twice on two different occasions, in order to save his own skin, he put Sarah's life in jeopardy. God still loved him. Moses murdered an Egyptian before he ever even got going into ministry. And then at the end of his ministry, in direct defiance against God, he took his staff and he just hit the rock. And yet God still loved him.

David committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then he organized the murder of Uriah the Hittite, her husband, and he was a practicing polygamist. And God still loved him. Jonah was a bigot.

He was prejudiced. He hated the Assyrians for just being Assyrians. God says, Jonah, I want to make you an evangelist, the Assyrians, and what I need you to do is I need you to go east. And so Jonah went west. And God still loved him.

And Peter was bragging. Look, Lord, I don't know about these guys, who knows what they'll do, but I can tell you one thing, I'll never deny you. And he denied him three times, and Jesus still loved him.

You see, nothing you do can diminish that. But in order to drive this point home, and I think to God it's such an important point, he gives us perhaps the most vivid story ever to illustrate how God loves you. The relentlessness of God's love. Open your Bibles to Hosea, the book of Hosea. Hosea chapter 1.

The setting is this. It's the northern kingdom. It's called Israel or Ephraim. It's the ten tribes to the north. It's not Judah and Benjamin to the south.

There is a split kingdom. There are kings in Judah and there are kings in Israel. Some of the kings in Judah were not too good.

Most of them, though, were. All of the kings in Israel were awful. God is so upset with Israel that he is about to take them into captivity by the Assyrians.

This is the eighth century B.C. In order to warn them one last time, he sends two prophets to the nation, Amos and Hosea. And so Hosea is this young prophet and his job is to take people who don't want to change and get them to change. It was a time in Israel of material prosperity, but they were spiritually bankrupt. And so Hosea shows up on the scene.

It's kind of interesting. The word of the Lord, which came to Hosea the son of Biri during the days of Uzziah and Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah. And during the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, the king of Israel, this is sort of like his calling is going to be. And it's the most unusual calling of all time.

And the reason it's such an unusual calling is God says, Hosea, I want to make a point here and I want to use your life to make it. I want your life to be an object lesson. In fact, this is what I want. I'm going to have your relationship with your future wife to be just like my relationship with the nation Israel. And I'm going to demonstrate to that nation how I love them. On the basis of how you love your wife.

Well, that's not so hard, is it? Well, you don't know his wife yet. It says when the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go and take to yourself a wife of harlotry. He says, for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.

And it says, and he went and he took Gomer, the daughter of the blame. I imagine, like any young man, Hosea visualized what his wife is going to be like. And back there, by the way, almost all the marriages are arranged. You see, you're going to have an arranged marriage. Your father is going to set it up and it's going to be arranged and it must always work out. So at one level, Hosea must be thinking, get this, God is working this out for me. God's arranged my marriage. Now, I know we all say that and I'll be the first to say it. You know, God put my wife into my life.

I get that. But he didn't actually say to me, Bill, you see, I want you to marry Velma. He didn't say that. He just now looking back on hindsight, he put us together. So if you're Hosea, what are you thinking? God arranged this.

This is going to be great. But when he said to him, he said he's a wife of harlotry. That could only mean one of two things. She's going to become a wife of harlotry or she already is a harlot. Some of the commentators think she might have already been a temple prostitute. Now, Hosea is an idealistic man, but he couldn't be more different than his wife Gomer. You see, Hosea had, he brought to this relationship the unsquandered treasure of a young man's purity. He took his relationship with God very seriously. Gomer had none of the purity that are intended have. Imagine from Gomer's point of view. I imagine she's swept off her feet by this young man.

He's already famous. He's a prophet. She's a harlot.

Astounding. This young man of genius who had the heart of a hero and he had the passion of a poet. I couldn't imagine how it felt for her. And it says then that she conceived and she bore him a son. Now, on the basis of what I think is happening, what's being illustrated, I have a hunch right from the beginning their marriage went bad. I would imagine that there were nights when Hosea got back from prophesying and she wasn't home.

I imagine there were nights when he just laid awake and waited for his wife to return. But this looks like maybe there's finally something who'll put them together in a good way and she's going to bear him a son. The dream of every young male Israelite. I'm going to have a son. I imagine also that Hosea probably thought in his mind, there are so many great names. There are so many great names and they're all going to end in Yah or they're all going to end in El. But I'm going to get God's name in here and it's going to be great.

My son's going to have this great name. God says, no, I'm going to name him. The Lord said to him, name him Jezreel. For yet in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. Jezreel is a name of shame. Jezreel is this part in northern Israel where you have a famous story of an evil king named Ahab.

And if you don't know him, you know his wife. Her name's Jezebel. It's actually in Jezreel where Jezebel is pushed out of a window and hits the ground. Then before they can pick up her body, the dogs eat her. Because she was so evil and corrupt. It's in Jezreel where a very misguided and sincere man named Jehu killed 700 actually beheaded and put their heads in baskets. 700 of the descendants of Ahab.

It became a place of public shame and scrutiny. And he says, oh, by the way, you got a little boy. You're going to name him Jezreel.

Who could imagine that? If I was drawing a parallel today, the only thing I could think of is this. You're a young Jewish man. You marry a young Jewish girl and God says to you, name that boy Auschwitz or Dachau.

A place of tremendous shame. And he does. He does exactly as God has suggested.

Well, he's not done then. It says in verse six, and then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Now he has a little girl. And again, God says, I'm going to name her, name her Lo Ruhama. Anytime you see the word low, it means no or negative, not in the strongest term in Hebrew, her name means no mercy, no pity. What a great name for a little girl. No mercy. Come here.

I'd like you to meet my daughter. No mercy, no pity. Just imagine the burden of that. And he says, I will no longer have compassion in the house of Israel that I will forgive them. Verse eight, and when she had weaned Lo Ruhama, she conceived and she gave birth to a second son and a third child.

And now we really get some insight. And it says in the Lord said, name him Lo Ami, literally not my kin. Best way to translate it. Not my child. What a name, what a burden. Every time your father called you, he called you not my child. In fact, most commentators should believe because she had better harlotry that none of these children were his. That they were all born through harlotry and adultery. Three kids. You have this whole idea of Jezreel, shame and disgrace, Lo Ruhama, no mercy, no pity, and Lo Ami, not my child.

And then one day it got worse. Gomer moved out. She moves out and leaves Hosea as the mother and father of three small children that very likely aren't even his. And although Gomer had left his home, she never left his heart. Just imagine the gossip then. Hey, did you hear about it? Gomer left Hosea.

Wow. You know what, I never liked that guy. He's one of those prophets that tells everybody else how to live, what all of us should be doing. He can't even take care of business at home. Those aren't even his kids. And now she's sick of him and she moved out. I imagine there are others who really liked Hosea and probably said what you would have said.

If you're honest with yourself. He'd be better off without her. Good riddance. Notice that's what we would say. Good riddance. I'm glad she's gone. But Hosea sees things differently.

He sees a reality and he has a hope. It says in verse five of chapter two, for their mother has played the harlot she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers who give me bread and make my water and my wool and my flax and my oil, my drink. She said, I love it when men take care of me.

It was my business. Hosea, though, has what I would call a dream. Verse seven, she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them and she will seek them, but she will not find them. And then she will say, I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now. She'll come back.

Now, what's interesting here is in. Verse eight, Hosea writes something and he says, for she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain and the new wine and the oil and lavished on her silver and gold, which they use for bail. She has moved to another man. He can't really take care of her.

Guess who's taking care of her? Hosea. Listen to what Haddon Robinson in his great sermon on Hosea, what he writes. He says after she left Hosea, she passed from man to man until she fell into the hands of a man who could not provide for her the basic necessities of life. In all that time, Hosea watched from a distance the downward path his wife had taken.

And finally, when he realized that she was living with a man who just could not provide the basics for a life, he went to the man. Now, this is speculation, obviously. And he said, are you the man that's living with Gomer, the daughter of the bomb? Well, what if I am? I'm her husband.

The man clutches his fist and is prepared for a fight. And Hosea said, no, you don't understand. I love my wife. And I wonder if you would do me a favor.

I wonder if you would take some gold and some silver and buy her the things that she needs. The man stares, he said, at the prophet and then sees the money in his outstretched palm and he begins to think, you bet there's no fool like this fool. He agrees to the preacher's plan. By the way, what do you think of Gomer? See, what do you think of her in this story? Because I need to tell you something. You're Gomer in this story. That'd be you.

That'd be me. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called oneplace.com. That's oneplace.com and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online.

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