Scandalous Love

Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. I think one of the most mind-blowing things in Scripture is that we see God reaching out to a group of people who are not paying Him any attention at all. Hosea gives us the most mind-blowing view of the love of God, one that is almost too difficult for us to believe. Welcome to Summit Life with pastor, author, and theologian J.D.

Greer. I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today we're kicking off a brand new teaching series called Come Back to Me. It's a study of the Minor Prophets, a part of the Bible that most of us probably don't know much about. But as we're going to see, there's a lot to learn from these short Old Testament books. We're starting off in the book of Hosea, discovering a beautiful and surprising picture of the gospel in the story of an unusual marriage. Pastor J.D.

titled this message Scandalous Love. For the next few weeks, we are going to dive into a collection of books that you have probably skipped right over in your Bible reading. And that's because they contain difficult names like Habakkuk or Haggai or Malachi, the great Italian prophet. In the Hebrew Bible, the 12 minor prophets that are the last part of your Old Testament constitute one book, often referred to simply as the 12 or the book of the 12. Most people skip right over them because first they're called minor. And so you think, well, how important can they actually be if they're called minor? And second, if you do read them, they tend to sound pretty gloomy and doomy. But these 12 books are not called minor because they are unimportant. They are called minor because they are short.

And we all like short things, right? Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah, they tended to write these really long verbose books. The minor prophets were more like, think of them as the most popular blog post of ancient Israel that got repeated around. These were mostly written after Israel had turned its back on God. And so in the minor prophets, God lays out his plan for restoration for Israel. And he points forward to a coming Messiah who was going to heal and to redeem what Israel sin had messed up. The good news for that in you, for good news in that for you is that if you have a life that you have messed up because of your sin, then these books are written for you. That's what they're written about is they're written about people that have brought misery into their lives because of dumb decisions that they've made.

And honestly, I don't know any one of us that would say, yeah, that's not me. All of us have made these decisions. This is about the path of restoration and the path of redemption. Plus, like I've told you, if you are a Christian one day in heaven, you are surely going to run into Nahum and Habakkuk and Malachi and they're going to come up to you. I promise you. And they're going to say, how'd you like my book? And if you've never read it, then you're going to be embarrassed and it's going to be awkward. And my job is to save you from that moment. So we're going to spend a few weeks in the minor prophets.

Hosea is the first of the 12 because Hosea sets the stage for everything that's going to come after him. In this book, he's going to give us one of the most bizarre and yet riveting illustrations of what God's love for his people is actually like. Honestly, it's downright scandalous, but first let me get into that through a story of my own. I had to fly to Florida this week for a meeting down there. And when I got to the airport, I got the good news that I had been upgraded to first class, which is always a really good day, right? And so when I got upgraded to first class, I went and took my new seat in first class and sat down right next to Mike Huckabee. I know who Mike Huckabee is.

I've watched all the presidential debates. I've even seen his talk show a few times. I know who he is, but honestly, in that moment, I don't have on a filter for sitting next to a celebrity. So all I know is I recognize this guy from somewhere. And my first thought is I think he's one of my seminary professors from, from years ago.

The second thought I had, and I kid you not is the second thought I had is maybe he is a leader at one of our campuses that I just haven't seen in a while. And you know, the worst thing to do in a moment like that is to act like you don't know the person. So I just, I'm always like, you know, try to be super friendly. And I'm like, Hey man, how's it going?

Things going all right for you. And he just kind of looks up at me and he says, well, hi there. And the moment that the words came out of his mouth, I was like, Oh, you idiot.

That is Mike Huckabee. So I sat down next to him. And I thought my second thought that I had was sometimes occasionally I'll sit on a plane. Somebody sit next to me and they've, you know, they've been to our church one time and they like, Hey, I got, you know, the pastor for the next two hours and I'll just ask him a bazillion questions and, and maybe, maybe not. I get annoyed.

And so, um, I was like, this is my turn to be annoying. I get to ask him every political question I can think of for the next two hours. Uh, so I didn't really do that, but I, I, he, uh, he was very, very gracious. I found out by the way, told him I was going to tell you this. I found out that he is, uh, the church that he is a part of. Um, he is a part of the parking team at his church and he picks people up in the parking lot in a golf cart and drives them to the front door of his church. You better believe I will use that the next time we try to sign up volunteers for our parking team.

Oh yeah, you're too important and too busy on the weekend for you to volunteer. He said, one day he said, I picked up this little, um, older lady in the parking lot. I got out of her car and she hopped in the golf cart. And she said, after about 30 seconds in silence, as we were driving toward the door, she said, anybody ever told you, you look like Mike Huckabee. He said, well, yes, ma'am.

I've heard that before. And he said, we drove on another 10 seconds. And she said, anybody ever told you, you sound like Mike Huckabee. He said, yes, ma'am.

I've also heard that. So we pulled up to the door and she looks at me and she said, are you Mike Huckabee? He said, well, yes, ma'am. I am. So she looked at me and said, no, you're not.

And got out and walked in. So now I tell you all that, uh, because I, that's certainly obviously not, I'm not trying to endorse Mike Huckabee's politics one way or another, but it's simply to say that, usually in the presence of a celebrity, most of us are not quite sure how to act, right? Including me. Um, you just, you know, celebrities, you tend to, we tend to be groupies and in front of celebrities, groupies are people who show an inordinate amount of attention to people who show no attention back to them. Um, that's what a groupie is.

You're paying attention to somebody that's not paying any attention to you. I think I've told you before that a lot of people are like that with movie stars or singers. When a lot of young teenage girls today that are in love with Ryan Gosling or Bruno Mars or Brandon Murphy and you adults, by the way, don't judge, don't judge. Because I know for a fact that some of you ladies, when you were in middle school, you were convinced that you were going to marry Donnie from new kids on the block, right?

Instead you married Phil from accounting, a responsible man who is slightly overweight balding and wears penny loafers. And now, and now you look at these girls that are in middle school dreaming about Justin Bieber or a Bieber or Timberlake. And then you're like, sorry, sweetheart. It ain't ever going to happen. And maybe you say that with a little bitterness in your heart. Maybe, maybe you say that, but you know what?

That's okay, because part of discipling the next generation is teaching them to live on planet earth. Life is too short. It's just too short to be a groupie. A groupie expresses inordinate amounts of love towards somebody who shows no interest at all in them. I think one of the most mind-blowing things in scripture is that we see God taking that posture with the sinful human race. Not of course, in the sense that he is enamored with our greatness, but in the sense that from the very first pages of Genesis to the final chapters of Revelation, we see God reaching out to a group of people who are not paying him any attention at all. Which brings us to the book of Hosea. Hosea gives us the most mind-blowing view of the love of God.

One that is almost too difficult for us to believe. Hosea chapter one, verse two. Hosea has to go down in history as the man who received the worst ministry assignment ever. Hosea one, two, go and marry a prostitute and have children with her. You seminary students, how would you like for that to be your assignment when you graduated from seminary?

All your friends are getting assigned to churches or writing books, taking teaching posts, and you're told to go marry a practicing prostitute who's going to continue on in her prostitution. By the way, to make matters worse, look in verse three. Her name was Gomer. Hey, if you're looking for biblical names for your daughter, I would not suggest you choose Gomer.

Okay, the only other Gomer I know is a dude and it was a goofy private on the Gomer pile. But God had a purpose for this. Verse two, this will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and by worshiping other gods. Spiritual adultery might be the primary biblical illustration of sin. It's a very gripping analogy because there are a few things that tear your heart out as a spouse as much as adultery. Adultery is a betrayal of love. Adultery is when you give to somebody else what you really ought to be finding in your spouse. It's interesting if you read the book of Hosea this week, you might've noticed this, that one of the primary sins that God identifies in Israel is that she looks to other nations for help instead of looking to God for help. When Israel was afraid, when she faced financial worry, when she was worried about her harvest coming in that fall or that spring, rather than turning to God, they ran down to Egypt or Assyria and they said, you gotta help us. Now that may not on the surface sound that immoral, but you see what had happened is something had replaced God in their heart as their trust and their love and their treasure. Our primary sin is that we have let other things take the place that God is supposed to occupy in our hearts. So let me just ask you to consider, where is it that you turn first when you are worried? For example, say that you're single and you really wanna be married or say that you're lonely and you're not happy with your life.

What do you do? Do you look patiently to God doing things His way or do you take things into your own hands and do them your way? You see, I know that we have people who come to our church every week who are, for example, living with somebody that they're not married to because they just don't wanna do it God's way. They're not content to be patient and wait on God.

So they've taken matters into their own hands. The primary immorality there is not the premarital sex. The primary immorality is that they have refused to trust God with their future and taken matters into their own hands. We got people committing essentially the same sin who are not living with somebody else, but are just worried and obsessed all the time about what that's going to be in the future. You're looking, you let something else in your heart take the place that God and His love was supposed to play. Where do you turn when you're stressed?

When things are really difficult, is it you can't wait till you get home so you can take a drink of some kind, or maybe you go shopping and you buy lots of stuff, or maybe for you men, it's a hobby that you indulge in. The primary sin is not the drunkenness or the excess spending. The primary sin is in the fact that we turn to something else for comfort besides the promises of God. Or take one more, let's just use your finances. What do you most look to for financial security?

Listen, I want you to understand this. One of the reasons that scripture makes such a big deal about tithing your first fruits back to God is that it reveals who or what you really trust with your future. God does not tell us to tithe our first fruits, which means 10% of everything He gives to us, we give the first 10% back to Him. God doesn't do that because He needs money. He doesn't do it because He's trying to test your generosity.

He does it because He wants you to see who you really trust for your future security. If you trust money as your future security, of course you can't give it away. You'll say things like, well, I can't give that away because what if I have a rainy day? And what if I don't have that one day when I need it?

I got to have that for the future. And when you say that, you are revealing with your own words what your real immorality, where the real immorality is not withholding the 10%, the real immorality is that the trust you ought to be giving to God about your future, you have put onto money. You're running down to Egypt. You're running down to Assyria, just like they did. God was supposed to be their joy. He was supposed to be their delight, their confidence, their security, their trust. But Israel, like that prostitute, had sought those things in something or someone else. And that betrayal of God broke his heart. And so God said to Hosea, I'm going to illustrate that for everybody. So go love a woman who is going to be unfaithful to you.

Hosea, by the way, didn't just go through the formalities. You look there in verse three, after it talks about taking Gomer, says she conceived and bore him a son. He genuinely tried to love her. He tried to start a family with her. They began to have children. And so after they begin to build this family and after they get it established, chapter two, Gomer returns to her old ways.

Look at verse five in chapter two. She said, I will again go after my lovers. And she does it in broad daylight so that everybody's like, hey, isn't that Hosea's wife? She shames him publicly. Eventually she leaves him for some man who just pays her for sex. To make matters worse, this new guy, this new lover begins to abuse her. And so Hosea in chapter two, he pleads with her to come back. He says, just come back and be the wife and the mother.

I've created this home for you. But insanely, she won't. You look in chapter two, verse eight, it says, he even gives the man that she is now shacking up with. He gives her money.

So that this man who is abusing her can take care of her. He's like, hey, here's some money and take care of her needs and make sure she's clothed. And she never even acknowledges that the money that's taking care of her while she's living in adultery with this other man is coming from Hosea. Well, eventually this new lover gets so tired of her that he tries to sell her back into the sex slave trade. And then God appears to Hosea with a second assignment, chapter three, verse one. Go again, love this woman again who is an adulterous. Now would you keep in mind that Hosea is a real person, just like you or me?

What had to be going through his mind? By her back? After I bought her once and then I gave her a home and I redeemed her and I restored her and then she humiliated me. God, after giving her everything, you want me to go and put myself through that again?

Why would I do that? God says, because I'm trying to make a point. Look at the rest of verse one, go again, love this woman, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, even though they continue to turn to other gods. And so Hosea would have gone to the auction.

Scholars tell us that Gomer would have been stripped down naked so that potential buyers could see what they were bidding on. And there stands Hosea in line with a bunch of men who just want to buy her as a prostitute and not only use her body for their needs, but also sell her out to others. And there stands Hosea who just wants to love her and protect her and provide for her, which leads me to the first reflection that I want to give you on the love of God.

Number one, God's love when we properly see it, scandalizes us. There's not a one of us in Hosea situation that would not have felt perfectly justified in just walking away. Sometimes we wonder things like how God could have the audacity to judge us as if God's anger toward our sin is just too harsh. But anytime you and I get put in a situation similar to what God is in, we rage with righteous anger. And yet God kept coming for us. What Hosea was doing by the way, was not required by Hebrew law.

In fact, in Leviticus 20, you want to make a note of that? God had said very clearly that a man in Hosea situation could divorce his wife. He could walk away.

He could even have her stoned for that kind of unfaithfulness. This was a divinely appointed loophole, but God, he was saying to Hosea, God says, I'm not looking for a loophole. And God's love drove him beyond the legal requirements of the law. He could very easily have walked away and been fully justified in doing so, but inexplicably, inexplicably, God set his love upon us. Chapter 11, verse eight might be in my opinion, the most remarkable verse in the entire Old Testament. Chapter 11, verse eight. How can I give you up Israel?

How can I let you go? My heart is torn within me. I love that verse because it shows us something absolutely staggering about the love of God. The God who created all the universe, the God who created stars and galaxy and the God for whom our planet is just a speck of dust in the midst of billions of specks of dust. And we're just a speck of dust on that speck of dust. That God had so united his heart with us that he couldn't let us go. I recently talked with a, let's just say a theologically minded guy who visited our church, who didn't like the phrase that we sing in the song, What a Beautiful Name It Is. There's a phrase we sing where it says, you didn't want heaven without us. And he said, I don't like that phrase because it makes it sound like God is needy. Makes it sound like God's in heaven. He's lonely and he really needs us to be happy. And so God came to earth to get us because he didn't want heaven without us.

And we were so important. And he says, I don't think we should ever present God as needy. And y'all, I understand that concern, but look, look at that verse.

Look exactly at that verse. How can I give you up? How can I let you go? According to this verse, God bound up his happiness in ours. That's how you feel when you love somebody. Your happiness is bound up in theirs. It's like I told my wife when we had our fourth child, after our fourth child was two or three years old, I said, you know, I don't think I'm ever going to be happy again.

She said, why not? I said, because I've learned as a parent now that I can only be as happy as my least happy child. And now that I got four kids, statistically, one of them for the rest of our lives is going to be unhappy about something, which means at no point am I going to be able to rise above the level of their unhappiness, which means I'm going to be able to rise above the level of their unhappiness, which means I am doomed to be unhappy until the day that I die. Because that's how you feel when you love somebody, right?

Your heart is so bound up with theirs that you can't be happy until they are happy. That is how amazingly God feels about us. And what is even more amazing, listen, is that we weren't his children.

We were his enemies when he does this. We saw this in the book of Ephesians, didn't we? In Ephesians, it doesn't say that we were his way, but we were his enemies. We were children of wrath. I explained to you that God's choice to forgive us was not like me forgiving my daughter for telling a lie or for taking an extra cookie out of a cookie jar. God's decision to forgive us would be like me forgiving and bringing into my family a kidnapper who had murdered one of my daughters. When we were God's enemies, that's when he set his love on us.

I love how theologian J.I. Packer says, by his own free voluntary choice. He didn't have to do it. He could have walked away and been on the poor.

He could have walked away, but by his own free voluntary choice, God will not know perfect and unmixed happiness again until he has brought every one of his children to heaven. I've heard it compared before to adoption. When a family adopts a child, it's not that they were unhappy and lonely before the adoption, right? I mean, at least that's not why you should get adoption. It's just that after they have chosen to enter into the adoption from that point forward, they have bound their happiness to the happiness of that child.

In one sense, my friend was right. God did not need us. God was happy before he made us. He would have been justified had he destroyed us after we sinned, but God by his own voluntary choice, so wrapped up his emotions in our pain so that he could not be happy again until we were happy.

That kind of love demands something from you. You see, you got to have one or two reactions to it. You either got to shake your head in disbelief and just walk away or you got to fall on your knees in abject surrender. The one reaction you cannot have is boredom, and that is precisely the reaction most people in church have toward the love of God.

They're bored with it, which shows you they've never actually understood it because if you understood it, you'd either disbelieve it or you would fall on your face and say, oh my God, I can't believe this is true. Here's the second thing we learn about the love of God from this story. Number two, God's love eviscerated him.

I'm sorry for the SAT word there, but I just couldn't come up with a better one. The word eviscerated means it literally cut his heart out. Purchasing Gomer this second time evidently broke Hosea financially.

Here's how we know. Look at verse two there in chapter three. So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a lethic of barley. You said, well, how does that show us it eviscerated him financially? Um, scholars say in those days, the going price for a slave was 30 shekels of silver, which means the fact that he bought 15 shekel for 15 shekels of silver and paid the rest in kind.

The only reason you could get away with that is if you didn't have the full price. So the fact that he had to pay half the price and buy the rest in kind or on credit that shows that he, in order to purchase her, he had to, he had to empty his savings account. It eviscerated him financially in order to purchase or he didn't have the rest. You see that pointed forward to Jesus who was not just financially eviscerated, eviscerated, but literally eviscerated to save us. He poured out his own blood so that we could be restored. In order for him to save us, he had to give something that he didn't have an abundance of and that was his own life. That was his own life.

Reconciliation always comes at a great cost. Jesus took the consequences of our sin into into his body, holding the gates of heaven open for us so that all we need to do is just receive it. You're listening to Summit Life and a message titled Scandalous Love from Pastor J.D. Greer. If you happen to join us late or if you'd like to share this message with a friend, be sure to visit our website jdgreer.com. So J.D., the Minor Prophets. This is a section of the Bible that a lot of us aren't super familiar with. So what are you hoping listeners will get out of this study?

Okay, Molly, here's a little known fact. I was actually dreading the series through the Minor Prophets, but I thought people in my church would criticize me that I'd never really touched them. So I got into them and just found, I mean, what I knew was going to be true, but had just forgotten that there was so much rewarding gospel, so much about the love of God that just exudes through these Minor Prophets. They're Minor Prophets with a major message.

They're major on the love of God. You see, the gospel is not just something that pops up in the first part of the New Testament. It's, Jesus said, written into literally every single page of the scripture. That's our whole focus at Summit Life. No matter what the subject is, no matter what part of the scriptures we're teaching from, we want to show that the gospel is there.

The whole Bible is the story of God's relentless love in coming after the people that He is saving. And so when you support this ministry financially, you're helping us bring that message of the gospel to more people across the country and even really, Molly, around the world. We've got a monthly partner program called Gospel Partners to make it easier for you to be a part of this mission. And so we want to invite you as the listener to partner with us financially. If you're being blessed by this, if you find yourself growing daily in the gospel and wanting other people to be able to experience this, we would invite you to commit to a monthly gift that helps us be able to get these messages and this gospel to people around the country and in other parts of the world.

You can learn more about that and anything else we've talked about today, just go to jdgeer.com. We'd love for you to get on board with that mission today to help us reach more people with gospel-centered Bible teaching. Your regular monthly support makes this all possible, and we are so grateful. It's easy to join the Gospel Partner team. Just give us a call, and we'll get it all set up for you.

Our number is 866-335-5220. Or if you prefer, you can sign up online at jdgeer.com. As a Gospel Partner, you'll get access to all of the resources we feature throughout the year, including our current resource. It's a 20-day devotional called What is the Gospel? Mention this new book from Pastor JD when you join the Gospel Partner team today or when you make a generous one-time donation. Call 866-335-5220 or go online to jdgeer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch, so glad to have you with us. And be sure to listen Wednesday as we continue our new study of the Minor Prophets right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.