3. God’s Unfailing Love Chooses to Sacrifice

Hosea was the one who had been wronged and humiliated. He was the one following God, but he was also the one called to sacrifice. Not only did he sacrifice his pride, but his rights as well.

Gomer had broken the covenant of marriage so, biblically, Hosea had every right to divorce her, but he chose to give up that right just like he chose to give up the right to seek revenge. He could have stripped her of every good thing in her life and no one would have blamed him, but he laid down his revenge, took the initiative and went to her. Amazing!

When our son Jered was a little boy, he loved to work in the garage with his dad. He especially loved Dan’s power tools. Wanting to direct his love of power tools in a safer direction, we bought him the cutest set of plastic tools and a wooden workbench for Christmas.

The look of disappointment on his face when he ripped the paper off his new tools and workbench broke my heart. I thought he would be excited. Wrong!

After playing with them for a few minutes, Jered headed for the garage to use “daddy’s big tools.” My husband said, “Son, those tools were made for daddy’s hands. If the wrong person uses those tools, they can get hurt.”

Dan then held out his hands and placed Jered’s hands in his. “See how much bigger my hands are than yours, son? When your hands are this big, you can use the power tools.” Jered got the point.

I hope we do. Revenge is reserved for the hands of God. Revenge is destructive in our hands but in God’s hands, revenge becomes a tool of restoration.

Nowhere does it say that Gomer was repentant. Hosea had no guarantee that she wouldn’t do the same thing again. I am sure his family and friends told him he was making a big mistake and deserved better.

True love goes beyond reason, refusing to settle for justice alone. True love insists on giving mercy. Love that never gives up is willing to pay a great price–to sacrifice.

The marriage of Hosea and Gomer is a picture of our relationship with God and illustrates God’s love for us, a love that never fails. Like Gomer, we have been unfaithful to God, selling ourselves to unworthy desires and goals.

Gomer did not deserve to be redeemed. Her behavior did not merit such mercy. Israel did not deserve God’s faithful betrothal. Their unfaithfulness did not merit such mercy. You and I do not deserve salvation. Our sin does not merit such mercy.

We have run from God, straight into the arms of our own selfish desires. Our lives and hearts are cluttered with people and things that we worship. They are false idols because anything that stands between us and God is an idol.

We have become comfortable with our sin and at times, happy in our disobedience. Like Gomer, we cherish that sin, refusing to let it go. However, like Hosea loved Gomer, God has loved us unconditionally–right in the middle of our messy lives.

“Hosea” literally means “salvation” and just like Hosea was Gomer’s salvation, God is ours as He looks fast our rebellious hearts and unfaithfulness – and pursues us. God never gives up on us.

Romans 8:39 (NLT) “Whether we are high above the sky or in the deepest ocean, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God chose to forgive us, sending His perfect son to pay for our sin and now He calls us to love the way He loves–with a love that never fails.

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2. God’s Unfailing Love Chooses to Forgive

Hosea 3:1 “The LORD said to me again, ‘Go, show your love to a woman loved by someone else, who has been unfaithful to you.’”

We often confuse forgiveness as a feeling instead of a choice. Forgiveness is a deliberate action, an independent act between you and God. To forgive means to “cancel the debt and send it away.”

Forgiveness is a choice.

In the Orient, when someone pays a debt, the loan paper is marked “Paid in full.” It is then nailed above the door of their home for everyone to see. Forgiveness makes the choice to cancel the debt–before they ask for forgiveness or even if they never ask for forgiveness.

Gomer did not ask for or even seem to want forgiveness. Scripture tells us that she “loved adultery” and worshipped the false God Baal. In other words, Gomer was happy in her sin, but Hosea forgave her and brought her home–again!

Why? To Hosea the answer was really quite simple. Because God told him to! God told Hosea not only to bring Gomer back but to love and forgive her.

Now that is asking an awful lot. Right? But God can ask a lot because He gave a lot. Forgiveness is the deepest need of our lives and the greatest gift of God.

Colossians 2:13-14 (NLT) “Then God made you alive with Christ. He forgave all our sins. He canceled the record that contained the charges against us. He took it and destroyed it by nailing it to Christ’s cross.”

Forgiveness must be given in the same proportion that it is received. There should be no limits to our forgiveness because there are no limits to His. In other words, we can stop forgiving when we run out of forgiveness. True love never fails but chooses instead to forgive.

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1. God’s Unfailing Love Chooses Commitment

Hosea 2:19-20 “I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. I will be faithful to you and make you mine.”

Commitment is something our world knows little about. We want commitment to be easy, convenient, painless and cheap. Commitment is none of those things.

Commitment never stops trying. Commitment never tries stopping. Hebrews 12:1 drives home a powerful truth, “Let us run the race that is before us and never give up.” A commitment is a covenant, a promise or pledge, and a contract.

Cortes, the Spanish explorer discovered what we know today as Mexico. He sailed in several boats with many men committed to conquering and settling an unknown land. When they arrived, the men looked around at an undiscovered world and were terrified.

Sensing the fear of his men, Cortes gathered them all on shore and set fire to their ships. He then announced, “Now there can be no turning back.” That is the picture of commitment–no turning back, no escape clauses and no option for retreat.

Love that never gives up can hold on because of commitment as it looks past the circumstance and locks its gaze on the promise of the covenant with God.

Hosea had a decision to make. I’m sure his feelings told him to run as fast and as far away as he could. Hosea was angry, hurt and embarrassed. Everyone knew what Gomer was doing because it had been going on for some time. Remember, Hosea wasn’t even sure that he was the father of his second and third child, but he chose to stay because he chose commitment–commitment to his wife and to his God.

Commitment sometimes means sacrificing your own happiness for a time in order to redeem the relationship. God called Hosea to commitment the first time in marriage. He now calls him to show his love “again.” “Show” means to be a “friend or ally” and to focus on the needs of others.

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3 Things Hosea Teaches Us about God’s Unfailing Love

A college man walked into a photography studio to have a framed picture of his girlfriend duplicated. When the photographer took the picture apart, he noticed an inscription written on the back of the photograph that read, “My dearest Tom, I love you with all of my heart. I will love you forever and am yours for eternity.”

The inscription was signed, “Diane” and contained a P.S. “If we ever break up, I want this picture back!”

Now there is some real love, right?

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 that real love never fails. “Fails” means “collapses, falls, or disintegrates.” True love is God’s love – a love we cannot understand or explain in human terms. God’s love has no “PS” in it.

God’s love doesn’t collapse under the weight of testing.

No matter how scorching the fires of life may be, God’s love does not disintegrate.

When a circumstance rattles the foundation of our lives, God’s love never lets us fall. 

The life of the Old Testament prophet Hosea powerfully illustrates this kind of love. Hosea was a godly man – a prophet. I’m sure he dreamed of having a wife who was also a seeker of God, someone with whom he could share God’s calling on his life. Those dreams were shattered when Hosea heard the voice of God say, “The Lord said to him, ‘Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.’ So, he married Gomer, daughter of Diblaim,” (Hosea 1:2-3).

Not exactly the kind of marriage announcement Hosea had anticipated or wanted. But because Hosea was a godly man, he obeyed the direction of God and married Gomer. Together, they had three children.

When Hosea heard rumors about Gomer, his heart began to break. His wife was sleeping with other men. In fact, Hosea could not even be sure the children they had were his.

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Eli was a very poor example of fathering to the young Samuel. Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were very evil men: 1 Sam 2:12-25. Obviously there comes a time when a father cannot be held responsible for the sins of his children.

  • “The soul who sins is the one who will die. The son will not share the guilt of the father, nor will the father share the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous man will be credited to him, and the wickedness of the wicked will be charged against him” (Ezek 18:20). This speaks of the personal responsibility we have for sin. We cannot simply blame our failures and mistakes upon the previous generation.
  • Jesus says: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin” (Jn 15:22).

Hophni and Phineas turned out to be so evil, however, because of the way their father treated them: “I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against his family—from beginning to end. For I told him that I would judge his family forever because of the sin he knew about; his sons make themselves contemptible, and his failed to restrain him” (1 Sam 3:12-13). “When Samuel grew old, he appointed his sons as judges for Israel. The name of his firstborn was Joel and the name of his second was Abijah, and they served at Beersheba. But his sons did not walk in his ways. They turned aside after dishonest gain and accepted bribes and perverted justice” (1 Sam 8:1-3).

When God revealed himself to Moses, he said, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punished the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation” (Ex 34:6-7). Could the reason the Lord punishes children to the third and fourth generation be that sins are passed down from generation to generation?

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Because sin is the root cause of all family problems, there is often “baggage” which is carried from generation to generation.

In other words, because children learn sinful ways of behaving in a household, they often repeat those sinful behaviors in adulthood. There are a multitude of examples in the Scriptures.

Abraham apparently passed on lying to his son Isaac. (Gen 12:10-20; 26:1-16). Granted, the episode with Abram’s going down to Egypt occurred before Isaac was ever born; however, it could very well be that Abram had a real problem with telling the truth—in Genesis 20, he told Abimelech that Sarah was his sister, not his wife.

Isaac and Rachel’s favoritism caused Jacob much heartache in later life.

“Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob” (Gen 25:28). Jacob was able to steal Esau’s blessing through the conniving of his mother—that act brought much heartache to that family (Gen 27).

Jacob continued that favoritism in his own family: “Now Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made a richly ornamented robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him” (Gen 37:3-4). Because of the jealousy of Joseph’s brothers, Joseph was sold to slavery in Egypt. (Did Jacob pass on deception to his children, deception in learned in his family of origin?) Jacob mourned greatly when he thought Joseph had died: “Jacob tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days. All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. ‘No,’ he said, ‘in mourning will I go down to the grave to my son.’ So his father wept for him” (Gen 37:34-35).

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God had promised to make Abraham a great nation:

  • “I will make you a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Gen 12:2-3).
  • “The word of the LORD came to him [Abraham]: ‘This man [Eliezer of Damascus, Abram’s heir at the time] will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be’” (Gen 15:4-5).

Sarai, Abram’s wife, had a hard time trusting God to deliver on that promise: “Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; so she said to Abram, ‘The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.’ Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived” (Gen 16:1-4). It was widely believed in Abram’s day that if a wife was barren, God was punishing you. The giving of a maidservant to a husband for the purpose of procreation was a widespread practice in Sarai’s day. Thus, what Abraham was doing here was not at all considered adultery. Hagar apparently did not have the fertility issues Sarai had, and she conceived.

As soon as Hagar became pregnant, however, Sarai became quite upset with her: “When she [Sarai] knew she [Hagar] was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me’” (Gen 16:4-5). Sarai then began to mistreat Hagar to the point that Hagar fled from her (16:6). As Hagar was running, an angel of the LORD appeared to her and said: “You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers” (16:11-12).

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Sin Negatively Affects Families

Every single problem in every single family has the root cause of sin. I will readily admit that this is quite simplistic, but it is true, nonetheless.

Sin has a serious effect on mankind:

  • When Adam and Eve sinned, human relationships were forever changed: Genesis 3:16-24.
  • Paul compiles numerous Old Testament references and writes: “What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written: ‘There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.’ ‘The poison of vipers is on their lips.’ ‘Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes’” (Rom 3:9-18).

Let’s think about some families which were adversely affected because of sin:

Sara brought much heartache to her family because she refused to trust God.

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Marriage and Family | Damaging Influences on the Home

Damaging Influences on the Home

 

There is no doubt but that American families today have a multitude of damaging influences.

Some of the problems:

  • Today, there is more “family diversity”: Few adults are married, more are divorced or remaining single, and more are living together outside of marriage or living alone.
  • Today, more children are born out-of-wedlock (now almost four out of ten), and more are living in stepfamilies, with cohabiting but unmarried adults, or with a single parent.
  • Between the mid 1990s and the early 2000s, the marriage rate dropped 24 percent in the United States, and in the same period nonmarital cohabitation climbed 49 percent in the United States. It is estimated that about a quarter of unmarried women age 25 to 39 are currently living with a partner and an additional quarter have lived with a partner at some time in the past.
  • There is a widespread acceptance by teenagers of nonmarital lifestyles. A survey was given which asked for agreement with this position: “that most people will have fuller and happier lives if they choose legal marriage rather than staying single or just living with someone.” Less than a third of the girls and more than a third of the boys seem to believe that marriage is more beneficial to individuals than the alternatives. More than 50 percent of teenagers now accept out-of-wedlock childbearing as a “worthwhile lifestyle.” Over half of teenagers believe it is acceptable for a couple to live together before they get married.

Why have these attitudes developed? Where are teens getting such ideas?

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Caught — by his parents

“I went home with this guy I met at a bar in college and he took me to what I thought was his house. I was pretty tipsy at this point so I didn’t really pay too much attention to where we were going or what the place looked like. It turned out he lived with his parents and while we were having sex on the couch, they walked in and his mom screamed. I basically fell off the couch, grabbed what clothes I could find and ran out. I never did get my other sock back.” Maia, Orlando, Florida

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