The Triumph Of Grace In Hosea (2)

The prophet Hosea marries Gomer, a wife who proves to be unfaithful to him, going after numerous men. How is Gomer to be brought back from her sin? How is the land to be delivered from its wickedness? It’s no secret. The way back is written plainly on every page of the Bible. There are two things that are needed for the restoration of Gomer, and Ephraim and Judah or of our own nation today.

1. THEY NEED THE GRACE OF LAW.

So one great theme through this prophecy is the need for God’s ministers to preach the law of God. For example, Hosea 4: 1&2 “the LORD has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: ‘There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.‘” Hosea 4:6, “you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God.” Hosea 8:1,”the people have broken my covenant and rebelled against my law.” Hosea 9:17, “My God will reject them because they have not obeyed him.” And so on, general and specific charges of disobedience and lawlessness are laid on the consciences of the people. They are told what God’s will is; how they should live in God’s sight is explained to them again and again.

What will happen if men don’t hear the law of God? People won’t be converted. The Bible says in Psalm 19 verse 7, “The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul.” How does that come about? Let me adapt some illustrations of a New Zealander named Ray Comfort now living in the USA. He has some vital comments to offer on the usefulness of the law of God especially in an address of his which he calls ‘Hell’s Best Kept Secret.’ Visit his website; you can find it via a search engine.

Imagine if I’d said to you, “I’ve got some good news for you; someone has just paid that 2,000 pounds motoring fine on your behalf.” You’d probably react by saying, “What are you talking about? Are you having me on? I don’t have a 2,000 pounds speeding fine.” My good news wouldn’t be good news to you. It would seem foolishness, a feeble joke. It would even be offensive to you, because I’m insinuating you’re a rotten driver while you think you’re fine.

So let me alter my approach and my message will make more sense to you. I say, “Do you know that on your way here a speed camera clocked you at 55 mph. You were going through an area set aside for a blind children’s convention. There were actually ten clear warning signs stating that 15 mph was the maximum speed but you sailed through them all at a steady 55 mph. What you did was so foolhardy and dangerous that you’ve been fined the maximum amount of 2,000 pounds. However, a good friend of yours who wants to remain anonymous has heard about it and he’s already stepped in and he’s paid the fine for you. You are a very fortunate man.”

You understand that telling you precisely what you’ve done wrong first of all, actually makes the good news sensible. If I didn’t explain the context and give you knowledge of your lawbreaking then my good news would seem a hurtful joke. You imagine that you’ve done nothing that merits someone paying such a price for your misdeeds. But when you understand that you’ve been convicted for breaking the law the good news is indeed good news.

In the same way if I would approach sexually permissive people and say to them, “Jesus Christ had to die for your sins,” it would seem foolishness and offensive to them, foolish because it doesn’t make sense. “Somebody died because of something I’ve done? But I’ve done nothing.” The Bible says that “The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness” (I Cor. 1:18). My words concerning someone dying for them will be offensive because I’m insinuating they are terrible sinners, but they don’t think so. They are simply doing what everyone else does and they know of lots of people more wicked than they are. So I have to take time and open up the law of God and explain to them how we should live and love, as Moses does in Deuteronomy 5, as Jesus did in the Sermon on the Mount, as Paul does in Romans 12, or as Hosea does right through this prophecy. Then atonement will make sense when the sinner starts to realise that he’s done wrong, that he’s offended God and violated his law.

James tells us that such a man becomes “convinced of the law as a transgressor” (James 2:9). Paul tells us that the law silences our mouths when they’d speak in self justification, and that the knowledge of the law leaves everyone guilty before God. “By the law is the knowledge of sin” Romans 3:20. Sin is transgression of the law (Romans 7:7). “I had not known what sin was until the law told me,” says Paul. Now the tragedy of modern evangelicalism and modern evangelism is that it is steadily forsaking the law in its vital capacity of convicting and alerting the soul to its danger, and driving sinners to Christ.

My question now is this, with what has modern Christianity replaced the law of God as the means of bringing people to the Saviour? How does it try to get sinners to come to Jesus Christ? The answer is this: by promising those who come to the Saviour life-enhancement. The evangelist says, “Christ will give you peace, love, fulfilment, and lasting happiness.” What are the serious problems with this approach? Here is Ray Comfort’s anecdote:

Two men are seated in a plane. The first is given a parachute and told to put it on because it will improve his flight. He’s a little sceptical at first because he can’t see how wearing a parachute in a plane could possibly improve the flight, but after a time he decides to experiment and see if the claim is true. As he puts it on he notices it’s heavy and awkward, there’s the weight of it on his back, and it’s tight around his shoulders, and he finds that he has difficulty in sitting comfortably. However, he consoles himself with the fact that he’s been told wearing the parachute would improve the flight. He decides to give the parachute a chance, but then what happens is this, that as he looks around he notices that some of the other passengers are laughing at him because he’s wearing a parachute inside a plane. He begins to feel somewhat humiliated. As they begin to giggle at him and turn around and stare at him he can’t stand it any longer. He sinks in his seat, unstraps the parachute, and squashes it into the overhead compartment. Disillusionment and cynicism fill his heart, because, as far as he was concerned, he’s been told an outright lie.

The second man is also given a parachute, but listen to what he’s told. “Put it on immediately because at any moment, up at 25,000 feet, you’ll have to jump out of the plane.” He gratefully puts the parachute on; he doesn’t notice the weight of it on his shoulders, nor that he can’t sit comfortably. His mind is occupied with the thought of what would have happened to him if he didn’t have a parachute when the call comes to deplane.

Let’s analyze the motive and the result of those two men’s experiences. The first man’s motive for putting the parachute on was solely to improve his flight. The result of his experience was discomfort, that he was humiliated by the mocking passengers; he quickly became disillusioned and embittered against those who’d given him the parachute. As far as he’s concerned it’ll be a long time before anyone gets one of those things on his back again. The second man put the parachute on solely to prepare him for the jump to come. What would happen to him without a parachute? So he has a deep-rooted peace and expectancy in his heart knowing that he is going to be saved from sure death. This knowledge gave him the ability to withstand the mockery of the other passengers. His attitude towards those who gave him the parachute is one of heartfelt gratitude.

Now listen to the message of what Tozer called the ‘new cross.’ It says, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ because he’ll give you love, joy, peace, fulfillment, and lasting happiness.” In other words, “Jesus will improve your flight.” So the sinner responds expectantly; he puts on the Saviour to see if the promises of life-enhancement are true, but what does he get when he tells people he’s become a Christian? Trials, discomfort and mockery. The other passengers make fun of him. So what will he do? Often he terminates his profession, he’s offended for the word’s sake (Mark 4:17); he’s disillusioned and somewhat embittered, and you can understand it. He was promised exclusively peace, joy, love, fulfillment, and lasting happiness, and what he actually gets is mockery and humiliation. His bitterness is directed toward those who gave him those good vibrations, and the result is that his latter end becomes worse than the first: another inoculated and cynical sinner who has “tried religion.”

Men and brethren, instead of preaching that Jesus improves the flight, we should be warning the passengers they’ll have to jump out of the plane. That it’s “appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27); we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. It is when a sinner understands the horrific consequences of breaking God’s law, that he’ll flee to the great Saviour to escape the wrath that’s to come. If we’re true and faithful witnesses, that’s what we’ll be preaching, that this is a moral universe; that God “commands all men everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30). Why? “Because he’s appointed a day, in which he’ll judge the world in righteousness” (vs. 31). You see, the issue isn’t one of happiness, but one of righteousness. It doesn’t matter how happy a sinner is, how much he’s enjoying “the pleasures of sin for a season” (Hebrews 11:25), without the righteousness of Christ, he’s going to perish on the day of wrath, “Riches profit not on the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death” (Proverbs 11:4). Peace and joy are legitimate fruits of salvation, but it’s not legitimate to use these fruits as the bait for salvation. If we continue simple to use these alone as the draw-card of salvation, sinners will respond with an impure motive. They’ll want the offered joy, of course, but they’ll remain strangers to the state of their own hearts, and ignorant of the repentance God requires.

Now, can you remember why the second passenger was able to keep a peace in his heart even though people were also making fun of him for wearing a parachute? It was because of his conviction that the parachute was going to save him from sure death. As Christians, we do possess, as Paul says, “joy and peace in believing” (Rom. 15:13), but that is because we know that the righteousness of Christ is going to deliver us from the wrath that’s to come. The knowledge of Christ is going to educate us; the lordship of Christ is going to keep us; the blood of Christ is going to cover us.

Now with that thought in mind, let’s take a closer look at the plane and another incident that occurs. The second man, still wearing his parachute, gets bouts of air-sickness, but he knows that it has nothing to do with the parachute. He doesn’t say, “Stupid parachute,” and take it off. We also have a brand new stewardess. It’s her first day and she’s carrying a tray of boiling hot coffee. She wants to leave an impression on the passengers, and she certainly does, because as she’s walking down the aisle, she trips over someone’s foot and tips that boiling hot coffee all over the lap of this second passenger. Now what’s his reaction as that boiling liquid pours over him? Does he go, “Ow! Man, that hurts”? Yes he does. He feels the pain. But then does he rip the parachute from his shoulders, and throw it to the floor? No. Why should he do that? He didn’t put the parachute on for a better flight. He put it on to save him from death, from the plane going down with him on board. If anything, his air sickness and the hot coffee causes him to cling even more tightly to the parachute and to look forward to leaving this doomed plane.

Now if you and I have put on the Lord Jesus Christ for the right motive, to flee from the wrath that’s to come, when sickness and tribulation strikes, when the flight gets bumpy and accidents occur, we won’t get angry with God; we won’t lose our joy and peace. Why should we? We didn’t come to Jesus for a happy ride through life: we came to flee from the wrath that’s to come; we came to glorify God, and if anything, tribulation drives the true believer closer to the Saviour. Sadly, we have multitudes of professing Christians who lose their joy and peace when the flight gets bumpy. Why? They’re the product of a man-centered gospel. They came to Christianity as strangers to repentance, but there’s no salvation without repentance.

Imagine my going to Hosea’s place one evening as his wife was dolling herself up for a night on the town, and telling Gomer that God loved her and had a wonderful plan for her life, that she could know God the great Creator, that she could have him as her Shepherd, and that it would be green pastures and still waters from then on, and when she walked through the valley of the shadow of death he’d be with her. Sounds great! O.K., she’ll give it a try. I say, “Do you mean it?” Yes. “100%?” Yes. “Sure?” Yes. “Then repeat this prayer after me . . . ‘Lord I am a sinner . . .” But I can’t go on because I know I’m not being a faithful witness to my Lord. Gomer has shown no sign at all of being broken hearted for the way she’s treated Hosea, and all the things that she’s done to other men, and the influence she’s had on her children, and the effect her life has had on the preaching of the word of God in the land. Gomer simply wants to give this Jehovah thing a go. She has tried sex and relationships and swinging. Yuk! Why not give this Jehovah religion a try to see if it’s anything like as good as all these Jehovahists crack it up to be – peace, love, joy, fulfilment? What is Gomer doing? Certainly she’s not been convicted of her wayward life, and she is not fleeing from the wrath of a sin-hating God. She’s not turning in repentance to the Lord and asking for his mercy because . . . I haven’t mentioned it! I’ve never spoken to her about personal sin. That’s the glaring omission from my witnessing. I haven’t told her about the law of God, and as a result she doesn’t know what sin is. How can she repent without knowing sin? She is simply going to try religion now because she’s already tried all the broken cisterns and they’ve all let her down.

But when David sinned with Bathsheba, and Nathan came and laid the law on him – “You are the man who took the one lamb from a poor man and devoured it for yourself!” David knew he had broken the law – all the ten commandments – coveting his neighbour’s wife, stealing her from him, committing adultery, living a lie, committing murder, dishonouring his father Jesse and his mother, and so dishonouring God – David didn’t say, “I’ve sinned against man,” he confessed to Jehovah, “I have sinned against God – against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight.” When Joseph was tempted by Potiphar’s wife he said, “How can I do this thing and sin against God?” The prodigal son coming back from the distant country said, “I have sinned against heaven.” Paul preached repentance towards God. It’s only when Gomer realises the enormity of her sin and that she faced an open-ended encounter with a God who hates sin, that she’d know adding superficial religion wasn’t going to help her. She had to come to God with a repentance in a measure commensurate with the evil of her life and plead his pardon – “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Once she’s done that she’s not very likely to fall away when trials come. She’ll say, “Though he slay me yet will I trust him.”

People must see themselves lost before they’ll cry for mercy; they’ll not long to escape danger until they see it. Think of this embarrassment, that you try to save a man from drowning when all that man is doing is having a nice swim; he’ll not be too happy with you. You see him in the sea in Cardigan Bay; you think he’s going under. Yes, you believe he is, so you call the coastguard on your cell-phone, the rocket goes off and soon the inflatable speed boat with four lifeboat men comes round the bay and they lift the struggling man out of the water and they bring him ashore. He’s not a happy bunny. He didn’t want to get saved because he didn’t believe he was in danger. He was doing some quiet snorkeling. Men won’t want deliverance until they know they’re in trouble, and the fact is that people in Europe today don’t believe they’re in trouble from God.

Let me put it like this, if you came to me and said, “Can I see you for a moment, Geoff?” and I said, “Yeah?” You said, “There’s a cure to Groanin’sinner’s disease; I’ve sold my second home to raise the money to get this cure and I’m giving it to you as a free gift.” I’d probably react something like this: “What? Cure to what? Groanin’sinner’s disease? You sold your house to raise the money to get this cure? You’re giving it to me as a free gift? Well, thanks a lot, but no thanks. Bye. . . Don’t call me. I’ll call you.” I mean, that’s probably how I’d react if you told me that you had sold your second house to raise money to get a cure for a disease I’d never heard of and which I don’t have. What are you doing, offering me an expensive cure for a non-existent disease? I’d think you were a pretty strange man.

But there’s another way of telling me about this disease; if you came to me and said you’d like a private word with me, that you were a specialist and you’d been studying me while I was speaking, and you had to tell me that I was displaying all ten clear symptoms of Groanin’sinner’s disease. In your expert opinion I was going to be dead in two weeks unless I got a cure. Then I’d look at you and judge whether you were having me on, and whether you were credible in your statements. I would ask some other people about you, and then I’d begin to take you very seriously. I’d say, “Brother, what shall I do?” You’d then say, “It’s O.K. Don’t worry. There’s a cure for Groanin’sinner’s disease and I’m going to sell a house to raise the money to get it for you. I’m giving it to you as my special gift.” Well, I’m not going to despise such a sacrifice; I’m going to appreciate it, and I’m certainly going to appropriate it. Why? Because now that I know that I’ve got the disease I can appreciate the costly cure.

But sadly, what’s happening all around us is that men are preaching the cure to people without convincing them they’ve got the disease. Men are preaching a gospel of grace without first convincing men by the law, that they’re transgressors. Biblical evangelism is always, without exception, law to the proud and grace to the humble. Never will you see Jesus giving the gospel, the good news, the atonement, the grace of our God, to a proud, arrogant, self-righteous person. No. With the law he breaks the hard heart and with the gospel he heals the broken heart. Why? Because he always did those things that please the Father. God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble (James 4:6; I Peter 5:5). “Everyone who is proud of heart,” scripture says, “is an abomination to the Lord” (Proverbs 16:5). How different Jesus was to those people who came to him and fell to the ground before him. They didn’t leave him in the same way they found him.

Think of the woman of John 8, like Gomer she was caught in the act of adultery, breaking the seventh commandment. The law called for her blood. She found herself between a rock and a hard place. What could she do but sit at the feet of the Messiah to hear what he might say. The broken law brought her to the just and merciful Law Giver, and he said to her, “Go, and sin no more!”

Ray Comfort is a man who travels in different religious circles from myself, and he has had many opportunities to observe the consequences of law-less Christianity. Many who profess to follow Christ quickly fall away, and Ray Comfort has asked the question why, and he has also studied the preaching of former evangelists. Now law-less Christianity may not be our little circle of influence but we ourselves are certainly being pressured into regarding the law of God as some handicap in evangelism.

What did John Wesley advise? “I think the right method of preaching is this. At our first beginning in any place, after a general declaration of the love of God to sinners and his willingness that they should be saved, to preach the law in the strongest, the closest, the most searching manner possible; only intermixing the gospel here and there, and showing it, as it were, afar off.”

It is fascinating to see Ray Comfort’s response to another quotation of John Wesley that he came across and how it resonates in his experience. John Wesley gave these counsels to a friend who was writing to a young open air evangelist seeking to bring a lost nation back to God, “Preach to them 90% law and 10% gospel.” You say, “90% law and 10% gospel? That’s a bit unbalanced. Couldn’t it be 50-50?”

Let me tell you why Ray Comfort finds that such a helpful statement. Think of it like this, that I’m a doctor and you are a sceptical patient, feeling as fit as a fiddle. I have to persuade you that you have a very grave disease. I have the cure, but it is absolutely essential that you are totally committed to this treatment. If you’re not 100% committed it won’t work. So I say to you, “Please sit down,” and as kindly and firmly as I’m able I begin to tell you, “I have serious news for you. You have a deadly disease.” I see your colour change and I feel so sorry for you. You hold your wife’s hand, and I know that I’ve got your complete attention. I bring out X-rays, and charts, and leaflets about the disease. I explain the symptoms and give the results of blood tests and barium meal tests. I talk to you for ten whole minutes without interruption about your serious illness.

Now my question is this, how long do you think I’m going to have to talk about the cure? Not long at all. When you are exhausted and demoralised by the fact of this sickness which has you in its grip I can then say to you some words which will have your immediate attention, “By the way, there’s a cure, and I have it here with me! You needn’t die at all, but you must do exactly what I say. I want 100% commitment and then we may grow old together.” Your face lights up! Your knowledge of the disease and its horrific consequences has made you despair, and long that there might be a cure. You will do anything to have the cure.

When I was a little boy I had a corgi called Sandy, and if I wanted to torment this dog I’d simply say to him the word “Bath,” and tail between his legs he would disappear behind the settee or under the table. He hated to be bathed, but he had to be bathed because he stank. What’s my point? It is this. Sinners hate words like ‘purity’ and ‘righteousness’ and ‘holiness’ and yet that is what they need. We don’t want Gomer to be religious but unchanged; we want Gomer to be hungering and thirsting after righteousness. That’s a mark of salvation, but no non-Christian hungers and thirsts after righteousness. In fact the stench of their sin is rotten in the nostrils of God, and yet they’re not seeking God to be washed and cleansed because they don’t think they’re dirty. Such people have to hear how they are in God’s sight, that the Lord requires truth in the inward parts, that God condemns our imaginations and our greed and our lusts, that in God’s sight the very desire for sin is sin, that hating someone is breaking the same commandment as actually murdering them. Only when they appreciate what sin is will they see that in the sight of heaven they stink. What can they do to be made right? It’s when they are convinced of the bad news that they begin to thirst for righteous way. Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. The law puts salt on sinners’ tongues.

My preacher friend Henry was witnessing and debating with a man for three months and nothing changed. Henry finally went into his home to talk with him very seriously about his condition. He went through the living room, where some disreputable men were sitting around, and on to the bedroom where this man was lying down. “I really laid the law on him,” Henry said to me. “I never laid it on anyone the way I laid it on him then.” After ten minutes of this the man shouted back at him, “You’re trying to tell me that I’m some kind of sinner!” “I’ve been trying to tell you that for the last three months,” Henry said. “Oh,” the man sighed. “I had been playing word games with that man for three months and he had enjoyed it all. I had never faced him with his sin until that time.” The following Sunday morning he was sitting in Henry’s church and Henry was preaching a series on the ten commandments. In fact, he said in the study on, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,’ these words, “Don’t you tell me you have any hunger for God if you only come to church on Sunday mornings.” The man visibly slumped in his seat because he had determined to start coming to church once a Sunday from that Lord’s Day, and the first time he came there he learned that that was not good enough. During the next months he was converted and in the following year he met a Christian girl in the congregation whom he married, and now they are leading a Christian family. It began with the requirements of God being brought to bear on him.

So right through the prophecy of Hosea this brave and righteous man is preaching the grace of law to the people, to Gomer and Ephraim and Judah. Let’s never stop preaching the law, but, of course, as tenderly and wisely and firmly as God enables us. Iain Murray has written in his new book, “Preachers are to go into their pulpits not to speak harshly but tenderly as fellow-sinners. There is a sympathy of heart, and a holiness of life, without which no good can be expected.” (The Old Evangelicalism, p.29) Spurgeon said, “Extremely pointed addresses may be delivered by men whose hearts are out of order with the Lord, but their results will be small . . . God connects special success with special states of heart, and if these are lacking he will not do many mighty works.” William Gurnal reminds us that “Sinners are not pelted into Christ with stones of hard provoking language, but wooed into Christ by heart-melting exhortations.” The preaching of the law may not be absolutised; it is not the single answer. It is an answer; it is an important answer, but there is more involved in the salvation of Gomer than in bringing the law to her.