The Triumph Of Grace In Hosea (3)

Gomer also needs the grace of redemption. See how God goes about this, “Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence” (Hosea 6:1&2)

What do we see in these words? God has other commandments.

1. GOD COMMANDS SINNERS TO TURN FROM SIN TO GOD.

“Come, let us return to the LORD!” It is a return to the supreme priority; come and put the Lord at the centre of every day, and of every activity. It is turning from every other obsession to him, that he becomes our magnificent obsession. “Come, let us return to the Lord.” We say it to our families, to our officers, to our church, to the world, “Come, let us return to the Lord as number one, as alpha and omega, as our all in all. Let us rediscover the beauty of Jesus Christ. Let us tell men and women about him as we never have before. O for a thousand tongues to sing our great Redeemer’s praise. “Come,” we say, “You must all come. C – the children must come. O – the old folks must come. M – the middle aged must come. E – everyone without exception must return to the Lord, and me too. “Let us all return to the Lord,” says Hosea is standing in solidarity with all the people of God. Come with me and we will return to the Lord. Come to me and I will give you rest, says Jesus. We are not giving up on Gomer; we are telling her to come to the Lord.

2. THERE IS A BODY LANGUAGE WITH WHICH WE SAY THIS.

Our bodies do odd things in the pulpit. Spurgeon, having observed many preachers, said, “It has occurred to me that some speakers fancy that they are beating carpets, or chopping sticks, or mincing sausage-meat, or patting butter, or poking their fingers into people’s eyes. Oh, that they could see themselves as others see them!” What was a prophet’s body language? Isaiah 65:2, “All day long I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.” There he stands with his arms open wide, ready to receive those who return to God. And the apostle takes that up at the end of Romans 10 and makes it the New Testament posture. That’s the Christian symbol, not the clenched fist – our Northern Ireland friends are welcome to that. The outstretched arms are the symbol of the gospel. “The arms of love that compass me would all mankind embrace,” and Wesley was absolutely right. Think of Moses’ arms held up in intercession for the people of God as they fought with Amalek. Think of Christ’s arms lifted high in blessing on his people as he left them and was taken up into heaven. Arms that would bring gospel blessings down. Arms stretched out ready to embrace the penitent, never growing bitter with a non-responsive audience, never chiding or shaking one’s fist at them – “All day long I have stretched out my hands.” That’s our body language, and sometimes it is the only language we can speak to our children because they are fed up with us hassling them about religion. So we can’t speak words to them about Christ but they can see stretched out welcoming arms, our warm affection saying, “Come to us and come to our Saviour.”

3. IT IS IN IMITATION OF GOD THAT IT IS PREACHED.

How are we to welcome sinners to the Lord Jesus? The New Testament tells us “as though God were welcoming them.” Well, how does Almighty God welcome sinners when he says, “Return to me”? And we get this extraordinary answer that God would actually beseech sinners to return to him. It is the word that is used of earnest praying. We beseech God in prayer to save men and women from hell: “O Lord, I beseech you for my children’s salvation, for my church, for my town.” That is how God addresses sinners. The Almighty isn’t ashamed to give the appearance of helpless longing. In other words, to inform sinners of their duty to repent – e.g. by means of a Bible verse outside a church – is not enough. To explain clearly to sinners that they need to return is not enough. To instruct the intellect is not enough. To proclaim it from the pulpit is not our only work. More than all of that we are to beseech men and women; we are to beg the congregations of our nation to return to God. This is the New Testament spirit of evangelism.

Teenage boys in Livingstone in Zambia earlier this month dogged my footsteps as I walked along the pavements, beseeching me to buy wire toys or copper bracelets holding them in front of my face, “Just look at them.” They implored me to take the things into my hands and examine them. See the craftsmanship and purchase one. They were poor boys and hungry boys and handsome boys, and with what earnestness they stuck to me beseeching me to buy from them. We have something to give to people – “won’t you take it – it’s free!” Men will beg their fellow-creatures for help when they are hungry or poor or hurting. A year ago I was ill and missed this Conference. I had to be taken in an ambulance to the local casualty department of our hospital in considerable pain, my stomach so extended, longing and aching to see a doctor, needing a catheter to relieve intolerable pressure, saying to my wife from my bed behind the thin screens, “Come on doctor! Come on doctor! Where’s the doctor? Come on, come on! Oh doctor,” saying it louder and louder and my wife saying, “Shh Geoff, Shh,” trying to calm me down but I needed the doctor to help me then, I needed her so much. “Come on doctor, I am in such pain, where’s the doctor?” I was pleading with the doctor to drop everything she was doing and come to me and help me. That is beseeching; and that is the biblical pathos of the Creator God urging rebel sinners to return to him, and that’s to be our spirit as we stand in the pulpit in the name of the same God and beg and beg men and women, boys and girls, to return to God.

I am condemning myself to be a poor kind of preacher when I tell you this. How infrequently this note has been present in my preaching. I should have been beseeching for forty years. What an honour it would have been if men had dubbed me, “Thomas the Beseecher,” but that’s not my nickname, but neither is it anyone else’s here that I know of. Alas. We have not become an army of beseechers, yet God beseeches, and he has left us that example that we should preach as he preaches. This is the main part of our business, and if we neglect this we will answer to God.

Someone says, “I don’t like the way this message is developing.” I will simply say that here is the Book that God has given to us, and in it is found all we need to know concerning true preaching. If the Lord has appointed beseeching then you ought to approve it, and if you don’t then you are wrong, but the Scripture is not. If the Almighty One beseeches, and if he urges me to plead with sinners – which he does – then I must do it. Though men will think me odd and question my soundness I’ll have to beseech. It is no demeaning of this world’s Creator to consider that he actually stoops to beseech specks of dust to turn. No, it magnifies God to show his pleading words. How great is his love. Our sin has constrained Almighty God to become a preacher, and what a preacher – he is a preacher who longs for worms to be saved! If that is the case then we also will beseech our congregation to be saved. Telling Gomer to return is not enough. Informing Gomer of her need to return is not enough; convincing Gomer of the value of returning is not enough; warning Gomer of her plight if she does not return is not enough. Our high calling is to humbly beseech her to return.

4. IT IS WITH TENDERNESS THAT IT IS PREACHED.

Yes, let there be manliness, but let it be the manliness of Jesus Christ, God’s great definition of a man, the archetypal man; the proper man. Was he not a tender preacher, and are we? Where is the pathos? Where is the pause to get one’s emotions under control so that one can continue? Don’t you se it here in the tenderness of God? “What can I do with you Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah?” (v.4). Isn’t he their great benefactor? Hasn’t he given them every good and perfect gift? Yes. What do they lack? No good thing. A land flowing with milk and honey? They have it. Children, a heritage from the Lord? Yes. The reward of the fruit of the womb? They have no lack there. The means of grace, the way of atonement and forgiveness, the mighty Word, the voice of the prophets? All those things they possessed in abundance. In which ways had God failed them? Ephraim, Judah, specify how he’s let you down. What more could God do? And yet what had Ephraim and Judah done? They had turned from him to the Baals, from his word to idols, from marriage to prostitution. Their professions of love have been like the morning mist, disappearing just like the early dew, there for a brief time and then vanishing away.

“What can I do with you Ephraim? What can I do with you Judah? What can I do with you Gomer? How can I condemn you to everlasting chains with the fallen angels until the judgment of the great day? I love you too much for that. What can I do with you Judah? I can’t take you to heaven in your wickedness, unredeemed and unsanctified. What can I do with you? I will send a Saviour for you, and such a Saviour! I will not spare my only begotten Son for you Ephraim and for you Judah and for you Gomer. I will love you with an everlasting love, I will wash you and justify you and sanctify you and adopt you into my family. I will take you to myself, that where I am there you may be also. I’ll do it not for your sake but for my own great name’s sake. So please won’t you turn from your ways and know pleasures for evermore at my right hand? What more can I do Ephraim?

Robert Murray M’Cheyne looked at the preaching of his day, and in many ways it was a greatly blessed day compared to ours. There were giants in the land, but his judgment on the pulpits of Scotland was this: “Most ministers are accustomed to set Christ before the people. They lay down the gospel clearly and beautifully, but they don’t urge men to enter in. Now God says beseech men, persuade men; not only point to the open door, but compel them to come in. Oh to be so merciful to souls that we’d lay hands on men, and draw them into the Lord Jesus! . . . We must do it with urgency. If a neighbour’s house were on fire, wouldn’t we cry aloud and use every exertion? If a friend were drowning, would we be ashamed to strain every nerve to save him? But alas! the souls of our neighbours are even now on their way to everlasting burnings – they are ready to be drowned in the depths of perdition. Oh, shall we be less earnest to save their never-dying souls, than we would be to save their bodies? How anxious was the Lord Jesus in this! When he came near and beheld the city, he wept over it. How earnest was Paul! ‘Remember that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears’. Such was George Whitefield; that great man scarcely ever preached without being melted into tears. Brethren, there is need of the same urgency now. Hell is as deep and as burning as ever. Unconverted souls are as surely rushing to it. Christ is as free – pardon as sweet as ever! Ah! how we shall be amazed at our coldness when we do get to heaven!”

I once met an American PCA minister who told me he had been a pastor in Pennsylvania and had accepted a call from 3,000 miles away from a church in California. They took a week to drive across the country and one day they came to a small town in the Mid-west and they called in at a super-market. There they lost their 6 year old daughter. Frantically they searched the aisles of the store but she was nowhere to be found, so while his wife continued to search he ran out to the car-park exit and began to stop every car and demand that they open the boot explaining that his daughter had gone missing. What lengths he and his wife went to as they sought their child, little caring about offending people, having just one thing on their minds, saving her. They did eventually find her, hidden away in some little spot. She hadn’t come to any harm at all. As I watched him he was reliving that fearful episode in their life as he shared it with me and some other students, breathing quickly, feeling the horror of losing his dear little girl, and applying his anguish then to us, search us, how deep was our concern to find the lost. How could we be so indifferent about men and women facing an eternal loss?

Again M’Cheyne says:

“It is to be feared there is much unfaithful preaching to the unconverted… We don’t speak to those who are Christless with anything like sufficient plainness, frequency and urgency. Alas! how few ministers are like the angels at Sodom, mercifully laying hands on lingering sinners!… Many of those who deal faithfully, don’t deal tenderly. We’ve more of the bitterness of man than of the tenderness of God. We don’t yearn over men in the longings of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote of ‘the enemies of the cross of Christ‘ with tears in his eyes! There is little of his weeping among ministers now. ‘Knowing the terrors of the Lord‘, Paul persuaded men. There is little of this persuading spirit among ministers now. How can we wonder that the dry bones are very, very dry – that God is a stranger in the land?… Some set forth Christ plainly and faithfully, but where is Paul’s beseeching men to be reconciled? We don’t invite sinners tenderly; we don’t gently woo them to Christ; we don’t authoritatively bid them to the marriage; we don’t compel them to come in; we don’t travail in birth till Christ be formed in them the hope of glory. Oh, who can wonder that God is such a stranger in the land?” (pp.402 and 590)

Again M’Cheyne says, “When Christ wept over Jerusalem… there was much that was human in it. The feet were human that stood upon Mount Olivet. The eyes were human eyes that looked down upon the dazzling city. The tears were human tears that fell upon the ground. But oh, there was the tenderness of God beating beneath that mantle! Look and live, sinners. Look and live. Behold your God! He that’s seen a weeping Christ has seen the Father. This is God manifest in the flesh. Some of you fear that the Father does not desire you to come to Christ and be saved. But see here, God is manifest in flesh. He that’s seen Christ has seen the Father. See here the heart of the Father and the heart of the Son laid bare. Oh, why should you doubt? Every one of these tears trickles from the heart of God.” (Bonar: M’Cheyne p. 472).

5. IT IS WITH THE OFFERS OF GRACE THAT IT IS PREACHED.

Do you see how Hosea strengthens his preaching with the offers of grace? We make a distinction between the promises of grace and the offers of grace. We say that the offers of grace are made to all men, to the chief of sinners, to the vilest offender, to Gomer, to the prodigal – all the offers of the gospel are made of peace and pardon, of a reconciled God and a home in heaven. All these offers are made sincerely and genuinely to everyone in Adam. That is the only qualification, are you in Adam? Then I have good news for you. I have a Saviour for you, for you to take, Christ risen to live for you, Christ our great High Priest to make intercession for you, the world’s greatest teacher to illuminate your mind – and he’s for you, all things working together for your good and all this is for you now, to be received. That is the offer which we make to every single person. However, the promises that they are yours we cannot make until you’ve accepted the offer, until you receive Christ, until you return to the Lord.

So here Hosea makes this offer to Gomer, and to Ephraim, and to Judah. He says, “Why be sick any longer? Your life torn to pieces but God will heal you. Your past has left you wounded but God will bind up our wounds” (v.1). What an honour for us today. Whom do we have in our midst today? The Son of God, the great Physician. He has come to this surgery tonight. He has made an appointment to meet with you now. Here he has set up his consulting room. Where two or three are gathered in his name the Doctor is here, and you don’t have to plead, “Come on Doctor, Come on Doctor!” The Doctor is here and more ready to heal than you to ask for healing. He is ready to cure your sick heart and to bind up your wounded soul. The balm of Gilead is here. What ointments are here, the leaves from the tree of life that heal the nations – they are here tonight. What balm we have. One is called The Lily of the Valley. Another, called the Rose of Sharon, is also here now. God’s great super drugs are here, and they are being offered to you, and this Physician is beseeching you to take them. “Please trust me! Please take them, and you will live. What more can I do with you Ephraim? I will heal you. I will bind up your wounds.” This is the offer he makes, and if you take him up on his offer you will know life in its abundance.

But an even greater offer is made, “we may live in his presence” (v.2). That is the language of grace, not the offer of the Mercedes and the luxury house and living disease free until you’re a hundred. Not those baubles of health and wealth. Never those. The offer grace makes is, “a sinner like you may live in God’s presence forever.” “One thing I have desired of the LORD, That will I see: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Psa. 27:4). That’s the longing of the returning sinner. Up to now Gomer had never sought Hosea’s face; she’d never tried, never dared to look her Lord in the eye. There’d been times she’d glanced at her husband, and there’d been times when she’s said a prayer, but she’d never sought his presence, happy to be just with him. How different now.

The Lord once said to Moses that he’d send an angel to be with Israel, and this angel would drive away the enemies of the Israelites and turn over the promised land to them. But the Lord himself wouldn’t go along. Ephraim and Judah would have jumped at such a chance. They’d have said, “Let’s go! What could be more beautiful?” They’d have an actual angel as their guide and at the end there’d be a land of milk and honey. Their enemies would be defeated. Many people in churches today would take God up on such an offer. They’d have the messengers of God every Sunday and never notice that God himself wasn’t there. But Moses refused God’s offer. He’d rather live in God’s presence in a barren, howling wilderness than enjoy all the delights of the promised land without the Lord. What are all God’s richest gifts if God himself isn’t present? Anyone who enjoys those gifts apart from the Lord’s presence is a pauper. Ephraim is offered life in God’s presence.

Gomer has returned and now she wants to live in her lord’s presence. She wants to “stay home”; she doesn’t want to stray from his sight anymore. No longer will she yearn for other people and other places; she knows from experience what it’s like to live far away from her best friend. Gomer doesn’t want a kid to feast on with her friends, like the older brother did. What was he saying, that his life at home left something to be desired, that he felt more like a servant than a son in his father’s home? She didn’t want a job as a hired servant in Hosea’s house. Gomer wanted to live in Hosea’s presence, living under his watchful eyes, the One who never sleeps, her Lord watching out for her, seeing us wherever we are- in the living room, in the bedroom, at work, or in church. Who would want it any other way? What a privilege to live in the presence of one who loves us so much.

It’s new life for Gomer; she’s been awakened through God’s amazing power and grace. This is true revival! Ephraim and Judah say that God will revive them after two days and restore them on the third day. Some commentators warn against regarding these words as an allusion to the death and resurrection of Christ, but I must differ with them here. What we have in this passage is more than an allusion. In fact, this text is primarily about Christ, for Christ speaks here through the mouth of Hosea. Christ was torn and struck down by God, but after three days he rose again. There’s no doubt in my mind that the Saviour also explained this text from Hosea to the two men on the road to Emmaus when he set their hearts on fire. The revival of Israel (the body) was only possible through the resurrection of Christ (the Head).

How does Christ’s resurrection benefit us? Through his power we are awakened to new life. Through our faith in Christ, we gain the power to live a life of gratitude. That life of gratitude means living in his presence. It is the beginning of eternal life. That doesn’t mean that we no longer stumble. Our joy will be complete when we are able to see him face to face. And what that will mean simply can’t be expressed in impoverished human language.