The Love Story of God: He is Risen!

Hosea 1:7

“Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them.”

I want to talk to you about a love story. God told Hosea to take an adulterous wife, which represents unfaithful Israel, and mankind. Hosea is about a love story of a man who took an adulterous wife.

Israel would follow after God a while, then start drifting away and follow after other gods. Oppression would come and attach from surrounding enemies and they would cry out to God and He would deliver them because of His love. He delivered them from the Egyptians and parted the Red Sea, yet they could not give Him time to give Moses the Ten Commandments and built for themselves a golden calf. What a slap in the face for God! How can something YOU make be stronger than you and something you worship and pray to? Sounds sort of ignorant and senseless, doesn’t it?

Yet that is what we do when we try to work things out our self after praying and ask God to when we become impatient with Him. We turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, gambling and the list of idols go on and on. We do the same thing, and yet, God still says, “I love you.”

That is why God asked him to love Gomer just as God loves us.

Hosea is story represents the story of all of mankind. We are human and God says,

Romans 3:23

“For we all fall short of the glory of God.”

This to those who are new to the Bible might be offended but it is actually a verse that can set your heart at rest because it tells us that none of us are perfect. We will all mess up, we will all sin. It puts all mankind on the same level playing field. Which should defeat any pride in anyone.

None of us can measure up to holy standards of God, but the love and faithfulness of God says we do not have to. Just as Hosea never gave up on Gomer when she left him to prostitute herself, God does not give up on us.

We cannot do anything to earn His love because He loved us when He created us, and He loved us when He died for us. The people of those days were hailing Him in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem and then yelling to crucify Him days after.

But don’t we do that? We are worshiping Him when things go our way, but when trials hit, we get mad and impatient with Him and we criticize Him when we ourselves make bad choices.

God chose to send His Son Jesus Christ to die for OUR sins so we could be with Him in eternity, but He doesn’t stop there, He helps us all through our life as well until we get there. He loved us when He went to the cross, when they were beating Him.

Jesus was rejected, rebelled against, and was mocked. They beat Him over and over with a whip that had leather strands at the end with sharp rocks at the end of each one. They beat Him over and over with it until His face and His whole body was marred with stripes of blood and swollen. Isaiah 52:14-15 says that “He was marred beyond human likeness.”

That is the picture of unconditional love and we should be giving Him as much love, devotion and patience as He does with us.

Romans 5:8

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

While they were beating Him like that, He still loved us and in His dying breath, He said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

That is love, and the story of Hosea represents that, Rebellion of Mankind, The Love and Mercy of God, and God’s Forgiveness.

Romans 8 tells us that there is nothing we can do or say that will separate us from His love. So, when we do sin, just pray and ask for forgiveness and He says He will forgive you your sins and REMEMBER THEM NO MORE. That is huge! He forgets as if you never sinned, you get a do-over. What person could do that and as easily as God does, no one.

Hosea found Gomer when she left and no one else wanted her, they thought she wasn’t worth it, but Hosea wanted her and bought her back as it says in Hosea 3. That is what God did for us. That is love, “Greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends.” John 15:13 – This is a picture of the cross.

Hosea 6:1-2

“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.”

On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead and He sends His Holy Spirit into our hearts upon asking, just believe, and ask, receive, it is that simple and you have someone to lead, guide, provide, protect, comfort, heal and love you from now on into eternity, who would not want that?

Just pray in your heart right now, and if you just did, tell someone, because it is your spiritual birthday!

The unconditional love of Jesus Christ is why we should thank Him in every situation, because we know it is out of His love that He allows it, to draw something not needed out of us, that will hinder our walk and turn us astray or to bring a passion out of us needed for the path He has for us, or to grow us.

His unconditional love is why we celebrate the Season of Easter. It is Passover in which because of the finished work of the cross we Passover from spiritual death to life, life everlasting in Jesus Christ and become sinless because of Him and a promised home in heaven.

I Corinthians 2:9

“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” — the things God has prepared for those who love Him.”