Key Truth: God perseveres in love to His people by disciplining us so that we might love Him above all else.

Introduction:

Q: What difference does the knowledge of God’s love for you make in your life?

Hosea 3:1-2: Gomer’s Redemption

“The ‘again’ in God’s command faced the fact that old wounds would have to be reopened and that what had happened once might happen yet again. Also the adultery, God reminded him, was still in progress: it had been no isolated lapse but a desertion which added a continuing insult to the injury…Perhaps this is why Hosea captures, as no other writer does, the tension within God’s love for the elect—for He refuses to ease the pain of the relationship either by compromise or by quitting.”

Derek Kidner, The Message of Hosea

Q: How has God continued to pursue you in love despite your unfaithfulness to Him? What difference has this made in your struggle against sin?

Restoration through Discipline

Hosea 3:3-5

“Bel bows down; Nebo stoops; their idols are on beasts and livestock; these things you carry are borne as burdens on weary beasts. They stoop; they bow down together; they cannot save the burden, but themselves go into captivity. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.”

Isaiah 46:1-4

Q: Has God ever used a period of discipline to take away good things from you? How did you receive it? What gives us hope that this is not the final word?

Hosea 3:1-5 teaches us that:

-Sin corrupts and enslaves, but the steadfast love of God for His people never fails.

-God disciplines His people to draw us out of love with our sin and in love with Him.

“Grant, Almighty God, that as thou often dost justly hide thy face from us, so that on every side we see nothing but evidences of thy dreadful judgement, - O grant, that we, with minds raised above the scene of this world, may at the same time cherish the hope which thou constantly settest before us, so that we may feel fully persuaded that we are loved by thee, however severely thou mayest chastise us: and may this consolation so support and sustain our souls, that patiently enduring whatever chastisements thou mayest lay upon us, we may ever hold fast the reconciliation which thou hast promised to us in Christ thy Son. Amen.”

John Calvin, Commentary on Hosea