Amen, you may be seated. Okay, we were in Daniel last week. Turn one book to the right. Hosea. On page 1248 of my Bible. That may not help you much. I'm going to read from chapter 2. In chapters 1 through 3, you kind of see the story of the book of Hosea that is expanded through the rest of the book. We've seen that in other prophets. We see a message of judgment as well as hope in the book of Hosea. And so we'll see both of those in chapter 2 as we read this. And then we're just going to focus in on verses 19 and 20 and specifically God's chesed or his loyal covenant love is what we're going to think about. That is the main message of the book of Hosea. But look in chapter 2 if you would, verse 1. This is God's word. Say to your brothers, you are my people, and to your sisters, you have received mercy. Plead with your mother, plead for she is not my wife and I am not her husband, that she put away her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts. Lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day when she was born and make her like a wilderness and make her like a parched land and kill her with thirst. Upon her children also, I will have no mercy because they are children of whoredom. For their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. Therefore I will hedge her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them, and she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she will say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now. And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. Therefore I will take back my grain in its time, my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand. And I will put an end to all her mirth. her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, these are my wages, which my lovers have given me. I will make them a forest, and the beast of the field shall devour them. And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals, when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyards and make the valley of Acre a door of hope. And there she shall answer, as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband and no longer call me my Baal. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beast of the field and with the birds of the heavens and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, the war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love, there's our word, in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. Let's follow God's word, let's pray together. Lord, these can be hard messages to read and yet encouraging at the same time. We see justice and judgment come upon the northern kingdom of Israel and southern kingdom of Judah as we're in these prophets. We see them disciplined and we see them in exile but we see them in exile with hope because you promise your true salvation, your son, your new covenant. You promise to restore them to the land but bigger and brighter than that. the coming of the Messiah and the new covenant and true salvation and a true people of God. So we praise you for that. And we look into Hosea this morning and we pray one thing, Lord, help us to know your love. Not just to know about it, not just to read about it, but personally to know you and therefore to know your love, to walk in a conscious experience and awareness of it that transforms our lives. Help us to believe Your Word. Help us to trust You. Help us to rest in Your grace. Lord, help me to preach Your Word and help us to hear Your Word as Your Word. Speak to us through Your Word and work in our hearts that we might trust and rest in the Lord Jesus Christ. We might believe truly the Gospel and might rest in Your love and therefore joyfully live for Your glory. It's in Jesus' holy name I pray. Amen. Go, return each of you to your mother's house. May the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me. That comes from the little book of Ruth, the eighth verse of the first chapter. Ruth is a short story of loss of hope and of loyalty. And I'm barely going to touch on it this morning so I encourage you to read it. And Ruth is one of those little books in the Bible that you can read in 15 to 20 minutes. So you can't say I don't have time. It's a great little book. It's a picture of our main word for today. In Ruth we see this picture of chesed and this is obviously on the human level. Naomi, her husband and her two sons, because of a famine in the land, have gone to Moab. While there, her sons have married two Moabite women and then her husband and her sons die. And she's encouraging those two Moabite women to go back since she has nothing to give them, no way to take care of them. She's going to go back to the land by herself, but Ruth won't hear it. She's going with her. She shows great kindness to Naomi, staying by her side in the midst of tragedy and caring for her, even though Naomi has nothing to offer to her. See, Ruth's commitment to Naomi, in fact, the word is used, hesed, God's covenant love. That was on a human level, obviously. But Ruth's commitment to Naomi is described as an act of hesed. It demonstrates loyal love, generosity, and enduring commitment. And so today we're going to take a look at the greater story of love, God's love, God's chesed, in the book of Hosea. So we'll bring up a timeline again. Hosea ministered in the 8th century BC. And I know you can't see that, but we can print copies and give you copies. Hopefully you have yours and you're filling it in. But Hosea, right here we have David, Solomon, Solomon's son Rehoboam. The kingdom splits into the northern and southern kingdom. And in 722, the northern kingdom goes into captivity. In 586, the southern kingdom goes into captivity. And then we have the return over here. Hosea is right here. From 755 to 715 is when he ministered in the kingdom and he's warning them and calling them. He's proclaiming judgment as well as hope. He primarily ministered to the northern kingdom though he refers to Judah a few times. But the structure again is judgment and hope. And He ministered to a people involved, and you can see that in the reading, in widespread apostasy and idolatry. A people who had turned from the Lord to the false gods, giving them the glory, seeking them for what they needed. And they were about to pay the price for that. Baal and Asherah were common means of worship there. He's a contemporary of Isaiah and Micah and Hosea's name means salvation. His very name means salvation. And the focus of this book is the unending covenant love for Israel. The main point of the book of Hosea is to illustrate God's faithful love for His unfaithful people And it's done through the metaphor of Hosea's marriage to an adulterous wife. And that's a symbol or a picture through God commanding him to marry a prostitute and then to go after and redeem her again and all of these things. It's a symbol of His enduring love for Israel. And as we say Israel, I would encourage you to remember our study in the book of Romans. that those who have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are the seed of Abraham are grafted in to Israel, Gentile and Jew, one new man in the Lord Jesus Christ. So that Old Testament national people was a type and a picture of the true and greater Israel which would be made up of Jew and Gentile together, one new man in the Lord Jesus Christ. Read Ephesians 2, Romans 9, go on down the line with those. Hope you remember our studies in Romans. But the main point of this book illustrates God's faithful love. While He is holy and just and righteous and must judge sin, there is certainly judgment in these books, but there is hope because God is working out His plan of redemption for His people. So in chapters 1 through 3, I said it was the story of Hosea that it gets expanded upon. Number one, Hosea is commanded to marry Gomer. And for the Andy Griffith fans, this Gomer is a woman. She's a, I'll just say, an adulterous woman. But God tells her to go and marry this woman because this is a picture of God delivering Israel from Egypt and making covenant with Israel at Sinai. And then Gomer leaves and does what Gomer does, right? And she's out committing adultery with her lovers. And God tells her, Hosea to go. And first that shows Israel has committed adultery against God. And you saw it again with Baal and Asherah and all those other things. And then he goes and redeems Gomer and pays off her debts to her lovers. And that shows God's redemption of Israel and his enduring love for the people that he has set his love upon. So we are in the midst of an introduction. This is an introduction to the major and the minor prophets. This is different than what we normally do. Normally we are preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible. Right. But so we are having to sort of identify the main theme of these books and with the larger books the major prophets and that's why they're called major because they're bigger books. Right. There's more material there. We've done a couple of sermons and the smaller minor prophets will do one on each. try to identify the main thrust of the book, introduce the prophet to you, and then look at one section of the book there. So today we are in Hosea, we've made it this far. Last week, if you didn't hear last week's sermon on misusing the prophets, I would encourage you to listen to that, and it's just a lesson on not taking verses out of context. But I would encourage you to listen to that. But today we're in Hosea and we're going to look in chapter 2 at verses 19 and 20 and just think about God. What you see in the ESV, if you heard me in the call to worship, what was repeated was steadfast love endures forever. Steadfast love endures forever. Steadfast love. God's steadfast love. That is His hesed. That is His love that we're going to talk about in the sermon today. So we're going to look at 2.19 to 2.20 and hopefully the main point is there and clear. Let God's steadfast love shape your life so that you walk in assurance and imitate His love in all that you do. Embrace His love. Believe his love. He wants you to walk in a conscious awareness of his love. If you are his child, if you are in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you are trusting in him, God wants you to walk in a conscious confidence. Awareness and enjoyment of his love of him, therefore. So let God's steadfast love shape your life so that you walk in assurance and imitate his love. in all that you do. So Naomi when she was caring I mean Ruth when she was caring for Naomi she's just a picture of God's love for his people and his care for those who can offer him nothing. But first, His steadfast love defined. And this is a difficult task. It's a difficult word to capture in English because you just have to do the best you can. You see so many concepts coming out of this word. But in verse 19, it says this, I will betroth you to me forever. Speaking to Israel, He's going to redeem Israel. We're going on down the line. To me in righteousness and justice. And here's our word, in steadfast love and in mercy. So that word has said it's hard to say hard for me to say it's you have to have a guttural throat to really really really make that guttural sound if you're used to doing it. But it's used of God's love. There's a there's a picture of the Hebrew the pointed Hebrew. You read Hebrew this way by the way. It took me about a class and a half in seminary to figure that out and I saw English backwards on top anyway. But that is that is how you would say it kind of. And really it's not just has said it's got to do it. See I said but it means that you see steadfast love mercy covenant faithfulness you'll see various things used to try to define it. But it's a it's used to 250 times in the Old Testament. Some 250 times and it's used six times in Hosea and it's the core, it's the center of Hosea. And God says that His steadfast love is a profound expression of His sovereign grace, His covenant faithfulness, His unmerited favor toward His chosen people. Israel. And we know this picture that we see in Hosea, Hosea for this national people of Israel is picturing and pointing us forward to the Messiah, to Christ and His coming and saving His people made up of Jew and Gentile, the Israel of God called in the New Testament. But God is faithful. to His people. Isaiah 34 6 is interesting because it says that God is abounding in steadfast love for His people right after the golden calf incident. Refreshing and renewing in covenant and love in Exodus 34 6. See, this word, chesed, or steadfast love, speaks of God's loyal covenant love and is the ideal or the pattern for His people's love. Since God took the initiative to love us. When did He do that, by the way? Before the foundation of the world. Covenant of redemption. Since God has taken the initiative to love us, then we so should love Him in return. He's telling Israel in Hosea that He is going to betroth His people to Himself forever in righteousness and justice and steadfast love and mercy. See, God's love, His chesed, is His undeserved covenant love. Notice, we don't deserve it. Look at me, child of God. You don't deserve it. Today, you don't deserve it. Tomorrow, you won't deserve it. Christ deserves it, and that's why we have it. Because His righteousness is imputed to us. We are being sanctified. But we will be glorified because of his undeserved covenant love. He will finish the work that he's begun in this. His mercy, his kindness, his goodness, his faithfulness, his loyalty to his people is so strong that he will do whatever it takes to capture them with his love. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice and steadfast love and mercy. He will not give up on his plan of redemption. What did God do to recapture or to capture his people's love? Well, that's where we get to the gospel, right? Since we have all failed to keep His law, and in various ways, maybe not in the literal making of statues ways, but we've all turned from the true and living God and pursued idols. We've all failed to keep His law and thought, word, and deed. I mean, starting with the first commandment, no other gods. We certainly have grown up having other gods. Our hearts are idol factories. It's not whether or not we'll have idols, it's who are they, where they'll be, it just happens. So we have broken God's law in thought, word and deed. That is the definition of sin. Sin is lawlessness. Sin is any lack of conformity to or violation of His law. By the way, do you know the Ten Commandments by heart? Some are looking away from me. Some are going, yes, and some of those are our young ones. We need to know His law as well as His gospel. Because it defines sin. And it shows us who our Savior is as well. We have broken this law in thought, word and deed. That's why Jesus came and was born in a low condition under His own law so that He could keep it, fulfill it. He told John the Baptist it was proper for Him to fulfill all righteousness. Yes, for the glory of the Father, but for the good of His people because we don't have righteousness. That's why it's so silly when people want to push off salvation by saying, I need to clean up my act first. You're in the mud hole of sin and I guess you're just going to rub some more mud on yourself to try to clean it off. And I'm cleaning that up, by the way. No, no, no, no, no. What God requires is repentance and faith. He does the cleaning. But Jesus kept the law. He kept the commandments of God. He kept them in thought, word and deed with joy, out of love for the Father and His people. He was the perfect, pure, spotless Lamb of God who deserved only blessing. But He came to be the Lamb of God. who would pay the sins of his people. So as you read that Old Testament and you see those sacrifices, it's not that God is mean and he doesn't like animals. It's showing us the seriousness of sin and the fact that we need another to pay the penalty for our sin. And that's all fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ who came to live for us and then to die for us. The wages of sin is death. Physical death, yes, but spiritual death as well. Separation from God. Eternal death. Wrath of God, do our sin. It will either have been paid by Christ on the cross or we will pay it ourselves. But see, Christ died for the sins of His people. John the Baptist said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The world there being Jew and Gentile, by the way. That's the way the Jew would use that word in that context. For us. He came to live for us. He came to die for us. And listen, He was raised the third day for us, for our justification. He's ascended and reigning and He is coming again. He's king now. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, He said. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations. So when you read texts like, God loved the world in this way, and by the way, that's a better translation of John 3.16. In this manner or in this way God loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to live for us, to die for us, to be raised for us that we might be reconciled to God. You want to be reconciled to God? Romans 6 23 does say the wages of sin is death but right after that it says but the free gift of God. Hear me, free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. You don't pay for it. You receive it by receiving him, by trusting Christ and Christ alone. So God loved the world in this way that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever but literally believes into him, whosoever trusts in him and him alone shall not perish. Wrath, hell, but have eternal life, be reconciled to God. know the only true and living God. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and He was raised the third day. So every last bit of our acceptance is Him. So you can stop trying to pay for it. You can simply believe the good news and turn from going your own way Pursuing sin and happiness in the world that way. Change of the direction of soul that results in a change of life that receives and rests in the Lord Jesus Christ and seeks to live for Him. What does God require? Repent and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. Turn from trusting in self and all other things to trusting in Christ. And living for self and all other things to living for Christ. to violate, from violating God's commandments and loving to do so, to hating sin and turning from it and seeking to live from Christ. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. He was buried and He was raised the third day. Think about that. The Son of God would come to live for His enemies. and to take the wrath of God due His enemies, and then to be raised and reigned so that He could reconcile His enemies to Himself, His people whom He set His love on before the foundation of the world. That's what God has done. That is the manifestation of His chesed. His loyal, faithful, covenant love. Are you trusting and resting in Christ alone this morning? I love you enough to tell you that He is the only Savior, that you must trust in Him if you will be reconciled to God and have eternal life. You must stand in Christ before the judgment bar of God to make it through with acceptance. Are you trusting in Christ and Christ alone? Well, that's just too narrow for me. Well, evidently God's that narrow. If you had cancer and I came to you with a vial of medicine that assured you'd be healed, you wouldn't be talking to me like that. Well, that can't be just the only way. You know what you'd be doing? You'd be grabbing that vial and taking that medicine. This is the medicine for our sin sicknesses that God loved us this way. He gave us His Son who lived for us and died for us and been raised from the grave. And if you are trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have been united to Him and you have been justified on the basis of His doing and dying and living. You have been forgiven for all of your sins and clothed in His righteousness and adopted into the family of God as a child of God. Your record of sin went to the cross with Him and His record of righteousness is credited to your account. If you are a child of God this morning, you have forgiven and cleansed from all of your sin and your record is righteous because Christ's righteousness has been credited to you. God doesn't look at you and save you on the basis of you. He sees you in Christ and forgives you. and close you in the righteousness of Christ and makes a lot of promises to you. I'm just going to highlight one in Psalm 23 6 and I'm going to give you a better translation than the ESV. It doesn't always get there's no perfect translation of the Bible by the way. Some people want to act like there is. There's good translations and bad translations. OK. Psalm 23 6. You know it this way. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. And that is wonderful enough. But that word look at that little word follow. And then go read the net Bible or the Christian standard Bible or any of those they got it better. You know what literally is being said there for the child of God. If you're trusting surely goodness and mercy shall pursue me. shall run me down all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord, which pictured the new heavens and new earth, dwell with the Lord forever and ever and ever. See, this is God's love that we see in Hosea. This is this, this, yes, just and judging love and this reconciling love, this saving love, this faithful covenant love that he never gives up on his people. Now sure, there's true faith and false faith, and if you turn from Him, it means you never knew Him. But if you are trusting and resting in Christ, and if you have been justified, you will be glorified. God's covenant love for God's covenant people in God's covenant Son applied by His Holy Spirit is sure and pure and yours if you're trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's undeserved. Covenant love and mercy. His kindness, His goodness and His faithfulness are for all those who are in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And therefore we should embrace His love. Point number two. Verse 20, I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. You there, all of you. It reminds me of Jeremiah in New Covenant Promise. You will know the Lord. Knowing the Lord speaks of more than intellectual knowledge. Knowing the Lord is the same kind of concept when it said that Adam knew his wife and they had children. It's this intimate, relational, love, experiential knowing of the Lord and His grace. Intimate. The most intimate relationship. Our marriage is a picture of Christ and His Church. An intimate relationship with Christ and His Church. It's the relationship God has for His children and it's one of growing faith and repentance. See, we are being sanctified. We haven't been glorified. But as we grow in faith and repentance, here's what I want you to hear me in. As we truly grow in faith and repentance, we grow in confidence in God's love for us. The more confident we are in His love then, the more intimate the relationship becomes with Him. Are you confident in God's love for you this morning? Are you confident in His chesed for you? Well, if you're not trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, that would be a false confidence that I would call you to repent of. But if you're trusting in the Lord, I'm asking you who claim to be followers of Christ, who claim to be trusting in Christ, are you confident of God's love for you this morning? Do you walk in a conscious awareness of His love for you? Because that's what He wants you to do, is to walk in a conscious awareness of His love for you. Do you believe the Gospel, which is the good news of grace for the unworthy? And are you confident of His love? Listen, if not, where are you failing to trust Him? If you're not confident in His love, where are you failing to trust Him? It's usually in something difficult that we're failing to trust Him. But it doesn't have to be. Because we all want to walk in this conscious awareness, don't we? This confidence that we are God's children and deeply and dearly loved by him. Where are you failing to trust him? Maybe you don't know what to trust because you're not reading his word. Secondly, is there some sin in your life that you are refusing to repent of? Well, I'm not refusing to repent of it. I just keep doing it. Well, guess what? That means you're refusing to repent of it. Because last time I read, we have all things necessary for life and godliness in the Lord Jesus Christ and His promises to us. We get worldly ideas sometimes in relationship to sin where we justify. You hear me? And I'm not saying people don't get trapped and don't need help, but there's the way out. God won't leave you in just this hopeless repetition of things that dishonor His name. You have everything necessary for life and godliness and growth and grace in Him. You may need the help of a brother and sister to apply that and walk in that and grow in that. But what would Jesus say sometimes when He would heal somebody? Go and be encouraged even though you'll sin a lot. He said repent, didn't He? He said go and sin no more. And listen, it's not that you know of every sin in your life. I'm asking you, is there a specific thing in your life that you are refusing to repent of? How do I know that I'm refusing to repent? Because it keeps happening over and over and over again and I make excuses for it. I have talked to men before who claim to be trapped in pornography and try to help them. Get a flip phone. Well, no, I can't do that. Leave this in the other room. I can't do that. What about your computer? Do you have software? Well, no, I don't do that because I know I'll be able to figure a way around it. Who's holding you accountable? Well, I'm praying. What you're telling me is you're refusing to repent. Make every effort. God's grace is there for you. It is not hopeless. He will deliver you from this thing but he calls you to repent. And pornography is not the only issue by the way it is one in the church. And if you're if you're indulging in that and making excuses for that we need to talk. But where are you failing to trust God? Where's sin that you're failing to repent of? Because if you're being, you know, slack, that may cause you to not walk in the awareness of God's love. You're not in the word. You're not reading the word. You're not spending time in prayer with the Lord. Or there's this particular thing in your life you're not trusting him with. Or there's this thing in your life that you refuse to repent of. Those things can inhibit you walking in a conscious awareness of God's love. So examine yourself, and better than that, ask God to examine you. The end of Psalm 139. Search me, and try me, and know my heart, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. Him leading you in the way everlasting is leading you in His grace, in His mercy, in His love for you, and in your walking in joy and a conscious awareness of His love and fruitfulness for His kingdom, because you trust Him. Because you're turning from things that dishonor Him and seeking to live a life that glorifies Him. What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. See, grace is in the picture. You can't glorify Him without grace and you certainly can't enjoy Him without grace. I've never met a happy legalist. I've met a bunch of nitpicking people that like to pick at other people's sins while they're doing nothing about their own. Jesus ran into a few of them. Sometimes we are not experiencing God's love because we don't know where to look. I want to see if God loves me, so I look inside. That's definitely the wrong place to look. We primarily know His love by the cross, by the sacrifice of His Son. There we see his chesed and his justice together in saving his people. And there is where we look to know that he loves us child of God. He has given you everything necessary to know His love. And listen, He wants you to walk in a conscious awareness of how humongously He loves you. Just as the power at work in you, Paul says in Ephesians, the same power that raised Christ from the dead is at work in you. Surely you don't have the strength, but He does. But He's exerting His strength for you and saving you, and He wants you to know the greatness of His love now as His child. How do I know that? A bunch of scriptures, but one of them is in Ephesians chapter 3. Ephesians 3, 14 to 19. Look what Paul prayed for, for the church. This is God working and inspiring His Word and showing us that one of the things Christ is praying for us. For this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and earth is named that according to the riches of His glory He might grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being. So what's going to be the outworking of me being strengthened with power by the Holy Spirit? Verse 17, so that Christ might dwell in your hearts through faith. What does that mean? Well, a lot of times if you want to know what something means, you just keep reading. He's telling us here, that you, being rooted and grounded in love. See, you're rooted and grounded in love because you're rooted and grounded in Christ, but you might not be walking in a conscious awareness of that. Verse 18, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints. What is the tininess of God's love? No. What is the breadth and length and depth and height? Now watch this. And to know, he's praying that his church, his people will know. Paul's praying this and we can pray this and we can look at it and know it. God wants you to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. The better I know his love, in other words, the better I walk in a conscious awareness of his love, not based on me, but based on Christ and Christ immeasurable love for me, the more I'm going to be filled and fruitful. For his kingdom. So there's one evidence of being filled with the spirit, you know, his love, the fruit of the spirit is what's the first one? An imitation of his love for you. God wants you to know how greatly you are loved. The fact that you don't know it doesn't mean it's not true. It just means that you're robbing yourself by not pursuing Christ with your whole heart to know who you are in Him and know what's true of you. The same power that raised Him from the dead is at work in you. And this love, this love that surpasses knowledge is for you. In Christ. That's why He came to live for you. That's why He came to die for you. That's why He came to be raised for you, reign for you, and He's coming again, and when He comes again, you'll be like Him. That's what God is up to. He wants you to know His love in the midst of your trouble. so that you can count it all joy, and know God's with you in it, and God's working even through this thing to make you more like Christ. He wants you to be able to trust Him in the middle of the storm. Christ was showing the disciples as He was asleep in the boat, and they freaked out and thought He didn't care. They didn't know who they were talking to at that point. God wants you to know this love that surpasses knowledge for you in your Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. so that you will joyfully seek to walk in both glorifying and enjoying him. And so you too then, like Ruth, will live that kind of love, return to God and to those around you. Steadfast love return, point three. God's chesed is meant to call Israel back to a faithful relationship with Him. So while Hosea 2.20 is primarily speaking about God's faithfulness, His unwavering commitment to His covenant with Israel is also expected to elicit a response of faithfulness from His people. And you see that word there in verse 20. Speaking of God's faithfulness and a kind of little double work here. Also then that faithfulness that produces a faithfulness. in His people. So if you really get His love, you will return that love to Him and to those around you because Christ deserves it and it will be joyful because of His love. See, the way we return our love to God is joyful obedience to worship and serve Him alone. Now think about Israel and who Hosea is writing about and warning, this is where they had failed, right? They had failed to worship and serve the true and living God alone. They had turned to the idols. They had turned from the Lord, even calling their false gods the Lord sometimes, but they had turned from the Lord. But if we really get his love. then we will return a pure and growingly pure love for him that is exhibited and manifested in a growing joyful obedience to him to worship and serve him alone. As Christ said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. He didn't say if you love me, you'll have all kinds of flittering feelings all the time. This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments and His commandments aren't burdensome. John defined it in 1 John 5. His love for us should produce a love for Him. This is the priority. Love the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. That's the first table of the law, right? And all our obedience and our sacrifices flow out in joy because of His love and grace to us. When we begin with the love, the mercy, the faithfulness of God, it changes us when we know that. It produces in us a loyal covenant love for God. We return true love because we are confident in His love. And this confidence comes by placing all of our hope in Him. Our hope, our confidence is not in our ability to keep His commandments. So we strive for but it's in the fact that he loved us at our worst with a loyal covenant love that can never fail. God has promised to always love his people and he will never fail ever never. We like Gomer and again I'm not talking about Andy Griffith but Hosea's wife. But we, like Gomer, have been sinful and adulterous, but Christ came to save us forever, all because of His grace, God's hesed, His loyal covenant love. And if you're truly trusting in Christ Jesus alone this morning, it's all because of God's faithful covenant love to you, and He will never fail. Let's do some quick application before we take the Lord's Supper. Number one, God's love is not best read by your circumstances. Was Naomi loved of God? Y'all are hesitant, right? Because things were hard. Yes. Proven by who He put around her and how He took care of her. And go read the book. I don't have time to finish. It's a great story. God's love is not best read by your circumstances. Remember, a lot of the people we've seen the prophets writing to have been taken out of their home and their country and taken into exile in a foreign land. But we've seen that God surely loved those suffering in exile. And many of the most godly people who've ever lived have suffered great loss. John Owen. Only one of his children lived to adulthood, right? I think she died before he did. Eleven kids. And look at all he wrote and all the fruit he bore. Some have struggled with depression. Some have been rejected and betrayed and yet all the while knew God loved them because they knew that God's love wasn't based on their circumstances. We have this mistaken notion that if we do everything right, all will go well. That's foolishness. Stop listening to Joel Osteen and others who try to tell you nonsense. Jesus did pretty well, didn't he? He did. They killed him. If they hated me, they'll hate you. But just general providence, we walk through some of the same tears and suffering that everybody around us walks through. We just don't do it alone. And God promises to make all of it work for us. And we won't understand it all. But trust him with it and know He'll make you more like Jesus. It's hard. I get it. But your circumstances being hard are not proof that God doesn't love you. And that's why he can say, count it all joy when you fall into various trials. I'm with you and I'm at work. Read Heidelberg Catechism question one. Number two, God's love is not best read by your feelings. And we need to be megaphoning this stuff these days. Your feelings prove nothing. They are not the engine of the train. They are the caboose. And sometimes they come along and sometimes they don't. But some of the worst advice you'll ever hear in your life is follow your heart. Feelings are not a reliable guide in life. Some days we feel good and other days we don't. And we've done the same thing both days. Some days we feel saved and some days we feel lost. I'm trying to be real with y'all so you... Right? Come on, you know what I'm talking about. We don't live on the mountaintop. And sometimes your feelings will try to make you feel good about sin. He will out of you. Your good days need grace and your bad days need grace. And God's grace, His love is yours every day if you're in Christ. So we don't look to our circumstances and we don't look to our feelings. We don't want life to be hard, but it's gonna be. Christ said, in this world you will have trouble and suffering, but be of good cheer for I have overcome it. He's with us in it. Number three God's steadfast love is best read by the gospel and the fact that his word says he said his love on us before the foundation of the world. OK preacher now you've gone too far. You're trying to tell me that God's love is best read in the gospel and the doctrine of election. Yes. That doctrine is true, number one. It's not given to you to make you great at arguing with people about it. It's given to you that you'll rest in Him and His grace. Quit trying to judge Him about it. Believe His word and rest in His grace. Wow, what a treasure to know that you were loved before the foundation of the world. How do you know I was? Because you're trusting in Christ. And I'm talking trusting in Christ. True faith. The gospel that Christ lived for me and He died for me and was raised for me, that fuels my knowledge of His love. Not me. It's not based on me. It's based on Him. The fact that His Word tells me clearly that He set His love on me before the foundation of the world. That doesn't mean I'm valuable. I'm not. He came and died for His enemies and He wanted those who were His enemies and now His brothers and sisters, those who were under wrath but now are children of God, to know why that's true and relax. and rest in His grace. Like it or not, if you're in Christ, He loved you first. You want me to say that again? Like it or not, He loved you first. Be able to figure it out or not. And by the way, you can't. He loved you first. He gave you to His Son before the foundation of the world. Rest in His grace. He loves you with an everlasting love. At just the right time, the Word says, Christ came and lived for you. He died for you. He was raised for you. And you're in Him. If you're in Christ. He loves you with an everlasting love and He wants you to know it. And as long as you try to think it's your idea, you'll never know it. Not really, not abidingly, not the way you should. So rest in it, walk in it through the good times and the bad. He loves you, child of God. Look at 1 John 4, 10. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried. And he was raised on the last day. So yes, Ruth was a great picture of God's faithful covenant love, his loyal covenant love, a faithful covenant love that never ends, a love that was made flesh in the Lord Jesus Christ. Chesed walked among us and lived for us and died for us and was raised for us, therefore saves us. A love that covenanted our salvation before the foundation of the world. Live in it, rest in it, and trust in it. J.I. Packer gives this, and I'll end with this, definition of God's covenant love. Packer says this, God's love is an exercise of his goodness towards individual sinners, enemies, whereby having identified himself with their welfare, he has given his son to be their savior and now brings them to know and enjoy him in a covenant relation. Jesus Christ is Lord. Let's pray. Lord, I pray for each and every one of us that are your children. that that prayer in Ephesians would be answered, that we would walk in this world knowing the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we would trust you and stay near you, that we would walk in a growing repentance and faith that glorifies and enjoys you, enjoys you because it is confident of your love. What more could you have done for us to be confident in you? Thank you for so rich and free a salvation that is greatly pictured for us in the book of Hosea, whose name means salvation. Of your great and glorious saving of a wayward people, because of your faithful covenant love. Lord, prepare our hearts now as we transition to the Lord's table to take communion, to commune with you, Lord Jesus, to feed upon your sacrifice by faith, to be strengthened and fortified in our faith, to grow in grace, to be hating sin and turning from it, to be loving you and your law and turning to it. all because of your grace. Lord, I pray again for those who don't know you that you'd work repentance and faith in their hearts. And I pray for us who do know you that we would even be more serious about walking near you as a result of being here today. But bless us now as we turn to the Lord's Supper. We give you all the praise.