THE DOOR OF HOPE II (Hosea 2:15) (3:1)

I. Introduction

A. Hosea up to this point in this prophecy had no problem in agreeing with God in the decisions he had made.

1. The people like Comer had been unfaithful and had violated the laws of God.

2. As a result, God brought them to the Valley of Achor or trouble. They must now experience the consequences of sin.

3. God's loving presence was shut off from them, they must now suffer for a period of time.

B. Their suffering and hardship did not come about because God no longer loved them.

1. Sometimes God seems so remote we feel that He no longer loves us.

2. Hardship, difficulty are all brought into our lives for a beneficial purpose.

3. They are meant to make us sick of wayward ways.

4. They are to be the fire to purge us from our sin.

5. God says our troubles are meant to bring us to the door of Hope.

6. God's desire is always to bring us back to Himself, He wants to cleanse us of our sins and restore us to fellowship.

C. God reveals Himself to us through our experiences.

1. God interprets himself to us through our difficulties.

2. I would like to present four things about God that are revealed to us through the experiences of Hosea.

II. First, God suffers when His people are unfaithful

A. When I speak of His people - I mean all people because God says "All souls are mine."

1. When we go astray from God's way, He suffers.

2. Faber uttered a profound truth when he sang;

3. There is no place where earth's sorrows are felt more than in Heaven.

4. Have you ever considered that there is no aggregate of human suffering except in the heart of God.

5. 1 am in trouble - you are in trouble, someone else is in trouble.

6. Three people in trouble, but we have no way of putting the trouble of three together and saying the result is three

times the trouble of the one.

7. There is no aggregate of sorrow except in the heart of God.

B. He feels my pain, your pain. All of earth's sorrows are in the heart of God.

1. Love ever suffers when the one loved suffers.

2. The difference between my love and God's love lies at this point.

3. I love and if the one I love is untrue to me, I suffer. Why?

4. Because 1 have lost that love but God does not suffer that way.

5. He suffers because the one who ceases to love Him is suffering.

6. There is a great deal of self in our love but none in God's.

C. Jesus was on His way to the cross. Women were weeping and bewailing His suffering. What did He say to them?

1. Women weep not for me but for yourselves and your children.

2. This clearly reveals the point of His agony. It was not that they were wronging Him but in wronging Him, they

were hurting themselves. God suffers when His people sin.

III. Secondly, I learn that God cannot tolerate or condone sin.

A. You say why not? For the reason I just stated:

1. Because sin is cheating and defeating the purpose of love.

2. It is because sin blights and destroys mankind that God can make no terms with it. Sin spoils those whom God loves.

B. God must judge sin, which He did in the person of His Son - He put away sin by the sacrifice of His Son.

IV. Third, I learn that God still Loves in Spite of sin.

A A little boy asked his Sunday School teacher if God loved naughty boy's. She said "no, certainly not."

1. Oh the unintentional blasphemy of telling a boy that.

2. If God didn't love naughty boys, He certainly wouldn't love me.

3. Shakespeare said; "Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds." Where did Shakespeare learn that?

4. He learned it from the Bible because he knew the Lord Jesus.

William Shakespeare revealed his faith in God and in immortality in his LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT signed in March, 1616. The first paragraph of this historic document reads --- " I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting, my body to the earth, whereof it is made."

B. God loves in spite of sin

1. That is the heart and core of the gospel. God sent Hosea after Gomer even while she was yet in her sin.

2. God was saying - Do what I do. I seek the sinner in order to restore them to fellowship.

V. Finally - Love a Woman that has Hurt You (3:1) ( God wants us to love people that hurt us.)

A. That is an amazing love to love someone who has done you wrong.

1. In that we find the unveiling of the wonderful love of God.

2. May God awaken us if we ever lose our amazement of the love of God.

3. Love so amazing, so Divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.

B. God say's Hosea go after Gomer, love her as I love this people.

1. Carry out the attitude you have seen in Me.

2. Jt is not enough to know God is love, He calls upon us to demonstrate that same kind of love to others.

3. Go love the drunkard, the derelict, that no one cares for.

4. Go serve them - go gather them into God's house.

5. Go pour your love out to the unlovely and in doing so you will rise into the fellowship of God's love just like

Rosea.

C. Not one person here is so bad that ho or she is

beyond the amazing love of God.