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[ Silence ] [MUSIC - "WHERE COULD I GO"] ♪ Come unto the Lord ♪ ♪ Where to, Lord, go ♪

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♪ Where can I go ♪ ♪ Seek a refuge for my soul ♪ ♪ For my soul ♪ ♪ Need a friend to save me in the end ♪

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♪ When do I go back to the home ♪ ♪ Day goes on ♪ ♪ I love him and we all ♪ ♪ We get along, it's sweet of heart ♪

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♪ Sweet of heart ♪ ♪ He did a friend ♪ ♪ Just like the empty air ♪ ♪ When could I go into a more ♪

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♪ When could I go ♪ ♪ Back to my home ♪ ♪ Seeking a refuge for my soul ♪ ♪ He and a friend were singing in the air ♪

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♪ Where could I go but to the Lord ♪ ♪ Where could I go but where could I go ♪ ♪ Singing a rendition of my soul ♪ [music]

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Amen. The passage of Scripture on which our message is based is found in the book of the prophet Hosea chapter 3 verse 1. And the Lord said to me, "Go again,

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love the same woman, Goma, who is beloved of a paramour and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins used in the sacrificial feasts in

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idle worship." I should read that again. And the Lord said to me, "Go again, love the same woman, Goma, who is blessed of a paramour and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to

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other gods and love cakes of raisins used in the sacrificial feasts in idol worship." subject of the message, God loves you. Love is a grand and wonderful experience. To be in love is the greatest thing in the world. In fact, the Bible is God's love letter to the world, it contains many love stories. We hear a great deal concerning the story

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of Ruth as a great love story. David and Jonathan are remembered because of their great love each other. It is said that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David. Solomon is called the celebrated lover of the Old Testament. Solomon would excel as a lover in any generation according to popular standards. Listen to his words

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words recorded in the Song of Solomon, the fourth chapter, addressed to his lady love. How fair are you, my love, how very fair. Your eyes are like those of a dove. Your hair makes me think of the black waving fleece of a flock of goats. Your teeth are like a flock of shorn lambs that have

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come up from the washing. Your lips are like a scarlet thread and your mouth is lovely. Your cheeks are like halves of pomegranates. Your neck is like the Tower of David.

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Your breasts are like two fawns, a gazelle that feeds among the lilies. "You are all fair, my love. There is no flaw in you." It's no small wonder that Solomon is called the great lover of his time.

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For that reason, his love songs are preserved for generations unborn. Today, I would like to invite our attention to one of the greatest love stories in the Old Testament. It is the story of the love life of the prophet Hosea.

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In it we see the dramatic portrayal of God's love for his people. Hosea was a man in love. There's a popular song that contains these words, "I'm in love with love and love is grand."

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Well, Hosea was in love. Many of us can remember our first experiences in romance and courtship. When I was a boy and we were in elementary school, we thought we were great lovers and great poets. I can remember some of the poems we were writing to each other. And some of them went like this,

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"The ocean is wide and I can't step it. I love you baby and I just can't help it." Those were some of the things we'd scribble one to the other. And Hosea here engages in a romance with Goma.

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He wooed her with acts of kindness. He was her prince charming and she was his fair lady. It seems that theirs was a wonderful union. They were soulmates.

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They engaged in courtship, which culminated in marriage. They entered that sacred institution of matrimony, which Peter Marshall calls the halls of highest human happiness.

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They exchanged vows one to the other. They promised each other to love in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer until death should part them. The love that Hosea has for Goma was not the sentimental,

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romantic love depicted by Hollywood. There are kinds of love that we see expressed in our time, that we read about in popular magazines, we see it on stage and screen.

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It's a kind of love that is easily started and also easily stopped. It is based on a feeling of possession. It's based on what the other person may do for the other. But the kind of love which Hosea depicts is something different.

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We do well to examine our love and see whether we love as we ought to love. How do we love? Elizabeth Browning in the love poem dedicated to her husband Robert Browning exclaims in one of the sweetest and best loved poems in English literature

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How do I love you? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach When feeling out of sight for the ends of being in ideal grace,

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I love thee to the level of every day, most quiet need by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely as men strive for right. I love thee purely as they turn from praise.

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I love thee with a passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seem to lose with my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life, and if God choose I shall

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but love thee better after death. All of us somehow have a person that we possibly would like to dedicate this kind of poem to. We are very much concerned about love, as Henry Drummond says, it's the greatest thing in the world.

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And I think possibly the greatest words that we can say to another to put it in the language I love you, just those three words. are the greatest words that we can say one to the other. I love you. So Hosea truly loves Goma. He performs with zeal the duties that a husband owes to his

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wife. They are rightly related to each other. They know that they belong to each other. Hosea is her husband and she is his wife. He was hers and she was his. Their marriage is a covenant relationship. They are together. They are bound by mutual obligations. They are in love and love is grand. But as we gaze

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into the sacred precincts of their marriage life we noticed that for a time all goes well with Hosea and Goma. Hosea is a young preacher. The name Hosea means help and the name Goma means completion. So he was to be her help and she was to find completion in him. They were so involved in each other that each was to

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contribute to the ultimate happiness of the other. But something happens in the course of time something happens to this love that seems to be such a budding relationship something happens. Goma, a refined and respected lady becomes a harlot, a prostitute. She falls from the state that she occupies, that

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lofty position and she begins to be a woman for hire. She sells her virtue for a price. She becomes the unfaithful wife. She responds to Hosea's kindness with unkindness. She is lewd and rude in appearance and attitude. She sells herself to strange lovers and in the course of time several children are born.

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They are born because of her activities in harlotry and the first child is a son named Jezreel and Jezreel is a name that has significance for the Hebrew people for it is a Hebrew word that means God's souls and this is a sign

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of God's wrath. God often speaks to us through tragedy and so the time goes on and a second child is born

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and this second child is given the name lo ruhaima which means not pitied. The first child speaks of God's coming judgment and the second child speaks of God's pity as being exhausted. God is tired of the foolishness of Israel. And then a third child is born and given the

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name Ammon which means none of mine. Hosea is saying that I am absolutely and completely convinced that this child is not mine for God is saying to Israel the nation that is wearing his name and claiming to be his people is not at all to be identified with him for you are not my people and I am not your God." This is

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the experience of Hosea. But God somehow uses this experience in order to depict his character and to show to the nation something of his character for in the course of time, Goma goes down, down, down until at last she sells herself into slavery. And there on the slave block, Hosea passes by and he sees Goma, this

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woman who was once his wife, who was the queen of his home, whose soul was knit to his soul, but who has somehow in the course of time drifted away and has become not only a victim of hollatory but has sold herself into slavery. And And there she is in chains as he passes by.

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And God speaks to him and says to him, "Go and bring her back. "Go and buy her, pay the price. "Redeem her from that position that she's in."

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And Hosea says, "I paid 15 shekels of silver "and I brought her back. I brought her back and I placed her in the same position that she was in in years gone by. And I loved her just as I had loved her before.

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And somehow this love that radiates in the life of Hosea describes for us in a most vivid way the love of God. For God says, "Just as you went and bought back Goma, "just as you have kept on loving Goma, "so is my love for Israel.

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"For Israel has drifted far from me." Israel has become entangled with foreign nations. Israel has somehow become wrapped up with idolatry in following after the gods of the Assyrians.

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And she has somehow departed from me with her immorality and with her economic policies that have been contrary to my will. But in spite of all of that,

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even though she has bowed and worshiped false gods, even though she has brought forth fruit that is foreign from any person who would claim to be a child of mine,

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The fruit of her womb has somehow been farmed to all that I would desire. And yet, in spite of it all, I still love Israel. That's the love of God that he just keeps on loving anyhow. Now it's rather easy for us to look at the story of Hosea and Goma and see what a wonderful

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person Hosea is and talk about what a terrible person Goma is. That's what we are inclined to do when we read this story. But I'd like for us to sort of turn it around. That's not the way God wants us to read this story.

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He wants us to see himself, God, in the place of Hosea, and he wants us to see ourselves in the position of Goma. That's the way you read it. For all of us, somehow, are in the position of Goma.

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only Israel but every person that somehow we have failed to measure up to what God requires of us. We are like Goma. Oh he has put us there in a position, he has watched over us, he has romanced us, he has loved us, he has embraced us, he has done everything that a loving husband could do. God has done that but

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Somehow along the way we have blundered, we have stumbled, we have fallen, we have not been faithful. We have missed a mark. That's true of every one of us. We are like Gomer.

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We've had strange thoughts. We have done things that are contrary to his will. We have not done as we ought to have done, and lack of faith as the prayer goes on, And lack of uttermost surrender to him has kept us back

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We have been like Goma And many have drifted so far that they find themselves Many of us find ourselves there sold into slavery

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We have become so attached to that which is wrong many times that we come to think that wrong is right and Right is wrong But God just keeps on loving us. No matter what we do, no matter where we go,

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God just keeps on loving us. He says, I just can't give up Israel. I just can't stop loving you. It's just the nature of God.

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No matter what you do to him, no matter how you treat him, he just keeps on loving us. When we curse him and when we turn our backs on him, And when we try to do everything that would somehow be contrary to him in spite of all

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of it, God just keeps on loving us. And he loves us so much that he comes right where we are. Comes right where we are in our slavery and our bondage to sin. God comes right where we are.

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right where we are through Jesus Christ and he comes and he redeems us. He buys us back by the gift of his son. He gives himself, gives all that he has to redeem us. Just as Hosea redeemed Goma and brought her back and placed her in that home God comes and places us in the position of being rightly related to Him

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and showing us His love. Oh that's the kind of love that just will not let go. I like to think of that story that's expressed in the life of George Matheson, George Matheson heard a physician say, "You must hurry if you want to see because soon you'll be blind." Well, he was engaged to be married to a beautiful

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young lady and so he thought he would tell her what the physician had told him hoping that she would insist on going on with the marriage. He offered to break it off but he was hoping she wouldn't accept that offer but to his surprise he said yes let's just break it up and he went into depression and as he went into

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seclusion during this period he came out with a song because in the midst of it all God's love was revealed to him as he had never experienced it before and out Out of that night season came the words of this song we love to sing so well, "Oh love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee.

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I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths my life may richer, fuller be." If you want your life to be rich, you somehow embrace the love of God. God loves us no matter what we do, no matter where we are, no matter how far we have drifted, God loves us. God loves us. He loves us no matter how deep we may be

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sinking in sin. He loves us and his love hides a multitude of faults. He loves us and he lifts us up from the sinking sands. God loves us and thanks be to God that he loves us one and all. And as the choir sings now the hymn of invitation,

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we invite you to come. We invite you to come. The door is open. The invitation is extended.

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(orchestral music) [MUSIC - "THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER"] ♪ In deep and swift ♪ ♪ A friend of peace was shown ♪

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♪ Every knee is made with fear ♪ ♪ Seeking to rise no more ♪ ♪ From the master of the sea ♪ ♪ Where all is verified ♪

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♪ From the water's depth ♪ (music) (music) ♪ Love him, tell me ♪

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♪ Love him, tell me ♪ ♪ When nothing else could help ♪ ♪ Love him, tell me ♪ ♪ Call my heart to hear my plea ♪

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♪ I'll call upon you, and hold you near my face ♪ ♪ In this blessing present day ♪ ♪ Here on this present scene ♪ ♪ Love so mighty as you do ♪

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♪ Merit my soul's best hope ♪ ♪ In the love that's cherished true ♪ [Music] [MUSIC]

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[ Music ] [ Silence ]