Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 557 | Why I Changed My Mind About 'Redeeming Love'

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

Today we're discussing Francine Rivers' wildly popular book, "Redeeming Love," as there was a major movie adaptation of it released recently. Despite many women's fond memories of reading the book as teenagers, it really does a poor job of translating what the book of Hosea is trying to tell us. Ultimately, this book does more harm than good, as it ends up glorifying earthly struggles and relationships over living a life committed to the Lord. --- Today's Sponsors: Carly Jean Los Angeles does the hunting for you & provide clothes that are effortless, easy, & flattering on any shape, size, age, or season! Never say you have nothing to wear again. Go to CarlyJeanLosAngeles.com & use promo code 'ALLIEB' to save 20% off your first order of anything in their online store. Annie's Kit Clubs helps your kids by encouraging their curiosity while providing fun activities that are as entertaining as they are educational. Their Genius Box explores exciting STEM themes & is perfect for all kids ages 7-12. Go to AnniesKitClubs.com/ALLIE & save 50% off your first box! Good Ranchers has a limited time offer happening right now. Get 40 free chicken breasts for free with your order by using promo code 'ALLIE' at checkout. Stock up on quality beef, chicken, & seafood at GoodRanchers.com/ALLIE. --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. We're experimenting with a little bit of a cold open today. So let me know what you think. We are finally talking about redeeming love.

And we are going to answer the question, should Christians watch this movie? Should they even read the book? Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Get you some craft beef and better than organic chicken shipped right to your front door. Plus you get a great deal if you use my link. Good Ranchers.com slash Alley. Okay. Let's finally talk about redeeming love,

the movie adaptation of Francing Rivers' book by the same title. It is a Christian romance novel that is supposed to be a rendering of the book the Bible called Hosea. We're going to talk about all of that. And let me just go ahead and caveat that I understand that we are going to have different opinions on this as Christian women. And that is okay. I hope that you listen to my take on this and my perspective.

And even if you disagree with me or you would add something to it or you would take away something that I said, that you would listen to this in a spirit of charity and understand that I am, you know, I'm not condemning you for having a different take on this. Maybe we can have a discussion if you reach out to me. But this is my perspective. As someone who read the book several times when I was in high school, absolutely loved the book when I read it, but kind of have a different perspective now that it's been about 15 years since the first time I read it.

So it's a very sensual, if not outright sexual book in some scenes, at least using sexual innuendo. Apparently the movie is as well. So as I said at the top, we're going to talk about if this is a movie that we as Christian women should be watching. And then I'm going to analyze, as I said, is someone who read the book, who loved the book when I read it as a teenager, if we should be reading this novel and other books like it. And we will also talk about the book of Josea. What is the book? And what does it really tell us about? About, God and what does he want us to take from it. You guys have been asking me about this topic for weeks and we've just had so many other things to cover that we haven't gotten to it and it's taken

me a while to gather my thoughts on the subject. Also, there has already been really solid analysis of the movie and whether Christians should watch it from other Christian women. I love Elisa Childers. She's been on this podcast several times. She dove into this and there have been many other wonderful Christian women on Instagram who have done the same. So I don't want to be repetitive. I have just been kind of wrestling with this question, though, from my particular perspective and asking myself, okay, is there anything unique that I can add to all of this? And should I chime in or has everyone basically covered it?

And the reason I am going ahead and talking about this is because, A, I may be the only person that many of you listen to when it comes to theology and culture. And maybe you're wondering about this. So I want to offer that to you guys. And B, I am coming at this, as I said, from the perspective of someone who loved the book. It was by far my favorite book when I was in high school. Some of the people who have been talking about this book and about the movie and whether or not we should read and see it have not read the book.

And that's okay. I think their analysis is valid and there's plenty out there to understand about it. that is, I think, a sufficient basis for, you know, analyzing whether or not we should engage with this kind of material. But I actually have read it. And so that's why I'm going ahead and I'm adding my voice to the mix here because I am coming from a place of once loving the book. But it has been about 15 years since I read the book for the first time. And while I loved it in high school, as a mom-neutral. as a mom now who is thinking about the kinds of things I want my children to read

and thinking back on how this book made me feel as a teenage girl, the thoughts that it put in my mind, the expectations I settle my relationships because of this book. I have a different perspective now. So first, if you know nothing about the book or this writer, the author, Francing Rivers, is perhaps the most successful Christian fiction author of all time. And the reason is because she has a masterful storyteller. She is incredible historical fiction, which is my favorite genre. Her Mark of the Lion series was gripping from start to finish.

I absolutely loved it. My mom and I read it at the same time. We talked about it. We just loved it. The characters, the relationships, you can feel the tension and the longing and the love and the pain and her writing. And that is truly a gift that most people, most writers, even most successful authors, don't have, at least not to the degree that Fransing Rivers does. So as someone who loves to write, who loves words, who loves a good story, who really appreciates when someone is a master of their craft, I have to give major props to Francine Rivers because it is not hard at all to see why she is so incredibly successful. And I began to know who she was in the books that she wrote in high school.

I was always a voracious reader growing up. And someone I don't remember who recommended to me a redeeming love when I was 15 or so ninth grade. It had everything that a hormonal teenage girl who dreamed of her future wedding day would want, desire, passion, love, suspense, the picture of what seems like a perfect man in a husband. It's set, if you don't know, in a long ago time in the 1800s, California gold country. It's about this godly man named Michael Hosea and his relentless pursuit of in faithfulness to a prostitute named Ames. who, despite all of Michael Josea's efforts to make her stay, she continued to leave him and to cheat on him. And there are very sensual or at the very least suggestive scenes in the book to the point where, even though it's been, I don't know, probably 12 years since the last time I read it because I read it multiple times throughout high school, maybe even in college, I still remember the scenes that I read. And I still remember at the end when she finally returns to him once and for all.

and she walks toward him. I think it's outside while she's taking off all of her clothes. And I remember bawling, crying, reading this just, like, totally emotionally invested in this story and wanting so badly to find my own Michael Josea. That was, like, a thing. In, like, 2008, you know, women going to youth group and talking about, like, getting purity talks and talking about, like, having their Michael Josea and all that stuff. And this is just, like, a thing that so many Christian girls did, especially in like evangelical Christianity. It's just, I mean, we all read this book and we all kind of felt and thought the same way about it at the time. We all liked it. We all thought it was a perfectly healthy depiction of what we should be looking for in a man because this is a Christian

book. It's based on a book of the Bible. Isn't this the kind of thing? You know, a lot of parents, maybe we're thinking that we want our teenagers to be reading and the kind of man that we want our teenage girls to be looking for one day. Won't this get them, excited to read scripture and to better understand the Bible because they're seeing it in a way that makes sense to them and that is engaging to them. But while those thoughts may be understandable, I can tell you from firsthand experience, that is not what this book accomplished for me. What this book did in the exact same way as Twilight did in all of the other secular romance novels did that I read throughout high school was stir up longings in me for marriage and sex that could not be

fulfilled when I was 15 years old. Redeeming love being a rendering of a book of the Bible did not make it any more edifying for my hormonal naive teenage mind to consume. As a Christian who was committing not to have sex until marriage, as a teenage girl who desperately wanted to, desperately wanted a boyfriend to be thought of as beautiful and desirable. This book simply made that passion in me that exists in a lot, most teenage girls, even stronger, while leaving me with a feeling of emptiness because I wasn't in a place where those feelings could be satisfied.

So redeeming love in other books like it, Christian or not, intensify both sexual and emotional longing in the reader. That's actually what they are meant to do. And these feelings are not in themselves bad or shameful feelings. It is natural to want sex and emotional connection. But they are meant, these feelings are meant to be satisfied for the Christian within the confines of marriage. So when those feelings are purposely being agitated, outside the confines of marriage,

and by two-dimensional fictional stories, no less, you're going to have a lot of love-sick, sexually frustrated young people who also may try to find the love that they are longing for in their high school dating relationships. So that's part of why I have concerns about this book, especially being read by young people and young women. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the Day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality.

We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Reading about Michael Josea as a six-year-old.

old girl can cause a girl to compare her high school boyfriends who are even more immature than she is. That's just a fact. To this fictional version of a perfect guy who basically becomes a version of God to this character, angel and redeeming love. It sets unfair expectations. It romanticizes in some ways, even though I don't think this is intentional, but it just does. It romanticizes unfaithfulness to a degree. It puts unmarried Christian women in the position of.

of having to visualize sexual acts that are either kind of roughly described or alluded to that they can't actually biblically engage in yet. It does not cause the reader to long primarily, at least in my experience and in the experience of a lot of people I know, for Christ. It causes the reader to long for sex. And yes, also for love and for marriage, but I would argue not in a healthy, well-ordered way. Now, I'm not saying that it doesn't also paint a picture of God's faithfulness to us, even when we are rebellious. But that is peripheral, in my opinion, in this book. The main takeaway

for most girls and even women who read it will be that they need to find a man. And as I said, there's nothing wrong with longing for a husband or for longing for love or hoping that your husband is a forgiving man who pursues you and loves you like Christ loves you. But Here's the caveat. But number one, there's no guarantee that you will get married. Even if you want to be married, as hard as that may be to accept. We just, we don't know that that is in the cards. And number two, whether marriage is in your future or not, your job as a single woman is not to be preoccupied with finding a Michael Hosea, but with pleasing Christ.

So are you consumed with pleasing Christ if you are fantasized? if you are fantasizing about sex with a fictional character? Are you glorifying God that way? Is that the best use of your time? Ephesians 515 through 16 says, look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. So not just a good use of our time, but the best use of our time. And that's an admonition for all of us, dealing with a whole variety of temptations to waste our time, by the way. I'm not singling out single women when it comes to that verse. We are all supposed to be spending our time in the best way possible in accordance with the Lord's will. And so many of us spend time in ways that are not

prudent. But I do happen to be addressing single women right now because time is something that single people have typically in more abundance than married people. And that is a gift. is a gift. I'm not saying, oh, that you're not busy, that you don't have a lot of demands. I'm not saying that. I am saying biblically the time and the capacity and the margin that a single person has versus a married person is biblically described as a gift that can be offered in service to the Lord. So Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 that he wishes everyone could remain single as he is, but that he understands men and women can and should get married so they don't burn with passion and loss outside of marriage. His reasoning, though, for wishing that Christians could remain single is this,

that he articulates in verses 32 through 35. I want you to be free from anxieties, he says. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy, and body and spirit, but the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. So in the margin that you have as a single person that a married person or a parent does not have, you are gifted with an even greater opportunity

to devote yourself fully to the Lord. So if you are a single woman, your single years will not be well spent in service to the Lord if your fixation is on your potential husband instead of Christ. And this book, in my opinion, will only cause you to fixate more on your potential husband, who again may or may not exist. And if he does exist, he's not going to be Michael Josea because Michael Jose is a fictional character and not on Jesus. But this is not just a warning to single women, even though I feel like I can empathize more with the mindset. of a single young woman reading this book because I was a single young woman reading this book. But this is also a warning, I think, to married women.

I think the book could be even more harmful, actually, to married women that to single woman because we are currently living in marriages that are not going to live up to the fictionalized love between Michael Hosea and Angel. Now, I hope that your marriage is better than that, that you're not cheating on your husband by becoming a prostitute. I really hope that. But Michael Josea is depicted as this kind of like impenetrable, you know, godly guy who rarely grows frustrated or annoyed. We don't see any of his bad habits or hangups.

We don't read about the mundane parts of marriage or the persistent effort put into loving and serving your spouse. We don't read about all of the normal difficulties of marriage in this book or in most books like this one. And even if we know better, it can still cause us to resent our current situation. It can steal contentment and joy and the acceptance of the everyday, sometimes monotonous demands of marriage and motherhood. It can make us wish we looked different, acted differently, felt differently, had a different life. It can make us fantasize about being a different person or being with a different person.

It can rob us of the gratitude to which God has called us. And we need to be so careful about what we allow to enter our minds, no matter our age, no matter our marital status, and even more vigilant about what gets into our heart. Proverbs 423, you guys, most of you probably know this first. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. And Jesus also says in Matthew 15, that out of the heart also flow the things of death. So we just read that out of it flow the things of life, but also out of it flow the things of life, but also out of the heart flow the things of death. So Matthew 15, 18 through 19. But what comes out of the

mouth, Jesus says, proceeds from the heart. And this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. Wow. The heart is so important. Out from the heart flows adultery. That means the things that we are putting in our heart and mind can actually manifest itself in external rebellion, even though we know that Jesus says, if you lost after a woman, if you lost, then you are already committing adultery. So what goes on in our heart and our mind really matter from the heart full of life and death, purity and impurity, good desires, and bad desires, truth and lies. Maybe this is why God's people are told, both in the Old Testament and the new, that we are to love the Lord our God first with all of our heart, mind, soul,

and strength. Maybe the heart comes first because from it flows that which enters our mind and fills our souls and determines our strength. That's just a guess on my part. And so a heart dominated by the love of God and a commitment to do his will will characterize and direct our minds, our souls and our strength. And that's why we are told that the heart must be guarded. It is a gateway, both for evil and for good. and why I think of Philippians 4 is really fitting here. So let me read verses 4 through 9. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything. But in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure,

whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable. If there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. So are rejoicing in the Lord, our gratitude to him. Our anticipation of his coming relieves us of anxiety and ushers in the peace of God, which guards our hearts and our minds with the power of Christ. And that guarded heart and mind, which has been relieved from the burden of worry through prayer and thankfulness to God,

should be filled with that which glorifies the God who both made and seeks to protect them. Truth, honor, justice, purity, loveliness, whatever is commendable, an excellent and praiseworthy, these are the things that we are meant to dwell on. They're good for our heart. We want to know how to turn away from the anxieties of this life. That's probably the biggest question that people Christian and non-Christian are asking. The Bible tells us we focus on Christ in the things that he calls good. We are content. We are thankful in our circumstances. And I'm afraid that books like redeeming love just don't get us there. I actually think that they can, they have the tendency to, the ability to fill us with anxiety by stirring up longing that cannot be satisfied by reality.

Song of Solomon 2.7 says, do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases, until marriage, until it can be satisfied by your husband. And I don't even think I need to get into the details of the movie to say that the same goes for it too. And probably even more so because apparently according to many reviews that I read, we are actually seeing at least some depictions of sex scenes in the movie. The truth is, both the book and the movie are forms of pornography. And just because they are supposed to be allegories for the book of Hosea, which contains an allegory for God's relationship with Israel, does not mean that they are glorifying to God or good for the Christian. I think we have to be so careful about what we put into our hearts and minds.

And I'm not just talking about redeeming love. I'm talking about all content that we consume. And I am definitely imperfect when it comes to this because I really, I like television. I like movies. I like books. I like a good story. And I have definitely tolerated certain kinds of content that were not good for my heart and mind because I thought that it was in service to a good story. And okay, this is a really important series that everyone's talking about.

And so I'm going to consume this content too. And it'll just be fine. it probably won't mar me, I'll be able to forget about it. But that is disobedience. And so I've been there. I understand if you've been there, it can be really difficult to do, especially when it comes to movies and books that are characterized as Christian. It's tempting to assume that if our child is reading or watching a movie that's supposedly Christian,

then while at least it's better than them being on TikTok, But let's nix both the TikTok and the Instagram and all social media for children. That's my stance on that. Let's mix all of that and the books that are not going to be filling their minds with good things. The books that I read in high school, which targeted teenagers, I went to Barnes & Noble. That was like my favorite thing to do. Go to Barnes & Noble. Go to like the teen fiction section.

and, you know, just take whatever is there. And I don't remember ever really having any sort of filter. Like maybe I shouldn't read this. I just kind of picked up what looked good to me. But the books that I read that I picked up at Barnes & Noble that were marketed toward people like me, they made sexual purity a lot more difficult. Just to be honest, they made waiting for sex within, for, you know, a time that it was actually, you know, exercised within the confines of marriage much more difficult.

They encourage lust and discontent and unfair expectations for reality. They worry, even if they weren't super graphic forms of pornography, even if just emotional pornography, which can be destructive especially for girls. Like this doesn't mean that I don't think that mature teenagers under their parents' guidance should be, you know, reading difficult books with mature topics or tough issues. History is ugly. Like life can be ugly. That's reality.

The Bible is certainly not all roads. I think it's really important for young people to be well read and to have a really good grasp on what the world is actually like. But the content depicting those, you know, sometimes very ugly and uncomfortable truths, you know, whether or not a teenager should consume them, it depends on a lot. Is the book glorifying sin? What is being learned from this book? Is it possible for my son or daughter to take the lessons from this book without filling their minds with things that aren't pleasing to the Lord and just aren't beneficial to their growth as a person or as a Christian? I think parental guidance and involvement and discipleship is so key. So, you know, I'm not saying that we should shelter our kids from reading all difficult books or books that, you know, might handle mature topics, as I said.

I'm just saying it should be done in a way that is going to be beneficial to them and not destructive to their mind. Remember, that frontal lobe is not developed in a young person until they're 25. That means that they're not really able to see the consequences of the things that they're doing, including the books that they're reading. And of course, I mean, it feels good. It's exciting. But the stories and the narratives that our kids latch onto, that's going to shape their view of the world. their view of themselves, their view of love, their view of marriage, their view of family, all of that really matters. And as we already read, the heart is something that is to be guarded. And as parents, one of our responsibilities is to help our child guard their hearts as much as possible.

Now, if you want an allegory to Christ's pursuit of his church, then we don't have to read redeeming love. We can actually read the book of Hosea. The book of Hosea is an allegory of God's faithful. to his faithless people. Okay, let's talk about the book of Hosea and what this book really teaches us about the good news of the gospel and who we are in Christ. So as a lot of you probably know, but it's okay if you don't. Josea is an Old Testament book written by the prophet Hosea who prophesied to Israel from about 755 to 710 BC.

see. Hosea is the first of the 12 minor prophets, and his name means salvation, the same as Joshua, and the same as Jesus or Yeshua. And in this book, we see that the salvation of God's people is based not on their worthiness, but on God's unrelenting faithfulness and love. So we see in the book of Hosea, God's loyalty to his people, despite their continued rebellion, their idolatry, their rejection of him, their disobedience to his commands. God instructs Josea to marry a woman named Gomer, who continually betrays him via prostitution, and God uses that marriage as a depiction of Israel's betrayal to him. Josea 1, 2, through 3 says this,

when the Lord first spoke through Josea, the Lord said to Josea, go take for yourself a wife of Hortem and have children of Hortem for the Lord, for the, land commits great hoarder by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of De Blaham, and she conceived and bore him a son. Then the rest of the first chapter talks about God's anger with and rejection of the people of Israel because of their sin, but then the chapter closes this way. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living God.

So God will redeem his people even after they rebel, he is promising. But the book doesn't end in one chapter. We actually see the rebellion of Israel described through the adultery of Gomer. And it is very hard to read. Like talk about introducing your teenagers depending on their reading level and their ability to kind of comprehend and think through these kinds of. tough issues and, you know, tough language. This is a really gut-wrenching read. This is a really difficult thing to work through. It is not sweet or romantic seeming at all. Here's how Josea describes

his wife, Gomer, after she cheats on him by becoming a prostitute, which again is an allegory for Israel's betrayal of God. He says this in chapter 2 verses 2 through 5. Plead with your mother. Plead for She is not my wife, and I am not her husband, that she put away her hoaring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked, and make her as in the day 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.

But then, again, verses 14 through 15. we see God's promise of redemption. Therefore, behold, I will allure her, I will, and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Accora 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, verses 19 through 20. And I will betroth you to me forever.

I will betroth you to me in righteousness and just. justice and steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. So the metaphor of Josea and Gomer's marriage is really weaved in and out of God's message to Israel throughout this book of the Bible. Israel is an adulterous, rebellious people. God is angry in the same way that a husband would be angry about this. He is jealous for his people. His love does not tolerate polygamy, polyamory, adultery. He wants all of their love and all of their worship. He is zealous for his own glory. He promises to punish his people until they turn back. And when they do turn back, he also promises to lavish mercy and love upon them. That is the theme of Hosea. That is how the rest of the book goes. God pleading with his people

to turn back to him, God showing his anger, but then promising to redeem them, to stay faithful to it. It is not a romantic, soft book. It is not a book for the faint of heart. It is a very sad book in one sense. I mean, it shows you the weight and the sorrow of sin and you just think about a lot of Christians today or people who profess to be Christians basically act like God doesn't care about sin. He doesn't care about obedience. Man, God cared so much about sin that he sent his own son to die a brutal death on a cross, a death that he did not deserve because of sin. God cares about sin so much. You can't read any book of the Bible without seeing how much God absolutely hates sin and how much he wants to rid us of sin.

And the book of Hosea is just another very graphic and hard to read depiction of that. How the iniquity of the people whom God chose and loves makes him both sad and angry. It demonstrates just the exhaustion of turning back to sin over and over again, the heartbreak associated with that, hurting the people in your life, hurting the God who made you. Like I said, it's a very difficult read. But it tells us some very important things about God. That he is jealous, that he is relentless, he is faithful to his promises, his love is never ending, his mercy is so reliable, even as he refuses to tolerate unrighteousness.

His refusal to tolerate unrighteousness, his inability to do so because of his holiness. Matched with his undying love for his people is the combination that gets us Jesus, whose name, like Joseus, means salvation. It means salvation for both the Jews and the Gentiles by God's grace through our faith in Him. Jesus, the Son of God, the perfect spotless lamb, became the ultimate eternal sacrifice for our sins, making us clean, giving us His righteousness, so that we could be made holy and acceptable before God. 2 Corinthians 521, for our sake, he made him to be sent, who knew no sin so that we knew no sin so that we, we might become the righteousness of God.

Man, that just fills me with so much gratitude and joy I could cry. Josea is a foreshadowing of Jesus. That could be why their names are so similar in Shara meaning. Josea is preparing Israel for their salvation by urging them through divine prophecy to repentance, to make ready for the forgiveness and redemption of the Lord. And Jesus doesn't just call people both Jews and Gentile. to repentance in his ministry. He doesn't just prepare the way of the Lord as the prophets before him did.

He is the way. The way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him, John 146 says. Through his death and resurrection, he defeats sin on our behalf and makes us new. In Hosea, God's people are likened to a bride. And what is the church called in the New Testament? The bride of Christ.

God uses Hosea to warn the bride, to beck in the bride, his people, Israel. And the New Testament, God uses Christ to save the bride, which is the church, believers in Christ, Christians. In Hosea, God uses the depiction of an earthly marriage to paint a picture of Israel's redemption. In the New Testament, God uses the depiction of the church's redemption to paint a picture of earthly marriage.

We see that in Ephesians 525 through 32. Husbands, love your wives. As Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her. having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it because, or just as Christ does the church,

because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. There are so many things to unpack in all of this. One, God loves us so much. We can't even fully comprehend how much he loves us. He is after us, and that pursuit culminated in sending his own sin,

son who is God made flesh to die a death that he didn't have to die on our behalf, a rebellious, sorry, sinful people so that we could be forgiven and live forever with him. I love God's relentlessness, his steadfastness. When we are faithless, he remains faithful. Second Timothy 2.13 tells us. The second thing, marriage is so powerful. It's important. It's not something to be entered into frivolously. It's not something that should be disintegrated. Jesus says in Matthew 19, five through six, and I like to reference this verse also when people say that God, that Jesus never talked about marriage being between a man and a woman or human beings being made male and female. Well, he very much does. Again, Matthew 19. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother,

a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife. And the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What their first, for God has joined together. Let not man separate. Marriage is not something to be trifled with or redefined as society sees fit. The marriage between a Christian man and a woman is a depiction between Christ and his church. The marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman cannot be that because God doesn't define it that way. Marriage is meaningful. The definition of marriage is meaningful beyond the physical and the temporal and into the spiritual and eternal. And all of this also shows us how powerful sex is for better and for worse. In the right context in marriage, it ties together two

bodies, two souls. It has the ability to bring forth new life. In the wrong context, it can destroy. It can lead to disease, to heartbreak, to unwanted pregnancies, to broken families. It can be a very destructive force. It's really we've seen throughout human history. But even entertaining thoughts that do not get us to a place of glorifying God and dwelling on the things that he tells us to dwell on so that our hearts can be guarded and we can be relieved from the burden of anxiety. Sex can also be a powerfully destructive force in that way. Even when we are consuming it through a book or a movie that calls itself Christian. So we have to be so vigilant. in all of this. And if we really want to know what God's love looks like, of course, there are

fictional books that can be helpful in depicting that for us. I'm not saying that we should never try to fictionalize or, you know, render a book of the Bible in a way that is interesting through fiction, that's fine. But if you really want to know what God's love looks like, if you really want to know what to look for in a husband. If you really want to know what we should think about sex and what we should think about ourselves and our body and our worth and even romance, like we can read the Bible. All of these answers are contained in scripture. And God is so gracious to give us the opportunity and the privilege to be able to access all of that through his word. So that's my take on all of that. I have actually a lot more that I could say,

but I'm going to leave it there. And I would love to hear what you guys think about. it feel free to reach out to me okay guys thank you so much for listening if you love this podcast please leave us a five-star review on apple podcast that would mean so much if you have not listened to yesterday's episode with james lindsay definitely go do that definitely listen to it i went back and re-listen to it and i like learned even more from listening to him you know through my headphones that i did when i was just sitting there there's just so much good good stuff there that can help you understand this moment that we're in and all of the cultural change that we've seen happen over the past couple of years. It'll give you the language and the context to really

understand where all this is coming from and really why it's contradictory to a truly biblical worldview. So we're going to play part two also of that podcast where we talk more about like, why isn't James a Christian? He uses so much Christian theology in the things that he says and the way that he argues, and yet he is not a Christian. We're going to talk about that. I'm going to kind of press into that just a little bit. We've also got a conversation coming up with a journalist from The Daily Wire. She just wrote this really interesting article about how evangelical Christians,

the establishment evangelical Christians, have been duped by Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci and people in our public health bureaucracy into promoting. measures for their congregations and preventing them or trying to get them to not ask questions about the origins of the virus and things like that. It was a really interesting article. We're going to have her on to talk about this. And so yeah, we've got a lot of good stuff. Also, there's a kind of a debate discussion that I'm having with a libertarian. That is coming up. So all of this is coming up in the next few days. We've got a lot of good content headed your way. Super excited for you to hear it. If you haven't subscribed on,

YouTube, please do that, and we will see you back here tomorrow. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality.

We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over. hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.