Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Impact of God's Love | Dr. Bryan Loritts | Hosea 3

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

What does it look like to love someone the way God loves someone? https://bryanloritts.com (Dr. Bryan Loritts), director and founder of the Kainos Movement, teaching pastor at Summit Church and author of several books, shares from his favorite passage, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hosea%203&version=NIV (Hosea 3). Listen to find out what Hosea 3 reveals about God's heart toward sinners. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks) Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast) Passages https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hosea%203&version=NIV (Hosea 3) Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. And I'm Patrick Miller. On today's episode, we have a special guest sharing his favorite verse, Dr. Brian Luritz. He is the president and founder of the Kynos movement. He's a teaching pastor at Summit Church and the author of several books, which have made a big influence on my life. One of my favorites is right color, wrong culture.

I'm really excited for you to learn from Dr. Luritz today. Hey, Brian Luritz here, and it is such a delight to share my favorite verse, or actually I should say verses on this The Crossing podcast. It's a section of scripture that is tucked away in the book of Hosea, Hosea Chapter 3. It's one of the shorter chapters in the Bible. It is a chapter where we get a big picture as relates to God's heart for his people and specifically around this, whole idea of what it looks like to love. I've been marinating in this passage, gosh, for about five years, and I just can't get away from it. If you're familiar with the book of Hosea, it's God just expressing his frustrations with Hosea, actually in regard to his people to Hosea, and him just

saying, I'm in covenant relationship with my people, and yet they keep cheating on me by their hoaring his words, hoaring after other gods. That's true of us. Every time we sin, sin isn't just sin. Sin is spiritual adultery and idolatry. It is us saying, God, you are not enough, and I am going to sidestep this relationship, and I am going to find fulfillment independent of you. In a lot of ways, that's what happens literally when a person commits adultery. They sidestep their covenant partner, God's gift to them, and they say I'm going to find fulfillment on my own terms outside of God's provision for my life. I love the next step God takes, and God's saying, in so many words, I've got every right to divorce my people, but I'm not going to do that.

Actually, Josea, I want to use you to show my people how much I love them. So what I want you to do is, and here's where the story just takes a turn. I want you to marry a woman. Her name is Go-Mond. chapter one she's a prostitute and i know you think that's strange that you a prophet would be with a prostitute a man of god would be with a woman of the night but if you think this is strange i can do you one stranger the fact that i holy god would stoop so low as to be with you as an even stranger sight put in those terms that's baffling isn't it that god would stoop so low as to be with brian loritz and all of the brokenness, all of the sin, all of the dysfunction, all of the ugliness, and the things that I consistently do, as the psalmist says, prone to wander.

That's me. And yet God still puts up with me. That's a strange sight that a holy God who created the universe would be in relationship with me. Wow, that's love. And in some senses, it makes me wonder how am I living out incarnating that kind of love towards others? Are my relationships pretty much the same? Or are there strangeness in my relationships? Examples of that would be, do my relationships, does my dinner table, does it transgress ethnic lines, does it transgress economic lines, does it transgress economic lines, does it transgress? Does it transgress moral lines? That's what Jesus' dinner table was.

He stunned the religious leaders who accused him of eating with tax collectors and sinners. Strange. So by the time we get to chapter three, we don't know how it happens, but it's happened. Jose and Gomer are separated. We know that to be the case because chapter three, verse one, opens up by God saying, I want you to go again. I want you to go get her. and we know that they're separated. Chapter 3 tells us because she is an adulteress, which means she's cheated on him. If I'm Josea, I'm just thinking, wow, I didn't want to be

with her in the first place. I'm kind of glad she did this to me. Boom, that experiment is over. And God says in so many words in chapter 3, remember, Josea, your marriage is not about your marriage. It's to be an illustration, a window to communicate my divine love to the world. And if every time you messed up, I wiped my hands clean of you and said, we're done. You wouldn't have made it out the first day. So I need you, Josea, to do with Gomer what I do to you every single day, several times throughout the day. I want you to go again and go again and go again. Wow. Who are you going again with? Who do you need to take steps of forgiveness towards reconciliation building trust with who are you going again with and so in verse two right on the heels

of this josea says so i bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a leithic of barley what's interesting here scholars tell us the devil's in the details because gomer is being sex trafficked and the going rate to emancipate a woman in gomer's predicament was 30 shekels of silver. The text says that he bought her for 15 shekels and a homerlethic of barley. Why doesn't it say he bought her for 30 shekels? Answers, scholars say he didn't have 30 shekels. To emancipate the one who had wronged him cost him everything he had. It bankrupted him. I don't know about you, but this gets me to the cross. I was in bondage to sin, destined for hell and on the cross Jesus Christ paid his 15 shekels of silver and a homer

and elithic of barley for me. To emancipate me, the one who had wronged him, cost our Lord and Savior everything he had. Wow. To apply this, who are you paying a cost for? Who in your life are you paying your 15 shekels of silver and a homer and elithic of barley for? I think the problem with how we view community and relationships, we want Nordstrom-quality community at thrift store prices. We just don't like to be inconvenienced. But the nature of love, I heard one pastor say, it means to be inconvenienced for the convenience of others.

That's why Galatian 6 tells us to bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. What is the law of Christ? You shall love your neighbor as yourself. who are you paying a price for it? If it isn't costing you, it's not love. I love how the text ends after he emancipates her. He tells her, you must not play the whore. He gives her a standard. And this is important because biblical love isn't this spineless thing that we would call tolerance, right? Tolerance is a part of the plausibility structure of our culture, but it's such a low ethic, I tolerate you. Christians aren't called to tolerate. We're called to love, and love has

a standard. But notice the sequence. Notice, he emancipates her first and then he gives her the standard. Had he given her the standard first and then emancipated her, he would have made Gomer's emancipation conditional upon her performance and obedience. But instead, he emancipates her first and then gives her the standard so that her obedience isn't in the category of duty. It's actually in the category of delight. And this is the gospel, right? God doesn't come to the children of while they're in bondage and say, hey, look, I'm going to open up the Red Sea, but before I do that, here's Ten Commandments, do these things well. If I'm pleased with your performance, I'll open it up.

No, he opens the Red Sea first and then gives them the Ten Commandments so that their obedience, again, would be in the category of delight and not duty. Or take Romans 2.4. Romans 2.4 says it is God's kindness that leads to our repentance. It is never our repentance that leads to God's. kindness. I just want to say this as we close. This will be the last thing. There's a lot of opportunities today for you to show this kind of love, for me to show this kind of love to people. But we will never show this kind of love unless we first see ourselves as Gomer. We are Gomer. We're the ones

cheating on God. We're the ones breaking his heart. We're the ones walking in sin. We're the ones who find ourselves at various points in bondage to sin, self-righteous people who never get in touch with their inner gomer will never show this kind of love. I pray that you and I never lose touch with our inner gomer and the reality of what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross. Josea 3. It's haunting me in a good way, and I pray the same for you.

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