OFFICE ADDRESS: 4255 WADE GREEN RD. NW, SUITE 515, KENNESAW GA, 30144

God's Redemptive Justice & Covenant Love

May 14, 2017 Preacher: Series: The Prophecy of Hosea: The Story of God's Redemptive Justice & Covenant Love

Scripture: Hosea 2:1–23

Key Truth: God’s discipline serves His redemptive purpose to eternally restore His wayward people to His covenant love and promised blessing.

 

 

Introduction:

Q: How do you respond when you are corrected or disciplined by any authority over you? What contributes most to you receiving it well and viewing it as a gracious opportunity?

 

 

God’s Redemptive Justice:

Hosea 2:1-13

“For God to make the way of sin difficult to sinners, is a most singular mercy. “Behold!” It is better for the way of sin to be hedged with thorns, and to be made difficult to us, than to have the smoothest path for its commission….it is one of the greatest mercies of God to his children to lay stumbling blocks and difficulties before them in the way of sin.”

Jeremiah Burroughs, An Exposition of the Prophecy of Hosea

 

Q: Has God ever used someone else to plead with you to come to or return to Him? Has God ever exposed your sin for the purpose of restoring you?

 

 

God’s Covenant Love:

Hosea 2:14-23

“Righteousness, steadfast love, and the rest are pre-eminently the very stamp and character of God, and it was the lack of them on Israel’s side, not on His, that had wrecked the marriage in the first place. So God’s gift is that He will not only be to us all these things but will impart them, so that His bride will be no longer in fundamental discord with Him and at odds with herself. It is another way of saying that He will put His law within His people and write it on their hearts (cf. Je. 31:33).”

Derek Kidner, The Message of Hosea

 

Q: What are some ways that God has restored you after disciplining you? What do you most look forward to when all things will be made new?

 

 

Hosea 2:1-23 teaches us that:

-God’s discipline serves to call us back to Him in repentance

-God’s will is for His wayward people to be eternally restored to His covenant love and promised blessing

“Grant, Almight God, that as thou often dost justly hide they face from us, so that on every side we see nothing but evidences of thy dreadful judgment, - O grant, that we, with minds raised above the scene of this world, may at the same time cherish the hope which thou constantly settest before us, so that we may feel fully persuaded that we are loved by thee, however severely thou mayest chastise us and may this consolation so support and sustain our souls, that patiently enduring whatever chastisements thou mayest lay upon us, we may ever hold fast the reconciliation which thou has hast promised us in Christ thy Son. Amen.”

John Calvin, Commentary on Hosea

 

 


Benediction: 

Hosea 2:19-20