Can you remember the first time you had your heart broken? For those of you who are still kind of young maybe that hasn’t happened yet… But I’m talking about a time when someone you loved did something that completely destroyed a relationship with you. A friend who stabbed you in the back and never spoke to you again… A boyfriend who broke up with you in high school… A fiancé who called off the wedding… Some of you have felt the pain of a broken heart from relationships that never seemed to take shape or take off the way you hoped… Some of you have felt that pain as years… even decades of love and trust were shattered by a lying family member… or an unfaithful spouse…
When we’ve been hurt badly by people, especially the people closest to us in this life… when the wounds are fresh and the grief runs deep… how do we handle a day like this when God comes to us in his Word and commands us to show love to the unlovable? How do we not only move on from such hurt, but forgive the person who hurt us? Paul in our 2nd lesson told a congregation that a man who had done some unspeakable things was to be welcomed back in. He said, “You ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” (2 Corinthians 2:17). But when someone has hurt us so deeply isn’t there a part of us that says… “They can go ahead and be overwhelmed by sorrow! I certainly was because of what they did to me!” For God to ask us to not only forgive but to comfort someone who has broken things so badly… it’s a lot to ask… No it’s not easy to love the unlovable.
Which is really what makes the sermon text we’ll consider today so shocking… God’s Word in front of us focuses on the life of one of God’s Old Testament Prophets, a man named Hosea. And if you think what Paul urges in 2 Corinthians today is tough to live by… or what Jesus encourages us to do in the Gospel where he tells us to rejoice over sinners who repent – if you think that’s hard to do… well… take a look at the command God gave to his prophet Hosea.
But before we look at the command he gives in the verses from chapter 3 of this book, let me fill you in on the big picture. God had sent Hosea to speak his Word to the northern kingdom of Israel during what would be the final years of their existence as a nation. For hundreds of years since God’s nation of Israel had split into two kingdoms – called Judah in the south and simply “Israel” in the north – ever since that break the people from the northern tribes of Israel had fallen deeper and deeper into spiritual darkness and idolatry… which God really saw as spiritual adultery. And in one last ditch effort to wake these people up before their nation would be destroyed – God sent them the prophet Hosea… and he used Hosea to not only preach against this with his words, but with his very life which God used as the ultimate object lesson. In the opening verses of this book God tells Hosea: “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” (Hosea 1:2).
So Hosea marries a woman named Gomer… knowing full well what kind of woman she was… and would continue to be even after he married her. Gomer was unfaithful, she was promiscuous… she even went so far as to sell her body in prostitution. And the only thing she ever brought home for Hosea was illegitimate children that God commanded Hosea to raise as his own. This this went on for YEARS… and eventually Gomer left Hosea all together… she stopped coming home and lived with another man who she became indebted to for one reason or another… it’s troubling to even imagine what she had gotten herself into.
And then we get to chapter 3, our sermon text, where God comes to Hosea… and after years of dealing with Gomer’s infidelity and unfaithfulness… her lies… her lust… God now tells Hosea… “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.” (Hosea 3:1). If the first order God had given was hard… to marry a woman like Gomer and live with her as she rejected his love, indulged her desires, and left him alone to suffer… if that was hard… imagine Hosea now hearing this command: Go and love her again. If that were you or me we might say, “Are you kidding me? How on earth can I show love to someone like that… someone who has shown me nothing but contempt… someone who is so… unlovable…?”
Perhaps you already sense what God’s answer might be if Hosea had asked that question… or if we would dare to ask that question when it comes to those in our lives who have hurt and betrayed us. God does not demand that we continue to live with a spouse who has been unfaithful like he did with Hosea… nor does he expect us to ignore wickedness and turn a blind eye to the sinful actions of those who have hurt us. But he does expect us to forgive… every… single… time.
And before you start thinking about how hard that might be because of the horrible things people have done to others or done to you… stop and think for a moment about your own sin. After all, that was God’s point in having Hosea marry and love Gomer despite her sin… to get Israel to realize their own idolatry… their own spiritual adultery. And although I’m guessing you haven’t bowed down to false gods and offered up food and drink in sacrifice to them… you haven’t engaged in pagan temple prostitution and you don’t have plans to offer your children as sacrifices to Canaanite fertility gods…
And while this may be true… at the same time, like Israel we have a God who has blessed us in more ways than we can comprehend. We have his Word and sacraments to comfort and sustain us. We have continued reassurance of sins forgiven, new life and salvation! We have the joy and pleasure to sit in these pews with like-minded friends and family who will help us in time of need! We also have material blessings! We have a roof over our head; clothes on our backs; food for our stomachs! We have all those things and more!
But in spite of God’s countless blessings, we still often find ourselves searching for pleasure and love in other places. Places we know God would not have us go. Satan is constantly trying to seduce us into thinking the sinful pleasures of this world are better than God’s love. And Satan’s pick up lines are good. He says, “Oh, you’re not satisfied with your spouse? Pleasure is only a click away! Not enough money? No worries, you can just take some! Feeling depressed and down? Meet my friends Jack Daniels and Jim Beam; they’re a great time!”
How do we hold up against the devil’s flirtation? Are we love struck with the Lucifer yet? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we haven’t fallen completely in love. After all, we go on a date with the Lord once in a while when we make it to church on a weekend. But how does the rest of the week look? Monday, we cozy up with complaining. Wednesday, we bond with bitterness. And Friday? Well, Friday night we dance with the devil!
Over time, we grow farther and farther away from appreciating God’s love for us. Like Gomer, we soon find ourselves no longer with our loving God, but in bed with the guilty pleasures of sin. And, like Gomer, we finally see where the love and pleasures of a sinful world leave us— addicted, helpless and hopelessly shackled by sin in a dungeon of despair; with Satan standing ready to drag us to hell. Who would care for someone like that? Who would dare to love the unlovable? We don’t deserve one ounce of kindness for the adulteress life we lead.
But just when it seems there’s no hope left, the unthinkable happens… Because at that very moment when we are at our most unlovable, God loved us and stopped at nothing to show his love. The Bible tells us “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8).
When Hosea went to buy back his unfaithful wife from the slavery her sin had landed her in, he scrounged up everything he had. Fifteen pieces of silver and some grain to make up the difference so he could pay the price set to free her from the shackles that bound her. But when it came to freeing you and me from the slavery of our sin, God did more than that… he didn’t just see what he had lying around in heaven… he paid the ultimate ransom price as he offered up his Son to pay the debt we had earned. God did that because he loved the unlovable… he loved you.
In love, God the Son entered this world to break into our dungeon of despair and give us the light of hope. In love he took the shackles of sin off our hands and placed them on his own. He tore us from the grasp of our illicit lover… from the claws of our enemy Satan and with his blood paid the price to bring us home again to the heaven where he says we belong. He is the faithful
husband for us his unfaithful bride. And after paying the price set for our sin – his very blood shed on the cross – our Bride-groom took us in his arms and cleansed us with his grace. St. Paul put it this way in his letter to the Ephesians: Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. (Ephesians 5:25-27).
Don’t you see my friends, when it comes to God’s command to “love the unlovable” – he was the first to follow it. He died for our sins. He washed us in baptism. He clothes us in the righteousness of Jesus. And no matter how many times we fail to show love to him… or fail to forgive our neighbor… he still calls to us in his Word and says, “I will never fail to love you.”
This brothers and sisters – this is how we find hope in the face of our own daily battle with our sinful hearts and our enemy Satan… this is how we find strength to not only forgive those who have wronged us, but to comfort them with the assurance that God, in Christ, has forgiven them too. When we remember that we are the unlovable creatures whom God calls his most dearly loved possessions… then we see what true love and mercy look like… and we are not only refreshed and renewed by them… but we come trembling in awe before our God and find strength from his blessings… strength to love those in our lives who do not deserve it. God grant you joy in your Bride-groom and Savior, my friends, as you imitate him and love the unlovable. Amen.