"If you could love me as a wife
and for my wedding gift, your life
should that be all I'll ever need
or is there more I'm looking for
And should I read between the lines
and look for blessings in disguise
to make me handsome, rich, and wise
is that really what you want
I am a whore I do confess
but I put you on just like a wedding dress
and I run down the aisle
I'm a prodigal with no way home
but I put you on just like a ring of gold
and I run down the aisle to you
So could you love this bastard child
though I don't trust you to provide
with one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side
I am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers less wild
that I would take a little cash
over your very flesh and blood
Because money cannot buy
a husband's jealous eye
when you have knowingly deceived his wife"
-Wedding Dress by Derek Webb
I thought I would say a word about why I chose to write what I plan on and my reasons for choosing such a title for this blog. My inspiration came from several places, one being the words written and sung by Derek Webb, formerly of Caedmon's Call, especially that of the song Wedding Dress seen above. I feel conviction when I read these words because they speak to the total depravity of our nature in sin. Numerous illustrations in Scripture show how the people of God, specifically Israel in the Old Testament, are like a prostitute to God in that they repeatedly are unfaithful to Him in thought, word, and deed. The book of Hosea speaks of a man, a prophet named Hosea, who was commanded by God to marry a prostitute. The reason God gives for this is that He was illustrating how the house of Israel was rebelling against Him by behaving like an unfaithful wife to Him, or more brutally as the Scriptures put it--like a whore. He chose Hosea to undertake this most grievous venture to show the prophet exactly the intense pain, suffering, anger, hatred, and indignation God felt towards the people of Israel.
Hosea took a whore named Gomer as his wife and had children with her. Imagine the anguish that this produced in Hosea, to be married to a woman who continually has sex with other men and does not relent in her bold-faced rebellion. Imagine the torment inflicted on Hosea, knowing that he was always faithful to her yet she was obstinate in her ways, unyielding to the love shown to her by her husband.
I really believe this is not just some sick and twisted story about how God messed with people in the Old Testament. There is a perversion that has seeped into the church that sees God in the Old Testament as always filled with hatred and rage towards people, like some out of control teenager who would smite anyone at any chance He gets, and that the New Testament is where God has matured, mellowed out, lets people get away with whatever they want, and is soft on sin. In the Old Testament, he would say, "I am releasing my vengeance upon all those that do evil," and furiously dash you to pieces, whereas in the New Testament he would say, "that's okay, you didn't mean to kill your baby" and pat you on the back while giving you an affirming hug. Let me just say that this god who is soft on sin does NOT exist. It's a demonically inspired lie. Rather than accepting this strange Testamental dichotomy that has infiltrated how we think about God's judgment of sin, it is essential that we understand how God views us.
The Book of Hosea illustrates this idea mightily. Israel is portrayed as a whore. God says that we are like a whore. Isaiah 53:6 says that "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way." We, like Gomer, have been unfaithful to our great and righteous Husband. We have failed to obey Him. We have not been a loyal wife, as the Church, to God. Yet this is not the end of the story. It is not as if God just allows people to continue in wickedness forever. Unlike Hosea, God is sovereign over His people. Though an unrelentingly hardened heart will eventually be turned over to the evil it desires (Romans 1:24), God does not always leave people to their sins. In Hosea, almost the entire book is about the impending judgment of Israel and how God's anger is burning towards them, eventually resulting in their destruction ("I will tear open their breast, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open." [13:8]). Towards the end, however, God speaks with love towards his people, the love that has been there all along.
We tend to have a very skewed way of viewing God in the Old Testament. His wrath is somehow detached from His love in our minds. I submit to you that without the wrath of God, the entire Gospel loses its power. Who is going to obey the Ten Commandments if God will not judge us in the end? If Jesus did not die on the cross, taking the wrath and just punishment that I deserve, I probably wouldn't be alive. I tell you, I am a different person if God is not going to judge me. If I didn't have the love of God shown through His wrath on His own Son Jesus, there are many places I would be right now instead of here. I would be somewhere trying to get a peak at a naked girl, get laid, get drunk, kill people who cut me off in traffic, and make as much money as I could get a hold of at the expense of anyone that tried to stop me. Not that I'm a good person or even close to it, but God has shown great mercy to me and I believe He is working on me slowly, chipping away at my depraved mind and heart, and giving me His righteousness (see first post 10/9/06).
We cannot detach the wrath of God from the Gospel. Some people may object, "what about the love of God?" I must counter that if God does not get angry and indignant at our sin, He would cease to be a loving God. Likewise, if you came home from work one day and found your spouse in bed with another person and were not angry, you do not love that person. Anger is the natural response against sin, especially for a holy and righteous God that knows no sin.
The point of Hosea is to demonstrate the redeeming love that God shows to His people. It is to show the transforming power of this love that He has for a wicked people. Because God is love (1 John 1:4) he is violently angry at sin, just as Jesus was against the moneychangers in the temple who were deceiving worshipers and making profits in the name of God (Matthew 21:12), but He chooses to be merciful on His people. Psalm 145 declares that God is "slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." This means that He is not capricious and does not act whimsically in his judgment. He is good and righteous, but He also in His own wondrous grace and love chooses to show mercy and compassion on whomever He chooses (Romans 9:15). He demonstrates His great love for us in this: "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8)
This love is the power of God. The same powerful love that He had for Israel in the book of Hosea is what He has for us. By power, I mean that His love is what changes us from our wicked state in sin into the righteousness of Jesus. A good dad always acts out of love for his children. Punishment may come, but only out of his love does it come. Likewise, the only way to raise a Godly child is to simply demonstrate love for them by devoting your life to him, as God does to us. Children are born sinful. You do not have to teach them to be evil. A kid naturally rebels from his parents. Psalm 58:3 says that we are wicked from our mother's wombs, speaking lies. In order to teach a child the way of Jesus, only love will conform them to the image of Christ. God's position throughout Scripture is: there is a situation where His people have gone astray into all types of debauchery, and His solution is to change them through loving them and causing them to see their sins and repent. Romans 2:4-5 says:
Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God's kindness leads you toward repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. (emphasis mine)
This shows that either people repent and are spared from God's wrath, or He will destroy them in His wrath because of their hardened hearts and love of wickedness and death.
The good news is that Jesus came to Earth to take on the wrath of God in your place if you trust in the work of Jesus in dying and resurrecting. He took our place on the cross. He took the beating, whipped back, ripped flesh, suffocation, anguish, bloodshed, and rejection from the Father in our place because of His great love. We all like whores have gone astray from our God, but faith in Christ means the deserved wrath of God has been transferred from us onto Jesus, for he bore our sins in his body and by his wounds we have been healed (1 Peter 2:24).
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