Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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! Direction—Getting Back to God
When we make a move toward God, He is making a move toward us.
And.... will abundantly restore us.
Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God.
Your sins have been your downfall!
Take words with you
and return to the Lord.
Say to him:
"Forgive all our sins
and receive us graciously,
that we may offer the fruit of our lips.
Assyria cannot save us;
we will not mount war-horses.
We will never again say 'Our gods'
to what our own hands have made,
for in you the fatherless find compassion."
"I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.
I will be like the dew to Israel;
he will blossom like a lily.
Like a cedar of Lebanon
he will send down his roots;
his young shoots will grow.
His splendor will be like an olive tree,
his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
Men will dwell again in his shade.
He will flourish like the grain.
He will blossom like a vine,
and his fame will be like the wine from Lebanon.
O Ephraim, what more have I to do with idols?
I will answer him and care for him.
I am like a green pine tree;
your fruitfulness comes from me."
Who is wise?
He will realize these things.
Who is discerning?
He will understand them.
The ways of the Lord are right;
the righteous walk in them,
but the rebellious stumble in them.
Hosea 14
During the Korean War some ten million families were divided and displaced.
Families were torn apart.
In 1983, thirty years later, the Korean Broadcasting System tried something extraordinary to reunite them.
A long telethon was aired that showed at fifteen-second increments those who had been separated from loved ones.
Each segment showed the faces of these people holding a plaque that listed their names, the circumstances under which they disappeared, and where they might be contacted.
It was a national phenomenon.
Immediately, 3,000 people were restored to relationships that had been dead.
And it all happened right on the television screen—reunions filled with screams and shouts and sighs and tears.
Even the host of the program couldn't keep from crying.
The telethon was watched by 78 percent of the viewing audience of the entire nation.
The demand was so great that the telethon was continued for several more days and now, several years later, this telethon of reconciliation is still being run every Friday night.
There is something in the human heart that loves to see people coming home, getting back together.
Think back to the last time the nightly news told of a long-lost sister or mother or son being found.
How often we've seen television films of such reunions at some airport's terminal gate.
Maybe that is why there is a timeless appeal about the story of Hosea, a man who lived over 2800 years ago.
Hosea was a simple Hebrew man who loved his wife Gomer.
Yet one day she left him to become a prostitute.
Hosea would not accept that decision on her part and vowed to use every means in his power to get her back.
Sure enough, one day he saw her for sale at a slave market and bought her back.
Gomer, though she was soiled merchandise, was gladly, freely taken back by Hosea as his loved and cherished wife.
The analogy between Hosea and God may be obvious.
It is assuredly the reason this story is in the Bible.
But the analogy is a wonderful one.
In essence, God is more like Hosea in his quest for reconciliation than Hosea was.
There is no length to which God will not go to see that we are back with Him.
Our God, our loving God, receives us just as unconditionally, on just as simple terms as Hosea did with Gomer.
There are times in life when we find ourselves separated—away—from our Lord.
We somehow lose direction, look away for a moment that turns into days, then weeks and months.
For some, it is even years.
On the day that we wake up to our separation from Him, we experience the sinking feeling that maybe we are too far away to ever come back.
There is a time for coming back, though.
And God is a Hosea pursuing us, even when we act as if we want nothing to do with Him.
It's difficult for us to believe that when we've strayed so far.
But it's true.
The Book of Hosea convinces us of this truth in several ways.
!! Return
God actively longs for us to return.
The very first word of this chapter of Hosea is "Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God.
Take words with you and return to the Lord."
Fifteen times in the Book of Hosea the word "return" is used.
In Hosea's language it is a word that came to mean to backtrack to where you left God until you are back where you belong.
Jeremiah uses the word "return" a hundred times in his prophecy.
The Book of Hosea continues the same loving appeal.
The door is open from God's side—if we'll come back He'll receive us.
It is a book about love that simply wants a chance.
Hosea kept telling Gomer that if she would give his love a chance he'd show her that she could come back.
He kept telling Gomer, "The door is open."
And as Hosea told his story, he came to realize that God is like that, too.
This isn't a warning to those who are about to slip.
This is for those who have already slipped.
Hosea's original audience was the Old Testament Israel that had already faced disaster and calamity.
The nation was ruined.
At this time, the final invasion of Shalmaneser V, the awful conqueror had ruined Northern Israel.
Hosea believed God to be saying: "Israel, even though you are already broken and ruined, if you will come back to Me I promise we can start over again together."
Why is it that we hesitate at such an invitation?
We are living in such pain and missing the growth such a spiritual reconciliation offers.
We know we can come back.
Yet we hesitate.
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