A Love That Will Not Let Me Go Lesson 1

A LOVE THAT WILL NOT LET ME GO – LESSON 1

“A Love That Will Not Let Me Go”

Kay Arthur, Teacher

“Contend; contend with your mother. Contend. Let her know her harlotry, and yet, as you let her know her harlotry, I’m going to let her know that I love her with an everlasting love. I love her, and I will not let her go.” This is the message of Hosea. As you and I explore this book, as we move through it chapter by chapter and verse by verse, you are going to see, and you are going to be assured of is this—a love that will not let me go, yet a love that will not let me stay in sin and get away with it. It is so crucial that you and I understand the message of this book, because the message of this book is the message that is needed for today. It is needed for today, and it is needed for the years to come, because we are going to find people, beloved, that are walking in disobedience to God, that are not taking care of that sin that does so easily beset them. And they are going to turn and walk their own way, and yet, if they are truly God’s child, in the midst of that, they are going to see the awfulness of their ways, and they are going to wonder, “Could He ever love me again? Could I ever come home?” You and I need to know the message of this book, “A love that will not let you go.”

You have done a lot of studying this week, and I want us to go to Hosea 2:2. That’s really, in a sense, if you were going to do a chapter division, is where you would begin. In Hosea 1:10-2:1, we have this glorious, glorious promise of a future, the glorious promise of the day of Jezreel, but now, as is typical of Hosea (and you see it as we go through this book, and the more you read this book the more you see it), but now He is going to turn around, and once again He is going to confront Israel with her sin. Now, let’s look at it. (2:2) “Contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; and let her put away her harlotry from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts,” [Contend with your mother. She’s walked away; she’s not acting like my wife. I’m not being a husband to her, because she is gone. What is she doing? She’s playing the harlot. She’s left me; she’s walked away; she’s after other lovers.]

You know, so many times in counseling (I don’t know why), it seems it is the man that is unfaithful. It’s the man that walks away. It’s the man that turns his back on his wife and goes after another woman, goes after the woman of his dreams, goes after the woman that he remembers that she was at one time, goes after a younger woman. But there is nothing more grievous to me in counseling than knowing that a wife has walked away from her husband and from her children, and that she is out there playing the harlot. I think, “Why is that so grievous?” I think it is so grievous because it breaks our motherhood. When I think of a woman that walks away from her husband and her children, all I can think is, “O dear me, someday you’re going to wake up. Someday you’re going to roll over, someday you’re going to look at that man that you have slept with, and someday you are going to remember your children. Or someday, you’re going to walk down the street and you’re going to come face to face with your child, and your child will look at you, the mother that has abandoned him or her, the woman that walked away and played the harlot, and you will feel so ashamed, and you will feel so dirty, and you will say, ‘Is there no recovery?’” I want you to know that, with God, there is recovery, although I think it is harder for a woman to recover from walking away from her children and her husband than it is for a man to recover. I think it is just something about us. I think it is something about us as women, because men are more goal oriented and women are more relationship oriented.

So he is saying to the children (to these three children that have been born of the union of Hosea and Gomer), (2:2) “Contend with your mother.” [That word “contend” is the Hebrew word rib, and it means “to quarrel, to be in a verbal kind of combat.” You are talking at one another, going at one another verbally. It means “to chide.” It means that you are saying, “You are wrong; you shouldn’t have done that.” It also has another meaning, and it’s a legal, judicial kind of contending. It is legal way (and this is how I look at it more throughout this book), and I think we’re going to see Hosea saying, “Contend with your mother.” But we‘re going to see from Hosea, from Chapter 4 on, in essence, God contending with Israel, God putting His quarrel before Israel, God showing them how they are wrong, and what they had done, and yet offering them that everlasting love, offering them that future and a hope. So you see it in a legal, judicial kind of way. “Listen; we’re married. We’ve made a covenant. You know that you cannot break a covenant and get away with it. You know that there are consequences.” So here is that legal judicial kind of way.

You see this in Isaiah 27:8. Isaiah was written during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. Does that ring a bell? Yes, because Hosea was written during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, and Jeroboam, and Jeroboam II. (8) “You (God) contended with them by banishing them, by driving them away. With His fierce wind He as expelled them on the day of the east wind.” [Here, when you see this contending, you don’t see as much a quarreling or argument, but a legal and judicial act that God did because of their iniquity.] (9) “Therefore through this Jacob’s iniquity will be forgiven;” [So here is a judgment in order to bring Jacob around and to bring him to a point where God can forgive him.]

Go back to Hosea 2:2. “Contend with your mother, contend, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband;” [It seems that it is at this point in their marriage where, all of a sudden, she walks out the door, she abandons her husband, she abandons her children, and she goes out to find her lovers.]

When I wrote, Israel, My Beloved (the only novel I have ever written. I have written a small novelette), but it is probably my favorite book that I ever wrote, simply because of what happened to me when I wrote this book. I wrote it in Israel, and God laid on my heart that I was to write a book that was to show the history of Israel from 586 B.C. (This has not yet happened in time, because we’re even previous to 722 B.C.). The year 586 B.C. is when they are taken into the Babylonian captivity. So I pick up from there, and I take Israel all the way through the coming of the Messiah, and the setting up of the millennium reign of Jesus Christ. I walk through every element of Israel’s history. I did all the research from Jewish books, and I would sit in my apartment in Israel, and when (after four or five days) I would go out to see the light of day and be with the people, they would ask me, “What are you doing?” I would tell them what I was writing. And they would say to me, “Is the end good?” I would also say to them, “You are God’s chosen people,” and many of them would say to me, “I wish He would have chosen someone else.” They wish He would have chosen someone else because of where they are right now, but they don’t know what is to come.

As I wrote this, I opened up with Sarah. She represents the nation of Israel. Sarah is walking out of the house, and her husband looking out the window and watching her go with those mincing steps, and those seductive eyes and purse full of the jewels he had given her. I got this from Ezekiel 16. “You adulteress wife who has many, many lovers.” I lived with this woman, and I lived through her with all of her history, and I lived in the book of Hosea, and the prophets, Ezekiel, Isaiah and Jeremiah, because these are the prophets that tell us the love that God has for this woman, even though she has gone off, and even though she has played the harlot. She has a future and she has a hope.

Listen, he says, tell her in Hosea 2:2, “and let her put away her harlotry from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts, (3) or (and I would circle the “or”) I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day when she was born.” [When you studied Ezekiel 16:4-8, you saw what she was like on the day that she was born, how she was cast out in an open field, how she was unwashed and unclean, a baby lying there, her umbilical cord uncut, abandoned in that field. And he says, “I came along and I saw you, and I took you and I cleansed you, and I grew you up. Your breasts were formed, and it was the time for love, and I spread My skirt over you, and you became Mine.” In other words, I married you, but you played the harlot.]

(3) “I will expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, make her like desert land, and slay her with thirst.” [It is so interesting, because when you go to the last chapter Revelation, Chapter 22, as God brings the total canon of scripture to an end, to a close, as He speaks His final, final words and His revelation is complete (and you and I have everything we need that pertains to life and godliness), He says this: (17) “And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come’. And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost.” [This is this last invitation.] (18) “I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophesy of this book:” [So His last invitation is, “Are you thirsty? Come, come.” And He is saying, “I am going to make you thirsty.” And you will understand that when you study Jeremiah, because He says in Jeremiah 2:13, “For My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” [He says, “I am going to take you out there, and I am going to make you thirsty.]

Also, in Hosea 2:4, it says, “Also, I will have no compassion on her children,” [I will have no what? Compassion. Have you seen that word before? Yes. What is the name of one of the children? Lo-ruhamah, “no compassion.” (4) “Also, I will have no compassion on her children, because they are children of harlotry. (5) For their mother has played the harlot;” [So I think, at this point in Chapter 2, she has packed her bag, she has walked out, she has abandoned her husband, she has abandoned her children, she has played the harlot.] “She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil, and my drink.’” [Have you ever seen a woman that is angry? Have you ever seen a woman that has been hurt to the core? Have you ever seen a woman who wants her way, and is going to get it no matter what? Look at me, before Jesus Christ—look at me angry, look at me disappointed, look at me with my cutting tongue. “You didn’t take care of me; you didn’t supply what I needed. I am going to get it myself.” This is what she is saying, “I am going after my lovers, the ones that gave me the oil, the ones that gave me the wine, the ones that gave me the grain. I’m going after them.” It’s a lie; she is deceived. And she’s thinking that she’s going to get what she wants from her lovers.

(5b) “Who gave me my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. (6) Therefore,” [When you see a “therefore,” find out what the “therefore” is there for. It’s a term of conclusion, and I put three red dots over the therefores.] “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns,” [In other words, you know what I am going to do? I’m going to take you, honey, as you go out, and you look for your lovers, I am going to put a hedge of thorns around you. If you put a hedge of thorns around her, then anybody that is going to come after her is going to get pricked. They’re going to get stabbed; they are going to get hurt.] (6) “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.” [In other words, she’s going to go after her lovers, the ones that gave her all this oil and everything. So, as she goes, she is going to hit thorns; as she goes she is going to hit a brick wall. Who is doing this to her? God is doing it to her. Why? “O love that will not let me go.” I am not going to let you go. I am not going to let you have your way. I am not going to let you destroy our relationship. I am not going to let it happen. You are going to go so far, and you are not going to go any farther. O God, O Sovereign ruler of the universe, we stand in awe; we stand in awe at the power of your chastening.] (6) “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. (7) And she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; and she will seek them, but will not find them.”

I went from one man, to another man, to another man, looking for someone that would satisfy me, but I didn’t find him. I was like the woman at the well, in John 4. I had drunk and drunk and drunk, and my thirst was not satisfied. Then one day He appeared, and He said, “I will give you water, and you will never thirst again.” (John 4:14) I found the lover of my soul, a love that will not let me go. I had shaken my fist in the face of God, literally, and I had said, “To hell with you God. I’ll see you around town. I’m going to find someone to love me.” And, as the song goes, “He was there all the time.” He was there all the time with outstretched arms. He had loved me; He had shown me. I had a knowledge of the word of God; I had been raised in a church. I hadn’t heard the gospel, but I had been raised in the church. I knew He died on the cross. My eyes were blind though, and I could not see.

(7) “And she will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; and she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now!’” [But still, what’s her focus? I’ll go back to my husband, because it was better for me. Not because it is right, but simply because I’m better off with him than I am out here. And because I am better off with him than I am out here, then I am going to return to my husband. But does God accomplish His purpose? Oh yes; Oh yes. This, beloved, is the power of chastening.]