Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 02, 2022


Ep 557 ｜ Why I Changed My Mind About 'Redeeming Love'


Episode Stats

Length

40 minutes

Words per Minute

173.6181

Word Count

6,953

Sentence Count

381

Misogynist Sentences

11

Hate Speech Sentences

27


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. We're experimenting with a little bit of a cold open today, so
00:00:04.940 let me know what you think. We are finally talking about redeeming love, and we are going
00:00:09.100 to answer the question, should Christians watch this movie? Should they even read the book?
00:00:15.020 Today's episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Get you some Kraft beef and
00:00:31.200 better than organic chicken shipped right to your front door. Plus, you get a great deal if you use
00:00:35.180 my link, goodranchers.com slash Allie. Okay, let's finally talk about Redeeming Love, the movie
00:00:43.440 adaptation of Francine Rivers' book by the same title. It is a Christian romance novel that is
00:00:50.700 supposed to be a rendering of the book of the Bible called Hosea. We're going to talk about all of that,
00:00:56.500 and let me just go ahead and caveat that I understand that we are going to have different
00:01:02.500 opinions on this as Christian women, and that is okay. I hope that you listen to my take on this
00:01:10.780 and my perspective, and even if you disagree with me or you would add something to it or you would
00:01:15.640 take away something that I said, that you would listen to this in the spirit of charity and understand
00:01:21.180 that I am, you know, I'm not condemning you for having a different take on this. Maybe we can have
00:01:26.120 a discussion if you reach out to me, but this is my perspective. As someone who read the book several
00:01:33.260 times when I was in high school, absolutely loved the book when I read it, but kind of have a different
00:01:38.320 perspective now that it's been about 15 years since the first time I read it. So it's a very sensual,
00:01:45.200 if not outright sexual book in some scenes, at least using sexual innuendo. Apparently,
00:01:53.260 the movie is as well. So as I said at the top, we're going to talk about if this is a movie that
00:01:59.640 we as Christian women should be watching, and then I'm going to analyze, as I said, as someone who read
00:02:06.220 the book, who loved the book when I read it as a teenager, if we should be reading this novel and
00:02:12.460 other books like it. And we will also talk about the book of Hosea. What is the book? And what does
00:02:18.860 it really tell us about God? And what does he want us to take from it? You guys have been asking me
00:02:27.120 about this topic for weeks, and we've just had so many other things to cover that we haven't gotten
00:02:32.820 to it, and it's taken me a while to gather my thoughts on the subject. Also, there has already
00:02:38.680 been really solid analysis of the movie and whether Christians should watch it from other
00:02:45.720 Christian women. I love Elisa Childers. She's been on this podcast several times. She dove into this,
00:02:51.080 and there have been many other wonderful Christian women on Instagram who have done the same. So I don't
00:02:55.720 want to be repetitive. I have just been kind of wrestling with this question, though, from my
00:03:02.620 particular perspective and asking myself, okay, is there anything unique that I can add to all of
00:03:09.740 this? And should I chime in or has everyone basically covered it? And the reason I am going ahead and
00:03:16.160 talking about this is because, A, I may be the only person that many of you listen to when it comes to
00:03:21.980 theology and culture, and maybe you're wondering about this. So I want to offer that to you guys.
00:03:26.480 And B, I am coming at this, as I said, from the perspective of someone who loved the book. It was
00:03:32.980 by far my favorite book when I was in high school. Some of the people who have been talking about this
00:03:38.980 book and about the movie and whether or not we should read and see it have not read the book. And
00:03:43.700 that's okay. I think their analysis is valid, and there's plenty out there to understand about it
00:03:49.400 that is, I think, a sufficient basis for analyzing whether or not we should engage with this kind of
00:03:57.340 material. But I actually have read it. And so that's why I'm going ahead and I'm adding my voice
00:04:03.200 to the mix here because I am coming from a place of once loving the book. But it has been about 15
00:04:13.660 years since I read the book for the first time. And while I loved it in high school, as a mom now who is
00:04:20.540 thinking about the kinds of things I want my children to read and thinking back on how this book made me
00:04:25.560 feel as a teenage girl, the thoughts that it put in my mind, the expectations I set on my relationships
00:04:30.400 because of this book, I have a different perspective now. So first, if you know nothing about the book or this
00:04:37.000 writer, the author Francine Rivers is perhaps the most successful Christian fiction author of all time.
00:04:43.780 And the reason is because she is a masterful storyteller. She is incredible at historical fiction, which is
00:04:50.260 my favorite genre. Her Mark of the Lion series was gripping from start to finish. I absolutely loved it. My mom
00:04:56.460 and I read it at the same time. We talked about it. We just loved it. The characters, the relationships, you can
00:05:01.560 feel the tension and the longing and the love and the pain and her writing. And that is truly a gift
00:05:06.340 that most people, most writers, even most successful authors don't have, at least not to the degree that
00:05:12.820 Francine Rivers does. So as someone who loves to write, who loves words, who loves a good story,
00:05:19.680 who really appreciates when someone is a master of their craft, I have to give major props to Francine
00:05:25.360 Rivers because it is not hard at all to see why she is so incredibly successful. And I began to know
00:05:32.660 who she was and the books that she wrote in high school. I was always a voracious reader growing up
00:05:37.340 and someone, I don't remember who recommended to me Redeeming Love when I was 15 or so, ninth grade.
00:05:44.080 It had everything that a hormonal teenage girl who dreamed of her future wedding day would want. Desire,
00:05:52.000 passion, love, suspense, the picture of what seems like a perfect man and husband. It's set,
00:05:59.040 if you don't know, in a long ago time in the 1800s, California gold country. It's about this
00:06:05.220 godly man named Michael Hosea and his relentless pursuit of and faithfulness to a prostitute named
00:06:12.880 Angel, who, despite all of Michael Hosea's efforts to make her stay, she continued to leave him
00:06:19.500 and to cheat on him. And there are very sensual or, at the very least, suggestive scenes in the book
00:06:26.640 to the point where, even though it's been, I don't know, probably 12 years since the last time I read
00:06:33.280 it because I read it multiple times throughout high school, maybe even in college, I still remember
00:06:37.800 the scenes that I read. And I still remember at the end when she finally returns to him once and
00:06:42.880 for all and she walks toward him. I think it's outside while she's taking off all of her clothes.
00:06:47.740 And I remember bawling, crying, reading this, just like totally emotionally invested in this story
00:06:53.920 and wanting so badly to find my own Michael Hosea. That was like a thing in like 2008, you know,
00:07:00.340 women going to youth group and talking about like getting purity talks and talking about like having
00:07:05.580 their Michael Hosea and all that stuff. And this is just like a thing that so many Christian girls
00:07:11.180 did, especially in like evangelical Christianity. It's just, I mean, we all read this book and we all
00:07:16.560 kind of felt and thought the same way about it at the time. We all liked it. We all thought it was
00:07:21.440 a perfectly healthy depiction of what we should be looking for in a man because this is a Christian
00:07:27.280 book. It's based on a book of the Bible. Isn't this the kind of thing, you know, a lot of parents,
00:07:32.480 maybe we're thinking that we want our teenagers to be reading and the kind of man that we want
00:07:36.360 our teenage girls to be looking for one day. Won't this get them excited to read scripture and to
00:07:41.760 better understand the Bible because they're seeing it in a way that makes sense to them and that is
00:07:46.220 engaging to them. But while those thoughts may be understandable, I can tell you from firsthand
00:07:54.620 experience, that is not what this book accomplished for me. What this book did in the exact same way
00:08:01.980 as Twilight did in all of the other secular romance novels did that I read throughout high school
00:08:07.720 was stir up longings in me for marriage and sex that could not be fulfilled when I was 15 years
00:08:14.900 old. Redeeming love being a rendering of a book of the Bible did not make it any more edifying for
00:08:22.200 my hormonal, naive teenage mind to consume. As a Christian who was committing not to have sex
00:08:28.140 until marriage, as a teenage girl who desperately wanted a boyfriend to be thought of as beautiful
00:08:37.300 and desirable, this book simply made that passion in me that exists in a lot most teenage girls
00:08:43.500 even stronger while leaving me with a feeling of emptiness because I wasn't in a place where those
00:08:50.860 feelings could be satisfied. So redeeming love in other books like it, Christian or not, intensify
00:08:58.020 both sexual and emotional longing in the reader. That's actually what they are meant to do.
00:09:03.620 And these feelings are not in themselves bad or shameful feelings. It is natural to want sex and
00:09:09.640 emotional connection. But they are meant, these feelings are meant to be satisfied for the
00:09:16.400 Christian within the confines of marriage. So when those feelings are purposely being agitated
00:09:23.020 outside the confines of marriage and by two-dimensional fictional stories, no less,
00:09:29.080 you're going to have a lot of lovesick, sexually frustrated young people who also may try to
00:09:35.060 find the love that they are longing for in their high school dating relationships. So that's part of
00:09:40.600 why I have concerns about this book, especially being read by young people and young women.
00:09:49.580 Reading about Michael Hosea as a 16-year-old girl can cause a girl to compare her high school
00:09:57.560 boyfriends who are even more immature than she is, that's just a fact, to this fictional version of
00:10:04.120 a perfect guy who basically becomes a version of God to this character angel in redeeming love.
00:10:10.040 It sets unfair expectations. It romanticizes in some ways, even though I don't think this
00:10:15.140 is intentional, but it just does. It romanticizes unfaithfulness to a degree. It puts unmarried Christian
00:10:21.600 women in the position of having to visualize sexual acts that are either kind of roughly
00:10:28.300 described or alluded to that they can't actually biblically engage in yet. It does not cause the
00:10:36.940 reader to long primarily, at least in my experience and in the experience of a lot of people I know,
00:10:43.940 for Christ. It causes the reader to long for sex. And yes, also for love and for marriage,
00:10:49.820 but I would argue not in a healthy, well-ordered way. Now, I'm not saying that it doesn't also
00:10:57.100 paint a picture of God's faithfulness to us, even when we are rebellious. But that is peripheral,
00:11:02.840 in my opinion, in this book. The main takeaway for most girls and even women who read it will be that
00:11:08.700 they need to find a man. And as I said, there's nothing wrong with longing for a husband or for
00:11:14.900 longing for love or hoping that your husband is a forgiving man who pursues you and loves you like
00:11:19.720 Christ loves you. But here's the caveat. But number one, there's no guarantee that you will get
00:11:28.000 married, even if you want to be married. As hard as that may be to accept, we just, we don't know
00:11:34.100 that that is in the cards. And number two, whether marriage is in your future or not, your job as a
00:11:42.880 single woman is not to be preoccupied with finding a Michael Hosea, but with pleasing Christ. So are you
00:11:50.360 consumed with pleasing Christ if you are fantasizing about sex with a fictional character? Are you
00:11:56.020 glorifying God that way? Is that the best use of your time? Ephesians 5, 15 through 16 says,
00:12:02.860 look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because
00:12:11.060 the days are evil. So not just a good use of our time, but the best use of our time. And that's an
00:12:17.440 admonition for all of us dealing with a whole variety of temptations to waste our time. By the
00:12:22.200 way, I'm not singling out single women when it comes to that verse. We are all supposed to be spending
00:12:28.180 our time in the best way possible in accordance with the Lord's will. And so many of us spend time
00:12:33.220 in ways that are not prudent. But I do happen to be addressing single women right now because time
00:12:42.000 is something that single people have typically in more abundance than married people. And that is a
00:12:48.540 gift. That is a gift. I'm not saying, oh, that you're not busy, that you don't have a lot of demands.
00:12:53.400 I'm not saying that. I am saying biblically the time and the capacity and the margin that a single
00:13:00.780 person has versus a married person is biblically described as a gift that can be offered in service
00:13:08.520 to the Lord. So Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 that he wishes everyone could remain single as he is,
00:13:14.380 but that he understands men and women can and should get married so they don't burn with passion
00:13:18.540 and loss outside of marriage. His reasoning, though, for wishing that Christians could remain
00:13:23.600 single is this, that he articulates in verses 32 through 35. I want you to be free from anxieties,
00:13:31.160 he says. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.
00:13:36.400 But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests
00:13:40.980 are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord,
00:13:47.820 how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things,
00:13:53.660 how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you,
00:13:58.860 but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. So in the margin
00:14:05.340 that you have as a single person that a married person or a parent does not have, you are gifted
00:14:11.860 with an even greater opportunity to devote yourself fully to the Lord. So if you are a single woman,
00:14:17.140 your single years will not be well spent in service to the Lord if your fixation is on your
00:14:22.380 potential husband instead of Christ. And this book, in my opinion, will only cause you to fixate
00:14:27.760 more on your potential husband, who again, may or may not exist. And if he does exist,
00:14:33.560 he's not going to be Michael Hosea because Michael Hosea is a fictional character, and not on Jesus.
00:14:39.300 But this is not just a warning to single women, even though I feel like I can empathize more with
00:14:48.140 the mindset of a single young woman reading this book because I was a single young woman reading
00:14:52.800 this book. But this is also a warning, I think, to married women. I think the book could be even
00:14:59.980 more harmful actually to married women than to single women because we are currently living in
00:15:05.060 marriages that are not going to live up to the fictionalized love between Michael Hosea and
00:15:10.040 Angel. Now, I hope that your marriage is better than that, that you're not cheating on your husband
00:15:16.160 by becoming a prostitute. I really hope that. But Michael Hosea is depicted as this kind of like
00:15:21.600 impenetrable, you know, godly guy who rarely grows frustrated or annoyed. We don't see any of his bad
00:15:28.500 habits or hangups. We don't read about the mundane parts of marriage or the persistent effort put into
00:15:33.620 loving and serving your spouse. We don't read about all of the normal difficulties of marriage in this
00:15:38.660 book or in most books like this one. And even if we know better, it can still cause us to resent our
00:15:46.300 current situation. It can steal contentment and joy and the acceptance of the everyday, sometimes
00:15:52.220 monotonous demands of marriage and motherhood. It can make us wish we looked different, acted differently,
00:15:58.440 felt differently, had a different life. It can make us fantasize about being a different person or being
00:16:03.500 with a different person. It can rob us of the gratitude to which God has called us. And we need
00:16:10.160 to be so careful about what we allow to enter our minds, no matter our age, no matter our marital status,
00:16:18.340 and even more vigilant about what gets into our heart. Proverbs 4.23, you guys, most of you probably
00:16:25.680 know this verse. Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. And Jesus also
00:16:34.340 says in Matthew 15 that out of the heart also flow the things of death. So we just read that out of it
00:16:44.120 flow the things of life, but also out of the heart flow the things of death. So Matthew 15, 18 through 19.
00:16:50.420 But what comes out of the mouth, Jesus says, proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.
00:16:58.180 For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness,
00:17:06.000 slander. Wow, the heart is so important. Out from the heart flows adultery. That means the things that
00:17:12.220 we are putting in our heart and mind can actually manifest itself in external rebellion. Even though we
00:17:19.620 know that Jesus says, if you lust after a woman, if you lust, then you are already committing adultery.
00:17:25.760 So what goes on in our heart and our mind really matter. From the heart flow life and death, purity
00:17:31.380 and impurity, good desires and bad desires, truth and lies. Maybe this is why God's people are told,
00:17:37.580 both in the Old Testament and the New, that we are to love the Lord our God first with all of our heart,
00:17:43.380 mind, soul, and strength. Maybe the heart comes first because from it flows that which enters our
00:17:50.300 mind and fills our souls and determines our strength. That's just a guess on my part. And so a
00:17:55.340 heart dominated by the love of God and a commitment to do his will will characterize and direct our minds,
00:18:01.840 our souls, and our strength. And that's why we are told that the heart must be guarded. It is a gateway,
00:18:08.700 both for evil and for good. And why I think of Philippians 4 is really fitting here. So let me read verses
00:18:16.980 4 through 9. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to
00:18:25.900 everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication
00:18:32.960 with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all
00:18:39.540 understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is
00:18:45.600 true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
00:18:51.360 commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
00:18:57.740 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of
00:19:03.820 peace will be with you. So our rejoicing in the Lord, our gratitude to him, our anticipation of his
00:19:11.820 coming relieves us of anxiety and ushers in the peace of God, which guards our hearts and our minds
00:19:18.300 with the power of Christ. And that guarded heart and mind, which has been relieved from the burden of
00:19:23.740 worry through prayer and thankfulness to God, should be filled with that which glorifies the God who
00:19:29.360 both made and seeks to protect them. Truth, honor, justice, purity, loveliness, whatever is commendable
00:19:37.400 and excellent and praiseworthy. These are the things that we are meant to dwell on. They're good for our
00:19:43.440 heart. We want to know how to turn away from the anxieties of this life. That's probably the biggest
00:19:49.520 question that people, Christian and non-Christian are asking. The Bible tells us we focus on Christ
00:19:55.180 and the things that he calls good. We are content. We are thankful in our circumstances. And I'm afraid
00:20:02.540 that books like Redeeming Love just don't get us there. I actually think that they can, they have the
00:20:08.960 tendency to, the ability to fill us with anxiety by stirring up longing that cannot be satisfied by
00:20:15.860 reality. Song of Solomon 2.7 says, do not stir up or awaken love until it pleases, until marriage,
00:20:26.020 until it can be satisfied by your husband. And I don't even think I need to get into the details of
00:20:33.160 the movie to say that the same goes for it too. And probably even more so because apparently, according
00:20:39.000 to many reviews that I read, we are actually seeing at least some depictions of sex scenes in the movie.
00:20:44.720 The truth is, both the book and the movie are forms of pornography. And just because they are
00:20:51.980 supposed to be allegories for the book of Hosea, which contains an allegory for God's relationship
00:20:56.100 with Israel, does not mean that they are glorifying to God or good for the Christian. I think we have
00:21:02.320 to be so careful about what we put into our hearts and minds. And I'm not just talking about
00:21:06.620 redeeming love. I'm talking about all content that we consume. And I am definitely imperfect when it
00:21:11.460 comes to this because I really, I like television. I like movies. I like books. I like a good story.
00:21:18.300 And I have definitely tolerated certain kinds of content that were not good for my heart and mind
00:21:26.240 because I thought that it was in service to a good story. And okay, this is a really important
00:21:31.620 series that everyone's talking about. And so I'm going to consume this content too, and it'll just be
00:21:36.000 fine. It probably won't mar me. I'll be able to forget about it. But that is disobedience. And so
00:21:40.760 I've been there, I understand if you've been there, it can be really difficult to do, especially when
00:21:46.940 it comes to movies and books that are characterized as Christian. It's tempting to assume that if our
00:21:57.800 child is reading or watching a movie that's supposedly Christian, then well, at least it's better than them
00:22:04.960 being on TikTok. But let's nix both the TikTok and the Instagram and all social media for children.
00:22:12.840 That's my stance on that. Let's nix all of that and the books that are not going to be filling their
00:22:19.200 minds with good things. The books that I read in high school, which, you know, targeted teenagers.
00:22:26.700 I went to Barnes & Noble. That was like my favorite thing to do. Go to Barnes & Noble. Go to like the
00:22:30.980 teen fiction section and, you know, just take whatever's there. And I don't remember ever really
00:22:38.720 having any sort of filter. Like maybe I shouldn't read this. I just kind of picked up what looked good
00:22:44.260 to me. But the books that I read that I picked up at Barnes & Noble that were marketed toward people
00:22:50.220 like me, they made sexual purity a lot more difficult. Just to be honest, they made waiting for
00:22:56.400 sex within, for, you know, a time that it was actually, you know, exercised within the confines
00:23:01.980 of marriage much more difficult. They encouraged lust and discontent and unfair expectations for
00:23:07.720 reality. They were, even if they weren't super graphic forms of pornography, even if just emotional
00:23:13.980 pornography, which can be destructive, especially for girls. Like this doesn't mean that I don't think
00:23:20.280 that mature teenagers under their parents' guidance should be, you know, reading difficult books with
00:23:26.220 mature topics or tough issues. History is ugly. Like life can be ugly. That's reality. The Bible is
00:23:32.220 certainly not all roses. I think it's really important for young people to be well-read and to
00:23:38.000 have a really good grasp on what the world is actually like. But the content depicting those,
00:23:46.300 you know, sometimes very ugly and uncomfortable truths, you know, whether or not a teenager should
00:23:52.620 consume them. It depends on a lot. Is the book glorifying sin? What is being learned from this
00:23:58.740 book? Is it possible for my son or daughter to take the lessons from this book without filling their
00:24:03.660 minds with things that aren't pleasing to the Lord and just aren't beneficial to their growth as a person
00:24:09.780 or as a Christian? I think parental guidance and involvement and discipleship is so key. So, you know,
00:24:17.500 I'm not saying that we should shelter our kids from reading all difficult books or books that,
00:24:22.980 you know, might handle mature topics, as I said. I'm just saying it should be done in a way that is
00:24:29.600 going to be beneficial to them and not destructive to their minds. Remember, that frontal lobe is not
00:24:36.160 developed in a young person until they're 25. That means that they're not really able to see the
00:24:43.220 consequences of the things that they're doing, including the books that they're reading. And of course,
00:24:47.500 I mean, it feels good. It's exciting. But the stories and the narratives that our kids latch
00:24:53.380 onto, that's going to shape their view of the world and their view of themselves, their view of
00:24:57.520 love, their view of marriage, their view of family. All of that really matters. And as we already read,
00:25:02.260 the heart is something that is to be guarded. And as parents, one of our responsibilities is to help
00:25:08.920 our child guard their heart as much as possible. Now, if you want an allegory to Christ's pursuit of
00:25:16.880 his church, then we don't have to read Redeeming Love. We can actually read the book of Hosea.
00:25:22.860 The book of Hosea is an allegory of God's faithfulness to his faithless people.
00:25:30.100 Okay, let's talk about the book of Hosea and what this book really teaches us about the good news of
00:25:37.300 the gospel and who we are in Christ. So as a lot of you probably know, but it's okay if you don't,
00:25:43.540 Hosea is an Old Testament book written by the prophet Hosea who prophesied to Israel from about
00:25:49.980 755 to 710 BC. Hosea is the first of the 12 minor prophets and his name means salvation,
00:26:00.480 the same as Joshua and the same as Jesus or Yeshua. And in this book, we see that the salvation of God's
00:26:07.960 people is based not on their worthiness, but on God's unrelenting faithfulness in love.
00:26:14.480 So we see in the book of Hosea, God's loyalty to his people, despite their continued rebellion,
00:26:21.020 their idolatry, their rejection of him, their disobedience to his commands.
00:26:25.600 God instructs Hosea to marry a woman named Gomer who continually betrays him via prostitution.
00:26:31.860 And God uses that marriage as a depiction of Israel's betrayal to him. Hosea 1, 2 through 3 says
00:26:39.600 this, when the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go take for yourself a wife of
00:26:46.220 whoredom and have children of whoredom for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.
00:26:53.980 So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
00:27:01.860 Then the rest of the first chapter talks about God's anger with and rejection of the people
00:27:06.280 of Israel because of their sin. But then the chapter closes this way.
00:27:11.120 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured
00:27:16.580 or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to
00:27:23.060 them, children of the living God. So God will redeem his people even after they rebel. He has
00:27:31.700 promising. But the book doesn't end in one chapter. We actually see the rebellion of Israel described
00:27:37.900 through the adultery of Gomer. And it is very hard to read. Like talk about introducing your
00:27:44.560 teenagers, depending on their reading level and their ability to kind of comprehend and think through
00:27:49.900 these kinds of tough issues and, you know, tough language. This is a really gut-wrenching
00:27:58.760 read. This is a really difficult thing to work through. It is not sweet or romantic-seeming at
00:28:05.860 all. Here's how Hosea describes his wife, Gomer, after she cheats on him by becoming a prostitute,
00:28:11.960 which again is an allegory for Israel's betrayal of God. He says this in chapter 2, verses 2 through 5,
00:28:18.100 Plead with your mother. Plead, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband, that she put away
00:28:24.480 her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and
00:28:30.260 make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land,
00:28:35.400 and kill her with thirst. Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of
00:28:41.200 whoredom. For their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully.
00:28:48.100 But then again, verses 14 through 15, we see God's promise of redemption.
00:28:54.240 Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.
00:29:01.440 And there I will give her her vineyards, and make the valley of Okor a door of hope. And there she
00:29:07.640 shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
00:29:13.640 Verses 19 through 20,
00:29:15.980 And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness, and justice,
00:29:21.380 and steadfast love, and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the
00:29:27.020 Lord. So the metaphor of Hosea and Gomer's marriage is really weaved in and out of God's
00:29:33.140 message to Israel throughout this book of the Bible. Israel is an adulterous, rebellious people.
00:29:38.420 God is angry in the same way that a husband would be angry about this. He is jealous for
00:29:44.000 his people. His love does not tolerate polygamy, polyamory, adultery. He wants all of their love
00:29:51.440 and all of their worship. He is zealous for his own glory. He promises to punish his people until
00:29:58.300 they turn back. And when they do turn back, he also promises to lavish mercy and love upon them.
00:30:04.960 That is the theme of Hosea. That is how the rest of the book goes. God pleading with his people to
00:30:10.720 turn back to him. God showing his anger, but then promising to redeem them, to stay faithful to them.
00:30:17.460 It is not a romantic, soft book. It is not a book for the faint of heart. It is a very sad book in
00:30:23.880 one sense. I mean, it shows you the weight and the sorrow of sin. And you just think about a lot of
00:30:29.380 Christians today or people who profess to be Christians basically act like God doesn't care about sin.
00:30:34.480 He doesn't care about obedience. He doesn't care about holiness. Man, God cared so much about sin
00:30:38.820 that he sent his own son to die a brutal death on a cross, a death that he did not deserve because of
00:30:44.880 sin. God cares about sin so much. You can't read any book of the Bible without seeing how much God
00:30:51.540 absolutely hates sin and how much he wants to rid us of sin. And the book of Hosea is just another very
00:30:57.880 graphic and hard to read depiction of that. How the iniquity of the people whom God chose and loves
00:31:03.820 makes him both sad and angry. It demonstrates just the exhaustion of turning back to sin over and
00:31:11.460 over again, the heartbreak associated with that, hurting the people in your life, hurting the God
00:31:15.960 who made you. Like I said, it's a very difficult read, but it tells us some very important things
00:31:21.120 about God, that he is jealous, that he is relentless. He is faithful to his promises. His love is never
00:31:27.060 ending. His mercy is so reliable, even as he refuses to tolerate unrighteousness. His refusal to tolerate
00:31:34.660 unrighteousness, his inability to do so because of his holiness matched with his undying love for his
00:31:41.860 people is the combination that gets us Jesus, whose name, like Hosea's, means salvation. It means
00:31:48.620 salvation for both the Jews and the Gentiles by God's grace through our faith in him. Jesus, the son of
00:31:55.620 God, the perfect spotless lamb, became the ultimate eternal sacrifice for our sins, making us clean,
00:32:03.380 giving us his righteousness so that we could be made holy and acceptable before God. 2 Corinthians 5.21,
00:32:09.760 For our sake, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.
00:32:17.720 Man, that just fills me with so much gratitude and joy I could cry. Hosea is a foreshadowing of Jesus.
00:32:25.620 That could be why their names are so similar and share a meaning. Hosea is preparing Israel for their
00:32:31.540 salvation by urging them through divine prophecy to repentance, to make ready for the forgiveness and
00:32:39.080 redemption of the Lord. And Jesus doesn't just call people, both Jews and Gentiles, to repentance in
00:32:45.620 his ministry. He doesn't just prepare the way of the Lord as the prophets before him did. He is the way.
00:32:51.300 The way, the truth, and the life. And no one comes to the Father except through him, John 14.6 says.
00:32:57.620 Through his death and resurrection, he defeats sin on our behalf and makes us new.
00:33:03.400 In Hosea, God's people are likened to a bride. And what is the church called in the New Testament?
00:33:09.440 The bride of Christ. God uses Hosea to warn the bride, to beckon the bride, his people, Israel.
00:33:15.800 In the New Testament, God uses Christ to save the bride, which is the church, believers in Christ,
00:33:21.300 Christians. In Hosea, God uses the depiction of an earthly marriage to paint a picture of Israel's
00:33:26.860 redemption. In the New Testament, God uses the depiction of the church's redemption to paint
00:33:31.240 a picture of earthly marriage. We see that in Ephesians 5.25-32.
00:33:35.880 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might
00:33:42.720 sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present
00:33:48.040 the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy
00:33:54.040 and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies.
00:33:59.700 He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it
00:34:07.480 just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave
00:34:15.940 his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is
00:34:22.060 profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. There are so many things to unpack in
00:34:29.320 all of this. One, God loves us so much. We can't even fully comprehend how much he loves us. He is
00:34:36.920 after us, and that pursuit culminated in sending his own sinless son, who is God-made flesh, to die
00:34:43.380 a death that he didn't have to die on our behalf, a rebellious, sorry, sinful people, so that we could
00:34:48.640 be forgiven and live forever with him. I love God's relentlessness, his steadfastness. When we are
00:34:54.680 faithless, he remains faithful, 2 Timothy 2.13 tells us. The second thing, marriage is so powerful.
00:35:02.400 It's important. It's not something to be entered into frivolously. It's not something that should be
00:35:07.500 disintegrated. Jesus says in Matthew 19, 5 through 6, and I like to reference this verse also when
00:35:14.180 people say that God, that Jesus never talked about marriage being between a man and a woman,
00:35:20.060 or human beings being made male and female. Well, he very much does. Again, Matthew 19,
00:35:27.600 therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother, a man shall leave his father and his mother
00:35:33.620 and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh.
00:35:40.600 What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate. Marriage is not something to be trifled
00:35:47.640 with or redefined as society sees fit. The marriage between a Christian man and a woman is a depiction
00:35:53.020 between Christ and his church. The marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman cannot be
00:35:58.320 that because God doesn't define it that way. Marriage is meaningful. The definition of marriage is
00:36:03.080 meaningful beyond the physical and the temporal and into the spiritual and eternal. And all of this
00:36:09.660 also shows us how powerful sex is for better and for worse. In the right context in marriage,
00:36:16.200 it ties together two bodies, two souls. It has the ability to bring forth new life. In the wrong
00:36:21.680 context, it can destroy. It can lead to disease, to heartbreak, to unwanted pregnancies, to broken
00:36:26.800 families. It can be a very destructive force as really we've seen throughout human history. But even
00:36:33.800 entertaining thoughts that do not get us to a place of glorifying God and dwelling on the things
00:36:41.520 that he tells us to dwell on so that our hearts can be guarded and we can be relieved from the burden
00:36:46.840 of anxiety, sex can also be a powerfully destructive force in that way. Even when we are consuming it
00:36:57.920 through a book or a movie that calls itself Christian. So we have to be so vigilant in all of this.
00:37:05.680 And if we really want to know what God's love looks like, of course, there are fictional books
00:37:13.120 that can be helpful in depicting that for us. I'm not saying that we should never try to fictionalize
00:37:19.400 or render a book of the Bible in a way that is interesting through fiction, that's fine. But if you
00:37:25.820 really want to know what God's love looks like, if you really want to know what to look for in a husband,
00:37:31.780 if you really want to know what we should think about sex and what we should think about ourselves
00:37:36.440 and our body and our worth and even romance, like we can read the Bible. All of these answers are
00:37:41.520 contained in scripture and God is so gracious to give us the opportunity and the privilege to be able
00:37:46.460 to access all of that through his word. So that's my take on all of that. I have actually a lot more
00:37:54.560 that I could say, but I'm going to leave it there and I would love to hear what you guys think about
00:37:59.680 it. Feel free to reach out to me. Okay, guys, thank you so much for listening. If you love this
00:38:07.320 podcast, please leave us a five star review on Apple podcast. That would mean so much. If you have not
00:38:12.460 listened to yesterday's episode with James Lindsay, definitely go do that. Definitely listen to it. I
00:38:19.920 went back and re-listened to it and I like learned even more from listening to him, you know, through my
00:38:25.880 headphones that I did when I was just sitting there. There's just so much good, good stuff there that can
00:38:31.420 help you understand this moment that we're in and all of the cultural change that we've seen happen
00:38:35.960 over the past couple of years. It'll give you the language and the context to really understand where
00:38:42.920 all this is coming from and really why it's contradictory to a truly biblical worldview. So we're going to
00:38:50.720 play part two also of that podcast where we talk more about like, why isn't James a Christian? He uses so much
00:38:56.580 Christian theology in the things that he says and the way that he argues, and yet he is not a Christian. We're going
00:39:03.280 to talk about that. I'm going to kind of press into that just a little bit. We've also got a conversation
00:39:10.080 coming up with a journalist from the Daily Wire. She just wrote this really interesting article about how
00:39:17.680 evangelical Christians, the establishment evangelical Christians, have been duped by Francis Collins and
00:39:24.480 Anthony Fauci and people in our public health bureaucracy into promoting measures for their
00:39:31.220 congregations and preventing them or trying to get them to not ask questions about the origins of the
00:39:37.100 virus and things like that. It was a really interesting article. We're going to have her on to talk about
00:39:41.200 this. And so yeah, we've got a lot of good stuff. And also there's a like a kind of a debate discussion
00:39:47.120 that I'm having with a libertarian that is coming up. So all of this is coming up in the next few days.
00:39:53.840 We've got a lot of good content headed your way. Super excited for you to hear it. If you haven't
00:39:59.440 subscribed on YouTube, please do that. And we will see you back here tomorrow.