Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 557 ｜ Why I Changed My Mind About 'Redeeming Love'

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 0.94

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 0.96

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. 0.89

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 0.82

00:07:05.580 their Michael Hosea and all that stuff. And this is just like a thing that so many Christian girls 0.97

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 0.60

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 1.00

00:10:21.600 women in the position of having to visualize sexual acts that are either kind of roughly 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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 0.99

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. 0.98

00:13:36.400 But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests 0.97

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, 1.00

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 0.97

00:14:59.980 more harmful actually to married women than to single women because we are currently living in 0.87

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 0.99

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, 0.60

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 0.98

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 1.00

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. 0.99

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. 0.94

00:27:11.120 Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured 0.95

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, 0.97

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 0.99

00:28:24.480 her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and 1.00

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, 1.00

00:28:35.400 and kill her with thirst. Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of 0.99

00:28:41.200 whoredom. For their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully. 1.00

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. 1.00

00:29:38.420 God is angry in the same way that a husband would be angry about this. He is jealous for 0.92

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 0.97

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 0.86

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 0.93

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 0.60

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 0.79

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, 0.96

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 0.98

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.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - February 02, 2022

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

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