MCC Podcasts
Love - God's Pit Bull Love
So we're three weeks now into this new series on love. It's going to be a couple months together with you on it. And so far, here's where we've gone. Pastor Jeff introduced the series. Remember that in the first week he talks about how we love love and revolved his message around that idea that love makes the world go round and explored that a little bit with us. And then last week, he answered the question, "How do we love God?" "We love God, but how do we love God?" And reminded us that we love God with all of our heart, our soul, our mind, and our strength. And developed that a bit. So he made this idea of love practical, reminding us of how we go about doing that. What loving God really looks like. This week and next week, we're going to attach ourselves thematically to that by asking the question, especially this week, how does God love us? What's that look like? Not by what means does God love us, but what is the torch that he carries inside that causes him to love us? How severe is his love for us? What's the relevance of his love for us? And then next week, how do we respond to such love? Today we're going to be in Hosea chapter three. We'll read that in just a second. Now, when I was a kid, we had one of these. Is he up there? Yeah, didn't quite look like that, but almost. Anybody know what that is? A pit bull. Combination of some sort of an English bulldog mix with a terrier and about the 19th century, they were breeding this and now they become an actual breed, a pit bull. We had a pit bull named Dylan when I was a kid. This is before pit bulls, anybody knew about pit bulls is before they had their reputation with a fair or not. Nobody else had a pit bull. We were the only people in the block with a pit bull and this pit bull's name was Dylan. Good luck getting the stick away from Dylan if you threw the stick and he chased it and grabbed onto it. You couldn't get that stick from his mouth afterward or anything else that he happened to grab in mid flight if you gave it all of your strength. Anything that came across Dylan's path that was flying through the air, whether you meant for him to chase it down or not would be pursued by Dylan, latched onto and you were not going to shake it loose. The hold of a pit bull's jaw and the grip that it has on anything that comes across that pit bulls know, this was certainly true, it knows, that was certainly true with Dylan. Is tenacious, is that not right? Tenacious grip, powerful grip. There were only two ways to get the stick free from Dylan, at least two ways that we could figure out and we tried to employ them both. One was to take smelling salts and take the smelling salt capsule, break it and then rub it in front of his nose and the ammonia smell he would finally shake his head and let go sometimes. He had hold of that stick and he was not going to let go of that stick. Now, here's the weird thing, he wanted you to throw it for him again and he would be happy chasing it and grabbing it but you couldn't shake him loose from it except with smelling salts half the time. The other option was one we were much less comfortable with but it's the only thing we knew how to do then, you would have to restrict the flow of air, his flow of air a little bit so that he would at least grasp for air and when he grabbed the stick real fast and then he would say, okay, throw it again, throw it again, we'd throw it again and he would come back again for more smelling salts, more choke therapy. So if Dylan was in the vicinity, you never wanted to say like I did once to your brother, hey, Lenny, toss me my other boot, will you? Because if he didn't get that boot flying high enough, it was going to be Dylan's toy and you were not going to get it back from him. If you were not equipped with the right smelling salts or Dylan was faster than you and he always was faster than us, running and hiding and chewing and playing, you might as well just go pick another pair of shoes to wear because you were not getting it back. He would throw, he would latch on to any object in flight that came within distance of him. And once he got hold of something, you couldn't get it back except by drastic means he would never, ever, ever let go. His hold was tenacious, his hold was ferocious. He would just lock on to that stick. Now, this is a picture of a bulldog, but it's not just a picture of a bulldog. Strangely enough, this is also a picture and a rather accurate one if we use it properly of God's love for us, a pit bull love of God, the tenacious love of God, the ferocious love of God. The I'm going to grab you and hold on to you and never let go and no one can pull you from me, love of God. And the thought that that love of God can be ignored or unappreciated is sad but true, but its severity can never really be denied. Not according to what Scripture teaches us about the love of God. In that sense, it's like the grip of a pit bull without all the damage that's associated with that dog, but the clinging grip, never going to let go. We're looking at Hosea this morning and in particular Hosea chapter three in a moment we'll read that together. Let me just give you the background story for those of you who might be unfamiliar with it. God decides to make a point to his people Israel. And so what he does is he decides to make a dramatic point and he says to Hosea one of his faithful prophets, in order for me to make my point, I want you to go and marry Gomer who is a harlot, Gomer's a prostitute 'cause my people are kind of acting like prostitutes. They keep wandering off and embracing strange doctrines and strange things and so I'm going to make a very severe point about the depth of my love, the tenacity of my love through your life and I want you to play this out. It wasn't acting, it was a real relationship. And so Hosea goes and he marries Gomer and God is using that relationship and saying, you're going to play the part of God, Hosea, play my part. She's going to play the part in this real life drama of my people and I'm going to show them just how much I love them, how far I'll go, the grip that my love has on them. And so he marries her, they have children together and she keeps running off, she can't stay faithful, just like the people of God. She can't stay faithful, I mean it's a good home, it's a loving home, he's faithful to her, he's caring for her, he's protecting her, he's feeding her, he's treating her right and she still can't stay faithful and there must be times when Gomer is thinking, why in the world do I keep going back to this addiction of poison? And the Lord says to Hosea, I want you to go and love her again and that's where we pick up on this story, it's during one of those times when she's at the gate selling herself and he's at home cooking his own meals with a broken heart. And we start reading in Hosea chapter three, would you stand for the reading of God's word, if you'd rather follow along in one of the Bibles that's underneath the chair in front of you, taught page 829, well we'll have it up on the screen too. Hosea's writing, the Lord said to me, go and show your love to your wife again, remember he's playing the part of God, the pit bull love of God. Though she is loved by another and is an adulterous, love her as the Lord loves the Israelites. Though they turn to other gods and love their sacred rays and cakes. So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a Homer and a half of barley, which by the way was not a high price. I told her, you are to live with me many days, you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man and how we'll behave the same way toward you. For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince without sacrifice or sacred stones without ephod or household gods. Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king and he will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days. May God add his blessing to his holy word, his fully inspired message to us. Let's go ahead and be seated. So this is a day when we're going to remember some of the things that it's pretty easy for us to forget. Just in case we may have forgotten, wanna remind us today of some of the reasons for this comparison, of some of the reasons for this description and the title of this message. God's pit bull love and the grip that it has on us, the grip so hard, in fact, impossible to shake. Why is this love considered so tenacious and how? And here's the first point. The first reason for this comparison is that God's love is so perfectly forgiving. It's a forgiving love. It's a love tied to forgiveness. It's love expressed by forgiveness. And even though that is not necessarily so profound, we all understand yes, God forgives. We've heard the words, God forgives. Jesus forgives me, I'm forgiven. It's one thing to say it, another thing to experience it. And quite another thing to be blown away by it. The tenacity, the extremes to which God will go in expressing his love and forgiveness. In the first verse of Hosea 3, one we've already read, I'm going to read it again. The Lord said to me, now look at the tenacity, the ferocious love of God and the forgiveness that he shows. Go and show your love for your wife again, though she's loved by another and adulterous. Love her the way I love my people. And here's the comparison, it reminds you of that comparison again. Hosea is playing the part of God in this real life drama. Gomer, the wife, is playing the part of the church. And it's a role well played. I mean, if that is illustrative of all at all of any of my experience and my experience is at all linked to some of your experience, the fact is we find ourselves at the gate selling ourselves for much lesser prices into much lesser experiences than the one God has planned for us. Not really showing our true value, selling ourselves cheap. Every once in a while, we need to look up and see somebody coming to the gate saying, come on, come on back here to me. I forgive you, I love you. You have Gomer, you have Hosea going to Gomer and buying back his own wife. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites. Go and love her again. And this is not the first time he had to do that. The word again is really important as though this has happened before. So God is in effect saying, go and love her again and again and again. Saying to us in terms that might be relevant depending upon our gender, go and love him again and again and again. That's a pit bull grip love, isn't it? To go publicly and love a wife that has been unfaithful. That's a love that cannot be driven away by sin. Have we forgotten that? I mean, whatever you came in here thinking, did you come in here this morning forgetting the fact that God's love is unbounded, his longing is to forgive you, his practices to forgive you, his commitment is to forgive you, you cannot out-sin that kind of love. You cannot embarrass him to the point where he wants nothing to do with you ever again. It's modeled in Hosea, who by the way, loves Gomer even though the text says, go and love her even though she's loved functionally at least by another, even though she's giving herself to another. I love the fact that it says even though she's loved by another and is a harlot and is unfaithful, not in spite of the fact that she's loved by another and is unfaithful. This is God whose love is so strong that he's able to say, I forgive you even though but not stuck with saying, I forgive you in spite of. He doesn't dismiss our brokenness. He's just aware of it. Scripture says he knows how we're made that we're cracked pots. He's aware of our humanity. He's experienced our humanity and our temptations and he comes and even though you're a bit greedy, even though you're proud, even though you had 90 days of sobriety and blew it in one hour last night at that bar. And you said, yes, do instead of no. Even though your marriage is such a struggle, even though you're not the perfect parent, even though, even though I'm going to love you again, cannot shake that loose. It's a tenacious, ferocious love. And I love what's not there in the text. You don't have any sense of God wanting to send the message, I'll love you when you get your act together. Which would mean, for me anyway, you're never going to love me. At least, not for any prolonged time. You don't have any words that imply that God has the feeling I can't love someone who did that. Now, we as Christians project that kind of message all the time, but that's not God's message. We're not dismissive of our mistakes, of our brokenness, of our errors, but the Christian community, when it's loving the way God loves His creation, is saying, even though you experience that, everybody else might throw you away, not us, we're your people, we're God's people, we're marching to wherever it is, you have placed yourself. And pulling you back into the love of this community that represents the love of God, even though we're still going to love you. Because God is saying, even though that's what you experience, there are no yeah buts before God when it comes to dealing with Him and His love for us. It's tenacious. His love has a grip on us. That's how severe His love is. Let me ask you a question. How many of you, because I know the answer for me, how many of you who are married to a spouse, when that's, you've bare your soul to that spouse for 30 years or whatever it might be, you've born and raised children together, you've gone through stuff together, you went through college together, you struggled to pay for the tuition together, you got behind and used too much credit card debt together. I mean, whatever it might be, you've just been through so much together and you've shared yourself to the point where that spouse could ruin you with the information he or she has if they had a mind to. And then you have that kind of trust and relationship, and then one day you come home and you realize, they slept with the neighbor. It feels so betrayed and rightfully so. How many of you would have the kind of love where you found it natural to walk next door, knock on the door and pick your spouse up and say, "You come back here and you love me, we'll work this out." Now, many of you might do that, but out of discipline. God does it naturally, that's the extent of his love, and he does it day after day after day. There's no sense in that text. I can't love someone who did that, or I'm going to hold back a little bit of love for someone who did that, or you get this much of my love, but then when you straighten things out, you get the rest of it. This is a pit bull love. This is a love that clamps down and will not be shaken loose. And this love is always working toward reconciliation, restoration, that's the depth of this forgiveness. If you were to turn back to chapter 2, verse 14, you read about this, about God wooing Israel. It says, "I'm going to allure her. She's distant from me. She's run off. I'm going to allure her. I'm going to woo her. I'm going to lead her into the wilderness. And I'm going to speak tenderly to her." Do you get that picture? Man, if someone betrayed me like that, my inclination is to woo them into the wilderness and then take away the water bottle and leave them there. Not God's. It's a tenacious love. Listen now, if you're out here thinking, "Yeah, but you don't know how I've blown it all apart." This isn't a message that's for everybody but you. That's a message specifically for you. Those are not the words of God saying, "Three years of faithfulness, and then you can come back and experience my love." He doesn't take us into the wilderness to leave us there. It says, "I will take her into the wilderness. I will woo her there, and I will speak tenderly to her." These are the words of God whispering in our ears. This is the words that describe God kissing us on the ear. Come back to me. I never stop loving you, I never will. I forgive you. Come back to me. I forgive you. People love. It forgets. Don't forget that. There's a second and final reason that this comparison is a valid one. First of all, because God's love is forgiving, it's tenacious. There's no wrong, no sin that can overwhelm its luster or defeat its grip, not possible. Second is this, that not only is God's love forgiving, God's love is humble, it's selfless. He cares more about saving us than he cares about saving face. If you look at the next verse, verse two, then it says, "So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a Homer and a half of barley." I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a Homer and a half of barley. And I told her, "You to live with me many days, and you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man. And I will behave the same way to you." So we have this picture of God's tenacity, his tenacious love, representing his ability to forgive. But you also have this interesting picture of God being humble or selfless in his expression of that love, because this was a public rescuing. This is the honored prophet walking down the public street going to the place where the prostitutes hung out, recognizing his own wife there while everybody watched, taking her up and instead of protecting his own image in the town, identifies with one of the most broken expressions of unfaithfulness, the most severe expressions of unfaithfulness. It says, "Though Jose is taking hold of Gomer, and while he's walking her home, holding her in his arms, as I picture it, in effect, saying to everybody in town, she may be a prostitute, but she's my lady. And I will be identified with her no matter how shameful you think it is, because he cares more about our life and hope for life than he does about the protection of his own image. God's more concerned with saving lives than he is with saving face." Philippians 2, 1 through 8 is a New Testament reminder of this with Paul writes, "If you have any encouragement, being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then take my joy and make it complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in Spirit and one mind, do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, rather in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interest or the people's perception of your own value, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interest of the others. In your relationships with one another, and here's the pertinent part, have the same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had. Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God, something to be used to his own advantage, something to be held on to, recognition as divine, was not something he said was worth holding on to if it came at the expense of rescuing. I don't care what people think of me. I just care that my people experience my love. Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness and being found in appearance as a human being. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even to death on a cross. The objects of God's love are more important to him than the protection of God's public image. It's a tenacious love. It forgives, but oh my, is it ever humble and selfless? It's tenacious enough to release the grip on recognition as divine in order to help us come to grips with life and to have hope in life and to do that in front of the entire village if Hosea is an example of it. It's a forgiving love. It's a selfless love. That's why it's a tenacious love, a pit bull love. There's a myth about the jaw bite and the clamp of a pit bull. My dad taught it to me. He thought it was true. I thought it was true all these years. The myth is that the pit bull holds so tightly to that stick because the pit bull has the ability to actually bite down and lock its jaws and it can't really let go if it wanted to. Well, that's actually a myth. The truth is there's only one reason our dog Dylan held on to that stick or that boot. He held on because he wanted to and he was strong enough to do it. It's not true that those jaws locked. There's no physical evidence or any scientific evidence to support that myth. God's love for us is tenacious. But he doesn't love us, forgive us, and forgive us so humbly because he stuck doing that, that there's some kind of a rule in his character where, "Oh, no, I have to love them. I'm going to bite down. I couldn't let go if I wanted to." God loves us like that so tenaciously for one reason because he wants to and he can. That's why he loves us like that. Here are the questions for you to consider as we draw this to a close. The band's going to play a little bit. I want you to think about some things. When we think about this pit bull love of God, will you recognize that he's always working his way back to you? Will you recognize you can never change that about him? No matter what you do, what you don't do, what you think, what you forget, how you act. He doesn't dismiss it. He just loves us even though. He's always, always, always working his way back to us. He's always climbing that fire escape. I love the picture of that movie because the fire escape is for someone to, when you're in trouble, you escape and you come down to safety. Here you have a great picture. God uses it backward. He climbs to where we are to change our lives and bring us to safety. Will you see him as somebody climbing that fire escape in some back alley in search of you? Will you find hope and healing in God's magnificent jaws of life? And allow the clinging power of God's love to touch you. Let him love you that tenaciously and recognize that you actually do need that love. Think about that for a moment now. God, break my heart because I have been so successful that I forgot that I need your love. I've forgotten that I need forgiveness. I've forgotten that you'll never quit working your way back to me. Break my heart. Or, God, I need this kind of help. I'm convinced I'm not worthy of your love. But it shames you too much to connect with me. I know that's not coming from you. Own my heart. Think about that.