Tough No.3 Promiscuity - Gomer

When I look into your eyes, and I gaze into your eyes, there are things that surround me, and shadows that are calling me. They are telling me what is wrong in my life. They are things that surround me, and shadows that are calling me.

I gaze into your eyes, and I gaze into your eyes. The Bible tells us that God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit, and in truth. Our reading this evening is from the book of Hosea, the book of Hosea at chapter 1. At this stage, Hosea was ministering to the kingdom of Israel, that was the northern kingdom.

This was written about 750 years before Christ. Outwardly, the nation was enjoying a time of prosperity and growth, but inwardly, it was moral corruption, spiritual adultery, leading towards the downfall of the nation. Hosea was called by God to prophesy to the nation in its last desperate days, and in this book, we have a cameo, a story of one-sided love.

Israel's relationship to God is mirrored by Gomer's relationship to Hosea. Chapter 1 at verse 2. When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, "'Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife "'and children of unfaithfulness, "'because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery "'in departing from the Lord.' "'So he married Gomer, daughter of Deblame, "'and she conceived and bore him a son.' "'Then the Lord said to Hosea, "'Call him Jezreel, "'because I will soon punish the house of Jehu "'for the massacre at Jezreel, "'and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. "'In that day, I will break Israel's bow "'in the valley of Jezreel.' "'Gomer conceived again "'and gave birth to a daughter.

"'Then the Lord said to Hosea, "'Call her Lo-Ruhamah.'" And that means not loved. "'For I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, "'that I should at all forgive them. "'Yet I will show love to the house of Judah, "'and I will save them, "'not by bow, sword, or battle, "'or by horses and horsemen, "'but by the Lord their God.' "'After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, "'Gomer had another son.

"'Then the Lord said, "'Call him Lo-Ammi.'" And that means not my people. "'For you are not my people, "'and I am not your God.'" And chapter 3. "'Then the Lord said to me, "'Go, show your love to your wife again, "'though she is loved by another "'and is an adulteress. "'Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, "'though they turn to other gods, "'and love the sacred risen cakes.

"'So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver "'and about a homer and a leatheth of barley. "'Then I told her, "'You are to live with me for many days. "'You must not be a prostitute "'or be intimate with any man, "'and I will live with you.

"'For the Israelites will live for many days "'without king or prince, "'without sacrifice or sacred stones, "'without ephod or idol. "'Afterwards, the Israelites will return "'and seek the Lord their God "'and David their king. "'They will come trembling to the Lord "'and to his blessings in the last days.'" Amen.

Now, let's turn in God's Word to the prophecy of Hosea and to that chapter which Hugh not only read but helpfully gave us a little digest of introductory comments so that we've got the thing in context. We're thinking people at the tab, at least I hope so. That's the reason why we come, not just to listen to a preacher, but for the preacher to be able to explain as we concentrate and ask the power of the Holy Spirit to explain the Word of God to us so that we can understand it and respond to it.

My subject this evening, not my choice, is promiscuity. I would say that in normal language, in the way that I address most topics, that I'm glad to be able to speak on the subject. Actually, I'm not.

It's the last subject on God's earth that I want to speak on. But I do believe that constantly and clearly from the pulpit, perhaps three or four times on a Sunday evening in a year, some statement ought to be made about sexual morality because we live in a world where what I am teaching and what Tim is teaching and Hugh and all those who come to our pulpits here and in Maybridge, in Bible-believing centres in this town, we are a minority position and we appreciate that. We don't glory in it.

We're sad because we think the majority are wrong. But nonetheless, what we have to teach in regard to sexual morality, we don't apologise for because undergirding it is the word of God and behind God's word is God himself. So if you've got an argument, it's not really with us.

It's with the one who caused this book to be written. Promiscuity then is my subject and it's something that meets you every day, almost when you travel the streets of Worthing and especially if you travel to London. Sometimes as you go around Worthing, you'll find somebody, some smart aleck with a sticker at the back of their car, windsurfers do it standing up and somebody does it sitting down and so on and so forth and the whole idea behind that is a subtle undertone of the moral state of our society because there is within these bumper stickers an indication of the promiscuous way of life.

Examples of the trends in sexual morality these days are all over the place and really it's not sexual morality, it's sexual immorality. What used to be done in private is now openly proclaimed at any rate in public. Shyness and reserve are reckoned to be psychological disorders which need to be liberated.

I once, not so many years ago, stood outside a place called Monkey Temple on the outskirts of Kathmandu. I looked up at the fresco of that very ornate group of buildings and I saw there, chiseled into the stonework, possibly marble stonework, graphic portrayals of the most bestial acts of perversion that anyone could have dreamed up. It was the sort of thing that I don't even feel would make Playboy magazine.

It was so bad. And yet those frescoes have been there on that temple for centuries because Hinduism, very much like Western culture, is also baptized in its worst forms in immorality, in promiscuity. I remember reading not that many years back a book by a man called Alvin Toffler.

And Toffler wrote one book, which was such a good seller around the world, he speedily wrote another. The first was called Future Shock. The second was called Third Wave.

And he was projecting the sort of lives that people would be living at the end of this century and trying to look as a futurologist, not as a medium, as a sociologist having certain criteria as to the way people are living today. He was trying to predict the future. And he was saying that the nuclear family, that means the sort of family that many of us were brought up with, mum and dad and the two kids or so, would become less and less evident in our society.

He suggested that businessmen who were going around the globe would sort of plug in at various families and have sexual favors given by many women. And I thought to myself, well, that's a very pessimistic way to predict the future. And yet there is a sense in which what Toffler is saying is becoming uncomfortably true in some areas of life even before we make the 21st century.

Pat Wynum-Jones, lecturer in the Institute of Higher Education in one of the colleges in South England, wrote a book entitled The Moral State of the Nation. And she said this, With few exceptions, teenage fiction gives a picture of society where a happy, united family is almost too much to hope for. She's commenting not on Asian society, she's commenting on British society.

And she says this, underlining the comment, This is significant. Now where is the main attack on the family coming from? If you could have one word to identify the dangers that present society is up against, then I suggest to you that one word is promiscuity. Promiscuity.

Or if you want a synonym, that means a word that's close in meaning, then I suggest to you permissiveness. What is promiscuity? Well, listen to the Oxford Dictionary. It is mixed and disorderly composition.

And then it goes on to interpret it in a physical relationship. Sexual relationships unrestricted by marriage. Sexual relationships unrestricted by marriage.

The in-house magazine that circulates amongst British librarians carried an atrocious article not so long ago in which the writer was saying that in the children's sections of most of our libraries we've touched on what were all the taboo subjects. Menstruation, various aspects of body development in terms of puberty and what have you. What remains to be done now, he says, is that somebody takes more time in graphically describing the sexual act so that our children have information as to how that is performed from the earliest years of their lives.

And the way that these things are described is not in a matter-of-fact fashion, but rather in a fictional state in which it's indicated that the best thing for a child to have is sexual relationships as soon as possible. Warren Wiersbe, a colleague of mine who pastored a church in Chicago, the Moody Memorial Church, says this. Young people are plugging their six-volt toys into a 220-volt generator and blowing all their fuses before they have a chance to live.

In other words, he's bemoaning the fact that promiscuity and the attractions to it are so prevalent in the media in the Western world. Well, you say, why bother dealing with this on a Sunday night here at the Tab? Well, I do so for these reasons. First of all, the media that confronts us today takes this majority line that I've been identifying, and it is possible for young people who perhaps only occasionally come into church not to realize that this sort of thing that you get on Dallas and most of the modern films and plays and most of the modern novels is actually condemned by God.

Now, did you hear me? I'm not saying that sex is condemned by God. I am saying that sexual activity outside the regulations that God has laid down in His Word. They're not only condemned by God, but the Bible teaches and human conduct illustrates that when you go outside the bounds, the parameters that He has set up, then actually you injure yourself.

God is not against sex. He made it. He made this whole possible relationship between the sexes.

But God has set that within certain contexts. And He asked people who follow His ways to apply His teachings to human behavior. So the first thing I want to say, and I'll take my three headings fairly rapidly and briefly this evening, is promiscuity is an offense against God.

Promiscuity is an offense against God. It seems significant to me that when you open the Bible in the first two chapters, you discover that Adam had one wife made for him. Not two wives.

One wife. And you will find at the end of the second chapter that God in effect is saying that the ideal situation He wants is one man, one wife for life. One man, one wife for life.

And then before anything is said about children or about families at all, God makes reference to the two coming together. And He uses a delightful word to describe this. He calls it one fleshness.

God is not against this. Indeed in the New Testament when He's looking for a word to describe the relationship that He wants to exist between Him and the believer, between the church and the head of the church, Jesus Christ, He uses exactly the same term. He goes to the analogy of marriage and He says there in its ideal state is the sort of relationship that also should exist spiritually between believers and the Lord Jesus Christ.

So this is the relationship which pleases God. This is the ideal. One man, one wife for life.

No messing around. No double dealing. No extracurricular activity.

Pledge to one another during the course of your sojourn on planet earth until one of you is taken from this life and then there is freedom for remarriage if you feel that that is within the purposes of the Lord. Now that's the ideal. But ideals break down.

This promiscuity thing does not subside. It does not go away. And we are sexual creatures.

One of the hardest things for a preacher to do is to take this particular subject and speak at it and not leave the congregation with the impression that he's got all the solutions. I come to you as my fellow leaders here in the tab, as brothers and those of us who are womenfolk in leadership, as sisters, who ourselves need to come before the Lord day by day to keep us morally pure. The Bible says, He that thinks he stands, let him take heed, lest he fall.

There is this problem of sexual appetites perhaps being aroused with the possibility of them being expressed in an illegitimate way that confronts every human being unless you're a very strange person at all. Those who tell me that they have completely been able to overcome all difficulties in this area, particularly younger people or middle-aged people, well, I think of the words that I believe come from Lewis Carroll who said, As I was going down the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today.

I wish, I wish he'd go away. That's a problem, you see. We are faced with the ideal in God's Word and the tendency in our nature to break away from the ideal and say, No, Lord, you're a killjoy.

I want to do it my way. And God says, No. If you take my regulations, if you adjust them, then you will hurt yourself.

As did Gomer. You're wondering where Gomer comes into my address. Well, Gomer lived light years before Dallas was ever thought of.

She'd never even heard of Jim and Tammy Bakker or Baker, I'm not too sure how you pronounce the surname of those unfortunate American tele-evangelists. But you see, misconduct, misdemeanor is almost as old as man. And scandal in the church, that too, unfortunately, has got a history that can be traced back to the New Testament and traced through in the Old Testament amongst God's people.

And here was a scandal that rocked Jerusalem. The prophet, the man who had the greatest influence, his wife, whom he deliberately married because she had this tendency of a weak sexuality, this woman let him down. She was engaging in this extracurricular activity to which I referred a few moments ago without referring it directly to her.

And her husband became suspicious of it. She had children. These were days before there were contraceptives or anything like that.

And as a result of this sexual activity, the children that were born, well it was questionable whether the parentage was that of her husband or that of her lovers. So here is a scandal indeed, promiscuity amongst the prophets in Israel, amongst the wife of one of the prophets. Now who did she basically let down? Well she let her husband down, yes.

She let the influence of the synagogue down. But most of all she let God down. When you play with this sort of fire, when ultimately it burns, actually what you do is sin against the Lord.

You remember David? One of the most outstanding men in the Old Testament, used to compose a great number of the hymns sung in the old Jewish church. But he tripped. There was one weak chink in his armour and the devil got through and David's sin with Bathsheba becomes a multiple sinfulness.

And when his sins find him out, because ultimately sin always finds people out, for him mercifully it was this side of eternity when he comes to his senses, in horror he says to the Lord, against Thee, Thee only have I sinned and done this evil in Thy sight. He took a good and a precious gift and he dropped it to the level of the sewer. And so many people in our world are living in the garbage.

I know a lot about garbage. You can't go through Bombay and Karachi at the literal level without being faced with and sometimes smelling the awful stench of the rottenness that there is in those cities, teeming with people. But there's a greater stench that comes to the nostrils of Almighty God in these days.

And it's the stench of promiscuity. People living against the known will of the Lord. Promiscuity, I tell you, is a sin against God.

Secondly, promiscuity is a sin against yourself. There's an expression that I think is daft. And it's that expression that says of him or her, you know, we're only human.

That is an absurd comment. You are less than human if you behave in a way that God has declared that you ought to maintain. Adam is made in the image of God.

He's given certain things that he ought to do as a human being. He has the capacity. He has the capability of living at this level.

But he lets God down. And it's a nonsense to say he's only human. What you're really saying is he is subhuman.

He is less than human. And so, when people are tempted in this area and they let themselves down, then they sin against themselves. Now, promiscuity has many ways in which it tempts people depending on your sexual orientation.

I remember a man came to see me some years ago, must be ten or twelve years ago now, a very educated man at the present actually. He's studying to be a priest. He writes to me from Oxford University.

And his difficulty was, well, he felt the homosexual tendency, particularly towards children, so very strong. And I listened to him and counseled him and tried to show him that by the grace of God he could resist these temptations. He is not at the whim of the desires of his body.

There are many scriptures which I think are good for you and for me to memorize. And one of the best scriptures is 1 Corinthians 9 and 27, where the Apostle Paul says, I buffet my body. Actually, it means, if you take it literally from the Greek, I give myself a black eye.

Now, he's not using it literally. But what he is saying is this, that there are things in his body that needs to be controlled, that need to be controlled. You have to ask yourself, my dear younger person and older person, because it's not just the young that have problems in this area, who really controls your life? Are you like an animal, who has no image of God built into it? Or are you living like a son of God? What is the difference? Well, an animal lives by instinct.

An animal lives by urges. An animal is really at the beck and call of instincts. But you're not.

You have a choice. There is a possibility of you maintaining integrity and dignity. You can live at that level by God's grace.

How do you do it? By buffeting your bodies. By saying to this body, you are not in control. You see, I have various appetites.

There's an appetite to eat. It's a good appetite and it needs to be satisfied to degrees. But once it becomes a master over me, then I'm engaging in gluttony.

And that which was permissible, has now moved into the area of the impermissible. And there are many other illustrations that one can give of this. And so the apostle Paul says, as far as these appetites are concerned, don't always yield.

Recognize that there are certain legitimate claims your body has. Satisfy them, but occasionally buffet your bodies. It's good at times to fast.

The power of positive shrinking. As somebody has defined fasting. The idea, of course, is not necessary to lose weight, though most of us could do with losing half a stone or so.

I've dropped about four pounds being in India. It's all the rice and dal. It doesn't suit my system too well.

But the idea of going without what your body needs has a spiritual value because it starts to show that you're the boss. You are in control. And it seems to me that one of the things behind the promiscuity movement in these days, and I will put it as strongly as that, because it seems to me that there is a movement telling our young people that they ought to give into every desire.

One of the things behind the promiscuity movement is this. The idea that you are not in control. That your hungers and your desires have to be satisfied.

And if they're not, then you're going to finish up middle-aged, Victorian, ladies wearing a bun at the back of your head and looking completely and utterly miserable. I have never known of anything quite as stupid as that. One of the modern psychologists from the University of Vienna has gone on record and said that it is necessary to tell young people today that to fall in with the promiscuity movement is harmful to them.

Be the master of your own body. Promiscuity is a sin against yourself. Gomer, actually, I understand in the Hebrew, can be translated heat.

Whether that's an accident or not, I don't know. But it does seem that there was this heated sexual urge that she has great difficulty in mastering with the net result that it controls her. And she ends up, because she's an equivalent, it seems to me, in the New Testament, of the prodigal son.

This is the prodigal daughter. He finishes up smelling of the pigs. She finishes up with the marks of the promiscuity, the promiscuous way of life that she's entered into, actually being etched on her.

If you check through Hosea 1 and 3 and dip into chapter 2, these are only notes you don't get in Hosea, a consistent narrative, you will discover that having now left her husband, having born three children, the parentage of whom are doubtful, she now finds herself at rock bottom in society. Not only a prostitute, but also a slave. And you find that she's on sale.

And she's on sale for 15 shekels. She's going at half price. Why? Because if you live a promiscuous way of life, if you go from one partner to another partner, the risks that you take are incalculable.

I have no need to home in on this. Most of you are very educated in regard to the existence of sexually transmitted diseases and the great plague of AIDS which is confronting us in these days. The Bible has indicated time and time again in the Old Testament and in the New Testament that sex within the context that God has put it in is not only a wonderful thing, it is also a healthful thing.

But outside of that it can be like fire that is completely out of control. It will destroy. And here is Gomer.

I say that promiscuity is a sin against God. It's also a sin against yourself. But here I close down by bringing you to a positive note in conclusion.

Promiscuity is not the unforgivable sin. Promiscuity is not the unforgivable sin. There's a lovely reference in the second chapter to God saying to Gomer who actually illustrates the spiritual infidelity of Israel, I will make the valley of Achor a door of hope.

That's verse 15. Achor is a valley that actually takes its name from a man called Achan who was stoned to death because he played fast and loose with the purposes of God in a different context. And his death, his stoning, gave rise to this, gave birth to this proverbial expression, the valley of Achor, which means the valley of trouble.

Now God doesn't want people to stay in trouble and difficulty. God is not a vindictive God. He yearns for the release of Gomer.

He yearns for the release of his people who spiritually are immoral. He yearns for the release of people today who find themselves somehow bound by pornography and sinful habits, who find themselves as slaves of their instincts. This God is no tyrant.

This God is a loving, compassionate Father who wants to release every man, every woman from the addictions that bind them. And the gospel of redeeming grace is a restorative gospel. It can take the Gomers from this world.

It can take the addicts from this world. It can infuse new life into them. It can restore dignity for them.

For this reason, God came looking for Gomer. For this reason, God came looking for Israel. And so the prophet is told in the third chapter, in the opening verses, the Lord said to me, Hosea, go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.

Love her as the Lord loves Israel. Well, I find that fantastic, don't you? I was once amazed. Tears down my face were coursing when I heard that back in the church where I was brought up in Sheffield, a woman who was a few years older than me, her husband lived fast and loose in that city, contracted venereal disease and passed it on to her and she was prepared to forgive him.

I find that measure of forgiveness fantastic, that Hosea can take this woman who's gone from pillar to post, from hand to hand, who finishes in the gutters as a slave prostitute and love her, and love her with the same love as God loves Israel. That's a tremendous love. And when you think of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and the reason why I died, why he died, hear me when I tell you that it's that same Hosea sort of love, Jesus coming for the Mary Magdalenes, Jesus coming for those who are addicted in any area of their lives which holds them in bondage.

This is the sort of God that you and I can know and worship and feel the release from the sins and the habits that bind. Do you want to be set free from habits which have been a problem to you down these years? I say that by God's grace that this is possible. One of the great difficulties is perhaps making no provision as the apostle Paul says, for the flesh.

One of the problems of addiction is that you'll hate the very thing that binds you. I was reading this afternoon of a man who was bound by pornographic literature. He bought the last magazine.

He looked it through for the last time. He got his match and he started to burn it. And within a few minutes, having been so disgusted at the fact that he'd been involved in reading this stuff and satisfying himself, within a few minutes he was going through the embers to see if there was anything left that he could look at.

Oh my friends, this isn't the way that God wants us to live. God wants us to be free from these addictions. The Lord Jesus Christ says, If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed.

Now again, I say don't leave this place feeling that this has been a negative address. There's not one man or woman in my congregation, I dare to suggest, who hasn't now or in years gone by had problems in this area. The control of the thought life.

We're all sinners together. We're all in this fellowship wanting to help one another. We don't look down upon those who've broken God's law.

There but for the grace of God go we, and very often in our mind we've been there in any case. But here is the message that comes to us from the Old Testament, that however much a goner you've been, there is the goodness and the largeness of the heart of God to forgive you from all your sins and to set you free. And there is the advice in Scripture that those things where you know you are weak on, leave them alone.

Some of us perhaps need to get rid of our television sets. Some of us perhaps need to just check before we read novels that we can't cope with. I'm not suggesting that we evacuate ourselves from this world, but I am saying that there are certain things from which we ought to distance ourselves as we live in this world a salt to savour and as light to illuminate.

So my dear friends, I commit to you this message from God's Word that though sex promiscuity is an offence against God and a sin against yourself, it's not the unpardonable sin. And there is forgiveness and there is power through the blood of our Lord Jesus for you and for me to know release and to know help to make us strong in the way that we live our lives, giving us back self-respect and dignity. Let us pray.

You shall be free indeed You must be born again I want to pray for people in this congregation who first of all perhaps recognize their need to know the forgiving grace of God, to trust Jesus as Lord and Saviour. If that's your desire right now, indicate it to the Lord and follow me as I pray for you. Lord God, illuminate minds quicken hearts and grant redemption and salvation as people trust the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now I want to pray for those of us who find this whole area in some way a struggle, that God will strengthen us and help us and give us his grace. Right now I want to charge this congregation, I want every eye closed and even if you're not quite in agreement with me then at least have the respect for the pulpit of doing what I'm saying and I'm asking friends who perhaps have some area of difficulty in their lives that they want to be resolved just at waist level to extend the palms of their hands. There's nothing magical in this but it's a physical indication of your need.

Now my hands are extended at that level already. I'm not ashamed to say that. I need God's help too.

Now I want to pray by the power of the Holy Spirit that he shall so come upon you that you will be set free from any area that causes you problem in this particular category. Lord God, we come to you in the name of Jesus. We believe that you do free people from addictions.

You give them power because the one who is for us is greater than the one who is against us. So we ask by the overwhelming of your spirit that you will strengthen us and empower us to be able to resist evil in its many manifold forms. We ask that as a congregation of people although we represent a minority opinion in this world that you will make us pure and clean and walk wholly before you and our relationships right with one another.

Firm up every marriage we pray in this church. Bring to a full stop any illicit relationship. We ask Lord that you will clean every impure mind.

That you will cleanse every heart and you will send us out from this place as those who feel that they have been blessed and forgiven and once more granted a new start. So Lord we commit ourselves to you asking for your power in the mighty name of Jesus our Lord and Savior. Amen.

God be in my head and in my understanding God be in mine eyes and in my looking God be in my mouth and in my speaking God be in my heart and in my thinking God be at mine end and at my departing the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the friendship and fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Be with all these dear brothers and sisters, now and always. Amen.

Good night and God bless you.