 Okay, this is blowing my mind. I was having a conversation with my wife in the car the other day, and we were listening to a John Piper sermon. Now, John Piper was making reference to Hosea. Now, if you're not familiar with Hosea, basically Hosea, the point of Hosea is there's this man named Hosea, and he marries this prostitute, this whore, as the Bible puts it, Gomorrah, okay? And basically, the point of the book is to demonstrate that Hosea is supposed to play God, and Gomorrah is Israel, so God is the faithful husband who continues to receive back this prostitute of a wife who continues to abandon him, but yet he still loves her. And this was a picture of God's love for Israel, and yet Israel continued to rebel and just screw things up. Now, after hearing the story, you might be like, wow, that's a really cool analogy, and that's really amazing of God, and that's kind of how I've always thought about it. But then, in this conversation we are having, we're actually kind of digging deeper a little bit more to understand that sex, right, and sex within marriage is one of the most vulnerable and intimate experiences, if not the most, right? Vulnerable and intimate experiences a human being can have. And so within the context of that relationship, there's the vulnerability, there's the intimacy, but then when somebody within that relationship decides to betray that trust, betray that intimacy, and sleep with somebody else, in a sense that is the deepest betrayal that we can experience on earth, right? Because you think about it, it's the deepest intimacy, the deepest vulnerability, and yet that is betrayed with another person. And so what God is doing here, I think in an amazing way, that just kind of a mind blowing way, is he is showing us that we have betrayed him in the most intimate way possible, by us leaving his, him creating us, right? Him creating us, him knowing us from day one, and yet we've decided to spit in his face to rebel against him. I think about throughout the Bible, when it talks about kind of this sexual intimacy that happens, often it's referred to as, you know, somebody knowing another person. So Adam knew Eve, right? And that's such a cool way of phrasing it because it's this deep intimate knowledge that moves beyond just kind of the intellect to the physical and also the spiritual, because it is a spiritual act as well. And so what God is doing here, continuing to do, is to demonstrate that there is this deep intimacy that has been broken by our sin, that we've betrayed him, that we've rebelled against him, and yet while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Another interesting aspect to this is marital unfaithfulness, is grounds for biblical divorce. Think about that for a second. When a partner decides to sleep with somebody else, right? That is grounds for biblical divorce, not all the time that people would go through with that. There's forgiveness to be had, but that is at least on one level, something to be said, okay, hey, this is justified, but we have betrayed God. And in a real sense, he has had grounds for divorce. He has had grounds for divorcing us of any kind of life or hope or freedom that we might want. He has grounds to just separate us for all of eternity, and yet he receives us back in love. He receives us back in love. How beautiful is that picture of the gospel that we didn't deserve that, we didn't deserve his love. He paints himself as the husband who has opened himself to provide and protect, and he's offered himself to us in that way. And yet we have turned aside and returned to the scum of the streets. Oh man, this theme of betrayal runs deep in the scriptures. I think about David, right? King David, a man after God's own heart, right? Somebody that God loved deeply. And yet God, in the moments where he committed the sin with Bathsheba and had Uriah killed, and all of these things and tried to hide his sin and run from what he had done, he was betraying God and he was betraying those around him. This is deep betrayal. And yet when David turned to God in repentance and said, God, against you and you alone have, I sinned, he received forgiveness. He received forgiveness. God had given him so much, so much, from being a nobody, right? Being a shepherd, raising him to be the king of Israel. And yet David, as he committed that sin, spat in God's face, spat in the face of the God who had made him. And yet God forgave him, amidst his repentance. I think of the apostle Peter, who was right next to Jesus, throughout his whole ministry, who would say, no, nothing's gonna happen to you, Jesus. We won't let anything happen to you. No, you won't die. No, we'll be with you. No, we'll never betray you. Constantly reaffirming his love and his commitment to the mission of Christ. And yet, when the rooster crowed three times, he betrayed him and betrayed him and betrayed him again. And that was a powerful moment where even Peter, the one who had stood beside Jesus, betrayed him. And he went back fishing, and then Jesus once again comes to him and says, feed my sheep, feed my lambs, feed my sheep. This is a powerful invitation back into the mission to say, hey, I recognize that you've done this. I recognize your betrayal here. And it's not a dismissal of that, but it's rather an invitation to say, hey, let's get back on the path. I recognize, you know, you've messed up here. You've known, you've done something wrong here, but I wanna invite you back onto this mission because that is what is important. Think of the apostle Paul who was ravaging the church and murdering Christians, and yet God transformed his life so that he would be one of the powerhouse apostles in writing the scriptures, in converting, in planting churches. And it's just this wonderful display of God's transformation. And his forgiveness emits this kind of betrayal. You see, Paul, he thought he was doing the Lord's work. He thought he was acting on behalf of the God. He thought he knew, but actually he was acting in opposition to God. And it was only amidst his transformation that he recognized that me, yeah, I am the chief among sinners. And he understood his own lowliness in the kingdom of God, and yet God elevated him to this place of exaltation because of this humility that he experienced. And so we see this theme of betrayal throughout scripture, and yet God once again receiving us back in our repentance into his family to say, I welcome you back. Just as the prodigal son ran from home, spending all of his inheritance on sinful pleasures and things that would not satisfy him when he returned home, he said, I'm just worthy to be a servant. Just make me a servant. I'm not worthy to be your son anymore. And the father welcomes him home saying, my son has returned, let's throw a party because this is a joyous and this is the son that I delight in. And that's a beautiful picture. It's something that that son didn't deserve and it's something that we don't deserve. And so this is kind of just what I've been pondering. I've been thinking about this. We've betrayed God in the deepest, most intimate way. And yet God once again receives us back by his grace. It shows us the extent and the gravity and the grandeur of his mercy and grace. Truly delight in him, delight in that grace. If you've yet to receive that today, put your faith in Jesus and receive his mercy and his grace and become a child of God today. Thank you to everyone who supports what I do on this channel. If you enjoy this content, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single week. Thanks to everyone who supports on Patreon and my mission of equipping people to follow Jesus daily. If you wanna support what I'm doing, click the link in my description. Until next time, God bless.