Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's happening folks? Hey, this is a grateful edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Specifically for you, if you're listening to this, you're part of our church fam here in Compass, north Texas. You were involved in Compass VBS, and I know that wasn't everybody, not everybody was able to be there in person, but I know a lot of you were praying for us anyways. But those of you that were there in person every night this last week and serving, and then especially yesterday morning. Our setup and tear down, or our tear down rather. And then our setup again for church this morning as it's Sunday as you're listening to this, went so smooth. We were done with everything. Within four hours. We had VBS torn down and church setup in a four hour window. And the bonfire in the parking lot at Founder's Classical Academy Fresco. That was amazing. Yeah. That was the fire department came, people in helicopters came to dump water on top of that. But besides that, there was really nothing outta the ordinary besides that. Besides that, no, but it was so cool. We just saw so many of our people show up and just jump in and say, what? What can I do? We need clips taken off the ceiling. Okay, where's the ladder? Grabbing a ladder, going up and doing that. We need the classrooms reset. We need chairs put on tables. We need, it just was everybody all hands on deck and it was just the church being the church, which was so good and so encouraging to see. And that's why we love what we get to do. Hebrews 13, you guys make our jo a job, a joy. And we mean that it is such a great body of believers here at Compass North Texas and we are privileged to be able to be your pastors. And good job. Good job team. Good job, pastor Mark. Good job. Ali. Your whole team VBS was a smashing success. I think it just was. Everything that, that we hoped it would be plus more. We saw an increase in attendance this year. We saw everything just go smoothly. I don't think that there were any fires that needed to be put out throughout the week as far as there's one. Just the bonfire. There was just that one. Actually there was two then, now that I think about it. The other fire that took place was on stage at the closing dance. Pastor Mark was dancing it up. He was cutting the rug. So good. He was the, a fire lit on stage. The guy was just burning up. He was burning. Yeah. It was amazing. Yeah, he was fire. Yeah. But no controversies aside from that. And so it was awesome. Good job team. Hopefully you feel a sense of righteous satisfaction in your labors and your efforts in knowing that it was a good week of service. And listen, we are not about what some churches out there will do and say, Hey, we're gonna, we're gonna get a bunch of professions of faith from these kids during this time. We're gonna dot alter calls during our VBS. We're gonna do this because we really feel like. As they do as well. But we are really careful with that because we wanna make sure that our kids are putting their trust in Jesus of their own volition of him actually truly saving them and opening their eyes to see their need for a savior. Not because they're caught up in the emotions of things or because they've got a leader that they love that's telling 'em they should, or that mom and dad are telling them that they should. So our. Fruit from this is not that we're gonna have a baptism service next weekend where we're gonna baptize 40 kids from VBS. Our fruit from this is knowing man seeds were planted, that we're praying and trusting that God's gonna water and that God will cause the growth and that we'll see them come to faith down the road and they'll be able to point back to a time like this last VBS where they learned a lot about Jesus from day one all the way through day five. They learned a lot about Jesus and we are trusting that God's gonna do great things with the seeds that were planted this week. Good job team. I'd like to say that the seeds went down as deep as they could have been, but I think we could have done something else because at the end when they were Thanksgivings being offered and then the dances ended at the finale, people were super stoked. And I think I heard the crowd saying, pastor PJ Dance, I think I heard one or two people there was on, on, on our staff. People were calling for it is all I'm saying. And. Their calls for gospel love through dance did not come to fruition. So those seed could have been planted deeper and are watering, are you telling Better are telling. Are you telling me at the bema seat that Jesus is gonna say and dance? If you had danced more would've been saved? Yeah, more would've been saved. I dare say I don't think that's the proper interpretation of all things for all people. I I don't know man, pastor Mark did it, so I'm just saying. He did. He did it. He cut the rug. I'm not saying it's his job, but he is the kid's men pastor. Alright y'all, let's jump into Jose. We got a lot of ground to cover today, seven chapters, but we recently covered this. We did in one of our sermons. So did, if you want to hear an extended a shorter. A short but extended version, right? Because it wasn't the whole thing. You wanna hear more? Go download that sermon. Yeah. Yeah. Jose is unique. He's a one of the prophets from the north which I think to our knowledge make him and Jonah the only two that we know for sure. Were from the north, and so he is called from the north and he's called to prophesy bo, both the northern kingdom and the Southern kingdom. Contemporaries of Isaiah and Micah. That's why we're also reading portions of Isaiah right now during our daily Bible reading, which we'll be back in Isaiah, I think in two days now. And he was prophesying. Jose was during a unique time in Israel's history because this was not a time when a seer was knocking at the door when Babylon was bearing down on Judah. This was a time of general prosperity and and everything was easy and comfortable, and with that came a lot of moral decay. And so God was sending Hosea with a message of you need to snap out of it and repent from your sinful ways. Repent from your idolatry of comfort and ease and literal idolatry going after false gods and sexual immorality and everything else that tends to come with that. And you need to return to faithfulness to God, and he's gonna do so by having Hosea act out quite the. The living parable in the first three chapters. And that's what we find as the book opens is Hosea is called to take a wife of Harlett tree. The ESV uses a word that's a little bit stronger than that, I think, but he is called to take an immoral wife, an unfaithful wife, and there's debate about whether or not she was already unfaithful, that she was already in this profession. And then he. Marry her out of that, or whether this was Hosea marry a woman who's going to prove to be unfaithful to you. But either way this was going to depict Israel and Judah's relationship with God that Hosea was the God figure in this living parable. He betroth himself to this woman who proves herself to be unfaithful. But not only that, he also has children with her. And these children become their. Own versions of living parables by the names that they are given. And so God goes through and gives them unique names that are gonna represent what he's gonna do in judgment to the people, but also how he's going to redeem them. And so first he's gonna have the child Jezreel. And again, this is probably as if you remember the sermon and nod to Ahab and Ahab's wickedness in One Kings 21. He did right by. By eliminating the line of the northern kings there. But he also went after the southern kings and that was outside of what God had commanded him to do. So Jezreel there and then the second one, he's gonna have this daughter called No Mercy. And then third, he's gonna have a son called, not My People. And so it escalates. You can see that all the way till the point that God says, Hey. Not my people. I'm done with you. And yet we also see a glimpse of hope in these opening chapters where God's gonna reverse the fortunes and say, there's going to be a time when I am gonna say that you are my people. I am gonna show mercy to you. And so mixed in the book of Hosea is this hope for the remnant, the faithful remnant, but also the intense judgment that is being threatened against an idolatrous. I immoral people in the northern and southern kingdoms. Yeah, it seems like through mu much of Hosea, there's this ongoing cycle and this kind of rhythm where you'll notice that God judges his people, he's expressing his forthcoming judgment, but also quickly thereafter, there's gonna be a section of, but I'm gonna love you again. I'm gonna restore you. I'm going to do good things to you. So it's a really interesting play. But it happens. A lot throughout the prophets. You're gonna see that same kind of rhythm as you read. What's interesting here, pastor pge, tell me about what you think about this. I read recently, and I noticed this when I read this time around, is that there's only one child that's explicitly said to be his. The others are a little ambiguous. Would you put any stock in that? Are these his kids? Are they other people's kids? Do we know? Yeah. And that's commentaries are split on that. Whether or not these are children that she had with these other. People that she suitors Yeah. Was with, or whether these are hosea's and I think that the commentaries that I went to the most basically landed on, we, they think that these are hosea's children. That these are his that there's nothing explicit in that text, which would indicate that these are somebody else's, that he's adopting. Even the fact that he's able to name them. Would it indicate as some suggested that he has a role in their. Their progeny in their existence. That he takes the fatherly role of naming these children as God commanded 'em to. Now God could still do that in another situation, but I kind of land, I think these are all his, yeah. Either way I don't think it really changes a whole lot of the interpretation just to, a point of curiosity. Yeah. But another, regardless, it does show that God is committed to his people besides the fact that they are adulterers. Yeah. Yeah. And that's really where after chapter three the rest of the book really unpacks that and it lays out for us the idolatry, the sinfulness of Israel, and why God was doing what he was doing in these opening three chapters. And he goes after them. Pretty intensely and doesn't pull back and doesn't pull punches on them. But he identifies their idolatry here in chapter four with pretty stark words like verse 12 when he says, my people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles. The prophets will do this often. They will mock. The foolishness of idolatry, and it really is. They'll say you elsewhere in the prophets, say you take a log and with half of it, you warm your house and with half of it, you bow down and worship to it. And that's the same thing that he's saying here. You inquire, you ask of a piece of wood, and your walking staff gives you oracles because your staff is the same thing as the idle that you're bowing down before. Verse 17, EEM, remember Eem, anytime we read that is the northern kingdom there. Eem is joined to idols, leave him alone. Even that we're joined there and I, and I. Should have gone to the Hebrew. I don't know what the Hebrew word is there but what came to mind is the idea of being betrothed, even with the opening of this situation of Hosea marrying a wife of Harlotry. I wonder there if this is the same root word or at least a similar synonym there for eing joining himself to idolatry. And God is just pointing out the intensity and depth of the sin of the people. But this is where he's going in these opening chapters here. Yeah. One, one thing I just wanna point out to, in chapter four, specifically the second half of verse 14, I just wanna point out something that you're gonna see as part of the thematic. One of the themes that Hosea captures, he says that people without understanding shall come to ruin. And the understanding is not just an intellectual, generalized understanding about how the world works, but specifically their understanding of the Lord. They're going through the motions in some ways, and yet he's charging them with saying, you don't even know me. You don't understand my words, you don't understand my will, and therefore what you're doing is all out of a lack of understanding. And he's gonna say that people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. In fact, that's the top of verse six here. He says, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge because you have rejected knowledge. I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children. Our relationship to God is founded by founded on Grace through faith. We are accepted by him. We are adopted by him, and that relationship is unilateral. He extends grace to us. We receive that. But once we're in Christ, there is an obligation that corresponds to our covenantal relationship to him that says we ought to be obedient. We ought to know his word. We ought to do what his word says, which is why we do this podcast in the first place, because we care so deeply that we know who he is and we do according to what He wills for us. Our whole existence is to know and love God, and this is how we do that lest we be destroyed for lack of knowledge. Yeah. And that's that lack of knowledge there is a willful lack of knowledge. To your point, it this is not like God is, he's hiding out hiding. He's not hiding. And this is also not God calling out people that. Didn't have an opportunity to know him. Oh yeah. They had every opportunity to know him. And that's another thing that you see in the prophets as well. When the prophets say are prophesying and the people say, we're putting our fingers in our ears. We don't wanna hear you. Stop prophesying. Stop telling us these things. That's the lack of knowledge. That's a willful ignorance there, to your point that. That is God is gonna judge. And in chapter five he gets into what that judgment's gonna be and he says, it's not just gonna be Israel, but it's also gonna be Judah. He says in verse five, Judah shall also stumble with them. And we get a little bit of a glimpse of what that's gonna look like. Later on in the chapter in verse 13, he says, when Eem, again, the northern Kingdom saw his sickness and Judah his wound, then Ephrem went to Assyria and sent to the Great King. Now this is unique here because this is probably alluding to the Syria. Ate war. The war between them and Syria, as Syria is proving to be a thorn in their sides. They actually go to the nation. That's going to be their end. They go to Assyria and they ask Assyria to come and help. And Assyria is going to be a. Sort of help because again, we've, and we've talked about this before on the podcast, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? And so they're gonna go after the enemy that's coming against ere because Assyria is gonna benefit from that too. But then they're gonna put ere under their thumb. And so that's what's happening here, ere rather than returning to the Lord, trusting in the Lord is going to try to appease. Assyria, and that's gonna be a problem, not just for Eem, but as we've talked about also for Judah, because the Assyrians are gonna have a massive role in God's judgment against both the northern and the southern kingdom, even though the Southern kingdom is not gonna be completely judged until Babylon comes along. But Assyria is a problem, and that's the judgment that's coming in chapter five. Notice again in chapter five, verse four. They know not the Lord. The spirit of prostitution is with them for they know not the Lord. Sin emerges from a lack of knowledge of the Lord's will and the Lord's ways. And so if you want to fight your sin better and know how to love the Lord better, you have to do it. In conjunction with a knowledge of the Lord and a knowledge of his word, which is where he goes in chapter six, right? Because he's anticipating I, I think here he's anticipating, okay, maybe there are some that are gonna hear this message and be cut to the heart and say, what do we do? And so he says there in chapter six, come let us return to the Lord for he has torn us, that he may heal us. And we talked about that a lot. That there's a, a. There's a didactic purpose of God's discipline in our life that God will use discipline and suffering to teach us something, to get our attention, to bring us back to Him. And that's the purpose of discipline to begin with. That's why, the writer of Hebrews brings up discipline and says, a it's as a father disciplines his son because he why? Because he loves him and he doesn't want him to go astray. And so Jose is saying, God has torn us that he may heal us, but. If he's gonna heal us, we need to repent. We need to return to him. And like you've been talking about in verse three, pastor Rob, we need to know him. Let us know the Lord. In fact, I love the imagery. Let us press on to know him. Let's work at it. Let's labor to know God and I think this is that knowledge that is more than just, do we know the theology? Do we know the doctrine? Do we have these things in place? But it's more of the, do we know him relationally? Do we have that component in place there? We're gonna be talking about that a lot. This morning in church as we study another amount of Prophet Haggai. But this is a relational knowledge that, that Israel had rejected God and had walked away from it and. Hosea here is calling them back to that saying, come back. Let's strive together to know the Lord. Yeah. Speaking of relational knowledge, verse six, lemme just point this out to you guys. It says here Hosea is speaking on behalf of the Lord. I desire steadfast love, Hess said, and not sacrifice. In other words, I want the relationship with you. I don't care about the offerings on the altar. Those matter, but they don't matter if there's no relationship there. Second half of verse six, the knowledge of God rather than burn offerings. There you see God's desire for connection with his people. He gives them rules and regulations and not so he can be overbearing and command them to do what he wants. He's commanding them for their good and that those rules and regulations are meant to. To de determine to define the boundaries of their relationship. And so God desires their steadfast love. He desires the same from you today. He desires not that you obey all the rules, although the rules are important, he desires a relationship with you, and the rules are there so that they can foster and contribute to that deepening and profound relationship. Yeah. Unfortunately, chapter Seven's gonna reveal that Israel's not gonna. Heed these words, at least by and large. And he even says in seven verse one, when I would heal Israel, the iniquity of eem is revealed and the evil deeds of Samaria for they deal falsely. He goes on and on. Verse 10, the main indictment here, the pride of Israel testifies to his face, yet they do not return to the Lord there God, nor do they seek him for all of this. Verse 11, Ephrem is like a dove silly. Without sense. Thanks for that man sound. I didn't hear that. That was just here. That's really good. Calling to Egypt and going to Assyria and so you just, we read this and it's like, why are you turning everywhere else but to God who's trying to get your attention. And yet sometimes that, that. That's not unique. That's been true of mankind throughout human history. That's true of people today. That can be true of a Christian. God may be trying to get your attention today, and you may be looking for everything else to try to solve the solution and to find deliverance rather than going back to God, the one who may have torn you in this season, that he may heal you. Israel is rejecting God, saying, no, we're not gonna go back to him. Let's go to Egypt. Maybe Egypt will help us, so let's go to assy. Let's go everywhere else we can except coming back to God the way that God is calling them to do. Yeah, what a great. Call to a life of repentance. When we live the Christian life, there's not a lot different from us in Israel. There's a lot of differences. Obviously there's a discontinuity. We're dispensationalist and so we believe God has a plan specifically for them. But when it comes to our relational connection to God, there, there are similarities. And there's a lot of similarities. And there's a lot of differences. But the thing I wanna point out is that we're not too different. We're still made of the same flesh. The difference is that we have by the power of the spirit, the ability to connect with God in a way that is satisfying, deep, profound, and even permanent. Their interaction with God was largely contingent upon their response to him, and it's the same for us. Their difference is that they didn't have the indwelling spirit like you and I do. Which means we now have a power source within us to draw near to God and to love him with heart, soul, mind, and strength. This is the beauty of the new covenant. So as you read through Hosea and you see the charges brought against the people of Israel and Judah, by God recognize that those are serious charges that God still cares about, he still cares about our fidelity. But the biggest difference is that we have the spirit. God's not gonna talk to us the way he talk to them. We have the spirit of God. We're in a different class, and thank God for that. Amen. Let's pray and then we will be done with these first seven chapters here. God, we thank you for the book of Hosea. We. Pray that we would be able to glean things. This is a tough stretch. It can be at least during our daily Bible reading of being in the prophets and trying to understand these things. God we thank you that you've given us commentaries and other helps to be able to understand and sort through these details and figure out what it is these meant at that time and how they should impact our lives today. We pray that these podcasts would help towards that end as well. Lord. Glad to be able to do this and to pray that it would continue to prove a blessing to our people. So we thank you for this time and your word, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See ya. Bye.

thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.