Way back in 1994, there was a song released by David Lee
Murphy called Dust on the Bottle.
Uh, I only recently as an adult learned that that was sing bottle and not Bible.
That's what you get for growing up as a kid in the church,
always talking about the Bible.
There might be a little bit of dust on the Bible, but don't let
it fool you about what's inside.
It works.
It's just not what he wrote.
He wrote about something different.
But we're coming to a portion of the Bible that might be a little dusty for us.
The minor prophets, uh, this section of scripture is not one
that we camp out in a whole lot.
It's not one that we spend a lot of time in regularly.
It's, it's one that we come to yearly as we do our daily Bible reading together,
and we, we read through them maybe without fully understanding what we're reading.
And even the name minor prophets, we think to ourselves, what is this referring to?
Is it like a, it's a minor key?
Are they small?
What, what's, what's going on here?
Well, that's one of the reasons why we're going through this together
this summer, because this is a, an important part of scripture
as all of scripture is important.
And though these 12 books, and we're not gonna go through all 12,
but I think 10 out of the 12, um, are these 12 books are, are written
primarily to Israel or to Judah.
There are truths within them that impact you and I today.
And as the whole Bible is necessary and good and relevant and helpful
for us to live lives of, of godliness, we find that we need to
understand this portion of the Bible.
And so there might be a little dust on our Bibles in this portion, but don't
let it fool you about what's inside.
We're coming this morning to the Book of Hosea, and on the back of your notes,
you're gonna find this timeline here.
And, and this is a, a rough and dirty estimate of where these authors all fell,
uh, their prophetic ministries fell in the course of the history of Israel.
Uh, you'll see on there that Jonah, it's our best guess, was the earliest of the
writing prophets around seven 90 bc.
To put that in perspective for you, king David was around 1000 bc.
And so we're a couple hundred years removed from David.
By the time we get to Hosea, about 250 years removed from David.
The kingdom has divided.
You've got the Northern Kingdom and you've got the Southern Kingdom.
The Southern Kingdom being Judah, the Northern kingdom being Israel.
And so you've got the prophets writing post divided Kingdom to
these two nations, these two peoples.
In fact, it wasn't just to them, this is might be hard to read,
but these are all of the prophets and the people that they wrote to.
And so Hosea wrote to Israel, the Northern Kingdom, Joel, to Judah, the
Southern Kingdom, and so forth and so on.
There's a couple of outliers there.
You've got Obediah writing to the Edomites.
You've got Jonah and Nahum writing to the Ninevites, and then most of them writing
to the, the Southern Kingdom to Judah.
And so as we go through these, uh, we're gonna say, man, these were
written to people that aren't us.
These were written to the the Israelites, or to the Judeans, or to
the Edomites, or to the Ninevites.
And so, pastor, what, what, how do I understand what this means for me?
Well, this is gonna be a unique series because it's not gonna be the type of
series where we're gonna get into the weeds on every single verse or every
single chapter, every single passage.
We just don't have the time to do that.
We're covering a book a week, and so for example, this morning,
our book has 14 chapters.
Y'all don't want me to preach 14 chapters of my normal preaching
up here for you this morning.
Otherwise, we're gonna be here until next Sunday, and we're supposed
to be up in Prosper next Sunday.
So that said, here's my goal for us in this series.
I want us to walk away from every single week understanding the core
message of the book, and I want us to walk away understanding how that
message impacts us as New Testament followers of Jesus Christ, because I
believe wholeheartedly that it does.
So as we get into the Book of Hosea, some background information here, the author.
Uh, hopefully that's not news, is Hosea.
We find that in Hosea chapter one, verse one In the days of us, Isaiah Jotham,
Ahaz and Hezekiah, Kings of Judah.
And in the days of Gerome, the son of Josh, king of Israel.
This is when Hosea, as he starts out here, uh, wrote the word
of the Lord, came to Hosea.
We don't know a lot about Hosea.
There's not a lot of information in the Bible outside of what
we read here in the book.
He appears to be somebody that was from the Northern Kingdom, as that's
his main target audience here.
He wrote from about seven 50 or ministered rather from about seven 50
to 7 22 BC probably beyond 7 22 bc.
But in 7 22 BC something significant happened in the northern kingdom,
and that is the Assyrians came in and took captive the Northern kingdom
and carried them off into exile.
And so that's why I put a little bit of a hard stop on Jose's ministry, even
though it probably continued, some people believe into maybe seven 15 BC even.
In context though, uh, the audience he's talking to is Israel.
And, and as we get into the context, the context is this, uh, things
were going really well initially.
In fact, the background to this, we read about in Two Kings 26 through
32, and or second Chronicles, excuse me, second Chronicles 26
through 32, and Second Kings 14.
So that's a little bit about what's going on the Northern Kingdom.
Things are going well.
Under Jerome's reign, he was restoring the borders.
He was establishing Israel on the map.
It was a time of prosperity and security for the people in the south back in Judah.
Things were going well there too.
Siah had strengthened the the defenses of Jerusalem and was expanding
Judah's power even during this time.
But along with this came moral decay.
The, the ease and comfort and the wealth and prosperity of the time
introduced moral decay, especially there in the northern Kingdom.
And so as time went on, the, the Northern Kingdom began to
rebel more and more against God to understand what is going on.
And so many of the minor prophets, we have to understand the backdrop
to this being the mosaic Covenant.
Deuteronomy chapter 28 lists the blessings for Israel if they would obey the Lord
and the cursings for Israel, the judgment for Israel if they would disobey God.
And so, so much of the minor prophets is looking at Israel and looking at Judah
and saying, y'all did not obey the Lord.
And so here comes the judgment of God.
And so in the Book of Hosea, we're gonna deal with that.
God is going to call Israel out for her sinfulness.
For her unfaithfulness, and he's gonna say, you know what?
Judgment is coming upon you Israel.
And yet at the same time, the undercurrent in so many of these books, there is a
hope that's held out to say, but this is not the end, that God is not done, that
God is not going to create a, a burn mark on the ground with the nation of
Israel, but even for the nation of Israel, even for the Northern Kingdom, there
would be hope in a future, a hope and a restoration, a hope in coming back to God.
That's anchored to a different covenant called the Abrahamic covenant.
The Abrahamic covenant was given to Abraham, obviously by name, and
it was a, an unconditional promise of God to the people of Israel.
It was a unilateral covenant, meaning one sided covenant where God promised Israel
that he would bless them and that they would have a future, and that he would
give them land and give them descendants and give them all of the blessings
therein that he promised to Abraham.
And so that's why God was never gonna be fully done.
With the people of Israel.
And so even in the pages of Hosea, we read about his judgment.
We read about Israel's sin, and yet the undercurrent there is God's not done.
And so there is going to be a, a promise, a hope of redemption.
As we go through this study, I hope that you can walk away associating
a, a word or a phrase with each of the minor prophets that we cover.
And the phrase of the word that I'd like you to connect with Hosea is
the theme, redemption, redemption.
Th this is a book about how God's unfailing love pursues
us, even as our love falters.
As we get into the text together, we're really gonna cover this morning, just
three chapters, just out of 14, and the three chapters that we're gonna
cover are the opening three chapters.
Because the way that Hosea breaks down is this, it breaks down into this living
parable in the opening three chapters.
That's then explained in chapters four through 14.
And so I think if we can get the message and get the picture of this living parable
in the opening three chapters here, then we're gonna walk away with a good
understanding for the rest of the book.
The rest of the book actually goes through a cycle of judgment and mercy as God is.
Indicting Israel for their sin, but also promising to be merciful to them.
Again, the judgment and redemption theme that courses throughout the book.
But as we look at this opening three chapters, this living
Parable of Hosea, we're gonna encounter this woman named Gomer.
And and Gomer is going to be defined as a woman of unfaithfulness, a
woman of Harlotry, and even some stronger language that he uses.
And the uncomfortable reality as we study the book of Hosea is this, we are Gomer.
And God is, is Hosea.
So the uncomfortable part is coming to terms with the fact that we are Gomer,
but our hope is that God is Hosea.
So with that in mind, let's jump in in chapter one, look with me at verses
two through three, God says to Hosea, it says, when the Lord first spoke
through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go and take to yourself a wife of ham.
And have children of horde for the land commits great horde by forsaking the Lord.
So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of de blame, and she
conceived and bore him a son.
Now, if you are familiar with anything about Hosea, you're
probably familiar with this story.
Hosea and Gomer.
A and the word that's used in relation to Gomer is a word that's uncomfortable.
It's unsavory.
By the way, if just a shameless plug for our podcast.
I warned you guys about the word on our podcast.
If you listen to the Daily Bible podcast this week, you knew that this was coming.
It, it's a word that makes us uncomfortable.
It's a word that's translated differently.
In other translations, uh, other translations will say,
go and take a wife of Harlotry.
Go take a wife of prostitution, uh, go take a wife who is unfaithful.
And, and the reason being is, is the Hebrew word is a word
that that can mean those things.
And so it's left to the translators of the English text to say, okay,
what's being communicated here?
And, and the reason why I'm, I'm uncomfortable with the concept of
prostitution or even harlotry, is we don't know that that's specifically
the sin of his, of, of Gomer here.
We know she's going to prove to be unfaithful.
We don't even know if she was unfaithful prior to Hosea marrying her.
It's possible that she was simply a, an Israelite virgin that Hosea
married, who then would prove to be.
Unfaithful to him.
And so there's a difference, for example, between somebody who is an adulterous
and somebody who is a prostitute.
And so that's why I think as we study this, we need to understand that the
best we can say is that God was telling Hosea, Hosea, go marry a woman who's
going to prove to be unfaithful to you.
That's enough though for us, isn't it?
To pull the E-brake a little bit here and to say, I'm sorry, God,
you want me to do what I imagine.
Those of you married in the room, if, if you knew that your spouse was going to be
unfaithful to you, egregiously unfaithful to you, would you still have married them?
On the front end,
God is saying to Hosea, go and marry a woman who's gonna be unfaithful to you.
God has often done this with the prophets that has caused them to be
a, a living story, a living parable.
He does this with Ezekiel and, and with some of the others as well, where he
commands them to act out things that represent his judgment, and that's what
God is doing here with Hosea and Gomer.
Hosea has told, go and marry this wife, by the way, that word, the word
ham, the same word unfaithfulness, is used multiple times in the scriptures
to refer to the state of Israel.
In Deuteronomy 31 16, it's there to point to the fact that Israel was going
to to to be an adulterous by going after other gods of the other nations.
In Psalm 1 0 6, verse 39, it shows up in Isaiah 1 21.
It shows up.
It shows up three times in the book of Judges, seven times in Jeremiah, 40 times.
The word happens in Ezekiel in relation to Israel, and it shows up
11 times here in the book of Hosea.
And so God tells Jose, go and marry a wife of unfaithfulness.
But more than that, he says, and have a family with her,
have children of unfaithfulness.
And so these children then, as we continue on, are born to Jose one by one.
In verse four, it says, the Lord said to him, the firstborn
son, call his name Jezreel.
For in just a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu, a northern king.
For the blood of Jezreel, and I'll put an end to the kingdom of the House of
Israel, and on that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.
This is referring back to a situation in two kings, chapter nine and 10, Jay,
who had killed a Isiah, the Southern king and destroyed his family members.
On top of that, that was against God's command.
That was not something that God had told Jehu to do, and it was
an abomination in the eyes of God.
And so God is calling receipts now.
For the breaking of God's commands, the breaking of God's law.
And so here he says, name the firstborn Jezreel.
It's a reminder of Israel's sin.
It's a reminder of Israel's rebellion.
It's a reminder of Israel's unfaithfulness against me.
But then she was going to have another child.
This is gonna be a daughter.
And it says in verse six, this time she conceived and bo a daughter and the Lord
said to to Hosea, call her name no mercy for I will no more have mercy on the
house of Israel to forgive them at all.
Lo Ruma.
In Exodus 34, God defines himself or calls himself Ruhama.
Lo is the negative of that.
And so in Exodus 34, when Moses says to God, God, show me who you are, God passes
before him and declares to him his name.
And one of the attributes that he declares as part of who He by nature is, is Ruhama.
That he is a God of mercy.
That he's a merciful God.
And yet at the same time as he passes before him, he says, but I
will by no means pardon the guilty.
And so God, in this birth of this daughter is again calling
receipts, and he's saying to Hosea, call her name, no mercy, low ham.
My mercy, my patience has run out with the northern kingdom
and I'm coming in judgment.
And then he continues and he has another child after Lo Ruma.
And this one's in verse eight.
It says, when she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son.
And the Lord said, call his name not my people.
For you are not my people, and I am not your God.
Lo am me in Leviticus, chapter 26, verse 12.
God had said to the nation of Israel, he had said this, I will walk among you.
And I will be your God and you shall be my people.
This is God indicting the unfaithfulness of the nation of Israel, this
living parable, uh uh, Hosea go and take a wife of unfaithfulness.
Why?
Because Israel has been unfaithful.
And have children of unfaithfulness.
By the way, there are some that argue that these are children that
that Gomer had with another man.
But I think the fact that Hosea is given the naming privileges over these children
conveys the idea that he is having children with Hosea e or with Gomer, even
though Gomer had been unfaithful to him.
So I think these are Hosea's sons and daughter, and he is given the
charge, name them these things to remind the people of their rebellion
against God, and it continues.
Then in chapter two.
Verse two, the the language continues to be stark and graphic and hard to palate.
It says this plead with your mother, plead for she is not my
wife and I'm not her husband.
That she put away her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her
breasts, lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born and make
her like a wilderness and make her like a parched land and kill her with thirst.
It's uncomfortable for us to read these things.
If you feel uncomfortable, then mission accomplished.
That's where God wants us.
That's where God wanted Israel.
Israel had turned to other nations and other gods over and over again
thinking that it was in them, that they would find security and wealth
and provision and, and blessing and honor and, and prestige and power.
All the while, all of those things were meant to be found in God and given
to God, and now God had had enough and his patience was wearing thin
with his people, and he was coming in judgment against their unfaithfulness.
Chapter two verses nine and following.
Therefore, I will take back my grain in its time and my wine in its season.
I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness.
Now I will uncover her lewdness, her shame in the sight of her lovers, and
no one shall rescue her out of my hand, and I will put an end to all her mirth.
That word mirth is not a word we use often.
It's a word that means what?
It doesn't sound like mirth is frivolity.
It's joyfulness, it's happiness.
I'm gonna take away her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths,
and all her appointed feast, all of her religious pomp and circumstance.
I'm gonna take all of that away and I will lay waste her vines and her fig
trees, of which she said, these are my wages, which my lovers have given me.
I will make them a forest and the beast of the field shall devour them.
And I will punish her for the feast days of the beals when she burned
offerings to them and adorned herself with ring and jewelry and went
after her lovers and for forgot me.
Declares the Lord.
Israel had taken the Lord and cast the Lord behind her back.
She had forgotten the one to whom she had been betrothed.
In fact, in Hosea chapter four, verse one, it puts it this way, here, the
word of the Lord, oh, children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy
with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love.
There is no knowledge of God in the land.
Hosea six verse four drives it home even further for us.
It says this, what should I do with you O efm, and what should I do with you?
O Judah, your love is like a morning cloud.
Like the do that goes early away.
Have you ever gone out in the morning and, and seen the brilliance of the clouds?
And they stand out in, in stark contrast because of the morning light
and the way that it hits the clouds.
But then by two, three o'clock you go outside and there's
no more clouds in the sky.
They've gone away.
Or you go out into your yard in the morning and it's covered in dew and
you think, wow, it's so saturated.
This must, there must be so much water here.
Look at how saturated the ground is would dew, and then you go out a few hours
later and it's as dry as it could be.
That's how God compares the affections of Israel for him at this time.
There's no substance, there's no endurance.
There's no persistence.
See Israel's sin at this time was spurning the God who had betrothed her to himself,
the God who had led them out of Israel or out of Egypt, rather, and into the
wilderness, and delivered them through the, the wilderness wanderings and brought
them into the land and given them their, their territory and given them King David
and given them King Solomon and given them the law and given them all these blessings
only to have Israel turn her back at the Lord and go after these other lovers.
I mentioned a second ago that these texts may cause some discomfort in you and I.
I, I hope it does.
And what's even more uncomfortable is for us to ask the question,
okay, where are we in Hosea?
Yes.
This is written to the Northern Kingdom.
This was written to Israel.
This is not written specifically to the church, and yet because it is God's
inspired word and it is relevant at all times in all seasons, for God's
people, there are truths for us to glean.
And the uncomfortable reality that we first have to come to terms
with this morning in this book is this, that you and I are Gomer.
We are the unfaithful ones before our faithful gal.
Point number one this morning.
Along those lines is this, recognize the adulterous nature of your sin.
Recognize the adulterous nature of your sin.
Uh, and none of us wanna be Gomer, not only because the name
is a horrible, horrible name.
None of us want to be the harlet.
None of us want to wear the title of unfaithful.
None of us want to be considered the wife of ham,
and yet in our sin, that's who we are before God.
Two Corinthians 11, 2, 2 Corinthians 11, two.
The apostle Paul says this, I feel a divine jealousy for
you since I betrothed you.
I weed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin bride to Christ.
Uh, Paul's writing to the Corinthians and, and he's, he's writing to them
saying, I'm jealous for your godliness.
I'm jealous for your holiness.
I'm jealous for your purity.
Because I wed you to, God, you are his bride and I don't want
you to be unfaithful to him.
And so church, we are the bride of Christ.
When you individually came to faith in Jesus, you were betrothed
to him, you were wed to him.
And just like in our human marriages, God expects faithfulness from us.
The problem is that we so often turn to other lovers.
In the Old Testament, Israel's relationship with the Lord was expressed
by their obedience to the Mosaic law.
Thus breaking the law was equivalent to unfaithfulness in their relationship
with Yahweh, and that's what God was entering into judgment with them over.
Well in the New Testament, our relationship with God
is similarly expressed.
Let me be clear on that word.
Not founded, not based in, but expressed by our obedience to
him, our faithfulness to him.
In fact, we studied the gospel of John together, where Jesus says, if you
love me, you will keep my commandments.
Our love is known by our obedience, our faithfulness, and that's
not a difficult concept for you.
If you are married, you can speak all of the tender words and the the
passionate words and the words of devotion to your wife, and yet, if
you are not faithful in action towards her, then those words are nothing and
they're hollow and they ring empty
like Israel.
This means that our disobedience should be seen as unfaithfulness to
the God to whom we have been betrothed.
Gomer wrongly believed that it was her adulterous lovers that were providing
all of the good, the wine, the food, the, the clothing, all of these things.
She thought that that was coming from her, her adulterous lovers, when in reality,
even in her unfaithfulness, Hosea was still the one that was providing for her.
For you and I, our belief that, that God is, is not the one that
provides, it looks different.
It's more subtle.
It's not going after a a, a, another woman or another man, although
maybe in some context that's what it has been, but it can be more
insidious and more subtle than that.
For example, we can look to our job in our intellect and our work ethic.
And think, well, that's what's been the, the key to providing a, a high paying
job and a secure future for my family.
And, and we look to the, the gift rather than the gift giver,
or we take our eyes off of God and, and we, we believe that it's our,
our workout regimen in our healthy diet, in our routine checkups.
That's what's keeping me healthy.
That's what's providing my health and, and my strength.
I'm in, I'm in good physical condition because of me, because I've done these
things and we've taken our eyes off of our, our husband, our, our father, the,
the one that has given us these good gifts and put them instead on ourselves.
Or we believe that it's, well, our approach to parenting our discipline
because we put our kids through this particular school and not that one that
has produced the children that we have.
And so we look to those things and we give those things the credit
and glory rather than our God,
or we believe that the images on our computer screens are gonna satisfy us
more than our wife or our husband Will.
We believe that the bottle of wine is gonna provide the calm and the escape that
we need rather than turning to the Lord instead, or we believe that the outburst
of anger is going to really satisfy our thirst for justice rather than allowing
the Lord to be the God of justice.
Who says vengeance is mine.
I will repay.
Or we believe that divorce is gonna provide the reset.
We need to find happiness in life.
These are the lovers that we chase.
Even still today as a church, it's not a be all.
It's not an Astra for, but the idols that fill our lives are there nonetheless.
And what we have to understand church is that our sin is adultery against
the God to whom we have been betrothed.
And we can't clean it up or domesticate it or tolerate it or
think it isn't as bad as someone else.
So why does it matter?
Let me ask you this question, lemme phrase it first.
To those that are married in the room, would you be okay with your
spouse committing a little bit of unfaithfulness, so long as it wasn't as
much unfaithfulness as somebody else?
Would you be okay with that?
Would you be willing to live with that?
Because you could say, well, at least you're not as unfaithful to
me as that person is over there.
Those of you that may not be married.
Think about other marriages.
Think about your parents growing up.
Would you have been okay knowing that your dad was unfaithful to your mom as long
as it wasn't as unfaithful as somebody else was unfaithful to their parent.
See, we're not okay with unfaithfulness in in our our lives.
Why are we okay with unfaithfulness in our relationship with God?
Why do we sit here with our sin and, and think, well, it's not as bad as
somebody else's, so God, it's okay.
Right?
I'm not as, as adult.
I'm not as much of a harlett as that person is when it comes
to my relationship with you.
So I'm okay
now.
We, we, we need to recognize our unfaithful as the
full weight of what it is.
We are goer.
But like I said, the good news is that God is Hosea, and so God's not
gonna leave us in our unfaithfulness.
Keep going with me here.
In fact, look back at this interlude, I jumped over it.
But look back at between chapter one and chapter two, look
at verse 10 of chapter one.
It says this.
It says, yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea.
This is the Abrahamic covenant.
So right after God has told Hosea, go have these three children,
and here's their names, Jezreel.
'cause I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna smoke you.
I'm gonna blow you up.
You're gonna get judged.
Jezreel.
Second, no mercy.
'cause I'm not gonna show mercy to you anymore.
And third, not my people.
Right after that.
He calls back to the Abrahamic covenant.
He says, but the number of the children of Israel will be like the sand of the
sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.
And in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be
said to them, children of the living God.
So now he's, he's reversing these names of these children
that he gave in chapter one.
He said, you're, you're gonna name one of your kids to your sons, not my people.
But in the future, Israel will again be the children of the living God.
And then he goes on, he says, and the children of Judah and the children
of Israel shall be gathered together.
Both the north and the south shall come together and they shall
appoint from themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land.
For grace shall be the day of Jez Israel.
Notice that Israel is no longer gonna be the place of judgment.
It's gonna be the place from which Israel grows up.
That's what it means they're to go up from.
It's the idea of a plant bursting forth and growing.
And so God says in the place that it was once judgment and destruction.
I'm gonna come back and my people will be planted there and they
will grow and they will flourish.
And then he says, and say to your brothers, you are my people.
And to your sisters, you have received mercy.
And so when God was gonna withhold his mercy for a time,
it was not gonna be forever.
But he was gonna bring his faithfulness and his mercy back upon his people.
So in the midst of the judgments that he's giving against the unfaithfulness of
Israel, with the Assyrians about to come and carry them into exile, he's at the
same time saying, Hey y'all, there's hope.
There's hope because though we are Gomer, God is Hosea.
So what change is gonna bring about these reversal, this reversal of fortunes?
Jump down to verse 14 in chapter two.
Verse 14.
It says, therefore, behold, I will allure her.
This is, again, strong terminology.
It's the, the terminology of a husband, wooing his wife, alluring his wife.
He's gonna draw Israel and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.
And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of aco.
A door of hope and there shall she answer, as in the days of her youth at the time
when she came out of the land of Egypt.
And in that day declares the Lord.
You will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal for I will remove
the names of the Baals from her mouth and they shall be remembered by name no more.
And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beast of the
field and the birds of the heavens and the creeping things of the
ground, and I will abolish the bow.
The sword and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety
and I will notice the language here betroth you to me forever.
And I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice,
in steadfast love and in mercy.
I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord.
That's how the reversal of fortunes is gonna take place.
God's gonna come after his people.
God's gonna come after his people, even in the midst of their unfaithfulness.
Does that sound familiar?
While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us here.
It's, he's gonna allure his people.
There's a couple of references in here.
For example, the the Valley of AOR that goes back to the sin of Aiken during
the conquest from Joshua chapter seven.
Remember they had destroyed the, the, the city there.
And, and Aiken had taken some of the spoil for himself when God said, don't do that.
And then Israel went out and was defeated the next time out in battle.
And then it was revealed that it was Aiken and Aiken and his family
were destroyed for their sin.
And so as a result of that, the valley of ACO was named in that spot.
And that came to be known as the Valley of Trouble, is what Acore means.
But notice the reversal here.
What God's gonna do, he's undoing everything that Israel's
unfaithfulness had done.
The Valley of Acore, the valley of trouble is now gonna be a door of hope.
And also, did you notice where he's gonna allure her?
Where he's gonna call her into, he's calling her into where the wilderness,
the place that Israel had failed so miserably after the Exodus was gonna again
become a place of hope and restoration for her because God was gonna pursue her.
Listen for Israel, the passage that I just read, verses 14 through
20, is going to that realization that fulfillment is yet future.
We believe in the millennial kingdom when they're gonna realize this,
when they're gonna know the Lord in this way, when they're gonna be
betrothed to the Lord forever and ever.
Uh, Ezekiel describes this reality even more for us.
Ezekiel 36, verses 24 through 28 says this, I, I will take you from the nation.
And gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.
And I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean
from all your uncleanliness.
And from all your idols.
I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new
spirit I will put within you.
And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statute
and to be careful to obey my rules.
You shall dwell in the land that I gave your fathers, and you shall be
my people and I will be your God.
This is Ezekiel speaking of the new covenant, and the reality
of that, again is gonna be for Israel in the millennial kingdom.
Here's the good news for us though, church, with all of this, we don't have
to wait for the millennial kingdom.
We don't have to wait for the millennial kingdom to realize God's pursuit of us.
That as we are Gomer, that God is Hosea.
And for you and I, we're not waiting for the millennial kingdom right now.
The offer is there for us, and, and the, the, the promise is there for us.
And even some of the blessings in the new covenant are there for us as the
church to realize God's pursuit of us.
And so what's left for us is to respond to that pursuit.
Point number two this morning.
Along those lines is this, respond to the unflagging pursuit of God.
Respond to the unflagging pursuit of your God.
Now, let me qualify this.
This is how God treats his people.
Meaning for us in this room, this is how God treats Christians.
If you are not in Christ, there is a very dangerous reality that you
are flirting with in which God may turn you over and stop pursuing you.
He may say, I'm.
I've been patient long enough the way he did with Israel back in Jose's day.
But if you are in Christ, he will never forsake you.
He will never turn you over.
He will never stop pursuing you.
And so it's for us to respond to the unflagging pursuit of God,
but first we have to understand what that pursuit looks like.
How does God allure us today?
Well, one of the ways is through the reality that, that you and I have
the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.
Back in Ezekiel, as I read about that, that God promised Israel he
would put his spirit within them.
Again, new covenant promises when Jesus in the upper room declared with
the disciples, this is the cup of the new covenant, which is my blood.
That was the, the partial fulfillment of that meaning that we as the church
get to know some of the blessings of the new covenant already.
One of those being that the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells within us.
And so are the, there are ways that through the Holy Spirit's dwelling
within us that God is pursuing us first.
Among those foundationally, number one is regeneration.
That he causes us to be born again.
That he takes us from death to life, that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us.
That is where God's pursuit of us is first realized by us, but the second
way that he continues to pursue us is through the Spirit that dwells within
us, causing us to be obedient to him.
The spirit producing within you this morning.
Your desire to be in the word, your desire to obey the Lord, your desire
to fight that sin, your desire to break off that pattern of disobedience,
that is God's alluring you.
That is God's pursuing you.
He drawing you out into himself.
The third way the Lord still all lures us or allure us as the church
is this, that the Lord sanctifies us in our understanding of who he is by
purging us of our idols in our life.
In Hosea chapter two verses 16 and 17, that passage that I just read, it says
this, and in that day, declares the Lord.
You will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal.
For, I will remove the names of the BALs from her mouth, and they
shall be remembered by name no more.
In other words, God was saying to the Israelites, I'm going to purge you of
all of the faults, gods that you've been worshiping, so that you will
worship me in purity, in full devotion.
He does that for us as the church as well, for you as a Christian by the spirit.
He's gonna drive the idols out of your life.
He's gonna drive away from your life the things that compete with him,
for your affections, for your love.
Because he wants to be your one and only your exclusive.
And then finally, the way that he pursues us is by sealing us in permanent union
with Christ as a bride to the bridegroom.
Again, that's through the spirit.
As Paul writes in Ephesians, that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit
as a guarantee of the inheritance that we will one day inherit.
Hosea puts it this way.
Same concept.
Hosea two 19 through 20, God says to Israel, I will betroth you to me forever.
I'll betroth you to me forever.
I will betroth you to me in righteousness and injustice,
steadfast love, and in mercy.
I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord.
Church, our our God is a pursuing God.
Our God is a God who leaves the 99 to go after the one.
In fact, listen to this as, as Hosea chapter 11, in one of the
sections of the Lord's passion and mercy and love is talked about here
as God is talking to his people.
He says this in Hosea, chapter 11, verse eight.
He says, how can I give you up?
Oh, ere Israel, how can I hand you over?
Oh, Israel, how can I make you like Ahah?
How can I treat you like Zebo?
My heart recoils within me.
Notice this, my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger.
I will not again destroy efraim for I am God and not a man.
The holy one in your midst.
And I will not come in wrath.
See y'all.
This is, this is God.
This is Yahweh.
This is the father.
I think a lot of times our, our concept of him is, is weighted
towards his wrath and his, his anger and his, his just retribution.
He's the holy one that we can't really approach.
We need Jesus to go before us and be like, Hey, Jesus, can you go
make sure everything's okay with God before I come before him?
'cause I, what I did this week, y'all, what I love about Hosea and, and
so many of the other minor prophets too, is it's gonna give you a picture
of God, that God, God loves you.
God is compassionate towards you.
He is pursuing you.
So my question this morning for you is, have you been keeping him at arm's
length as he's been pursuing you?
Have you been resisting his pursuit?
Have you been going back to play the Harley even after
he's betrothed you to himself?
Is your love like the morning clouds or the morning dew?
Or are you leaning into his pursuit of you?
Have you sat with him with your Bible open and your soul beared before him?
Have you cherished his words and treasured them up in your heart
that you might not sin against him?
Have you felt broken over your sin
and your proclivity to return to that life of unfaithfulness?
Have you been silent before him in gratitude for how he pursued
you, even when you weren't pursuing him this morning?
Some need to hear Hosea six verse one.
Come let us return to the Lord.
Let us return to the Lord for he has torn us that he may heal us.
He has struck us down and he will bind us up.
Let us know.
Hosea six three.
Let us know the Lord.
Let us press on to know the Lord.
His going out is as sure as the dawn and he will come to us as
the showers, as the spring reigns.
That water, the earth, the Lord Church is after you.
This pursuing love of God is unique to Christianity.
You're not gonna find it in Islam.
You're not gonna find it in Hinduism.
You're not gonna find it in Buddhism.
You're not gonna find it in the perversions of Mormonism and Catholicism.
Those perversions in, in both of those religions will say, you have to come
to God before God will come to you.
Now, God is a pursuing God.
God is the God who's going to come to you.
And that is unique to Christianity, unique to the gospel.
And the reason is because of what follows.
So, so far we've seen Israel's unfaithfulness, and
that's our unfaithfulness.
We are Gomer.
And the good news that that God is pursuing Israel, he's got a future
for Israel, that Abraham Abrahamic covenant is unconditional and
he's gonna bring that to fruition.
And so he's gonna pursue Israel.
And we've seen that he's also going to pursue us as well.
And now we're gonna find out why.
Because he is Hosea.
Look at chapter three.
The Lord said to me, chapter three verse one, go again and love a
woman who is loved by another man.
This is still Gomer here.
There are some that wanna argue that this is another woman.
This is not Gomer, but he doesn't say that.
He doesn't say, go marry her.
He says, go love her again.
And so Hosea is meant to go and take the wife of unfaithfulness, the wife of
Harlotry, from the arms of her lover, and to bring her back, go again and
love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulterous, even as the
Lord loves the children of Israel.
Though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.
And so verse two, I bought her for 15 shekels of silver in a
homer and a letic of barley.
This love that God instructs Hosea to go and demonstrate
towards Gomer is his love for us.
And just like Hosea's love for Gomer was going to cost him,
God's love for us, cost him.
For Hosea, it was a financial investment.
30 shekels was no small amount, but I think more than that, it was the cost
of, of just his, his dignity, his honor, his having to go and condescend and,
and get the picture in our, your mind of going and knocking on the door of
the man who his wife has gone to live with in a relationship of infidelity.
And that man answers the door and he says, I'm here to buy my wife back from you.
What's the cost?
The cost of our redemption.
Listen, God's love for Israel is going to prevail.
Hosea alludes to this In in chapter three, verse five, it says, afterward,
the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their
king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter
days, okay, again, millennial kingdom here, what's gonna be the key to Israel's
return to God, the same as the key?
That was the key for us coming to him in the first place, and
that is the cross of Christ.
We're gonna get to Zachariah a little bit later on in our study,
but Zechariah chapter 13 verses one and two says, this says on that day.
There shall be a fountain open for the house of David and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem to cleanse them from sin and uncles.
And on that day, declares the Lord.
I will cut off the names of the idols from the land so that they
shall be remembered no more, and that will remove from the land, the
prophets, and the spirit of uncles.
That fountain that's gonna open up for the house of David is the
fountain of the blood of Christ shed for them on the cross.
That fountain is the fountain that's gonna lead them, as Zacharia
says elsewhere, to look on him whom they have pierced and mourn.
And so I'm saying all that to, to say this.
The fact that Hosea is, is demonstrating that God is gonna bring Israel back to
him is going to all come down to the cost that God is gonna pay to redeem Israel.
And that cost that God is gonna pay to redeem Israel is the same
cost that God paid to redeem every single one of us in this room.
And that is the death of his son, Jesus Christ, on the cross, so that
your sins might be forgiven and the resurrection so that you might
one day live with him forever.
That's the cost.
Of our redemption.
That's the humiliation.
That's the condescension.
That's the ign amenity.
That's the shame.
That's the dishonor, that's the humiliation.
That's all of it that Jesus paid so that he might bring us and buy
us back to the one who created us to be his in the first place.
See, we are Gomer, but this, the good news is that God is Hosea.
And the cost he paid was the cost of his son.
Third and finally this morning, remember the inconceivable
grace of your redemption.
Remember the inconceivable grace of your redemption,
Isaiah two 14.
Again, therefore behold, I will allure her and bring her into the
wilderness and speak tenderly to her
the only way that that was gonna be possible.
Is to deal with her unfaithfulness in the first place and in a temporal fashion.
He did that through Assyria, but Assyria didn't satisfy God's
eternal wrath against his people.
Whatever suffering, whatever discipline God has brought in your
life, has not satisfied his eternal wrath against your sin for God to
bring you to himself, to betroth you to himself forever, as Hosea says.
Uh, then he has to deal with our unfaithfulness and put an
end to it once and for all.
And the way that happens is through the cross that the actions of Hosea in this
chap chapter are shocking and sobering, and they're meant to be that a man would
go to another man to buy his own wife back from his arms, and that he would take her
and forgive her infidelity.
And functionally cleanse her from that infidelity and betray
with her once more to himself.
That's a love that this world knows nothing of.
And yet the love of God for us through Christ is even greater than that.
What God did with Christ on the cross for us is even greater than that.
And so church, remembering the cross is the key component to
our growth in Christ's likeness.
We don't know the rest of the story of Gomer, but my guess is this, that
she was, I at least I hope, and I hope that one day we will meet Gomer
and, and I hope that she was so overwhelmed by the grace of Hosea
that she vowed never to be unfaithful to him again.
And church.
That should be our response to the cross of Christ.
That we seeing the cross of Christ would say, God, you loved me to that extent when
I was Gomer, when I was the wife of Ham,
when I was in the arms of my other lovers.
You loved me then enough to kill your son in my spot enough to take
my infidelity and charge it to Jesus
and gimme his righteousness.
So that I can stand before you as the pure and spotless bride.
What love is that?
If you guys want to grow in humility, mercy, grace, love, compassion, patience,
tenderness, look at the cross, look at the cost, where all of those things were
exemplified by Christ on the cross for us.
And the father's love poured out for us in wrath on him.
Not you.
You know, a lot of people wear a cross.
You may have a cross on this morning.
That's great.
A lot of people wear the cross to show other people that they're a Christian.
I wanna wear a cross because it's, it's a bold testimony to other
people that, that, that I follow.
Jesus.
Do you know the cross as, as a, a symbol of jewelry, as something that we wear?
It really was not a thing until about the fourth century.
Ad after Christianity became the, the official religion of Rome, that's
when it kind of came into, into vogue.
It started showing up in, in works of art and became something
that people would even wear.
'cause prior to that, the, the cross was an instrument of execution
and shame and nobody really wanted the cross to be on them.
And so while we wear a, and it does convey something to other people,
can I suggest that the chief thing it should convey to us is to remember.
The shame to remember the cost to remember God's love, not for
other people, but, but for us,
wearing the cross around your neck should have more of an impact when you look in
the mirror than it does when you look at the person across the table from you.
'cause it needs to remind you of how much God loves you.
It needs to remind you that though you were Gomer, that he was Hosea.
And it needs to drive you to say, God, I never want to ever, ever,
ever, ever be unfaithful to you again.
I want to live in perfect faithfulness to you.
That day will come for us.
It's not here yet.
And so we're about to go into a week where we will have moments where we
find that we are, once again, Gomer.
And it's gonna be necessary for us to remind ourselves that God is Hosea,
that God is the pursuing God.
That God is the God of love and mercy and grace, that God is the patient, God,
until we get to be home with him where sin is not gonna be anymore.
It's interesting, I think, and not on accident that.
That's described by Jesus through the the revelation that he gave to John
as the marriage supper of the lamb,
when the final betroth of us and the Lord is fully realized at that time.
Jose is a hard book.
We've just hit three chapters of it, and again, if you read the rest of it, and
I encourage you to do that, you're gonna see these themes show up time and time
again throughout the entirety of the book.
It's hard because it confronts us with the ugliness of our sin.
Uh, we are Gomer
and that's hard because we live in a world where sin is more and more
being trivialized into life choices or orientations or, uh, just no big deal
or it's not as bad as that over there.
And, and, and the sinner is no longer guilty.
But we live in a world that is taking the sinner and making
them a passive victim of our sin.
So Hosea is refreshing for us because it reminds us that
we're not a victim of our sin.
We are the perpetrator.
We are Gomer.
But the good news is that God is Hosea.
We stand with me as we pray and wrap up.