God’s Hope for Us

When we looked at the book of Amos, one of the messages that comes out very strongly in that book is how the nation themselves were treating one another, how they were treating fellow Israelites, how they were treating their neighbors and their countrymen. Remember that injustice was running rampant, that a judge could be bought off by nothing more than a pair of sandals. Do you remember when we read through that in Amos? That judges didn't take a lot for injustice to be had and for those who didn't have a lot of money to be treated unfairly. Those who had a lot of money, they ate well, they prospered, they partied. Those who didn't have a lot continued to not have a lot.

God sent Amos to wake up the nation and to see if they would listen. Now, the life of a prophet was not an easy one for most of them. For example, Ezekiel had to lay on one side for an entire year and to cook his food over a pile of manure. That was something that God asked him and commanded that he do as an example and a symbolic of Israel's sin and departing from God. Isaiah had to prophesy while walking around without any clothes on, thankful that God has not asked this guy to do something of that measure. Jeremiah was another one of God's prophets who had to hide his underwear under a rock by the Euphrates River. He was also commanded to make a yoke, like one that would be put around the neck of an animal and that would be used for plowing or to guide it. But Isaiah himself, or Jeremiah, excuse me, had to wear this yoke. He had to build one and then wear it, symbolic of the slavery of the entrapment that Israel would fall into if they continued to seek after foreign gods and not follow the one true God. So if you ever think that God has asked too much of you, just be thankful that you have not been counted as one of his prophets. Amos was not the only prophet who God would send to Israel at this time. A contemporary to Amos was the prophet Hosea, whose writings we will look at today. Amos preached a message of repentance and turning back to God. Hosea preached a message of repentance as well, along with the other prophets. Amos's focus primarily was on the way that the Israelites would treat each other. Hosea wanted to bring out that for those who will turn back to God, his love is without end. Hosea preached about the unproachable righteousness of God. His glory is just magnificent, and as we continue to try to live according to our elder brother and to achieve righteousness in our own, we can never reach the level of God's own righteousness. Hosea shared the extent of God's heart towards his people. In the book of the minor prophets on page 86 by Charles Feinberg, he describes the nation of Israel this way at this time. The days of Jeroboam II and Israel were marked by great prosperity, in fact, the most prosperous of the northern kingdom. Israel was at the height of her power under this king. This period was one of great wealth, luxury, arrogance, carnal security, oppression of the poor, moral decay, and formal worship. The moral decline and spiritual degradation of the people was appalling.

The name Hosea means salvation, and Hosea would prophesy for about 40 years, lasting from about 753 to 715 BC. The message is given to, again, the northern tribes of Israel who, as they go through life, think that they're making some pretty good decisions for themselves. We can't be that bad, right? Because look at how we're prospering. Look at the blessings we have. Blessings, put that in quote, right? Look at everything that we've done. Look at what our hands have been able to provide for ourselves. God, we can't be far from God, or He wouldn't, of course, allow this to happen, would He? So in their own self-righteousness and ignorant of their own sins and how vile they had become internally, they were blinded to their sins. They were blinded to their focus. They were bringing in, as we know, since the division of the United Kingdom under David and Solomon's reign, the northern tribes followed the leadership of Jeroboam, who set up new cities of worship. Remember that? And Dan and Bethel is where he set up golden calves that they would then bow down to and worship. They would keep the Holy Days at a different time, the fall Holy Days at a different time a year. A month later, he had shifted the dates of even God's own Holy Days, and he even established his own priesthood, not of the tribe of Levi, like God had instructed, but of another tribe of other people who could even make money off this way of life. The priests could become wealthy by serving in this way. So, under this rule, that the nation continued to digress and to get further and further away, even though at times they seemed to be doing well and making positive steps as a nation and growing as God's people. But they worshiped Canaanite gods. They blended in false worship with the worship of the one true God, and they were practicing things that God absolutely abhorred. This nation is really struggling. Sin is prevalent, and God's patience is about to run out. I believe as we work through this message, we won't be able to help but see there are similarities to the prosperity and the direction our own nation is going around what we see in our society and our country today. And I think there's a parallel that we can draw out from that as we work through this message. But there's also a message of hope, not only for God's people, but for all the world that we can draw through. So, with our time that we have together today, we'll look at excerpts from the book of Hosea as we consider God's great love story for His people. God's great love story for His people. The archaeology study Bible describes the theme of Hosea this way. Israel is the Lord's bride, but Israel has instead joined itself to Baal, the false god worshiped in Syria, Palestine. Worshiping Baal violates the first of the Ten Commandments. It is also a betrayal of God's intimate union with His people. Therefore, Hosea describes it as spiritual adultery, an offense against the marriage between the Lord and Israel. He compares Israel's spiritual unfaithfulness to the ingratitude of a wayward wife. Such unfaithfulness justifies the Lord's coming judgment. But punishment is not ultimately what the Lord wants for His people. He desires that they leave their sin. He wants them to return to the one who first loved them and who can provide what is best for them. As we begin to dive in, and if you will with me, turn to Hosea 1, chapter 1, and verse 1. We'll get into this book that God inspired to be written by the prophet Hosea. If you're trying to find Hosea, it's after Ezekiel, and then Daniel, and then Hosea.

And speaking of some of the hard things that prophets have been asked to do at times by God, notice how the book opens and what Hosea is asked to do. This book is difficult to read at times, and even in preparation and in study, at times it's difficult for your pastor to read through. For those who've read through, you probably know where I'm going with this.

There's a tone that is set right from the get-go. There's something that Hosea is asked to do that many of us are shocked that God would ask someone to do. It's graphic, the story is at times, and it's appalling at times. And we can each, I believe, put ourselves in the shoes of Hosea and the heartache and the hurt and the difficulties that he would endure. But we also have to remember that what God asks man to do is for a purpose. God has asked many times over the centuries for his people to do very difficult and challenging things, and there's a purpose to this, a divine purpose for what God was going to ask Hosea to do. And it was to symbolize his unfailing love and devotion to his people and the hurt that his people had caused him and the damage that his people had done to their relationship with the Almighty. So as we open up this book, recognize the significance of what God asked Hosea to do, and notice that Hosea complied and understood and followed through. His faithfulness to God was beyond measure and did not stop at just things that we would be appalled by or recoil back from. Notice Hosea 1 in verse 1, it says, In the word of the Lord came to Hosea, the son of Berea, in the days of Yoziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel. When the Lord began to spoke by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, and any time that God's speaking to a prophet or one of us, pull out your note cards, right? Start taking notes. What does God want us to do? Okay. He began to speak. He goes, Go take for yourself a wife, for a young man unmarried. That's a good note to write down, right? You want me to get married? Boy, God, I'll follow through that one. I'm going to get married. But then wait and see. He says, Go take for yourself a wife of harlotry. And I think that's where the pen trails off the end of the paper. He...what?

You want me to take a wife as one of your prophets? You want me to go and take a wife but one of harlotry? Go take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord.

Hosea's marriage, as we'll see in a moment to Gomer, frames the broader message of unfaithfulness and forgiveness spoken through the prophet. Their relationship served as a parallel to the behavior of Israel, who had committed great adultery departing from the Lord.

Going on in verse 3, he followed through in his faithfulness and his commitment to God. It says, So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diabram, and she conceived and bore him a son.

Then the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel, for in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. She'll come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. The name Jezreel means God scatters as in seed. You can imagine scattering and throwing. You have a handful of seed, and all of a sudden when you scatter it, it just goes all over the place. It goes very far and wide. That's what this name Jezreel means, that God scatters. Its spiritual intent is a warning to Israel that God's patience had run out, and they were about to be scattered among the nations in slavery and to be destroyed as a nation. God's promise to bring and to put Israel to an end as an independent kingdom came true 25 years later when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom and carried the people into captivity.

So going on with this account and going on with this family that Hosea had with Gomer, verse 6, and she conceived again and bore a daughter, then God said to him, Call her name Lohruhama, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bone, or by sword, or battle, or by horsemen, or by horses, or horsemen. The name Lohruhama means not loved. Another meaning for this name is not an object of mercy or gracious favor.

Israel as a kingdom was never restored from Assyria as Judah was from Babylon after 70 years. But as we will see, God is more focused on restoring people individually than He is on restoring nations. And so we have Hosea having now two children, and some of the commentaries wonder, are these his children? Are they not his children? Are they another man's children? But his wife becomes pregnant, and he accepts these children as his own. There's a lot of confusion going on in the household of Hosea. A lot of untrust, a lot of questions going on. And as God gives him these names to name his children, there's significance, meaning, behind it, on this example that he's portraying and living out physically before the nation of Israel. Notice, go on in verse 8, as he has another child brought into his household. Now, when she had weaned Lohruhama, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said, Call his name Lo Ami, or Lo Ami, for you are not my people, and I will not be your God. The name Lo Ami means not my people. This name expresses the final degree of chastisement. God would remove his protection and providence from the nation of Israel, allowing them to fall into the hands of their enemies. This is a heavy way to start a book of 12 chapters, isn't it? We're not going to go through the entirety of this book today. There's not enough time. But very early on in the story of Hosea, God establishes the meaning and the intent of what he's asking his prophet to do and to symbolize. Some commentaries think that, well, maybe this was just a metaphor or parallel or an allegory or an analogy that God inspired, and he just wrote it down and didn't actually act this out in his own life. But as we see with other prophets, God didn't just use metaphors and allegory. He actually had them act out specific actions so that the people could see what was going on and hopefully turn back to God. So Hosea followed through. He brought a woman who would be unfaithful to him into his house. He grew to love her. We'll see that in a little bit. This was not someone who just brought a woman in and said, well, I know what you're going to do. I'm never going to give my heart to you. Hosea gave his heart to Gomer, knowing that she would do what she would do because of what her lifestyle was, her actions, her track record up to this point of being unfaithful. Some wonder, was she a temple prostitute? Because remember, prostitution in the Bible, in the temple setting, in a religious setting, was a common practice by those who worship Baal. There was also questions of how long has she lived this lifestyle? Things of going on and of her background and her upbringing.

Just as other prophets went on and they shared of God's impeding judgment, impending judgment, Hosea did not lack bringing the focus back to God and the hope that he had for his people. God wanted to make sure this was part of his inspired message, to bring hope, to bring healing. Hosea's inspired vision saw beyond God's correction for his people and at different times focused on a future full of hope and of love for God's own people. Through once, though once not his people, they would be restored and be called the sons of the living God. So sprinkled throughout this message from Hosea is nuggets of hope that he made sure would be shared. And we see that first nugget here in verse 10 of Hosea chapter 1. Notice how it switches away from not being my people to being unloved, to bringing this group of people back under God's protection and blessing. Verse 10, it says, yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered, and it will come to pass in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people. There it shall be said to them, you are sons of the living God. We know that there would be a time where he would bring his people back from their scattered dwellings. He would bring them back out under his protection and plan, but we also know that this is symbolic also of the future, a future time when all of humanity would be given an opportunity to know God and to grow in his love. It goes on in verse 11, it says, then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and appoint for themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.

And moving into chapter 2 and verse 1, he says, say to your brethren, my people. This is the word, am I. You know, lo am I, the one not my people. God is saying, this is not going to be permanent. You will again be my people. He says, say to your brethren, my people, until your sisters' mercy is shown. That word mercy means ruhama. Remember, lo ruhama, which now we're getting into rahama, where they have God's mercy. They are shown his mercy. And so there's this hope for a future time when they would again be his people and he would again be their God.

Hosea pivots here, though, in verse 2 of chapter 2, to the effects of sin within a nation. And those addressed in verse 2 are Israel. He's not talking about his wife and his own children at this point. He's talking about the greater nation of Israel here starting in verse 2. Notice what he says about the nation that he is part of. He says, bring charges against your mother, bring charges, for she is not my wife, nor am I her husband. So this is God speaking here. Let her put away her harlotries from her sight.

Let her adulteries from between her breasts. Let I strip her naked and expose her in the day she was born and make her like a wilderness and set her on a dry land and slay her with thirst. I will not have mercy on her children, for they are children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot. He's talking again about the nation of Israel. What has this nation done? She who conceived them has behaved shamefully. For she says, I will go after my lovers who are symbolic of the other nations around Israel.

Saying that these are the nations that give, and here is what he's saying, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen and my oil and my drink. All the riches of the nation, all the abundance they had, they were saying, well, it's our trading with these other nations. It's these agreements that we've made with these other nations that is bringing in this prosperity and this goodness for us as a people. But yet, it was God's blessings that they were giving away his food, his wealth, as they made treaties, as they paid ransoms of sorts to Assyria and to Egypt and to other nations around them.

They were giving away God's blessing, his prosperity, what he provided his people to live on and to take in and be part of their lives. And as they gave away this wealth, the other nations around them started to become wealthy. And they would say, oh sure, I've got your back. I'll protect you at this time, but I'm going to need a little bit more money if you want this protection to continue.

If you want these trade deals to stay open, we're going to need a little bit more. And as the other nations around them grew richer and richer, Israel became poorer and poorer. They were more worried about building an alliance for protection with foreign nations, and they were about following God and looking to him for their protection. Notice verse 6.

God says, therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns and wall her in so that she cannot find her path. Remember when God says he puts a hedge around us, a hedge of protection, he goes before us, he's behind us, he's on our left and right, we're protected. This is not that type of protection. This is not that type of hedge row that he's putting around Israel. They're going to go forward thinking they're making good choices and making good trade alliances and deals. And he says it's going to be like you ran into a hedge of thorns. You're all caught up in and then so you're going to be like, well, this direction obviously is closed, so let's turn to my left.

Oh, more thorns. Let's turn to my left. Nope. Another closed path. He's saying I'm going to allow you to get hedged in as with thorns. And notice verse 7. She will chase her lovers but not overtake them. Yes, she will seek them but not find them. Remember, like money's running out. You want to continue this alliance? And all of a sudden they're like, you really don't have anything for me.

A serial will say to Israel, they'll go to Egypt then, and Egypt will say, you don't really have anything for me. There's nothing really for you to give me anymore. So no deal. Then she will say, I will go and return to my first husband. I'll go back to God. I'll look to him for it was better for me then than for me then now.

And God is speaking again of what's going on. Said for she did not know that I gave her grain, new wine and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which what did they do with that, which they prepared for Baal. You can just see the way that God's heart is just broken.

He has brought in this nation that was struggling in Egypt that had no hope, no future, no direction to go with their life. They were enslaved. And yet God says, you're my people because of his promise to Abraham and holding true to that promise. He said, I'm going to take you out of this nation of Egypt. I'm going to remove you from this slavery. You have nothing going for you. You have no prosperity. You're not even a nation. You're a group of people with no hope and no future. Yet I'm going to bring you out. I'm going to give you riches. I'm going to show you a better way to life. And then they just gave away his blessings, not only gave it away, but then they sacrificed it before false gods. You can just see the way it just broke his heart. Verse 9, he says, therefore I will return and take away my grain in its time and my new wine in its season, and I will take back my wool and my linen given to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall deliver her from my hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths, all of her appointed feasts.

We know when we read a passage like verse 11 where at times God says, your feast days I hate, whereas in this example, her feast days that he despises, we know this is in reference to their false worship that they had combined with the pagan societies around them. Because we know in Leviticus 23 when God's referring to the right holy days, he says, my feast days, right? These belong to God. He's accepting it. So when he turns it and says, your feast days, or I hate your feast days or her feast days, he's talking about how they had taken something that was pure, something that was right, something that he had given them, and then they twisted it. They brought in false worship. They still kept the holy days, but a month later. They still would go to church or go to the synagogues or go and worship him on the Sabbath, but with their idols, their asherah poles in their front yards and maybe their idols in their pockets. They had taken error from the nations around them and combined them with the one true way that God had instructed them to live their lives.

And this is that warning for even us today. They were no longer observing God's feast, but rather the ones that he hated because of their corruption of these beautiful and wonderful days.

It's what we see very often around us, where there is truth in a lot of the churches around us in our society, but there's a lot of error as well. Things that God has said not to touch, not to do, not to bring in to your homes. We know that many keep the Lord's day, Sunday, as their Sabbath. But we don't see that in Scripture, where they may take communion every Sunday, even though God says we take those symbols issued at Passover once a year. We could talk about Easter. We could talk about Christmas. We could talk about other rituals that we see where there's a level of truth, but also a level of error mixed in, making it a false religion and false worship. In a similar way, Israel was the originators of this blended faith, of this new religion, because Israel was given the right way to worship their God. Yet, then they started adding in their own ideas. They started adding in their pagan ideas, things that God hated. We look at verse 12, as God continues to talk about this nation that he loves. He says, I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, of which she has said, these are my wages that my lovers have given me. So I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. These blessings that God poured out would just grow wild, because nobody was there to tend them. Nobody was there to keep them anymore. The animals would just come by and eat the fruit on the vines. Verse 13 says, I will punish her for the days of the bales to which she burned incense. She decked herself with earrings and jewelry, and went after her lovers. And notice these four words, but me she forgot, says the Lord. It's a powerful warning for us individually that we cannot allow ourselves to get caught up in so much going on around us, and as people, and as when we make plans for life, that we lose sight of where we have all our blessings, where they stem from, we can never forget our great God. As we consider the imagery God inspired Hosea to capture, another passage from a different prophet describes why God loves his people so passionately. Let's come back to Hosea, but let's look at Ezekiel chapter 16.

Ezekiel's a couple chapters, a couple books forward, excuse me, a couple books, not chapters, forward towards the front of our Bibles, Ezekiel 16.

This passage here is one of the most, I feel, beautiful ways that God describes the way that he looks after his people, both individually and nationally.

We're going to see the descriptions here are very, well, they're just very descriptive.

The imagery that he uses here, just you can sense the feelings that God has for his people. You can internalize it. You could put yourself into the speaker's shoes and imagine the way that God loves his people, but also the way that his heart hurts. Notice Ezekiel 16 in verse 1. Again, the word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations. And verse 4 gets into this beauty that God has for his people and the care and the love and the concern. As for your nativity, on that day that you were born, your naval cord was not cut, nor were you washed in water to cleanse you, nor were you rubbed with salt, nor wrapped in swaddling clothes. Unlike what we would do with a baby born today, the care of a mother and the care of a father, bringing this baby in and just washing it up and cherishing it, hold it so gently in your hands and your arms and caring and just being in awe. Can't get the smile off your face. The beauty of this new life. The parents here in this story did not do that. They cast the child aside. It wasn't wanted. It wasn't needed. It was despised. It wasn't even cared for at all. Notice verse 5. No, I pitied you to do any of those things for you, to have compassion on you, but you were thrown out into the open field when you yourselves were loathed on the day you were born. Again, he's talking about Israel, his people, being in captivity in Egypt, having no hope, being despised. Nobody cared about them. They were there to serve a purpose. They were there to serve Egypt, to do what their masters told them to do. They weren't given a hope. They weren't given a future. They weren't given an inheritance. They were nothing. Verse 6, it says, And when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood, I said to you in your blood, live. Yes, I said in your blood, live. God's heart is just moved to see this innocent, beautiful child that has so much potential. And in this story, this man takes this child, washes it up, looks after it, makes sure it's provided for with money and things, and he goes on his way trading or doing other business. He departs from this child, making sure it would be cared for and looked after. And notice in verse 8, it pivots a little bit. Time has gone on, and this child has now grown into adulthood, ready to be a time to be looked at and to be married. Notice Ezekiel 16 verse 8, When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed, your time was a time of love. So I spread my wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you. And you became mine, says the Lord God. Then I washed you in water. Yes, I thoroughly washed off your blood and anointed you with oil. I clothed you in embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin. I clothed you with fine linen and covered you with silk. I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck. I put a jewel in your nose, earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown on your head.

Thus, when you were adorned with gold and silver and your clothing was of fine linen, silk, and embroidered cloth, you ate pastry of fine flour, honey, and oil. You were exceedingly beautiful and succeeded to royalty. This is what God did for this beloved child that he cared so deeply for, provided all their needs, made sure they were looked at as the best, cared for, provided for, loved. Notice verse 14, your fame went out from among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through my splendor, which I had bestowed on you, says the Lord God. Getting back to the imagery here that when God took Israel out of Egypt, they were nothing.

They had no hope, no future, no material wealth. They didn't even have an army. They had no protection. And God says, I will do be all of this for you. He walked them out of their misery into the Promised Land, gave them everything that they could ever dream, ever envision.

They grew in stature. They grew in wealth. They grew in influence. And he says, as long as you keep following me, as long as you remain committed to me, you'll continue to reap these blessings.

But then they started looking at the other nations around them. They wanted a king. They wanted to be like the other nations. They wanted their worship to be brought in and mingled with the one true way that God wanted them to worship him. They started not looking to him for protection, but trusting other countries around them, building alliances. And even though he says, your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty. And even though you were perfected through my splendor, which I had bestowed on you, notice verse 15, but you trusted in your own beauty. You played the harlot because of your fame, and you poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it. You took some of your garments and adorned multicolor high places for yourself. And you played the harlot on them. Such things should not happen nor be. You have also taken your beautiful jewelry from my gold and my silver, which I had given you and you made for yourself male images and played the harlot with them. You took your embroidered garments and covered them and you set my oil and my incense before them. Also my food, which I gave you, and the pastry of fine flour, oil, and honey, which I fed you and set it before them as sweet incense. And so it was, says the Lord. In verse 22, and in all your abominations and acts of harlotry, you did not remember the days of your youth when you were naked and bare, struggling in your blood. He goes on in verse 25, you built your high places at the head of every road and made your beauty to be abhorred. You offered yourself to everyone who passed by and multiplied your acts of harlotry. You also committed harlotry with the Egyptians and your very fleshly neighbors and increased your acts of harlotry to provoke me to anger. Verse 28 says he did the same thing with the... the nation did the same things with the Assyrians.

But I want to pivot here in the same account of Ezekiel chapter 16 and see what God says about His mercy. Notice verse 62. He says, I will establish my covenant with you, and then you will know that I am the Lord, that you may remember and be ashamed, and never open your mouth anymore because of your shame when I provide you an atonement for all that you have done. God's saying you're going a direction that I am so hurt by, but I'm going to make sure I keep my part of the promise and the commitment that I made to you, and I'll bring healing, and I will atone us. I'll make us one again. I'll make all this possible. To get another sense of this love that God has for His people, let's look at Matthew 23 and verse 37. Jesus Himself provides this imagery of the way that He cares and looks after the city of Jerusalem, and the people that He was there to serve, but also at times to correct. Notice Matthew 23 and verse 37.

In Matthew 23, we see, like if we were to read it starting at the beginning, we see where He's offering a lot of woes to the Pharisees for the things that they had done. Woe to the scribes calling them hypocrites at times, recognizing they try to live a certain way of life, though, but they're not inwardly. Well, outwardly, they're acting like they're righteous before God, but inwardly they're full of dead man's bones. It's playmaking, it's faking. He calls them hypocrites, and He's providing correction because they should know better. They should know better.

But notice verse 37, the way that Jesus' heart is poured out, what He wishes He could do for this nation. He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, because Jesus was the one who sent them as the word. He's the one that looked after this nation and cared for them and provided for them. He sent prophets to them to give warnings, and He said, What did you do? You just stoned them, treated them like trash, killed them. Notice He says, How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But the problem is, He says, but you were not willing.

This is the compassion that our Heavenly Father and His Son, our elder brother, has for His people.

He gave them a way of life. He brought them out of their misery, as Ezekiel describes.

But what did they do with it? They just gave it away. They sold it away to everyone else who would have anything to do with it. And God's heart is broken. But as we move towards the end of this message, I want to pivot, as God does so often. I want to draw our focus on God's enduring love for those He is working with and those He has called and He has drawn to Him. There are times in life when each of us rebel against God. We all know it. We all do it. Our human nature wants to do things our way, and at times, we seek our own path.

And while God would never support or endorse these decisions we make, He continues to look at us with the hope and the love He has for us to be His children, to be part of His family.

Now, what really sets the book of Hosea apart from many of the rest of the prophets is the clear and thorough story of redemption that He records. It's a love story at heart, and it reflects the way that God looks at His people both nationally and individually. We know that our sin causes a separation between us and God, but God so desperately wants that separation to be erased and to be one with us again, and He wants it so bad He was willing to buy us back with an unspeakable cost—the life and the blood of His own Son. We can never lose sight of the cost that God was willing to pay because of His eternal love and the depth of that love.

Starting with verse 14, let's go back to Hosea chapter 2 again.

I know you guys are thinking I'm 45 minutes in and we're still in chapter 2, and we've got how many more to go. I'm not going to do that to you today. But let's go back to chapter 2 and verse 14.

Because, again, God pivots through the inspiration of Hosea. God pivots, again, from the sins of this nation, and He looks forward to God's promises being restored in His relationship with Israel and the return of their prosperity. This is what God wants. He wants this reconciliation. Notice Hosea 2, verse 14.

God has every right to be our master, and He is. He is God. He is the Eternal. But He goes, I don't want to just be that. I want to be your husband.

I want you to recognize there's an affection. There's a love that I have.

Yes, I am your master, but I don't want you to look at me that way. I want you to look at me as the way that I want you to love me as I love you. That's what He's saying here, that you will call me my husband. He says, verse 17, For I will take from her mouth the names of the bales, and they shall be remembered by their name no more. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword a battle will shatter from the earth to make them lie down safely. I'll betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, and justice, and living kindness, and mercy. I'll betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. Shall come to pass in that day that I will answer, says the Lord. I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth. The earth shall answer with grain, with new wine, and with oil. They shall answer Jezreel. Remember Jezreel? The name means God scatters as in seed. God said the punishment's going to come where you're going to be scattered among the nations, but when I bring you back into my fold, when I bring you in with the hope again, I'm going to scatter as like seed the blessings all around you. The abundance will be unmeasurable. You'll look left. There'll be abundance. You'll look right. There'll be abundance. It'll be all around you. And notice verse 23. Then I will so her for myself in the earth, and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy. Then I will say to those who were not my people, you are my people, and they shall say, you are my God. I want to flip to Romans 9 and verse 21 quickly, because the Apostle Paul in the book to the church in Rome references this passage from Hosea. But I want to focus on the context of what Paul says here, too, because the blessings and the promises are not just for a physical nation. And it wasn't for just the physical nation of Israel at this time. It was for a much greater purpose, a much larger group of people.

And it's for a future time still to come as well. Notice Romans 9 and verse 21. Paul says, Does not the potter have power over the clay from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another dishonor? He's saying he's God. He gets to make the choices. He's making pottery, which is symbolic of us, some for honor and some for dishonor. What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long suffering the vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction? He's saying, I'm preparing these vessels to be destroyed.

But what if I change my mind? What if through my long suffering I change my mind, Paul's saying, and that he might make known, in verse 23, the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. The doors were blown open. The veil was torn. Everyone had access to God at this point, if they will give their life to him, if they will believe, if they will turn to him, if they will accept Jesus as their Savior. He's saying, it's not just to the promises I made with Abraham. It is now the doors have been blown off the hinges. All who will be part of my family are welcomed. Notice verse 25, referencing back to the book of Hosea, Paul says, as he says also in Hosea, I will call them my people who were not my people, and her beloved who were not beloved, and it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people. There, they shall be called sons of the living God. God's plan is not just for a one nation at one point in time. It's not for just those who grew up in certain families, certain heritages. It's for all of humanity. This is the way that God looks at his people and the love that he has. I want to go back and wrap up in Hosea, this time in Hosea chapter 3. Continuing with this account with Hosea's physical life and marriage, God instructs Hosea to do something monumental, something almost unspeakable, almost too much to do, almost unreasonable, but which displays the unmeasurable love God has for those who are his and he loves. And again, this is not allegory. This is not imagery of what God wants somebody. Hosea did this physically with his wife Gomer.

Notice Hosea 3 verse 1, then the Lord said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who looked to other gods and loved the raisin cakes of the pagans. And so Hosea says of himself, so I bought her for myself for 15 shekels of silver and one and one half omers of barley.

We don't know exactly the storyline here. We know at some point Gomer left Hosea.

For whatever reasons, she moved on. She found herself in the hands and arms of different men.

She eventually found herself indebted to another man.

But Hosea went to her, found her in her misery, found her and with no hope, and he buys her back to again live with him and be his wife. The magnitude of this event is again almost unspeakable that somebody would be willing. But the love, and this is where we know that Hosea had a deep love for his wife. This wasn't just fake. This wasn't just, oh, I'm going to marry this woman, but with everything she's going to do, I'm not going to give my heart to her. He gave his heart to his wife, just as God has given his heart to us. Verse 3 says, And I said to her, You shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man. So too will I be towards you. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or without prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or terror. He's saying the nation's going to go into captivity and they are not going to have the ability to come and worship me the way that I instructed them to do. They're not going to be able to have the freedoms to go around continuing to live the lives that I wanted them to live. They're going to desire to do that, of course, but they're not going to be able to offer sacrifice. They're not going to be able to have a king. They're not going to exist the way that they had before. But verse 5 says, Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days.

Much of the rest of Hosea, if we were to continue to read, speaks of the idolatry and the sins of Israel and the destructive path that they were on. Hosea spoke to them boldly about their sin and the coming correction that would come by God's strong hand. I do encourage, if you have time, this Sabbath or this week to read through the remainder of the book of Hosea. It'll probably take you about 20 minutes. It's not a very long read. But I'd like personally to finish by reading a few additional excerpts which point to God's eternal love and devotion to those who are his. Remember I said he sprinkled nuggets of hope and love throughout this message? Let's look at a few of those. Let's turn with me to Hosea 6 in verse 1.

The words, the imagery used here in the words to add color is beautiful in the rest of Hosea, where he sprinkles these nuggets of hope. Because here is a people without a hope. Here's the people without a future. And he says, no, let me tell you how important you are to me. Let me show you through words like that you can relate as a parent and as a husband or as a wife to understand the depth of my love. Notice Hosea 6.1. He says, come and let us return to the Lord, for he has torn, but he will heal us. He has stricken, but he will bind us up. After two days, he will revive us. On the third day, he will raise us up that we may live in his sight. Let us know. Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. He is going forth as established as the morning. He will come to us like the rain, like the latter and former rains on the earth, saying, if we will turn back, God will take care of us. He will provide. He will nurture us in a beautiful way. We know that when God drew the 12 tribes of Israel out of Egypt, he did not choose again a great or powerful nation.

He did not choose a mighty people, ones full of wealth or with a strong army. He did not draw them out as giants. He didn't look for the strongest and the most mighty in the world. But he remembered his promise to Abraham and the love that he had for his people.

So he brought them out. He taught them a new way to go. He gave them a rich land full of blessings and abundance. And God's steadfast parental love continued despite the ingratitude, the disloyalty, the unfaithfulness that damaged their relationship. Through it, though Israel was guilty, how could God give up on his children? He couldn't.

And this is a powerful reminder for all of us today. Notice Hosea 11 and verse 1.

Another insert section here between the judgment, between the coming justice that God was going to have on his people. He sprinkles in these messages of hope. And notice, again, the imagery in the words. Hosea 11 verse 1. When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. As they called them, so they went to them. They sacrificed to the bales and burned incense to carved images. But notice verse 3. He says, I taught Ephraim how to walk, taking them by their arms. But they did not know that I healed them. I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love. And I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and I fed them. God is using this imagery again as a parent dealing with the child. We have children that are born in states that they can't provide for themselves at all. But yet, when they start to get of that age where they can walk, how excited are we for them? I remember being so excited, so excited, until she became very mobile. And then I said, remember those days where she would just lay on a blanket and wouldn't go very far? That was pretty nice. I could watch a football game all the way through. Remember that? Now she's into everything. But we all know what I'm saying. The joy we have when they start to take those first steps, can't grab the cameras fast enough, the smiles, the laughter. God's saying, I lifted you up, Ephraim. I helped you to be able to walk. He says, I stooped down. I fed you. Like we get down on their kids level. We don't make them get up to our level. We get down on their level. We sit on the floor and play with them.

He's saying, this is the way that I love you so deeply. Verse 8, he says, how can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over Israel? He's saying, I can't do this. How can I make you like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboim? These are cities in the plains that perished with Sodom and Gomorrah. He's saying, how can I bring you to ruin? I can't. He says, my heart churns within me. My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the holy one in your midst, and I will not come with terror.

We're going to close in Hosea 14 and verse 1.

It's another just beautiful chapter, finishing up the book. God doesn't just leave them without hope from this message of Hosea. He doesn't just leave them on the curb saying, well, you've made your bed, now you've got a lie in it. Notice how he finishes out this message from the prophet. Hosea 14 verse 1. O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Take wisdom. Take my knowledge. Turn. You have an opportunity to say to him, take away all our iniquity. Receive us graciously, for we will offer sacrifices of our lips. And this is like the nation recognizing and coming to repentance. He says, they say, Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses, nor will we say any more the work of our hands. You are our gods, for in you the fatherless finds mercy. They won't say this. They won't look to foreign nations or to pagan gods. And then God says in verse 4, he goes, I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them. I will be like the dew to Israel. He shall grow like the lily and lengthen his roots like Lebanon. His branches shall spread. His beauty shall be like an olive tree and his fragrance like Lebanon. Those who dwell under his shadow shall return. They will be revived like grain and grow like a vine. Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Ephraim shall say, what have I to do any more with idols? The imagery for us individually, what will I have any more to do with sin in my past life? It's nothing. It's done nothing for me. It's proven to be damaging and hurtful. Notice he says, I have heard, verse 8, again, I have heard and observed him. I am like a green cypress tree. Your fruit is found in me. And then we get that message for us again today in verse 9. Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent? Let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right. The righteous walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them.

Again, there's more that we could cover in this book. But what we have covered today is a great reminder of the way that God looks at his people and the commitment God has to us. I hope that we can continue to internalize this powerful message.

The Life Application Study Bible reminds us of this. Forgiveness begins when we see the destructiveness of sin and the futility of life without God. Then we must admit we cannot save ourselves.

Our only hope is in God's mercy. When we seek forgiveness, we must recognize that we do not deserve it and therefore cannot demand it. Our appeal must be for God's love and mercy, not for his justice. Although we cannot demand forgiveness, we can be confident that we have received it because God is gracious and loving and wants to restore us to himself, just as he wanted to restore Israel. The Life Application Study Bible goes on to say, when our will is weak, when our thinking is confused, and when our conscience is burdened with a load of guilt, we must remember that God cares for us continually. His love knows no bounds. When friends and families desert us, when co-workers don't understand us, and when we are tired of being good, God's love knows no bounds. When we can't see the way or seem to hear God's voice, and when we lack courage to go on, God's love knows no bounds. When our shortcomings and our awareness of our sins overcome us, God's love knows no bounds. The message of Hosea is one of those that in the Bible can be, like I said, a difficult message to begin to wrap our minds around as we read through what this man was asked to do with someone and to bring make her his wife.

Knowing the challenges, knowing the troubles it would bring, it's a kind of a tough story to kind of read through. But the beauty of this story that God has given to us and the message he gave to his nation was one of eternal love. It's the greatest love story one could ever read or contemplate. It's a story that encompasses not only his nation at that time, the way that he cared, as Ezekiel described, the way that he cared for this people who had no hope, no direction to go.

And I think we can each individually think back to our past ways, to think back to our humble origins as people, to recognize that we have fallen more times than we've stood, but yet that we have a God that so intimately cares for us. He was the one that got down on our level and started to show us a better way to go. He was the one that nurtured us in our pain. He was the one that nurtured us out of our discomfort and our tribulations and things that we had brought on to ourselves. And then he was the one that says, I will do everything, including giving my own son, to make sure that there is a path for reconciliation for not only you, but for the entirety of the world. What a blessed story that we have here in the Book of Hosea, the symbolism and the importance of it. And may we continue to reflect on this beautiful but amazing love story for the ages.