Hosea 1 The God Who Really Loves

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his series on the book of Hosea, a study in God's relentless love.

Let's listen in. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak.

I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be together this morning with all of you to worship our Lord and Savior.

We're a church that believes that the Bible is the capital T truth of God. We believe in our core values, replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth, and this morning we start a series in Scripture that proves that we actually believe that all of Scripture is beneficial, all of it, including books like Hosea.

So I say that kind of ominously because Hosea is a bit of a tough book. How many of you have read Hosea and have at least a general understanding of what we're getting ourselves into?

Not only is it tough because it's prophecy written to an ancient people, set into an ancient context that are far removed from where we live.

There's a lot of history that I had to study this week to try to bring this up to up to speed and where we're at today, but Hosea is also shocking to our sensibilities and the metaphors.

As a matter of fact, I've said, and you probably saw it up on the screen, and you've seen it around hopefully already, this message this morning is going to be

PG, rated PG, and I'm going to give a rating to each one of these messages throughout the book of Hosea just so that you can be mindful of that for those of you who have kids here.

My intention is never up here to say anything that is for the intention of being crass, and yet you may hear some things that might strike your sensibilities in the wrong way.

The terminology of Hosea is meant to shock, and so I'm going to seek to utilize my words in line with Hosea's and what scripture has to say, and for this reason we're going to have an opportunity multiple times throughout this series for kids to go back and hang out for a few minutes in room four.

There are some people back there to help those kids just kind of stay entertained for a few minutes here. Then they could come back in for the worship time and then go out to their classes, so that's an opportunity right this minute.

I'm giving you this opportunity. If you want your kids to get up and go, they're going to hear at least one word from the reading of the text that they might ask you for a definition of on the way home that you might not be ready to define for them, and I don't want your kids to hear terminology from me.

I don't want to be the one to teach them that, but if you... So, yep, some people taking advantage of that.

Awesome. This sermon introduction is going to include a couple of phrases that you would probably likely want to monitor first, and so I'm going to jump ahead now, because even from the reading of this text, the prophet

Hosea uses a central metaphor that will be with us throughout the entire series.

It kind of goes away in its formal sense after the third chapter, and then it just dives into prophecy that's based on that metaphor, but the first three chapters really spell out the metaphor for us, and it's this metaphor.

The betrayal of sexual infidelity is a reality in human history, and just this past week, unrelated to my study in the book of Hosea, Linda mentioned to me we're both reading through the

Bible, starting a new Bible reading plan. Some of you are doing that, so some of you are in Genesis like us, and so we're reading through Genesis in our own quiet times, and she looked over at me at one point, and she said, these families are messed up.

Like, you're reading through Genesis, and it's like, holy cow, and she just mentioned particularly the sexual infidelity, the sexual sin that occurs in the book of Genesis, and it's just from the very beginning, right?

Like, we see this level of brokenness right there at the start, and as far as an operating metaphor,

God is intentionally utilizing shock and deep sorrow and intense relational brokenness to convey the way he feels about his people when they forsake him for other loves, when they forsake him for other gods, and isn't it in our heart to worship things that are not

God? Isn't that natural to us? I've entitled this message this morning, The God Who Really Loves, because we can easily lose sight of the reality as we go through Scripture, forming an opinion of a

God who is really angry, and that's what the world out there thinks. Oh, the God of Christians is an angry

God. He's just always ticked and always looking to smite somebody, always looking to judge, and it comes, is

God, does God have wrath? Do you guys know that? He does have wrath. He has wrath like the husband who is breaking down the hotel door to get his wife back from the arms of another man.

In this book, we will see God's disciplinary wrath blazing out of the prophet Hosea, but it comes from an enacted parable given to us in the first three chapters.

Hosea was called by God to live out a parable over the course of many years of his life.

He is called to marry a promiscuous woman. He is called by God to try to have a family life with her and see how that goes.

All of this is for the purpose of demonstrating God's pursuing love toward his people, even to demonstrate his relentless love toward us.

You see, what we're meant to understand in this passage is that we are the promiscuous, he is the faithful, we are the whores, and he is the husband.

That's what this book is teaching us, and yet throughout the book of Hosea and even in this opening chapter, we see

God as a lovesick husband, and while he's ready to go through a season of tough love and even separation with his people, he will not ever give up on the covenant that he made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and David.

In the short run, we'll see in the text, it spells out trouble for his people in the short run.

His hand of discipline is serious and stern, but church, it's not swift. You go through the

Old Testament, and he was patient with people for centuries. He is slow to anger, abounding in love, but he will by no means ignore sin, ever.

There is indeed an end to his patience for the one who continues to choose other gods over him.

But in our text, we'll see a really rough separation being pledged between God and his covenant people, while he still also pledges a reconciliation in the distant future, a reconciliation that we're living in today.

So, buckle up and let's turn our Bibles, open up to Hosea chapter 1, your scripture journals, your devices, however you navigate to the

Bible, and we're going to read Hosea chapter 1. We're actually going to include in this section verse 1 of chapter 2 as well, just simply because I think you'll see that it goes with it.

So, but recast God's holy word on what he desires to communicate to us, a pretty shocking word, but I'm convinced that this book is going to have a positive and good impact in our lives as we come to understand why it's revealed to us.

Hosea 1, 1 through 2, verse 1. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel.

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go take to yourself a wife of Hortem, and have children of Hortem, for the land commits great

Hortem by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son, and the

Lord said to him, call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel.

I will 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.

She conceived again and bore a daughter, and the Lord said to him, call her name no mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all, but I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the

Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen.

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. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall 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 shall be said to them, children of the living

God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

Say to your brothers, you are my people, and to your sisters, you have received mercy.

Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity that we have to dive into your word.

It's holy, but it's also very real and very raw. It's very direct, and Father, in the way that you speak through your prophets, it's a refreshing voice in a world that gets very complicated and very convoluted, and all of our motives get all twisted up inside us, and the good that we do is on the basis of trying to look good and trying to get ahead, and there's so many motives that cling to us, and here you identify just so clearly in such stark terms the reality of our brokenness, the reality of our idolatry, the reality of the way that our hearts are so torn in so many directions that are not toward you.

Father, I pray that you would allow Hosea's word and his prophecy to put a spotlight on the glory of Jesus Christ and the hope that we have in him, an old covenant that we could not keep, an old covenant that we could not fulfill, and you sending your son to establish a new covenant of grace through faith, an eternal covenant by which you are on both sides of that covenant, pledging to sustain and keep your people and paying the price, being both just and justifier for us.

Father, I pray that that gospel would delight our hearts as we have this opportunity to praise you in the gathering of your people right now.

Accept these songs as worship to you in Jesus' name. Amen. I encourage you to get comfortable and keep your

Bibles open to Hosea chapter 1. If you didn't, these got here late this week, but there are some scripture journals out there.

If you're a note taker and you have been using these in the past, this one is one that has Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah all together in one volume, but those are out at the welcome table if anybody wants to get up and grab one so that you can take notes on this section and have it in there.

That's up to you. You can grab one after the service too if you want, but I want to remind you guys all here at the start that Hosea was a real guy, real flesh and blood guy.

He lived, he breathed, he died on the same planet that you and I live on, and while many of us might be tempted to empathize with him in a way that goes far beyond what the text actually indicates for us or spells out for us,

I want to encourage our minds to stay on the plot line as much as possible throughout this book. We're going to be tempted to make much of things not mentioned in the text at all or to make much of simple things in the text that aren't meant to be carried all the way through, and a particular warning to any of you who have seen the movie or read the

Francine Rivers book, Redeeming Love, there's probably some of you in the room, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but that book has so little in common with the intention of the book of Hosea that it is worthless and potentially misleading to anyone who thinks it follows the gist of this biblical book, and so I point that out as a caveat, just not to malign

Francine Rivers, but she's a fiction author who is just taking the name Hosea and a couple of little minor things here and there and snippets and sprinkling it in there and then running with her storyline.

Does anybody even know what I'm talking about? Am I? Okay, good, I'm speaking to some of you. So, caution you about thinking that, get that out of your mind, try to scrub your mind as much as possible of that as we dive into the actual biblical account of Hosea, but what we do know, what we do know is revealed for us here, particularly in verse 1, that the word of the

Lord came to Hosea sometime around 760 BC. Now, there's going to be some history in this, particularly as a first introductory message to the book of Hosea and kind of, you know, getting us into the time frame, but verse 1 helps us to narrow down that year pretty well, so when

I say 760 BC, give or take a couple of years, not give or take decades, like we've got that pretty well refined, and that's partly because of the kings that are mentioned there in both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom of Israel to line that up fairly well, about 760

BC. And let me give you some road signs here, like 760 BC, my brain is mush, those are just numbers, we are roughly 150 years after the rule of King David, we are about 150 years before the final destruction of Jerusalem by the

Babylonians, and we're about 750 years before the birth of Jesus, so hopefully that gives you some, a couple of benchmarks for you to kind of like understand where we're at in history.

Now, as far as outlines go, we've got five points this morning, they'll go pretty quick. The first is a promiscuous wife, the first two verses, or verses 2 and 3 rather, and then a son of destruction, verses 4 and 5, a daughter of judgment, verses 6 and 7, a son of divorce, verses 8 and 9, and a promised reversal, starting in verse 10 of chapter 1, going through the first verse of the second chapter.

So again, that guy in the Middle Ages did us a great service and sat down and divided it all into chapters and verses, sometimes he got it right, sometimes he didn't, and so, but I don't think

I'd do any better job than he would, so in this case, it's kind of like, oh, verse 1 really does go with this section.

But the word of the Lord came to Hosea, and it was a shocking word. Anybody shocked when I read it? They're kind of like, well, the word whore is in there, that's so uncomfortable.

It was, it's a shocking word, when God first spoke to Hosea, he gave him a command, a really startling command, and so we start off with a promiscuous wife, verses 2 and 3.

Her name is Gomer, and her name is mentioned in the text, but he says, God says, go take to yourself a promiscuous wife.

The phrase of whoredom, in verse 2, is a word of sexual sin that is not strictly prostitution, it's like the

King James Version has it, I think, prostitution, some different translations translate it differently, some of it say adulterous.

There is a word in the Hebrew language for the oldest profession of prostitution, and this is not that word.

This is a word that means quite generic sexual immorality. It is probably best, I really like that the

Christian Standard Bible, the CSB, the one that I'm gonna read through in this, I started it already in Genesis, I'm reading through it in this next year, it's probably the best translation here, it's promiscuous.

So, go find yourself a promiscuous wife. Exactly what everybody's looking for, right? Not really.

So, Hosea is told to go find a wife who's already been around a bit, and nothing of the search, nothing of the search is mentioned in the text.

How does a guy find a woman like that? Well, somebody said, probably go ask the other guys, I don't know. But nothing of the search is mentioned, nor of the arrangements to marry her.

Does he go to her father and ask for her hand in marriage? All of the arrangements that happened in that ancient culture, like there's a lot of mystery here, it doesn't go there, doesn't tell us how this marriage came about, just go find yourself a promiscuous woman, marry her.

And there's nothing mentioned, by the way, in the text at all about how

Hosea felt about this. There's not really much concern in this metaphor for Hosea's feelings.

It's just not there. It's here, you're gonna go do a tough thing. And he is given a command, marry a promiscuous woman, have children by this promiscuous woman, and the reason is given right away at the end of verse two.

There is a message God wants to communicate through the prophet Hosea. The land commits great promiscuity by forsaking

Yahweh their Lord. The relationship, the analogy given is that God is like Hosea and the promiscuous wife is like Israel, and Israel has been whoring after other things.

The word land in verse two might strike us as kind of strange. When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, the

Lord said, go take yourself a wife of whoredom, have children, for the land commits great whoredom.

What is meant by the land there? It might strike our ears as impersonal, but the land as a connecting point to a people was common in ancient times, as a metaphor for the entire people, and agricultural people were symbolized by their land.

And we still have remnants of this in our day and age. We might speak of the sins or crimes of our land, and we clearly wouldn't be talking about hills and valleys and streams committing, but we would be talking about the people committing those crimes, right?

Like we could still use that as a phrase, but the metaphor here is drawn to clarity at the end of verse two.

Promiscuity will be used in Hosea as a symbol of idolatry and sinful departure from a relationship of Yahweh, the

Lord. So that's the metaphor. It's like idolatry, going off into other, dabbling with other gods, is like adultery, like being promiscuous against the marriage of Israel and the

Lord. Verse two invites us into the entire sordid case study. God's people, the northern nation of Israel, has been to god -like unfaithful spouses.

They've been all about illicit sexual encounters, and that's been their MO. Always dabbling with Baal, always dabbling with Asher, always dabbling with Molech, always going off.

And I mean, none of that, by the way, speaks to, the Old Testament doesn't seem to be super interested in the individual.

It's the nation, but how many of you think that maybe some of the people just were generally selfish in worshiping themselves during this time?

Like it doesn't even go there. It's like all about these other idols, but I mean there is a generalized self -centeredness that's involved in all of that.

But now, why couldn't God use a more tame metaphor for this? That I think is really, really fundamental about the book of Hosea.

God desires to shock us. He wants to shake us awake.

He wants to shock his people. He is not as tame as you might be raised to think.

I mean, God's pursuit of you and me is no different than a man pursuing a genuine committed marital relationship with a promiscuous woman.

Well, the fact of the matter is we are messy. We don't have a clue what love really is. We abuse others and abuse ourselves, spend our days loveless and whoring after things.

Meanwhile, God is pursuing, loving, drawing, providing, and remaining faithful to us, his people. Amen? Is that true?

How many of you are grateful for his faithfulness to you knowing, because you know yourself, right?

Do you deserve that? But he remains faithful to us. And in verse three, we see the explicit obedience on the part of his prophet.

There's no trip to Joppa to get on a boat bound for Tarshish. Hosea is no

Jonah. He obeys a very hard command and goes out and finds a promiscuous wife in Gomer and marries her.

At this point, I want to say that some of you have the same genuine question my wife asked me this week.

I've even had a couple of people come up to me this morning and ask me this question. The question is simply this, why Hosea?

My wife asked that. Like, why not 2 Corinthians? Why not

Obadiah? And within minutes of her asking that question to me this week,

I came across this quote and I literally sent it to her, or handed her the book and had her read it, but came across this quote from David Hubbard in his commentary.

He is, by the way, a man who devoted a huge chunk of his life to studying the book of Hosea. He's a scholar among Old Testament scholars who, this is his specialty.

Like, can you imagine? Like, Hosea is your book, right? And a lot of these Old Testament scholars pick a book, specialize in it, write their dissertations on it, write their books about it, just keep writing books about Hosea.

And this is what he says about the book. He says, living with Hosea has been an awesome privilege. For years, his message has been a regular part of what

I've pondered, read, and taught. His remarkable role in human history and divine revelation is combined with an astounding literary skill to make an irreplaceable contribution to my life.

I cannot imagine myself as a human being, let alone as being a believing person, without the deposit of Hosea's political, moral, and spiritual insights.

Here's a man who's gonna, who studied the book and is commending to us the value and benefit of understanding and studying the book of Hosea.

Well, hopefully it's enough that it's in the Bible for you, you didn't need David Hubbard's endorsement, right? Like, it's like, it's in there, this is

God's holy word. But it's a challenging chunk of revelation, and it is, it is revelation though, and we will be better, much better, for having studied it together over these coming weeks.

So, back to verse 3, Hosea obeyed, he somehow found himself a promiscuous woman, the marriage is implied, it's not that we don't see a wedding ceremony here or anything, but I'm confident that it took place according to the way that God had instructed him.

And that leads us to the son of destruction, verses 4 and 5. A little bit, maybe, more of a confusing historical need to understand what the naming of this son means.

In the end of verse 3, she bears him a son, and Yahweh, the great I Am, the creator of the universe, speaks to Hosea and told him to name the son

Jezreel. And you're like, oh, I get it now, now I see where God's going with this. Jezreel, are you kidding me?

No, I'm just kidding. Of course, I don't expect you to really understand, I didn't understand when

I first read this what in the world is the significance of Jezreel, right? Like, I mean, you're looking for marginal notes, you're looking for like, what does this name mean, all of this stuff.

It's a very significant name, it's got depth. When Hubbard talks about the literary skill of Hosea, it is rich and deep, the things that he does with the language here.

But Jezreel symbolizes three, really, three things in the text. Jezreel is a city,

Jezreel is a valley in northern Israel, and Jezreel is used as a metaphor, meaning scattering or sowing.

That's the meaning of the word, like if you're, just the word Jezreel in Israel, in the

Hebrew language, means to scatter or to sow, like as in seed, like throwing out seed, like agriculturally.

So the current king of the northern kingdom of Israel is in the line of Jehu. Jehu, you see him mentioned in the text here, and I think we can get through this section without having a master's degree in ancient

Jewish history, but what is pertinent here for our understanding is that Jehu, what you need to understand about him, why is he mentioned in this judgment against the northern tribe of Israel, or the northern nation of Israel?

Jehu led a bloody coup that resulted in the decimation of King Ahab's family. Now some of you, you hear the name

King Ahab, you might have a fuzzy notion of some really bad guy. That would be right. So Jehu led a bloody coup that resulted in the decimation of King Ahab's family.

As a matter of fact, in one passage it actually mentions that he stacked up 70 heads of the family of the royal line of Ahab into two piles.

So he did his job, grisly job, and actually dispatched the family line of Ahab.

Jezebel, King Ahab's wife, you recognize her name, was killed at Jezreel by the command of Jehu.

She died really at his hands. She was up in a tower looking out gloating as he sieges the city of Jezreel, and he says, hey

I'll stop it, you guys can all eat food, you can have dinner tonight, and we'll stop the siege if you just throw

Jezebel out the window. And so somebody does, and that's how she ended. So this is

Jehu, this is Jehu, this is King Jehu, like a lot of blood on his hands. Hosea isn't really concerned for all of this detail, he's concerned for the bloody nature of Jehu's establishment of his own dynasty in Jezreel, and he is saying judgment is coming for the blood of Jezreel.

Interestingly, Jehu did a lot to bring the people away from idolatry by getting rid of Jezebel, by getting rid of Ahab, but since those early reforms, his royal line, the dynasty of King Jehu, has taken a deep, deep dive back into idolatry and forsaking

God by the writing of Hosea. And so he's like, you're no better than them, and I'm gonna bring back on your head that bloody rebellion.

And so here, in a very matter -of -fact way, through the birth and naming of his son,

Hosea's son Jezreel, God conveys that the northern kingdom of Israel is going to end, and that's the metaphorical use of it.

It's going to happen at the valley of Jezreel, but the armies are going to be scattered and broken, they're scattered.

If you're going to say the armies are going to be scattered in the Hebrew language, you would use the word

Jezreel in there. Like your armies are scattered, your army's Jezreel. I think it might need to be explained that the people of God have been divided for over a century, though, as of the writing of Hosea.

Ten of the northern tribes split from the two southern tribes and established their own king, their own territory, their own capital.

Their capital city is Samaria in the north, while two of the tribes remained in the south. They are called

Judah in the south, and their capital is, of course, Jerusalem. And so in a quite nonchalant prediction,

God says ten of the tribes of Israel are going to be wiped out. Assyria is going to come in and wipe them out, and it's all going to transpire, and the military strength is going to be broken in the

Jezreel valley. A spoiler alert, in 721, within 40 years of the writing of Hosea, Assyria will set one of the most brutal sieges ever enacted in human history on the city of Samaria.

Samaria and the nation of Israel will fall in devastating fashion, and this is what is meant by the naming of Jezreel.

And verse 5 emphasizes that the army of Israel, the bow of Israel, would be broken in the

Jezreel valley near Samaria. The word Jezreel also means to scatter, to sow seed.

As I said, it's used as a metaphor for destruction, like scattering an army as they make a hasty retreat, or scattering of people in exile.

But it also can be used in a positive metaphor when it's more agricultural. When said in a more agricultural context, it can be an upbeat word.

Sowing seed is hope for growth and hope for good. The use of the word Jezreel needs context to determine if it's good or bad, and the reason that that's important is we're going to see the word

Jezreel used positively by the end of this text. But here in chapter 1, it's used for destruction, but by verse 11, it's going to be used for that positive sowing hope.

But through the life of Hosea, God is telling a story. Maybe you got confused a little bit in that history, and if you've got any questions you can come back with me on that.

And again, some of these Old Testament books do get a little technical, and I see a little bit of history fatigue on your faces.

But God is telling a story. It's a story of God lovingly drawing in and seeking to provide for a promiscuous people.

But the fruit of that relationship is destruction here.

And destruction isn't the end of the story because God has more to clarify. It's not just one son,

Jezreel, that naming. Okay, there's your metaphor. You're going to be destroyed. The northern kingdom is going to go away.

Gomer, Hosea's promiscuous wife, bears another child, a second child, a daughter of judgment, verses 6 and 7.

I think it's interesting that Jezreel is identified as Hosea's son in verse 3. You can look with me at the text and look at verse 3.

So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Dibliam, and she conceived and bore him a son, but the next two children get no designation as his.

And I believe that's with intention. He is married, indeed, a promiscuous wife. And the next two children, we don't know who the father is.

God tells Hosea to name the daughter Lo -Ruhamah, which means no mercy in Hebrew.

God is done showing mercy to his people. He is done overlooking their sins. He will no longer give them forgiveness, the text tells us.

In preparation for the sermon, I went back and did a lot of reading. I don't have time to share here all of the details of everything that I read, but the wicked acts of Israel in their closing years are epic.

Child sacrifice, prostitution cults on every hill, the worship of Asherah and Baal, violence in the streets, the worship of Molech, and as I said, child sacrifice to the god

Molech. And through Hosea, God is saying, you're done. You're done.

God is not done with his promise, as you will see in our last three verses, but he is about to discipline his people in as clear as he can get an expression of wrath towards sin.

Even in the same breath of predicting judgment on the northern tribe of Israel, God does here in our text promise more patience with Judah, the southern kingdom.

He says, I'm going to rescue Judah, not rescue them from the clutches of the Assyrian army by military might, but by miraculous intervention.

And that amazing account can be read in 2 Kings chapter 18 and 19. I encourage you, even if you're not a notetaker, to jot that reference down.

Go back and read that amazing account of the way that God actually fulfilled this prophecy through the prophet

Hosea to the southern tribes of Judah in 2 Kings 18 through 19.

It's actually a riveting read. It's got some intrigue in there and all kinds of things, but God indeed miraculously delivered

Judah, not by their strength, not by their military, not by their horses, not by their army, but miraculously by actually wiping out a huge chunk of the

Assyrian army in the middle of the night. And so they turned tail and ran back to Assyria.

But there is a final fruit of this relationship between Hosea and his promiscuous wife. Even as they symbolize

God and his people, a third child is born. And again, we are left in ambiguity as to who the father is.

I want to point out there was no Jerry Springer at the time, but I think just a little phone call and I think that Hosea could have gotten a spot on the show.

And some of you know what I'm talking about. Raise your hand if you don't know what I'm talking about. That's okay. I'd be proud if you don't.

Okay, good. That's good. A couple people I'm proud of here. A son of divorce is the fourth point here, verses 8 and 9.

Time passes and we are told nothing about the nature of the relationship in the Hosea household.

Usually it was a couple of years before a child was weaned. So we're talking about passage of time here. This is not just like, you know, succinct and quick.

This is life. And how many of you think that the family, the Hosea household, was a bit rocky? Anybody?

It's probably pretty rocky. These are real people. The Bible is not at all trying to pretend that life is easy.

It doesn't get into the nitty -gritty details, but I think it doesn't take much, you know, reading between the lines to go like,

I think if they were real people this was not an easy marriage. But along comes ankle -biter number three, a son, and the command from God a third time is to give the child a symbolic name again.

And this one is named Lo -Ami. Lo -Ami means not my people. Not only is destruction coming like the scattering, not only is the storehouse of mercy dried up toward Israel, but also

God here in this text, this is a harsh word, but God is divorcing his people with the words, you are not my people and I am not your

God. This is exactly covenant language. That's why I say it's divorce. He said, you will be my people and I will be your

God to the people of Israel at Sinai. When he struck that Mosaic covenant with the people, talking about the law, a conditional covenant, the

Mosaic covenant is conditional. Abrahamic covenant is not. But it was conditional there.

You follow my laws, you follow my rules, and be my people and I will be your God and I will protect you in the land and all these things.

This is where we need some important discussion about that old Mosaic covenant. It was conditional. The value of the old covenant was limited by the very fact that it was conditional.

They kept up their end and God kept up his. This passage in Hosea highlights for us the need for a better covenant than law, by which

God is both just and justifier. We need a covenant where his strength is applied on both sides of the agreement so that we can arrive at reasonable balance.

Of course, we're not balanced if it's us on one side of an equation and God on the other. How many of you know that's not a balanced equation?

We need God on both sides. We can't keep up our end and that's what the old covenant with the law existed to prove.

That old Mosaic covenant served a purpose of demonstrating the reality that you and I can't obey

God. We can't keep his laws. In our broken state, in our fallen state, we are corrupted, broken, through and through.

We are promiscuous people. Now I'm talking this way because it would be reasonable for some of you to be wondering as you go through Hosea chapter 1 here, if God divorces his old covenant people, what's the next question?

Why wouldn't he give up on me? Is that a reasonable question? If he'd give up on his old covenant people, why wouldn't he give up on me?

But the author of Hebrews writes this for us and I love this. I'm going to read a large chunk. I don't usually do this. I'm not going to ask you to turn there because the reference is going to be up on the screen,

Hebrews 8, 6 through 13. I think it's up there, yeah. I'm going to read a large chunk of the New Testament here for a second, but it's really, really important and pertinent to our understanding about the distinction between that old covenant that's being ended here in Hosea chapter 1 with his old covenant people and what is distinct from the new covenant that you and I benefit from today.

Hebrews 8, 6 through 13. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is much better, much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. What's he getting at there?

What is the author of Hebrews telling us? Why send Jesus if the law was enough? Why send

Jesus if you and I could get okay with God by obedience? We go on in verse 8.

For he finds fault with them when he says, behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when

I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant.

Do you see the conditional nature of this language? And so, says God, I showed no concern for them, declares the

Lord, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law into their minds and write them on their hearts.

And here it is, I will be their God and they shall be my people. Do you hear that from Hosea?

I will be their people and they shall be my God and they shall not teach each other, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, know the

Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, for I will be merciful,

Rahama, I will be merciful toward their iniquities and I will remember their sins no more.

And speaking of the new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

Now, God is not done with his people, but they have been unfaithful. The case study and human inability to keep

God's law or to love him well is completed and Hosea here is saying, that's going to be done.

We've failed miserably. He is done with that old illustration while preparing us for him to reconcile us to himself completely by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, for the glory of God alone.

I would argue with any of you if you would take issue with the idea that this is divorce language here. Some people really kick against that and kind of it's a visceral thought.

But God said, I pledge to you to be your God if you will be my people. The people wanted the blessing of God's favor while dabbling with other gods on the side.

They were like, yeah, I mean it's kind of like they wrote it into the vows a bit. Like, yeah, we'll follow you as long as you do this and this and this, but you know really we kind of got

Baal over here, kind of got Asherah. Is it okay if we visit them once in a while? Hang out with them?

Spend the night with them? And in their wickedness they forsook the covenant they had entered with Yahweh, their

God. And he's done. I'm not your God and you are not my people. I don't think you can get more clear than that.

And I'm so grateful that the text doesn't end here. Anybody glad that that's not where, like Hosea just like wraps up the book and we're done and let's go have a great week.

That's not how it ends. In the short term, certainly, hopefully you can see and you will see increasingly over the coming weeks,

Israel is in trouble and that's what Hosea is going to spell out. But in the long run,

God's promises will prevail and so our text ends with a fifth movement, a promised reversal starting in verse 10 through the first verse of chapter 2.

So far the message has been this, just to recap, God's people are whores, they've earned destruction, judgment, and divorce, and in the short run

God's wrath will unfold. Message of Hosea 1 in a nutshell.

But then verse 10, the promises to Abraham will be fulfilled. We are meant to think of Abraham right away when we start hearing verse 10, yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like sand of the sea, which was the promise to Abraham, which cannot be measured or numbered in the places it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living

God. We are meant to think of Abraham here in this text.

It's going to be fulfilled. God is not giving up on that. The offspring of Israel will be numerous like the sand of the sea and God connects the dots for us.

By the way, in case you're wondering like is this a promise to Israel? How does that relate to us? Galatians 3 7 through 9 connects the dots for us here.

The Apostle Paul writing to the church says this, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham.

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles, amen, justifies by Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed.

So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. How will the offspring of Abraham become like the sand of the sea?

Through the Gentiles. Through us. When God says to Hosea the number of Israel's children will increase, we have biblical reason to believe that he's talking about us.

And this is further evidenced by Paul's quoting of, he quotes, Paul quotes Hosea. I don't know if you knew that.

Paul quotes Hosea in Romans 9 25 through 26 and what does he quote? He quotes verse 10 regarding the inclusion of the

Gentiles. We who once were called not his people are now called his people.

Now listen, I could get a whole lot more technical than I think is beneficial here and so I'm open to any discussions of any of this if it becomes confusing to you in your mind or you're kind of like,

I don't really understand this Old Covenant, New Covenant business. Some of you are sitting here and you're going like, I don't even understand Jesus, so like please come talk with me.

But here's the point. God is amazingly speaking of the church here in Hosea 1 10 through the first verse of chapter 2.

Here at the declaration of the broken nature of the Old Covenant come the promises of the pathway of fulfillment.

God is not done with his promises to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, and to David. He is declaring a far future fulfillment, one that we benefit from here today.

And the symbolic names of Hosea's children are reversed in this text. Lo -Ammi becomes children of the living

God. No longer not my people but now brought into the family. Sons and daughters, children of the living

God. Say to your brothers, verse 1, you are my people and say to your sisters, you have received mercy.

Those two names being reversed there. There will be a new covenant unveiled, has been now, a new covenant unveiled by which many will come in and be called children of the living

God. And God's people will be gathered together, united under one leader, the text tells us.

Hmm, wonder who that could be. And it will be declared among them, you are my people and you have received mercy.

And the reversal, so those names are reversed, but then there's also the reversal of the name Jezreel, which I think is the most interesting.

The phrase go up in Hebrew, look at verse 11 with me for a second, and the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and they shall appoint for themselves one head, let's just say

Jesus, and they shall go up from the land for great shall be the day of Jezreel. That phrase go up is really intrigued a lot of scholars because the depth, the depth of Hosea's usage of words are pretty riveting here and the precision with which it comes into the

New Testament. This is a metaphor for resurrection. The word go up in Hebrew at the end of verse 11 is metaphorical.

What it could be translated, they shall spring up from the land, they shall come up from the land. And some scholars just go all in on that possible understanding, actually most do.

The phrase spring up in light of the use of agricultural word Jezreel, sowing reverses the negative scattering into a positive sowing.

There will be a great day of planting, Jezreel, and many will spring up out of the land.

The precision of that language is breathtaking in this ancient book and when it comes to predicting the place that you and I live today as the church, when it comes to grace,

I want you to think about this. We as spiritually promiscuous people deserving of destruction, deserving of no mercy, deserving of the title not my people, are now united under one

King. We are numerous beyond count. We are called children of the Living God.

We live in a great time of sowing and we will all, every single person who has faith in our

Covenant King, will spring up from the land to be with Him forever. Hosea got this.

It gives me chills to think about what, I mean we're talking 750 years before Jesus was born and he says this is the way the future is gonna go.

Like the precision of that language is astonishing. He didn't even know Jesus's name yet and he's telling us how the church is gonna run, what the church is gonna look like, what this era that we live in now is gonna be like.

And so God has us, you and me, church think about it, He has us living in the great day of Jezreel, the great day of planting, the great day of sowing the seed.

And so the question has to be asked, are you sowing the truth? Are you spreading the good seed that is the gospel?

Get planting while we live in the great day of Jezreel. Church, we who are in Christ under the new covenant with better promises, let's practice obedience to verse 1 of chapter 2.

And let's, I'm gonna ask you to do something super cheesy. I don't, I don't like cheesy, but I'm gonna ask you to do it.

On the count of three, I'm gonna ask all of you to say to one another and just obey what Scripture is saying here.

It literally instructs us. There's a command here. Do you see the command in verse 1 of chapter 2? What's it say?

Say this to your brothers. Say this to your sisters. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna let you just put it into practice right now.

I'm gonna ask us all on the count of three to say, you are His people. You don't have to shout it. I'm not, I'm not gonna like gauge your volume, but I'm gonna gauge your participation.

So on the count of three, you are His people. One, two, three, you are His people.

And then let's try the second. You have received mercy. On the count of three, one, two, three, you have received mercy.

Amen. Amen. You see, church, that's, that's true over us, isn't it?

Hosea pictured a time when we would say that to one another, and, and it would be true, and it would be real.

You see, we're no better than Gomer. We are no more deserving than Israel, and yet he has pursued us with a relentless and faithful love.

So we, as we come to communion together, let's be love struck by the one who hasn't given up on us.

He has promised now better promises. Promises like, I will never leave you or forsake you.

Amen? Can you cling to that one? He will be with us to the end of this age, and the gates of hell will not prevail against His church.

Remember the one head, Jesus Christ, who unites us, whether Jews or Gentiles. All who are saved are united by His sacrificial death for us.

And so come to the tables to remember His body broken in our place. Come to take the juice to remember His blood shed for us.

And if you're at peace with others here, and at peace with God through faith in His Son, then go to those tables with joy, and remember this week, we are

His people. We have received mercy. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this awesome and glorious prophecy that we have the privilege of seeing from so many centuries ago.

Predictive of our time. Accurate. You spoke through your prophet to declare to us hope, and trust in you, and promise to us, and that we would be a people united under our one head,

Jesus Christ, our Lord. Father, I pray that that would continue to be reality, that we would keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, that you would protect us from wandering away into the idolatry of other things.

Father, we know that our hearts are so prone to wander. We are so spiritually racked with ADD, spiritual

ADD, just our attention going every which way, and the next shiny object, the next promising relationship, the next

God of this age that would grab our attention. Father, I pray that you would help us to be a people continually drawn back to your

Son, continually fixing our gaze on Him. Just even the reminder in this thing that we do every week that runs the risk of being routine, but a recentering of our week, a recentering of our focus on what's been done for us in your

Son, Jesus Christ. I find this refreshing and helpful to my week to come back to that, to remind myself that it's all about Jesus and what

He's done, not all about me and my failure, not all about me and my brokenness, but about Him and His redeeming work in this new covenant of grace.

Father, if there's anybody here who doesn't have faith in you, I pray that you give them boldness to come and talk with me or come and talk with anybody.

I'm guessing that there's all different kinds of people here who would be willing to talk with someone who has questions about Jesus.

Father, I pray that you would, as David even prayed earlier, that today might be a day of salvation for anyone here who doesn't know you as Lord and Savior and King, and I thank you for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.