Hosea #1 Ch. 1 Introduction — Chuck Missler

Hosea and the Minor Prophets

Well, we start a new book tonight, and we're going to turn tonight to what's called, unfortunately, the Minor Prophets. That's a strange designation. It really comes from the church, not from ancient divisions and so forth.

The church collections divided the major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, as the larger, major meaning larger in size. And then the remaining 12, they called the Minor Prophets because the books are smaller.

And it's misleading to a Bible student because it sounds like they're less important. Hardly. They are perhaps some of the most profound, pithy, and relevant to our day kinds of passages. And we're doing this for a couple of reasons.

One is we're trying to work our way through the entire Bible, of course, and this also, this and Micah will complete our series in the Minor Prophets. But it's interesting. I was quite startled as I started to refresh in this book.

I was really startled at how it is so relevant for you and I today in some surprising ways. Hosea was a contemporary of Amos, Isaiah, and also Micah, actually. And Jeremiah was the weeping prophet focusing on Judah.

And Jeremiah had the unpleasant task, in effect, of presiding over the death of his nation. But that was a hundred years in the future. This book by Hosea focuses on the decline and judgment on the northern kingdom.

You may recall after Solomon passed away, the kingdom divided. His son, Rehoboam, took the southern group, but the northern group, Rehoboam, rebelled. And they called themselves the House of Israel, and the southern half of the nation was called the House of Judah.

We often get confused in many passages where it'll speak of Israel, referring really to the northern kingdom, not the total nation. Unless you're sensitive to the context, that can be confusing. The northern kingdom is also sometimes called Ephraim.

One of the prominent tribes that designated a major part of that area. And now, the capital was Samaria, so we also speak of the fall of Samaria in 722. And what Hosea deals with are the circumstances leading up to that.

And they'll be quite surprising in many ways. There's probably no messenger of God that gives us such a complete outline as to how God deals with His earthly people. Few do this as thoroughly as Hosea does.

God's Faithfulness Despite Israel's Unfaithfulness

And we'll learn at least four major aspects of the way God deals with His people. First of all, we'll discover God suffers when His people are unfaithful to Him. That's a strange idea that the eternal God, the creator of the universe, can suffer.

But He's hurt. He feels pain, in effect, when we are unfaithful. We'll also discover something that doesn't come as a surprise, and yet we don't probably fully appreciate that God does not condone sin.

We're so conscious, especially from New Testament teachings of God's grace, that we often fail to fully appreciate that a holy God cannot condone sin. It has to be dealt with. We'll also discover, though, despite some of the dark aspects of this book, we're going to discover that God will never cease to love His own.

He never ceases to love us. And consequently, the fourth item is He always seeks to win back those who have forsaken Him. So we're going to see some very strange things occur, but we'll always notice that there's always an interlude and always an emphasis on what the ultimate end will be.

Hosea's New Testament Fulfillment

So now, the book of Hosea is surprisingly quoted in the New Testament, many, many places. One of the strangest passages to me, and we'll deal with that when we get to chapter 2. In 2 .15, there's a passage, Out of Egypt I have called my son.

And yet when you read that passage in the context, it clearly is referring to the nation of Israel as His firstborn son. He's using it idiomatically. And yet, and yet, the Holy Spirit moves Matthew to apply that to Jesus Christ when Mary, Joseph, and Jesus come back out of Egypt, having fled there for refuge from Herod.

And so we begin to get a glimmer that many of these passages are Holy Spirit puns, if you will. They have a double application. The application context in Hosea 2, of course, is the nation. Yet specifically, Matthew 2 .15 quotes Hosea out of that.

Matthew 9 .13 says, I'll have mercy and not sacrifice. We find that quoted twice in Matthew 9 .13 and 12 .7. And we also find, we'll look at this a little later, in Romans 9, my people, which were not faithful and so forth.

It's quoted both by Paul in his epistle to the Romans and also by Peter in his first letter. And we'll deal with that when we get there. And remember the famous passage that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection chapter, which says, O death, where is thy sting?

Grave thy victory. That's a quote from Hosea. So we quickly recognize that the New Testament writers were very, very conscious of the book of Hosea. Hosea, we all probably remember the way Charles Dickens opens his novel, The Tale of Two Cities.

He said it was the best of times and it was the worst of times. And he uses that colorful opening to open his novel. Well, it's interesting, that famous phrase, it's often applied to many things, certainly fits the times that Hosea is dealing with, because it was the best of times.

Prosperity, Moral Decline, and National Judgment

The Dow Jones was over 10 ,000. I mean, it was great, great prosperity. And yet, what will clearly be evident, it was also the worst of times. And material prosperity was really the descriptor of our society, especially in the Northern Kingdom.

Their prosperity was unequaled since the days of Solomon. And we find that in 2 Kings 14, 2 Chronicles 26 will detail all that. Historically, we won't take the time here to get into that. But Jeroboam, the king, was able, had been able to recover all the territory that had previously been lost to Israel.

He even had possession of Damascus. So they were very, very successful. Militarily, with the standing army and all the rest. And, but one of the lessons we're going to learn as Hosea deals with the Northern Kingdom and the predicament, is that no material prosperity is a guarantee of safety to that people whose stability rests not on their moral basis of the fear of God and obedience to his laws.

Material prosperity is no guarantee of safety. Your safety always comes from the moral basis that's built upon a fear of God. And that should start to bother us a little bit. Because as we study Hosea, as we read the records and we try to get a background, we see a disturbing parallel between the predicament of the Northern Kingdom and ourselves.

Strong military, enjoying unparalleled prosperity. A prosperity that's even baffling the analysts. The strength of this economy, apparently, seems boundless. And so much so that we have an utter disregard for our heritage.

All the things that made America great, all the things that we held dear in the 40s, 50s, 60s. The American heritage, gone, ridiculed, stripped from our museums in Washington and stripped from even the rhetoric.

We can have campaigns where character doesn't count. We can have impeachment proceedings which essentially rule in the Senate that it's okay to conduct perjury, to lie under oath if you have high enough office.

Stop and think about what this means. Not about him, about the culture that permits this, that encourages this. For righteousness, he looked for justice but beheld oppression. For righteousness, he saw a charming couple of little notes.

A little 12th grader wrote, Dear God, how did you let happen what happened in Columbine High School? Note comes back, Dear so-and-so 12th grader, I'm not allowed in the schools. Signed, God. Just a cartoonist little quip but he gets the point.

So anyway, Hosea's message, just like his 8th century contemporaries, Isaiah, Amos, Micah, needs to be understood against the background of Deuteronomy, particularly Deuteronomy 28. If we were going to conduct this as a course, one of the prerequisites would be having had a study of Deuteronomy.

Particularly to understand the covenant relationship between God and the nation Israel, between Yahweh or Jehovah or however you care to pronounce it. See that the deal was, the covenant relationship, is that Israel was to maintain loyalty to the Lord by worshiping Him alone and obeying His commandments.

And that was their part of the deal. His part of the deal is as long as they were obedient, that would bring blessing. And if you read Deuteronomy 28, the first 14 verses are the blessings for obedience.

The next 14 verses, or in fact more than that, from 15 all the way to the end, disobedience would bring judgment and eventual exile. It probably would behoove us to mark your place here in Hosea. Let's drop back to Deuteronomy 28 and just sample it a little bit to get a flavor of the Torah on this subject.

First 14 verses are the things that will bring a blessing upon Israel. Verse 1, And it shall come to pass that if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, and observe and do all His commandments which I command thee this day, that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth.

That's God's commitment. And by the way, one of the most important theological discoveries is that we worship a God that delights in making and keeping His promises. That's distinctive by the way. The Allah of the Koran is presented as being arbitrary, capricious, unknowable.

That's their conception. No, the God of the Old Testament, the living God, is quite of a different, in fact the opposite character. He delights in making and keeping His promise. Here's His promise. If you'll do that, then I'll set thee high above all the nations.

And all these blessings shall come on thee, verse 2, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken to the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, blessed thou shalt be in the field. And He goes on and on here for 14 verses of all the blessings and if they'll keep His commandments.

Take it down to verse 15. Let's pick up 14 just to tie off the first 14 verses. He says, And thou shalt not go aside from any of the words which I command thee this day, to the right hand or to the left, to go after other gods, to serve them.

Then verse 15, it gives you the other side of the coin. But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to all His commandments and His statutes which I command thee this day, that all these curses shall come upon thee and overtake thee.

Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be in the field. And it goes on and parallels the previous passage. And you can, you know, read that at your leisure. We'll keep going forward here.

Israel's Restoration in Deuteronomy 30

Well, as we leave Deuteronomy 20, let's stop at chapter 30. Chapter 30. That's going to come up here shortly. Let's just pick it up right now. Because even though we have the promise, these blessings and cursings, in chapter 30, there is a commitment you really need to understand.

And this is at the root of a great deal of controversy in the church today, strangely. In Deuteronomy 30, we have the promise of Israel's ultimate restoration. Deuteronomy 30, verse 1. It shall come to pass that when all these things are come upon thee, and the blessing and the curse which I have set before thee, that thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations to which the Lord thy God hath driven thee.

Because the previous chapter has talked about the diaspora. That they would be scattered throughout the world. And thou shalt return unto the Lord thy God, and shalt obey his voice, according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart and with all thy soul.

Then the Lord thy God will return thy captivity and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations where the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out unto the uttermost parts of heaven, from there will the Lord thy God gather thee, and from there will he fetch thee.

And the Lord thy God will bring thee into the land which thy fathers have possessed, and thou shalt possess it, and he will do thee good and multiply thee above thy fathers. And it goes on. Now, we quickly recognize there's been just a miraculous movement of God in our history, recent history, by the reestablishment of the State of Israel.

Profound fulfilling of prophecy. And yet, as we read the rest of Deuteronomy, as we read the prophet Hosea, we realize that there's still yet a dramatic future yet to happen. And strangely, that's quite controversial within the church.

We'll get to that as we go. But, so one of the things that Hosea is going to do, in addition to exposing the nation Israel's breach of covenant, and God's intention to implement judgment, he's going to deal with that, he also confirms the Deuteronomic promise of ultimate restoration and fulfillment.

So, yes, we see the beginning of that has started with the reestablishment of the State of Israel on the planet Earth, but there is a great deal yet to come, and Hosea will emphasize that. The major themes in Hosea will be the sin, the judgment, and ultimate salvation of the nation.

Hosea's Marriage as a Picture of Israel's Unfaithfulness

And now Hosea is going to emphasize idolatry, spiritual idolatry. And he's going to do this, God is going to do this to Hosea in a very strange way. He's going to do it by means of Hosea's marriage. And it's very interesting how God always uses the marriage to demonstrate, describe, explain, teach us, his most intimate truths, in both the positive way and also the negative way.

And he's going to have Hosea marry a woman that he tells Hosea will be unfaithful to him. And in spite of that harlotry, in spite of that adultery that she's involved with, he takes her in and restores her.

As God's way of committing to Israel, he's going to treat Israel the same way, just as Israel has been unfaithful to him, he will still ultimately restore Israel back to himself. And that's one of the key things, especially in this first chapter of Hosea.

But as we get into Hosea, we're going to discover that in addition to the idolatry, which is the core issue here, we have other sins mentioned. In chapter 12, we'll find there's social injustice. What do we mean by social injustice?

That you can buy the decisions you want. That somebody might quip in our country, here, you can get away with murder if you have enough money and whatever. It'll talk about violent crime in chapter 4 and 6 and 12.

It's going to talk about religious hypocrisy. It'll talk about political rebellion, chapter 7, foreign alliances. It'll also talk about the selfish arrogance and the spiritual ingratitude that characterize the nation.

As we go through these things, I think we will be unable to deny the parallels to our own predicament in this country. Not only are unbridled, unparalleled prosperity on the one hand, and yet never in the history of this country has it been more open condoning.

Of virtually everything, it's an offense to God. You can make a list of those things that offend God. And they're the things that are not only around, they've probably always been around, but openly condoned and celebrated in our culture.

The Valley of Jezreel and Armageddon

Oh, one other thing I'll mention before I just start jumping into the detail. In chapter 1, we're also going to encounter the bloodiest parcel of ground on the planet Earth. If you're going to take the globe, the planet Earth as you know it, and try to summarize all of history in your mind, where is that piece of ground that's probably seen more battles, had more blood spilled than any other, you know, acreage on the planet Earth?

There are a lot of good competitors. There's been a lot of blood spilled around the Earth. But in one place over and over and over and over and over again, which is also going to be the scene of the final climactic blood spilling on the planet Earth, a place that's just outside of Megiddo, a place that has an eschatological name, Armageddon, Ha-Armageddon, Mount Megiddo.

But what it really overlooks is the Valley of Jezreel, also called the Plain of Ezdurah. And interestingly enough, Hosea is going to zero in on this one. So let's jump in. Chapter 1, verse 1. We got through an introduction in record time.

We're really into the text. Great. Usually it takes me a tape or two to get into the text. Okay. Chapter 1, verse 1. The word of the Lord came unto Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, the kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel.

Kind of a strange list, by the way. There's a whole bunch of kings. I'll go with that in a minute. But you'll notice there are four kings of Judah mentioned, and only one of the northern kingdom. And that's very strange, because during the reign of Hosea, he's actually going to embrace a lot of kings, because you'll see as I get through in a minute.

But it's interesting that he emphasizes the series of kings for Judah, which is the other guys down south. That's the kingdom of Judah. And there's a lot of conjectures as to why is this strange imbalance.

He mentions just the one king, the then extent king, Jeroboam, which will be succeeded by others before the era is over. But he lists all four of the kings of Judah. And the conjecture is just an academic conjecture, but it may be very valid.

It's almost as if to emphasize the legitimacy of the Davidic throne, even though they're the rebels. They're the northern group that have spun off. Down south, they worshiped Yahweh, in large measure.

That's where the temple was in the Levites. Up in the north, they worshiped the golden calf. They worshiped idols, Baal, you name it. A mess. And I should explain something about that so you get the picture here.

When the Civil War took place, when Jeroboam rebelled against Rehoboam, in 1 Chronicles or 2 Chronicles 11, you'll find that the Levites, which were scattered throughout the land, migrated south. Why?

Well, if you were a Levite committed to the worship of Yahweh, and the temple down south, and you were suddenly in an area that had separated itself from the nation, and that had committed itself to idolatry, you were obviously in the wrong place.

So what did you do? You packed up and went south to Judah, where they were worshiping in that consistent with the way that you chose to worship. When the Levites go south, what also happened, and the text says so, the faithful throughout the land, up north, migrated south.

If you were of one of the tribes, of Ephraim or anywhere else, but wanted to stay committed to the worship of Yahweh or Jehovah, you probably packed up and went south, because you were politically incorrect up there.

They would move to idol worship. Conversely, if you were down in Judah, and kind of fed up with the Levites and the temple and all that stuff, you had enough of that stuff, when after the civil war, you would pack up and go north, where you could, you know, worship the way you wanted to worship.

You follow me? So there's a myth, because they speak of tribes two ways. Tribes are spoken of as the genealogical clustering of people, but it's also spoken of as the land that is allocated. So when they speak of Ephraim, that doesn't just mean that that can mean the people that descended from Ephraim, or it can also mean the people that live in the area that was allocated to Ephraim.

The point is, the faithful went south, the unfaithful stayed there, and as we'll see when the Assyrians finally capture them and take them captive and deport them, they disappear from history. There's a myth about the ten lost tribes.

There aren't ten lost tribes. The tribes did not maintain their integrity in that sense. The faithful from all ten tribes, all twelve tribes, typically migrated south. And you'll discover that the terms are used interchangeably, Jew and Israel, Israelite and Jew, throughout the Old Testament subsequent to this, and the epistles are written to the twelve tribes and so forth, Peter and the rest, and James.

So the point is, you'll hear a lot, there's a lot of literature, a lot of views, built on a false premise that there are ten lost tribes, on the theory that the ones that Assyria captured are somehow lost to history and infiltrated Europe and are really this, that, or the other thing.

And those are myths. Because they don't have a scriptural basis. People don't like to hear that. A lot of people are really into that stuff. But we try to have something to offend everyone. We don't play favorites.

We try to get us over that. Anyway, we have here Hosea. Hosea, by the way, Hosea is a derivative of Yeshua or Yehoshua. There's, just like many of our other names, they have slightly different, same name as different derivatives.

Anne and Nancy actually have the same root. And different names have, you know, Diego and James and so forth. You know, they have, so the point is, Hosea is really a derivative name from the same name from which we get Jesus, interestingly enough.

But it means salvation of Yehovah. Salvation of Yehovah. His father was Biri, which means the well of Yahweh. Be 'er Sheva, well of the covenant. These kings, not to spend a lot of time on it, but Jeroboam II is the one that where Hosea, he's the one that brought in this great prosperity and where Hosea begins.

And he succeeded by Zechariah, but he reigned only six months. He was murdered by Shalem. Then Mannheim took charge, and he was extremely cruel. He was a puppet of Assyria. He really sold out. His Democratic National Committee took bribes from one of the foreigners, and he sold out.

And Pekahiah was then, he was killed by his successor, Pekah. Pekah took charge. He was killed by Hosea, and it was about that time the Galilee captivity took place, which is about 734. King Hosea in the north was the king that was king when it finally fell, the fall of Samaria in 722 B .C., one of these major milestone dates when the northern kingdom finally falls.

That's the end of the northern kingdom. And, of course, Hosea is prophesying during this period. Down south, Uzziah was a good king, and that's when, he was a king when Hosea began his ministry. He was succeeded by Jotham, who was also a pretty good king.

He was succeeded by Ahaz, and he was a bad dude. He was a very, very, very, very wicked. He's a subject of a lot of discussion. He married a gal by the name of Jezebel. We'll talk a little bit about her before it's all over.

And he was, in turn, succeeded by Hezekiah. He was a pretty good king, all in all. So I won't get into the dates. They varied among different scholars anyway, and there's some very interesting difficulties in some of the chronology of the kings, but that's not critical to our issues here.

Most of these reigns are recorded in 2 Chronicles, from about chapter 26 to 32 in that area, you'll find all these guys. But, in any way, as Hosea foresees, Tiglath-Balazer III in Assyria was expanding westward.

The Assyrians had ruled the world for centuries, but they're expanding westward. And about 733, they make the northern kingdom a puppet state. This would have been in the reign then of, in effect, Manaheim and following.

And the violence up... Now, by the way, this is the other thing to notice, as we try to characterize the times. Southern kingdom had a succession of four kings. Three out of four were pretty good guys.

Northern kingdom is one after the other, reigning six months, murdered this guy, murdered this guy, murdered this guy. It sounds like a banana republic, doesn't it? In what other country does it sound like?

I don't know if they promoted the myth of the lone assassin to explain all these. That's a great American myth. Whether it's Abraham Lincoln or whoever, it's always some crackpot working by himself. Anyway, it is disturbing to stand back and see the violence in our country.

And I don't mean just the Columbine High School kind of thing. At the highest levels of office, the shenanigans, the murders. On the Internet, you can find lists that report by name of over 100 people that have somehow been entangled and then been removed before they could give evidence.

So it's interesting that we see the same kind of overtones to the northern empire here. But in any case, the northern kingdom becomes a puppet state of Assyria. And this is 2 Kings 15, for those of you taking notes.

And they were a puppet state, but after they plot revolt under Hosea, and not Hosea, Hosea the king up there. And they were finally, after finally revolt, Israel was given a shattering military defeat in 722 and were ultimately deported.

That's in 2 Kings 17 and 18, it's all through there. And so, by the way, Judah to the south was also incorporated as a vassal state into the Assyrian empire during Hosea's time in 2 Kings 16. But because they're faithless, God intervenes supernaturally and has an angel one night after dinner wipe out 185 ,000 soldiers.

They packed up and went home, didn't bother them anymore. You don't mess with angels. So, anyway, verse 2. The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. The Lord said unto Hosea, strange command, think about this guys.

Go take thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms, child of whoredoms, for the land hath committed great whoredom departing from the Lord. Now, the scholars debate a great deal on whether she was a whore already or whether that was just a prediction of the way she would behave.

A lot of debates about that. Sort of academic, really. The point is God informs Hosea what he's getting into. And he marries her. Because she's going to be a model of God's dealing with Israel. And I'm not implying this is some great sacrifice of Hosea.

He may have been madly in love with her anyway. But the point is God instructs him to go ahead and do this because he's going to show himself, he's going to teach through this how these whoredoms can be dealt with.

And it's important, this whole concept of marriage, we take that so for granted, but it is the model of love, intimacy, privilege, and responsibility. It had its origins in Eden. It's the only institution that survives Eden, comes out of Eden, marriage.

Very, very dear to God for lots of reasons, not just a relationship of convenience to somehow get along through life. It's the basic molecule of our nation. As the marriage goes, as the homes go, so goes the nation.

And that speaks volumes also of our country. As not only do we have such horrible statistics, we have a government that's encouraging them. And it's always a mystery until you really analyze it. Why is it in the government interest to promote immorality, to promote teenage pregnancies?

Because the government gets stronger if there's social crisis. What creates social crises? Immorality. So it's of any surprise the government has an incentive to promote immorality and increase its power over the people.

Idolatry as Spiritual Adultery

But anyway, moving on. To get some feeling of this, again, to set the stage here, turn to Exodus 34. Think about verse 14, For thou shalt worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.

Verse 15, Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, that they play the harlot with their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods. And one call thee, and thou eat of his sacrifice, and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters play the harlot with their gods, and make thy sons play harlot with their gods.

Play the harlot is an alternative rendering the King James says going whoring after. Same concept. And I want you to notice that the two things here, the idiom of harlotry is being applied spiritually.

Spiritually. For someone in a covenant relationship with the Lord God, the living God, to worship other idols is equivalent, as far as he's concerned, as adultery. You're going whoring after other gods.

So when you bow down to an idol, to worship that idol, you are, in effect, committing a spiritual abomination. And this is exactly what Ahab and Jezebel promoted in the Northern Kingdom. When Ahab took over, he married Jezebel, I'll come to all that in a little bit here, who introduced and enforced idol worship throughout the land.

Said, well, gee, we don't have idols here. Wrong. Your tax dollars are enforcing paganism in your schools. But let's move on here. Let's pick up a few others as we go forward. Let's take Leviticus 17.

Talking about instructions here for the priests and so forth. It says, they shall no more, verse 7, they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto demons, after whom they have played the harlot. There shall be a statute forever unto them throughout their generations.

Again, this idea of offering worship or obeisance to idols is called harlotry, but it also acknowledges these things are not simply carved of wood and stone. They, in effect, represent demon entities.

And that's, again, so we're not warring here against superstition or the evils of ignorance. It's something quite the contrary. These things have behind them sentient, malevolent beings. And turn over to another page, Leviticus 20, verses 5 and 6.

God says, then I will set my face against that man and against his family and cut him off, and all that play the harlot after him to commit harlotry with Moloch from among their people. And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits and after wizards to play the harlot, after them I will even set my face against that soul and cut him off from among his people.

What's he talking about? Mediums, channeling, practices of the new age are simply modern packaging of exactly those same things. Commerce with demons called collectively in the scripture harlotry. Let's keep moving.

We can go to Deuteronomy 32. Verse 16, they provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, and with abominations provoked they him to anger. Here again is, I want you to notice the vocabulary, abominations.

Abominations is an equivalent term to the harlotry towards false idols. The extreme form of that is the abomination that makes desolate. The abomination of desolation, which will be a climactic event in Israel that preparations are already positioning themselves for.

We might skip down to verse 21. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God. They have provoked me to anger with their vanities. I will move them to jealousy with those who are not a people.

I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. So God's going to use the Gentiles for his method of judgment here. Let's pick up one more and we'll get back to the text. Isaiah 54, Isaiah 54. Verse 5, for thy maker, speaking to Israel, for thy maker is thine husband.

The Lord of hosts is his name, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God of the whole earth, shall he be called. The Lord hath called thee like a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, a wife of youth.

When thou wast refused, saith my Lord, and he goes on. Isaiah deals with the same issue. Again, God is going to use in Hosea this whole institute of the marriage between us as people to model or communicate the relationship that God holds between himself and his nation Israel.

Where nation Israel is the unfaithful wife and he's the husband. He's the injured husband, so to speak. And of course we find the same idea modeled in more positive terms perhaps in the book of Ruth. We're there too.

Boaz, the kinsman and Redeemer, is the husband taking to himself a Gentile bride, Ruth. And by doing so, Naomi, a type of Israel, is returned to the land. And the whole book of Ruth is an elegant, eloquent model of the church in the Old Testament.

And that's, again, obviously a whole other study. You can also, in your notes, to use our time best, I'll keep going, but in your notes you might put Ephesians 5, verse 25 through 32. Because in Ephesians 5, starting about verse 25, Paul gives us instruction, husbands and wives, how you should behave to one another.

And the wife is instructed to submit to her husband. I know all you girls have had that pointed out to you already, that passage. But the husband has a counterpart. He is to love his wife like Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

Boy! Did Christ love the church a lot? Boy, did he. And that's our example, guys. That's our example. And I'll forego going through... From here we usually go through a whole side trip on examples of that.

But I think you get the message. And just about the time, as you go through Ephesians 5, from 25 on, you hear all this admonitions about husbands, wives, what you're supposed to do. Just about the time you think you're getting it, you get to verse 32, where Paul throws you a curveball.

He says, but I speak of Christ and His church, meaning he turns it over. Once we understand how we are supposed to relate to our wife in both ways, he then says, that's the clue about the relationship between Christ and the church.

We are to hold Christ preeminent above all things. And He has given Himself. Everything is on our behalf. Staggering, as you try to get your mind around that one. Verse 3. We're making great progress.