Hosea 2:2-13 The Forgotten God

Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, 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.

Good morning. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And for over 15 years, this church has been meeting here, not in this location, but in Madawan every Sunday. Much has changed in this community over the past 15 years.

It's been awesome to kind of see it grow. Businesses have been built, subdivisions have been added, people have moved in, others have moved out, and there's been a lot of change in the community over the last 15 years.

But I'm really grateful for the Lord's blessing us here with a gathering of people, kind of a stable influence in this community each Sunday, to really gather together and love one another, to worship our king and to hear from his word together.

And so that's been just a privilege to be a part of that from the very beginning. But I just want to point out that really what's happened here over these last 15 years has been God building his church in this location with his word.

You see, God's word is powerful. His word is always helpful to correct us, to teach us, and to train us to walk in his.

Ways.

And so we just continue to trust in his word. Going through books of the Bible, just kind of marching through them, this morning we're going to encounter a powerful, convicting, and even shocking text.

I really think I'm going to be using the word shock a lot over the coming weeks as we go through this series of Hosea. For those of you with young children, I would like to warn you, as I did last week, and I'm going to warn you now, that this passage and this message will be PG -13.

Now if you were here last week and you thought that was tame, well, I thought it was too, and so I rated that one PG, but this one I'm saying PG -13. So if you thought, no, I thought that Don overreacted last week and it didn't need a rating at all, you might be shocked at this one.

So for this reason, we're again offering parents an opportunity to take their kids back. As a matter of fact, we're making it even more simple this week. The double doors back there, you can take your kids back there.

Right now, you could take kids back there, and there's going to be some things and activities for them to do in room five, right through those double doors where the windows are. So if you want your kids to go, you can take them back there now.

And then they're going to open those doors before the worship time, and you can go back there and collect your kids at that point, and then they'll go out after, I said before connection time and I actually meant before the worship time, and then at connection time they'll go back for their classroom lessons and things like that.

So you've been warned, there you go. Rebukes and threats will make up the majority of our text this morning. Kind of a going back and forth between rebukes and threats. God is using an enacted metaphor, and I recognize that somebody listened to my message last week and they were like, I didn't know this was just a metaphor, I thought it actually.

Happened.

And the word enacted metaphor, I mean it's actually acted out, like it's lived out. Like Hosea actually lives these events, like these things actually transpired, but it still serves as a metaphor, and this is all through the prophet Hosea.

He told Hosea in chapter one, God told Hosea in chapter one to marry a promiscuous woman. He did, and she bore three children. An indication in the text is not all three were his. And in the metaphor, God is the husband, and the leaders of Israel, his covenant people, according to the English Standard Version, are whores.

And the children are the common people following the religious leaders in all kinds of religious false teachings, idolatry, and pagan practices. But in our text, God is threatening divorce from his people because they have dissolved the marriage bonds through their unfaithfulness, through their infidelity.

The main thought we need to keep in front of ourselves as we continue this study in the book of Hosea is that God is like a jilted husband. That's what the text is telling us. God is like a jilted husband.

The people of Israel and their leadership were giving credit for their blessings to pagan idols, and even giving credit to their leaders who were making agreements with bordering nations for protection.

The problem being that fundamentally the people were not trusting God in multiple ways. They were trusting in idols for their harvest. They were trusting in treaties with foreign nations for military strength.

Israel was, by the way, as of the writing of Hosea, at a place of wealth and blessing under King Jeroboam. And they were steeped in pagan idolatry, even offering up their children on altars in order to obtain the blessings of Molech.

They performed all kinds of sexually immoral pagan practices in the worship of Baal and Asherah for the purpose of increasing their harvests. All that they have, the text tells us definitively, all that they have has come from the hand of the Almighty, but they give the credit to other gods and goddesses.

How do you imagine that's going to go for them? Probably not so good. If you know how Scripture goes and you know our God, then this is probably not going to end well. We're seeing in this text how God feels about us having a little sin on the side.

How we, church, us, we are also under a covenant with Almighty God. Often we keep a little something, though, if we're honest, on the side for ourselves. Now, we see God has been patient with His old covenant people, but under the conditional covenant of that old conditional covenant of Moses, Ten Commandments, you follow me and abide by my law and I will be your God and you will be my people.

Don't abide by my law and these curses, and the curses are spelled out in that old covenant. These curses will come upon you, including all kinds of ruin and exile and conquest. Of course, all that's written in this passage is meant to call us to consider God and then follow Him out of love.

We must not forget that in this new covenant, God has first loved us by sending His Son to die for us. And by faith in His sacrifice, we are now empowered by His indwelling Holy Spirit to lovingly obey Him from our hearts.

That's the way the new covenant works. Him first moving toward us and then us responding in love to Him. But grace doesn't mean that Hosea has nothing for us. We might be tempted to go, and I've heard some people say, the Old Testament, there's not enough grace there, there's not enough Jesus there, I just kind of skipped the Old Testament, just give me that New Testament, you know, just give me the solid stuff.

But Hosea has a lot to say to us. We who have been loved by Almighty God most certainly seek and ought to be continuing to seek to understand Him. And in Hosea, we see the kinds of things that set off his jealousy.

Think about it, if you love someone and you know they can't stand it when you chew with your mouth open, what do you do? You try not to make those smacking sounds with your lips while you're eating, right?

That's what you ought to do, right? Because you love them, you do the things, some of you literally just, like, I could.

See it.

From my vantage point, I'm watching it happen in real time. You're kind of like, ugh, yeah, he's talking to you, shut your mouth. Love, you try to do what pleases the person that you love, and we're seeing some things that God loves by contrast to the things that He hates, the things that He despises in the text.

And so, our text shows us four things that God desires of His people, really kind of by the converse, by what He punishes His people for, we can see, oh, the opposite of that might be better. These four things are absent from the people of God and they lead to the destruction and ruin of Israel and that old covenant.

You see, here's the things. God desires us to engage in accountability. God desires us to repent. God desires us to worship Him gratefully. And God desires for us to remember Him. So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to Hosea 2, 2 through 13, God's holy word, a pretty stark and shocking word, but what He desires to communicate to us this morning, all of this will hopefully make sense by the end of this morning, Hosea 2, starting in verse 2, plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife and I am not her husband, that she put away her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born and make her like a wilderness and make her like a parched land and kill her with thirst.

Upon her children also, I will have no mercy because they are children of whoredom, for their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully, for she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water and my wool and my flax and my oil and my drink.

Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. And she shall seek them, but shall not find them.

Then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now. And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for bail.

Therefore I will take back my grain in its time and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand.

And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts. And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, these are my wages which my lovers have given to me.

And I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall devour them. And I will punish her for the feast days of the bales, when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares.

The Lord.".

Let's pray. Father, the idea and the notion of forgetting you when we read this in the text can seem stark and shocking and even just like how in the world could they? How could they forget you? How could they go after these idols and build altars to these pagan shrines and sacrifice to that which is not you?

But God, would you please reach down into each heart here and show us the truth about our own souls, the truth about our own ways, the truth about our own last week and the ways that we have forgotten you, the ways that we have sacrificed to things that are not you, the ways that we have placed other things central in our lives and in our hearts.

Father, you are glorious. You are amazing. And in this new covenant, we rejoice, not no longer conditional, but unconditional based on grace alone, faith alone, by grace and in Christ alone. Father, I pray that you would reach into each heart here and remind us of your glory, remind us of your majesty, remind us of your gospel, your love, your mercy, your grace, but also the great high calling of your love, that you who have loved us then in turn desire us to in turn love you back.

And there are some very practical and simple ways that we could do that, but Father, not without a heart change, not without you reaching in, not without your gospel. So Father, I pray that you would protect any heart here that is not yours, that they would not hear in this a message of do's and don'ts, but they would hear in this a message of come to Jesus, come to hope.

And then for those of us that have come to hope, have recognized the salvation that we have in Christ, Father, I pray that you would help us with your power and your strength to go and to do what you desire.

Father, even now as we have an opportunity to sing songs to you, to recognize you, to remember you, I thank you for this cadence of week after week after week of coming together each Sunday, at least as a centering point for our remembrance.

And Father, I pray that you would help us to remember you, think about you, and to place you central as we sing these songs together now in Jesus' name. Yep, you can go ahead and be seated and get comfortable.

I encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Hosea chapter 2 verses 2 through 13. If you got your scripture journal or a device that you navigate there, it's good for you to be able to reference God's word as we go through this.

I want to point out that we can easily get lost in the metaphor this morning in the text. We know that this is a real family, this is a real life, a real dude named Hosea. So trying to figure out what's primarily about Hosea and Gomer's biological family and what is about God and his spiritual family can get us all twisted up and we can kind of get confused at times.

So I'm going to recommend that this morning for the purposes of this text and really why it's revealed to us that we focus our attention as much as possible on God and his covenant people being the focus.

Now certainly there are some threats of divorce going on in the Hosea-Gomer household, but the point of the passage is that God's people would be called back to the covenant relationship with their Lord and God throughout this text.

Our outline this morning is made up of four things that I've identified that God desires from his covenant people and I think this has a parallel in the new covenant of grace in which we live as well.

As I said in the introduction, God hasn't changed. He is still a jealous God who loves us with a relentless love. He knows that the best thing for each and every one of us is himself. The best thing for each one of us is him.

And when we forsake him, when we forget him, when we walk away from him, it's to our detriment and he knows that. So our outline looks like this, four points, called to rebuke, called to repent, called to rejoice, and called to remember.

I actually alliterated for you this week. I can't do it from time to time. So all Rs, rebuke, repent, rejoice, and remember that you can see that outline up there with.

The verses that go with them.

Called to Rebuke: Accountability in the Covenant Community

As I mentioned earlier, the overarching thing we can gain from these opening verses is that God has some genuine desire for us to engage in accountability with the covenant community. God's people watch out for one another.

They guard one another. They genuinely love one another. And so it might be strange to see the word rebuke in this as a main point. But we are called to rebuke, verses two through five. Now this might not be apparent in this section at first.

Like when you read it, I'm not sure that rebuke came to your mind, but I believe it'll be made plain by the end of this first point, really by the end of these first few verses. In verse two, God is calling out to his people to rebuke their mom.

Now again, if we get too far over into what is actually going on in the Hosea household, we get a really strange and bizarre picture of dad having a family meeting and calling all the kids together and saying, hey kids, gather around, I'd like to ask you a favor.

Could you put some pressure on your mom to stop her whoring? Like, I mean, do you see it in verse two? Go in and look at it. I'm not making this stuff up. It's right there. And it's like, I mean, this is a weird conversation to have in a household, right?

I mean, if you go like, that's strange. Like, that's a strange conversation. But let's talk about Israel instead here for a minute, because that is really the point that we're getting at. God is telling the people here to hold their leaders accountable.

This has been, by the way, this is thematic in scripture all the way back when Cain asked if he was his brother's keeper, all the way up to the book of Revelation, where John is rebuking the seven churches and calling them to task.

God's people holding each other accountable to the truth in belief and practice has always been a part of God's plan. We have always been relational. We've always been in community. There's always been the need for us to work in tough situations in other people's lives.

And we are a culture that shies away from that. Do you know what I'm talking about? We get far away from this. So that when the main point is rebuke, you're like, that's for somebody else. But here he is calling on others to put pressure on mom to put away her jewelry that identifies herself as a whore.

The doubling up of the word plead in this text makes me think that the people really make scholars think that the people, that is the kids, the people don't really want to hold her accountable. They actually kind of appreciate all that their leadership has brought to the table.

In the extended metaphor, the Israelites have no interest in changing the religious practices of their leaders because they're involved in those religious practices too. That's what it means when you say she is, that Gomer is involved in whoredom and the children are children of whoredom.

They're engaging in the same practices as her. Now, obviously not as children, but that's not really the point. It's about the metaphor. So the Israelites have no interest in changing those religious practices.

And they have to be emphatically called to plead.

Plead, plead.

When it's doubled up in the ancient languages, it's for extra emphasis. Plead, plead with her to change her behavior. And what are they supposed to be calling their leaders to change? There are some indications that particular jewelry would identify a woman as a woman of the night.

Even in our culture, we might be able to determine a woman's intentions by what she's wearing on a street corner in a certain part of town at a certain part of the day or evening. But the call to accountability comes with a very stern threat in verse three.

Tell her to cut it out or I'm going to divorce her and leave her destitute with nothing. Now, when we read verse three, it is shocking to our ears, right? Is that one of the most, is that probably the most shocking verse in this text?

Strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born and make her like a wilderness, make her like a parched land and kill her with thirst. Harsh much? Like, are you getting that? Tell her to cut it out or I'm going to divorce her and leave her destitute with nothing.

Not even anything to drink. I want to make sure that you understand that I fully get this. I mean, nakedness has always been an issue of shame. Every public speaker has that nightmare. Like, that's just part of being, you get up and you forgot something.

But we live in a day and an age when women will expose themselves to others for financial gain. I don't know if you're aware of that, but that's happening. I actually assume that you know that. And it's always been a case where there's, all throughout history, there's an exposure for shame and there's an exposure for sexual expression.

And in this sense, the punishment is confusing and scandalous to our ears because we are a prurient culture. We are a culture that is scandalous. We are a, we're a people of nudity. So it's scandalous, but for other reasons though, when we get to verse three, you see, this threat of discipline is the threat to recall.

And it's not quite, I mean, it's still extremely harsh, but it's not quite what we think it is. It's the threat to recall all things, all things provided for the unfaithful wife by the husband, including her clothing.

This was common and it actually happened.

This is historical.

This is what a divorce looked like in the ancient world where the wife was unfaithful. It's clearly quite cruel, but it happened in real life. This is not just merely metaphor. We will see this metaphor though of nakedness as an expression of bringing back to nothing throughout this text this week.

And it really comes down to Israel being stripped bare, having no resources, having nothing left to her, having no military, having no strength, having no crops, having nothing. So again, it's metaphorical for Israel, but it actually, this kind of thing really did transpire in real life.

God is threatening to withhold all of those material blessings from his people to leave her with nothing. And the phrase strip her naked is about the equivalent of our term, serve her papers. It's clearly a socially understood declaration of returning her back to the way she came into the world with nothing.

And look at verse four to see where accountability and the call to rebuke leads us. Her children in the metaphor, those not in leadership positions in the family are still held accountable to God. Upon her children also, I will have no mercy because they are children of whoredom.

Verse four. Her children in the metaphor, those not in leadership positions in the family are accountable and they should have spoken up. This is where they're indicted on the basis of their apathy toward this situation.

Instead, they've gone along with the madness and breaking the covenant against God. So hear me carefully, church. I think what we're getting at here when I see rebuke in this and a call to rebuke, those who follow false religious leaders and false religious teachings don't get to say on judgment day, but I was led astray or I was just following the leaders.

Is that a viable excuse? That's not a viable excuse. Each person is responsible. And in this sense, we are responsible to be careful who we allow to lead us spiritually and to be ready to call out false teaching when we see it.

And I got to be careful because I mean, the last thing that I want is anybody to be lit up with the belief that they have the ministry and gifting of discouragement and petty complaint toward me as your leader.

But every single one of us at some point in our lives will be called to righteous rebuke. I don't think any one of us is given that specific ministry of calling everybody to task and some people, how many of you know that some people take that on their shoulders?

Like it says, if it's my job, my job is to just kind of make sure that every T is crossed and every I is dotted and they're kind of like the police in that sense. But I believe that we need to be willing to speak into the life of a brother or sister with love and truth when they are walking away from obedience to the God they say that they love.

That could be really hard, a hard calling, but it's, I think it's clear all throughout scripture, not just from this text, but all throughout scripture that that's a reality. The people of Israel have stood by as the national religious leaders actively pursued.

Other gods.

Note that Gomer is not to be pictured here as a tragic woman. She has pursued her lovers. For their mother, verse five, for their mother has played the whore. She who conceived them has acted shamefully, for she said, I will go after.

There is an action on this, on her part. She's not pictured to be a tragic woman, like in some, you know, historical fiction surrounding this, like the book that I mentioned last week pictures Gomer as like this person who was abused as a child and then got caught up in sex trafficking and then is sent away to a brothel and all of that stuff.

She's not a tragic woman who fell into a life of prostitution through her upbringing and through bad actors. She is an aggressor. She actively goes out after her lovers. She has a husband at home who loves her, provides for her, and has wed her.

Do you understand that? She has somebody who cares for her and she's going and acting this way. She's acted shamefully, as everyone ought to be able to see. Now, those common folks living in Israel at this time cannot plead ignorance.

Their leadership has been actively whoring after other blessings, seeking shortcuts, and every attempt to try to get ahead on their own. Anybody with eyes in their head should be rebuking their leadership at this time in.

History.

You see, a failure to rebuke has made the people culpable for the sins of their leaders. While you might be tempted to apply this, and I mean, some of your minds are already spinning and you're going like, what about our nation?

What about our state? What about our local politics? And I just want to remind you that the way to apply any concept of rebuke or any concept of corruption in the Bible is to apply it within the church.

Paul says in the New Testament book of 1 Corinthians, what do I have to do with judging.

Outsiders?

Judge those within the church, but not those outside. Sinners out there are going to act like sinners. But when you say and you claim that Christ has saved you and you've been rescued, now it's time to be accountable and to hold each other up, pray for one another, encourage one another, but also to rebuke when necessary.

You see, refusal to hold each other accountable in the church displeases God. So that's the first thing, the call to rebuke. The second is call to repent, verses 6 and 7. God himself acts to put barriers in the way for his sinful people.

I'm grateful for this. He puts up a hedge of thorns, it says in verse 6. He builds a wall, a firewall, an internet filter. I don't know, it says wall. But verse 6, you see it there. And he does this so that she, Gomer, the whore, can't find her way or pathway to her paramours, her lovers.

I love the way that this is a graphic illustration of a New Testament concept that comes to my mind often. I memorized this verse when I was young and it served me well. But 1 Corinthians 10, 13, I have it in New American Standard, so if you were to jot it down and look it up, 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, no temptation has seized you except what is common to man, and God is faithful.

He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. Now, that was ESV and I was just quoting the New American Standard because that's what I used to use when I was younger.

But God actively puts exit ramps on every temptation that his people face. And that's, I've seen that in my life. Have you seen it? Have you seen the exit ramp? Sometimes you take it, sometimes you don't.

But you know when it's time to kind of go like, I'm done. I'm not going to go down this pathway. And you still choose to sometimes. Sometimes you take it and he's faithfully provided a way out. I don't have everything figured out yet, but I can testify that God has inhibited my desires and greed for wrong things over the years.

And I think many of you could testify to the same thing as well. And I don't say that to boast as if I've got it all figured out because I don't and I'm still easily tempted. But maybe I can say that to say it gets easier and has gotten easier to some degree to give someone here some hope that fighting temptation can become easier over time.

But we are called to pray regularly.

What are we supposed to pray in the Lord's Prayer?

I want to remind you of a phrase that is there. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Why pray it if he can't answer it? Why pray that if he can't answer it?

He can answer that.

So pray that he would not lead you into temptation, but he would deliver you from evil. Because God is capable and able to make today easier than yesterday for you. He can kneecap us and make it harder for us to catch up with our own lusts, our own passions, and our own sins.

He can build a wall around us that serve as a barrier for us to give in to sin. But note in verse 7 that Israel still has a desire to pursue her lovers. She shall pursue her lovers but not be able to get to them, not be able to overtake them.

And she shall seek them but shall not find them. And in giving up her pursuit, she just might return to her husband admitting it was better for her back home. That's the hope. Here we see the hope for repentance held out for Israel in real time when this was read to them.

God is still wooing his people back through the prophet Hosea.

As the people of Israel would have heard this prophecy.

Either from the mouth or from the writing of Hosea, verse 6 and 7 exists in the text to speak to them in real time and quite specifically say, it's not too late.

It's not too late.

There's a call to repentance here. You can come back to your husband. If they would turn from their idolatrous ways, God is ready to run to them like he did to the prodigal son who repented and came back home to find his father eager to run to him and welcome him back.

Have you experienced that in your life? That run back, that turn back to God, that repentance and see him run to you and embrace you, forgive you and give you grace and give you a fresh start. How many of you would say you, your faces are so blank right now that I'm actually not sure you just heard that.

How many of you have experienced this grace? If you've experienced this grace, amen. God has grace to anyone who will turn back to him in repentance. This call to repentance even yet today is to unbelievers and believers alike.

And I would just ask all of you, is there a sin that you've been dabbling with? Is there something that you think is hidden in the dark closet of your heart that needs to be confessed? Confess it as sin and then throw it out in repentance.

Consider today that maybe God is speaking to you through me that today is the day to come clean and get some help. If there is anything we get out of the book of Hosea, it is this, God takes sin very seriously while he equally provides opportunities for his people to repent and turn back to him.

He did that here in verses six and seven, a call to repentance. The third movement in the text is a call to rejoice, verses eight, eight, nine, and 10. I have to confess that I changed this for the purpose of alliteration to rejoice.

What I really wanted it to be was grateful worship. So you can jot that down, a call to grateful worship or rejoice. But in verses eight through 10, we see a shocking and even disgusting reality that I think many of us get caught up in ourselves.

We can see this, these things actually attack us too. The people of Israel had been blessed significantly. Anybody with me so far been blessed significantly? Anybody has some stuff that you ought to be thanking someone for?

In their lives, the crops were cropping, the cows are calving, the gold is multiplying, the armies are bored. That's a good place to be in the ancient world, right? When those things are clicking and your armies are bored, that's a good sign.

You want a bored military, not an active military, right? And they believe it's because they found the secret formula.

You see, they are actually pretty sure they know.

How they've arrived at this place of being blessed. They believe they have the right mix of worship. Baal is treating them right and they're making their offerings. Asherah is blessing. Molech is keeping the warring nations around them at peace.

They have grain and wine and oil and silver and gold. And do you notice the possessive pronoun in the front of all of that? My, my, my grain, my wine, my oil, my silver, my gold. And they believe that these are all coming from Baal.

And so God threatens to take back everything from them. Like the divorce of an unfaithful wife, he will take back everything, leaving them destitute and naked. And then the way that they've acted will be exposed.

All will see exactly how crude and weak and foolish Israel have been toward their God. She will be exposed in the sight of all. Her lewdness exposed, she has pursued others and they will not come to her aid on the day that she is judged.

Of course, Baal can't come to her aid. Of course, Asherah can't come to her aid. Of course, Molech can't come to her aid. You know why? Because they're not real. It seems weird to call this a call to rejoice, but hear me out for just a minute.

What did God want from his people that they did not offer to him? What did God desire in this that they are giving to another? I would suggest to you that it's pretty simple.

Thank you. Thank you.

That's what he wants.

Thanks.

Recognition that all that they have has come from his hand. Not Baal, not Molech, not their intelligence, not their industriousness and their work ethic, but from him. When God talks about himself as a jealous God, I think we get a little uncomfortable because we understand false and sinful jealousy.

That's the only brand that we really relate to. But what does he mean? Well, I think we actually do have some level of holy jealousy. We just don't call it that. But he means he's genuinely involved in love toward his people.

He feels our thanklessness. He feels jolted when we worship other things. He has righteous anger when we take his blessings and offer thanks to any other thing, including taking credit for those good things ourselves.

God is asking for something so simple from his people. Gratitude for his blessing them. Acknowledgement that what we have is from his hand. Now, it would be wise for all of us, in light of this passage, to spend some time in gratitude toward God for his multiplicity of blessings poured out on us each day.