I know I'm late, but why are you all looking at me? You're kind of weirding me out. And so I kind of waved and smiled. Hey, how you doing? And I thought that was kind of weird. And I sat there. And I looked around and realized that I had sat on the lady side of the church. And so if you're sitting in the back section and you're not wearing a mask, you're in the lady side of the church. Anyways. So we are going to be looking at the book of Hosea. This is our first. We had our dear friends the Belsies here last week and today we're kicking off. This is our first live Sunday school class session in a long time and we're going to be looking at the book of Hosea. Just by way of, I'll go into some background, but I like to read the passage that we're going to be considering as part of the lesson because whatever I say is not going to be as rich as reading God's Word. Typically when I teach, and I don't know what everybody else is going to do in the subsequent weeks, I like a lot of interaction. I'll ask a lot of questions and try to get some input from you all. Because we're recording, it's going to be a little more of a lecture format. So unfortunately, you're going to be stuck with listening to me for much of the morning, including when it comes to reading the passages. I'll just read them aloud so that you all wouldn't, if I were to ask somebody in the back row over here to read, it wouldn't get picked up on the microphone for our folks that are going to be watching on the, YouTube channel. So, without further ado, let me pray for us and then we'll read Hosea chapter 1. Heavenly Father, happy 4th of July. Thank you for the freedom that you give us in Christ, the freedom that is truly free, freedom from our greatest enemy. Thank you for purchasing us at such a high price. Thank you for the privilege of being in this country, but Lord, thank you even more for the privilege of being your children and citizens of your kingdom. Thank you for getting us through this past year plus. We have not met live for Sunday school in what to us seems like a long time. So Lord, may it serve to give us a sense of gratitude and not take for granted our freedom and our ability to meet together and enjoy fellowship and enjoy you. Lord, use your word to teach us. This is a tough book. There's some gory details, but Lord, you shine brilliantly in it. Help us to see you in it. Help us to love you more as we go through this study. Help us to understand ourselves better, understand you better, and again, cultivate hearts full of gratitude for what you've done in saving us. We love you, and it's in Christ's name we pray, amen. So Hosea chapter one. Starts this way, the word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, 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 Debalaim, 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, and 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 Sorry, 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 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. Some background. Jews refer to their holy book, oftentimes, as the Tanakh. It's a guttural at the end. This is the Na part of the Tanakh. Torah, Navaim, and the, I can't even remember, what is it, the Katavim, the writings. This is the prophets, the Navaim portion of what we call the Old Testament. Hosea. whose name means salvation and it's the same root as Isaiah, Joshua, Hosea. They all come from the same word meaning salvation or the Lord of salvation. Hosea's writing at a time a couple hundred years after King David and Solomon, so it's a period in the nation of Israel and lots of times I'm going to, he spoke primarily to Israel. My brain's not quick enough. I'm going to refer to Israel. Sometimes I'm maybe talking about Israel and Judah together. Sometimes I'm just talking about the Northern Kingdom. It'll be up to you to figure out which. He's primarily talking to, speaking to, ministering to the northern kingdom of Israel. So this is after King Solomon. You'll recall from your Old Testament history, the kingdom split. Southern kingdom of Judah, and then the northern kingdom of the rest of the tribes. Benjamin, they kind of tagged along with Judah. But the northern kingdom was made up of those other 10 tribes. And Hosea is speaking to them. And it's a time, particularly under King Uzziah or Azariah, It was a time of great economic prosperity. The people life materially speaking life was good in Israel. It was good to be a Jew during these days just from a physical material standpoint. So they had a strong army. They built it up. It was other than the glory days of King David and Solomon. This was probably the next best from from a material standpoint and a military standpoint. This is probably the next best time in the history of Old Testament Israel. Spiritually, it was brutal and a great place to look just to kind of get some background. And I'd really recommend the whole book of Isaiah. But even just the first chapter, or if you want to be even more eager, the first six chapters of Isaiah to get a feel for what was going on in that time. Isaiah spoke primarily to the southern kingdom Judah, but he overlapped with the northern kingdom as well. But Hosea and Isaiah, the dynamic that was going on in the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, there was a lot of overlap. The northern kingdom did not have one godly king. They had, I think it was 18 or 19 kings. All of them were wicked. The southern kingdom waffled back and forth. They had eight good kings that tried to obey God, all being in a limited manner. And they had 11 wicked kings. And so Judah kind of flip-flopped. Israel was just all bad as far as the the leadership of the people and Isaiah says this in chapter 2 Verse 6 he says for you talking about to God about God for you have rejected your people the house of Jacob Because they are full of things from the east and of fortune tellers like the Philistines and they strike hands with the children of foreigners Their land is filled with silver and gold. So there's economic prosperity there and and there is no end to their treasures. Their land is filled with horses and there is no end to their chariots." So militarily, they're very strong. Their land is filled with idols. They bow down to the work of their hands, to what their own fingers have made. This is just a summary, a snapshot of what's going on in the country. Materially, they're doing great. Militarily, they're doing fantastic. Spiritually, they stink. They're lousy at following Yahweh and being obedient to him, to his word, to his commands. A couple of big, important dates that will maybe help you as you're trying to get a big picture of what's going on as you read the Old Testament and the times leading up to Christ. In the year 722, the Assyrians came in and basically wiped out most of the northern kingdom of Israel. So 722 is an important date. There was some trouble leading up to that. The Assyrian conquest. I think was a little bit quicker than the Babylonian conquest of the south. The Babylonian conquest took over a decade. So Judah just was like being put through the wringer for years before finally in the year 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, the walled capital of the southern kingdom Judah. So those are a couple of important dates. So 722, 586, just kind of tuck those in the back of your brain. they'll help you with just kind of putting things in place with regards to the Old Testament and the timeline that we're working with. So Hosea and Isaiah, Amos, Micah, these are prophets that are writing during this time in the eighth century, the 700s BC. And it's a time when the people are compromising in their faith. They're still going through the motions, they still pay lip service to Yahweh, they're still priests, they still do sacrifices, they still celebrate some of the holidays, but In all of that, in addition to their Yahweh worship, they've kind of bolted on or even in some places exchanged their Yahweh worship for Baal worship. Hosea 2, verse 8, he says this, I'm the one that gave her everything she's got, speaking about Israel. But it says this about the silver and the gold, which they used for Baal. The Israelites were guilty of worshipping Baal. So who was Baal? Who was Asherah? Baal, Ryan mentioned it in his sermon earlier about kind of regional gods. Baal just means Lord. The Baals were mostly localized idols or gods that the people would worship. So let's say Irmo's got their Baal, and Prosperity's got their Baal, and Newberry's got their Baal. And if it really did kind of become this, if Irmo went into battle against Newberry, Part of that whole dynamic was whose bale is bigger than the other bale. And if we won, then our bale is stronger than your bale. So they're kind of localized idols that were in charge of a little territory or tribe. They were very much tied to life in the sense of reproduction. And there's a lot of perversion that all that entails. a mother and a father, or two parents, if two people wanted to make babies, they were counting on Baal to allow them to conceive and procreate. And a lot of times that would involve going to the worship of bail would involve going to a cult prostitute and then trying to garner the favor of bail to cause mom and dad to have kids, or to cause Farmer Jones' crops to flourish that year, or for the herds, the goat and the sheep and the cows to multiply. That was all bail that would do that. And Asherah was the female god. In fact, Asherah was the supreme female god. And lots of times she was depicted. They would carve poles. They would worship trees, a tree of life. A tree is a symbol of life. When the leaves come out and they're green in the springtime, that's all symbolic. And so there's lots of symbolism, things like roosters and bulls that would impregnate a whole herd of cows or a whole bunch of chickens or whatever. All this stuff was wrapped up in it, and it was really perverted. And they would sacrifice, lots of times if they'd go in to, say, the cult prostitute, she would conceive and have a child. They'd raise that child up, they would sacrifice that child to Baal. And all this was just, it was heinous, and it was gross in God's eyes, and it was so, so unlike the heart of God, and so disgusting to him. And this, what I'm describing here, this was characteristic of the Canaanites, the people in Palestine or Israel, and those tribes that God told, go in there and wipe them out, get them out of the land. I don't want them. They've filled up the measure of their wickedness, and I want them to be wiped out and cleared out of there. This was part of the reason for all of that. In addition to he was giving the land to Abraham's seed. But that fertility cult. was characteristic of so much of the world. And certainly you're up into what we now call England and the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, like all the pantheon of gods that were worshipped around. What I just described about these Canaanites was common all over the place. And so all that to say is that Yahweh condescending and actually speaking to people and actually saying, I don't want your sacrifices. I definitely don't want the sacrifices of your children. Do not sacrifice your children in an effort to try to speak to me or worship me or pay homage to me. In fact, can you see how utterly different Yahweh was when he said, you know what? I'm actually going to sacrifice my son. to restore your relationship to me. Yahweh was the complete opposite of what the pagans were doing. And here, his children, the Israelites, in Hosea's day, they were doing just what the Canaanites were doing. All this perversion, all this bloodshed, they were doing it regularly. They were embracing it. And they were, to where what we just read from Hosea 2, they actually thought that The prosperity of their farms, of their herds, the reproductive ability of their flocks and herds was due to Baal, not due to Yahweh. There's a lot that we could say in this. Just thinking back to Abram and the covenant of circumcision and all the symbolism of that. Yahweh is the giver of life. Yahweh is the one that's gonna cause a nation to prosper or not. Yahweh's gonna be the one that provides for, in this case, an agrarian culture. He's gonna provide for these farmers, these herdsmen, these mommies and daddies. He's gonna be the one that gives them families and herds and causes them to flourish. But the Israelites, who were nothing, they were slaves in Egypt that Yahweh brought up and caused them to prosper, forgot their roots, forgot where they came from, and now they were ascribing all of their success to Baal rather than Yahweh, the one that had done everything for them. So this is the context. This book of Hosea It is meant to shock. It is meant to just, I mean, grab us by the shirt and shake us. This is gross. This is heinous what's going on. And I think, sadly, too often, I could be somewhere and hearing the dirty details of somebody's sin and not be shocked by it. I can remember. When Laura and I first got married, we decided somewhere early on that we really didn't need cable TV. And Bob doesn't need cable. I don't need to spend my time that way. I also don't need the stuff coming in my eye holes that I see on TV. And so we cut our cable early on in our marriage. In fact, when we came to South Carolina, we didn't have cable. We did get it for a couple of college football seasons. But other than that. Having said that, it's happened more than once over the last 20 years where I've been somewhere and a TV's on and I can hear it and I can see it. and not having been sitting in front of that TV for a decade or two decades, I'm shocked that, I can't believe they said that on primetime TV. I can't believe that they get away with that. The last sitcom that I ever watched, I'm not recommending this to anybody, was Seinfeld. So just so you have some idea, my history of TV. So I'm going back to the early 90s. A lot's changed since then. Seinfeld was not God honoring, so I'm not, anyway. Yeah, I'm shocked like it's it's it's this wow. I can't believe that that's that's gross to me and I've even been in Now you're going to think I'm super judgmental. I'm not trying to be. But I've been in homes with Christian families, and there's something on TV. I can't believe you're watching that. I can't believe you're listening to that. I can't believe you're letting your kids listen to that. Anyways, Hosea is that. Hosea is supposed to make us go, ooh, yuck, really? Hosea is an X-rated book. It's disgusting what goes on in here. And I want to. I want to not let us off, because God shines in this book. But I also want us to not just jump to the end and go, whew, I'm glad that's over with. Happy ending. All right. Because we need to hear the gory details of the sinfulness of Hosea's wife and of God's people. Because it makes, it's really the juxtaposition of the sinfulness of Gomer, How could she not be sinful with that name? Gomer, she's bitter. Her sinfulness contrasted with the holiness, with the righteousness, the unconditional lovingness of her husband, Hosea. It's this picture of people, God's people, the Israelites and their sinfulness and the holiness of their loving father. the sinfulness of man and the loving holiness of God, the Redeemer. And it's this picture that is there for us. It is an indictment against Israel. Shame on you. This is you that I'm describing. It's also a warning to the southern kingdom of Judah. Be careful, Judah. I'm going to rescue you, but you guys are Be careful, don't fall down the same path as Israel did. But this is a picture for all of mankind, and it's really, in this one book, it's a picture of really all of scripture. When you go back to the creation account in Genesis 1 through 3, Man falls in chapter 3 of Genesis, and right in the midst of all the curses and the consequences of the sin, God gives us a glimmer of hope. You know what? One of your offspring, Eve, one of your offspring is going to crush the head of the serpent. And then fast forward to the account of Noah in Genesis chapter 6, and you've got the whole earth being destroyed by a flood. But in the midst of that, everybody's going to die. But Noah, there's going to be one boat with eight people on it that I'm going to save. And Abraham, Abram and Sarai, his wife, these stargazing, star-worshipping pagans that God calls when they're 100 and he gives them a baby, they had no chance. Adam and Eve had no chance. Noah had no chance. Abram and Sarah had no chance of ever becoming a great nation. David and Goliath, none of these are accounts of people beating the long odds. They're people beating impossible odds. It wasn't, you know what, David, man, that guy was lucky, wasn't he? Man, that stone could have gone anywhere. Just a couple degrees off, it would have just grazed Goliath. That's not the story of the Bible, that even though the odds were stacked against them, David pulled it out. He threw that Hail Mary, he threw that haymaker and knocked out the giant. Those are not the stories of the Bible. The stories of the Old Testament, Noah, Adam and Eve, Abraham, David and Goliath, it's infinity to zero chance of success unless God intervenes. That's a story of Hosea as well. Israel, you guys are disgusting. Gomer, what you're doing is so heinous and so gross. But God. This is a but God book. Hosea is the loving, faithful, does everything right husband. Like God is the perfect agape loving redeemer. the Israelites, even the good thing, like Yahweh just handed them a plate of food, and they went, thanks, Baal. Let's pray and thank Baal for the food that Yahweh just gave us. I mean, it's so grotesque, and we should be shocked by it. Anyway, I'm completely off from my notes here. I don't even know what page I'm on. So let's skip ahead to the marriage. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go take to yourself a wife of Hordom. That's a word that's tough to, when's the last time you even said that in a conversation? Yeah, take for yourself a wife of Hordom and have children of Hordom. Because the whole reason for this, this is a picture, and Hosea's marriage is a picture. I'm just going to tell you where I'm coming from. There's a lot of debate about this. Was Gomorrah a real person? Was Jezreel and No-Mercy and Not My People, were they really people? There's a lot of people saying no, they were just metaphors. I believe that this family was a metaphor, but I believe they were real people. That's my take. If you disagree, that's fine. We can still be friends. But I think that Gomer was a real person, and I think those three children were real people. I also, my take is, I think there's at least a chance that Gomer was chaste. She was a virgin when she married Hosea. Again, I could be wrong. There's people that debate that. We don't have time for that, but my take is that she was probably a virgin when they got married. And then sometime after they were married, she got off the beaten path. I also think that the first child, Jezreel, was probably the biological son of Hosea. And my interpretation, again, plenty of people disagree with me, but the other two were not his biological children. We'll come back to that in a little bit. But they're a picture of the kindness, the holiness, the generosity, the long-suffering, the patience of Yahweh. He is pictured in the husband of Hosea. And then Gomer, with her infidelity and her mockery, her rubbing Hosea's nose in it, like, I'm cheating on you and there's nothing you can do about it. That was just a picture of sinful people, God's people. Anyways, the first child, Jezreel, why did God tell him to call him Jezreel? Again, we don't have time to go into a ton of detail, but Jezreel means may God give seed or it also means to scatter. I'm not sure what the richness of the name itself is. It might not be anything. But there may be some symbolism in the fact that God's going to scatter the people. Jezreel became under Ahab, King Ahab, one of the most wicked kings of the northern kingdom of Israel. Jezreel was his capital. It was his capital city. And it was a place where there was a lot of bloodshed. And he even says here, Hosea tells us that this is where Jehu shed a lot of blood. He wiped out Ahab's line there, and Ahab's line needed to be wiped out. But nonetheless, it was a bloody incident in the history of God's people, and God was going to punish it. The name Jezreel for the firstborn was symbolic of this is a bloody, murderous culture that y'all are living in and I'm going to judge it severely. And then jump down to verse 6. Remember the first one, it says that she conceived and bore him a son, Hosea. She bore Hosea a son. The Hebrew in this I think the English translation, from what I can tell, I'm not a Hebrew expert, but I did my best, and I'm looking at it, and there's words unique to the conception of Jezreel, and birth of Jezreel, that were not there for, no mercy, and not my children, child two and three. And it just says in verse 6, she conceived again. It doesn't say with whom she conceived. I might be reading too much into it. I don't think I am, but I think it's intentional. She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, call her name Lo-Ruhamah, or no mercy. Because I'm not going to have mercy on Israel anymore. I'm not going to leave their sin unpunished any longer. they're going to face it full on and they would shortly like within this generation the Assyrians are going to come in and cause a whole lot of pain and grief to Israelites. And then if we jump down to We'll come back to the third child in a second. I want to point out something real quick, just as kind of an aside. Look at verse 7. God says this, but I will have mercy on the house of Judah. So Israel, I'm not gonna have mercy on you. You're gonna get what you deserve. You're gonna get the punishment that you deserve. 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. There's an obvious warning in here to the southern kingdom of Judah, and that's part of the purpose of this book. But at this time, both the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah, I have three fingers up, that's two, both of them have got strong armies. But God is explicitly, like in the middle of everything else that's going on, he stops and he says, Judah, I'm gonna save you, but it will not be with your chariots, your horses, your spears, your bows, your arrows, your kung fu skills, none of that. I'm gonna do it. By my name, the Lord, Yahweh, I'm gonna do it. I want to, just as a point of application, I'm gonna throw this out just to be kind of a burr under your saddle. I want you to, I want this to kind of cause you to chafe a little bit. Hopefully it's helpful, ultimately. As Christians, in whom or in what is our faith? Sunday school answer, Jesus. All right, everybody gets a gold star, good job. Really? Who is your faith in? Who is my faith in? What is my faith in? Is it our strength? Is it our brains? Is it our bank accounts? Is it in all the stuff that's in our gun safe? What's our faith in? If it's not Jesus, it's misplaced. In fact, if it's not Jesus, it might even be, and probably is, an idol. And I promise you this, 100% of the time, your idol will let you down. 100% of the time. I've known, I go back to Canada, but I can also talk about guys that I met in the prison. I've met some really tough guys. I've also seen them need somebody tough when they were young. I've seen them require somebody else's help in going to the bathroom in their later days. As a young man, my faith is in my strength. As an old man, I'm like, wow, I need somebody to get me to the toilet quick because I can't get there on my own. I've seen in 2008 and 2009 when the stock market crashed, I literally saw people's idols just seep through their fingers. They couldn't hold on to the money. It just disappeared. Years and years of work and saving just disappeared. Their faith was in their stock portfolio. I've got a dear friend who lives up north who has, he's a great guy, I love him. He's got a extensive gun collection. And he has spoken to me. And if you guys know gun lovers, and I know you know a few, sometimes you'll just be talking to one, like, well, this one's for, like, if you're in a small room, you need to kill, like, 20 guys. This one's if you're in a bigger room, you need to kill, like, 40 guys. This one's in, like, a field, and you need to wipe out a whole army. And they go through all their different arsenal of what they're going to do with all these guns and go down in a blaze of glory. My friend in Canada has Parkinson's disease so bad that he can't even hold his gun straight enough to aim it. Our idols will always, if God loves you enough, and if you're his child, he does, if he loves you enough, he will topple your idol. Anyway, I got five minutes. Let's move down. Verse 8, 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. And I think this not my people, I think there's a It's kind of a two-edged sword in the sense that it's God saying, you don't belong to me. So don't come running to me next time you're in trouble. You've been neglecting me. You've been shaking your fist at me. You've been mocking me. You've been dragging my name through the mud. So I disown you. I think there's an element of that. And maybe that's entirely what it is. But there may also be an element of, God saying, you know what? Frankly, you guys have been worshiping something other than me for a long time. I'm not your God. You haven't treated me as your God. So not just that God's disowning them, but you disown God first. And so I think it's kind of both wrapped into one here, but you are not my people. And this was a big deal. I made a silly little illustration earlier about what if Irmo had its own bale and Newberry had its bale and we went to battle, my bale's bigger than your bale so whatever, like little kids, my dad's stronger than your dad. There was like a group or a region, a tribe, a nation's identity was tied to their God. Well here Israel, whose L is in the name, God Elohim, Their whole identity is tied to Yahweh. And here, Yahweh himself is saying, you're not my people. Don't call me your God. Don't wear my jersey, my sweater with my logo on the front. You're not on my team anymore. And I think, too, as we look at this, this not my people, These names, I suggested earlier that biologically, I think that only one of the children is biologically Hosea's. The other two, picture what this looks like. Because again, Hosea and Gomer and their children, as a whole package, they're a picture for everybody else. What I envision here is Hosea going into the market with his three kids in tow, and no three of them look alike. How did that kid get red hair? What on earth? Where'd that come from? Like I'm picturing like different hair, different skin tone. That's what I'm envisioning here. I could be off, but they are a stark, obvious snapshot of something went wrong in that household. And it makes this whole metaphor that is the Hosea household, that much more dramatic. And the names would have been like, why would you name your kid? We're going, why would you name your kid Gomer? You named your kid No Mercy? You named your kid Not My People? What is that? Well, I'm glad you asked. It actually refers to all you guys. It refers to the nation. It refers to our culture. It refers to your idols. What idols? People don't like being told about their idols. What do you mean I'm idolatrous? No, I'm not. That's when the claws come out, when we start trying to nudge on somebody's idol. But here, the very names. Oh, Jose, who's your kids? No mercy. What? I was going to talk to you about maybe setting her up with my son someday, but now that I know she's named that, what is with that? The names of Hosea's children were meant to be slaps in the face of the whole culture. You're not my people. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine on the 4th of July someone saying, you're not American. This is not your country. That's what the name of not my people, that's what it was intended to do to the people of Hosea's day. was just to shake them. What do you mean Yahweh doesn't love me? Of course Yahweh loves me. I got a tattoo with his name on my shoulder. He must love me. And God himself is saying, you don't belong to me. So all my provision, all my protection, all my mercy, it's no longer yours. It's not one of your benefits. We don't want to stop there because God doesn't stop there. I mentioned that there's a happy ending in those last couple of verses in the last chapter of Hosea. It just occurred to me now. And again, he's a contemporary of Isaiah. when the Jews would read through the book of Isaiah, the very last chapters, chapter, chapters, it gets kind of dark, like, whoa, man, that was a belly punch. So what the Jews would do is they would go back and they would reread, I can't remember, like maybe chapter 62 or something, because it was a happier ending. Anyway, I just stared right at that light and now y'all are just like blotches. I can't read my notes. Anyways, this is, Hosea is a happy ending story. But man, it's painful getting to the finish line. But the happy ending, it's meant to be alarming. I go to, all the time I go to the second half of Romans chapter 8. It's in the context, remember it kind of kicks off in 28 that God works all things together for good, for those who love Jesus. Well that all sounds good, I'll claim that. But it's in the context of suffering. that neither height, depth, angels, rulers, principalities, things present, things to come, nothing will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. That all sounds great, but all that's in the context of Christians, buckle up. It's gonna be a bumpy ride. You will suffer. Jesus said, foxes have holes, birds have nests. What does that mean? They've all got a place to live, but if you're gonna follow me, You're not even going to have a place to call home. You're not even going to have a pillow. In fact, I want you to pick up a cross of your own and bear it in obedience to me. This is a... a book, there's a very happy ending. The people that were called not my people, you're going to be called children, sons of Yahweh, of the living God, not Baal, not something, not Asherah, not carved out of a tree, not something that can't speak back, not something that can't hear you. You're going to be called child of Almighty God himself. Gomer's redemption, Israel's redemption, and here 2,700 years later, Bob Stacy's redemption. I need it just as much as Gomer ever did. It's 100% the work of a gracious, loving God. Hosea is God's story. The details are gross, but the redemption is perfect and our God is so good. I hope you enjoy the ride of Hosea, but buckle up. It's a bumpy ride. Let me pray for us. Lord, thank you for saving us. Thank you for your goodness. Thank you for your redemption. Bob Stacy needs redemption every bit as much as Gomer ever did. Help me never to feel so smug and so entitled to where I think you're lucky to have me. Lord, give me, give my brothers and sisters in this room hearts that are genuinely grateful and genuinely appreciative and genuinely aware of that we were enslaved orphans, and without your rescue, we were doomed. So Lord, help us to ever be mindful of your kindness, your goodness, your agape love. We pray in Christ's name, amen.