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It's a little bit of a multi-direction. We've been going through the
minor prophets, and we've usually gone to the next one. We've just
turned the page and hit the next one. But Hosea actually begins
the minor prophets. We've been looking at the books
that, in your Bible, age-wise, after Hosea, but actually before
him. So in Hosea, chapter 1, I'll be reading only the first
verses. It's the introductory one of the book. We'll be having
a lot of other scripture passages in the sermon itself as we look
at the background to this. But the background to this covers
such a long period of time that, instead of as we normally do
when we begin a book, and I just read through, The word of the Lord that came
to Hosea and the Son of Mary in the days of Uzziah, Jopham,
Ahaz, and Zechariah. Let us pray. Heavenly Father,
we thank you for your wondrous gift to the world. We pray that
this day you will give us a year to clear our minds from this
pain. We pray, Father, that you would send forth your spirit
with your word to do this good work in us, drawing us ever nearer
to Christ, who is in heaven to be with us, informing us more
and more of his blessed image, equipping us to live and serve
in his kingdom in such a way as to bring him glory. Be with
your servant. We come to the Book of Hosea. Remember, we've already worked
through history really going back to
the time of Elijah. We come to the book of Hosea
and this morning I just want to give a broad So let's just take a look at
who this man is, Hosea the prophet. We don't know a whole lot about
him. In some of the prophecies we get quite a bit of background
about the book. We'll get different biographical
things. Remember in the book of Amos, there were times when
Amos would give us some insight into his life, where he came
from, what he did, where he was sent, and so many interactions
we had with those. Hosea, however, says very little.
It just says that the word of the word came from Hosea. in a sense, or can we say, providentially
predetermined, because his book is all about God's salvation,
what he does for his people. We'll see as we go through. We
don't really know who this Liam Berry, his father, was. The name
shows up from time to time in the Chronicles, but never in
mention, saying, well, this is the father of Hosea. And many
times, he John's in the community, who
is it really? Without anything else, it doesn't
do us much help. He most likely, though, was of
Israel, the northern kingdom, and was sent to the northern
kingdom. While Valley Hope will see this
time, he says he'll group together Judah and Israel, it seems he's
predominantly speaking to the northern kingdom of Israel. Now, this is significant, and
in a minute we'll see who other people were around at the same
time. But for one, he goes from the time of Jeroboam II, remember
when we were talking about Amos and Jonah were under Jeroboam
as well. That was one of the great golden ages of the northern
and southern kingdoms. the great world power, had been
weakened a bit from different internal strife and other things,
and Islam drew to use Islam to expand their borders basically
to the size it was during the time of King David. So it was
a golden time, but they had great military might, they were incredibly
wealthy, that's where over the time Hosea's ministry
ends, Israel and the Holy Kingdom doesn't even exist anymore. Assyria
came and wiped them out. Over the time, they're losing
more and more power. They're losing money because
they have to peg off all their kings to try to keep them being
conquered. And they end up conquering. So
in the life of Hosea, he goes from seeing poverty and wealth
and Israel being self-sufficient and proud to Israel being absolutely
humble and wiped off the map. Hosea himself may have lived
to be 100 or more years old, because the book starts, we'll
see next week, with him getting married. So he had to be at a
marriageable age, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years
old. And as you follow all the kings
he lived with, The book is a pretty simple breakdown. Chapters 1 through 3 kind of
use Hosea's life as a parable for God's relationship with Israel. So as we'll see starting next
week, Hosea is called to marry an adulterous woman and has children
who were given needs that point to how God deals with Israel.
And then that marriage is ultimately restored. Israel is the unfaithful wife.
Israel is the rebellious child. Then the second half of the book,
from chapters 4 through 14, basically talks about Israel's rebellion,
the coming punishment, and their restoration. Especially at that
point, Israel is set back and forth between these two heads
again. Being an unfaithful spouse, being
unfaithful in God's covenant, and also being a rebellious child. and not being grateful and being
rebellious, but that highlights that God is grateful. Instead
of openly casting them off forever, he redeems them and restores
them. The world of Hosea, which we
find especially in 2 Kings 15-18, you can actually sense an end
to the life of Hezekiah. You can even go further in the
chapters 19, 20, and 21, also the chapters and chronicles that
follow it. And as well, the Book of Amos,
which we've already studied. Remember, in the Book of Amos,
he gave us a picture of what was going on in the northern
kingdom is the rich and powerful were getting more and more rich
and powerful at the expense of the poor and weak. They were
exploiting the people. There was neither love for God.
Their religion was purely external. nor love for man. If they could
abuse people, they would. Anything, they'd get it in. And
Amos had warned them, told them to turn from this, but it said,
God will break his hand of judgment against them if they do not turn.
Now, Amos lives at the same time as Hosea. So that's going on.
So we get some of the background from Hosea as we went through
Hosea to Amos. If you remember that book, that's
a lot of the background through this same time. In the larger
world, what's going on is these And they had been given a lot
of internal struggle. Remember Jonah lived at this
time as well. Jonah had gone and announced
God's judgment coming upon Assyria. I'm going to give you a little
bit of background on this. those areas. So what's going
on with those people? Well, they go back and forth
between fighting with each other. When Assyria's not strong, they
all fight with each other to see who can gain the most land
and power. But when Assyria starts flexing its muscles, they either
fight with Assyria, or they make treaties with Assyria to fight
against the other people. So there's all this political
intrigue. Everybody's kind of in survival
mode, because they all basically know they can't stand up against
the Assyrian troops who in Ethiopia, they're the other
big world power, and they don't like Assyria coming down that
way because it threatens them, so they come from the south,
and they're always pushing up this way back against Assyria.
So you have people in Israel and Judah and Syria, and you're
looking in one direction, from the north and east, here are
the Assyrians, and to the south is the Egyptians and the Ethiopians,
and they're always saying, well, how can I get one big guy to
fight the other big guy? time to live, a very dangerous
time. And it's a great temptation to
make political alliances to keep from being wiped out. And that's
what we'll see was part of the problem of the Northern Kingdom,
was making all these alliances and not relying on God. Instead
of saying, our God will deliver us, like they would say in the
Psalms, they said, well, we need to make all these political alliances.
We need to do these things. So that's what's going on in
the broader world. I'm going to give you a couple
of examples. under the time of Ahab, they
started bringing in and worshiping the Baals and the Asherahs. And
God had warned them about this. And he sent the lie to the prophet.
And then the lies to the prophet. And then he sent them Obadiah
and Joel and Amos up around the same time. He had sent Jonah
to Nineveh to the Assyrians to call them to repentance. Living
at the same time as Hosea is the great prophet Isaiah. And
he's down in the south. And Judah, speaking to the king, Religiously, down in the south
in Judah, you have the priests and the Levites. In the north,
you have the false religion that's been mixed with worship of the
gold, the calves, and the beasts. It's not also the males. You
also have, down in the south, the kings of David, from the
line of David, the rightful kings. In the north, you have the apostate
kings, who have turned away, who are not authorized by the
law. In the south, you have Isaiah and Micah preaching to the people
there. In the north, you have Amos and Hosea preaching. And way out in Assyria, you had
Jonah preaching. But then Hosea tells us the list
of the kings who were living during his time. This helps us
to fill in some of the background, what's going on in the south
in Judah. what's going on in the north. He started by saying
he served in the days of Uzziah. Uzziah is also spoken about as
Azariah. Many times in that culture you
have two different names. So when you find in 1 Kings where
it talks about Azariah, he's also spoken of in Chronicles
and later in Kings as Uzziah, it says this, It says, in the 27th year of
Jeroboam, king of Israel, Azariah, the son of Amaziah, king of Judah,
became king. He was 16 years old when he became
king, and he reigned 52 years of Jerusalem. His mother's name
was Jecholiah of Jerusalem. And he did what was right in
the sight of the Lord, according to all that his father Amaziah
had done, except that the high places were not renewed. The
people still sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. So
the first king lives for quite a long time. He was a good king,
a godly king, except he still let them sacrifice in the high
places. After him comes Japheth in 2 Kings 15. In the second
year of Pekah, the son of Ramaliah, king of Israel, Japheth, the
son of Uzziah, king of Judah began to reign. He was 25 years
old when he became king, and he reigned 16 years in Jerusalem.
His mother's name was Jerusha, the daughter of Zechariah, and
he did what was right in the sight of the Lord. He did according
to all that his father Uzziah had ordered. He built the upper gate of the
house in the womb, and the rest of the acts are taught And Ahaz, his son, reigned in
this place. So the king after Uzziah is another good king.
But again, he allows this compromise to go on, this worshiping in
the high places. And also, you start to see some
of the political intrigue. The king of Israel now conspires
with the king of Syria to start pressing against Judah, the southern
kingdom. The next king is Ahaz. The second
king is 16. This is in the 17th year. Ahaz was 20 years old when he
became king, and he remained 16 years in Jerusalem. And he
did not do what was right in his sight of the Lord, but his
God, as his father David had done. But he walked in the ways
of the kings of Israel. Indeed, he made his sons pass
through the fire according to the abominations of the nations
whom the Lord had passed out from before the children of Israel.
And he sacrificed and earned incense at the high places and
on the hills and under every Then Rez, the king of Syria,
and Pecha, the son of Jeroboam and Eliah, king of Israel, came
up to Jerusalem to make war, and then deceived Ahaz. But he
could not overcome them. At that time, Rez, the king of
Syria, captured the lot of Assyria, and drove the men of Judah from
the lot. Then Edomites went to the lot, and Welder did the same.
So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath-Beliezar, king of Assyria, saying, I am
your servant and your son. Come up and save me from the
hand of the king of Syria, from the hand of the king of Israel
who rides up against me. And Ahaz took the silver and
gold that was found in the house that we were in, the treasuries
of the king's house, and sent it as a present to the king of
Assyria. So the king of Assyria heeded
him. So the king of Assyria went up against Damascus and took
it, carried it to these folks, captured it here, and killed
Reza. Now, King Ahaz went to Damascus to meet Tiglath-Balasor,
king of Assyria, and saw an altar that was in Damascus. And King
Ahaz sent to him a rod and a priest, and designed the altar and its
pattern according to all its workmanship. King Ahaz came back from Damascus.
And when the king came back from Damascus, the king saw the altar,
and the king approached the altar and made offerings on it. So
he burned his burnt offering and his grain offering, and he
poured out his grain offering and sprinkled the blood of his
peace offering on the altar. He also brought the bronze altar,
which was before the Lord, from the front of the temple, from
between the new altar and the house of the Lord, and put it
on the north side of the new altar. Then King Ahaz commanded
Elijah the priest, saying, I'm to break your altar, burn the
morning burnt offering, the evening grain offering, the king's burnt
sacrifice, and his grain offering, and the burnt offering of all
the people of the world, their grain offering, their drink offerings,
and sprinkle on it all the blood of the burnt offering and the
blood of the sacrifices. And the man's altar shall be
to be required by him. Thus did Elijah the priest support
the wall that King Ahaz commanded. And King Ahaz cut off the panels
on the carts and removed the ladders from them. Also, he removed the Sabbath
for a million, which they had built for their temple. He removed
the king's outer entrance from the house of the Lord on account
of the king of Assyria. Now, the rest of the acts of
Ahaz, which he did, were they not written in the book of the
Chronicles of the kings of Judah? So Ahaz rested with his fathers
and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. And Hezekiah's
son reigned in his place. Now we get the king out of here.
Too good God became. So now you get himself. He says,
when the children pass in the fire, that's when they would
burn children alive to the God Kimosh, the Moabites' God. He
strikes a deal with the king of Assyria, Tiglath-Meazer III,
and says, come defend me from Syria and Israel. So he gives him money, so he's
sort of taking the gold and silver out of the temple and gives it
to him. And he comes in an alliance. Not only does he do that, but
when Tiglath and Lazarus conquers Damascus, Syria, he goes up to
meet him there and he sees an altar to a Syrian god. And he
says, you know, I want one of these in the temple in Israel,
in Judah. So he sends back the high priest
and says, I want to build an altar just like this. So they
start to tear down the Lord's altar and move him from the place
and bring his altar to a false god So we'll see as we go through
Hosea, while he mostly speaks to the north, because most of
the kings in the south were good, there is a time period when there
was a wicked king in the south who wasn't relying upon the word
God of Israel to protect him, and is worshipping a foreign
god. So he'll have some words to speak to them. After Ahaz,
we get to Hezekiah. It says of Hezekiah in 2 Kings
18, Now it came to pass in the third year of Hosea, the son
of Elah, king of Israel, that Hezekiah, the son of Ahaz, king
of Jerusalem and of Eden, was twenty-five years old when he
became king, and he remained twenty-nine years of Jerusalem.
His mother's name was Abi, the daughter of Jechron, and he did
what was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that
his father David had done. He removed the high places and
broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image, and broke
in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made. For until
this day the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called
it tabushka. He trusted in the Lord God of
Israel, so that after him was none like him among all the kings
of Judah, nor who before him. For he held fast to the Lord.
He did not depart from following him, but kept his commands, which
the Lord had commanded Moses. The Lord was with him. He prospered
wherever he went, and he rebelled against the king of Israel. the watchtower to the fortified
city. So you get to the end of Hosea's life, and in the south,
things were looking pretty good. You had toots, good kings, then
a wicked, terrible king, but then, through the ministry of
Isaiah and the ministry of Micah, God brings a revival, as it were,
to the southern kingdom, and God raises up a godly king. So
by the time you get to the end of Hosea's life, in Judah, things
were looking pretty good. In the north, things aren't quite
so good. For one, he only mentions one
king to the north, Jeroboam. But if you go to the times of
Hezekiah, there's many kings to the north. Why does he only
mention Jeroboam and nobody else? Well, Jeroboam and his son Aphram,
Zechariah, who only lasted for six months, they were the end
of the dynasty of Jadab. Remember Jadab? We're back in
the times of Elijah and Elisha. And God promised to Jadab that
his family would reign for four generations. So when we get to
the end of the fourth generation, that's it of those who got authorized
into the north. He'd given no promises to any
other kings. So it's probably that Hosea just
looks at these other kings after the reign of Jeroboam and his
son's reign is so short, it's not even worth mentioning, that
he doesn't mention how their kings would be worth, because
they're all illegitimate. They should not be kings over the
people. So he doesn't mention them. But who are these kings?
What were they like? Well, again, 2 Kings, starting
in chapter 14, tells us of Jeroboam. It says, in the 15th year of
Amaziah, the son of Joab, as king of Judah, Jeroboam, the
son of Joab, as king of Israel, became king in Samaria and reigned
for 41 years. He became evil in the sight of
the world. He did not depart from all the
sins of Jeroboam, the son of God, who had made his rule sin.
This was a wicked, terrible, Not in the way that you see in
some other books, not like Ahab who brought in the Baals, but
in that he kept following what the first Jeroboam had done,
and having the people worship the golden calves. So it's spoken
of him and of his long reign that he was a bad king, and he
didn't depart from the sin. His son Zechariah comes next.
He says, in 2 Kings 15a, in the 30th year of Hazariah, king of
Judah, Zechariah, the son of Jeroboam, reigned over Israel
and Samaria for six months. He made evil in the sight of
the Lord and his fathers at night, and he did not depart from the
sons of Jeroboam, the son of Abba, who had made Israel sin.
Then Shalom, the son of Jabesh, conspired against him and struck
him and killed him in front of the people, and he reigned in
his place. And the rest of the Acts of Zechariah 8, they are
written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. This
was the word of the Lord, which he spoke to James, saying, your
son shall sit on the throne of Israel for the fourth generation.
He spoke the word of the Lord. Zechariah, Jeroboam's son, is
another bad king. Walks in the ways of the first
Jeroboam, beating the people, commercial people, the calves.
And he is murdered six months into his kingdom. And this is
going to start. You'll see as we go along that what happens
is we keep having murder after murder, assassination after assassination. In fact, there's only one king.
He has his kingdom down to his son. So one king reigned in the south,
and one king reigned for over 50 years. Here, they're very
short reigns, because there's so much turmoil. And this ends,
according to the prophecy, with Zechariah. That's the fourth
generation of Jacob's line. That's the end of those who are
legitimate in the kingdom of God, in the northern kingdom.
We get to the next king, which is Shalom. Second Kings 15. Shalom,
the son of Jabas, became king in the 39th year of Isaiah. and
he reigned a full month in Samaria. From Mennahem, the son of Gad,
he went up from Tirzah, came to Samaria, and struck Shalom,
the son of Jadab in Samaria, and killed him, and he reigned
in this place. Now the rest of the Acts of Shalom and the Conspiracy
of the Two Dead, indeed, they are written in a book of the
Chronicles of the Kings of Israel. Here we don't even see whether
there's a good and bad king, because he only lasted for one month,
and he is murdered. So we've already got, we're already three
kings into Hosea's time, two of whom didn't even last a full
year between the two kings. One is killed after six months,
and the man who murdered him is murdered one month into history.
After him is Menahem. In 2 Kings 15, it says, then
from Tirzah, Menahem continued. Menahem attacked Thithsa and
all who were there in its territory, because they did not surrender.
Therefore, he attacked it. All the women there who were
with child from Rivko in the 39th year of Azariah came to
Menahem, the Son of God. He became king over Israel. And
he made 10 years of his marriage. And he did evil in the sight
of the Lord. He did not depart all his days from the sins of
Jeroboam, the son of Nebuchadnezzar. Kul, king of Assyria, came against
the land, and Menahem gave Kul 1,000 talents of silver that
his hand might be with him to strengthen his kingdom under
his control. And Menahem exacted the money from Israel from all
the very wealth of each man 50 shekels of silver to give to
the king of Assyria. So the king of Assyria turned
back and did not stay in the land. Now the rest of the Acts
of Menahem, although he knew, they're not written in the Book
of the Prophets or the Kings of Israel. So Menahem rested
with his fathers, the Tekehi and Sonri in his place. So Menahem,
who was a murderer, he starts out with brutality. The city
didn't surrender to him after he had taken over the kingdom. He rips open the pregnant women
as a show of his violence and his wickedness. He continues
in a long and terrible ball to worship the golden calves. He
is now in a position of weakness. Now he starts extracting from
him, basically shaking down the rich people. We need money, because
I need to pay off the Assyrians, so they don't take away my kingdom.
So now the northern king, remember the southern king you wanted
to ask? They're paying Assyria, protect us from Israel. Israel's
paying Assyria, protect us from Judah, protect us from Syria.
So everybody's sending money to Assyria to help them. And
whenever Assyria gets money, what do they do? They say, OK,
we'll leave you alone for a little while. This is all that's going
on. Now he's one of the few of the
kings His son is Pecahiah, who finds
himself in Kings 15 again. In the 15th year of Azariah,
king of Judah, Pecahiah, the son of Menahem, became king over
Israel and Samaria, and reigned two years. And he did evil in
the sight of the Lord. He did not depart from the sins
of Jeroboam, the son of Habakkuk, who made Israel sin. Then Pecah,
the son of Reveliah, an officer of his, conspired against him
and killed him in Samaria, into Citadel of the king Now notice,
this is in the 50th year. That's right, we're still in
the time of the first king in the south. So in that time, we've
already had four kings. Three of them were murdered. Although, that's how bad things
are in the North compared to the South. And this is another
fact. Said he didn't do right. Said he didn't. He believed in
the people, again, in their worship of the Lord. Yes, remember, all
this time, Hosea is preaching to them. All this time, Amos
had been preaching to them. These were people who their grandparents
had murdered. Elijah and Elijah preached to
them. But they keep going on in their wickedness. And they'll
stop and they'll make a hideous murder by a cat. He is the next
king. Of Pekka, we're told, in 2 Corinthians
15, in the 52nd year of Azariah, king of Judah, Pekka, the son
of Ramaliah, became king over Israel, Samaria, in the mean
20 years. And yet, evil and decider of the world, he did not depart
from the sentence of Jeroboam, the son of Habakkuk, king of
Israel, said. In the days of Pekka, king of Israel, Tiglath-Bileazor,
king of Assyria, came and took Ajahn, Abel, Bethlehem, Chag,
Noah, Cain, or Caesar, Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of
Hebron. And he carried him captive to Assyria. Then Hosea, the son
of Elah, led a conspiracy against Pechah, the son of Abeliah, and
struck and killed him. So he remained in his place until
the twentieth year of Japheth, the son of Uzziah. Now the rest
of the House of Pechah, all they knew, indeed, they already knew,
quote, from the chronicles, So, Pecah, who had murdered Pecahiah,
Pecah himself is murdered by the next one we take, Hosea.
He was again one who would not turn from the sin. Now again,
remember, they're constantly being preached to. Turn from
this sin. God is going to bring judgment
if you don't. And they continue and continue and continue. Now
imagine, living in this time, that king after king after king
is being murdered in the south. Pecah starts, Uzziah is still
king. One king in the south, and now
there are six kings in the north, five of whom are assassinated.
We get to the final king born in Samaria, who has the same
name as our prophet. In 2 Kings 17, it tells us, in
the twelfth year of Ahaz, king of Judah, Hosea, the son of Elah,
became king of Israel and Samaria in the mid 9th year. But not
as the kings of Israel who were before him. Shalmaneser, king
of Assyria, came up against him, and Hosea became his vassal and
gave him tribute money. And the king of Assyria uncovered
a conspiracy by Hosea, for he had sent messengers to sow king
of Egypt and brought no tribute to the king of Assyria as he
had done year by year. Therefore, the king of Assyria
shut him off and bound him in prison. Now the king of Assyria,
with about all the land, went up to Samaria and said, In the
ninth year of Hosea, the king of Assyria took Samaria and carried
away Israel from Assyria, and placed them in the law by the
Hagarim, the river of Grozon, in the cities of the east. For so it was that the children
of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who brought
them up out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh,
king of Egypt, and they had feared other gods. And he walked with
the statutes of the nations of the Lord that had been cast out
from before the children of Israel, and of the kings of Israel, and
said, Also, the children of Israel secretly belittled to the Lord
their God things that were not right. And they built for themselves
high places in all of their cities from the watchtower of the good
white state. They set up for themselves sacred pillars and
wooden images on every high hill under every green tree. There
they burned incense on all the high places, like the nations
whom the Lord had carried away before them. They did wicked
things to promote the Lord to anger them. But they served idols,
of which the Lord had said, and you shall not do this. Yet the
Lord testified against Israel and against Judah by all those
prophets. Every seer said, Turn from your evil ways and keep
my commandments and my statutes according to all the law which
I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you by the servants
of the prophets. Nevertheless, they would not hear, but stiffened
their necks like the necks of their fathers, who did not believe
in the Lord their God. And they rejected his statutes
and his covenants that he made with their fathers, and his testimonies
which he had testified against them. They followed idols, became
idolaters, and went after the nations who were all around them,
concerning them with what it charged them that they should
not do the will. So they left all the commandments of the Lord
their God, made themselves a molded image of two halves, made a wooden
image and worshiped all the hosts of heaven and the sun and the
air. And they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through
the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsayer, and sold themselves
to be evil in the sight of the Lord through a broken hand. Therefore
the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them from
His sight. There was none left but the tribe
of Judah alone. Also Judah did not keep the commandments
of the Lord their God, but walked in the statutes of Israel as
they had been. And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel,
afflicted them, and delivered them into the hands of plunderers,
until He had cast them out of the sight. For He tore Israel
from the house of David, and He made Jeroboam the son of the
god of Jeroboam drove Israel from following the Lord and made
them commit a great sin. For the children of Israel walked
in all the sentence of Jeroboam which he gave them. They did
not depart from him. He told them who were bringing
Israel out of his sight, as he had said by his servants the
prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria,
as it is this day." During his time, he first starts
making a deal with Assyria, so Assyria won't conquer him. Then
he plots against him and says, you know what? I can get away
from Assyria by making a treaty with Egypt. And he sends money
to Egypt, sends his money to Assyria. Assyria coming down
to Egypt isn't strong enough to defend Israel. And Assyria
conquers the northern kingdom of Israel and brings it into
captivity. Totally wipes them out. But then
notice how, God's word ends that period. It steps away from Hosea
and says, he was a wicked king. And now it says, it's not just
that he was a wicked king, they were a wicked people. That the
people themselves, from the time God brought them out of Egypt, They were faithless. That they
have seeking after the other gods who God warned them, do
not seek after other gods. He says, it's not just they just
fell into sin. He said they sold themselves
to do evil. They sold themselves back into
sin and slavery. And it says that God warned them
again and again and again in the prophets that they must turn
away from the hope and judgment. And by the time we get to the
end of Hosea's mission, the northern kingdom is wiped out, is no more,
and God had brought His judgment justly and promisingly. So we
see during the time of Hosea the prophet, political corruption,
politicians report that they're using political alliances that God
had warned them not to make. He was their strength. He was
their shield. He was their shepherd. They were
supposed to trust him. They rejected that. They had
no trust that God could protect them, but instead looked to the
nations around them. We see corrupt religion. In the
South, we see Ahaz bringing that in. But in the North, they can
continue in their wicked worship following the wickedness of Jeroboam
I, who had them worshiping the golden cows. They should have
rejected false worship, and they didn't. Instead, they added to
their false worship. They were worshipping the bronze
serpent that the people of Israel captured way back in the days
when they wandered in the wilderness. They were worshipping the bronze
serpent. They worshipped the veils. They worshipped them all
the time, under every green tree, no matter where you turned in
Israel in the north. So you had corrupt religion,
and you had corrupt people. The people were no better than
their leaders. They were just living their life sold out to
sin. What you have is the people that
God had warned, and warned, and warned, and warned, and He continued
in your covenant on faithfulness. So what is the message of Hosea? The message of Hosea is the Lord
God of Israel is faithful to His covenant, whether it means
bringing judgment or showing mercy. He is faithful to His
covenant, even when His people were not. His people who have
been unfaithful the whole time. Again, it gives you a picture
of basically an unfaithful spouse, an adulterous spouse, or a rebellious
child. But God is always faithful, Hosea
says. He's faithful in bringing judgment,
but He's also faithful in showing mercy. That even though His people
were incredibly wicked, they were like an adulterous woman
who should not have been cast out, but should be stoned to
death. They were like, not only were they rebellious children
that should have been sent out, and again, under the law of God,
continued rebellious children to be stoned to death, God in
His great covenant love, in the end, redeemed them, and showed
them mercy. Because He is faithful, even
when His people are faithless. That means the Book of Hosea
ultimately points us to Jesus. Because it's in Jesus that we
see the covenant faithfulness of God. God is faithful to His
covenant, and His covenant, He says, He will punish sin. And
in Jesus, He punishes the sin of His people. Pouring out His
wrath upon Jesus, the sin bearer. But God is also faithful unto
a person. And in Jesus, we see the person. the lessons of the covenant,
redemption and life for his people. So a book of Hosea, whose name
means salvation, points us to the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So just starting from this introduction,
what should we do? How do we live our lives in the
light of Hosea? Well, for one, Hosea is important
to us, to the church as a whole and to us as individuals. When we run after the world and
the things of the world, when we place our heart at anything
more than God, we become spiritual adulterers. We love something
more than God. We say, oh, I still love God,
but we love something more than Him, or alongside of Him. And
He warns, if you do this, My judgment will come upon you.
We are like rebellious children. God gives us good things. He's
redeemed us out of it. He's set us apart as His own
people. We say, God, what I want is the stuff You can give me,
but I don't want You. That's the church of 2 in 1.
It warns us that if we are faithless, since God is faithful to His
covenant, He must punish sin. And He will bring judgment upon
our heads. If we, like Israel, are unrepentant,
if we keep hearing His word, year after year, week after week,
and just blow it off. But it's also a message of hope
to us. If God can receive back his invulnerable
wife, instead of having her stoned, instead of cutting her off forever,
can we bring her back and love her again? If instead of killing
his rebellious children and having them sold to death, if he could
bring them back and make them his children, he'd father life
as Jesus did. welcome back those who repent
and turn. He will restore us to the bride
of Christ. He will restore us to the children of God. That
you can't sin so much that you can't come back anymore. If you
repent, move. for those who will turn from
their sin and embrace Jesus. Those who wish to continue living
in their sin will wind up like this or like the end of the story. Cut off from my life forever,
for those who depend on me will be like the adulterous woman
who was restored for marriage, and the children who were brought
back. You will be welcomed back as a king. So may this book,
as we begin to study, warm you and turn from your sin. warn
you to repent and not to live in their sin, and they encourage
you that the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ is greater
than your sin, and because he is faithful to his covenant,
he will do everything that is necessary to bring his people
to himself in repentance. Let us pray. Heavenly Father,
may we see in Hosea the picture of who you really are, Jesus Christ. May we take the morning and look
what goes on. May we turn from our spiritual adulteries and
rebel. May we not be like Israel of
old, where morning after morning again, we've not turned from
our sin, but continue to turn away from it. Instead, may we
be
Hosea 1:1
Series The Book of Hosea
| Sermon ID | 1102222135206 |
| Duration | 41:40 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Hosea 1:1 |
| Language | English |
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