I'm going to read from Hosea 14, verses 1 through 3. I think this captures the spirit in the heart of the book. Hosea 14, 1 through 3. Hear God's word. O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you. and return to the Lord, say to him, take away all iniquity, receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips. Assyria shall not save us. We will not ride on horses, nor will we say any more to the work of our hands. You are our gods, for in you the fatherless finds mercy. Amen. Father, we thank you that we do find mercy in you. You are the fountainhead of mercy. Redemption flows from you. We cannot look to broken cisterns. And I pray that as we look into this marvelous book of Hosea, that our hearts would be stirred at the greatness of your salvation. Bless this your people as we continue to worship in Jesus name. Amen. Well, Hosea is an amazing book on redemption, and he himself is a wonderful model of God's love and forgiveness. And I'm going to spend most of the sermon on the first three chapters, because those really set the tone for the whole book. What you see in the first three chapters will impact how you view the rest of the book. But before I get into the first three chapters, let me give you just a little bit of background. Hosea lived in the northern kingdom of Israel, which had pretty much become completely apostate. He prophesied from around 785 to 720 BC, an astonishing 65 years of ministry. Now some of your study Bibles might say that it was 755 BC, which would be during the reign of Pekah. But Floyd Nolan Jones has done a good job of nailing down the biblical data. Actually, you don't need to be a chronologist. You don't need to be smart. All you have to do is read verse one, and you realize it has to start earlier than 755, because look at verse one. It says, the word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, when? In the days of Uzziah. That's long before 755 BC. So you don't need to be very smart. You just have to read. Anyway, it goes on to say that his prophetic ministry lasted until the reign of Hezekiah. And so I've included on the backside of your outlines, just one little snippet of a massive outline that Floyd Nolan Jones has given. It's online and it really is a worthwhile resource for you guys to look at. But if you look at that, you will realize that Hosea lived and prophesied during some of the most turbulent times in northern Israel. He saw in his lifetime six kings get replaced, four of which were killed by the succeeding kings. And he saw Israel overthrown as a whole. Now, if you don't follow Nolan's dates, There are certain prophecies of imminent fulfillment that you simply will not find a fulfillment to. For example, chapter 1 verse 4 gives a prophecy that on my dating, on Nolan's dating, did happen very soon. But it does not, there's just a total mystery to commentators who hold the 755 date. And so the book spans 785 to 720 BC, 65 years in all. And this makes his ministry come right after Amos and overlap that of Isaiah and Micah. Now, why was he called by God? Well, I've got a bunch of verses here that I won't refer to that say that he was bringing a call to Israel to repent of its apostasy, and he was confronting the priests who were leading the people astray, and he was confronting the false prophets who patted people on the back, made them feel nice with their messages rather than pointing out their sins. He was confronting the politicians who were pragmatically using politics to enrich and empower themselves were not following the law of God. And so from citizen to preacher to politician, the entire nation had become entirely corrupt and was in danger of imminent judgment. And so his calling was not a pleasant calling. No prophetic calling was. He was born into a family of nobility, which is interesting in light of Paul's statement in 1 Corinthians 1, that not many noble have been called. He didn't say, praise God, not any. He said, not many. But even though he was a nobleman, he definitely had a heart that identified with the down and outers. When you look at the wife that he married and the children that he adopted, you will see that he really reflected God's heart. He had a huge heart. He was not your typical nobleman. He was one of the most gifted prophets in literary techniques. Johnson suggested that if you were to adequately explain every metaphor, simile, and illustration that he uses, you might as well just write a commentary on the whole book, because those are everywhere, and they interweave with each other in ways that are just incredible. I wish I could use the picturesque language that Hosea used. He was a marvelous communicator. But back to his life, when you see how God used Hosea's family life to illustrate God's own relationship to Israel, you begin to see Hosea was a great husband. He was a great father. He had a huge heart. He married a woman who brought two children into the marriage, children born out of wedlock. And I'll explain a little bit why I come to that conclusion. Not everybody agrees, but I'm 100% convinced of that fact. And so this is a book that gives a lot of instruction on how to handle some of the broken situations that the modern church in America is increasingly going to be faced with. I tell you, especially with all of this LGBTQ stuff that's going on, when people get converted, they're going to have so many things we're going to have to help them process through. But in this book, you see that he's a model on helping single parent homes, adultery, divorce, how to restore people caught in the grip of prostitution and sexual abuse, how to have your children turn their backs on a family member that's engaged in adultery for that member's best interest, and of course, There was fallout on that particular decision. There was huge fallout because the first two adopted kids sided with their mom and thought that their adoptive dad, Hosea, was being way, way, way too strict, too harsh. And he's thinking, I love you kids. I want your favor, but I cannot go along with your wishes on this matter because you are asking for a false mercy. In fact, why don't you look with me at chapter two, And the verses four through five, I will not have mercy on her children, for they are the children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot. She who conceived them has behaved shamefully. Now sadly, they were identifying with her, even in her sin. So what's going on here is that the mom had managed to get at least the adopted children, those would be the children of harlotry, to empathize with her and decide with her. You see some of the dynamics of an unhealthy, blended family happening here. But Hosea explains things to his kids, saying about their mom—and we're picking up here in the middle of verse 5, chapter 2, verse 5—for she said, So Hosea is going to be giving his kids his reasons why he is cut her off from the family at this point. For she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns and wall her in so that she cannot find her paths. She will chase her lovers, but not overtake them. Yes, she will seek them, but not find them. Then she will say, I will go and return to my first husband, for then it was better for me than now. This was an incredibly tough assignment for Hosea. He's called to prophesy to his children why he's treating his wife this way and prophesying that she will eventually come back and he will receive her back. This was a very tough assignment. Hosea's goal was to let his adulterous wife experience the fruits of her sin and not enable her in her sin. He wanted her to turn from her wicked ways, and he was fully prepared to forgive her if she fully repented. No problem. But he was not going to enable her. Now, sadly, two of the children wanted him to keep doing nice things to her, but he wouldn't have mercy. It was too early for mercy. Mercy would come in chapter three, and it was a beautiful mercy, but it was after she hit rock bottom and was willing to fully repent, enter into accountability, and start all over and do things right. There are way too many people nowadays that simply do not understand the gracious purpose of tough love, whether it's with a drunk in the family or somebody else in the family. In fact, they are undermining the purpose of Hosea's true love. They have a false kindness to rebels that is not really kindness at all. They try to hold the door open to rebels, but they're holding the door open in lawless ways. And as such, they become partakers, they don't realize it, but they become partakers of the rebels' sins. Let me read you a scripture. I've had commentaries and I've got, I don't know, quite a few commentaries on Hosea. But I have commentaries that actually say Hosea was being way, way too tough. And I think it's because they have bought into our culture's insistence on blind empathy and unconditional love. They need to read 2 John 10-11, which says, People don't realize, even though, hey, I'm not guilty of this sin. Yeah, but because you're enabling that person, you have now become guilty of that person's sins. So Hosea's way of holding the door open to his wife is the only biblical way, and it worked. But it wouldn't have worked if he had had mercy on the first two children and caved into their desires and let the adulterous mom have visitation rights and to come and go as she pleased. That would be to let the rebel dictate the terms. and for the rebel to enjoy the benefits of relationship when that relationship is a fake relationship. It would have been a fake relationship. So there are lessons on tough love that are fantastic in this book. In fact, this book actually has helped to refine some of my own thinking on this subject. The more I have pondered and meditated and studied it. This book corrects the world's faulty views of empathy. There's good empathy, there's bad empathy. There are lessons of what constitutes true love and true forgiveness, shows how to draw boundaries for straying family members, but how to do it in a way that gives hope for restoration in the future, does not cut off hope. Hosea gave hope to his children. God will work through this. He will work through it. We just need to trust him. Let's do it God's way. There are lessons for single parents. For an undefined period of time, Hosea was a single parent who had to care for very young children while his wife irresponsibly left home and started sleeping around with various men, trying to have fun the world's way. And it broke Hosea's heart. It broke his heart. And so Hosea is not just a model of how to navigate the tough waters of the blended family. That's tough enough. But he's also a model on how to be a single dad in a way that will enable the children to flourish. For example, and there's controversy on this, but I see chapter 11, which describes God's amazing relationship to Israel in the figure of a dad. who is gentle with his son, who draws him with cords of love, who teaches him how to walk, who dandles this child. I see that whole chapter as being prefigured by Hosea's own relationship to his adoptive children. I see Hosea as being a prophetic symbol of fatherhood and God's marriage to Israel all the way through this book. Even Hosea's cutting off contact between Gomer and her children is a mirror image of God later on telling the remnant children of the northern kingdom, the kingdom of Israel, to leave their abusive relationship with adulterous Israel and to move south to Judah, where a revival was happening. In fact, if you read in 2 Chronicles 30, you will see that King Hezekiah joins with this man right at that time in inviting those people, saying, look, you can come with us into the Passover. We will welcome you down here. So there's a lot of cool prophetic things that are happening, even with his own biography. Now, of course, not everybody agrees with my interpretation. I ran across two feminist commentaries that made Gomer out to be the free love hero and Hosea to be the abusive, patriarchal, fuddy-duddy dad. You know, he's the killjoy. He's the bad guy in this story. Of course, they don't believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, so no wonder they're messed up. But even among evangelicals, there are at least seven different views of what is going on in chapters one through three. Some people are so embarrassed by these chapters that they are trying desperately to explain away the obvious in chapters one through two. And they're having a real tough time. Others think that Hosea could not possibly take Gomer back in chapter three because they have a faulty view of divorce and remarriage. Though she was sleeping around, she did not get remarried after Hosea divorced her. So she does not fit the prohibition in Deuteronomy 24. Fornication does not make you married, as some people claim nowadays, or Jesus would not have said to the woman at the well, you've had four husbands and the one you're sleeping with right now is not your husband. If sex made you married, then she'd be married to that person too. And he said, no, not your husband. So it's a covenant. There's nothing in here that would prevent him from remarrying Gomer. But let me at least list some of the different views that evangelicals have taken. And these are all good evangelicals. You know, I don't want to diss them, but we need to take account of every word and phrase in this book. First, John Calvin, much as I love him and respect him greatly, was absolutely wrong when he took this whole vision as non-history. It has nothing to do with history. Just imagine it as if it's a bad dream where God's revealing something about Israel, and he thinks it's his wife, and he wakes up, oh, great, it's not my wife. So he says, it's not Gomer whatsoever. Now, There are several indicators in the text that this really is history and not simply a vision. For example, why does God make it sound historical, like calling Gomer the daughter of Diblai? Why that little detail? I mean, that makes it sound like the literal daughter of some historical person. Or why does he say in verse eight, now, when she had weaned low Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. I mean, there's those and many other indicators that this is being written like it's real history. But a number of people have followed Calvin on this because they're embarrassed by chapters one through three, and it contradicts their legalistic theology. But to me, this is not embarrassing at all. To me, it's so encouraging that God's word not only gives blueprints for the ideal, the perfect, but it also gives us instructions and blueprints for how to deal with a messed up, broken situations of life. This is a book that is so realistic for our modern world. It's an absolutely necessary book. And to me, It helps us to minister to the broken and the messed up families in our culture. Anyway, the first interpretation says it's not history. Wrong. It is. Second, some take Gomer in chapter 1, verse 3 as being history, as being Hosea's faithful wife, but all the rest of the chapter and chapter 2 is not history. It's simply a vision. And so it represents Israel being unfaithful, and he's using his wife in the dream. Okay, he's married to a faithful woman, but in the dream she's not faithful. Okay, so that's the idea. And then they take the prostitute of chapter 3 as not being married to Hosea, but simply Hosea showing kindness to an immoral woman. So to them, the command from God, go again, love a woman who was loved by a lover, is committing adultery, is not a command to marry her. It's a command to love her, be kind to her, be compassionate to her, help her out. No, that's the opposite of Hosea's tough love. And furthermore, I fail to see how it would be honoring at all to his faithful wife in this vision to be using her as an image, a comparison to unfaithful Israel. So there's many reasons why I think this is a troubling interpretation and it's exegetically unfeasible. It's eisegesis, not exegesis. Thirds, still others take chapters one and three as being actual history, so that's good. But they see the two chapters as describing two totally different women. So he married a prostitute named Gomer in chapter one, then he turns around and he marries another prostitute in chapter three of an unnamed person. Now, I can't get into all of the exegetical reasons of why this is not feasible, but just one that should be obvious is this is supposed to be a comparison to God. And when you look at that comparison, then it becomes very clear that Hosea had been previously in a relationship with the woman of chapter three. He divorced her, now he's remarrying her. There are four interpretations that take chapters one and three as both referring to the same woman, Gomer. I hold of the fourth one. The first of these four interpretations say that God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute. Okay, I agree with that. She then gave him one son. I disagree with the figure, but she did give him a son. But then she turned to her old ways, bore two children of doubtful paternity. And what they mean by that is somebody else's children. She's been sleeping around all the time that she is being married to him. And I also question that. Hosea then separated from her, or some say was abandoned by her. That's chapter two, verse A. A little bit late for separation. If she'd been sleeping through two kids that whole time, that's a little bit late. Anyway, this view says she then fell into poverty. Hosea brought her out of slavery, restored her to the family. Now, some of that is correct. But the relationship, the children is not, the time frame is not, the number of children is not, even putting up with things so long is absolutely not. It's out of character with the Bible. Fifth, Archer, Anderson, and Friedman all take a similar view to the one I outlined, and they say that Gomer was not yet a prostitute in chapter one, verse two, and that this is simply Hosea later on realizing, oh, wow, the woman that God commanded me to marry is going to be a prostitute in the future. And I can't get into all the reasons why, but you simply cannot twist the Hebrew into saying a woman who was going to commit fornication. No, chapter one, verse two, he knew already she was a prostitute. And the key thing is she was repentant. You know, people wonder how on earth could God allow, let alone command, him to marry a prostitute. She was repentant, and I will prove that in a little bit, and she stayed faithful to Hosea for the next several years, and I will show that. She was starting a new life, just like Rahab the harlot did. A sixth interpretation says that chapters 1 and 3 are just variant accounts of exactly the same event, and no sequence was intended. However, there are differences between the accounts of chapter 1 and chapter 3, and there's sequential indicators. And third, it requires that the word, again, in chapter 3, verse 1, be an editorial addition later on. And my high view of Scripture just cannot accommodate that. So let me give you the view that I have adopted, and we're going to take a tour of chapters one through three. Hosea's relationship with Gomer started when she was already a prostitute and had at least two children out of wedlock. I'll show in a bit, she had basically become a slave to a pimp. Chapter one, verse two, when the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, He has taken both the wife and the children at the same time. Now, even though there's debate on this, I see absolutely no exegetical basis for rejecting that view. I believe Mick Miske is absolutely correct when he says the most natural reading of this is she was already a prostitute, already had children from her life of prostitution. They're clearly called children of harlotry, and there is no way you could call Hosea's children children of harlotry. They are legitimate children. So he's already taken some children and adopted them as his own. Now this interpretation is confirmed by chapter two, verse one, which speaks not only of brothers, but also sisters, plural, people who disagree with me. You look at their commentary on that. They are puzzled beyond belief on what that sisters mean. It's clear. Later in this chapter, we are told that Hosea had only one daughter of his own, and everybody agrees on that point. But that means that the word sisters, plural, being in the home, In chapter 2 verse 1 means that Hosea had adopted at least one girl when he married Gomer. I don't think there's any escaping that conclusion. She is going to be a stepsister to Hosea's daughter and sons. Now there's a hint from chapter 2 and from chapter 11 verse 1 that at least one of the children plural who came into the marriage at the time of the marriage, was a boy that would become a symbol of Jesus. And let me build the case for that, and then I'll explain why this is so, so significant. It answers a huge conundrum in Matthew 2, verse 15. Andrew Dearman, in his commentary, points out that Gomer must have been taken into sexual slavery in Egypt before chapter one. How does he arrive at that conclusion? Let me give you some of the data. I won't give all of it to you, but chapter two jumps ahead by six to eight years to when she started sleeping around with other men again. And in the first part of chapter two, Hosea cut off visitation rights, had to explain to his kids why this was really the loving thing to do. He tells them he cannot subsidize her evil and he wants God's providence to bring her to repentance. In chapter two, Hosea tells the kids prophetically that she will indeed repent And chapter three will show that repentance, that coming back and returning. And when that happens, he will take her back, but not before. But I want you to take a look at the words in chapter two, verse 15. I will give her her vineyards from there. She used to have vineyards, but she's been cut off from those. Why? Because of her adultery. Prophetically, he prophesied, when she repents, he will give them back. I will give her her vineyards from there, and the Valley of Acre is a door of hope. She shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. So she stands as a symbol, an image of Israel. So if Dierman is correct when he says of this verse, quote, Gomer also came up from the land of Egypt in the days of her youth, chapter 2, verse 15. Then it means that her children of harlotry, plural, children of harlotry, also came up from Egypt with her. Well, this suddenly gives new significance to Hosea 11 and verse 1, which says, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. What commentators have puzzled over is how Matthew 2 verse 15 can say that that verse is a prophecy of Jesus coming out of Egypt when he was a child. Now the reason they're puzzled as they see Hosea 11 verse 1 is exclusively a reference to history, not a prophecy. Reference to history, to Israel coming out of Egypt in the book of Exodus. If at least two children of Gomer came out of Egypt with her prior to her first marriage, his first marriage to her, I should say, then everything is resolved. We know from chapter one that all three of Hosea's own children became prophetic symbols of Israel's future. If this was one of Gomer's children of harlotry who came out of Egypt, he too could stand as a symbol of Israel's history, as well as Israel's future in Christ. The individual child could stand as a prophetic symbol of Jesus. Each child prophesied concerning the future. So I believe God is using Hosea's adoptive child as a prophecy of Jesus coming out of Egypt. Now, in any case, whether you buy that or not, All of chapter 11 shows what a great father's heart God has, and I believe God's father's heart is symbolized by Hosea's father heart. And so this is a chapter that has marvelous statements of what kind of love Hosea showed to the children of harlotry that had been adopted. So let's go back to chapter one, my view. is that God commanded Hosea to marry a repentant prostitute who had at least two children who were born out of wedlock. This would have been no different than Rahab the harlot marrying Salmon, who was the father of Boaz, who was the ancestor of Jesus, right? No different whatsoever, just as Rahab was supposed to do. Gomer was supposed to abandon her lifestyle and enter into a faithful relationship with Hosea. which he did for at least seven years. Verse two goes on to show how this would be a prophetic symbol. For the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord. So this is the first of several mentions that Gomer will be a symbol of Israel. Verse three. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaian, and she conceived and bore him as son. Each of the children that Hosea has by her become prophetic symbols themselves. Hosea's first child is named Jezreel in verse 4 because God was about to judge the house of Jehu and slaughter them in the valley of Jezreel for all of their idolatries. And it would occur in exactly the same way that Jehu had previously slaughtered all the descendants of Ahab in the same valley of Jezreel for their idolatry. And indeed, as Dwayne Garrett says, Shalom killed Zechariah at Eblaim, a town located in the southern part of the Valley of Jezreel. So there's a perfect fulfillment there. We're expecting fulfillments of each prophecy. The next child was a daughter. And in verse six, he names her the prophetic name, Lo-Ruhamah, which means no mercy. Why? Because Israel is going to be conquered by the Assyrians. God was not going to have mercy upon them. After weaning, verse eight, Probably two to three years later, after weaning, she conceived again. And he named that son Lo Ami, which means not my people, a prophetic statement that Paul picks up in Romans about the remnant of Israel and God going to the Gentiles. And if there was two years, here's the point. If there were two years between each of these children, Gomer stayed faithful to Hosea for at least seven years. If there were three years between each of these children, as is much more likely, given the breastfeeding techniques and everything that they had, and it does say it was after weaning. Weaning usually happened at about age three. If there was three years, it would be a lot more than seven years that she remained faithful to Hosea. So that just gives you a little bit of context. But in chapter two, verse two and following, we see Hosea accusing his wife of sleeping around with other men. And he asked his children to join him in the divorce court. They must have had plenty of evidence. So he tells his children, bring charges against your mother, bring charges for she is not my wife. OK, he's going to divorce her as a symbol of God divorcing Israel. Right. But he holds out hope and the rest of the chapter. Of course, she's not repentant, so Hosea is forced to kick her out of the home. In effect, he was saying, you cannot be in this home if you're sleeping around with other men. And he cut off her funds because to do otherwise would be to finance her rebellion and immorality. There is no such thing as no-fault divorce in the Bible. That is an ungodly, ungodly system, ungodly to the core. And he has to tell his children to turn their backs on her, to have nothing to do with her. This is an act of discipline. Sometimes churches need to engage in acts of discipline in divorce cases. As I've already mentioned, that's where the trouble begins. His two oldest adopted children, the children of Harlotry, don't agree with this tough love. And Hosea has to navigate some pretty troubled waters, but he sticks to his guns, and it appears that the children eventually come alongside of him. He tells his children at the end of chapter two, his whole purpose is to bring her to repentance. And once his wife repents, he will start all over again with a betrothal and a period of wooing her heart. But that cannot happen until she repents. He's not going to pretend that nothing is wrong. In any case, Hosea prays that God will severely discipline her for all of her licentious living, and some commentaries that I own think that this prophetic behavior on the part of Hosea is grossly unloving and ungracious and unchristian. One commentator even said abusive. But they're downplaying the seriousness of adultery. It is so serious in its destruction of the family, its destruction of the entire culture, that God put the death penalty on this. He made it a capital crime. It was worthy of death. Hosea is being responsible. He's actually engaged in a kind of tough love. He could have been much more severe. He could have gone to court and instead of divorcing her, he could have said, I'm pushing for the capital penalty. He chose not to. He had a heart of forgiveness, but it didn't look anything like the humanistic forgiveness of some who empathize with rebels while they are still rebels. Okay. That does not reflect the heart of God at all. Hosea is obviously brokenhearted over this turn of events, and God's prophetic words come to him in the remainder of chapter two that, hey, this is exactly what Israel has done to my own heart. Israel has broken my heart with their adulteries, which he defines as all of their sins. And I think we need to think about that. When you willfully sin, just imagine, let's back up a little, just imagine that your spouse started sleeping around with other people and the enormous pain that this would bring to your heart. Now transfer that to God. Every time you engage in willful sin, you're breaking God's heart in exactly the same way. It really is a horrible, horrible thing. We should not treat sin lightly. Oh, I'll just ask for forgiveness. No, you're breaking God's heart. Now God holds out hope that he will forgive Israel if she repents, and he'll start a new relationship with her if she will turn to him. So it is a book that shows redemption, and that neatly transitioned into the third stage of Hosea's relationship with Gomer. Even with his tough love, he prays for restoration, and God brings Gomer to the end of a rope, just as Hosea had prophesied that she would. He prophesies that in chapter two. She had fallen so low that she had sold herself into slavery and was in abject misery. Commentators point out that the price that was paid was a price for a slave. God had prepared her to repent. And until that happened, there was no point in stopping the tough love. And this is where chapter three comes in. Let me begin reading at verse one. Then the Lord said to me, go again, love a woman who was loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel who look to weather gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans. So I bought her for myself for 15 shekels of silver and one and one half homers of barley. And I said to her, you shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man. So too will I be toward you. So he promises to be faithful to her, makes her promise to be faithful to him. And then the next two verses speak of its prophetic significance, beginning to read at verse four. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord, their God and David, their king. They shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days. A New American Commentary gives many reasons why evangelicals have insisted that David their king is a reference to Jesus Christ. I 100% agree. And that the period in between is the period from Malachi until the time of Christ. I wrote out a bunch of notes. I'm going to skip over them. There's no way that we can cover them, but it is really a marvelous prophecy. But the point is that commentators show that verses four and five together show that the future Messiah would be prophet, priest, and king in the same person. And just as this section ends, With Jesus being the solution, each of the next two sections end with Jesus being the solution. And I could be quite speedy in giving you an overview of the rest of the book. And your outline, the messianic portions are in bold text, okay? Bold letters. In chapter four, God brings rebuke over myriad sins. Lying, lack of mercy, rejecting the knowledge of God. Renecting the knowledge of the Bible, swearing, killing, stealing, adultery. Basically, if you go verse by verse through there, you see all 10 commandments being repeatedly violated. And he blames the sin on a number of things. For example, verse 6 says, my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. When you don't know the Bible, you can easily fall into sin. This is why Psalm 119 says, your word I've hidden my heart that I might not sin against you. So if you're not motivated to memorize the scripture and to study the scripture, keep that verse in mind. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. But verse 12 says demons can also lead us to sin and take advantage of our sin nature. So if you're not fighting against demons, they're not going to quit fighting. They're still fighting. It just means you're going to lose. If you are not engaged in spiritual warfare, you're automatically going to lose because they're going to keep fighting. And of course, he points out our own sin nature can also lead to sin. And so if you're not crucifying your sin nature, automatically you're going to lose. We're in a battle. And so all through Hosea, we have a theology of sin, a theology of man, a theology of demons that I can't get into. Verse 11 says certain sins can be enslaving and completely controlling. Let me read that. Harlotry. wine and new wine enslave the heart. It's an incredible picture. When people are addicted to sexual sins, it is just as enslaving as if they were addicted to chemicals. And actually, recent scientific studies have shown that the impact upon the brain itself is almost identical when you're addicted to porn as when you are addicted to chemical drugs. And so he brought this out long before, saying that they are very simple. They've been able to map the brain and show that. But verse 12 shows that when you give Satan legal ground, demonic spirits can be just as enslaving to sin. It says, for the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray. So there was a demonic spirit they needed to be freed from. Anyway, verses 11 and following outline sexual immorality, addiction to alcohol, seeking counsel not from God, idolatry, stubbornness, self-will, rebellion, hardness of heart. These are all things that God says, this is so offensive, so offensive to me. In chapter 5, God outlines more evils in Israel, including sexual immorality, verse 3, pride, verse 5, lawlessness, verse 5, unfaithfulness, verse 7, eminent domain, verse 10, oppression of citizens. He says all of those things, they're like adultery. That's how God treats them, very, very seriously. And then in verse 4, he says, an evil spirit of harlotry had been moving them toward those sins. So don't be surprised when you see nation church and family and individuals acting in very irrational ways when they've given legal ground to demons to be at work in their lives. You see the irrational, you smell it, you're probably smelling the work of demonic behind it. The book of Hosea really explains some of the irrational hatred that you see against God and against anything that disagrees with Him in our nation is becoming more and more prevalent. He begins chapter six by pointing to a solution, Christ corporately bearing the death they deserve, and after three days, raising his people from this death. This is one of the two Old Testament passages that Paul alludes to in 1 Corinthians 15, when he says, Jesus was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures. Okay, this is one of them. Well, there's people who were raised with him, and that leads to the new covenant reign, like the latter and the former reign to the earth, verse three. And so the kingdom of Christ follows the first century AD resurrection. Now with that new covenant vision in mind, it proceeds to bring more rebuke in the rest of chapter six. They're not even remotely living in light of all of the grace that the future Messiah could bring to them. And verse seven says that like Adam, you know, it's not translated that way in the King James, but if you look at the margin it is, like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. This is one of those verses that you ought to memorize if you're trying to prove covenant theology. Okay, covenant theology started in chapter one of Genesis. So chapters one through three, there was a covenant made with Adam, a covenant broken with Adam. Chapter 7 gives more accusations, and just like the previous chapters, just punches them home with amazing metaphors and similes. I love the metaphor of Israel being like a cake unturned. It's literally a pancake, okay? You didn't flip it over. So on one side is burning. The other side is white, gooey, disgusting, right? He says, that's what Israel is like. Or he says, Israel, all of these sins that have accumulated is sort of like all of these gray hairs that you didn't even notice. Well, women notice that they get gray hairs, right? But we men were oblivious and all of a sudden, whoa, we got nothing but gray hair, right? He says that that's what's happening here. He likens them to a silly dove that's so easy to shoot. I love the metaphor is in Hosea. We don't have time to get into them. In chapters 8 through 10, he speaks of political idolatry with powerful image after image of their unfaithfulness, how gross that looks to him, and their judgment, what it would look like. And I'm not going to get into the substance of those chapters, and I would if I was preaching to legislators, executive branch, judges. Man, I would be hitting those chapters hard because there's so many rebukes that need to come to our nation from those chapters. But he ends the second section of the book with chapter 11's promise of hope. This is an incredible image of a loving father who dotes upon his children, who nurtured his children, who cared for those adoptive children, but they take sides against him. They betray him, okay? And he thinks to himself, okay, so you wanna be with your mom? You wanna follow your mom? You're gonna end up in slavery. You're gonna be hurt just like she is. And he's weighing this, and then he says, no, I cannot give you up. I cannot let you do what you're wanting to do. Let's read verses eight through nine. How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I set you like Zebulun? My heart churns within me. My sympathy is stirred. I will not execute the fierceness of my anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come with terror." So it shows God's forgiving heart. And he ends that section by pointing out that God would be in their midst despite their sins, another messianic promise of God with us. In verse 12, our unfaithfulness is answered by His faithfulness. This brings us to the last section. Unlike the previous section that had dozens and dozens of images, metaphors, and similes, the third section of the book, that's chapters 12 through 14, has three main images that are followed by yet another picture of messianic hope. And those three images keep weaving into each other. Just astonishing how he uses these. First powerful image is surprisingly taken from Genesis 27 through 28. So he likens the Israel of his day to Jacob's deceiving his dad and his treachery with his family that brought so much backlash and pain into his life and really brought all kinds of pain into his family. And Hosea does a masterful job of showing how it would be so much better if Israel would just trust God rather than fruitlessly trying to manipulate life like Jacob did. He said, Jacob's the master deceiver. He's the master manipulator. But he said, don't be like Jacob. It is not worthwhile. And Jacob eventually learned that he could not manipulate God. So that's the first metaphor. The next metaphor borrows from Numbers 12 through 20, where Israel's rebellion against God in the wilderness led to so much death, suffering, and needless pain. You can maybe remember the rebellion of Korah and some of the other rebellions. Well, by using the wilderness generation as an illustration, Hosea was basically saying, hey guys, you are acting just like the wilderness generation that God almost destroyed. And again, he tries to convince them, learn from history. It isn't worth it to rebel against God. The third metaphor that is used throughout these chapters is Israel's bad choice of King Saul in 1 Samuel. The kings that Israel was trusting would let them down and would hound them just like unrighteous King Saul had done. Actually, even worse. So God rejects the kings of Israel, just like God had rejected Saul. But then he ends the whole book with chapter 14, a chapter of hope once again, in addition to calling the nation to repentance, a call, by the way, which he clearly knows they're going to ignore. They're going to ignore it. But then he speaks of the remedy to their sin. The remedy doesn't come from them. He said over and over, you've proved you can't repent. You cannot turn from your backsliding. So what's the remedy? It's a messianic promise that, quote, this is God speaking, I will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely. Verse four, to love freely is sovereign love. It's sovereign love, it is not merited. God would supply the remedy that they could not provide. And he goes on to use a marvelous image of how God would bless all nations through Abraham's seed. It would be the incredible tree of life that would provide fruit and shade for all, would be the solution to all of Israel's failures. It's a marvelous messianic image. And then the last verse of the book is a note to the wise to apply all of the book to all of life and to walk in God's way. So he starts the book with one verse that says, okay, here's the word that came to Israel. Now the last verse of the book says, hey, pay attention to this word that came to Israel. And I'll just read it and close with prayer. Who is wise? Let them understand these things. Who is prudent, let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right, the righteous walk in them, but transgressors stumble in them. May we be wise like Hosea and not foolish like Gomer. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. And we thank you that it deals with the messed up, tough situations of life. We thank you that you have not allowed us to get away with our rebellion and sin. but that you deal with us even as you dealt with Gomer. We thank you, Father, for your faithfulness to us, for your kindness, your love, your redemption. We thank you for the forgiveness that we have in Christ. May we never take it for granted. May we cling to you tightly all of the days of our life. Father, we recognize that there but for your grace, we would go. We would be just like Gomer. And so we pray for your protection, that your grace would fill us, your Holy Spirit would fill us, that you would keep us from falling into the sins that are listed in this book. Bless this, your people, with increased sanctification, even in this coming week. And we pray this in Jesus' name.