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Well, Hosea is the start of the
section in the Old Testament called the smaller prophets,
the shorter in their size. And Hosea, the first of these
prophets, is not given to us in their chronological order. Our Bible translation follows
the Masoretic or Hebrew text of the scripture, and they follow
identically to what we have in our translation. And yet chronologically,
Joel is the oldest of the prophets to speak around 860 BC before
Christ. And Isaiah, who is part of the
major, larger prophets, he prophesied a thousand years in some sections
of his book before the time of Christ. These prophetical books are,
well, let's just say they're difficult to understand. And one of the great challenges
for in the book of Hosea, it has to do with the symbolic and
figurative language that leads to many different explanations
by commentators. Sometimes when you read them
all, you might come away a little more confused than when you started. Well, I say that a little bit
with tongue in cheek. because it's important always
to study the Scriptures and the broader understanding you have
and knowledge you have of the Word, well, the Lord's Spirit
will guide us into all truth. One of the interesting things
that we will find in our study of the minor prophets is that
when the New Testament gives a quotation from one of these
prophets, then we have oftentimes a New Testament commentary on
the Old Testament prophet, which helps us to understand what the
Holy Spirit wants us to learn from it. Hosea is certainly no
exception here. And several of the scriptures
that Hosea used are quoted by Paul, quoted by Peter, and quoted
by the Lord. So that's significant. And it
is a real blessing when you gather these in the course of your study.
But as far as the hardness of it goes, one commentator, a guy
by the name of Ebenezer Henderson, he said, the minor prophets have
generally been considered more obscure and difficult of interpretation
than any other prophetical books of the Old Testament. I think
that's a true saying. As we think about Hosea himself,
very, very little is known about him. In fact, we really only
know his father's name and that he served as a prophet during
a time of Israel's history when there were some prominent kings
of Judah, but only one king of Israel is mentioned. A little
bit of the background to do with that. There was a division in
the kingdom of Israel. That division happened after
Solomon, whose son Rehoboam took over from him. But what happened
was Rehoboam was not able to keep the kingdom together. And
so there was a split, a division. And a man called Jeroboam I,
the son of Nebat, he became the king of the 10 northern tribes
known as Israel. And the two southern tribes made
up of Judah and Benjamin, well, They took up the name Judah,
and Jerusalem is the capital of Judah, and Samaria was the
capital of Israel. There were no good kings in Israel. Every one of them was said to
be evil and to do evil in the sight of the Lord. That's not
a very good heritage. As a matter of fact, most of
them had this follow-up. It says that they did evil in
the sight of the Lord and followed after Jeroboam, the son of Nebat,
that caused Israel to sin. And what Jeroboam did at the
very beginning, now it's not the same Jeroboam that we have
just read about here in verse one. This is actually Jeroboam
II, the son of Joash. He has come several years later. But the first Jeroboam, what
did he do to cause Israel to sin so seriously in idolatry? Well, he set up two golden calves,
one of them in Samaria, another one up in the northern part of
the empire kingdom. Because Jeroboam figured that
if Judah, or pardon me, if the Israelites were to go back to
Jerusalem during the annual feast of atonement, of Passover, of
the other feasts that they were to have, if they were to go back,
then he would lose power because they would join themselves back
to the King of Judah, and things would not go well for him. So
he came up with a plan. And he said to the people, don't
trouble yourself to go to Jerusalem, just stay in Samaria here, have
the feasts and worship the Lord here. And so he said, worship
the Lord. But he set up the golden calf.
Now, we know it's not the first time a golden calf appeared in
Israel's history. You go back to the time of the
wilderness, back to the time when Moses was taken up into
Mount Sinai to receive the law. And the people were down and
they got Aaron to make them a golden calf and they worshiped. No,
idolatry has been in the blood in the history of Israel from
years. And so it did not turn out well for them. So here's
this guy, Hosea, the prophet, and he's been now called by God
to minister primarily to the nation of Israel, though Judah
is mentioned a couple of times. But his focus, the direction
God had given him, was to minister to the 10 tribes of the North. And the word and the message
that he had to bring was not a good one in many respects,
because it was a word of the pending judgment that God was
going to bring against those people for their idolatry, for
their rejection of God and his word. The name Hosea, it is the
exact same name of Joshua. In fact, Joshua is called Hosea,
and it's another spelling, another way of saying Hosea. And Jesus
is the Greek word for the Hebrew Joshua. So really, we could say
that Joshua, his name is Jesus, and Jesus' name is Joshua. That's
exactly what it is. And the meaning of that name
is Jehovah is salvation. We know from Matthew 1, verse
21, that you shall call his name Jesus, for he shall what? save
His people from their sins. Jehovah is salvation. Jehovah is Savior. Jesus is Savior. So that's a very good name that
Hosea has. And his message was one of God's
mercy and God's salvation. In fact, the theme that runs
through this book is a theme of God's unmerited favor to an
ill-deserving people. But I say to you today, is that
not the gospel message? Is it not true that we are an
undeserving people? We are ill-deserving people because
we have rejected the Lord. We've rebelled against him. And
yet the God of salvation, the God of grace, the God of mercy
and love has come to us with gospel truth. And Christ has
come with a message of hope. And so we have received the gospel. But do you know the message that
was delivered to Israel was a message to a rebellious, backsliding
people. Yes, God's mercy was to people
who had received much mercy, much grace, but they had spurned
the grace of God. They had rejected the Lord's
overtures of love. They had completely thrown out
the warnings of fleeing from idolatry and of sinful behavior. The themes of sin and judgment
of retribution, they come throughout the entire book. The message
was calling people back to the Lord. I wonder, friend tonight,
Is the Lord calling you back to himself? Have you slidden
away from God? Have you become cold? Have you gone a distance away
from God? Tonight, now is the time to come
back. Now we know that backsliding
has various degrees. We know that We can become cold
and drift away from the Lord very, a small amount, imperceptibly
sometimes, but that soon turns into a month, maybe six months,
maybe a year when we have not been walking very close to the
Lord. We left off our Bible reading, we left off our prayer, because
that's, of course, where all backsiding starts, isn't it?
But is it not time, my dear friend, My brother, my sister, come back
to the Lord, wherever you are. I don't know your heart, but
I know my own heart. And I know the need as I preach
to myself tonight. I don't want to drift away from
the Lord. I don't want to be at a distance. I don't want to
be cold in heart from God, because as we drift away from the Savior,
from the source of heat and light, well, what's going to happen
to us? Well, the farther we go away from the sun in our solar
system, the colder things become. We need to come closer to the
light and the heat. in order to be warmed. So if
the Lord has a word to anyone here tonight, if you have slidden
away from the Lord, well, it's time to come back. It's time
to renew your heart and your love to him. You know, when Hosea
started preaching the Lord's message, It was not welcome. I don't think that would be any
surprise, would it? If he's preaching about repentance and return to
a rebellious people who've heard the word before and they don't
want to hear it again, well, he's not going to be warmly received
in the religious halls of Israel. He certainly is not going to
be received in their cultural stages. Any nation that has rejected
the Lord does not want to hear from the servants of God who
are being very faithful to him. Among the many, many lessons
that can be learned from studying this book, it's the repeated
appeals of repentance and returning, the faithfulness of God's servant
and how he handled the word of God. And I want us tonight for
a few moments to think about the preciousness of God's holy
word. And I pray that our hearts, believers,
will be renewed in the scriptures and in the word of God. It was
just last week that we were thinking about the Protestant Reformation,
thinking about what God gave to us in that great revival of
spiritual things, revival of truth. It wasn't an invention
of truth, we know that, but it was a revival of truth. And one
of the major issues or the tenets of the Reformation was the Bible,
alone as a rule of our faith and practice the bible alone
as the chart and compass of a christian's life a bible the bible alone
that is able to direct us in our conscience and teach us the
way that we are to go when we read tonight in psalm 119 it's
so precious that psalm and that verse 41 according to the word
Cata Christos, according to the scripture? Well, our prayer is
that God's holy word would be seen as valuable, precious, holy,
the holy scriptures of our God to us. Believer, let us be encouraged
and let this truth be something we're reminded of continually.
The first thing I want you to think about tonight is that God's
message is the message that came to Hosea. And if it was God's
word, it was therefore an inspired word. God's holy message. is therefore an inspired message. Now, when we use that word inspiration,
it's a good English word. It comes from two Greek words,
a compound Greek words, theopneustos. And the word theos is the word
God, and the word pneuma or pneustos is the word spirit. or breath,
or wind. So in 2 Timothy chapter 3 and
verse 16, when the apostle said, all scripture is given by inspiration
of God, that's the very compound Greek word right there, theopneustos,
God breathed. or God-spirited. And the God-spirited word, he
has breathed out his mind. He has communicated his mind
to the mind of men through the written scriptures. So when we
think about God's inspired message, we realize it is come directly
from God himself. This is very encouraging for
us because God has revealed to this world the nature and the
being of God himself through nature, through creation. Psalm 19 tells us that, that
the heavens have declared the glory of God. But what that nature
and heavens do not declare is detail about the person of the
Lord. Nature does not tell us about
how we can come to know God. Nature does not really tell us
that we are separated from God in that sense and how to be reunified
to God, reunited to Him. but the written revelation, God's
breathed out word, gives us that communication. So when we think
about the inspiration of God's truth, it being breathed from
the Lord, well, the next question comes to us, well, what were
the ways in which God did this? What were the methods of transmitting
the word to people. So in the Old Testament days,
before the scriptures were brought together in what we call the
canon of God's written revelation, the Old Testament text, the first
five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch, those first five
books of Moses, well, the Torah, the law of God, they are very
sacred to the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. And so before those books were
written, well, how did God communicate to his people? And how indeed
did he tell them the message that he wanted them to write
down? Well, it was by vision. God somehow communicated to the
mind of his servants by way of a vision, and he gave them the
message he wanted them to know. But there was another way the
Lord did this, and it was by a dream. And the use of a dream
was interesting because it was not singled out only to God's
prophets. As a matter of fact, he used
dreams by Pharaoh and by Nebuchadnezzar and by others. And for example,
God communicated to Pharaoh by a dream, and Joseph, he was the
one who interpreted that dream about how God was preparing Egypt
with much plenty to take care of the famine and of God's people
for the days that were ahead. And so the Lord used even a wicked
king, an ungodly man. The Lord can use vessels. He
uses vision. He uses dream. But then God also
spoke audibly to people, mouth to mouth, face to face. I want
you to turn to Numbers chapter 12 for a moment. Numbers chapter 12. We have in the account before
us here in Numbers 12 something of all three of these methods
put together, of vision, of dream, and of speaking audibly. But
the situation was a little difficult. And as we read the context, you'll
see what happens here in Numbers 12 and verse 1. It says, and
Miriam and Aaron spake against Moses because of the Ethiopian
woman whom he had married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman. And they said, hath the Lord
indeed spoken only by Moses? Hath he not spoken also by us? And the Lord heard it. The man
Moses was very meek above all the men which were upon the face
of the earth. And the Lord spake suddenly unto
Moses and unto Aaron and unto Miriam, come out ye three unto
the tabernacle of the congregation. And they three came out. And the Lord came down in a pillar
of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle and called
Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forth. Now, I don't know
at this point if Miriam and Aaron may have had a thought that,
well, God was going to put his stamp of approval upon their
objection that they had raised to Moses. Maybe they thought
that this was their day, this was their time of glory, time
of being promoted, elevated. Well, whatever they may have
thought, things were vastly different. Verse number six, and God said,
hear now my words. If there be a prophet among you,
I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will
speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who
is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to
mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude
of the Lord shall he behold. Wherefore then were ye not afraid
to speak against my servant Moses? And the anger of the Lord was
kindled against them, and he departed. Miriam became leprous at that
moment. Aaron humbled himself and went
to Moses and asked him to pray that Miriam would be healed.
God answered Moses' prayer and Miriam was healed, but they both
learned a very, very important lesson today, that day. They
had stepped over the boundary. They had presumed that they were
God's honored servants. They had presumed way, way too
much. But out of all this, God spoke
some important lessons. And what we draw from it, these
three things are here mentioned in this one portion of how God
would speak to his prophets, how he would give his God-breathed
message. Some of the people he spoke to
mouth to mouth, and that day Aaron and Miriam also heard the
direct mouth communication of God to them, which must have
caused them to shake. and to be afraid, because evidently
the anger of the Lord was visible when he withdrew in the in the
pillar of cloud. But did you notice the other
thing that God said about Moses? How that the similitude of God
was revealed to his servant? Yes, Moses knew the Lord in a
very special way. And God communicated his word
But you know, in the New Testament, there is one other way in which
God spoke his inspired truth. And it was through the writer's
spirit, their being, their person. Most of the New Testament was
written in this way. So the spirit of God came upon
the author, the writer, and so controlled the person, the being
of that writer, that the miracle and the mystery of inspiration
took place, whereby when those writers were writing down the
gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, when the apostles were
writing James, Peter, Paul, Timothy, and Titus, God's spirit so possessed
them, so controlled them, that they were communicating exactly
what God wanted them to say, but he was also using their personality,
using their style, because there's quite a variation between the
style of Paul and Peter. But that's how God used the authors
and the writers of the New Testament. And it's quite an amazing thing. So when we are faced with dealing
and looking at God's inspired word, and the word that came
to Hosea, the word of the Lord to Hosea, it was God's inspired
word. Now, how he communicated that
to Hosea, It may well have been in a vision. It may well have
been in a dream. It could have been a combination
of the Lord speaking audibly to him. But the important thing
is that when Hosea received that word, it was authoritative in
his life. It was authoritative to bind
his conscience. And I think, friends, that as
you and I, as God's children, when we face the Scriptures,
and the Word of God searches our hearts, and we submit ourselves
to it, our conscience becomes bound. by the Word of God. Now, our conscience is not to
be bound by other people or other things. We sometimes submit our
will. We will submit ourselves to the
dictates of someone else, maybe, or maybe the laws of a land,
as long as they are not opposed to God's Word. But our conscience
must only be bound and controlled by the authoritative scripture.
This is where Luther found himself at the time of his stand at the
Diet of Worms in Germany. He stood there firmly upon the
scriptures. He said, if the doctrines and
teachings that he had written about, if they could not be countered
apart from the scripture itself, that he would not surrender them.
He would not give them up. He said, my conscience is bound
by the word of God. And what a great stand Luther
took at that day and that time. But you know, as we think about
the inspired nature of God's word and the word that came to
Hosea, it is from the Lord, breathed out by him, authoritative. And
what does that mean? It means it gives us instruction. to guide our lives. There can be no better verse
than Proverbs 3, 5 and 6. What does that say? Trust in
the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him,
and he shall direct thy paths. My brother and sister, commit
that word to your heart. I'm sure many of you have. but
that's instruction to guide our life. And when we have submitted
ourselves to God's holy, inspired, infallible, and inerrant word,
all of those things are true because it's inspired by God,
then we will trust the word to be our guide, our compass, our
chart through some pretty dark days, maybe dark valleys, Maybe
uncertain times, but the Lord's Word is true, and it is certain. But you know, my dear friend,
and perhaps there's someone here tonight, and you have not come
to trust the Lord yet as your Savior. I say to you, the Word
of God is alive and powerful, powerful to awaken your soul.
Romans 10, verse 17. Faith comes by hearing and hearing
by the Word of God. And so the scripture used by
the Holy Ghost is able to awaken a man from the darkness and deadness
of his sin and bring us into the light and the liberty of
the sons of God. And therefore, when a person
repents of their sin, when they acknowledge that they need to
repent of their sin before God, and they call out, Lord, be merciful
to me, the sinner, God's Holy Word comes with power to give
life. Hebrews chapter four and verse
12 says, the Word of God is quick. That word simply means it's alive. The Word of God is alive and
powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, able to pierce,
able to discern between the thoughts and the intents of the heart?
Yes, my dear friends, the word of God is alive. It is God's
holy and true and living word. Do you cherish God's word tonight,
Christian? Or perhaps the scripture has
become set aside Maybe we have taken it for granted. Maybe we
don't think about it as carefully as we should. You know, if the
scripture was taken away from us, we did not have the word,
then we would long to receive its instruction, to have its
comfort and its counsel and its encouragement. You know yourself
that when Someone has lost a loved one when someone is going through
a very deep and dark trial. We might try to encourage them
with our own counsel, but there's nothing, there's nothing to replace
the scripture to bring comfort and counsel and stability and
hope when there is no hope apparent. Yes, we're told in the scripture
to comfort one another with these words? Well, believer, tonight,
as we have thought upon this truth and this scripture, it
was given to Hosea, God's inspired word. It was given to him as
a consecrated servant of God, to follow after it, to obey it,
to live it out. Hosea was not given the option.
Well, here's my word, Hosea, the Lord would say, you've got
an option. You can either say this word,
or you can speak a message that you would like yourself. There
is no such thing. Because God's servant was called,
and therefore he was consecrated to speak God's word, and he was
faithful in that. Because really, what kind of
a servant would say something different
from what God would say to him. He would not be faithful. He
would not be a good ambassador. He would be an unfaithful man.
And you know, something else about this message, this word
that Hosea got, it was a word that came with God's timing,
and therefore it was urgent. Hosea did not have time to delay.
When God gave the word, Hosea's responsibility was to faithfully
take that word and deliver it. Let us not be careless. when
we have God's word in our heart. Do you remember Philip in the
New Testament? He was ministering in Samaria.
Great revival was happening there. And then God suddenly called
him to go down to the desert of Gaza and to meet someone. So off Philip went down to the
desert, wandering on that road. And then along came a chariot. It had a man who was returning
from Jerusalem to Ethiopia And as soon as the chariot came within
view, God said to Philip, go and draw near to that chariot.
Join yourself to it. You know what we're told about
Philip? We're told he ran to meet the man. Philip, the man
who ran for God, because the message that Philip had was urgent.
The word that Philip had to give the man was urgent. and the word
of God in our lives is urgent, friends. Let us be quick to obey
the Lord. Let's be quick to follow him.
Let's be quick to do his bidding. Yes. And one final thing, that
God's holy word was given, inspired, and therefore It was a sacred
trust. We are put in trust with the
gospel message. We are put in trust with such
a timeless word that we dare not be careless with it. We dare
not be negligent about it. Paul said, I don't want to be
preaching to others and yet myself be a castaway. I don't want to
be guilty of mishandling the word of the Lord. It's a sacred
trust believer. Therefore, we want to be careful
and to serve the Lord with all of our being, all of our heart.
I trust that tonight the Lord would reinforce this truth into
our own hearts, that as we have God's engrafted word, the inspired
word of God, the holy oracles of God, let us cherish the scriptures
and let them be the word that will guide our lives, that we
will be obedient to all the precepts, the holy words of God. Let's
bow before the Lord, please, now in prayer. Father, as we come to the end of this
service and of thinking on this prophet, and the message he was
given, the word of the Lord put in his hands. I pray that its
truth would reverberate in our minds, that we would receive
the word readily, gladly, openly with all our hearts, that our
lives and minds would be molded by the scripture. For we know
that Christ, the incarnate word, fulfilled to every detail the
scriptures of truth. And I pray that we will mirror
our Lord's life, that we will be made like him. Dear Father,
make us students of the word, diligent in all things, following
hard after the master, letting it be the guide and keeper of
our way. For as we're called to trust
in the Lord, with all our hearts, we lean not unto our own understanding. Lord, hear our prayers. Bless
all the people that have joined in tonight. Bless the message
as it goes out over the internet. And we pray that any who might
come to listen to a message later on would also receive blessing
and edification. So part us now, Lord, in your
fear with your rich blessing. We ask all these things in Jesus'
holy and precious name. Amen.
The Word of God
| Sermon ID | 1182161449828 |
| Duration | 41:06 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday - PM |
| Bible Text | Hosea 1:1 |
| Language | English |
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