Our scripture for reading this evening is taken from the book of the prophet Hosea and chapter 1 Hosea chapter 1 he is first of what are known as the minor prophets not because they are less important but because they are shorter than the great prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel Hosea is notable in that he is the only writing prophet to have come from the northern kingdom of Israel after the kingdom was divided in two Amos of course wrote to Israel but Amos was himself from Judah Hosea however was from Israel and spoke to Israel to Hosea chapter 1 Hosea chapter 1 the word of the Lord that came to Hosea the son of Beeri in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah kings of Judah and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel When the Lord began to speak by Hosea the Lord said to Hosea Go take yourself a wife of Harlotry and children of Harlotry for the land has committed great Harlotry by departing from the Lord. So he went and took Goma the daughter of Diblaim and she conceived and bore him a son. The Lord said to him call his name Jezreel for a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu. bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel shall come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel and she conceived again and bore a daughter and God said to him call her name Lo-Ruhamah for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel but I will utterly take them away if they will have mercy on the house of Judah will save them by the Lord their God and will not save them by bow nor by sword or battle by horses or horsemen. Now when she had weaned Loah Zoharma she conceived a boy, a son then God said call his name Lo-Ammi for you are not my people and I will not be your God yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea which cannot be measured or numbered and it shall come to pass in a place where it was said to them you are not my people there it shall be said to them you are sons of the living God then the children of Judah the children of Israel shall be gathered together and appoint for themselves one head and they shall come up out of the land for great will be the day of Jezreel save your brethren my people and to your sisters mercy is shown We trust God to bless the reading of His Holy Word. Hosea lived in a period of prosperity for that northern kingdom. When we turn to 2 Kings chapter 14 verse 23 and following we read something of the events of that age of the time of Jeroboam the second Jeroboam the son of Joash in the 50th year of Amaziah the son of Joash king of Judah Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel became king in Samaria and reigned 41 years and he did evil in the sight of the Lord he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who had made Israel sin so much for the spiritual state of the nation and nevertheless we read he restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the sea of the Arabah according to the word of the Lord God of Israel which he had spoken through his servant Jonah the son of Amittai the prophet who was from Gath-Hepha and again we read in verse 28 of that chapter the rest of the Acts of Jeroboam and all that he did his might how he made war and how he recaptured for Israel from Damascus and Hamath or how it belonged to Judah are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel so Jeroboam II had a prosperous reign the nation recovered its strength, recovered territory and grew in size and yet the nation was not right with God the people of the nation looked and they saw that they were wealthy that they were increased in power and yet their spiritual condition was very very wrong and in that situation the word of the Lord came to Hosea Sarnabiri Hosea's name is basically the same as that of Joshua before Moses changed his name Joshua was Hosea Hosea it's really the same name it's just that Hosea has come to us to a slightly different root in terms of the English pronunciation but Hosea's name, like Joshua's name speaks of salvation he is a prophet whose message is a message that is on the one hand of judgement but also of salvation and of grace. The word of the Lord came to him with a shocking call. He was called to go take yourself a wife of Harlotry and children of Harlotry. That is to say a woman notorious for her sexual immorality and a woman who would bear children the parentage of which would be in question. And we are not to try to paper this over. It's fascinating how you read the older commentaries and a lot of them seem to operate on the principle well it can't possibly mean that because we feel that God wouldn't call a man to that but the fact of the matter is that God often called his prophets to some fairly shocking actions one of the more notorious is found in the book of the prophet Isaiah and chapter 20 first couple of verses, in the year that Tartan came to Ashdod and Sargon the king of Assyria took it and he fought against, sent him and he fought against Ashdod and he took it at the same time the Lord spoke by Isaiah the son of Amoz saying go and remove the sackcloth from your body and take your sandals off your feet and he did so walking naked and barefoot and the Lord said just as my servant Isaiah walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign of wonder against Egypt and Ethiopia so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Ethiopians as prisoners the Egyptians as prisoners and the Ethiopians as captives God commanded Isaiah to walk around not with no clothes at all but in his underclothes and barefoot a shocking command and prophets were often commanded to do strange things we find that God commanded Jeremiah to do something that is also rather unusual Jeremiah chapter 27 In the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim, son of Josiah, king of Judah, the word came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, Thou saith the Lord to me, make for yourselves bonds and yokes and put them on your neck. And he was to walk around with bonds and yokes upon his neck, symbols of the captivity and the slavery into which the nation was to be placed. and this is another example of prophetic action that Hosea is commanded to take and to marry a woman notorious for her immorality and this is to be a picture because the Lamb has committed great arbitrary by departing from the Lord There is to be a comparison between the unfaithfulness of Hosea's wife and the unfaithfulness of the people of God. Israel was chosen by the Lord, called by God to be a holy nation and even with the division of the kingdom it was not God's commandment that they were to go their own way. but in fact God again and again called the people to return unto him and yet they followed after all manner of other gods we read of the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat and of course the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat was that Jeroboam made golden calves idols and set them in the cities of Israel as a sort of political alteration in worship he said to himself if the people are able to the people have to go to Judah to worship to Jerusalem where God had set his name then they will conspire against me and go back to the house of David when God had said that if he was faithful then nothing of the sort would happen but because Jeroboam heard the word of God did not believe the word of God and disobeyed the word of God he set up these idols that the people followed after and Ahab thinking it a light thing to commit this sin of idolatry brought in with his wife the worship of Baal the Syrophoenician fertility god And the worship of the fertility gods of the nations was a particularly filthy kind. There was actual ritual prostitution. So when God speaks of the Lamb committing great harlotry, he's not just using the term metaphorically. He is using it metaphorically because the Lamb is regarded as married to God. The people were regarded as the bride of Yahweh of Jehovah also there was actual immorality going on false religion always includes moral corruption as well as corruption in doctrine and teaching and God says to the people in effect if you look at Hosea and you say what a dreadful thing it is that his wife is so unfaithful to him running after these various other men remember that you are just like her a truly shocking thing was not her immorality but the people's unfaithfulness to the God who had brought them out of Egypt and settled them in the land and we see in the naming of these children the deterioration of the relationship between God and the people of Israel. It's interesting that we are told in verse 3 that Goma bought Hosea a son but when we read of the births of the daughter and the second son we are simply told that she bore them now whether they were Hosea's or not, well that was the question until very recently it was said that maternity is a matter of fact but paternity often a matter of opinion and quite simply Hosea could not have known who the father was and that was rather the point but these children are given these symbolic names the son is born and he is to be called Jezreel Jezreel was an important town in Israel it was a town that had in it the one of the summer residences of the king a town of a good situation a town where terrible things have happened is the town in which in 1 Kings 21 we read of the events of Naboth's vineyard it came to pass after these things that Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard which was in Jezreel next to the palace of Ahab king of Samaria so Ahab spoke to Naboth saying give me your vineyard that I may have it for a vegetable garden because it is near next to my house and for it I will give you a vineyard better than it or if it seems good to you I will give it to you it's worth in money but Naboth said to Ahab the Lord forbid I should give the inheritance of my fathers to you you remember that when Israel came into the land it was God who divided up the inheritance it wasn't something they did themselves and so Naboth looked at this land and said God has given it but Ahab was so upset that he was off his food made himself ill and Jezebel his foreign wife his pagan wife arranged for Naboth to be falsely accused and murdered and then the vineyard was stolen but when Ahab went to take possession of the vineyard God calls Elijah to come and to meet him there and Elijah came down and we read the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite saying arise go down to meet Ahab king of Israel who lives in Samaria there he is in the vineyard of Naboth where he has gone down to take possession of it you shall speak to him saying thus saith the Lord have you murdered and also taken possession? and you shall speak to him saying thus saith the Lord in the place where dogs lick the blood of Naboth dogs shall lick even shall lick your blood even yours so he hath said to Elijah have you found me O my enemy? and he asked I have found you because you have sold yourself unto evil in the sight of the Lord and while Ahab humbled himself before God nevertheless the disaster came at last upon the house of Ahab even as God had said that it would God called Jehu son of Nimshi to execute his vengeance and Jehu wiped out the entire line of Ahab but Jehu did not follow after the Lord 2 Kings 10 29 however Jehu did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat who had made Israel sin that is from the golden calves that were at Bethel and Dan And the Lord said to Jehu, because you have done well in doing his right in my sight and have done to the house of Ahab all that was in my heart your son shall sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation. But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord God of Israel with all his heart. He did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam who had made Israel sin. And because of that because his motive was not to carry out the justice of God but to seize the throne to himself and his posterity then his actions were judged to be nothing more than the bloodshed of a wicked man seeking to seize the throne of a usurper and thus the bloodshed of Jezreel verse 4 of our chapter would be avenged on the house of Jehu the descendants of Jehu would pay the penalty not just for Jehu's disobedience but their own disobedience because they all continued in the same way that Jehu had walked and it shall come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel Now the concept, the idea of the breaking of the bow is the destruction of the strength of the enemy the archers were one of the most formidable parts of an army in the ancient world after all they were the ones who could fight at a distance, they were the artillery and so if the bow is broken an army without its archers is weak and vulnerable and defeated and time and again it was said of God that if you broke the bow of the oppressor and the invader he says I will break your bow and you will not be able to defend yourselves and then we come to the second the second child, the daughter, call her name Lo-Ruhamah for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel the name of course as the language suggests means in Hebrew no mercy or not pity it's a name that no child should ever have that the child is not pitied, is not cared for but it is a declaration of God's patience running out with the people of Israel God had before spoken to Moses back in Exodus chapter 34 speaking of his His nature the Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. God spoke of mercy as part of his very nature and such it is but that mercy had been presumed upon by the Israelites not one king of Israel followed the Lord with all his heart every one of them was in some way a bad king and every one of them followed the sin of Jeroboam the son of Nebat made religion a political tool to be used and bowed down to idols fearing what would happen if he were to honour the living God and the people followed the way of the King and the people did not repent or turn to God there was the remnant in the midst led by the prophets such as Elijah and Elisha in particular but the people as a whole presumed upon the mercy of God for centuries God sent his prophets and of course when we read the threatenings of judgment we are to remember they too are a message of mercy because the aim is to bring people to repentance to bring the land to repentance and they did not God is saying the end is coming very soon and yet he would have mercy on the house of Judah not because Judah was any better than Israel but because of his purpose of salvation through the house of David because from Judah was to come Christ the Saviour of the world they go from those who have shed blood at Jezreel to those who will not receive mercy and finally we have Lo-Ammi you are not my people and I will not be your God Now that wording is a wording that should be very familiar wording that comes up again and again in the scriptures because it's the wording of the covenant The covenant may be very simply set forth that God says to his people you will be my people and I will be your God and so we find in Exodus chapter 6 and verse 7 it is stated like this I will take you as my people and I will be your God then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under all the burdens of the Egyptians and we find the same thing stated in Leviticus chapter 26 Leviticus 26 and verse 12 I will walk among you and be your guard and you shall be my people and again and again it is repeated throughout the Old Testament and we find it also in the New Testament that is the essence of the covenant and the people of Israel presumed on this covenant they said we are the chosen people of God we are His people and He is our God and we have this special relationship and that means that God will always protect us and deliver us and yet God says that false confidence is worthless because that Northern Kingdom were not his people they had forfeited the covenant the covenant that was made with the people of Israel at Mount Sinai had conditions and they had broken those conditions they had broken those commandments that God had given them thus far it is all we may say judgment and catastrophe but then In verse 10, which is where the Hebrew Bible starts a new chapter. Now the chapter divisions of the Hebrew Bible are no more original than the chapter divisions in our Bibles. They are introduced for the sake of being able to find the text. And verse 10, suddenly we have all of this reversed. The number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea. There is a yet, a but, after the wrath of God there comes the salvation the grace of God the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea we go back before Sinai back to a covenant not of works not a covenant that is conditional the covenant that is unconditional, the covenant that God made with Abraham. Genesis chapter 13 and verse 16, I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if a man could number the dust of the earth, then your descendants also could be numbered. before that Sinai covenant there is the promise of God made to Abraham the salvation comes because God has promised unconditionally and that condition and that promise cannot therefore be broken because God keeps his own word in the place where it is said to them you are not my people there it shall be said to them you are sons of the living God there is a salvation now we must remember that these judgments are the judgments that came when the kingdom of Israel fell they are judgments that to us are in the past that has happened Samaria fell that nation was overthrown and ceased to exist as a separate political entity as a kingdom and yet the Israelites did not cease to exist there was nevertheless God's grace over them when Judah fell yet Judah was brought back into the land and then in 17 AD the Romans overran the land again took Jerusalem, crushed the Jewish revolt and the Jews were scattered in every nation in AD 70 best part of 2,000 years ago and yet the Jews as a people continued to exist the Hebrew people continued to exist and exist to this day and we find that the Apostle Paul speaks in Romans 11 of this future for the Israelite people a future that has not yet fully come to pass because he speaks not simply of them being restored to the land but of them being restored to Christ he says that there is going to be Romans 11 12 now if their fall is riches for the world and their failure riches for the Gentiles how much more their fullness there is going to be some restoration of Israel but we find that more than this Paul relates these words in Hosea to the salvation of the Gentiles as well Romans chapter 9 reading from verse 23 verse 22 what if God wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction and that he might make known the richness of his glory in the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory even us whom he called not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles thus he says also in Hosea I will call them my people who are not my people and her beloved who was not beloved and it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them you are not my people there they shall be called sons of the living God there is a mystery that they are to be brought into that covenant grafted in those who are not children of Abraham according to the flesh These promises continue in existence and they extend to us. We are not mere bystanders, onlookers, but we are them who have received these by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, 1 Peter chapter 2, reading from verse 9, now he says, but you are a chosen generation a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people that you may proclaim the praise of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light who once were not a people but are now the people of God who have not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy the curses are spoken of as reversed and then we find at last the last reference to that covenant the end of the Bible in Revelation chapter 21 and verse 3 I heard a loud voice from heaven saying behold the tabernacle of God is with men and he will dwell with them they shall be his people. God himself will be with them and be their God. At the end of all the judgments of Revelation, John sees the new heavens, the new earth, the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven. And he hears these words of the covenant, my people the children of Israel and the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and appoint for themselves one head and they shall come out of the land for great will be the day of Jezreel the name Jezreel means God scatters but there are two reasons you may scatter there is the scattering of that which is cast away, thrown away and the scattering of the seed that is sown and the scattering is now seen to be seed that is sown that will bear fruit in due time and in the centre we see the head who could only be pointing to the Lord Jesus Christ in chapter 3 of this prophecy we read chapter 3 verse 5 on 5 afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king now David is dead and buried but David's son great David's greater son the Lord Jesus the son of David he has come and he is the centre of all of God's mercy and all of God's grace. And so we see here the deterioration of the nation but the grace of God that comes to meet those in that extreme situation, those who have wandered away but the end of the judgment of God when it comes upon the house of the Lord is mercy to his people and restoration in the Lord Jesus Christ. And to Him we are appointed, and to Him be the glory. Amen.