Please open or click in your Bibles to Hosea. We've been considering the minor prophets in their historical order, as best we can figure. But this Hosea, he's our fifth prophet that we've considered, but he's the first in the canonical order of the minor prophets. So Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, the major prophets, and then Hosea. Open to Hosea chapter 4. Hosea 4. I will be reading a selection of verses as a sampling of Hosea, and I will announce each verse as I go along, so you can flip through the pages and stay with me, seeing that what I am saying is really there on the page. You know, that's always important. It's always important to be sure the pastor is saying what's actually there in Scripture. So I will point these out, but if you're a note-taker, let me tell you, you don't need to write all these down. They're in the bulletin insert. All the verses I'm going to be reading here in a moment are already listed there in the bulletin inserts. Also, if you fall behind, you can glance there and catch up with me. So let's begin in Hosea 4, verse 5. And I will be offering some comment along the way. Hosea 4, verse 5, where it says to Israel, I will destroy your mother. Verse 6, and since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will forget your children. That's harsh. Organized crime has long known that if you want to hurt a man, you don't hurt the man, you hurt his family. The quickest way to get somebody to do what you want them to do is to threaten their family. And here God has said, I'm going to destroy your mother and forget about your children. Flip over to chapter 5. Isaiah 5. I'm going to look at verses 11 and 12. Ephraim is oppressed. Quick comment there. Ephraim is the largest tribe in the northern nation of Israel. And so it is a part of speech known as a metonymy, where you take a little bit of something and use it to speak of the whole thing. We will sometimes talk about Moscow. The news reports talk about Moscow doing this or that when they mean the government of Russia. Or Beijing did this or that when they mean the government of China. Ephraim stands for the northern nation of Israel. Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment because he was determined to go after filth. But I am like a moth to Ephraim and like dry rot to the house of Judah. Like a moth doesn't sound all that terrible at first reading, but it is a reminder that things go bad. You put it away. I've had this experience. You put that wool suit away for the summer and come back in the fall expecting to have a nice suit to wear, and it's got holes in it because the moths have gotten to it. Some of you know that I've been doing some remodeling in my house, and I tore open a corner of the house to find it's all rotted away. This moth, this rot, God is destroying Israel. And notice he says, I am the moth. God is destroying Israel and Judah from the inside out. Verse 14, I will be like a lion to Ephraim and like a young lion to the house of Judah. Jesus is the Lion of Judah, a common metaphor for him. I'm sure we all assume that means that he will defend Judah, that he will rise up and attack those who attack her. But listen as he goes on. Even I will tear and go away. I will carry off and no one shall rescue. Flip over to chapter seven, Hosea seven, beginning in verse 12. I will spread over them my net. I will bring them down like birds of the heavens. They didn't have shotguns back then to hunt. They would use these nets, these weighted nets that they would fling into a flock of birds and trap some of them. And it was a horrible experience for the bird, its wings tangled in the net and broken, its bodies wrenched. God is going to do that to his people. Verse 13, woe to them, for they have strayed from me. Destruction to them, for they have rebelled against me. Verse 16, their princes shall fall by the sword. Chapter 8, verse 5. My anger burns against them. Now, we know that must be a mistake, right? That's a typo in the Bible. You know, we know that the ancient manuscripts are, there's a few places where they're damaged, and this must be one of those places. It must be damaged here, right? God's anger burns against sin, not against the sinner. I mean, if there's one thing we know, it's that God hates sin, but He loves the sinner. No, there is no textual damage here. My anger burns against them. Verse 13, as for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them. Marriage counselors will tell you that if a couple comes in yelling at each other, screaming at each other, there is some hope, because at least they're talking. It's when they will not talk, when one ignores the other, or both ignore each other, that that marriage is in serious trouble. And God says, I ignore your worship. I want no part of it. Same verse. He will remember their iniquity and punish their sins. What is the great hope in Scripture among the psalmists and among the prophets? That God will no longer remember our sins. Recall not to mind, O Lord, my transgressions. And here we see that he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins. They shall return to Egypt. Again, they will be slaves. Verse 14, I will send a fire upon Israel's cities, and it shall devour her strongholds. Notice, it does not say that a fire will arise. I will allow a fire. I will let the Assyrians know. God says, I will send the fire. Chapter 9, flip over to chapter 9, verse 3. Ephraim shall return to Egypt. Again, they shall be enslaved. And they shall eat unclean food in Assyria. That doesn't seem like much to us. They're going to eat unclean food in Assyria. We say, well, what's the big deal with that? So they have to have a bacon cheeseburger. So what? But remember, this was the marker of their identity. This was the outward sign of who they were. Their dietary laws were a big deal to them. And what's being said here is that when the Assyrians haul them away into captivity, they're going to lose their identity. They're going to lose their status. The inward reality that they are no longer the people of God shall become the outward reality that they will lose the markers of themselves as the people of God. Chapter 9, looking at verse 6. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver. Thorns shall be in their tents. If you are familiar with your Bible, this ought to bring to mind Genesis chapter 3. The curse upon Adam. The curse wherein God says to him that thorns and thistles will arise and entangle you and ensnare you. That the curse of sin is now coming upon God's people in a profound way. Verses 11 and 12, still in chapter 9. Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird. Now listen to why, how. no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them till none is left." Again, loss of identity, loss of who they are. There will be no children to carry on the family name. Death is terrifying, being utterly forgotten for all of eternity. Even more so. Staying in chapter 9, looking at verse 14. Give them, O Lord, what will you give them? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. Let the women miscarry. Let there be stillborn children throughout the land. But if one of them should happen to survive and be born alive, then let him starve to death at the breast of his mother, which are dry. This is astounding language. That God is going to rain his wrath down on their babies. Of course, it recalls what he said back in Exodus and repeated in Deuteronomy. I am Yahweh your God, and I am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me. Still in Hosea 9, looking at verse 15, I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more. Verse 16, even though they give birth, I will put their beloved children to death. It's hard to read in Joshua where Joshua is commanded to go and to wipe out entire villages of the Canaanites, man, woman, and child. This is even harsher. These are the people of Israel, and God is saying he's going to kill their babies. verses seven and eight. Samaria's king, and a reminder, Samaria is the capital city of Israel, so this is another metonymy, the capital being used to speak of the entire nation. Samaria's king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters. The high places of Avon, the city of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle shall grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, cover us, and to the hills, fall on us. Again, the curse of sin upon Adam. is brought to the people of God. Hosea 10, verses 14 and 15. The tumult of war shall arise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be destroyed, as Shalom destroyed Beth-Arable on the day of battle. Mothers were dashed in pieces with their children, thus it shall be done to you. Some 150 years after Hosea was written, an unknown psalmist would sit in exile in Babylon and pen the 137th Psalm, which closes like this. Oh, daughter of Babylon, blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock. It's a terrifying and horrible picture, but now Hosea is applying it to the mothers and children of Israel. Hosea 11, verse six. The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them. Hosea 13, verse eight. Mosiah 13, verse 8, skipping over a couple chapters. I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs. I will tear open their breasts, and there I will devour them like a lion, as a wild beast would rip them open. Verse 14. It's going to sound familiar to you. Verse 14. Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes. Hosea 13-14 is quoted by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. Two weeks from today, on Easter Sunday, churches around the world are going to read 1 Corinthians 15 to talk about the resurrection, and they're gonna read this, where Paul quotes this from Hosea, where he says in 1 Corinthians 15, O death, where is thy sting? Paul quotes it ironically. Paul is quoting it to say, look, the sting of death is gone because of the resurrection of Christ, but in here, in Hosea, do not read Paul's reading, get back into Hosea. This is not being said ironically. This is God saying to death, bring out your sting. Bring out your victory. When I say to Becky, where is your frying pan? I'm not asking ironically, ha ha, you don't have a frying pan. It's because I want to put it to use. God says in Hosea 13, 14, O Death, where are your plagues? I have need of them. O Sheol, that's the underworld, where is your sting? I'm gonna put it to work. Compassion is hidden from my eyes. And Hosea 13, 16. Samaria shall bear her guilt. Not, I will remove her guilt. Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she hath rebelled against her God. They shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open." This is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, speaking to the biological descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Are we hearing What is being said? Does it rattle us at all? I've taken these in the canonical order, just so it would be easy to flip along, but I left one of them out of order. Go back now to Hosea 9.15. Turn back in your Bibles to Hosea 9.15. And put away every distraction for this moment. Do not talk to the person next to you. If you're at home, shoot a cat away, put down the coffee. If you're here, ignore what's around you. Don't worry about taking notes in this moment. But hear Hosea 9.15. Let it fall upon your ears and heart. And hear the word of God that says this. In Gilgal, there I began to hate. God says of Israel, I begin to hate them. Almighty God, fearsome and awful, tremendous and terrifying, these verses from Hosea shake us. They scare us. We do not want you to hate us. Teach us through these verses. Teach us through the prophet Hosea. Show us how we can avoid all that is portrayed here. Amen. Jesus loves you. There may not be a phrase that is more familiar in the church than that one. loves you. In fact, the church has so regularly and routinely proclaimed it that it is a phrase that many outside of the church know to be true. I was most recently reminded of this being our, for lack of a better term, mantra of the church. I don't love that phrase, but anyway. When Becky and I were out for a run the other night, we were running on the rail trail there in Easton, And on the black asphalt of the rail trail, in pink chalk, was written out the words, accompanied by some butterflies and some rainbows and some flowers, were written out the words, Jesus loves you. So this child, I'm assuming, knows that to be true. But why do we? On what grounds do we just randomly say that to anyone and everyone? On what grounds? Now, if the child had written, Jesus loves me, well, that may be true. But to just randomly declare to anyone and everyone, Jesus loves you, there's a problem. The selected Psalms we read, our Old Testament reading, our New Testament reading, All were chosen because they have a thread through them. Did you catch it? It is the word hate. The Psalms, the Old Testament reading, and the New Testament reading all include the word hate. And what's interesting in them is that it's not hate for something abstract. It is hate of people. Even the Proverbs, the Old Testament reading, begins, there are six things the Lord hates, even seven, begins with the list of sin, a lying tongue, haughty eyes, those sorts of things, but it ends with God's hatred for the specific people. Look back in your bulletins to page five. Verse 19, God hates a false witness, the actual person who testifies falsely, who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among the brothers. That list may begin with hate for abstract things, but it ends with God's hate for people. So why do we feel free to just say to anybody randomly, Jesus loves you? In our study of the Book of Acts, we commented on the fact that the word love does not appear anywhere in Acts. And not one sermon of the apostles was a proclamation that Jesus loves you. And in fact, most of the sermons of the apostles were the other way around. You have made God very angry. The Jesus whom he sent, you crucified. You better get your house in order. You had better repent now. In one of our study of the minor prophets so far, did Obadiah declare to Edom the love of Jesus? No. What about Joel's depiction of the day of the Lord? Is it a love fest? Was Joel's depiction of the day of the Lord all about the warm fuzzies and the cuddlies? It was about a locust plague destroying God's people's land. And Jonah, you know, he went to Nineveh and he preached the love of God, right? 40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed. and the intensity we saw in Amos last week. That was because he was really worried about proclaiming God's love. No. It was because he was proclaiming God's wrath. On what biblical grounds do we say Jesus loves anyone and everyone? It is unwarranted. Let me say that again. There is no biblical warrant No scriptural basis for just randomly saying to anyone and everyone, Jesus loves you. In fact, Jesus hates a lot of people. Until we come to grips with this biblical truth, we're going to doom a lot of those people to a first-hand experience of that hatred. What of the Pharisees? Is Jesus just overflowing with love for them? You whitewashed tombs? You brood of vipers? And Judas? Does Jesus say, well, I'll forgive him. It's all good. I love him. No, Jesus says it would have been better if he had not been born. Woe to you, scribes and Sadducees. Does that sound like love? Woe. It's not whoopee. Whoa. Turn your Bibles to Revelation chapter 19. Revelation 19. We're going to begin at verse 11. Revelation 9 verse 11. Oh, 19. Thank you. Revelation 19 verse 11. Pay attention. Follow the details, pay attention to who's here, who this is. Then I saw heaven open and behold a white horse, the one sitting on it is called Faithful and True. Okay, it's God. And in righteousness he judges and makes war. Well, it's gotta be the God of the Old Testament, right? That's who judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood. Wait a second. And the name by which he is called is the Word of God. Who is the Word of God? It is Jesus. And he comes, listen to how it goes, and the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And he will rule them with a warm, fuzzy kindness. He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Skip forward to verse 21. The intervening part is the war that breaks out between Jesus and the forces of heaven and the forces of the beast on earth and the evil forces. In verse 21, and the rest, not the beast, and the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse, and all the birds were gorged. wish with their flesh. Turn back to Hosea. That is not a picture of a love of God. That does not fit with God's own definition of love. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. This is not a picture of God's love. And what do we do? Where does this leave us? The Bible says God is love, pastor. Yes, it does. First John, chapter four, twice, God is love. But God is also holy. Because he is holy, he will not tolerate sin. And until we come to grips with that, until we understand God's holiness, we will not fully understand His love. Now, God is not hate that is not inherent to who He is, but hate is a possibility because of holiness. Alfred Nobel did not create dynamite to be used in bombs. He created it for the mining industry and the construction industries, so they could dig pits and holes faster. But in a world where international hostility exists, and in a world where dynamite exists, bombs are going to be made. So it is with God's holiness. God is not hate, he is not inherently hateful. But in a world where God is holy and sin exists, hate is going to happen. Look at Hosea 4, verses 1 and 2. Hosea 4, verses 1 and 2. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love and no knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committed adultery. They break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. This is the opening salvo of God's charges against Israel. And from chapter 4 through chapter 13 is a list of God's charges. And we've read a bunch of the consequences of those charges. God's hatred exists because the people are sinful. He is love, but he is sin. holy, and because he's holy, because there is sin, hatred is a real possibility. We've got to come to grips with this. We've got to understand this biblical reality. This idea that God hates sin but loves the sinner is either unbiblical or all of these passages of scripture I just read are unbiblical. One of those two things must go. The two cannot coexist. If we understand God's hate, if we look around us, we realize that it is only in light of God's hatred that the world makes any sense. There really are only two logical, internally coherent, self-consistent interpretations of our world. One that almost nobody holds to, and the few who do try to hold to it end up committing suicide. One is the realization that there is no God, the world is completely amoral, there is no right or wrong, there is no standard, there is no justice, there is no hope, and that everything is just random Chance. Not even the atheists hold to that. The other view is this. There's a God and he hates sin. Hates it. This word that we don't allow our children and grandchildren to use. Oh, don't use that, honey. God hates sin. It's only in light of that that the world makes any sense. How can storms like Katrina and Sandy devastate millions of people? Oh, we might chalk up the shooting in Atlanta. You know, that's on us. Yeah, we did that. But how do you chalk up a storm? A Christmas tsunami? Was it 20 years ago or whatever that was? COVID. How do we make sense of that? If God exists, and He doesn't have any hatred in Him, then why is He letting these things happen? And if He can't do anything about it, then is it God worth trusting in? If He can't do anything about COVID, what makes us think He can do anything about our eternal situation? The only logical thing, the only thing that makes sense, is that God hates. Stop and think about what happened to Adam in the garden. He didn't cheat on his wife. He didn't murder anybody. He wasn't a child pornographer. He took a piece of fruit. And for that, God said, you will die. God hates sin. And he hates sinners. God hates sin. The second part, you go, wait a second, Pastor, I get the first part, he hates sin, but he hates sinners? Yes. God does not, in the end, send sin to hell. On the fields of war in Revelation 19, it wasn't the bodies of sin that the birds were gorging on. It was sinners. People. Flesh and blood human beings are gonna go to hell. where there is no mercy, no compassion, no grace, nothing but the wrath of God poured out against them as sinners for all eternity. God hates sinners. And we have got to come to grips with that. With that said, now we go back to the beginning of Hosea. Now we go back and look at Hosea 1. And now we come back and we understand how this passage opens up and who this minister is. You know, when we think about Hosea 1, You know, we have a tendency to say, I want a preacher like me, I want a pastor who understands me, who can relate to me, who gets me. And at least in the case of Hosea, this may not be true of every minister all the time, but in the case of Hosea, God said, nope, I want a minister, I want a preacher who understands me, who understands me as God, what I'm going through, what my situation is like, what my relationship with my people is. and therefore we find in Hosea 1-2, we read these words. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, here's the opening, here's his call to ministry. This is not, think about Isaiah's call. In the year the king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord high and lifted up, seated upon his throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. No, here's Hosea's call to ministry. Go, take to yourself a wife of Hordah. and have children of whoredom. For the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Do not read verse three as proof that it was his biological child. Just the opposite. Verse two tells us it probably isn't. Or we don't know, at least is the point. In verse three, She's bearing him a son in the legal sense. They're married, therefore it's his kid. But the whole point of verse 2, children of whoredom. You're not going to know if you're the father of your own kids, Hosea. Welcome to the ministry. Verse four, and the Lord said to him, call his name Jezreel. Jezreel was a place of bloodshed. It was the place where Ahab and Jezebel, those evil kings of Israel, had been slaughtered. So Jezreel conjures up a time of God's judgment against evil people. And there's the name of your firstborn child. God kills the evil. Verse five, she conceived again and bore a daughter, and the Lord said to him, call her name No Mercy. No Mercy. Hebrew, Lo Ruhamah. Lo meaning no, or it's the negative. Ruhamah, mercy. No Mercy. That's the name for your daughter. We use names like Faith and Hope for our daughters. We will name them things like Charity. When's the last time somebody named their daughter No Mercy? But this is how Hosea was to name his little girl. And then we see, where am I? I lost my verse. Verse eight. When she had weaned in no mercy, she conceived and bore a son. The Lord said, call his name, not my people. Lo, Ami. Ami is my people. Lo, the negative. Not my people. That's quite the baby list of names. Place of death and judgment, no mercy, not my people. Then in chapter 2, verse 1, say to your brothers, you are my people, and to your sisters, you have received mercy. Looking back, what has happened to you now? Verse 2, plead with your mother. Plead. For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. that she put away her whoring from her face and her adultery from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst. Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of whoredom. For their mother has played the whore, she who conceived them has acted shamefully. This metaphor Hosea's marriage is so that Hosea can understand God. So that the prophet can go, I get it, Lord. I get what you're going through. I married this woman. I gave her a chance. I went down to the temple of Baal where she was chained up as a cult prostitute. And I freed her from that life of abuse. from that life of being treated like property. And I loved her. Despite that, she wandered. For me, children, I can't even be sure they're mine. I get it, God. I get what you're going through with Israel. I understand. It's why Hosea could preach the rest of this book the way he preached it. Because he understood what God was going through. I get why you hate these people. Because all I can feel in my heart for my wife right now is disgust and hate. She has treated me horribly. And we turn over to Hosea 3. Hosea 3. A passage that James Montgomery Boyce, a pretty good exegete, a pretty good expounder of scripture, Hosea chapter 3, he calls the greatest chapter in the Bible. Look at it. Follow with me. I'm sorry, Hosea 3. And the Lord said to me, go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress. even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisin. So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a lethic of barley. She has returned to prostitution, and she is enslaved in it. Just as many prostitutes today are essentially owned by their pimps, she is owned by the temple where she is a prostitute. She walked away from the good life that Hosea had offered her, back into the life of sexual slavery. But verse three is still there. I said to her, you must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore. or belong to another man. So will I also be to you. For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. And they shall come in to fear the Lord to his goodness in the latter days. Let me close with this illustration. Dr. Barnhouse. long time pastor up at 10th Press in Philadelphia during the middle of the 20th century, shares a story about a man who came in to him and said, Dr. Barnhouse, I have a terrible past. I came to know the Lord later in life, and I lived a rough, rough life before I became a Christian. But I have yet, I've met a woman, a lovely Christian woman, and I want to marry her, but I am afraid of how my past is going to affect our relationship. And Dr. Barnhouse agreed. to meet with the two of them. And so they invite the woman in, and the man pours out his heart to this woman that he wants to propose to. And he lays out all the disgusting, sinful, terrible things that he had done. It's a tough story. She looks up her eyes, and she looks up and says, listen, I know my Bible. And I understand that you've been made a new creation in Christ. I understand that you are a new man. But I also understand that the old man will still be there till the day you die, entangled with you, wrapped up in who you are. And I get that you're going to be tempted. And I get that you're going to be dragged down. And I get that you are probably going to fall. And when you do, you're Instincts in this world are going to tell you to hide it from me, to keep it from me. Don't hurt her. Don't tell her. I want you to do that. I want you to come to me. I want to help you through this. Because I love you. I love you. And I love the new man that Christ is making you, but I love the old man that is still there. And I will help you. And the man turns to Dr. Barthaus and says, well, if love like that won't keep down the straight and narrow, nothing will. We have been bought with a price. Not because we were good or pure or wonderful or nice, but because despite how much he hated us, underneath all of that was a love that said, go after them, pursue them. buy them back, redeem them from their iniquity, and make them yours. The ministry of Hosea is a reminder that God hates sinners, and yet He still redeems them, and loves them, and makes them His own.