The scripture reading this morning is the 10th chapter of Romans. If you'd like to follow along as I read Romans chapter 10. Beginning at verse 1. Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For being ignorant of the righteousness of God and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the righteousness that is based on the law. that the person who does the commandment shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, do not say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven, that is to bring Christ down, or who will descend into the abyss, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that is the word of faith that we proclaim, because If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the scripture says, everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. For there's no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How then will they call on him in whom they've not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? and how are they to preach unless they're sent as it's written, how beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news. But they've not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed, they have, for their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world. But I ask, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation, I will make you angry. Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I've been found by those who did not seek me. I've shown myself to those who did not ask for me. But I'm Israel, he says. all day long I've held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people. And that is the word of the Lord. And that certainly, as we return this morning to our study of the book of Hosea, that is the prophet Hosea's experience as he preached God's word all day long, holding out his hands to a disobedient and contrary people. Well, let's turn back then to the book of Hosea and let's pray and ask the Lord's blessing on the ministry of his word. Father, as we return now to our study of this powerful and great book of scripture, the words, your word preached and proclaimed so long ago by your prophet Hosea. We pray, Father, that you would give us real understanding of the truths that you have here for us, that you would increase our faith and we would be quick to hear and believe your word. And we pray, Father, that you would enable us by your spirit to make specific and pointed application of these scriptures to our own lives and our experiences in this world in which we live. We pray, Father, that by your word you would make us wise, that we would grow in Christ and we would be enabled to discern good from evil. And we pray all of these things in Christ's name, amen. Here is the, well, this morning what we want to do, since it's been quite a long time since we were, we left off our study to do a couple of other series, left off our study of Hosea, we need to spend this morning together reviewing where we've been. And I thought we would, I'd say in the notes here that we'd review the first four chapters. We'll just make it through the highlights of about the first three chapters. And then next time plan to finish our review and move on into new territory in chapter five. So let's begin here by just reading Hosea chapter one. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Biri, 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 first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, go take to yourself a wife of Hordam, 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. And the Lord said to him, call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel. and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel." She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, call her name, No Mercy. And that's in some of your translations, Lo-ru-hamah, Lo-ru-hamah, No Mercy. For I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel. forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow, or by sword, or by war, or by horses, or by horsemen." When she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, call his name, this is Lo-Ami, not my people. For you are not my people, and I am not your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Hosea's ministry then was in the Northern Kingdom of Israel. And here's a bit of background information. His ministry extended from 756 BC to 725 BC, and the Northern Kingdom fell to the Assyrians just after that. In 722 BC, that's when the Northern Ten Tribes were wiped out by Assyria. Judah, the Southern Kingdom, would endure until 587 BC, and they were wiped out by the Babylonians. Hosea was called as a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam. But this is Jeroboam II. And during his reign, there was a secession of six more kings in the north and four in the southern kingdom of Judah, several of which, at least two of them here, Uzziah and Hezekiah, were godly kings. So Hosea, if you put some timelines together, Hosea was a contemporary with Amos and Isaiah and the prophet Micah as well. His wife, Gomer, as we just read, and he had three children. And it's thought that this book is a compilation of sermons that Hosea preached to his wicked countrymen during those 25, 25 years. Now if you remember also we considered then in our study the what we call the problem of Gomer, the problem of Gomer and that problem is that How could it be that God would command a holy man, a righteous man like Hosea, to marry, and this would have been against the law, How could he command him to marry an adulterous woman? And different commentators over the years have proposed different explanations to try to sort out this apparent problem. For instance, John Calvin, he took the position that this whole thing, that Gohmert was not a real person. He's not denying that scripture here is the word of God, but rather this was kind of a fictional story, a symbolic story of unfaithful Israel. And so, Hosea's marriage to her was not a real marriage. But of course, you don't get that impression when you read the text. And that's what others have pointed out. There's no indication. in the scripture here that would lead us to believe anything other than the fact that Gomer was a real person, she was an adulteress, and Hosea's marriage to her was a real marriage then. Another commentator, I think it might have been Gleason Archer, said that he thinks that this was a marriage in advance, that God knowing that she would become adulterous and unfaithful to Hosea in the future, but that she wasn't yet when they were married and so on. Well, we also learned that, and this is interesting because we don't think a lot about the book of Hosea, but the New Testament actually quotes Hosea several times and shows that there are some very significant messianic passages in the book of Hosea. Here's several of them here, Matthew chapter 2. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, Hosea. Out of Egypt I called my son. That's quoted in the Gospel of Matthew and of course that's in connection with Joseph and Mary fleeing into Egypt to avoid Herod when Christ was born. Matthew 2, 13, go and, I might have the wrong chapter there, but go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice, for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. So Hosea's countrymen, they were all about external religion. Just going through the motions, but really they were idolaters at heart. And so Jesus quotes this to the Pharisees who were the same ilk. and says what God really requires is mercy, not sacrifice. That true religion is of the heart, not of the flesh. And then, of course, this classic one in Romans chapter nine. As indeed, he says in Hosea, those who were not my people, I will call my people. and her who was not beloved, I will call beloved. And in the very same place where it was said to them, you are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God." And so there Hosea is, the Lord through Hosea is giving a prophecy of the new covenant and salvation in Christ and the church as the true Israel. So, Hosea is preaching during the reign of Jeroboam. As we've said, this was not the first Jeroboam. Just after the time of Solomon, when the nation of Israel split, into the northern and the southern kingdom, you recall. There was this conflict. And Jeroboam, who was not of the lineage of David, he led the rebellion to the north, the northern 10 tribes. And he became the first, he was the self-appointed king of the northern tribes. And Solomon's son, Rehoboam, was the rightful king in the kingdom of Judah. So this Jeroboam, he comes on the scene and we call him Jeroboam II. He was an able and wise ruler, but he was a wicked and ungodly man. And when we were going through this chapter, we read some of John Calvin's comments here. Here's one of them. The prophet testifies, that is Hosea, testifies here in express words that he had already threatened future vengeance to the people even when the kingdom of Israel, that is the northern kingdom, flourished in wealth and power. when Jeroboam was enjoying his triumphs and when prosperity inebriated. There's a good word. They were drunk with their prosperity, you know, inebriated the whole land. So he was, Jeroboam was leading the armies in victory over enemies. He was restoring the size, the land of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. All these successes. and there was material wealth and prosperity. Under Jeroboam, Calvin continues, the kingdom of Israel became strong, and was fortified by many strongholds and a large army, and abounded also in great riches. As then he had increased the kingdom, as he had become formidable to all his neighbors, as he had collected great riches, and as the people lived in ease and luxury, What Hosea declared to them seemed incredible. You are not, he said, the people of the Lord. You are adulterous children. You are born of fornication. The Lord's instruction to Hosea, these are my words now, not Calvin's, the Lord's instruction to Hosea to go and marry a wife of whoredom, as shocking and weird as that sounds, and then have children born from and an adulterous wife was a picture. It was a picture of ugliness. It was an ugly picture of how God viewed the Israelites who through their idolatry and disobedience to God's law had become adulterers, spiritual adulterers. And because of the current prosperity They wanted to believe, and they wanted everyone else to believe that, what do you mean, Hosea? God's accepting us. He's blessing us. Regardless of how they lived, they didn't dwell on that. They just said, look how prosperous we are. This must prove that God's blessing is upon us, but it was all a delusion. And I think you can easily make that application to our nation today. God bless America, right? God bless America. Surely he's blessing America. Well, I don't know, maybe in this last year, it doesn't look quite so much like he's blessing America and it may well get much worse if it gets better than at all. But this is how people think. This is the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel, right? If you are not healthy, wealthy, and prosperous, God's not blessing you, you must be doing something wrong. Here's what you need to do. Because when God's going to bless you, then his blessing will be visible on you and you'll be making lots of money and healthy and You know how that thinking goes. That's the kind of so-called gospel, right? That's the kind of preaching that fills the pews. And, you know, that's one thing, isn't it, that drives these, so many of these mega things that want to be called Christian churches. Because I really think what happens then, this mentality, people come and they see, oh wow, these new tabernacles being built, and new causeways to walk down through these giant buildings, and all these people coming in, and all these huge amounts of money coming in, and they conclude what? God is doing this. This is God's work. We want to be part of this. Wicked, wicked wolves in sheep's clothing are very happy to take advantage of people thinking that. Well, Hosea's first child was to be named Jezreel. And apparently in Hebrew, I only took a year of Hebrew, and it's been a long time ago, but apparently, The Hebrew word Jezreel and Israel are very similar, at least in sound. And Israel meant the seed of Abraham through Jacob. But Jezreel, while it can mean seed, more often means dispersion. God's going to disperse those who survive. In fact, the northern tribes, they're just gone, right? They were dispersed. They were Jezreel when God's judgment came upon them. Listen to Calvin again. You are Israel, but in another respect, you are Jezreel, you are dispersion. For as the seed is cast in various directions, So the Lord will scatter you and thus destroy and cast you away. You think yourselves to have been planted in this land and to have a standing from which you can never be shaken or torn away." And that was, of course, their attitude from way back when, right? the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord when they were still in the Southern Kingdom. But the Lord will with his own hand lay hold on you to cast you away to the remotest regions of the world. They call themselves Israelites, but I will show by a little change in the word, right, Israel to Jezreel, that they are degenerate and spurious, for they are Jezreelites. rather than Israelites. And it appears that Jezreel was, as Calvin adds, that Jezreel was the metropolis, it was a city, was the metropolis of the kingdom in the days of King Ahab, which had come before this, and was the place where that great slaughter was made by Jehu. We spent some time, and I won't go into it this morning, but we spent some time looking at that curious question that God, back in 2 Kings, had commanded Jehu to go, and I think Jezreel was the home of Jezebel, and to go and kill her, and then he effected a slaughter, wiped out the city and so forth, and now And then later on, you find out that, well, wait a minute, God's going to wipe out the house of Jehu for doing that. But God commanded him to do it. And we saw that the issue was that Jehu carried out God's word, but with the wrong motive. And you might remember that Calvin compared Jehu to King Henry VIII of England who put on outwardly like he was zealous for the Lord and he's going to throw Rome out of England, which he did, but his heart wasn't His motive was not to serve God and glorify God. His motive was to build his own kingdom and that was all it was all about. And so God brings judgment then upon Jehu. Well Calvin noted then here as we saw that Jezreel was the chief metropolis of Hosea's day. This was the place and time of prosperity, the center of boasting, look at us. self-congratulatory people. And the Lord vows that everything that these wicked people place their confidence in is going to be brought to an end. When he talks about breaking their bow, he's talking about wiping out their military strength. And that, of course, would happen when the Assyrians come in in 722 BC, right? The Jezreel of our own country, the chief metropolis of our own country, in ways at least the chief commercial city, Jezreel of our nation, was attacked on 9-11. And the Lord allowed that devastation to come upon the center of our nation, which has long been in rebellion against God. But like Hosea's day. Did the people repent, right? Did they repent at all? He had sent them warning, after warning, after warning, and many prophets, and they rejected him. And it's the same thing today, that even though you can have a visible, talk about a visible manifestation of God's judgment and warning upon our nation, in our day, You know, even back 20 years ago or so, when 9-11 happened, literally, literally, everybody in this nation, everybody in this nation, almost in ways you could almost say everybody, almost everybody in the world saw it. I mean, with the technology, we actually saw that this happened. Do people, when they see something like that, what was their response? Is it, this is the hand of the Lord. He has done this. He is chastising us for our sin. No, in fact, that message even today then is mocked, you see. What would be very encouraging to see, and maybe some of it is happening. We don't know because we don't see everything that's happening in Ukraine. But certainly a nation like Ukraine, when this terrible wickedness of this tyrant is unleashed on them. and targeting civilians. You've seen the news reports and how wicked and evil this is that is being visited on Ukraine. Nevertheless, at that point, it would be very encouraging, wouldn't it, to see the president of their country? Maybe he has, and we just haven't seen it. And certainly, The church that professes to be there, most of the religion is Orthodox Christianity, which is essentially Roman Catholicism. But certainly, it would be, well, let's put it this way. The absolute right and best thing that the people of Ukraine could do would be to humble themselves before God and confess their sins and call upon him for deliverance because God's promise is consistently in scripture is Even though we, I think probably all of us, believe it's a good thing that other nations are helping them and providing armaments and so forth, and that that is a great thing and probably should be happening even more. But God's word is plain on this. The king is not saved by a mighty army. He's not saved by a mighty army. And you know what? God doesn't need a mighty army to deliver Ukraine. He can do it just like that. Remember the account? Where was that back in Kings, the book of Kings, the Old Testament? They woke up in the morning and all the enemy, they're all dead. Just like that. Other times he strikes them blind, and that's the end of it. And that all of us should be praying for God, you know, God, glorify yourself. Put yourself on TV, you know. All the enemy army is wandering around blind. They can't see. And so God can do that in just a moment. We saw in our previous study here that then when God is for us, who can be against us? But we also saw when God is against us, who's gonna deliver us? If God is your enemy, you've got no hope. We may enjoy economic prosperity, We may trust in our own nation in all the military gadgetry and might known to man, but God can break our bow at any moment he pleases. Any moment. The only reason a nation exists is because God has established it. God can strip us in a moment of everything that we're placing our trust in, and he can do it in a twinkling of an eye. Back in the days of the depression, the economic depression, what was that, in the 20s, right in there? And it's been a long time in the 30s. If I'm not mistaken, that stock market crash was like overnight. I mean, just that fast. people started jumping off buildings and killing themselves. And I mean, it can come down just that fast. And it does seem that God has been giving our own nation warnings. And he's been long suffering and merciful, but he gives us these warnings. And we see kind of rumblings of more warnings. to come, things to come, you see. He's calling us then to repentance. God, on the other hand, can preserve and save us even when our earthly resources are weak and few or even nonexistent if we turn to him and obey him and repent of our sin. Well, Jezreel was not the only child of bad news. I think I, later on after I printed this handout, I changed the title to Three Bad News Children. And that's what you have here. So after Jezreel comes a second one. Their names pronounce verdicts of judgment against the nation. No mercy. and not a people. Now in the middle of it, and this is so typical of God's word, and you see it a lot in the Old Testament, prophets especially, interspersed between his warnings and thunderings and promises of certain judgment for wickedness, God inserts a ray of hope for the remnant of his people, right? And that's what he does here. You see it here in verse 10 of chapter one, after he had pronounced, call her name, no mercy, call his name not my people. And then in verse 10 of chapter one, yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. Now, that phraseology brings to mind what? Immediately, God's promise to Abraham. You know, it's God's promise to Abraham, way back in Genesis, by which we are saved. The promise is by faith, right? That's the promise. And And so here, what God is saying, even though I am now pronouncing that my mercy toward Israel is over, that I am divorcing them. They are not my people. I am making null and void the covenant. I am not in covenant with them. any longer, yet he says, he turns around and says, the number of the children of Israel, well, wait a minute, I thought they were gonna be gone. Well, the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea. And what he's reminding us of is, he will faithfully fulfill his promise to Abraham. Who are these children of Israel that will be like the sand of the sea? Well, it's you and it's me. It's the elect. It's the true Israel of God. In the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living God. And of course, those promises are quoted in the New Testament and applied to the church. Verse 11, the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, that is Christ, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. So all of a sudden, Jezreel becomes a positive thing. There's a spin on it in that the seed of Abraham is maintained and becomes like the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky. By the way, when we deal with passages like verses 10 and 11, they're in that way, and we see the children of Israel and Judah in Israel, we see them as the church being the true Israel of God Fundamentally, and maybe people have asked, maybe you've asked this question, or people have asked you this question, and they'll say, what's the difference between dispensational theology and Reformed theology? What is the fundamental difference? And a good answer to that is, well, the fundamental difference is that we believe that the promise to Abraham And the Old Testament promises to the nation Israel are types and pictures of what God promises to do in Christ in the new covenant, establishing the true Israel. Whereas dispensational theology will say, well, God has his plan for the church, but when the Old Testament or even the New Testament, says Israel, it means Israel. It means the Jews. And so dispensational theologians approach scripture in what I would call a more wooden literalism, you see. But I think it's plain. I think it's plain that we are right. That's what the Bible says, that it isn't people who are circumcised in the flesh who are Jews, but it's those who are circumcised in heart, you see. Well, here's Calvin again. God's favor was now taken away from the people. I have to this point borne with you, God says, but now your obstinacy is intolerable. I will not then bear with you anymore. God had borne with them until the state of things proved that they were altogether incurable. My mercy has till now preserved you. When I withdraw my favor from you, your ruin will be inevitable, and you must necessarily perish and be brought to nothing. There you see it is an error, it's wrong to say that the mercy and forgiveness of God is infinite. It isn't. God's mercy There's a point at which God's mercy comes to an end. God is merciful, he's abounding in loving kindness. He doesn't desire that anyone should perish. But it is not true that his mercy is infinite. And if you think about that for a moment, you realize that has to be the case, not just from passages like we see here in Hosea. But if God's mercy were infinite, there would be no hell. And there would never be anyone in hell, you see. But the day of judgment, as the Lord comes again, certainly shows that there is a time when the mercy of God runs out. And the day, that's why the New Testament says, Hebrews says, today. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. Because tomorrow won't be today, and it may not be the day of mercy. Well, these children then of Hosea and Gomer are a picture. Well, they have proceeded from an adulterous covenant-breaking marriage, you see. And therefore, they are a picture of these judgments of God, dispersion, no mercy, not my people proceeding from what? The adulterous, idolatrous people of Israel. There's a sense of finality, utter, finality here. The covenant was broken once too often. It was withdrawn due to their habitual hard-hearted violation of their vows. They made the old covenant null and void by their sinning. Listen to Matthew Henry on this. We quoted him when we were studying chapter one or chapter two. Now it is here threatened that they shall be both stripped and starved. They thought that their idols gave them their bread and their water, their wool and their flax. But God, by taking them away, will let them know that it was he who gave them bread and water, you see, and everything they had. God would raise up difficulties and troubles in their way so that their public counsels and affairs shall have no success. Nor shall they be able to get forward with them. God would show by these punishments how heinous, odious, and offensive they were in his sight. And then Matthew Henry gives us this great line. Sin will have shame. That is, sin will lead to shame. Let those who pursue sin shamefully expect it. Sin will bring shame. As we've been seeing, by the way, and we'll see more this week in our study of the book of Revelation in the trumpet judgments, turns out, and if you think about it, it's really true, all through the Bible, one of the judgments that God brings upon wicked people is famine. It's famine. It's a sign of God's judgment. And that's what he's doing here. They worship their idols and professed that their prosperity, their bread and their oil and their wine, all these, their prosperity, well, it was their idolatrous gods that were giving it to them, not Yahweh, you see. So what God does, his judgments are always very ironic and fitting, is, well, he's gonna show them that it's not their false gods and idols. that are giving them these blessings. And he's going to show them by taking those things away from them. Famine. One of the things that happened even in this country in the Great Depression was, and you're right, there were soup lines. People lined up to get a shortage of food. Now there's rumblings of that in our day as well. And anybody that thinks, and you know that this is the attitude of people in this country, Anybody that thinks that a famine could never happen in this country, well, dream on. God can bring that about in a second as well. Here's another comment that we had heard from Matthew Henry. Many who lie under guilt and God's wrath are yet very jokend, that means jovial, right? party on, and marry, and they live jovially. But whether in their laughter their hearts be sad or not, it is certain that the end of their mirth, you say mirth, I guess, mirth, right? The end of their mirth will be heaviness, all right? For God will cause all of their mirth to cease. Sin and mirth can never hold long together. But if men will not take away sin from their mirth, God will take away mirth from their sin. And so the unrepentant and the wicked person, they may be partying on right now, but the party is coming to an end. Well, we see then that man left to himself will never repent. I mean, no matter what judgments God brought upon these people, see it again in Revelation, right? Even when the kings of the earth see the ungodly earth dwellers, when Christ comes again, And they know that it's Christ, because what they're saying is they're calling on the rocks and the hills to fall on them. Why? To hide us from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of His wrath has come. So they know it, you see, but even then, In that time, they still refuse to repent. And you see that here in Hosea and the other prophets. This is why salvation must be of the Lord. It has to be of the Lord because if it depends on man the sinner at all, salvation is not going to happen. It's only by God's electing grace that any of us are saved, any of us. And that realization, I think I would imagine that you're like me. Sometimes the realization of how wicked your sins were, sometimes still are, right? But were, and you realize more and more that if it wasn't for the Lord grabbing hold of you, and choosing you and bringing you and giving you a new heart, you would have never repented. You never would have. In fact, it seems like the more that we grow as Christians, And sometimes you start, you think of your early life, and you think back then, and you think, man, how in the world, what was I thinking when I was doing that? Well, we weren't saved, but salvation is of the Lord. It is the Lord's doing. And as the New Testament says, if it weren't for God choosing us, saving us, changing our hearts. If it weren't for him sending Christ and bringing us to faith, we would all have gone up in smoke just like Sodom and Gomorrah, exactly like them. But here we are, children of Israel. If you are in Christ and you are children of Abraham and heirs of the promise, heirs of all the, everything that God promised to Abraham is ours then in Christ. And so here's the rest of this chapter in chapter two. Listen to it. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness. He's talking about the true Israel here. And speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. He's using, the Old Testament Israel as a picture of the true Israel who he will one day, who he establishes now in Christ and brings to its fruition when Christ comes again. And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband. And no longer will you call me my bale, for I will remove the names of the bales from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant. So here's the new covenant in Christ. I will make for them a covenant on that day. Here's an aspect of the new covenant, get this. I will make a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field. What? Beasts of the field? the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety." Part of the New Covenant is what? It's a total removal of the curse. This means that the beasts of the field aren't- grizzly bears aren't going to be eating people anymore, right? Everything is going to be put right, and there's not going to be any war. nuclear weapons, it'll be all over and I will make you lie down in safety. Here again you're probably like me in this sense and I think a whole lot of people are like this in this sense. The war in Ukraine and what Russia's doing Now anybody that went through World War II has experienced it before. But here now we have this thing happening that could blow up into World War III. And I think people in this, and this is a good thing, it should be, right? But this is, people are very anxious. Very, very anxious. You watch what's going on and And you think about the poor people in Mariupol, women and children. The Russians want to starve them to death. And so many others that are suffering there. And how's this going to turn out? And this thing's on your mind. It's on your mind all the time. And sometimes then we don't lie down in safety. Well, in the new heavens and the new earth, all gone. There won't be anything like that. Verse 19, and I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord, is an unbreakable covenant. And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth. And the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel. And what this is talking about here is, it goes back to Genesis when God, remember God, because of Adam and Eve's sin, God pronounced even the earth, even the ground, cursed. You know, in order to, have food to eat, it's going to be by the sweat of your brow from now on. It's like the earth gives it reluctantly, and there's briars, and there's thorns. All of that stuff gone, reversed then in Christ. I will sow her for myself in the land, and I will have mercy on no mercy. And I will say to not my people, you are my people. And he shall say, you are my God. So there's these great promises of the new covenant in Christ here in this book of. of Hosea. Well, we'll plan to go on into reviewing some in chapter three and four, and then move into chapter five next time. But let me close us with these great words of promise. This is from Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Edwards. And he wrote a book called The True Believer. And here's what he had to say. And this is the message that these Israelites in Hosea's day refused to get, they refused to get it. Christ will not refuse to save the greatest sinners, who in a right manner come to God for mercy. For this is his work. It is his business to be a savior of sinners. It is the work for which he came into the world, and therefore he will not object to it. He did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Sin is the very evil which he came into the world to remedy. Therefore, he will not object to any man that he is very sinful. The more sinful he is, the more need he has of Christ. The redemption of Christ is sufficient for the pardon of the greatest sinners. But to come to Christ, we must see our misery and be sensible, aware of our need of mercy. And we must be sensible that we are not worthy that God should have mercy upon us. We must come to him as beggars, not as creditors demanding what is owed to us. And finally, we must come to God for mercy in and through Jesus Christ alone, what he is, what he has done. And if a person comes in this manner to God for mercy, The greatness of his sins will be no impediment to pardon. Let his sins be ever so many, ever so great, and ever so aggravated. It will not make God the least more reluctant to pardon them. The tragedy of Israel is they didn't get it, and they refuse to get it. We pray that everyone listening today would hear those words and call on God for his mercy, which he is very willing to give whoever calls upon his name. Father, we thank you for your word here in Hosea. We pray that you would permit us to study the rest of the book together in the weeks ahead, and that you would use these scriptures to strengthen our faith to rebuke us where we need to be rebuked, and that we might repent of our sin, and to love you more. And we pray this all in Christ's name, amen.