Now please turn in your Bibles to the book of Hosea, chapter 1. You can find this on page 1038, 1038, if you're using the Pew Bible. And I'll be reading from the New King James Version, which is the same translation you have there in the Pew. As we finished our series on the book of Romans last week, and as I said, I'll be kind of doing some different topical things over the summer, and then Lord willing, we'll start a series in the book of Daniel in the fall. I am up against a deadline here to go speak at the Horn Creek, which is the Midwest Presbyterian Conference out in Colorado in just a couple of weeks. You are getting to study the minor prophets a little bit because that's what they are going to study. I appreciate your indulgence on that. And this won't be exactly what I do with the people out there, but it gives us an opportunity to look at these books, which we studied as a congregation. Anyone have a guess how long ago that was? Long time? 2010. Alright, 2010. So it's actually been a few years. I realize that there are many of you who weren't here when we did that series through the Minor Prophets. So even if you were here, hopefully, again, it's the Word of God and He'll speak to us from it. So I'm going to read chapter one and then down to the first verse of chapter two is really all part of the same thing. And then we'll talk a little bit about the book as a whole, but about this passage in particular. So please stand for the reading of God's word. This is the Word of God. The Word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beri, 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 Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Then the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel. For in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, and bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. It 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. Then God said to him, "'Call her name Loruhamah, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. Yet I 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 Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said, Call his name Lo-Ami, 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 the 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 and 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. Say to your brethren, My people, and to your sisters, Mercy is shown." And there ends the reading of God's Word. You may take your seats. Well, some of you know, my wife and I got pressed into service to chaperone the senior trip of the graduates of Lighthouse Christian Academy. There wasn't available a male faculty member, and I made myself available kind of at the last minute to go, and Amy and I went. and chaperoned the trip. It was supposed to be family fun at Myrtle Beach. I had nothing to do with planning the trip because by the time I got involved everything was planned. We arrived there and the place that we were going to stay, Myrtle Beach, and we noticed that there were barriers and blockades all over the place, and orange crime scene tape, and it looked like things were kind of being set up for something. And so as we were getting into the hotel, and mind you, this was at 4 or 5 a.m. after driving 13 or 14 hours, one of the people working there said, oh, haven't you heard this is the annual biker fest? which brings 400,000 people and their motorcycles to Myrtle Beach. This happens every year over Memorial Day weekend. And my wife and I looked at each other at that point, realizing we had this group of 15 high school kids from a small Christian high school and said something like, well, we're not in Kansas anymore, are we? And as the bikers arrived then over the next couple of days, we got to see in full regalia what a biker fest, and here I should say, here in full audibles, what a biker fest is all about. And to put it mildly, we were surprised. This was not exactly what we were expecting. And when we come to our prophet here, Hosea, this is the first of the 12 minor prophets. We get something that I think we don't expect. We get a family that's described for us. And I think we come to the scripture, especially this is the first of this book. And in the Hebrew Bible, this is one single book with 12 installments. It's one thing in the Hebrew Bible. And so why is the first one a picture of a family? And we might say, well, there might be some reasons God has done that. And we certainly would expect that the picture then of the family would be what we would consider a biblically solid, family-friendly view of the family. But in fact, it's not what we get. It's completely unexpected. And the reason I think that God does this is to get our attention. And when we talk about some of the details, I think it does very much get your attention. But also to highlight the extent of God's love for us. Because God loves us in a way that goes way beyond what human love is like. And so it's setting this in the context of a very dysfunctional human family to illustrate how great the love of God is. And there's two images that the book of Hosea presents to us that I think are especially powerful. And so what the message here is that Jesus Christ is the faithful husband and He's also the obedient son who loves disobedient people, and faithless people, and loves them in such a way that He transforms them. by His love. And this is the image that comes out of the book of Hosea. And I think it is a very important way to start the book of the 12, because it lays out for us in powerful ways the depth of the love of God for lost people. And that that's your sure foundation, even as the book would say and the prophets would say some other things that would be very challenging to us in areas where we're perhaps not living. like we should be. So there was an outline at the back if you wanted to follow along. You see there what we're doing. And children, if you're going to draw a picture, you could draw a picture maybe of this family, Hosea, Gomer, and their children. And you want to listen to what the children's names are. Those are very significant, and they help us understand something about God's love. Well, the first thing I want you to see in the passage is that God's people are always tempted to turn away from Him. In verse 1 of our text, you see the Word of the Lord comes to Hosea, and then it gives us some very clear time references. It mentions several of the kings in Judah, the southern kingdom, Uzziah and so on, and Hezekiah. And it also mentions one king, Jeroboam, this is Jeroboam II, who was ruling in Israel. Now, Hosea is unique in that he's a northerner, he's from the northern kingdom of Israel, and he's preaching to the northern kingdom of Israel. And he's doing this in a time period that's leading up to the destruction of Samaria. The Assyrians are growing strong in the north, and they're a threat arising on the horizon, and eventually they're going to come down and conquer Israel. Now, Jeroboam himself, the king that's mentioned here in the North, ruled for 41 years. It was a very long rule. It was a time of prosperity and relative stability. for the people in the north. And so in some ways, we could say this was almost like a bit of a golden age for Israel. And in the south, you had Uzziah ruling for a long time. So again, relative to other times in our history, fairly stable, not under attack at the moment. And so realize he's coming to a people that are fairly prosperous and doing well. But of course, as is often the case, external prosperity leads to internal internal weakness and sin. And so if you flip over in Hosea chapter 4, you can just see a little bit about this. When Hosea addresses the people, he says to them in chapter 4 verse 1, Hear the word of the Lord, you children of Israel, for the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land. And look at what he says about them. There's no truth or mercy or knowledge of God in the land. By swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery, they break all restraint. Bloodshed upon bloodshed. See, this describes a culture very much like our own, doesn't it? Where we throw off all restraint. And in fact, if you're a person who tries to advocate for some level of restraint, you're going to be attacked yourselves. And so there's this desire not to have any constraints. Look down then in verse 7. It talks about what the Lord is going to do. The more they increase, the more they sinned against Me, I will change their glory into shame. They eat up the sin of My people, they set their heart on their iniquity, and it shall be like people like priests. So I will punish them for their ways and reward them for their deeds. For they shall eat but not have enough, they shall commit harlotry but not increase, because they have ceased obeying the Lord." And you see this idea, the more they increased, the more they sinned against Me. So as they prospered, they used their prosperity, they used their freedom to turn against the Lord. And God says He's going to bring an end to that. He's going to bring judgment against them. And he specifically says there at the end of that passage in verses 11 and following, "...harlotry, wine, and new wine enslave the heart. My people ask counsel from their wooden idols, and their staff informs them, for the spirit of harlotry has caused them to stray." And they've played the harlot against their God. So, in no uncertain terms, God calls this sin of idolatry, of seeking other things other than the true God first, as a form of spiritual adultery, spiritual immorality. This is what they're doing to the Lord God. And of course, these are very graphic terms. And many of us would say, well, I would never do something like that. But he's saying, any time we in our hearts put something ahead of God, we're in effect committing a spiritual form of adultery. And this is how serious that God takes it. So there's a huge message of judgment here. And in fact, what happens over the lifetime of Hosea, actually, one of the things that's fascinating, he may have been the longest serving prophet. This period he describes here is 70 years long. And we don't know exactly when he dies in this. But over this long period of time, he's talking about this impending doom, and in fact, Within just a few years after this King Jeroboam dies, they go through a series of kings, and Assyrians come in and destroy them, and the whole nation is wiped out within literally 20 to 30 years of when he's making this prophecy. So, although they think everything's great, they're actually very close to the end of their nation, and they're facing great danger. And I think we have to realize this is a danger for you and me. We live in a community, we live in a country where we have tremendous freedom, we have tremendous prosperity, certainly as the world goes, untold prosperity and blessing. And it's very easy for us to become spiritually complacent. as these people were, to take other things to make first place in our lives, other than the true God. And God says He's not going to tolerate that. You can look great, right? How do we know everything's fine when we say, I've got money in my bank account, or I paid off my mortgage, or the rent's being paid? We can point to all these external things, that look well organized and respectable and we can say everything's fine, I look at those things and they tell me it's fine, but God's saying where you have to look is at your heart and is your heart set on the Lord or the things of the world? What is your first love? And the point of this first part of this is just to tell us this is a constant struggle, even for people that are in the church, that we don't leave our first love That our hearts are set on the Lord and we're not turning away because that's the natural tendency of the human heart. Well secondly, and we've already sort of referred to this, God says specifically that our sin, your sin, my sin, is like adultery. You could say that this is presented here graphically in these two images, the image of the wife who's unfaithful and the image of the son who is rebellious. And here we want to look at this image of the violated marriage. And what's fascinating here is that the prophet himself, and of course Ezekiel had to do this, other prophets had to do this, he has to act out the message. He has to bear in his own body and life the message that the Lord is giving to him. And this is why being a prophet wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Because it often involved tremendous suffering. So, you see in verse 2 what he's told to do by God. The Lord began to speak to Hosea. He says to him, take for yourself a wife of harlotry. and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord." Now, there's a little debate amongst the commentators over what this means. Does he have to go find a woman who's already known to be immoral and then marry an immoral woman? And given that he's a prophet, given that the prophet is actually in office, given that priests had very stringent requirements on who they married, I don't think that's likely that he goes and marries someone that's already known to be immoral. I think he marries a woman that at the time has not engaged in immorality, but which the Lord knows she will engage in immorality, and he has to realize this is part of his ministry. This is a part of the way he shows in his life the message that God wants the people to get, which is that in turning away from Him, they're committing adultery. So he takes a wife, this woman Gomer, and things seem to start okay. Verse 3 tells us, she conceives and bears him, that is, bears Hosea, a son. And the Lord says, call his name Jezreel, for in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu and bring to an end the kingdom of the house of Israel. Now, the word Jezreel can mean plant, established, but it can also mean scatter, like you scatter seed. And it's in that sense here that he's saying, name this son Jezreel, the idea is that you're going to be scattered and you're going to be overthrown as a nation. And it mentions here the house of Jehu. Jehu was one of the kings who started a new line in the northern kingdom. He brutally exterminated the descendants of the previous line, and was so zealous in doing that that God said, I'll let you rule for four generations, and then I'll wipe out your family. And so Jeroboam is the third of those, and his son will only reign a very short time and be murdered. And that's going to be the end of that house, and eventually it's going to be the end of the whole northern nation. Well, so they have this son and they name him Jezreel, and it's a little bit of a weird name, children, and you might think it would be awkward to have that name, but the name has, it could have a good interpretation or a bad interpretation, so maybe so far things are okay. Well, except when we come to... to the next child in verse 6. It says there that she conceived again and bore a daughter. And then God said to him, call her name Lo-ru-hamah, for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel. Now this is subtle, but notice what's missing in verse 6. The previous verse that talked about the child being born, In verse 3 says that she conceived and bore him a son. In verse 6 it said she conceived again and bore a daughter. But Hosea is not mentioned. And the most likely explanation is this is in fact not Hosea's child. It's the child of another man who's had a relationship with Gomer. And the name is fitting, right? The name is No Mercy. And so this child now is a picture, not only that God's going to scatter them, which is real, but that God is going to show no mercy on them. And he goes on to say, I will utterly take them away. Now verse 7 is interesting, we don't have much time to talk about it today, but, Yet I 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. You know what that's referring to? When the king of Assyria came in and wiped out the northern tribe, he went all the way down to Jerusalem, when Hezekiah was the king in Jerusalem. And remember, they write the letter to him saying to him, your God can't save you, you're dead meat, I'm going to take you out. And Hezekiah spreads that out in the temple and prays. And the Lord miraculously saves Jerusalem. And so the southern kingdom survives for another period of time before they're later conquered by the Babylonians. So here's Hosea predicting. Before this happens, he's predicting that the Lord's going to come in and wipe out the northern kingdom, but spare the southern kingdom in a miraculous way. And then again now in verse 8, we have another child, a third child, another boy. And again, the language is like with the second child, she conceived and bore a son. Hosea is not mentioned. And so commentators believe that this is yet another illegitimate child born to Hosea's wife, Gomer. And God says, call his name Lo-Ami, for you are not my people and I will not be your God. And this child is literally named illegitimate, not mine. And this is to be a picture of the people that God is going to disown, this people who have ceased to love him and to serve him and to follow him. Understand what the imagery is trying to communicate here. If you've ever known someone who's had an incident of marital unfaithfulness in their family, you know how absolutely devastating that is, that in some sense people never recover from the infidelity of a spouse. And this is speaking about an infidelity that happens in a family, but one that is very, very public, because this prophet was a public person. And so on top of the pain of the betrayal of his wife, he has the public humiliation that comes from everybody knowing that this is going on. And you understand, it had to be known, because that's part of the message. The message is that this kind of unfaithfulness, this is what your sin is like when you turn from the Lord and that He is not your greatest love. And I think for us to realize, you know, whenever I hear a story, I'm always putting myself in the story, right? So, your temptation is to think about, boy, what would have been like to be Hosea. But that's not, Hosea is God in the story, right? You and I are Gomer. This is the analogy that you are like an unfaithful spouse who has left your first love and has betrayed the Lord. And God says, this is how great your sin is against a loving God. It's just like adultery. It's worse because the Lord is perfect. And you may have the greatest spouse in the world, but your spouse is not perfect. The Lord is perfect. And for you to turn against Him in sin is a heinous, heinous sin. And it's quite clear, this is the point, is to apply this to all the people. Look down in verse 2 of chapter 2. Bring charges against your mother. Bring charges, for she's not my wife, nor am I her husband. Put away her harlotries from her sight, and the adulteries from between her breasts. That's applied to the people. This is what the prophet is saying about the people. When you sin against God, you're choosing your idols over God, and you subject the Lord to public humiliation, in a sense, if you carry the name of Christ. So, your sin is that bad in God's sights. It's like spiritual adultery. But thirdly, he says that your sin is also like the sin of a rebellious son. So turn now over to Hosea 11, and just to point out, this is another image in the book. We don't have as much time to delve into this as we might like, but this same imagery is used to illustrate a similar point, what it's like when we turn from our Lord. Chapter 11, when Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. As they called him, so they went from them. They sacrificed to the Baals and burned incense to carved images. So what he's saying there is, Israel, my people, were like my child. God is saying, I loved him and I called them out of Egypt, right? Referring to the Exodus and bringing them out of bondage and providing for them. But what happens in verse 2? They hear the call of the idolaters around them and they go and sacrifice to the bales and burned incense to carved images. They turn away, they rebel against the Lord who have saved them. And verse 3 is really a powerful way of describing this. God says, I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. It goes on to say, I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them. And part of that imagery, at least, is what any of you have experienced. You've seen a young child. trying to learn to walk, right? And you bend over and you let them hold on to your fingers, and then you kind of walk with your arms there, holding them up, and they're tottering along, because we all know children's heads are way too big for the rest of their body. So there's this image, though, of God saying, this is how I was to you. I was like a father, tenderly helping you along, helping you learn to walk. And the response is for you to turn against me, to leave me, to spit in my face. And this is how our sin is viewed in God's sight. I remember the first time Amy and I went to the International Conference quite a number of years ago, back when they still had it up in Carleton, Minnesota. And I remember it well because it was like 95 degrees and no air conditioning on that little campus. So we were there and in one of the first talks, I don't even remember who was speaking or what the person was speaking about. But he said something that had to do with wayward children. And as we were sitting there, the two couples that were sitting in the row in front of us just absolutely broke down, weeping and crying to each other. And it was clear. I mean, we didn't know who they were. We didn't know the situation. It was clear that they were still in absolute agony over children. that had walked away from the faith, who had been raised in the church, and had walked away from the faith. And children, you just have no idea how you would break your parents' hearts if you turned away from the Lord. You have no idea how that would break your parents' hearts. And more importantly, what a terrible thing that would be in the eyes of God. God's saying, again, We put ourselves in the position of the parent, but again, in this imagery, it's saying, you, you are all like the child. You're like the child who's been raised the right way, who's been provided for, whose parents have sacrificed for you, and you turned away from them. You rejected everything they gave you, and you spit in their face, in essence. And this is how, again, I'm not the one making this up, this is the way the Lord describes the sin of His people when they turn their back on Him and when they find their first love in other places. But the beauty of the book of Hosea, of course, isn't just that it calls attention to our sin. It's that it also calls attention, and more importantly, calls attention to the love of God. And so I want you to see, as the fourth thing in the outline, that Jesus Christ is the faithful husband whose love transforms a wayward life. Turn now to Hosea chapter 3. This is the shortest chapter in this book, and I think almost the whole Old Testament except for maybe Psalm 117. And many commentators think this is the hinge of this book, certainly with regard to this imagery of the wayward wife. This is what the Lord says, Then the Lord said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans. So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley. And I said to her, You shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man. So too will I be toward you." For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and his goodness in the latter days." Now what's being described there? When He says, go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover. I put in the outline the translation from the NIV, which I think maybe is easier in terms of understanding the meaning, where it says, the Lord said to me, go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods, and love the sacred raisin cakes." And what commentators think is going on here is some time has passed, and Gomer has actually left the family. And Gomer is sleeping around with whoever will take her in town, while Hosea is raising his three children. And the situation gets so bad that we don't know if it's because she has unpaid debts or what happens, but Gomer finds herself as a slave now. Verse 2, I bought her for myself for 15 shekels of silver. This woman has been so reduced that she's now being sold in the slave market. And as the commentators remind us, slaves were sold naked. She's there in the nude. Nobody wants to bid on her. Perhaps everybody's had her already who might be interested in her. So he gets her for half price. Thirty shekels is the price of a slave. And he pays half price to buy his own wife back. You understand the incredible significance of what's going on, right? The absolute humiliation of a man having to go and bid to buy his own wife back from the slave market. But that's exactly what he does. And once buying her, he would have been completely justified in killing her. But that's not what he does. Look what it says in verse 3. You shall stay with me many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man. So too will I be toward you." He brings her back into his house. He rehabilitates her. And the implication is, because we don't hear about this again, that she actually comes under his roof and is healed, in a sense, and goes back to being his wife. And why is this picture given to us? It should be obvious, shouldn't it? See, this is the way God loves unfaithful people like you and me. And what's incredible about it, of course, is that the Lord Jesus Christ, He's the one that's paraded naked in the streets, who's subjected to public shame and humiliation. on behalf of His people, in order to buy them back. And He buys them back in such a way that He transforms His people with His love. This is what's going on, because He goes on to say in verse 4, "...the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, But what in verse 5, "...afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king. They shall fear God and His goodness in the latter days." So even though they've been unfaithful, this is what God is doing through the Messiah. He's going to bring them and make them whole again, so that they will seek His face and love Him. And this is mentioned also in chapter 2, at the end of chapter 2, verses 19 and 20. And it picks up this language again. I will betroth you to Me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in loving kindness and mercy. I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. This is the promise that He makes. Now you might be saying to me, OK, Pastor, I don't see Jesus' name mentioned here. How do you know this is really about Jesus? One of the reasons I know is because those verses I just read out of chapter 2 are quoted. Actually, not there, a little bit farther down in verse 23 where he says, I will have mercy on her who I had not obtained mercy and I will say to those who are not my people, you are my people. That's quoted in the book of Romans and applied to Christians. That it is through the Lord Jesus that He brings people who have turned away from Him and makes them His own. And I gave you a couple of New Testament references also that point to this idea that it is the Lord It is the Lord who makes His people holy. Ephesians 5, 25-27, husbands love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water and the word that He might present her to Himself a glorious church. not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. And again in Revelation chapter 19, let us be glad and rejoice and give Him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife has made herself ready and to her And then speaking about the church, it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. See, this is the work of the Lord, to beautify and protect and to make holy His wayward children. When I took my trip to China last year, one of the things I tried to do was to buy a few things of silk, and they make some wonderful silk, so I got some scarves and some things like that to give to the women folk in my house, because that's the only folk that are in my house apart from me. And, you know, we take pleasure in giving our daughters, our wives, beautiful things. But we realize the ability of a husband to make wives or daughters holy is limited. There are certainly things that fathers can do to promote that, but we can't make our daughters and our wives holy. Only the Lord can do that, and that's exactly what He's saying here. I bought you back, I brought you into my house, and I am making you one who loves the Lord. And this is a wonderful promise to people like you and me, who are not faithful, that the Lord brings us back because Jesus is the faithful husband. And then finally we see here that Jesus is also like the obedient Son, whose love for the Father makes His children obedient. So, back in chapter 11, And we talked about this imagery of the rebellious son. And then I read it the first time, you might have noticed. This is a verse that is applied to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. And in fact, in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew quotes this verse and says, this refers to Jesus coming out of Egypt after he fled there to escape Herod, and he comes back into Galilee. That in a sense, Jesus is the true son. And we're only children because we're connected to God through Jesus. And in fact, if you go back to chapter 1, this is exactly what he says. He will make us children who are faithful. Look at verse 10 in chapter 1. 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 the place where it was said of them, you are not my people, there it shall be said to them, you are the sons of the living God. Then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and appoint for themselves one head, this is again the Lord Jesus Christ, and shall come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel. Say to your brethren, My people, and to your sisters, Mercy is shown." He takes those same names and changes them. Rather than Lo-Ruhamah, it's Ruhamah. Rather than Lo-Ami, it's Ami. And so going from those who have been rejected by God, we are those who are brought into the family of God. And once again, verse 10 in chapter 1 is something quoted by the book of Romans and applied to the Christian church, the people who come to the Lord through Jesus Christ. So realize again what the picture is now. Hosea had one legitimate child and two illegitimate children. And it's as if the Lord takes away the one legitimate child for the sake of saving the illegitimate children. Because that's what God does when He allows His Son, His only true child, the Lord Jesus Christ, to suffer punishment and death. And He does that for the sake of the illegitimate children, the not naturally His children, so that we can become the sons and daughters of the living God. Jesus is the obedient Son who makes you and me true sons of God. And that's the basis upon which we're able to be transformed as members of his family. That's what we heard about in the Sunday school class earlier. Being in the family of God and having God as our Father is what transforms us and allows us to live for the Lord. Now look at chapter 14. This is the last part I'll have you turn to. Because the book ends with a very clear appeal. Oh Israel, verse 1 of chapter 14, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, take away all iniquity, receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips. This is what God wants us to do in response to this. He holds out His hand welcoming you. He wants you to come to Him and to say to Him, take away all iniquity and receive us graciously. And He promises to do that for the sake of His Son. So if you're here this afternoon and you do not know the Lord, you're not sure, that you've received the salvation that comes from having Christ in your place. This is what he says, he holds out his hand saying, return to me, come to me. But if you're here and you claim the name of Christ, but you feel that you've lost your first love, you've turned away from the enthusiasm and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that's not really your first love, and that's not really what you're banking on. He says to you also, return to me. Return to me. And you see why this is so important, that this is the first book of the twelve, because there's so much judgment in the minor prophets. Because recognize, this is the end of these two nations' existence. First the northern kingdom, then the southern kingdom, and they're all destroyed. And the prophets are calling the people, they're saying, it doesn't have to be this way. Come back to me. And how important is it to have the very first book of the twelve saying, above everything you need to know that God loves you. And that God gives His Son to be the obedient Son in your place and to be the faithful husband in your place. Come to me, I love you and I will forgive you and I will heal you. And we need to know that we have a God that loves us more than we can ever imagine and who will receive us as we put our faith and trust in Him. Jesus Christ is the faithful husband and the obedient son who makes you a child of God who can be transformed by His love. Let's pray and we'll ask Him to bless us in that. Heavenly Father, we recognize how Your Word is amazing to us. We would never write books this way, in which we compare people's sin to adultery and prostitution and rebelliousness of children. And then we especially wouldn't have the solution to all of this being the public humiliation of the Son of God, or the sacrifice of the Son of God, who comes as a perfectly obedient Son, dying in the place of disobedient children. But yet, Lord, that was Your solution to the problem. And we see that in that solution, You magnify Your glory. Because if ever there was a person who didn't deserve to be saved, it was Gomer. And we can say the very same thing about ourselves. But the Lord Jesus came and took our shame upon himself so that we could be saved, that we could be free from that shame. Lord, we thank you and we confess we don't begin to understand and appreciate the depth of your love for us. Lord, we ask that you'd help us even as we approach this new week to do so with the confidence and joy that we should have knowing that Christ Jesus is the faithful husband who buys us back and the obedient son who fulfills all righteousness for us. And Lord, would you please help us to be faithful as we seek to live out your will for our lives in the coming days. We ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen. And now let's sing back to the Lord in praise from Psalm 149, selection B. Psalm 149, one of the things that's mentioned here is that the Lord's people would be made glorious or beautiful with salvation. So in stanza 2, second half of the stanza, that the people whom the Lord has claimed is pleasant in His eyes, and with salvation's radiance, the meek He beautifies. And then in stanza 3, with glory let the godly ones exalt with lifted heads. Yes, let them all with gladness shout and sing upon their beds. This is the response of those who've been made beautiful, not for their own beauty, but by the work of the Lord through the Savior. Let's stand and we'll sing Psalm 149b.