Thank you so much for leading us in worship today. You know, one of the great truths about heaven is that's a place of change. And when you come to Monument Hill Church, there's always change. This morning, our boys and girls are going to be worshiping with us. We do not have Kids' Corner for today or the next two weeks. And parents, just relax. Your child's not going to embarrass you or anyone around you. And if you need to step out and take somebody to the bathroom, that's fine. If you want to take me to the bathroom, please come up here and do that. I appreciate the worship music today. I know that some of us were thrown off a little bit by not getting the syllabra and the note connected on some of those hymns, but that's okay. You know, in heaven there's going to be high church music, renaissance music, cowboy music, and those people who just love hymns. And there'll be a lot of other things there. And this is a preparation for what is going to happen in the future. And if you are a guest today, I know you would love to hear our beloved pastor, Tom Clemens. I would love to hear our beloved pastor, Tom Clemens. He did text me this morning from London and said that he was praying for us he will return not soon enough but in about four weeks he will be preaching and on that day that is our annual church picnic and we're going to have a very special welcome for our beloved pastor as he returns to the pulpit here. So, guest, I am the assistant pastor. I'm not a preaching pastor. I am more of a teaching pastor, as our church will attest. And I have, by the clock today, at least 45 minutes. Okay, I'm going to try to end a little early. I can't say that I will do that, and somebody told me they would give me a quarter if I would end early. So I'm going to try to be very persistent in that. And at the end I've asked Brother John, I sort of sprung this on him, to come and to sing a song that I wanted to conclude the worship with. Our pastor, right before we left, he introduced us to a sermon series from the Old Testament on the prophet, on the prophet Daniel, an Old Testament prophet. And I really enjoy the prophets. In fact, I would say my favorite portion of the Old Testament is in the books of the prophets, both major prophets and minor prophets. And so I have selected for us in these three weeks, as we were planning the who's going to be preaching, I selected these three weeks because one, I remember last summer three-quarters of the church went on vacation and then they didn't invite me to go with them. And so the attendance today is a little lower at this time of the year which is to be expected because many people are trying to get in a good vacation before school starts. And I just couldn't resist the opportunity to be able to do this little mini series that's more of a teaching series. When I was growing up, my brother and I played lots of games together. We played cowboys and Indians. We played cops and robbers. We played farmer, where he was the farmer and I was always one of the animals. Appropriate part for me. And I can remember, as we got older, people would come up to me and they would say, Gary, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I always hated that question because I didn't know what I wanted to be. I just wanted to be a kid. I enjoyed being a kid. In school, I always had to sit in the corner of the room, which was a wonderful place to sit. I just didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I had people in my family who were school teachers. I had people who were merchants. I had farmers. I never had anybody in my church or in my school in my community come up to me and say, Gary, do you want to be a minister? Not one time did that happen in my life. And believe it or not, I never had anyone come up to me and say, Gary, would you like to be a prophet? I thought, prophet, yes, I would like to make a prophet. But no one ever asked me this question. Now, I've selected, as you see on the screen here, these three prophets. Hosea, the prophet of love that I'm going to briefly address with some background material about a prophet's world, and Micaiah. That's not a misprint. It's not Micah, it is Micaiah. He is a prophet that many people forget about. He only has one chapter in the Bible and your assignment for next week is to find that one chapter in the Bible. And then we want to conclude with Elijah and I've entitled him as the prophet of depression That's if you want to skip church This is the Sunday to skip church the prophet of depression because we need to talk about depression and the influence of depression in our lives but also he was the prophet of victory and so with that said You know, some of us are old enough to remember the song, It's Love, It's Love That Makes the World Go Round. Some of you have never heard that. I'll sing it to you afterwards, or Brother John will. He'll get his guitar out and teach you that song. As I traveled into Asia and Africa, those two particular foreign countries more than once, in each country, I want you to know I never saw love in those nations making the world go round. In fact, I saw in the world that there were people who were hurting, who were thinking that the God that I represented from America was a mean God. And I discovered not only is that true in foreign lands, but that is true right here in America. Just a couple of weeks ago, I stopped and I visited with a total stranger. And this lady looked at me and she said, I was raised in a religion where I was taught that if you did not toe the line, there was no hope for you. Now, she came out of a works-based world religion here in America, but she saw God as being judgmental, angry, capricious, and far removed. And so, my heart today is to say to all of us, and help us to remember to share in our gospel presentation. God loves you, and indeed, he does have a wonderful plan for you. So we want to talk today about Hosea, the prophet of love. You know, from the beginning of time, God has chosen to speak through a few people personally, and then to speak to a larger group of people through selected individuals. The general term for that kind of presentation in the Old Testament was the word prophet. And if you were to start counting how many times that word is used, you will find that it's used over 300 times. The prophets ministered from the 9th century to the 5th century BC. Boys and girls, that's a very long time ago. If we were to take everybody's age in here and start adding up each person's age, there still wouldn't be enough years to tell us how far back the prophets spoke, how far back they preached. But it was not in the books of the prophets where they are first mentioned in God's word. I have a new Bible today. It's very big so I can see it. But if you would take your little Bible in the chair before you and turn to Deuteronomy 18, let's read one of the first places where the word prophet is mentioned in scripture. And I'm going to read to you out loud Deuteronomy 18, 15 through 22 on page 161 in the Chair Bible if you're using that. This is Moses speaking. And he says, to the children of Israel, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen, just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God to see this great fire anymore lest I die." That's the children of Israel saying, we don't want to hear God's voice. It's too great for us. And God says, I will give you a prophet. The Lord said to me, they are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I have commanded him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. but the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You will need not be afraid of him. Every prophet that God called by name was an individual who was endowed by God with distinct gifts and was placed, according to the Word of God, in a specific setting, thus called by God to a very unique ministry. Now, every prophet, listen to this, this is important, every prophet with new, the cultural setting, the political setting, the social setting, and the religious setting of his world. I occasionally hear Christian people say, well, all we need to know is the Bible. And I'm not really concerned about sociology or counseling or politics. Granted, beloved, you cannot come to Christ through those modes alone. But if we are to be effective salt and light and leaven in this world, we have to know something about the world that we live in. The Essings were a political group of people in Jesus' day who decided that it was good for them that they retreat. They became monks, if you please, monastic people, and they retreated away from life in order that they could be influencers in the world. Well, the greatest influence of the Essings was that they gave us the Qumran community and we find the Dead Sea Scrolls from them. But I'm not so sure that they were actively engaged in their culture. And I want you to know today, the prophets were men and a few women, sprinkled in according to the Word of God, who spoke up for God, and they knew the world in which they lived, and they were effective. As a prophet, he was inspired by the Spirit of God. He was sensitive to the Word of God, and he wanted to know the will of God. I pause and I just simply ask each person here in this room today, are you a man or a woman who is inspired by the Holy Spirit of God? Are you an individual who understands this great book that is our authority? And do you really want to do the will of God? When God's Holy Spirit touched each prophet's personality and spoke through that prophet, the voice of God himself was speaking to the people of Israel. That's what we just read. And listen, that had nothing to do with spiritism. Some people say, well, when God's voice was speaking through somebody, it was like a medium experience. And no, it has nothing to do with darkness, witchcraft, that kind of thing. You don't have to get your Ouija boards out for this, don't. It was God directly speaking through the mouth of the prophet. So, the broadest definition of a prophet is a person who speaks for God. Now I know you can do some theological readings and some commentaries and you will find people who say that's a very poor definition. But I want you to know for this day, this moment, this hour, it is a good definition because it's the definition I want us to use. The prophet was God's representative to mankind. When God called a prophet, God would tell that person, that individual, exactly, what does the word exactly mean? Any deviation? No, if it's something as exact, it means with great precision. He would tell them exactly what they were to say, but not only what they were to say, There were times in the prophet's life he would tell them, do this, this is what you're supposed to do. The prophet did not have the right. He might have wanted to, but he did not have the right to preach anything except the word that God had revealed to him. Otherwise, according to the passage that we just read in the book of Deuteronomy, what would happen to that dude or that dudette? They would be killed. They were to be killed. A man did not become a prophet simply because he awakened one morning and said, Daddy, I think I want to be a prophet. I want to go to school and learn to be a prophet. He was not trained professionally in seminary education in the prophetic school. There was, later on, Elijah did start a school for the prophets, but early on there wasn't any such place. A man became a prophet because God chose him. The prophetic office was received rather than achieved. God will raise up a prophet. Now I need to stop and just say, for today, the office of the prophet is antiquated. It's obsolete. It's old. It's dead. It's gone. The gift of prophecy is still very much alive in the church today, and we need that spiritual gift. And I will address that more next week. I'm gonna say in just a moment something about the difference between prophecy and teaching. But the prophetic office that we're talking about, you do not see today. Well, or that's not true. You're seeing it right now, sort of, and we'll explain that more. But I want to say to you today, in this moment, grandparent, aunt and uncle, parents, the greatest thing that could happen to you as a family, believe it or not, is if God's spirit would fall upon your child and your child would go forth and speak up for God. That is the greatest work, the greatest career, the greatest occupation that could happen in your family. And yet, there are so many families that are afraid. God, you can do anything with my child. You can be an accountant, can be a professor, can be a rocket scientist, but please don't send them to yada, yada, yada. We need to come back to that next week. Many people think of prophecy, Pastor Tom helped us to remember this truth when he introduced Daniel, as foretelling future events. While a prophet may have some similar element in his message about the future, that is, foretelling the future, he was more concerned about forth telling, speaking up for God. Now when God did reveal something about the future, it was always for the purpose of encouragement. So when I pick up my Bible and I'm reading about prophecy in the Old Testament, and there's some future event, it is connected in my life not to discourage me, not to make me think, oh my, let's run and hide. It is for the purpose of encouragement. God wants to encourage you more than your spouse wants to encourage you. He wants to encourage you more than your Sunday school teacher, your life group, your small group teacher will ever want to encourage you. God has a bright, future, especially for those of us who are in the family of faith. The message of the prophet is more important than the messenger. I'm going to highlight for you, beginning today, three prophets. It doesn't matter if you remember their names or not. If you are child in this worship service, you may never have heard of these names. What you need to remember is that God had a special assignment for men and women to deliver to his world, and the message is more important than the messenger. Now, I want to tell you something. This is important for all of us who are leaders in this room today, who are teachers, who are elders, who are deacons. Anywhere where we have authority over people and spiritual instruction, the old flesh likes to call attention to itself. And we live in a generation today where we esteem men. We esteem people who are great teachers. We run and we buy their books. And we quote people by name. And we give them high authority and credibility in what we speak and say. But that is not God's plan. God, not one time, is willing to share his glory with any one of us in this room. Did you hear me? God says all glory belongs to him. And so, when we find that we'd like to be recognized, we want to be known as being really important, You better run and wash your face, your mouth out, and every bit of your body and purify yourself, because God will do a number on all of us if we are self-centered. Whew, I haven't even got to Hosea yet. the New Testament, do you remember John the Baptist? He was a prophet, he was called a prophet, and as he thought about his Lord and Savior, the Son of God, John sets for all of us in this room today the supreme example when he said, he, referring to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, he must decrease and I must increase. No, that's not what he said. No, glad you were paying attention. He said, Jesus must increase and he must decrease. The prophets were mainly, and I'm going to use a new word at this point that I haven't used, they were mainly preachers. The prophets were mainly preachers who wanted to bring men into conformity with God's standards. Their messages were about heart change. Their messages were about repentance. Their messages were that it doesn't matter what the outward action is of the life, if God is not internally honored, individual needs to make a major life adjustment. In many ways, a preacher of today is like the Old Testament prophets, because a preacher bases his sermons solely on the absolute authority of God's Word. solely upon the authority of God's Word. We were talking this morning, and my Sunday school class, Keith Powell, called attention to the fact that there was an article this week, and it was written, I will tell you, it's on the front page of the webpage Fox News, and it was five reasons why you can leave a church. Now, I don't want anyone to leave this room, or to leave this church at this particular moment, But one of the tenets of the article was that you have the right to leave a fellowship when there is heresy, false doctrine, when theology is punk. You better run for the tules and you better run fast. Get out of there. head for a group of people who will honor the authority of God's Word, and praise God we do that here at Monument Hill Church. If you are a guest today, I want you to know there is no other book that we preach from except God's Holy Word. It is authoritative in our lives. When we read in the New Testament about the gift of prophecy, we see that prophecy is to preach or to tell forth or to declare the scripture. And closely linked with that is the spiritual gift of teaching. And teaching is the ability to teach the word of God and to help the hearers understand the scriptures the author and that author is God. It's not man. The Bible was not written by men. God used 40 people to bring about over 1,500 years his divine book, but it was the Spirit of God who wrote the Bible. And to help teaching is to help people understand as God intended. So We're not going to read now, but you can just think, I need to check out this next passage, which is 1 Corinthians 13, one through five. It says something, or not 1 Corinthians, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 13, one through five. It says something very similar to what we just read in chapter 18. But it delineates again, and we have to ask ourselves, how do we know false prophet. How did the Israelites come to understand who was telling the truth and who was a fake? Well, God knew that was an important question. And so from Deuteronomy 13 and Deuteronomy 18 and from the whole counsel of the word of God, we can lay forth these five tenets. False prophets appealed to the wants and the desires of people. They love tickling people's ears. What do you want me to preach? I'll say it for you. False prophets avoided the real issues of sin and judgment. I'm always amused when somebody comes up to me and says, this church is just talking about sin too much. Every once in a while I have some baffoon come up and say that to my face. And I want you to know, we're concerned about sin. In the music presentation this morning, even though Guy was silent at one point, he illustrated for us that the gospel is important to us and we have to say something about sin. False prophets were every bit as much rebellious and disobedient towards God as the people that they supposedly were to stand before. Now, I recognize this morning that my heart's very black. Had I not come to Christ, you would be looking at a man with a black, black heart. But praise God, Because of his regeneration in my life, he has changed the black to his purity. And his purity doesn't have any gray in it or any black specks in it. His purity is white. And I am by no means perfect. But I'm moving towards, as you have heard preached in the last three weeks, I'm moving towards sanctification and glorification. And there will come that time in my life and in your life as a believer where all rebellion will no longer be a possibility. It will not be a possibility. False prophets would try to turn Israel away to false gods. Beloved, I think we live in a day and age today where we do not appreciate what it looks like to have a false god. Most people, especially here in America, and I'm gonna say since I moved to Monument, Colorado, the capital of all the nature worshipers that I've ever met in my life, We do not appreciate what false gods look like. The Bible says God is a jealous God. And he's not going to allow any false god to take his place. I'll have to come back to that in just a minute. And then the last thing that you see here delineated is that false prophets might speak in God's name, but his prophecy would not come to pass. Now, I have to tell you, when I study the prophets, Here's why I get excited about this segment of the Bible. I get excited because I am strengthened in my understanding that God is sovereign in his control of his kingdom. He is sovereign in his control. I'd love to preach to you this morning, but I can't, a sermon on the will of God. How does God's sovereignty reveal itself in his world, in your life personally, in our church? That would be a great sermon. I might get to do it five years from now. I am strengthened when I study the prophets in my personal faith. I read the prophets, whether major or minor, and my faith is encouraged. I'm not discouraged by what I read. Some of it, I don't understand. Going through Daniel, I was somewhat lost a time or two. I know nobody else was lost, but I'll admit it. You get into the book of Revelation, and there are some things in there, in that prophecy, New Testament prophecy, that apocalypse that is hard to understand. But overall, as we study the prophets, as I study the prophets, my faith is encouraged. And I am motivated, because of this segment of Scripture, to be a holy individual and to avoid sinful living. Now, everywhere you go in Scripture, you are exhorted, live a pure life. But in the prophets you see especially the consequences of disobedience and rebellion. So that motivates me. stallion inside of me wants to jump the fence line of God's moral standards for my life to live a holy, pure life, and I want to go over that fence into the far country, I'm quickly brought back to my senses. Be a holy person. And I'm reminded that as a Christian, I am to serve God, and I am to serve others. Now, I got all of that out of the prophets. I didn't go to anywhere else in the Bible. We don't have enough time for me to tell you what I would get from the rest of the Bible. But as you study this marvelous section of Scripture called the prophets, God will speak to your heart. You know, in summary, because I have 15 minutes to talk to you about Hosea, Prophets, the prophets are a progress report about how God wants life to be lived. Do you remember when you went to school, you got a progress report in midterm, mid nine weeks, six weeks, whatever the semester was? And the progress report, you'd take it home and you would humbly submit it to your parents and pray for grace and mercy, or at least that's what I did. The prophets give us a progress report of how we are to live life under God's righteous rule. So, in your Bible, turn to page 751 to the book of Hosea. Hosea is mentioned only in this book that bears his name. He is a contemporary with three other prophets, Amos, Isaiah, and Micah. He preached for about 40 years to the northern kingdom. Occasionally he would say something about Judah. He was placed in a kingdom where every one of the 19 kings was extremely wicked. That was highly, highly normal. Now Judah had three kings that were considered somewhat decent, but not Israel. You remember after the Northern Kingdom split from the Southern Kingdom, ten tribes went north to make up the north, and two tribes stayed in the south. Jeroboam I, the first king of the northern kingdom, he was afraid that the Israelites were going to go back to Jerusalem to worship. And he remembered what had happened under Moses and Aaron when the Israelites made a calf out of gold and worshipped it. And so Jeroboam I was no dummy. And he said, I'm not making you an idol to worship, but I am making for you a representation of something that will remind you about the true worship of God. It's sort of like those of us who wear crosses around our neck or have them tattooed on our bodies. They're visible reminders. We don't worship them, but they remind us. And Jeroboam I, said, we're not worshiping a false god, but we are going to remember who God is. And he set up idols, that's what they were, even though he said they weren't, at Bethel and Dan. And with each generation that passed, instead of the people drawing closer to God, they got farther and farther away. And every king, without exception, pulled the people away from the worship of God. The prophecy of Hosea affords all who will pay attention, that's Israel and that's you and me here this morning, a beautiful real and life presentation of God's judgment and wrath of his love and of his mercy. While the prophet Jeremiah is referred to as the weeping prophet of the south, Hosea is called the weeping prophet of the north. Those who have preached in this pulpit for the last three or four Sundays have reminded us that God hates sin and that he reacts to sin in wrath. It has been well stated that we sometimes ignore this side of God's character, and even more often we misunderstand it. Some people see God's wrath against sin as a temper tantrum, as if God was in a bad mood. The reality is that God does not stand by idly and let sin forever hurt and wound his creation. He judges sin with wrath. We've been reminded of this. Of course he has wrath against sin. He sees clearly, as none of us can, what sin does to those who are oppressed, to those who are hurting. He sees that sin will destroy our children. It will tear up our marriages. It will separate us from him. There's nothing that sin can do that will profit you in life. In fact, if you go far enough away from God, you will experience His wrath, not just in the present moment through discipline and punishment, but you will experience His wrath into eternity. God is not an angry God of the Old Testament and a loving God in the New Testament. The same side of God's character that caused him to deal with sin and sweeping judgment caused him to send his son to die on the cross and to take the penalty of our sin. Hosea's whole life was an object lesson for Israel. You remember his story. He was told to take a wife who would become unfaithful. They had three children, and at least two of those children may not have been his own. If you have the King James Version of the Bible, there's a certain word that's used there, Israel has gone, and I won't use that word today out of respect for our children who are in this room, but I will tell you that wherever he went, wherever Hosea went, he was an object lesson for Israel. And I have to ask you this day, as you think about Hosea's life, and he eventually found his wife in the slave market and bought her back to himself, and thus, typified God's great love and redemption plan for all mankind, I want to ask you, if I could ask you just one question, it would be this question. What kind of life's message are you preaching today? What is your life saying to your family, to your loved ones, to your work associates, to your community? And yes, what is your life saying right here in this church? What is your life message? When one examined the dire conditions of Hosea's time and work, it is quite obvious that the nation is far away from God. far away from God's plan and was deserving of God's wrath. Hosea 4 verses 1 and 2 and 9 here delineate for us the kinds of stuff that was going on in Israel, in the land. Not very good stuff there as you read, swearing, lying, murder, stealing, committing adultery, bloodshed, And we say, oh, I'm not that bad. Well, we could be that bad, especially if our spiritual leaders emulate that, because that's what happened in Israel. The priests, who should have known better, according to the book of Hosea, they began to give a testimony of sorriness, and the people followed the priest example. I want you to remember today that spiritual leaders will give a greater account according to the Word of God about how we live our lives, whether we are a pastor, a missionary, or whoever we are, what kind of person we are in spiritual authority, we are going to stand before God and we are going to give a great account. And so you see these passages here that are going to flash on the screen for you, Luke chapter 12, James, 3.1 and Hebrews 13.17. Whenever you begin to take for granted God's perimeters, you will allow into your life, first and foremost, a very permissive spirit. It's okay just this one time if I do this. When you begin to doubt God's word, when you begin to change God's word, when you choose that you do not want to obey God's word, you're going to become permissive. permissive. And then you're going to get to the place where you have tolerance in your life. It's really not that bad, it's just not bad at all. That's what was happening in Israel in Hosea's day. And then, even though this is a modern-day word, it happened a long time ago, it's called pragmatism. Whatever works best as opposed to, let's trust God. Whatever works, let's just do it, instead of following God. And ultimately, you will find yourself at the altar of self-centeredness. It's all about me. It's all about my life. It's all about my feelings. Hosea showed his people that the mixture of Baalism, which was the Canaanite worship, which is absolutely an abomination in God's ultimate plan. I can't tell you how bad the Canaanite worship was. Probably the second worst thing to, second to it would be the worship of the Moabites. But it was awful stuff. And he showed the Israelites who began to toy around, according to the book of Hosea, with Baalism. And he said very clearly to them that mixing Baalism with their worship of Jehovah was rank paganism. What are you toying around with today in your life? What do you consider just a little old sin? And you know that God's Word says this is rank paganism. Whatever you're toying around with, you have crossed a line away from Jehovah God. And that's what Hosea was saying. Now, let's turn in our Bibles to Hosea 11. And as you're doing that, slide number 37, Carolyn, the Bible tells us in Hosea, that the people, instead of turning towards God, decided they would find a new savior and go to Assyria. They would go to the nation of Assyria, to King Tiglath-Pileser, and there they would find, ultimately, freedom from the harshness of Jehovah God in their life. Assyria would be their reference, their point where they could do whatever they wanted to do. God is going to bring punishment to them. Instead of freedom, he's going to bring enslavement. And then we come to this beautiful passage. He's saying, I'm going to punish you. Hosea 11. Let me call attention to verses 1 and 2. When Israel was a child, I loved him. I loved him when he was a child. Out of Egypt, I called him my son." The more they were called, the more they went away. That's Gary Long's story. I remember God calling me, and the more he called me, the more I didn't want anything to do with God, and I tried to get away. They kept on sacrificing, it says in verse 2, to the Baals, and they burned offerings. But look at verse three, yet I, it was I who taught Ephraim, which is another name for Israel. Ephraim was the biggest tribe in the north. I taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. led them with cords of kindness and with bands of judgment, with bands of fear, with bands of wrath." No, that's not what the word says. I led them with bands of love. God loves you. That's not a new truth for us today as a church, but it is a truth that some of us in this room must embrace, afresh and anew. Because you see, there's someone in your life who will only change when they see the love of God through you. Love is concern for the welfare of another, even above one's own welfare. Associated with love is the word mercy, slide 45. In the Hebrew language, the word for mercy comes from the same root word as a mother's womb. It is caring for that which is completely helpless. Caring for one who's completely helpless, mercy. Aren't you glad for God's love and mercy in your life today? Aren't you glad that he gave us the prophets? If you see God as being unapproachable, then you will never be able to see him as relational. And neither will the world that God has called you to be a witness in. before you can come to the conclusion that you are wrong, you have to admit God is right. God is right. I've asked John to come and to sing an old hymn. It was written over a hundred years ago. It's a song about the love of God, an old hymn. David Allen Hubbard said of Hosea, There is a sense in which Hosea gives us a preview of the cross. Hosea was a cross-bearer, a man who was wounded for the transgressions of others, who was bruised for their iniquities. The redemptive suffering of Christ becomes more meaningful to us as we vicariously share the experience of Hosea, whose home became his Gethsemane, whose marriage became his Calvary. Many times he must have wished this cup be taken from him. Yet the great nevertheless, thy will be done, became the rule of Hosea's life. And beloved, it must become our rule too. It must become our rule too. Hosea's name means savior, salvation. Jesus is my savior, my salvation. and God willing, your Savior, your salvation, because of his great love.