We're going to be in the book of Hosea. We started a couple weeks ago a series on the book of the Twelve, also known as the Minor Prophets. Our idea here is we wanted to spend time getting to know these books that oftentimes are kind of overlooked and sometimes be a little hard to read, the imagery's a little hard to understand, and it's so much easier to read the book of John or 1 Corinthians, you know? But we want to unpack these. These are a wealth of knowledge and images of God and who God is. And so we desire to do that and the goal today is just to orient you a little bit to Hosea. Two weeks ago we spent time orienting to the entire corpus of the book of the 12 and talked about why they're viewed as a unit in antiquity and some of the themes of the 12 as a whole. Today we want to jump in individually to the individual book of Hosea and just give you some tools to have as we go through it and maybe as you read it on your own, some background information, some themes of Hosea, why it unfolds and works the way it does. And just to kind of do that, so that as we begin into it, we'll know what some of the main ideas are, so we won't lose the forest for the trees, okay? And our title today, anyone here like old school Petra fans? There's a few. Wow, awesome. Dance with the One Who Brung You. Pete would recognize this, right? Unseen Power, one of their best albums. And this is a great song on that album. And the whole theme of it was stay with the One who brought you here. And that's the theme of Hosea. They walked away from their God. They thought there were greener pastures, better options outside of Yahweh. People who, gods and powers, earthly powers that would better meet their needs than Yahweh. And the way it's portrayed in the book of Hosea is spiritual unfaithfulness, spiritual adultery. And Hosea forces us, a couple things, to think about God and his love for his unfaithful children, it also causes us to examine our own lives and ask ourselves, in what ways have I been the unfaithful bride? to a God who has given me so much, to a God who loves me so much. So what I wanna do today is we're gonna really just focus in on one verse, the superscription here, and I'll say a one-one, kinda give some background to that. But what I wanna do for our reading today is read a one-one and then read three other passages, verses, that kinda just help give you the snapshot of the book of Hosea and what's going on. They're not the most important verses, in the prophetic word here, but they're helpful to understand the direction of Hosea and the trajectory of Hosea. So I wanna start here in Hosea chapter four, Hosea chapter one, we'll get to chapter four in a minute, and I wanna read just verse one. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, Keep that in mind, that'll be important in a few minutes. Kings of Judah. And in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, the northern kingdom. Flip over to Hosea chapter four, verse one. Again, I wanna walk through just three verses here that kinda give you a snapshot of what's going on in Hosea. Chapter four, verse one. Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel. For the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness. or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land. No faithfulness, steadfast love, spiritual adultery on the part of God's people. They've left, they've walked away from their faithful God. Flip over to Hosea chapter 11. Hosea chapter 11, verses eight through nine. And there we read, After we read about Israel's rebellion and apostasy, how can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man. And the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. And one more, look at chapter 14, verse two. Let me read verses one and two. Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take with you words and return to the Lord. Say to him, take away all iniquity except what is good, and we will pay with bulls the vows of our lips. Repentance. That leads to God's favor. God, we pray this morning that you would just take your word and press it on our hearts. This prophetic word has been around for centuries. Ancient, and yet, God's so applicable to today. Meaningful today. Given us a picture of who you are in calling us to a place of repentance, right relationship with you so that we can experience all that you desire for us. We're relying on you this morning, God. I pray that you would take your word, teach us the power of your spirit. And as always, we pray this for the glory of Jesus, the sake of the kingdom. In Jesus' name we pray, amen, amen. I'm gonna start with a question here today. Have you ever been betrayed or suffered the loss of a close personal relationship? Ever been hurt by someone else? Felt betrayed by someone else? I mean, all of us probably think back to our high school days, right? The crush we had, like someone else, right? This is a real part of our existence. I mean, think of all the love songs that have been written over the years that express this feeling of betrayal, right? Any Rod Stewart fans? When the one you love's in love with someone else, don't you know it's torture? Rod writes, Chicago. So many songs Chicago wrote, right? If you see me walking by and the tears are in my eyes, look away. Baby, look away, right? And the whole thing's predicated on this. You called me this morning and told me you'd found a new love, right? And so he's brokenhearted. I could sing some Michael Bolton for you. So no, I won't do that. You can tell how old I am by the references. I could reference country music, right, when I said probably 75% of country music is about betrayal and loss, and you left me, and the other 25% is about pickup trucks, right? Kidding. Kidding, Andrew. I'm sorry. Right? But this is a theme, right? And why is it, it resonates with us, because this is just part of our world. Again, we all remember in high school, But not to completely make light of this, because really, betrayal hurts, right? Move beyond that and think about betrayal. In my mind, I went to a couple places where betrayal probably feels the worst. The parent-child relationship, right? Child that you've loved and nurtured, and that child turns on us in rejection. That hurts, stabs, right? Husband-wife relationship, when one cheats on the other and that marriage covenant is violated, that brokenness, it shatters, right? This is very real, painful. One of the things Hosea is helping us to see is that God has been on the receiving end of our betrayal, betrayal of his people, people he's loved. Isaiah gives this great picture of a vineyard that God has lovingly planted and nurtured and walled in and protected, and yet this vineyard grew up to produce evil. It pierces the heart of God. Hosea is communicating that to us. So again, what Hosea wants us to do is to contemplate a God who has been pierced by our unfaithfulness. And the other thing Hosea wants us to do is examine the ways in which we've committed spiritual adultery. We've been the one who's inflicted that on our loving Heavenly Father who created us. Years back, I was going through a box in the basement. My parents had brought a couple things over that were still at their house, and I was going through this box, college papers, and I found this letter from a girl who had been one of my best friends in high school. Amy was her name, Amy Green. And our parents were youth leaders together. And Amy, she was never a girlfriend. It was never like a romantic thing. She was like my sister. And, you know, you've heard the story, I mean, we lived 40 miles from where we went to church there, and so sometimes on Sunday afternoons, instead of driving all the way home, we'd just go to Rob and Cindy's house, the Greens' house, and spend the afternoon there, and we'd just hang out. And so, yeah, Amy was like my sister, and we both went to Bible college together at Word of Life. And I got there, and... I had a couple of these jobs on campus that were considered really cool, and so I, in all honesty, probably just got a little full of myself and had kind of a new, cool group of friends. And I found this letter that Amy had written probably two months or so after we had been at school, and the gist of it was, where'd you go, man? Where'd you go? I thought you cared about me. Like, I used to be able to tell you, like, you don't even pay attention. And it pierced my heart all over. I mean, this is years later. It's like, man, I inflicted that sense of pain on someone who cared about and cared about me. And I'm like, man, I did that. And what I've been confronted with as I've read Hosea is like, man, how many times do I do that to my God, right? This is what Hosea does for us. Hosea is meant to be felt. I really believe that. The book of Hosea is meant to be felt. You read it and it evokes some emotion in you. As you read about how God has been betrayed by his unfaithful bride, you need to feel that, sense that, the heaviness of it, the heart of God as he experiences that, right? So we're gonna jump into that and unpack that here over the next few weeks. So it leads to our first point here. And betrayal is the underlying theme of Hosea's prophetic message. At times, Hosea can be kind of graphic. Try to deal with that carefully, but it's here. So we wanna deal with it, right? Fornication, adultery, harlotry, these are the graphic themes that run through Hosea's prophetic book. We'll see these next couple of weeks that this is what characterized Israel. her relationship with God, right? So again, Israel betrayed God in two ways, really. One, by relying on Baal and otherworldly powers for help, for security, for meeting of their needs. This isn't too hard for us to imagine, right? Imagine dads or husbands, as a husband, that your wife, instead of coming to you with problems or advice, she's going to another guy. That wouldn't sit real well with us, would it? Or our kids, we find out our kids, they're not talking to us, they're continually, my son, my daughter, they're going to someone else constantly to get advice and help. That would pierce a little bit, right? And these are the two images that Hosea really uses, the husband-wife relationship and the father-son relationship. And Israel stopped going to God. trusting in other things for help and security. One of the things we'll see is that they trusted, they came to trust in politics more than God. That'll preach, right? An election year, in about a month or so, a couple months, month and a half away, right, we can get so caught up in that, like, oh, you know, if this person gets in office, like, oh, everything's gonna, stop it. No, it's not. My faith, my security isn't bound up who sits in that office in Washington DC. Israel's security and faith wasn't bound up in Assyria. There's a greater power on the throne. Don't go looking for security and help other places. Ahaz demonstrates in this wayward spirit, 2 Kings 16. So Ahaz sent messengers to Tiglath Pileser, king of Assyria, saying, I am your servant and your son. This is the king of Judah. Judah, right, descendant of David, I am your servant and your son. Come up and rescue me from the hand of the king of Syria and from the hand of the king of Israel who are attacking me. Ahaz also took the silver and gold that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king's house and sent a present to the king of Syria. He's taking God's possessions from God's temple and going, here, king of Assyria, I give this to you, come help me. That's a problem. Right? It goes on just a little bit later in the passage. I like how the NIV actually rendered this. He took away, Ahaz took away the Sabbath canopy. So again, he's taking things away from the temple that has been built at the temple and removed the royal entryway outside the temple of the Lord in deference to the king of Assyria. It's a spiritual adultery, no longer looking to God. In deference, the king of Assyria became more important to him than the king of the universe. And we do the same thing sometimes, right? By relying on Assyria, Israel affirms the claim that Assyria's God, Asher, is more powerful than Yahweh. They also demonstrate betrayal by worshiping idols, giving their affections to idols and other false gods. There's 150 statements, give or take, concerning Israel's sins in Hosea. Idolatry is mentioned in about half of them. More on that in just a minute. But these are the ways that they betrayed Yahweh. Here's one of the major things I want you to have in your mind as we go through Hosea. Kinship imagery is central in Hosea's prophetic message. Kinship imagery. Mary said just a minute ago, I think two of the most powerful places of betrayal are in the marriage relationship and in the parent-kid relationship. It's interesting that those are both the images that God uses, that Hosea uses in his prophetic book. to demonstrate unfaithfulness and the hurt that goes with it. So we tend to think of God as judge, especially throughout the prophetic word, and it's there. There's courtroom language and covenant lawsuit language throughout the prophets, but Hosea doesn't really emphasize that as much. It's in there, but he doesn't emphasize that as much as he does this kinship angle. The use of family metaphors, like I said a minute ago, marriage and sonship, this is what he uses to describe Yahweh's relationship with his people. Yahweh and Hosea is not just an uncaring God, an uncaring judge in a sterile courtroom setting that can't wait to punish you for your sin. Ah, man. Jaden, I can't, oh, oh, don't do it, don't, if you do, I can't, oh, yep, you just did it again. Ah. Got him. you little, you know? But sometimes that's how we can, we come to view God that way sometimes, don't we? Man, if I mess up again, he's just gonna, he's gonna squash me because he's just angry with me. You ever felt, I get in those funks, I'm like, God just doesn't like me. He's angry with me all the time. He's a judge, you just can't wait to bring the hammer down. That's not how he's portrayed in Hosea. Portrayed as family. New Testament carries a sovereign play. I love the passage in Hebrews where it says that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers. What? Family? Jesus is not afraid to say that I'm part of his family? It's crazy. It's crazy. Hosea has this theme throughout. Throughout the Old Testament, God's relationship to Israel was figuratively portrayed as a relationship of a husband who was bride. See this in other prophetic places. And this is why the sin of idolatry was akin to adultery. Jeremiah 3 writes about this. Jeremiah, by the way, probably depended heavily on Hosea's prophecy in his own writing. But like a woman, unfaithful to her husband, so you, Israel, have been unfaithful to me. So the Gomer narrative in the first three chapters of Hosea really sets the tone for the book, and we'll get into it more in the next couple weeks. But the picture of God's relationship to his people and his grace toward them, as portrayed in Hosea's relationship with Gomer, presents an unprecedented view of deity in the ancient Near East. The gods of the ancient Near East did not view their subjects as family. They were capricious, they were vindictive. And their goodness to you was based on your goodness to them. And they certainly did not come pursuing people they were angry with. They hated you, they punished you. But a god who comes after a wayward, brightest foreign, But yet that's who Jose is introducing us to. A God who loves like vats, willing to take back an unfaithful bride after being shamed. and the father-son relationship in Hosea. I love this passage. Think about this. Dads, think about this. Moms, think about this, too. Think about your kids, right? You have your kid. Look at how God is talking about Israel here. When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt, I called my son. The more they were called, though, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I, again picture you caring for your child when they're little, caring for them, holding them in your arms, feeding them, right? This is what God's doing here, this is the image. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, right? You're sitting there walking with your infant, come to dad, you know you're walking, letting go. This is the image that God is presenting of himself with his people. I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them. God. Just the way I interacted with Chrissa and Hannah and Megan, Zach and Tyler, when their loving dad, protecting, holding them in thunderstorms because they're scared, making sure they have food, Protecting them. That parent imagery is what Hosea wants us to grasp here. Through Hosea, we see a father who is torn between punishing his wayward son and saving him. There's a deep emotional attachment. Which, by the way, when we understand this background and the prophets, it makes Jesus' parable, the prodigal son in Luke 15, even more pointed, doesn't it? The father runs after his wayward kids. It's rooted in the prophetic word. There's a cool thing here too, the exclusivity of Yahweh and his covenant with his people. The gods of the ancient, Baal and El, the two major gods, they had multiple lovers. They went after whoever did the most for them. This is contrasted with Yahweh and his singular devotion to his people and his family, which was not reciprocated. But God stays faithful. We're gonna see how God stays faithful to his people as we go through Hosea. But for now, let's move on with our survey. Hosea prophesied during times that were turbulent and chaotic, due mostly to Israel's sin and unfaithfulness. Should get rid of the word mostly. Due to Israel's sin and unfaithfulness. Man, it was a bad situation. And it was chaotic. And they were in the middle of it. And it was the penalty for their sin. It was the consequences of their own sin. So we read this, this Hosea 1.1, we'll talk about some of these kings here in just a minute. One of the things that came up a couple weeks ago, and this was a great conversation, it was even a conversation with Megan around the dinner table just saying, you know, the Minor Prophets are so kind of obscure. Could you help us understand the time in which they ministered? So, this is a little bit smaller than what I would have liked, but I want to help you locate the Minor Prophets' ministry in the meta-narrative of Scripture and in the Old Testament. So, you can see this big block up here. Here's the United Kingdom of Israel. So you have Saul, David, Ishbeth, Seth was there just a little bit, David and then Solomon. So these were good days in Israel, the Saul thing didn't work that great, but the rest of it was pretty good, right? And you had some prophetic, some prophets there, you had Samuel and Nathan. And then after Solomon dies, the kingdom splits. So you have Judah over here, You have their series of kings, and a lot of these guys were really good guys. Not perfect, we'll see that in just a minute, but still had a semblance of spiritual sensitivity to them. This is why Judah hung on a little bit longer than the Northern Kingdom did, because they were a little bit more sensitive to God. Judgment didn't come against them as quickly. The Northern Kingdom, Israel, this is a train wreck from day one. And you go through this list of kings, and you find very, very, very little good to speak of amongst these guys. So you get down here after a few years, and here is Hosea. And I'm gonna go to the next slide here to show you where Hosea is at. So here's Hosea, and he prophesied with Amos and Jonah. And somewhere during their prophetic ministry, Isaiah and Micah come on the scene, and then following them afterwards is Nahum and Daniel and Obadiah. And so you have, here are the kings that are mentioned. There's Uzziah, there's Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. So these are the four southern kings that are mentioned in Isaiah 1.1. And then Jeroboam II is mentioned as the northern king. None of these guys put a big X through them. They were so insignificant and so vile and they were just killing each other that they're not even acknowledged. They made no difference other than contribute to more wickedness. So they're not even mentioned. But there's kind of the time in which these prophets prophesied. And Hosea, his ministry was about 40, 45 years. Great theological term here, ish, okay? 45 years ish, give or take, and we know that because we know he started with King Uzziah, so we don't know when in that time period when he began, and we know he ministered at least to Hezekiah's time. So sometime after 729 and sometime after 792 is when he ministered. He preached, oh, and the other significant thing about this is most likely that Hosea was prophesying and saw the fall of the Northern Kingdom. That's significant, we'll talk about that in a minute. But he probably was still prophesying when Assyria leveled Israel and took them into captivity. Most commentators think that Hosea escaped, to the Southern Kingdom, and we'll talk about that here in just a minute. But here's another significant thing I want you to tuck away. Hosea's ministry also, even though he preached to the North, had a lot of significance for the Southern Kingdom. This is why we say this. We mentioned this a couple weeks ago, but this is why we say this. A prophet who preached to the North, and yet at the beginning of his book, four Southern kings are highlighted. and only one northern king. Why would a prophet who preached to the north, the beginning of his recorded prophetic word, highlight four southern kings? You would think it would highlight all northern kings, right? Well, the speculation is this, that this is some sort of compositional strategy, okay? It probably points to some kind of editorial work and compilation, most likely in Judah, after the fall of Samaria, with the intent of capturing Judah's attention. You start the written work highlighting southern kings because you want the southern kingdom to stand up and take notice, that this message wasn't just for the north. And I believe it was put together, that there's authors here, that doesn't take away from Hosea's ministry, he preached this, but probably these authors, these compilers, took his messages, perhaps even carried to Judah by Hosea himself, and compiled it to serve as a warning to the southern kingdom that stand up and pay attention, right? It is speculated, like I said, that Hosea's message was carried, maybe by Hosea himself, to the south, where scribes, and this is kind of the most popular speculation here, where scribes in Hezekiah's court, Hezekiah cared deeply about following the law, right? That scribes in Hezekiah's court maybe compiled it along with other 8th century books, such as Amos and Micah and Isaiah. And the reason why scholars say that is because if you look in Proverbs, Proverbs chapter 25, verse one, it tells us that the Proverbs were compiled by scribes in Hezekiah's court. So we know from Proverbs that Hezekiah's court was concerned about compiling, and was concerned about preserving God's word and God's truth. And so Hezekiah may very well have been responsible for some of the compilation of the 12 prophets in their early stages. Now again, this is speculative, but it's reasonable. But here's why it's noteworthy. Again, scholars feel like this was done so that these prophetic words would speak to Judah that also was at a crossroads themselves, right? The difference between the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom is this. The Northern Kingdom heard the prophetic word, didn't obey, and were carried off in captivity. The Southern Kingdom heard the prophetic word, they didn't listen either, but the difference that they had, the advantage that they had, is they saw what happened to the Northern Kingdom. They had, most likely, the words of Hosea and some of these other, and they still ignored it. That's significant, right? And we know that. Second Kings addresses this. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, the northern kingdom, and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah, the southern kingdom. But Judah also did not keep the commandments of the Lord their God, but walked in the customs that Israel had introduced. They didn't listen. They learned nothing from Israel's demise. And the Lord rejected them too. He rejected all the descendants of Israel, northern kingdom and southern kingdom, and afflicted them and gave them into the hands of plunderers until he had cast them out of his sight. Northern kingdom didn't listen, southern kingdom didn't listen. So spiritually, both kingdoms end up in very dark places. Physically, it wasn't so bad. There was a lot of good that was happening, nationally, for both the northern and southern kingdoms. There was land expansion, there were new towns. Uzziah really strengthened Judah's military. So there could be a sense, this false sense of, oh, things are great, and we can be that way, right? If our finances are good, if the country's in a good place, we can go, oh, man, things are not bad, and we can be morally decayed on the inside. And ultimately, that's kind of what was going on here. There's a lot of good going on. There was a little bit of a time period there where the Assyrian Empire was temporarily weakened, and kingdoms like Israel and Judah really took advantage of that. Now, they came back with a vengeance, Assyria did, but some of these good things happened. So let me walk through some of these kings that are mentioned in Hosea 1, again, to help us understand the context in which Hosea is ministering. King Uzziah, you look in 2 Kings 15, that tells Uzziah's story. Uzziah was a pretty good dude. He did a lot of good, but 2 Kings 15 is quick to point out that he never completely removed the high places in Judah, the places of idolatry, and therefore the people continued to worship false gods there. The other problem with leaving these high places is even though some people went and they worshiped Yahweh in the high places, that was outside the bounds of what God prescribed, right? And that was part of the problem with Uzziah. Uzziah ultimately became prideful, because things were going so well, and he assumed a priestly function. Remember, Saul kind of did this too. And he was condemned for this. But instead of repenting of it, Uzziah became angry with the confrontation, and God struck him with leprosy. That account is in 2 Chronicles 26. You have Jotham who follows him. Jotham, also a pretty good dude. Says he also followed in the ways of the Lord, did many good things, but he also allowed the high places to stand. Kind of allowed this undercurrent of apostasy to still go on. So you're sensing a theme here. They were good people and doing some good things, but they didn't fully eradicate sin. They didn't go all the way. They kind of allowed compromise just a little bit. 2 Chronicles 27.2 tells us that the people under Jotham's reign continued to practice corrupt things. Ahaz, 2 Chronicles 28, Ahaz was all bad. There's nothing good about that dude. So pretty good dude, pretty good dude, bad dude. He actively participated in idol worship. You can read about him in 2 Chronicles 28. He even enabled, encouraged Baal worship. He didn't even try to hide it. Worship Baal, it's the best way, it's great. And he became increasingly wicked throughout his reign. But then you get, if you saw a picture, then you get to Hezekiah. Hezekiah, not just good dude, Hezekiah was great. You look at really three standout kings in Judaist history amongst some good ones, but the three standout kings in my mind would be David, and Hezekiah, and Josiah. And those are the three just really on fire for God and radical reforms. And so Hezekiah was a good guy. He was the one, again, the Proverbs seemed to have been compiled under. He purified the temple, he reinstituted Passover and other aspects of Israel's worship that had been neglected. And unlike his predecessors, Hezekiah did wipe out the high places. There was national reform under Hezekiah. So good guy. This is probably, Hezekiah may be a big reason why the judgment against Judah was delayed, as long as it was. And then the one northern king mentioned is Jeroboam II, and he was bad all the way through. He went the way of the sins of his namesake, Jeroboam I. He was the first king to really introduce evil practices of worship in the northern kingdom. He's the one who created two bulls and said, here, Israel, these cows, they're the ones who led you out of Egypt, and instituted shrines and false worship. And Jeroboam II just kinda continued that same spirit of idolatry. That's just a sampling of the evil that was going on amongst their leadership. That's going on amongst the leadership. You know that the rest of it was pretty corrupt throughout, right? So we'll get more into some of that as we look throughout the book, but you can summarize the evil and wickedness in these kingdoms. Three I's, three words that start with I. Injustice, immorality, and idolatry. Injustice, immorality, and idolatry. And those really are the things that they're hammered for throughout the prophetic word. Worship of Baal. They look to Baal for their provision instead of God. This is the unfaithfulness. Hosea 2.8, and she, my people, Israel, did not know that it was I, Yahweh, who gave her the grain, the wine, the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal. Because in their mind, Baal gave it to us. We sing this morning, it's your breath in my lungs, so I give that back to you. The way they viewed it is, it's your provision, Baal, so we give it back to you. They looked to Baal. They credited Baal with providing for them. Here's the thing, though, I want you to have in your mind. I think sometimes we hear about this time and we're like, oh, they were completely pagan. Israel had become completely secular. It's not really true. Israel, and we read this in places like Isaiah, where God said, stop, they were still offering sacrifices, they were still bringing stuff to the temple, and through Isaiah, God's like, stop, knock it off. You just don't offer up sacrifices to me. Because you're doing that, but you're doing all this other stuff, too. And here's a statement I want you to keep in mind, that the biggest problem here wasn't that Israel completely forgot God. They didn't worship other, instead of Yahweh, they worship others as well as Yahweh. They didn't worship instead of Yahweh, they worshiped as well as Yahweh. They just added to it. And we do the same thing, right? Oh, I can go to church on Sunday, I can work in the nursery every night, and I can do that, but I can have this from the world too. I can allow this sin to go on unchecked in my life too, and I can have both. And that was the problem. They had both. No concept of the holiness of God. I could just do whatever I want and add it to God, and God says, no, that's not acceptable worship. We'll continue on with our survey here as we begin to wrap up. Hosea. is notoriously difficult to outline and interpret. I was getting so frustrated. So one of the things I've done to try to get a grip on these books is I've written them out, not just read them, but I've actually written them out in a composition book, and I'm writing out Hosea, and I'm like, this is the, why did I, why did I, I can't, I don't know how to organize this. This was the worst idea I've ever had, and I've had some bad ones. and I'm lining up some guys to preach here, when different Sundays, and when we've gone, and they're like, what passage am I preaching on? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I don't even know what passage I'm preaching on. I can't decide, like, where one thought ends. Like, bring me back to Paul, where it, like, makes sense, you know? And so, I'm kind of frustrated with this. Hosea is, by far, the most difficult of the 12 to outline. I became very encouraged starting to read some of the commentators, and read things like this. Jerry Huang, in his commentary of the Baker series, The prophetic oracles of Hosea can sometimes unfold in a non-linear way, I'm like, yes, that defy our attempts to understand them. These features lend the book of Hosea its distinctive character as a collection of turbulent literary forms, amplified through a messenger's agonized life in order to enact a searing theological message. So Hosea's not really parallel like a lot of other Hebrew poetry is. There's no discourse markers like thus says the Lord, like we have in Amos. It was written with broken chiasms and wordplay and kind of an eccentric style. Don't say this to discourage you. I say this actually to encourage you, like, okay, you're not alone, right? And one of the things they say that Hosea, my Hebrew is not good enough to pick this up, but one of the things they say about Hosea was Hosea was written in a distinctly northern dialect. And that was preserved. And you talk to someone from a different part of the country sometimes. I remember when my mom grew up, born and raised in Texas. And she talked about when she moved to Massachusetts, which, first of all, was hard as it was. Texas and Massachusetts, two very different places. Southern hospitality and northern hospitality, very, very different things. And then she talked about she'd go to the deli, the meat counter, and they'd ask her three or four times, not in the kindest way, to repeat what she just said, because it makes no sense. And she did. She said, I'd come home crying. Right? It's kind of like that. You get the sense that that's what they're dealing with, trying to interpret Hosea. It's this northern dialect. To help you with that, like, I grew up in Massachusetts, right? And Massachusetts does weird things. You're going to go to Massachusetts, and you're going to hear them talk. Like, these are names of towns in Massachusetts. Anyone take a stab? What's that first one? Anyone know? It's Situate. Yeah, that's good. The second one is Gloucester. The third one, Worcester. Haverhill. That one, you know what that one is? Lester. Like, Massachusetts loves using consonants that we don't actually use. The last one? Lemon stir. You're like, you got some things backwards there, Massachusetts, right? So, I think in Hosea, kind of like he's writing in this dialect that they're trying to decipher. Jerry Huang writes this, as far back as the translation of the Septuagint in the third century BCE and onwards, the book of Hosea has proven challenging to interpreters for its obscure terms, sudden topic shifts, awkward turns of phrase, and opaque imagery. It's like, yes, I'm not an idiot. John Golden Gay, another commentator, there are as many understandings of the structure of Hosea as there are scholars writing on the subject. Well, that's helpful. I paid $50 for a commentary to tell me that. All of these are not the answer, but they all illuminate and help us understand. Hosea the man is kind of viewed as a bit of an eccentric prophet and poet. But here's the thing, I don't tell you this again to discourage you. There's a brilliance seen in his writing, right? Odd metaphors cause us to think. People say Hosea is brilliant. They map him and they said, you know, there's three great poets in Hebrew history. The author of the book of Job, the author of the book of Song of Solomon, and Hosea. and they use imagery that causes us to really stop and think. There's some great metaphor for God. Here's metaphors used for God. Husband, then God's like a moth and like decay, and then he's like a lion and a cougar, and then he's like a father. He's like a lion and decay? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Ephraim, they're like an adulterer. They're like a half-baked pita. They're like a simple-minded pigeon. They're like a slack bow. Right, like, this guy's weird. No. No. Jose is a gift. Because it makes us slow down and think, right? It's like this guy, right? Yogi Berra, right? You hear what Yogi says, and it makes no sense. But then you sit back and you go, wait a minute. It's actually really deep. If you don't know where you're going, you might end up in the wrong place. In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. You've heard a lot of that. Baseball is 90% mental. The other half is physical. It gets late early out there. You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't come to yours. Like the last one there, we made too many wrong mistakes. But when you stop and think, you're like, actually, Hosea's a gift. Jerome, this ancient theologian, he writes this, Hosea is halting as if speaking in maxims. And I love this, this is almost funny. I think he's trying to be funny. Old theologians can be funny. I am one, right? If in the interpretation of all the prophets, we stand in need of the intervention of the Holy Spirit, how much more should the Lord be invoked, interpreting Hosea, and in St. Peter's words, should it be said, expound for us this parable. I found myself doing that in the sermon prep. God help me, I can't. More especially, is this the case since the author himself wrote at the end, whoso is wise, let him understand these things. thereby giving a precise indication of the obscurity of the book. Love that. Listen, don't be discouraged by that. Dive into Hosea, embrace it. Read it slowly, chew on it, it's rich. Our last point here, Hosea presents the loving heart of Yahweh as he deals with his unfaithful people. The loving heart of Yahweh. Harold Fish writes, Hosea, more than any other book of the Bible, gives us God's side of the relationship. As dominated by the first-person mode of address, as God himself cries out, cajoles, reprimands, mourns, and debates with himself. The trajectory of Hosea is a trajectory of redemption, of God's indictment against his unfaithful people, God's change of heart towards his unfaithful people, and God's offer of a restored relationship to his unfaithful people. In the book of Hosea, reconciliation arrives at the moment when estrangement seems most irreversible. God's agonizing love and emotional pain is felt throughout the book. We see just how much God cares. This tension. Sin must be punished, it's there. And yet God desperately wants another way. Does this sound familiar? It should. This is the gospel. Sin must be paid for. It must be paid for. And throughout scripture, the way sin was paid for, it was always exile. Adam and Eve exiled from the garden. Israel exiled from the land. And how is it gonna be solved? Because we're exiled as well. God says, as the loving father, I'll make it right. My son will go into exile so that people can be saved. And in the cross of Jesus, the perfect justice of God having to deal with sin and punish sin and the love of a good father, loving father meets in Jesus Christ and Jesus becomes our exile. Jesus becomes the object of God's punishment so that we didn't have to experience it. The tension of the Father is ultimately solved through the person and work of Jesus Christ. And remarriage to Yahweh as we repent will bring back all that was lost, all the blessings of the land, and a restored relationship with the Father. I love this quote. Again, why all these threats of punishment in the prophetic word? We read it, what a jerk God is. He can't wait to squish his people. If God wanted to punish us for sin, he could have done it right away. I love this. The reason why the God of all threatens punishment is not to inflict it on those he threatens, but to strike them with fear and lead them to repentance. And by ridding them of their wicked behavior, extend to them salvation. After all, if he wanted to punish, he would not threaten punishment. Instead, by threatening, he makes clear that he longs to save and not to punish. God loves us enough to say, if you continue in your sin, this is where it goes. But he loves us enough to map that out for us so that we will see that and turn to him and realize that there's hope in him and there's forgiveness in him, and that is the message of the prophets. I'm gonna ask our worship team to come back up. Here's a couple takeaways. Confess your own spiritual adultery to God. Confess your own spiritual adultery. James runs with this imagery from Hosea, James 4. He writes this, right? You adulterous people, what is adultery defined as in James' epistle? It's friendship with the world. We become a friend of the world, we become an adulterer spiritually. So you need to evaluate, in what ways have I become a friend of the world? But also understand this, God is a loving father and husband who loves you and wants you to be restored to him. He's chasing you down. One old writer put it, God is the hound of heaven, chasing you down, wants you to be restored to him. And I love this, your future's not determined simply by past failures. Israel did nothing to restore their relationship with God. It was all God in his grace and mercy. And he made a way for Israel to not be defined by their past failures, to find forgiveness and restoration and a new hope. Why? Because he's a loving husband and a loving father who never gives up. I'll close with this story before Griffin leads us in the last song. A few years back, someone at church here, when Carissa was really little, gave her a goldfish for her birthday, showed up at our front door. I'm like, oh, thanks. Goldfish. Chris was so excited. She named it Nemo, put it in a little tank on her dresser. She, like, kissed the tank goodnight before she went to bed. She's trying to pet Nemo. We're going to bed a couple hours later. Kathy comes in. She says, um, Craig? She goes, I don't know much about fish. But she goes, it's floating upside down at the top. Is that bad? I'm like, it's dead. You know what I did? I'd go 11 o'clock at night, take the dead goldfish, throw it in a Ziploc bag, and go to Walmart. The ladies there, can I help you? I'm like, I need to find one that looks just like this. And we're there digging through this tank. I mean, there's 100, and we're like, that one. We're trying to catch it. We get it. I buy it, bring it home, dump it. Now, maybe I shouldn't have deceived my daughter. But she woke up the next morning and first thing she did was go and visit Neem Hall. Why does a dad go out at 11 o'clock at night to replace a goldfish? Because you love your kids. You love them. You want their hearts to be healed. God sent his son out in the middle of the night to bring you back. as he's a loving father. Feel Hosea, feel the heart of God pursuing you.