Good evening. I like to start off this evening by actually reading a passage that's a little it's kind of in the periphery of. It's way on the outside edge of what we're talking about tonight. It's going to be referenced later on, so we're going to read it now. Yeah. We're going to talk about something loosely related. So this is out of Exodus chapter 15. It's taking place immediately after the Israelites have passed over on dry ground across the Red Sea. This is called this is one of the songs of Moses. OK, this is a proclamation of glory before God that is sung by Moses and the people of Israel. Says in chapter 15, beginning in verse one. Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord saying. I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. The Lord is my strength and my song and he has become my salvation. This is my God and I will praise him. My father's God and I will exalt him. The Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. Yahweh is his name. Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea. and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea. The floods covered them. They went down into the depths like a stone. Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power. Your right hand, O Lord, It shatters the enemy. In the greatness of your majesty, you overthrow your adversaries. You send out your fury. It consumes them like stubble. At the blast of your nostrils, the waters piled up. The floods stood up in a heap. The deeps congealed in the heart of the sea. The enemy said, I will pursue. I will overtake. I will divide the spoil. My desire shall have its fill of them. I will draw my sword. My hand shall destroy them. But you blew with your wind, the sea covered them, they sank like lead in the mighty waters. Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand, the earth swallowed them. You have led, in your steadfast love, the people whom you have redeemed. You have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. The people have heard. They tremble. Kangs have seized the inhabitants of Thalyssia. Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed. Trembling seizes the leaders of Moab. All the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away. Terror and dread fall upon them because of the greatness of your arm. They are still as a stone. till your people, O Lord, pass by, till the people pass by whom you have purchased. You will bring them in and plant them on your mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established. The Lord will reign forever and ever. May God bless this, the reading of his word. Let us come before him in prayer. Dear Lord, we ask for your blessing this evening as we read from your word. Lord, guide the proclamation of your glory. Instill in us a sense of awe for your majesty. Renew our hearts and draw us close to you as we read. Of the promises you have made to your people. to your bride. Help these things to sink deep into our hearts. Let us know that without a fact, these promises are for us. Give us strength, O Lord, give us boldness for your gospel and is in the name of your son, our most precious Savior, Jesus Christ, that we pray. Amen. So returning to the book of Hosea, we're in chapter two now. We've been moving at a. Semi rapid pace, moving through and trying to cover this glorious narrative in which God has revealed himself to his people. In this metaphor of a husband and a wife, and we see the wife as being unfaithful, but God, the husband being faithful to her in spite of herself. We're going to be focusing on verses 14 through 18 tonight, but I'm going to start reading in verse 13 because there's a very crucial therefore. That is nigh unto beyond comprehension. Verse 13 reads, and I will punish her for the feast days of the bales. When she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the Lord. We talked about this last week where she takes all of the things that God has granted her and she takes the abundance and she lavishes it on other gods and she attributes it to other gods and she seeks after other lovers. After other idols. And in doing so, God says she forgot me. So in following up after this verse, we would expect the natural conclusion would be a greater declaration of condemnation. She has forgotten me. She's gone after these other gods. She has forgotten me. Therefore, what? I will smite her. I will wipe her off from the face of the earth like we saw with the story of Moses. If you read through the story of Moses, God at one point comes to Moses and he says, I'm going to just wipe them off the face of the earth and I'm going to start over with you because these people are so sinful. This is what we expect. God says she went after other lovers and forgot me, declares the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her. or I will woo her, I will seek after her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her, or I will speak comfort to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Acre a door of hope, and there she shall answer or shall sing as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband and no longer will you call me my bail. For I will remove the names of the bales from her mouth and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow and the sword and war from the land. And I will make you lie down in safety. Quite a transition. Like I said, we see that, therefore, and we expect all kinds of condemnation to follow. That's the way that our mind works. If as a husband, you watch your wife go out and seek after other lovers. At the very most, you would think that this would be in spite of all that. I will still seek after her. But God says, therefore, behold, I will allure her. I will woo her. I will bring her into the wilderness and I will speak tenderly to her. This is the mysterious existence of God. But it helps us to gain just a little glimpse of the master plan, so to speak, that God seeks after a people that is unfaithful because it is the best way that he can show his steadfast love, his undying loyalty. And he says, because she is gone and done all these things, I will love her all the more. I will pour out my love on her and I will take her out and I will woo her. I will bring her to her most basic form and I will recast her as my bride. I'm going to take her out into the wilderness and I will speak comfort to her. Now, as I mentioned in an earlier lesson, when we hear the word wilderness, it's kind of an ethereal concept for some of us, but especially here in Arizona, we can understand the kind of wilderness that they're talking about. If you've driven from here to Phoenix, you've seen a similar wilderness to what they're talking about. When you look at Palestine, and especially this wilderness that exists between Egypt and and the nation of Israel between Egypt and Palestine, you see this vast open wilderness where there's very, very limited access to water, very, very limited access to food. And it's a concept of exile and it's a concept of isolation. When God brought Israel through to Palestine, he took this long route through the wilderness in order to isolate her from the rest of the world, in order to bring her into a period wherein he would speak to her, wherein he would make his covenant with her, wherein he would establish her as his people. But there's this concept of exile that's present here because the immediate context of what's going on is Israel is going to be taken out into exile. The nation of Israel is going to be drawn out And we saw earlier that he talks about, I will even kill her with thirst. I'm going to draw her out into the wilderness. She will be in exile. She will be drawn out of the promised land and she will no longer have all of this abundance which she took and lavished on other gods. I'm going to isolate her. I'm going to exile her and I'm going to recast my bride. We saw with. With Moses in Israel, how this is The process by which he establishes his people, but it's taking place in an entirely different way now. Now, most immediately, this has application to us because we exist as a people in exile. Some of you may remember some time back, I taught a lesson on existing as a people in exile. The two kingdoms doctrine is what we called it, where as God's people, as the church, we function more like Joseph did in Pharaoh's courthouse, or like Like Joseph did in Pharaoh's courthouse, or like Daniel did in Nebuchadnezzar's courthouse. That is how we function. We exist and we live among people who are not God's people. In our day-to-day life, we work alongside of them. We labor with them. We don't act like Ehud and go and try to, well, hopefully none of you will go and try to assassinate the king or uh... we're not gonna go there when i go there but that's not a christian duty is it's not a christian duty to go into those things whatever happens in politics happens in politics. But it's not our Christian duty to overthrow someone based on morality or based on those things. If you have a boss who is obviously out and living in the world and who is living in sin, it's not your obligation to by force cast them out of the nation because they're living in violation of God's covenant. Because this isn't As much as we say this is one nation under God, this is not a nation with whom God has made covenant. OK, so we exist as a people in exile and that affects everything that we do. So we read this and we we understand that this is what is taking place in our present life. Therefore, behold, I will allure her. I will bring her into the wilderness. We exist in the wilderness. And in this time, God speaks tenderly to his people to draw them to him, to raise them up as his people. But God is predicting that he is going to exile her, but he speaks of it in beautiful terms, that he is going to use this as an opportunity to reform her, to woo her, to draw her to himself. And he will speak comfort to her while she is in exile. Then as we move into this next segment, which I've called New Vineyards, which is really, really amazing. This has taken me, the majority of my lesson preparation for this has been spent just on this one verse. The vast majority has been spent just on this one verse. And there I will give her her vineyards Literally, I will give to her vineyards and make the Valley of Acre a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. Right. So we'll just kind of as a professor of mine once said, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? So we're just going to take this one little leg at a time. And there I will give to her vineyards or from there I will give to her vineyards. So what is there? What is the immediately preceding context? Sorry. A grape at a time. Not real sure what you mean by that, Jake, but good. The immediately preceding context is that God is going to take her out into the wilderness. I'm going to take her out into the wilderness and from there. I will give her vineyards. That means he's going to power of the wilderness. That's what the text is literally saying. I'm going to take her out of the land of milk and honey where vines grow naturally. And we saw earlier where he talks about, I'm going to take you out of those lands. I'm going to lay waste to them. And it's going to be the wild animals that will eat the grapes off of the vines that you once tended. And I'm going to drag you away from where you saw a naturally fruitful land. I'm going to drag you out into the wilderness and I'm going to give you vineyards there. In the wilderness. This is why I've spent so much time on this verse, because there's a lot of immediate difficulties that come into our minds, because if you're reading this just on the surface level, if you're looking just at the nation of Israel, Then they would naturally go, well, this isn't what we want. You're going to take us out into the wilderness. OK, you're going to woo us and OK, we have to live in exile for a while, but you're going to be faithful to your old covenant promises. Right. And you're going to bring us back into Palestine. Right. And we're going to get our vineyards back. Right. No, I'm going to take you out and I'm going to take you out into the wilderness. You're going to be recast. I'm going to woo you. You will be my people. But you're no longer going to be here where you had all of these things naturally occurring. I'm going to take you out into the wilderness, the most despairing and terrifying place that you can possibly be. You're going to live in exile. You're going to be isolated from everything that seemed to be so fruitful for you. And when you are there, when you have no means of supporting yourself, I'm going to give you vineyards. I'm going to bear fruit for you in the most desolate of places. I'm going to take, and from unlikely grounds, I'm going to bring forth the most beautiful fruit from the most unlikely vines I'm going to bring forth fruit. And when you are in tribulation, when you are under the heat and the turmoil and the difficulty of this world, I am going to use that wilderness to bring forth fruit in my branches. So here we see that he is establishing vineyards in the wilderness and from unlikely ground, he brings forth fruit. And then he says, and I will make the Valley of Acre. A door of hope. What is the Valley of Acre? All right, the Valley of Trouble, sure, jump ahead. I mean, where do we hear of? Where do we hear about the Valley of Acre? What is the significance of the Valley of Acre? It's actually where it gets its name. Yeah. Right. Akin. Akin was taken out when when when Israel first comes into the land, we're talking here. I have it marked. It's in Joshua, chapter seven. You see that. that when they come in and they lay waste to Jericho, it was this harem warfare. They're supposed to go through and annihilate everything. You kill every man, every woman, every child. You burn the city to the ground. You lay waste to everything. You don't take gold. You don't take vessels. You don't take prisoners. You don't take cattle. You don't take anything. You burn it all. And the significance of that was because Palestine, It is a foreshadowing of heaven. It's the promised land. The promised land for us is not to move over to where we got the Mediterranean on one side. That's not where we're headed. The promised land for God's people in the ultimate reality is heaven. That is what the real promised land is. OK, so the harem warfare was God's way of saying my land must be pure. you will take and you will lay waste to all of these things. This gold and these cattle that are used to worship other gods, you must lay waste to it. You must purify this land. So when they go through and they do that at Jericho, Achan takes some of the gold and some of the treasures and some of the loot and he takes it and he buries it underneath of his tent. Then Joshua, goes forth with the army to continue the conquest of Palestine and they come up to the next city and they just get slaughtered. So Joshua comes and he speaks before God and he weeps before God and he says, God, why have you brought us into Palestine just to have us killed? You could have killed us just as easily out in the wilderness. And God says, I am punishing the people because one has sinned. One has has coveted all of these things. He has held to the things that I have declared to be idolatrous, that I have declared to be sinful. And so because of one man's idolatry, many died. And so they named it the Valley of Acre or the Valley of Trouble is what it translates to. That's what the Hebrew word means. You see this a lot. They generally within the scriptural context, they just they name things very literal names. We don't seem to we don't do that nearly so much, although Phoenix is a pretty close one talking about something that burns constantly and eternally. So we can see a parallel there. But. They name it the Valley of Trouble or the Valley of Acre. All right. So we see a parallelism that exists in idolatry. And if you're reading this again, just on the surface level, it doesn't seem it would seem to be about them reentering the land. But he's just said that he's going to give her vineyards out in the wilderness. He says, I will make the Valley of Acre or the Valley of Trouble a door of hope. For you, I will make the valley of trouble a door of hope. This is nothing more complicated than God's way of saying, I am going to, through that which was tribulation and disturbance and trouble for you, bring you hope, bring you peace. Through trial, through tribulation, through difficulty, I will give hope to my people. Though you have been idolatrous as Aten was, I will bring hope for you. Just as a side note, the story of Achan is a really phenomenal one for understanding the essential differences that exist between the Mosaic Covenant that we've seen be broken, and the remnants are still there, but we see that Mosaic Covenant being broken and the transition into the New Covenant, wherein the Bride of Christ is no longer within this physical nation, but it is going to be brought out and be scattered among all of the nations, and it will be of Jew and Gentile both. Akin provides us a wonderful example of the contrast between the covenant of grace, the new covenant and the covenant of works that we see within the Mosaic covenant. And we see this because Akin repents. Akin sins. He's aware that he said he's idolatrous, he's covetous, he sins. And he repents of that sin, he makes a public declaration of repentance and of sorrow for the sin that he has done. But within a covenant of works. We see no mercy because God is declaring his holiness for his land, Aiken's life is not spared. In spite of all of his weeping and all of his sorrow, he and his family are stoned. And it's a display of the holiness and the justice of God. Now, why do I say this is a tremendous contrast? Because. I personally believe that this gives us license to believe that Aiken, under the covenant of works, was condemned, but under the covenant of grace, was saved. He expressed repentance and faith. So under the covenant of works, which was for the physical nation of Israel, he had to be condemned unto death and was stoned and he experienced a terrible death. But if that repentance and faith was true, if it was genuine, if it was that which was granted by the Holy Spirit, then he was saved under the covenant of grace. So it provides a tremendous contrast for us. But that's just a side note. Therefore, I will give to her vineyards. There I will give her vineyards and make the Valley of Acre a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. Now, this is why we read that song of Moses at the beginning. He's saying she will answer as in the days of youth. Now, the word here is a not that's the Hebrew verb that's existing in this passage. And the reason I say that is because I know it can mean depending on context, a number of different things. One of them is just answer when when when spoken to you answer and you would use that verb. I know I am answering. Or given certain context, it can mean saying. to break out in song. And I think that Jose is specifically using that word in order to make a pun out of this, to have a dual meaning that exists within the text. She's going to answer to the things that I give her. There's another word here that they translate as there, which looks almost identical to the word for here. So she will hear an answer. So there's wordplay that's taking place within the text here. She's going to answer as in the days of her youth and she is going to sing as in the days of her youth. As at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt, she's going to respond in joy and in declaring the glories of her husband. And in that day, declares the Lord, you will no longer call me my husband and no longer will you call me my bail. So this is where we are from Bali to Ishii. This is this is not this is not what you order at a Japanese restaurant. Not sushi, Ishii. OK, so. When we went through, if you guys can remember back, we talked about lo, where it was to him. So in Hebrew, you have these suffixes that express possession. When we talked about ami, lo ami, the child, it was not my people. So that I that's on the end is what we translate as my. Am is people, so ami is my people. So we see from Ba'ali to Ishi. There's a reason I'm not just randomly taking you through Hebrew lessons for the sake of torturing you. There's actually significance to this. There's wordplay here because Ba'al literally comes from a root that means master. OK, we talked about this. In a previous lesson where we talked about if they want bail, if they want this false god bail, I'm going to give them bails. I'm going to give them masters. I'm going to give them those who will oppress them. And so now Jose is playing with this word again, and he says, you will from now on call me Ishi, which has a female counterpart. There's Ish. And there's Isha. Ish and Isha. Husband and wife. Male and female. There's counterparts. There's no counterpart to Baal other than Melech, which is where we get Malachi. It's servant. The counterpart to Baal is servant. To master is servant. I'm no longer going to be master to you. Although there's a sense in which God will always be master over his creation. OK, but I am going to be husband to you. You will I will be husband and you will be wife. I will not be master and you will be servant, but I will be husband and you will be wife. Now, there's I have to express adamantly that. There is. There is still a sense in which God is master to us. We can never forget that. OK, and for the sake of going through this, we can say king as well. OK, when we look at the threefold office of Christ, Christ's relationship to us is as prophet, priest and king. He is king over a people. OK. But as we see this transitioning, This recasting of the bride of Christ, this recasting of Israel from a physical nation into a spiritual nation from the Israelis to the church. As we see this transition taking place, we see the transition from master to husband. What is God's primary relationship to Israel in the Old Testament? It is as their king. It's a very ethereal and distant relationship that exists insofar as the covenantal relationship. God speaks to the prophets and then the prophets speak to the people. And oftentimes the people don't even hear the prophet directly. The prophet would go and they would speak to the earthly king and then the king would pass the word down through the hierarchy. So there's this great distance that exists between the sovereign God of Israel, Yahweh, and the individual people of the nation. It's a theocracy. It's a theocratic nation where God is king over the nation. Existing in this relationship to them, primarily the way that they primarily see him relating to them is in the Mosaic Covenant. So it's a covenant of works. You do these things and you live. You don't do these things and you die. It is a king's relationship to his subjects. The king doesn't come alongside each individual subject. How are you doing? How's life? What can I be doing better to serve you? There's not a deep, intimate relationship that exists between a king and the average subject. OK. God is saying, I am going from being your master, your king, to being your husband. This is going from being a corporate national covenant. Wherein I am this distant king whom you have to pay obedience for the sake of surviving. I'm going from this corporate national entity. To a one to one relationship. I'm no longer just going to be this distant king and master to you, I'm going to be as intimate in your life as a spouse. And because I will be that close with you, I am going to labor in your heart. I am going to place a new heart in you. And you will not even remember the names of the gods you once served. You will no longer have that heart to seek after these other idols. I will make you my own. For I will remove the names of the bales, the masters from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. In verse 18, and I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land. And I will make you, my bride, lie down in safety. This is the new covenant. He says he is establishing a covenant, but we can echo the words of John as he says it is an old covenant, but it is it is a new covenant, but it is also an old covenant. This is the covenant that has been in the works, so to speak, from the first gospel with Adam until now. This this covenant is coming through and he uses the word establishing because the covenant has not yet been established. It has not yet been ratified because it has to be ratified in blood. And that blood has not yet been shed. And we see that all of creation is involved in this. This is why we see in the New Testament them talking about the new heavens and the new earth. All things will be made new. It says on that day with the birds, the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens and the creeping things of the ground, this is just a They call it a mirrorism, but it's just a way of saying all of creation. He lists a couple of things to denote all of creation. All of creation is going to be made new. And when Christ reigns as sovereign king over his people. When he comes again and reigns. He will abolish the bow. the sword and war from the land, we can say even from the earth. And he will make us his people to lie down in safety. There will be eternal peace in the new covenant. So in closing, we take a look at a few applications Understanding that this exile refers to us, we need to remember that this exile is temporary. This is not going to be the way things will always be. And with that in mind, our isolation, our exile being temporary, we should never cease to pray, Lord, please quickly come. And as we pass through this wilderness, this existing as a sojourner in a foreign land. Waiting for that day. And we go through the trials and the tribulations that are part and parcel of existing in a wilderness, we need to remember that it is through that wilderness, through that dry and dusty soil. That God brings forth fruit. And I challenge you, do you relate to God, to Yahweh as a distant and ethereal master? Or do you relate to him as intimately as a spouse? Do you seek him? And petition him? As I'm going to just throw my prayer out into the open air and hopefully maybe he'll get the time to listen. Or do you petition him intimately, lovingly, trusting in his providence? He reveals himself no longer as a master only, but as a husband and as a father to his people. We need to yearn for that new creation and we need to yearn for the return of the bridegroom. Let's come before him in prayer. Dear Lord, we thank you for your providence. We thank you for your graciousness. We thank you that you saw fit to bring good fruit from dry and dusty soil, that you would take branches in the wilderness and graft them onto a vine that is good, that is solid, that will not wither, that we might bear fruit. Lord, renew our hearts and draw us close to you. Forgive us for treating you as some distant and disinterested entity. Instead of loving you. As a husband. Instead of loving you as a father. Forgive our wandering hearts. and draw us again close to you. It is in the name of your son that we pray. Amen.