(I want to listen to this sermon)

Welcome to the Book of Hosea! It's a little book hidden away towards the end of the OT – and you may be wondering what on earth are we doing looking here on a Sunday morning?

Hosea is one of the Minor Prophets and you may well have had trouble finding it. I imagine that several of you are unlikely ever to have come across this Book before so by way of introduction let me tell you something about this part of God's word.

Of course that is the reason we are looking at it this morning – it is part of God's word. The Book opens with the clear statement:

Hos.1:1 "The word of the LORD that came to Hosea…"

Hosea may well belong to the group of prophets called "Minor" but that word refers merely to the length of his writing and not at all to the contents of His message!

We need all to take seriously all that God has given us. And all that God has given us will be of benefit and profit to us if only we take the time to listen and make the effort to understand.

I remember back to the first time I read this Book of the Bible when I was a teenager – I was bowled over by the love of God that is so clearly and so dramatically presented in its pages.

The famous Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon preached more than fifty times on various texts from Hosea. One of the sermons carries the title "The Climax of God's Love." On my bookshelves I have two different commentaries and they each carry the word love in their title:

"Love to the Loveless" – "Wayward but Loved"

A third series contains a series of lectures and bears the title "The Heart and Holiness of God".

Hos.2:19 "And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy."

Hos.14:4 "I will heal their apostasy; I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them."

The Book of Hosea is a prophetic book and it contains a series of oracles that God addresses to His people. But we must understand that prophecy does not only refer to foretelling the future. Biblical prophecy does include that but also and perhaps primarily is concerned with the forth-telling of God's truth.

Hosea preached over an extended period. He ministered during the final thirty years of Israel's national life before the nation was destroyed by the Assyrian invasion in around 722BC and for this reason he is sometimes referred to as the death-bed prophet of Israel.

The people of God had become divided after the reigns of King David and King Solomon – the southern tribe of Judah remained faithful to the house of David but the northern tribes declared their independence and seceded creating their own kingdom with their own kings. It is this northern kingdom that is known as Israel and also as Ephraim.

This northern kingdom of Israel had in Hosea's day enjoyed a remarkable period of material prosperity and peace. But, as is sadly so often the case, material prosperity had been accompanied by moral and spiritual decline. The people had not however stopped being religious – the problem was that their religion was all wrong. They used their religion as a cloak to cover their moral failings and their religion was no longer the pure worship of the One True and Living God but the contaminated worship of religious pluralism. They especially liked the local religions with their emphasis upon sex and sexuality.

Hosea's goal was to turn Israel back to the LORD God and in order to do so He had to make clear to this people the extent of God's love for them. He had to make it clear that this love was something deep and strong and very very special. Now God's love for His people must not to be confused with the weak, indulgent sentimentality that passes for love in our day. God's love is robust and strong and pure – it is a love that is rightly jealous and will brook no rivals!

Hosea's ministry would be characterised by three main things:

1.    He was to show the people their sin. That is he was to show them how their acts and their attitudes disappointed the LORD.

2.    He was to tell the people of the ruin that awaited them. God, being grieved by their wanton waywardness and unfaithfulness, would not be inactive. His offended love would call for the punishment of the guilty who steadfastly refused His overtures of love. Hosea had many warnings concerning what an unrepentant people might expect should they continue to reject the LORD. Yet they are primarily warnings and not to be read as a blueprint for the future – if the people change the warnings will never need to be carried out!

3.    He was to testify of God's love and grace towards the undeserving. It is the love of God that issues warnings longing for change, it is the love of God that is not willing that any should perish. There is hope because of the love of God – but the people must respond to this love of God - you must respond to this love of God. All of Israel's unfaithfulness and obstinacy could never exhaust God's redeeming love – God's love goes way beyond our feeble capacity to understand it!

While Hosea's message was straightforward enough the way in which he was called to communicate it was something else. The first three chapters of the Book deal with the personal details of Hosea's life and will form the platform for our deeper understanding of the LORD's repeated interactions with His people in chapters 4-14.

As Hosea looked back on his long life of ministry He opened his written account with a description of how the LORD, before He ever sent Hosea to the people of Israel, had personal dealings with him.

Before a man or a woman can properly go to others with God's word they must have had personal dealings with God themselves. Do you know anything of the LORD God dealing personally with you?

When the LORD spoke at the outset to Hosea he told him to do a strange thing but he also told him why.

Hosea was to get married! However the woman he would marry would turn out to be extremely fickle and unfaithful to him. She would not honour her marriage nor would she keep her marriage bed undefiled. She would in fact bear children that weren't Hosea's at all!

Hos.1:2 "“Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom,"

Now some of you know what it is like to suffer the breakdown of a marriage, you understand something of the trauma of seeing your loved one turn their attentions elsewhere. Some of you have had to experience the unfaithfulness of a partner and then the deep pain of abandonment.

Hosea was being called to live through just such devastating experiences and that in His service and obedience to the LORD.

But a reason is given to Hosea explaining why he must experience such pain and heart-ache:

Hos.1:2 cont "for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD."

Hosea must marry Gomer who will turn out so poorly so that his marriage will serve as an acted-parable of to reveal the relationship the LORD has with His people Israel where Israel is the unfaithful wife! (The details of this relationship will be addressed in chs.4-14 as the Lord alternately accuses, warns, appeals and entices His people that they should return to Him!

As Hosea obeys and experiences the painfulness of his own failed marriage so he, and we through him, are given insights into the broken-heartedness of the LORD God as His people treat Him so

It can be tempting at times, when we look out on the world with all its problems, to begin to think that God doesn't care and that He doesn't understand. Others may challenge our faith and say that if God were really there He would do something about the mess. They say either He's not powerful enough or He doesn't care enough.

The Bible knows nothing of a weak, indifferent God. The Bible reveals to us a God of omnipotence and a God who is so concerned and so involved that He is ready to use of Himself the staggering picture of a husband who has been cheated upon by his wife. Omnipotence will not be of any use in trying to win back the loving affections of a spouse who has abandoned him! What true husband wants a slave wife who yields to him only out of fear and power plays?

The solutions for God are not easy at all. How we wrong Him when we suggest that somehow He is some sort of cold unfeeling master-controller. There is no costless snapping of the fingers that will resolve the situation and win back his wife who has been cheating on Him. No, but He will set about wooing her all over again. Yes, He will reason, He will argue, He will express the real anger and genuine pain that are His, He'll warn of the dire consequences ahead and He'll plead over and over again for her to respond properly towards Him. He will do what it takes to "save His marriage".

The Book of Hosea has much to show us of what it means to say God is love!

Not only was Hosea to marry but he was to have children and all of his children were given names that carried a serious meaning for their time.

The first child to be born, and the only one to be clearly identified as being Hosea's, was given the name Jezreel. This name recalled the site of the massacre of King Ahab's family by Jehu who then established his dynasty for four generations. The divine punishment was ordained for the house of Omri and Ahab, who had been an utter disaster for the nation belonged to that house. However the way in which Jehu eliminated Ahab's family while imitating their sins was totally unacceptable to the LORD. Pay-back time had arrived. The name of Hosea's son would be a living reminder of the crimes of the past while pointing towards judgment as the LORD determined to destroy Israel in the very place of its crimes!

The next child to be born (no reference is made to Hosea now) was given the name Lo- ruhamah "No mercy".

In Ps.103:13 we read: "As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him."

The word compassion is the same used that translated "mercy". There is the hint here of the child not being Hosea's as otherwise he would naturally show his daughter compassion or mercy but the name is specifically given because of how the LORD will now treat Israel – viewed here not as the wife but as the child.

Repeated and stubborn disobedience means that judgment is looming.

On the other hand Judah, the southern kingdom which has still maintained a more faithful attitude (though still being far from perfect it must be said) will be preserved.

The threat was of the coming Assyrian invasion. Israel would fall but Judah would not and this deliverance would be due directly to the LORD's intervention and not due to any special military power of skill belonging to Judah.

The warning of destruction to the unfaithful Israel accompanied by promises of safety to faithful Judah was surely designed to cause Israel to rethink, to mend her ways and to return the LORD in faithfulness!

The third child mentioned is also given a name that carried a message – Lo-ammi or "Not my people". Again a clear message is sent, this child wasn't Hosea's! Neither were the people of Israel anymore God's people.

Warnings! Warnings! How many would the people of Israel need to hear before they would heed them? How many will you need to hear before you will pay heed?

A Voice from Hell

Oh, why am I here in this place of unrest
When others have entered the land of the blest?
God's way of salvation was preached unto men;
I heard it and heard it, again and again.

Why did I not listen and turn from my sin
And open my heart and let Jesus come in?
For vain earthly pleasures my soul did I sell
The way I had chosen has brought me to hell.

Oh, soul without Christ, will these words be your cry?
God's Word so declares it that all men must die.
From hell and its terrors, Oh, flee while you may!
So, come to the Saviour; He'll save you today!

Hosea has declared some stark truths by means of his marriage and by the names given to Gomer's children.

If the situation is really as bad as that is there any hope at all? Is there any ground for thinking that all may not be entirely lost forever? God has just declared the breaking of Israel's bow, the destruction of the nation. He has just said He will have no mercy on a people He no longer considers His people.

But just look at what is held out:

Hos.1:10-2:1 "Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God.” And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Say to your brothers, “You are my people,” and to your sisters, “You have received mercy.”"

There is a great and a glorious hope! The LORD God promises to act and to reverse the curses He has Himself pronounced. The people who are about to be destroyed will become an innumerable company that no man can number – not merely are they to be described as God's people but they are to be made God's own children.

How can this be so? When will it take place?

It happens when they recognise and appoint one head for themselves but what is all that about?

Well the NT picks up on this and supplies us with an answer: it is when Jews and Gentiles come to faith in the LORD Jesus Christ – as both Paul in his letter to the Romans 9:25-26 and Peter in 1Pet.2:10 make clear!

There is hope! The relationship that had been broken by sin can be restored by grace and it is restored fully in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This chapter then which has been speaking of an historical period many centuries before the coming of Christ has a relevance to us today because the fulfilment of the promises are in Christ. There will be, says Hosea, a great multitude who have their lives transformed and their status renewed – will you be included in that number?

Come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith and I can say to you in God's name "You are my people" and "You have received mercy."

And this is why the Book of Hosea is written down!

Is not the generosity and kindness of such a loving longsuffering God to be embraced and warmly received. Our God is no hard taskmaster barking our severe sets of orders but a loving husband who would woo you until you come.

He calls upon you not only to glorify God but also to enjoy Him forever – if you have not yet come then come today!

Amen.