Sources taken from: Brian Bell, Ron Daniel, David Guzik's & Ray C. Stedman
Hosea 1
1 The LORD gave this message to Hosea son of Beeri during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.
2 When the LORD first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the LORD and worshiping other gods.”
1 The LORD gave this message to Hosea son of Beeri during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.
2 When the LORD first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the LORD and worshiping other gods.”
3 So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son.
4 And the LORD said, “Name the child Jezreel, for I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed at Jezreel.5 In fact, I will bring an end to Israel’s independence.
I will break its military power in the Jezreel Valley.”
4 And the LORD said, “Name the child Jezreel, for I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed at Jezreel.5 In fact, I will bring an end to Israel’s independence.
I will break its military power in the Jezreel Valley.”
6 Soon Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. And the LORD said to Hosea, “Name your daughter Lo-ruhamah—‘Not loved’—for I will no longer show love to the people of Israel or forgive them.
7 But I will show love to the people of Judah. I will free them from their enemies—not with weapons and armies or horses and charioteers, but by my power as the LORD their God.”
7 But I will show love to the people of Judah. I will free them from their enemies—not with weapons and armies or horses and charioteers, but by my power as the LORD their God.”
8 After Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she again became pregnant and gave birth to a second son.
9 And the LORD said, “Name him Lo-ammi—‘Not my people’—for Israel is not my people, and I am not their God.
9 And the LORD said, “Name him Lo-ammi—‘Not my people’—for Israel is not my people, and I am not their God.
10 “Yet the time will come when Israel’s people will be like the sands of the seashore—too many to count! Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said, ‘You are children of the living God.’
11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite together. They will choose one leader for themselves, and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be—the day of Jezreel—when God will again plant his people in his land.
2:1 “In that day you will call your brothers Ammi—‘My people.’ And you will call your sisters Ruhamah—‘The ones I love.’
11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite together. They will choose one leader for themselves, and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be—the day of Jezreel—when God will again plant his people in his land.
2:1 “In that day you will call your brothers Ammi—‘My people.’ And you will call your sisters Ruhamah—‘The ones I love.’
In many ways the book of Hosea is the most beautiful book in the Old Testament. It is a love story--the story of a broken marriage and of the heartache which unfaithfulness brings into a life. Yet it is also the story of the persistence of God in fulfilling His promise of redemptive action. It pictures the New Testament promise of
Philippians 1:6: "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."
Book Overview:
Adulterous wife yet a faithful husband;
Adulterous nation yet a faithful God.
Main Theme: God’s faithful love toward His unfaithful people.
Story in a nut shell: Hosea married a woman who bore him 3 kids, & then deserted him & became a prostitute. - He finally buys her back from the slave market.
- This was a sermon to the nation of Israel, for committing “spiritual adultery”.
EXEGESIS
v.1a The LORD gave this message to Hosea son of Beeri …
-The name Hosea means "salvation" same Hebrew root as the names Joshua and Jesus.
Hosea will show us that salvation is found in turning to the LORD and away from our sin.
- a prophet. He spoke forth the word of the LORD, and applied that word to his life, and to the people and circumstances around him.
-Before the prophet can speak to the nation, he first has to hear from God for himself.
God wants to speak to you before He speaks through you.
However, what God may desire to say to you is not necessarily what you may be expecting or wanting to hear.
Certainly, what God had to say to Hosea was not an easy thing to hear.
v.1b … during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.
Jeroboam was one of the wicked kings of Israel and the nation was going through a difficult time when Hosea was preaching.
+ Things were so politically successful and economically prosperous that people just didn't look to the Lord the way that they should. From a political and economic standpoint Jeroboam II was a successful and good king (2 Kings 14:23-29).
-But it was a time of significant spiritual and moral decay. Idolatry, spiritual failure, and moral corruption sown in days of Jeroboam II produced a tragic harvest in the following years.
The state of Israel: Prospering outwardly, but decaying inwardly.
People were "living it up," as we might say, and didn't have much time for God.
They wouldn't have said that, of course; nobody ever says that when it is true.
Instead they may have said something like we do -- that it was just a case of not having quite enough time to meet the demands that God made upon them; they were so busy with so many other important things.
It was a case with them as it is often with us that the spirit was willing but the flesh was ready for the weekend!
And so young Hosea found that his audience was diminishing. People were polite to his face,
I suppose, but they sneered behind his back. He found that he was being given the nice-and-harmless treatment.
Yr by yr % of people going to the temple diminishes also.
So Hosea is rather discouraged and in the opening chapter of this book of prophecy & we read a personal note about him.
God said, "I want you to get married."
I think Hosea brightened up at that, because he was a bachelor, and God said, "I have a girl picked out for you." When he mentioned her name, Hosea's heart must have fluttered, because the name of this girl was Gomer, the most beautiful girl in Israel. Hosea was definitely interested.
2 When the LORD first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the LORD and worshiping other gods.”
But God said to him, "I want you to know the whole story about this girl.
I want you to marry her, but she is going to be unfaithful to you; in fact, she will become nothing but a common street prostitute.
But I want you to marry her anyway." Now undoubtedly Hosea was very puzzled by God's strange command just as Abraham was puzzled by God's command that he take his son Isaac out and kill him for sacrifice, put his own son to death.
God does strange things at times, things we don't always understand, things we can't categorize, things that don't fit into what we think we know of him. And this is one of those strange things.
There is no reason to believe that Gomer, was a harlot at the time of their marriage, but it is clear that Hosea was told by God that this would ultimately come to pass.
God was planning to use this prophet and his family as an object lesson for his people.
To illustrate through the personal history of Hosea the heartbreak of God when He saw the people of Israel given over to spiritual harlotry.
What a nightmarish request to be placed on any man, especially a man of God like Hosea!
to marry a harlot, a woman who was a prostitute, renting out her body and sexual services to men for money.
.
But the Lord wanted Hosea to be a living example, a visible portrait.
He was to be a picture of a righteous man wedded to a harlot, just as God Himself was wedded to unfaithful Jews.
By this holy man being wed to a woman with no commitment to morality and purity,
God was showing them how their idolatry and rebellion truly looked.
They were just like a wife with no commitment to her husband, going after every other man in town.
In this vivid picture, we see how our idolatry and rejection of the LORD feels to God.
When we put anything in front of the LORD, it hurts Him like unfaithfulness hurts the victim of an adulterous marriage.
God will put Hosea in the place where he feels what God feels - and it won't feel good. It will hurt…
So Hosea went courting. Sure enough, Gomer was attracted to this shy young man, and at last he summoned up the courage to ask her to marry him. To his great relief, she said yes, and they were married.
At first it was heaven on earth.
Hosea loved Gomer w/ all his heart. You can't read this prophecy without seeing that.
v3 So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son.
v4 And the LORD said, “Name the child Jezreel, for I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed at Jezreel.
v4 And the LORD said, “Name the child Jezreel, for I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed at Jezreel.
v5 In fact, I will bring an end to Israel’s independence. I will break its military power in the Jezreel Valley.”
.
1st Child
They must have been wonderfully happy together, and then they had their first child.
It was a boy, as God had said. Hosea's heart was filled to bursting, and he went to God for the name of this boy.
"What should we name the lad?"To his great surprise, God picked the name Jezreel,which meant "castaway" and was a name of shame in Israel.
The name spoke of two things.
1st, Jezreel means "Scattered," and Israel would soon be scattered in exile by a conquering Assyrian army.
2nd ,Jezreel refers to the Valley of Jezreel- to confirm His promise to avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel by judging the house of Jehu.
God was thus warning his people:
they too would be cast away if they didn't turn from going after idols and giving way to abominable practices and trying to be like everybody else around them.
God was warning them with this baby's name.
6 Soon Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. And the LORD said to Hosea, “Name your daughter Lo-ruhamah—‘Not loved’—for I will no longer show love to the people of Israel or forgive them.
2nd child
In the course of time another child, a daughter, was born to Hosea and Gomer.
Lo-ruhamah,which means "not pitied." Imagine naming your little baby girl "not pitied."
“Mercy” is a girl’s name, but “No-mercy”?
It meant that God would no longer have pity on His people if they continued their stubborn rebellion,
for His patience was wearing thin.
After some hundreds of years of trying to reach this stubborn people,
he was now warning them that they were getting near the end.
That a time would come when he would hand them over to invading armies.
So, as always, people didn't pay much attention to Hosea. He spoke of judgment and of chastisement.
But the people paid little attention to him, and they said that
Hosea's God must be a pretty vengeful sort to talk like that. Hosea tried to tell them that wasn't so.
He said that God was a God of love and that his doing this was the very activity of love; that God wanted them to see what they were doing to themselves and that the only way he could get them to listen was to make things rough for them.
But they didn't pay any more attention than people do today about things like that.
Instead, they blamed God and said, "If God is really a God of love, then why does he let things get in such a mess? How could a God of love ever send a ruthless people like the Assyrians down upon our land?"
Every call to this child with the unfortunate name would remind Hosea and everyone else of coming judgment and exile.
v8 After Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she again became pregnant and gave birth to a second son.
v9 And the LORD said, “Name him Lo-ammi—‘Not my people’—for Israel is not my people, and I am not their God.
v9 And the LORD said, “Name him Lo-ammi—‘Not my people’—for Israel is not my people, and I am not their God.
3rd Child
Gomer conceived again and bore a third child, another little boy.
This one God named Lo-ammi, meaning "not My people."
Every call to this unfortunately named child reminded Hosea and everyone else
that the people of Israel had pushed away the Lord God, and should no longer be considered His people.
For you are not My people, and I will not be your God:
This is not so much of a sentence or a penalty, as it is a simple stating of fact.
It isn't as if the people really wanted to be the people of God, …but they want his blessings.
yet God will not have any of them.
The people of Israel rejected God, and here the LORD simply recognizes that fact. The time for those games is over.
Since Gomer did prostitution, there may have been a cruel irony in the name Lo-Ammi.
Perhaps this son really was not the son of Hosea, but of another man. Perhaps the appearance of the child made this evident.
What a heartbreak it must have been to this young preacher as he heard the whispers that began to circulate about his wife and about what happened when he was away on preaching trips.
God had said that he would name these children as a sign to his people,
Q: What mixed feelings might Hosea have about his 3 children?
Castaway, No Mercy, Not My people. Hosea: His name = Salvation.
One day Hosea came home and found a note from Gomer: she had decided to find the happiness she felt she deserved, and she was leaving him and the children to follow the man she really loved.
You know how those notes go: "Dear John..."
Hosea had to live out 1st hand…loving one who was unfaithful.
Marital unfaithfulness is unfortunately “nothing new”!
Some of us might have also have suffered through the same in your marriage our in a past relationship. There must be no deeper wound!
Hosea was going to feel on the temporal scale, what God was feeling on the eternal scale.
About this time a new tone came into Hosea's preaching. He still warned of the judgment to come and the fact that God was going to send the Assyrians down across the land, but no longer did he announce it with thunder. He spoke to them with tears.
But poor Gomer passed from man to man, until at last she fell into the hands of a man who was unable to pay for her food and her clothing.
This went on but at last word came that the woman Hosea loved was to be sold in the slave market.
Her current husband had tired of her and she was to be sold as a slave.
The brokenhearted prophet didn't know what to do.
He went weeping to God.
And God said. "Hosea, do you love this woman in spite of all that she has done to you?"
Hosea nodded through his tears, and God said. "Then go show your love for her in the same way that I love the nation Israel." 3:1
So Hosea went to the marketplace and he watched Gomer brought up and placed on the dock and there she was stripped of all her clothing and stood naked before the crowd.
The auctioneer pinched her and prodded her and showed how strong she was, and then the bidding began. Somebody bid three pieces of silver and Hosea raised it to five. Somebody else upped it to eight and Hosea bid ten. Somebody went to eleven; he went to twelve. Then Hosea offered fifteen pieces of silver and a bushel of barley. The auctioneer's gavel fell and Hosea had his wife back.
He went to her and put her clothes on her and he led her away by the hand and took her to his home. And then follows what is perhaps the most beautiful verse in all the Bible. As Hosea led her away he said to her:
"You must dwell as mine for many days; you shall not play the harlot, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you." (Hosea 3:3b RSV)
He pledged his love to her anew.
And that was all this poor woman could take.
She had gotten down to the very dregs of shame and disgrace, but the love of this man broke her heart,
and from this time on Gomer was faithful to Hosea.
She became an honest. industrious, faithful wife, and the rest of the book of Hosea simply goes on to tell the effect of this story on the nation of Israel –
God said to them. "How can I give thee up?' 11:8
He reminded them of his love for them all those years.
He reminded them of his goodness, and of how again and again they had turned their backs on him.
Israel shall at last return to God -- her true husband -- and shall say,
"What have I to do with idols?14:8
I have seen him and heard him and he has won my heart."
Can you see in this beautiful story all the elements of the eternal love triangle?
There is the loving God, the faithless human heart, and the deceptive attractiveness of the world.
This is your story and my story .
So many times we try to satisfy ourselves with the lying idols of self-importance or wealth or a good time.
Ours is the blindness that like Gomer's cannot distinguish between lust and love.
We try to run from God and drown our miseries in empty pleasures or drink or work or social life but as surely as we think we have escaped, as surely as we think we have run far enough, God touches our sleeve with his love saying My child, my name and my nature are love and I must act according to what I am.
When you tire of all your running and your wandering and your heartbreak,
I'll be there to draw you to myself again."
That is the story of the Bible. At Bethlehem God entered the slave market where the whole human race was putting itself up for auction, prostituting itself and its humanity to a cheapened life.
But on the cross the Lord Jesus paid the price, the full price for our freedom, and bought us back.
This speaks of God’s temporary rejection of the nation because of their sins.
And he began to speak of a day when love would at last triumph, when -- after the bitter lesson was learned that the way of the transgressor is hard -- Israel would yet turn back to the God who loved her.
And he began to speak of a day when love would at last triumph, when -- after the bitter lesson was learned that the way of the transgressor is hard -- Israel would yet turn back to the God who loved her.
A promise of future restoration
10 “Yet the time will come when Israel’s people will be like the sands of the seashore—too many to count! Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said, ‘You are children of the living God.’
11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite together. They will choose one leader for themselves, and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be—the day of Jezreel—when God will again plant his people in his land.
2:1 “In that day you will call your brothers Ammi—‘My people.’ And you will call your sisters Ruhamah—‘The ones I love.’
11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite together. They will choose one leader for themselves, and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be—the day of Jezreel—when God will again plant his people in his land.
2:1 “In that day you will call your brothers Ammi—‘My people.’ And you will call your sisters Ruhamah—‘The ones I love.’
10 Although God was going to judge the northern kingdom of Israel, he was not forsaking the sons of Israel completely.
Here He promises that one day, they would be restored, multiplied, and blessed. his grace also was being shown.
- there would come a day when Israel would be restored and their names of reproach taken away and they would be called by all "Sons of the living God"
11 God promised a restoration so complete that the division caused by the civil war of Rehoboam and Jeroboam I would one day be erased. be reunited..
- For great will be the day of Jezreel! The first child of Hosea and Gomer was named Jezreel as a sign of judgment.
But God promises a restoration so complete that Jezreel will once again be a name of greatness, not judgment.
12 "Mercy is shown": Lo-Ruhamah, "No Mercy" "Mercy is shown" unto them. What was a sign of judgment is now evidence of redemption.
Prayer:
Our Father, we thank you for this beautiful story and pray that it touches our own hearts and softens us.
How we see the tenderness of your love, the irresistible nature of a love that waits and hurts and hungers and pursues.
Lord, we pray that we may respond, that we may understand that no other answer can satisfy us, no other power can meet our need, no other love can heal. We pray in his name. Amen.
Bless is the Nation whose God is the Lord Ps.33.12
No comments:
Post a Comment