Sunday Service
Notes
Transcript
Summary of Hosea, the book of God’s love.
Hosea and Gomer
The spiritual adultery of Israel .
I. ‘Draw near to God ...’, 14:1-3.
I. ‘Draw near to God ...’, 14:1-3.
There is warmth in the emphatic form of the word, ‘Return’ in this last chapter of Hosea. In its other occurrences,in this book of prophecy, it has brought only disappointment and reproach. It was a call to ‘turn’; and Israel did … the wrong way, over and over again. They flatly had refused to respond to the LORD; they were too proud and were settled in their ways of sin. But God would not give up—how could He?
How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me, All My compassions are kindled.
I will not execute My fierce anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath.
With the strong preposition ‘to’ (Heb. ‘ad), the verse could almost be translated, ‘Oh turn, Israel, right back to the LORD.” The words ‘your God’ gain a new intensity: against all deserving, The LORD is still their God.
Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes.”
The first step to return home to God is to accept responsibility for departing from Him.
Their repentance will be personal. Where Amos would cry out, “Turn, for in front of you is destruction,” Hosea’s cry is, “Turn, for behind you is God.”
God’s call is warm, but it is also exacting. The implications of the word ‘return’ is seen in Hosea 12:6
Therefore, return to your God, Observe kindness and justice, And wait for your God continually.
Toward man, we are to “observe (hold fast) to kindness (love) and justice”; Godward, “wait for your God continually.”
The second step to return home to God is to make an honest confession to Him.
In verse 2, “take words with you.” We are not speaking of shallow words and actions, this is meant to be a meaningful, personal encounter with the LORD. They are not to be words with reservations or excuses. God knows that we have stumbled because of sin (see verse 1). each must accept and echo that indeed they have sin and ask Him to take it way.
‘To receive us graciously’ may simply be a plea that the LORD will accept the offering from the lips and the heart which He has required of His people. Hosea 6:6
For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
Also Psalm 51 17
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.
The acknowledgment of sin now turns into acknowledgment of God in praise. “the fruit of our lips” becomes an offering of praise to our God, as Heb. 13:15
Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.
Here is the positive side of repentance. The the one who runs away must return, the sinner plead, uses his mind and lips to come back into fellowship with God. It is a turning to the light.
The third step to return home to God is to turn away from the old ways of living that led us away from Him.
Verse 3 gives us the negative requirement, a turning from the old ways, saying farewell to futile hopes and false beliefs. What had Israel put their trust in?
foreign alliances
weapons of war
false gods
Israel had flitted between placating Assyria while cultivating Egypt as an ally (as well as a source of chariots and horses, Isa 31:1
Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help And rely on horses, And trust in chariots because they are many And in horsemen because they are very strong, But they do not look to the Holy One of Israel, nor seek the Lord!
By choosing these foreign nations, Israel demonstrated no desire to think God as relevant to their practical affairs. The LORD’s name carried no weight in the politics of that day, leading Israel to a worldly outcome just like her foreign friends, Hosea 7:8-9
Ephraim mixes himself with the nations; Ephraim has become a cake not turned.
Strangers devour his strength, Yet he does not know it; Gray hairs also are sprinkled on him, Yet he does not know it.
The false beliefs are constantly in evidence throughout Hosea, and the scorn Hosea has for them is as total as Israel’s infatuation with them. We can observe the lunacy and ingratitude of all this described in Hosea more easily than we can see its modern counterparts. As long as man-made deities, both visible and invisible, keep their power to seduce us, this verse will still have words for us to use.
Israel would become an orphan in the world, but she is loved and will be shown compassion again just as the disowned daughter of Hosea 1, whose name meant ‘unloved,’ would be renamed Ruhamah: ‘She is loved.’
Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.
“Can a woman forget her nursing child And have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you.
II. ‘… and He will draw near to you’, 14:4-7.
II. ‘… and He will draw near to you’, 14:4-7.
Here is the fourth step to return to God—claim His promises for the future.
The LORD now speaks with poetry full of promise:
‘I will heal their apostasy’ — a reminder that our waywardness is incurable until God heals it.
‘I will love them freely’ — The purest expression of the grace of God, which prevails over the language of judgment and forsaken from Hosea 9:15
All their evil is at Gilgal; Indeed, I came to hate them there! Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of My house! I will love them no more; All their princes are rebels.
The assurance is found in the last phrase of verse 4:
‘For My anger has turned away from them.”
The fourth step to return home to God is to claim His promises for the future.
These promises are perfectly clear. The the LORD goes on with imagery from nature, at its happiest and most joyful.
Here we can gain a threefold impression of Israel revived and reconciled to God.
There is a freshness, seen in the image of dew, the blossoming of the lily, the fragrances of nature, the beauty and shade of the trees.
There is stability, like the roots of the cedars or the roots of the mountains of Lebanon.
There is vigour, pictured in the spreading shouts of new growth, the fruit of vine, and the grain in abundance.
What God will do for a revived and reconciled Israel is seen in the last phrase of verse 7: His renown [will be] like the wine of Lebanon
III. The appeal to the nation, 14:8.
III. The appeal to the nation, 14:8.
The exclamation that begins verse 8 is one of both love and anguish. Hosea 6 4
What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud And like the dew which goes away early.
How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me, All My compassions are kindled.
Now, for the last time God reasons with His people. The penitent words of verses 2-3 and the prospect of verses 4-7 were part of an invitation (see verse 1-2a) that Israel has yet to accept and make her own.
The incomparable claims of God are the foundation on which God reasons, even pleads, with Israel. Can He really be spoken of, even though of, in the same breath as idols? Can the protection of Assyria or Egypt compete with His? Will those nations answer when Israel cries out, or do they care for Israel as He cares?
God has all the constancy of the evergreen. He possesses all the richness of the fruit tree.
Ephraim will indeed live up to her name and be “fruitful” when she looks no further than the LORD her God.
IV. ‘What is your response?’, 14:9.
IV. ‘What is your response?’, 14:9.
Here is the fifth step to return home to God: to walk in the way of the Lord is to surrender our will to Him
The point of Hosea’s prophecy here is that it is open-ended. Israel had a choice to make; her response could either be repentance or indifference.
“Whoever” speaks to the individual Israelite, but also exposes us to the same searching encounter. You see, the word of God goes on speaking to us today; it never slips safely into the past.
Just as self-sufficient Israel is without excuse and self-condemned, so too self-sufficient man in light of the rightness of God’s ways in both holiness and love revealed in Hosea.
Turn into the way of righteousness. You will find yourself met more than half-way. God will never give up on us, He will not let us go.
