A Prophet’s Family
Notes
Transcript
The word of the Lord which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.”
So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
“On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.”
Then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I would ever forgive them.
“But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses or horsemen.”
When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son.
And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people and I am not your God.”
Yet the number of the sons of Israel Will be like the sand of the sea, Which cannot be measured or numbered; And in the place Where it is said to them, “You are not My people,” It will be said to them, “You are the sons of the living God.”
And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, And they will appoint for themselves one leader, And they will go up from the land, For great will be the day of Jezreel.
Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.”
Introduction
Introduction
The Old Testament is such a blessing. It is the foundation for our understanding of so many things in the New Testament.
The same God who revealed the New Testament’s gospels and epistles, revealed the histories and prophecies of the Old Testament.
They tell one coherent story, which is really amazing being that the Old and New Testaments were written over a period longer than 2000 years.
Today we are looking a the first chapter of Hosea, which introduces and encapsulates the whole book.
Hosea was a prophet of God mainly to the Northern Kingdom of Israel, sometimes called Samaria or Ephraim.
Verse 1 gives us a time frame for when he prophesied.
The word of the Lord which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.
I would really recommend reading Samuel and Kings for a better grasp of the history, but in short the Hebrew nation was divided into two kingdoms after King Solomon died.
Judah to the south, and Israel to the north.
They both had histories of straying from God, but the Northern Kingdom strayed farther faster.
In the very beginning of its existence, King Jeroboam set up to golden calves for the people to worship so they wouldn’t have to go to Jerusalem in Judah to worship at the temple.
So the king consulted, and made two golden calves, and he said to them, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem; behold your gods, O Israel, that brought you up from the land of Egypt.”
This would be a stumbling block for all the kings to come after him.
The wickedness of the people would grow and grow as they began to worship more and more idols and false gods, Baal, Asherah, and even Molech who was worshipped by placing your baby boy or girl onto the red hot metal of his statue with a furnace built inside.
God sent many prophets, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, and Hosea were but a few, to preach the coming judgement to them.
But they were unrepentant. Even the best of kings that would tear down the idols and kill the false prophets, left Jeroboam’s golden calves there to falsely represent Yahweh.
So God calls Hosea, and as we will see, uses his very life to illustrate God’s judgement and God’s salvation to his people, and to us reading it some 3000 years later.
He first uses Hosea to show us….
God’s Judgement Illustrated in Hosea’s Marriage v. 2-3
God’s Judgement Illustrated in Hosea’s Marriage v. 2-3
When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.”
So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
If we look at the landscape of American Christianity today we see many confused people.
People have given themselves biblical sounding titles with no biblical understanding.
There are many churches, even in our areas who are led by so-called Bishops, Apostles, and so-called prophets and prophetesses.
They give themselves these titles in order to sound like they are important or that they have some special call on them, but they don’t have a true understanding of what they mean.
To be a prophet or prophetess was a special calling and an important calling, but they were not at all respected by the people they were sent to.
They often had bad news for the people, and people don’t like to hear bad news.
Consider King Ahab, husband to Jezebel.
He had aligned with Jehoshaphat King of Judah against the Nation of Aram.
Jehoshaphat wanted to consult the prophets of Yahweh to see if God would bless them in battle.
So Ahab gathered the prophets together, around 400 of them and asked if they should go to battle.
And they all said to go because the Lord will bring success.
Jehoshaphat sensed that these were just ear ticklers and asked Ahab if there were any real prophets of Yahweh they could ask.
Ahab said in
The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, but I hate him, because he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil. He is Micaiah son of Imlah.” But Jehoshaphat said, “Let not the king say so.”
And sure enough Micaiah did not have good news.
The prophets were imprisoned and killed for telling the truth against the wicked leaders, up to the prophet John the Baptist who told Herod it was a sin to take his brother’s wife as his own.
It was also difficult to be a prophet because God told you to do things that were hard.
God would often use the prophets as His own personal illustrations.
Consider Ezekiel. God used him, literally him!, in many ways to illustrate God’s judgement.
“Now you son of man, get yourself a brick, place it before you and inscribe a city on it, Jerusalem.
“Then lay siege against it, build a siege wall, raise up a ramp, pitch camps and place battering rams against it all around.
“Then get yourself an iron plate and set it up as an iron wall between you and the city, and set your face toward it so that it is under siege, and besiege it. This is a sign to the house of Israel.
“As for you, lie down on your left side and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; you shall bear their iniquity for the number of days that you lie on it.
“For I have assigned you a number of days corresponding to the years of their iniquity, three hundred and ninety days; thus you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
“When you have completed these, you shall lie down a second time, but on your right side and bear the iniquity of the house of Judah; I have assigned it to you for forty days, a day for each year.
“Then you shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem with your arm bared and prophesy against it.
“Now behold, I will put ropes on you so that you cannot turn from one side to the other until you have completed the days of your siege.
450 days in total he had to lie on either side of a brick.
And that wasn’t the worst part. The next part of the passage tells him what he could eat while illustrating the judgement God had for Israel and Judah.
“But as for you, take wheat, barley, beans, lentils, millet and spelt, put them in one vessel and make them into bread for yourself; you shall eat it according to the number of the days that you lie on your side, three hundred and ninety days.
“Your food which you eat shall be twenty shekels a day by weight; you shall eat it from time to time.
“The water you drink shall be the sixth part of a hin by measure; you shall drink it from time to time.
“You shall eat it as a barley cake, having baked it in their sight over human dung.”
Then the Lord said, “Thus will the sons of Israel eat their bread unclean among the nations where I will banish them.”
But I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I have never been defiled; for from my youth until now I have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has any unclean meat ever entered my mouth.”
Then He said to me, “See, I will give you cow’s dung in place of human dung over which you will prepare your bread.”
If these charlatans today knew what it really was to be a prophet I’m not sure they would be so eager!
And so it was with Hosea.
God would use his life as an illustration of what Israel and Judah were really like.
When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.”
He was to marry a prostitute to illustrate what the Israelites were doing when they went after idols.
God considered the Jews to be His bride, His wife.
“For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the Lord of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth.
“For the Lord has called you, Like a wife forsaken and grieved in spirit, Even like a wife of one’s youth when she is rejected,” Says your God.
And so is the church, we heard this last week in the sermon from John 5.
And in a year or two we will see this in Ephesians 5.
Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body.
But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,
so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.
So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself;
for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church,
because we are members of His body.
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.
One of the reasons God created marriage itself was to illustrate His relationship with His people.
And so when the Israelites left the worship and relationship He created for them to live by in His covenant with them as a husband, and went around with other false gods, it was just like an adulterous wife.
And to show His people what they were like he called Hosea to take a harlot for a wife.
But the illustration goes deeper, the next part of our passage shows…
God’s Judgement Illustrated in Hosea’s Children v.4-9
God’s Judgement Illustrated in Hosea’s Children v.4-9
And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
“On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.”
Then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I would ever forgive them.
“But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses or horsemen.”
When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son.
And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people and I am not your God.”
If his marriage to Gomer wasn’t enough of a personal illustration, God directs him to use his 3 children and their names to show His judgement on his people.
Hosea has 2 boys and a girl and God directs him to name them specifically to show what will happen to the Israelites.
His first son he was to name, Jezreel.
And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
“On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.”
Jezreel was a valley where God had a man named Jehu fight against King Ahab of Israel.
It was a place with sprawling flat lands where chariots and calvary would have enough flat terrain to maneuver and do battle.
God had commanded Jehu to take the throne throne away from Ahab and his sons.
When he came, behold, the captains of the army were sitting, and he said, “I have a word for you, O captain.” And Jehu said, “For which one of us?” And he said, “For you, O captain.”
He arose and went into the house, and he poured the oil on his head and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘I have anointed you king over the people of the Lord, even over Israel.
‘You shall strike the house of Ahab your master, that I may avenge the blood of My servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord, at the hand of Jezebel.
‘For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male person both bond and free in Israel.
‘I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah.
‘The dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel, and none shall bury her.’ ” Then he opened the door and fled.
And he did so in a battle in Jezreel.
He then tricked all the worshipers of Baal into coming together by telling them to gather.
Then Jehu gathered all the people and said to them, “Ahab served Baal a little; Jehu will serve him much.
When they all came together he had them surrounded and cut down by the sword.
He tore down and burnt the idols and
They also broke down the sacred pillar of Baal and broke down the house of Baal, and made it a latrine to this day.
But there were a couple of problems. He did what God had commanded him to do, but he didn’t go all the way.
Outwardly it looked like he was following the command of God, but
However, as for the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, which he made Israel sin, from these Jehu did not depart, even the golden calves that were at Bethel and that were at Dan.
He still used the golden calves set up by Jeroboam, a political stand in for God’s temple in Jerusalem.
He still wasn’t faithful, like an adulterous wife isn’t faithful to her husband.
So God has Hosea name his first born son to remind them of their sin.
They have a daughter and name her “No Pity”
Then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Name her Lo-ruhamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I would ever forgive them.
“But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses or horsemen.”
Lo-ruhamah is Hebrew for no pity, or no mercy.
The whole succession of leadership of Israel was marked by sin and idolatry, but God was merciful.
He protected them and sent prophets to them, but they still turned away and went after idols.
They disregarded Him completely at times and at others only paid lip service to Him.
On top of that, when it came down to it, they relied on man rather than God.
2 Kings 17 tells of the last King of Israel and how they became conquered by Assyria.
In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea the son of Elah became king over Israel in Samaria, and reigned nine years.
He did evil in the sight of the Lord, only not as the kings of Israel who were before him.
Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against him, and Hoshea became his servant and paid him tribute.
But the king of Assyria found conspiracy in Hoshea, who had sent messengers to So king of Egypt and had offered no tribute to the king of Assyria, as he had done year by year; so the king of Assyria shut him up and bound him in prison.
Then the king of Assyria invaded the whole land and went up to Samaria and besieged it three years.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and carried Israel away into exile to Assyria, and settled them in Halah and Habor, on the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes.
The looked to men and arms as their savior and not God.
Judah was not so, they were to be delivered from Assyria by God’s power and not by man’s.
“But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses or horsemen.”
Now picture this. God has you name your daughter, No Mercy.
Every time you call her name, you are reminded of God’s judgement.
All of the birthday parties and special moments of life, His plan for Israel is brought to the front of your mind.
His plan of no pity in judgement.
Then they have another son, and name him “Not a people”
When she had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she conceived and gave birth to a son.
And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people and I am not your God.”
This last son they were to call Lo-ammi, which means “not a people.”
Again, I can’t stress enough how this was to be viewed.
Every person who used this name would be reminded of God’s judgement.
There is a built in progression with the names as well.
Jezreel reminded them of what they were being judged for, Lo-ruhamah, or no pity, would remind them of how God was going to judge them, and Lo-ammi, or not a people, would show them the end result of their judgement.
A three point sermon God preaches through the names of Hosea’s children.
God told Moses in Exodus 6 that the Hebrew would be His people.
“Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.
‘Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
This was the reason they existed as a nation at all, because God, going all the way back to Abraham, made them one.
He watched over them, directed them, loved them, rescued them.
He was long suffering when they sinned, He provided for their needs, He revealed Himself to them.
They were special. Not because of how good they were, but because God had made them special.
Their whole history was one of sin and rebellion.
Every step of the way the grumbled and complained.
They turned away from God in the most wicked of ways.
Worshipping all of the idols of the nations around them, even those that would have them pass their children through fire.
They were to be the shining jewel of the world, showing the other nations the greatness of the Creator, they were given more light and instruction than any other people around.
But they squandered it, they turned away from it and turned towards idols of wood, stone, and metal.
God would judge them and when he was done, they would be driven away and made no nation.
Now this came about because the sons of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and they had feared other gods
and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel, and in the customs of the kings of Israel which they had introduced.
The sons of Israel did things secretly which were not right against the Lord their God. Moreover, they built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.
They set for themselves sacred pillars and Asherim on every high hill and under every green tree,
and there they burned incense on all the high places as the nations did which the Lord had carried away to exile before them; and they did evil things provoking the Lord.
They served idols, concerning which the Lord had said to them, “You shall not do this thing.”
Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah through all His prophets and every seer, saying, “Turn from your evil ways and keep My commandments, My statutes according to all the law which I commanded your fathers, and which I sent to you through My servants the prophets.”
However, they did not listen, but stiffened their neck like their fathers, who did not believe in the Lord their God.
They rejected His statutes and His covenant which He made with their fathers and His warnings with which He warned them. And they followed vanity and became vain, and went after the nations which surrounded them, concerning which the Lord had commanded them not to do like them.
They forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God and made for themselves molten images, even two calves, and made an Asherah and worshiped all the host of heaven and served Baal.
Then they made their sons and their daughters pass through the fire, and practiced divination and enchantments, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him.
So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from His sight; none was left except the tribe of Judah.
God would have them devastated by the Assyrians and replaced by what would become the Samaritans.
But that wouldn’t be the end.
God had made promises to the people He had called, and He is always faithful to His word.
He didn’t leave them with no hope.
He would use the judgement He would send and their future return from it as an illustration to us.
God’s Salvation Illustrated in His People’s Future v. 1:10-2:1
God’s Salvation Illustrated in His People’s Future v. 1:10-2:1
Yet the number of the sons of Israel Will be like the sand of the sea, Which cannot be measured or numbered; And in the place Where it is said to them, “You are not My people,” It will be said to them, “You are the sons of the living God.”
And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, And they will appoint for themselves one leader, And they will go up from the land, For great will be the day of Jezreel.
Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.”
Here in the last passage of the first chapter, God shows that their is hope.
He is not just using Hosea to preach judgement, but also salvation.
Throughout the book there are pronouncements of judgement with promises of salvation given.
This first chapter introduces the theme to us.
This is how God works.
He is a God of holy justice and holy wrath, but also, and to the same degree of perfection, of grace and mercy and love.
This is shown by this passage.
He begins the reversal of the judgements He has given, all to show that He keeps His promises.
His promise to Abraham that his seed would be numbered as the sands of the sea would be kept, because his people, even in exile, would be protected and kept until they return.
And, amazingly, He will use the very judgement for their sins into the expanding of His kingdom.
Verse 10 shows the great way He reverses their shame and turns it into a kingdom expansion.
Yet the number of the sons of Israel Will be like the sand of the sea, Which cannot be measured or numbered; And in the place Where it is said to them, “You are not My people,” It will be said to them, “You are the sons of the living God.”
His judgement came to pass, it was said, “You are not My people,” but He turned that into, “You are not just a nation, but you are my sons, sons of the living God.”
This looks like it is the first use of the concept of being “sons of the living God.”
This is used throughout the New Testament by Christ and it is used in Romans 9 by Paul to talk about the Gentiles coming into the covenant.
And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory,
even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.
As He says also in Hosea, “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’ ”
“And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.”
Then He talks about a reunion of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with one leader, a King from the line of David.
Finally, His judgements shown by the naming of Hosea’s children will be reversed.
Jezreel mean’s God sows, and where it first meant the God sows destruction, it now will mean that God sows a people.
And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, And they will appoint for themselves one leader, And they will go up from the land, For great will be the day of Jezreel.
“And they will go up,” could be translated as they will “spring up,” as in plants that were sown as seeds but begin to sprout.
The chapter division is not the best as chapter 2 verse 1 should be included with this passage.
Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.”
With a stroke of the pen Hosea removes the judgement of God.
Lo-ammi, not a people, becomes ammi, a people.
Lo-ruhamah, no mercy, becomes Ruhamah, mercy!
What a beautiful way to illustrate the salvation of God.
Though we deserve the judgement of God, He literally changes the most fundamental thing about us, and makes us a people, sown by Him, of mercy.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Hosea goes on for 14 chapters, showing the sin of Israel through Hosea’s own family.
In chapter 3, Gomer, leaves him and goes back to her prostitution.
God calls him to take her back again as wife, illustrating again how merciful He is.
God’s people, His bride, will be His for all eternity.
I want you to remember this.
We are all Gomers. Saved out of a life of sin, constantly tempted to return, but God is gracious.
As we look around us, and as we look at history, we see the judgement of God being poured out.
The persecution of believers waxes and wanes throughout time, but we know what the end will bring for the believer.
We remember that we are the bride of Christ. That this is the purpose of history, to prepare us for an eternity of the care and intimacy with our bridegroom.
Many times we are like Israel, we are unfaithful. But our bridegroom is never unfaithful to us.
We were once not a people, but He has sown us and we will spring up one day from the ground, His people, because of His mercy.
Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.
“Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.”
It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.
Then he said to me, “Write, ‘Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ ” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.”
Hosea’s prophecy will be fulfilled, the direct judgement we see in the the Israelites being taken into exile, and the fulfilment of His promised blessing in eternity.
Yet the number of the sons of Israel Will be like the sand of the sea, Which cannot be measured or numbered; And in the place Where it is said to them, “You are not My people,” It will be said to them, “You are the sons of the living God.”
And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, And they will appoint for themselves one leader, And they will go up from the land, For great will be the day of Jezreel.
Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.”