Slide: Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Nahum

Intro

Invite them to D-Lab

Illust: When I was young, I had this thought. I’m not great at school, I’m not great at sports, I’m not great at much, but I’m gonna be such a good boyfriend one day. I’m gonna be such a good husband. I’m gonna treat her like a queen. Get her whatever she wants. If girls only knew how much charm I had, they would be into me.

I thought I was an incredibly loving person. Who wouldn’t want to be attached to me?

But there were things I was blind to.

If you looked around at my friendships, my relationship with family, and my approach towards people in every situation, there was inconsistency.

There were kids I avoided at youth group because they annoyed me and I didn’t want to be seen as their friend so other people wouldn’t want to hang out with me.

There were times I did service to get attention or get people to think I was nice or talented, completely removing any love from my actions and corrupting all the service.

I was mean to my siblings, lashed out at people that offended me, gossiped about people to make myself feel better.

How on earth could I think that I would be loving to a spouse when my whole life was surrounded by a failure to love?

It’s because my view of love was very small.

Those things I was failing at, those were the easy things.

The thing I wanted? So much harder than I could ever expect.

The minor prophets are love letters that God writes to people who think they are very loving, but are completely blind to their lack of love. The letters are brutal, confrontational, tragic, but they bleed the words of a God pleading with his wandering bride to turn back to Him.

These books promise to make you a more loving person. But you will only ever do that if you are willing to accept the painful truths they have to say about how unloving you are.

Historical Context:

The Minor Prophets take place during kings.

They are preachers pleading with people. Yes they involve visions of Israel future at times, but always to try and warn them of what is coming so they they repent in the present.

Israel gets split into two kingdoms.

Israel - Only evil kings, combines worship of God with the world.

Judah - Some good, some evil. Self-righteous trust in the temple.

Today, we are dealing with four minor prophets, the four

Four written to the Northern Kingdom: Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Nahum

Five written to the Southern Kingdom: Joel, Obadiah, Micah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah

Three written to the Remnant Kingdom: Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi

Today, God wants you to relearn love.

Matthew 22:37–40 ESV

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

God says that the whole bible, the entire story told from beginning to end hinges on love.

If any of you are learning to drive, you learn there is this spot called “the blindspot.” It is the part around the car that you cannot see in any of the mirrors, and failing to check it is the number one cause of accidents.

There are some mistakes you can afford to make in life, but gettin love wrong is not one of them.

I want to ask you to check something for me today. Check your spiritual blindspots and see what is there. God has written four letters to remind you of four spiritual blindspots.

4 Blindspots of Love God Wants you to See:

Amos - God’s love wants you to hate your sin.

The Whole Theme: God is waiting to punish the evil of this world until it is most ripe.

You cannot love God and and people and also love what God hates.

Read: Amos 1:2, then survey each of the nations. Then read Amos 2:6.

We enjoy seeing other people get punished. Whenever a youtuber get’s canceled or has to put up an apology video, we love it. There is something so satisfying about seeing others have justice visited on them.

Illust: Gravity falls, “gettem!”

Israel had a big issue. They didn’t see themselves as bad people.

If you never accept the fact that by nature you are not a good person, you will never repent.

They excused their behavior based on how bad everyone else around them was. They really had disdain for the nations.

They thought they were in the right because of how bad they thought everyone else was.

Annoyance is not a sign of maturity, it’s a sign of immaturity. Being offended is not a sign of zeal, it’s a sign selfishness.

The more you grow as a Christian, the less offended and annoyed you will be. Why? Because you see how offensive and annoying of a person you are.

If you are annoyed, the first thing you should look at is your heart. That’s the issue, not the nuisance.

Amos 5:14-15

Jonah - God’s love wants you to love others that are hard to love.

Jonah is a book that you are all kinda familiar with. At least one story within it. But there are many more layers to this.

Read Jonah 1:1-17

Jonah wanted to avoid going to a place of evil, but he was blind to the fact that the act itself.

Read Jonah 2:5-9

God’s love allows the most broken person to return to Him.

Read Jonah 4:1-3

I’ve heard people say things like “I could never forgive them for ______.”

People might have done terrible things to you. However, our sin before God is so worse. God forgave you of that. The Christian doesn’t get to say “I could never forgive” because we are the mot forgiven people.

Nahum - God’s love wants you to trust His jealousy for justice.

Did you know Jonah has a sequel? Hundreds of years later. What happened to the Ninevites?

Well their repentance didn’t stay. Instead, they returned to the evil and were merciless and cruel.

They turned on the Israelites, killed tons of innocent people, and led them away with fishooks in their noses.

Now the Ninevites didn’t want forgiveness. And Israel has been really hurt. This isn’t a Jonah situation anymore. Jonah refused to go to people who cost him.

Have you ever been hurt by someone, and felt like they got away with it wrongly? You just want to see them pay.

That’s the kind of people Nahum comes to: Read Nahum 1:2-5. Then show them Nahum 3:18-19.

Jealous? Isn’t it a bad thing to be jealous?

God is jealous for you. Have you been wronged? Then God sees it. He is righteous. He will deal with it.

You lose sight of God’s love the moment you take justice into your own hands.

God’s justice is motivated by love. Like a husband who cares about a wife, he fights those who would harm her.

Hosea - God’s love wants you to love others one-way.

Hosea gets a message from God.

Hosea 1:2–3 ESV

When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

It doesn’t give up after a certain number of times.

Illust: Video of me almost going into the fireworks.

Read Hosea 2:16-20.

God says I’m gonna stick it out and love them. And when I’m done loving them, they will be changed.

Conclusion

Let me ask you: Are there ways you look down on others when you see their sin? Are you only loving people that are easy to love? Are you taking justice into your own hands and gossiping or hurting those who have wronged you? Do you love others expecting something in return?

Repent.

You might feel discouraged. You might feel guilty. But wanna know what is going to turn that all around?

Who’s love have we been discussing all night? Yours? No, it’s your God.

Christ sees the worst of your sin, but he has none.

Christ forgives people hard to forgive.

Christ is jealous for you.

Christ loves you on a one way street though you don’t contribute.

Conclusion: The Minor Prophets are trying to show you that you can’t hope in your love for God. But you can always hope in God’s love for you. Christ is what was promised by them as a seal of His love.

Christ came as your representative, and God forgives your failure to love because He loved perfectly.

What happened at the end of Hosea? He sent David their king, and he changed all of them.

When Jesus came, he came in perfect love. God loves you because his son loves him back perfectly.

There is nothing naturally in yourself that is loving, but if there is true sacrificial love that comes out, it’s God in you and not you.

You can never trust your love for God, but you can always trust Christ’s love for you.