Hosea 2:14-23

Introduction

In our last time together we got a heavy dose of Israel’s sin! This is a constant theme of the prophets and one which we will have to go through again and again as we work our way through these minor prophets. One of the primary purposes of the prophets, if not the primary purpose was to call Israel to repentance, to lay their sin bare before them and arrest their hearts drawing them back to covenant faithfulness and love for the God who graciously endured their faithless wanderings and adulterous affairs with false gods and foreign powers.

In his book “Love Divine and Unfailing: The Gospel According to Hosea” Michael Barrett says this:

Love Divine and Unfailing: The Gospel according to Hosea His World at Home

Convincing a sinner of his sin is always prerequisite to pointing him to the gospel solution to his sin. Hosea, obviously conscious of that logic in evangelism, focused much of his message on exposing the sin of the people. He was dealing with a people whose spiritual callousness, hardened by material riches, desensitized them to spiritual matters. The good life, thanks to Jeroboam, made Hosea’s job hard.

The work of the prophets and the work that we have to do as evangelist in our day is to bring the Word of God to bear on the sins and sinful hearts of those we interact with so that by God’s grace that initial realization of the individual’s sinfulness, which is the first beat of the life born out of the sovereign work of the gospel of grace in a sinners heart, that first realization of sinfulness which is actually preceded, though sometimes only by moments, by the first faithful knowing of who God is, that knowing and the fear that comes with it leading to an abhorrence of sin and terror and fear of its consequences as an affront to the God they now know leads to repentance and repentance leads to forgiveness and to a love of the God who in light of that vast horror of sin would condescend to love the sinner and rescue them from their rebellion.

The book of Hosea, as all the prophets ultimately do, directs our eyes forward to the cross, to the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ. And the good news for those of us who have already come to faith in Christ is that these things again give us ample opportunity to glorify God for His amazingly wonderful grace. Today we are going to see a section of hope in Hosea and in our next time together we are going to further explore this theme of restoration as we look at the restoration of Hosea’s own marriage but the glory of restoration hinges on the condition of what is being restored. I used to enjoy watching some of the restoration type shows that maybe still play on places like the history channel, but as I watched those types of shows there were two types of them. In one show, say a car restoration show, a skilled restorer might take some old rusty hunk of a car for instance and turn it into this shining new super cool automobile, in other they might make a really cool car but they would do it by starting with a normal run of the mill totally fine and running vehicle. Now both kinds of shows are cool but there is clearly a difference in the transformation from plan Jane car to hot rod and an old pile of rust pulled out of the mud in a cow pasture being turned into a shiny chrome covered driving machine.

In directing our attention as he has done, and the attention of his original listeners I would add, to the woeful condition in which they lived Hosea sets the stage for the radiance of the glory of the great saving and redeeming grace of God to shine forth in a marvelously beautiful display. Remember where we came from! Just peek up again to the end of verse 13, we read there that she, that is Israel, the bride, has gone after other lovers and forgotten her husband the Lord! And remember that what is happening there is not that she is so totally lost in the ecstasy of her relationship with her other lovers that her husband, the Lord of Glory, has drifted from her mind, no what is happening here is the exact same thing that we read about in Romans 1, she is suppressing the truth about God, suppressing her knowledge of God so that she can pursue these other lovers without the guilt that she feels knowing that she is an adulterous whore! This forgetting is an active forgetting, a forceful removal from her mind of the thoughts of her true husband, her true love.

So lets take a moment to pray and then we will read this passage and dive in.

PRAY & READ

Sovereign Mercy

As we start in today, knowing that we have set the stage for seeing the glory of the grace of God on display it is interesting to note the structure here that one commentator points out. (Hubbard, David A. TOTC Hos) We see in these first three chapters, first God uses Hosea’s marriage and Gomer specifically to foreshadow what Israel has become, however, when it comes time to flip the script it is God’s great redeeming love that is put on display first and only then in chapter 3 will we see how Hosea’s love for Gomer will be used to reflect that. David Hubbard points out that:

Hosea: An Introduction and Commentary 1. Hosea’s Experiences (1:1–3:5)

Gomer’s betrayal of Hosea may foreshadow Israel’s defection from Yahweh, but no human act of forgiveness can take priority over divine forbearance. When it comes to the exercise of grace God is mentor to us all.

Hubbard continues later in his commentary:

Hosea: An Introduction and Commentary d. A Gracious Restoration (2:14–3:5 [Heb. 2:16–3:5])

When judgment is the theme, illustration precedes actuality; when hope is in view, actuality takes priority over illustration

So again as we dive in here take note of the precious nature of this text. Today we see the actuality before we see the picture. This is the gracious redeeming love of God for a people who have played the whore, willfully forced Him out of their minds, this is the gracious redeeming love of God put front and center against that backdrop of heinous wickedness. We will see that today, we will have to wait a few weeks to see how it plays out in Gomer’s life!

There is a really important thing to see as we start in here, notice for a moment how many times you see the phrase “I will” over the course of these verses. No less than 14 times over the course of 10 verses! We cant miss this, this is a salvation passage, we will see that this passage fits squarely into the vein of the overarching salvation motif that runs through the entire of the OT and carries us right to and through the cross and the most visible phrase in this passage is “I will” this thing, this marvelous redemption is all of God, it is His initiative, He is the one who is doing this thing! God is the center of this story!

Verses 14-15

Verse 14 is striking. Remember we ended 13 with Israel forgetting God, actively forgetting God, willfully pursuing other lovers. Therefore we expect to read further indictment. We expect to see the hammer coming down again! We expect the other side of this “therefore” to contain more of the same, more of what we have already seen in chapter two but it does not!

God’s judgement suddenly gives way to mercy. “Behold, I will allure her” God says.

You aren't miss hearing what God is saying there. The word allure means just that. God is enticing, wooing, and the word even has uses so strong as to suggest seduction. God is now pursuing this adulterous bride, she has been enticed by other lovers and has fled to them for the fulfilment of her lusts and desires and now God, the pure, and holy, and faithful husband stands before this treacherous woman and in an almost unthinkable display of love and mercy begins to court her again!

God does this we read by bringing her into the wilderness. This allusion to the wilderness is a direct reference to the exodus. In fact the whole of these 2 verses, 14 and 15, is a picture of the exodus. This is how God is going to woo his whoring bride. (An aside, I am tempted to just say wayward but we really must stick with the picture and imagery of Hosea, wayward bride doesn't capture it, she is whoring after other false gods right in the face of her one true Lover)

Speaking here in his book Barrett says of the Exodus:

Love Divine and Unfailing: The Gospel according to Hosea Remembered in Terms of Redemption

There was no event in Israel’s history more important than the exodus. Politically, it marked the birth of a nation; religiously, it pictured the gospel. In the Old Testament, including in Hosea, every reference to the exodus is theologically pregnant, and we miss the point as interpreters if we ignore that theological fullness. The fact that the details are not delineated does not mean that the details are not there.

Indeed we see that these verse are pregnant with imagery!

We see that God is going to move her away from the place where these Baals hold sway. The people worshiped Baal under the shade of the trees of the land, we read in Chapter 4 verse 13:

English Standard Version Chapter 4

13  They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains

and burn offerings on the hills,

under oak, poplar, and terebinth,

because their shade is good.

Therefore your daughters play the whore,

and your brides commit adultery.

God is now going to move them into the wilderness and He is going to speak tenderly to her. This phrase literally means to speak upon her heart. God is reaching into His wayward bride and doing a work here that only God can do, he is doing heart work!

I cant help but think about God’s calling to sinners that we see in the NT in places like 1 Corinthians 1 where we read about God’s call that brings sinners out of their bondage to sin, as the gospel goes forth many will account it as foolishness but we read in verse 25 that for those who are called, this message of the gospel becomes Christ power and God’s wisdom, “the word of the cross is folly” Paul says there in verse 18, “to those who are perishing” “but to those who are being saved”, to those we might read in the light of Hosea who are being wooed in the wilderness, that word of the cross is the power of God!

As God woos His bride we see more allusions to the whole of the Exodus, not just the leaving of Egypt and slavery but also of the entrance into the promised land. This entering into the promised land, into the rest that was provided in that land is one of the major salvation motifs that is picked up and dramatically fleshed out for us in the NT by Christ and the apostles as they expound on what all of these things in the OT mean in light of what Christ has done!

Salvation means not only a release from bondage but also a bringing to fruition of a promised inheritance! For the bride at this point in redemptive history this was the land flowing with milk and honey. “I will give her vineyards!” We read just this past week of the giant cluster of grapes that the spies carried back with them as they went into the land to spy out its fullness! Vineyards were an essential part of life and also of mirth and the imagery here speaks to God’s faithful provision of both just as his promise of the land flowing with milk and honey had done in the time of the exodus!

The imagery of the valley of Achor may be unfamiliar but it is important.

In Joshua 7, right as the people are entering the promised lad we read after the defeat of Jericho of the story of Achan. Achan had kept some of the things that he saw in Jericho, he wanted them, silver, gold, and a beautiful cloke! The lust of his eyes was at work and we read that he took these things though he knew the command of God that everything, absolutely everything, in that city, outside of Rahab and her family were to be devoted to destruction!

The result was that Israel experienced defeat right on the heals of their divinely wrought victory at Jericho. The people of Ai defeated them and 36 men were lost.

As a result Achan and his whole family were stoned and a heap of stones was raised over their bodies and we read the epithet of this story in verse 26 of Joshua 7:

English Standard Version Chapter 7

26 And they raised over him a great heap of stones that remains to this day. Then the LORD turned from his burning anger. Therefore, to this day the name of that place is called the Valley of Achor.

This valley would be remembered as the door to the promised land but as a door that had been marred by the sin of unfaithfulness. A foreshadowing in a long list of foreshadowings of what was going to happen with this people. There was no hope associated with this valley, its pile of rocks stood as a memorial of unfaithfulness and judgement, a whole family stoned to death and berried there right on the doorstep of Israels promised home.

Picture the imagery of a groom sweeping his bride off her feet to carry her across the threshold of their new home together only to have that threshold marred by a reminder of unfaithfulness! This was the valley of Achor, and yet in His great merciful redemption God is going to take this place that had lead to the people’s estrangement from God and turn it into a door of hope. God is using the imagery and terms of the exodus to speak of the renewal of this marriage.

“She shall answer me as in the days of her youth” “as at the time when she came out of Egypt” (As if we needed to be sure this was exodus imagery)

We read of that answer in Jeremiah 2:2

English Standard Version Chapter 2

“I remember the devotion of your youth,

your love as a bride,

how you followed me in the wilderness,

in a land not sown.

When God had presented Israel with the terms of His covenant they had gladly answered “yes”

Notice also the assurance of these things, made sure by the constant use of “I will” but also punctuated by several “She shalls” When God moves to redeem His moving as will all of His moving, is unstoppable, it will happen!

Verses 16-20

As we continue on we have to pick up the pace a little bit but we again see this next section of verses filled with exodus imagery.

In that day should be read to refer to the day of salvation or the day of redemption. We tend to see everything so linear in our western world and want to put day on a calendar or timeline and know when it was but the reality is that the day of God’s redemption has unfolded over a long period and continues to unfold even today. Hosea is laying a foundation for the new covenant language that we will find really fleshed out by Jeremiah and ultimately inaugurated or brought to its fullness by Christ when he says, “This cup is the blood of the covenant which is poured out for many.”

Part of redemption will be the renewing of the marriage relationship. A big part of that will be the ability and privilege for Israel to call God husband again. In a play on words however God strikes at both the guilt and sin that hindered that relationship and put God in the position of Baal, or Lord and master and the idolatrous confusion that had led to the mingling of Baal worship with YHWH worship and ultimately the outright rejection of YHWH worship for Baal.

English Standard Version Chapter 2

no longer will you call me ‘My Baal.’ 17 For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more

Israel had rightly called God their Baal, their Lord and Master but that has been used in the process of diverting the hearts of the people to the actual worship of Baal and now God says that as He woos them and reveals himself to them as not a Lord or Master but as a loving and faithful redeeming husband that in the rapture of that new found relationship they will put away the names of their adulterous lovers forever. Again remember the forgetting of God was an active forgetting and so here the love that God shows to this people is so marvelous that it will move them to put out of their remembrance these false gods.

We then see imagery of a new covenant being established, one that allows them to dwell safely and securely in the land. They will not have to fear the beasts of the field, their crops and sustenance will be safe and they will not have to fear military conquest any longer, they will “lie down in safety.” In the words of the writer to the Hebrews, they will find rest!

This rest will be the result of their renewed marriage to God. He will betroth them to Himself!

We see first that this will last forever! They have no need to worry that when this day of redemption comes that it will ever give way again to a new day of falling away. The valley of Achor will have been forever changed to a door of hope. This is the hope that Paul speaks of in Romans 5 that will never put the hopeful one to shame.

Lastly we see the qualities that God will display in this newly restored relationship. Verse 19 is about God, if you are like me you tend to read those descriptors there, righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness as things that we are to be and while the natural response to receiving those things from God is to seek to return them in kind the thrust of this verse is on describing who God will be toward them as the husband in this relationship.

He will be righteous, which means he will be utterly committed to this new covenant. The word literally means straightness and points to God’s character in always doing the right thing!

He will be just, God will act in ways that are fair and right, He will seek their good and will not be flippant are arbitrary in His dealings with them.

He will show steadfast love to them, this is the Hebrew term Hesed. Most significantly this is an unfailing kind of love! He will remain utterly committed to loving them

He will show mercy to them, this will be brought to the forefront when the name of Hosea’s daughter is turned on its head in just a few verses. Important to note though is how desperately we need a God who shows mercy, when we take communion every week we pause to remember and confess our sin confessing it before God clinging to His righteousness alone for our acceptance before Him in mercy!

Finally God will be utterly faithful to them! It is not that He has some how ceased being faithful but that Israel again will experience the blessing of their faithful husband!

Finally and climatically we read “you SHALL know the Lord!”

Hubbard notes here:

Hosea: An Introduction and Commentary i. Salvation Speech II: Renewal with Cosmic Consequences (2:14–23 [Heb. 2:16–25])

Though know is appropriate to the intimacy of marriage (Gen. 4:1), its meaning here is that the bride will make the appropriate response to the Bridegroom by committing herself as fervently and faithfully to the terms of the covenant as he has. Such lack in Israel’s present devotion was simply stated by Hosea in 2:8, 13 and will be greatly expanded in 4:1, 6; 5:4; 6:6. Covenant loyalty and obedience are the core of knowing Yahweh. And they manifest themselves in precisely those qualities that Yahweh pledges to bring to the marriage. What he offers is what he asks of Israel in permanent commitment:

Israel will know God and in knowing God will respond correctly because of that knowledge. Remember in our introduction we talked about how a right knowing of God is the first work of grace in an unbeliever heart in the path to salvation, if we don't know God, see God for who He is we can never repent of our sin because we will never see it as needing repentance but when a person comes to know God in this way the rest will necessarily follow, knowing God is at the center of everything and clearly takes central place for Hosea!

Verses 21-23

Central to the last few verses is the reversal of the names.

Jezreel which meant scattered and was a marker of Israels impending deportation now means scattered but not scattered in terms of judgement but scattered like sees, sown by the Lord, planted in the land. “I will sow her for myself in the land.” Even God’s movement to save and sow them finds its terminus in Himself, it is for His own divine pleasure and joy that He will do this thing.

He will “Have mercy on No Mercy” In Hebrew all that is happening is the “lo” is being removed. No mercy, becomes mercy!

Not my people, again with the “lo” removed become my people. God in an awesome display of redeeming love is taking a people who had no desire to be His people, has wooed them and draws them in and now calls this wretched whore, this faithless adulterous wife, MINE!

And the response from the bride in light of all this should, cause joy to well up in our hearts. “You are my God!”

Look where we have been and now through God’s sovereign and marvelous free grace look where we are!

“Oh for a thousand tongues to sing my great Redeemers praise! The glories of my God and King, the triumphs of His grace!