Hosea: Intro

Intro: Do you like romance?

Hollywood has ruined romance to be so unrealistic, the couple is always attractive, even if they have been through a plane crash the make up never moves, the couple stays strong, the only issues they have are just ridiculous.

The notebook -

Tonight we begin a book about love. You could call it a romance BUT this one is real, it does not give the story the Hollywood sugar coat BUT leaves it raw, untamed and forces the reader to deal with it. Hosea is a book about FAITHFUL LOVE. Hosea was a prophet of God in the nation Israel. A prophets job was to deliver messages FROM GOD to THE PEOPLE. and in the same way you see some preachers bring up props or use pictures to better explain or illustrate a point, Gos uses Hosea to LIVE OUT an ILLUSTRATION to make a point. He commands Hosea marry a woman who he knows will cheat on Him. A woman who will leave Him for other lovers. Why? Well to prove a point… you say that seems extreme. THINK ABOUT IT! God could have made His point by...

Simply telling His people “I love you”

He could have commanded His people “Because I love you, you must love me”

He could have prophesied “I will love you and bc of that you will love me”

He could have reasoned with us “Look at all of the ways I have loved you, it only makes sense that you’d love me”

He could have created robot humans who can do nothing but “love” Him

BUT INSTEAD He uses REAL PEOPLE in a REAL RELATIONSHIP to ILLUSTRATE what His FAITHFUL LOVE to His people looks like. And I’m so glad he chose this way. Because in this artistic form we see the reality of His love, we see the means by which he loves, we see characters that relate to us and that relate to God and we better know God and we better know us BUT I think above all else what THIS FORM of artistic, romantic story telling does… IS PRESENT the EMOTION.

No Good romance leaves out emotion because it is a natural part of love, love isn’t merely an emotion and (no book makes that clearer than Hosea) BUT love is never VOID of emotion. And here we will see the difficulty of heartbreak and the joy of reconciliation and everything in between.

and as we travel through it together over the next several weeks we will see that it can be divided into 2 segments

A physical marriage - with a PERSONAL PROBLEM - Hosea and Gomer

A spiritual marriage - with a NATIONAL PROBLEM - God and His people

And tonight is just a teaser, just a trailer that gets you to buy a ticket, to comeback. So I’d like to entice you with a few themes that we will see in this book.

4 reasons to hear Hoseas message:

Balanced view of God

Cake Illus:

3:16 - see him as husband not boss

How to Love God

Spiritual Adultery

when we sin, it is cheating on God, it breaks a relationship and we cannot fix it

we need God to forgive and initiate or else we die in our sin

Be Saved

God loves the world generally but not salvificly

some here don’t actually know God, don’t love God, and he loves you enough to bring you hear tonight to hear this good news that God didn’t leave us in spiritual adulterous

Hosea 3:15

end with cliff hanger Who started The prostitute and prophet relationship?

Hosea 1:2 NAS

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.”