Let me ask you this evening to turn with me, if you would, to the prophecy of Hosea. If you weren't with us last Lord's Day evening, as I said this morning, the going and coming of vacation season and all, but I want to start, and start at last Lord's Day, a look at what we call the minor prophets. And just last Lord's Day evening, giving our thoughts to the office of prophet itself, But this evening, coming to what is the first of the prophets in our canon of Scripture, we may say more along the way, these minor prophets are not given to us in a strict chronological order. There seems to be some mixture of chronology and length of prophecy that was considered and how they appear in our English Bibles. Hosea was an earlier prophet, to be sure. We'll see more of his time and circumstances in a moment. But I want this evening to beg your patience because what I'd like to do is actually to read the first three chapters of his prophecy. Now, you can take some encouragement. None of the chapters is very long. Chapter 3 is exceedingly short, so we've read single chapters that were longer than these three. But it will set forth the stage, I think, help us a little bit in becoming familiar or reminding ourselves a little bit of this prophet, of his days and of his circumstances. So let's read together these chapters. The word of the Lord that came unto Hosea the son of Beri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel. The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms, and children of whoredoms. For the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, which conceived and bear him a son. And the Lord said unto him, call his name Jezreel. For yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. And it shall come to pass at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.' And she conceived again, and bare a daughter. And God said unto him, Call her name Lo-Ruhamah. For I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. Let me just pause there. The reference, if you recall, the Assyrian invasion, which decimated the northern tribes under Hezekiah and his great prayer, that invincible by human standards, Assyrian army, Many of them perished and never entered and took Judah at that point. So the reference there is clear. But verse 8, And when she had weaned Lo-Rahamah and conceived and bare a son, then said God, Call his name Lo-Ami, for ye are not my people, and I will not be your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured nor numbered, and it shall come to pass that in the place where it was said unto them, you are not my people, there it shall be said unto them, you are the sons of the living God. Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be gathered together and appoint themselves one head, and they shall come up out of the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Say to your brethren, Ami, and to your sisters, Ruhama, plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband. Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight and her adulteries from between her breasts, lest I strip her naked and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a dry land, and slay her with thirst. And I will not have mercy upon her children, for they be the children of whoredoms. For their mother hath played the harlot. She that conceived them hath done shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns and make a wall that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them. And she shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband. For then it was better with me than now. For she did not know that I gave her corn and wine and oil and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal. Therefore will I return and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax given to cover her nakedness. And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and none shall deliver her out of mine hand. I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast days, her new moons, her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts. And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, whereof she hath said, these are my rewards that my lovers have given me. And I will make them a forest, and the beasts of the field shall eat them. And I will visit upon her the days of Balaam, wherein she burned incense to them. And she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers and forgot me, saith the Lord. Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably unto her, and I will give her her vineyards from thence and the valley of Acre for a door of hope. And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt. And it shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi and shalt no more call me Bali. For I will take away the names of Balaam out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name. And in that day will I make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and with the fowls of heaven, with the creeping things of the ground. And I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth and will make them to lie down safely. And I will betroth thee unto me forever. Yea, I will betroth thee unto Me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in lovingkindness, and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto Me in faithfulness, and thou shalt know the Lord. And it shall come to pass in that day, I will hear, saith the Lord. I will hear the heavens, and they shall hear the earth. And the earth shall hear the corn, and the wine, and the oil, and they shall hear Jezreel. And I will sow unto her, I will sow her unto me in the earth, and I will have mercy upon her that have not obtained mercy. And I will say to them which were not my people, thou art my people, and they shall say, thou art my God. Then said the Lord unto me, go yet, love a woman, beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love flagons of wine, So I bought her to me for 15 pieces of silver and for a homer of barley and a half homer of barley. And I said unto her, thou shalt abide for me many days. Thou shalt not play the harlot. Thou shalt not be for another man. So will I also be for thee. For the children of Israel shall abide many days without a king and without a prince and without a sacrifice and without an image. and without an ephod and without teraphim. Afterward shall the children of Israel return and seek the Lord their God and David their King, and shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days." Well, amen. I trust, again, the Lord's blessing to be on the public reading of His Word. Let's bow our heads together. Our Heavenly Father, we tonight have come and sung many hymns and gospel songs of Your faithfulness to us and of proper desires for our own increased faithfulness unto You. And here we read sober words and yet words that are not devoid of hope. And we ask that You will give us grace in reading what was preached to a generation of centuries ago now And yet the needs, because the condition of hearts, are the same. Lord, so applicable to our times. So bless us as we consider something of this prophet tonight. And we pray it all in Jesus' name. Amen. I don't know as we go into these prophets just how many messages we'll take on each one. I would assume that we'll have a little more on the longer ones and a little less on the shorter ones. But having said that, Hosea is a more lengthy prophet and I don't know how many messages we'll take. I'm thinking at this point, maybe just two. But yet, we'll see as we go along. I want to try and speak a little bit of the prophets themselves and of their particular times. I think understanding the times in which they ministered, that's really the significance as so many of the prophets date themselves by the reigns, the kings that they ministered under or during their reigns. Hosea mentions five, four kings of Judah and one king of Israel, although he ministered in the northern kingdom. The kings of Judah and their season are just given for our reference and for our understanding. Hosea has an interesting name. His name means salvation. And his name is really the same, or at least the bulk of the same, as Joshua. And of course, Joshua is the Old Testament way of saying the New Testament Greek name of Jesus. Joshua, just with the abbreviated form of the Lord's name affixed to it, Jehovah is salvation. That's Jesus. Hosea is the shorter version of that very name. And Hosea aptly is named, and Hosea aptly represents our Jesus. All of these men, if we can enter into that debate, we occasionally mention as to the extent of types in the Old Testament Scriptures. We brought that up recently in the thought of Joseph and his being presented as a theme for the campers this year in camp. In Greenville, Dr. Cairns and Dr. Barrett had a little debate and discussion going on about whether Joseph was properly called a type or not. I just leave those debates aside. But even the strictest interpreter would understand that all of the prophets were types of Christ because of the very nature of their office. Christ as mediator, as prophet, priest, and king. And so for good or for ill, the Old Testament kings and priests and prophets were types. They were either good representations of Christ or poor. Hosea, though his life and even his ministry was sad, is a good type of the Lord Jesus. And of course, Jesus is known as a man of sorrows. But as we come to look at Hosea, this prophet of salvation, if we look at the reins that are put before us, Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, so Jeroboam II, king of Israel. There were four prophets that were ordained of God to minister during this same period of history with Hosea. You may have, if you're mindful of Isaiah, seeing that that chronicling of the Judean prophets is echoed in his opening verse. Isaiah ministered during these very reigns. But not only Isaiah and Hosea, but Amos and Micah were also prophets that were called to minister in this season. And the very fact that there were four prophets ordained of God to minister at the same time among His people should have been an indication to His people that those were needy days. They were days in which people needed many voices to call them back. to their God. Now we won't labor the point, we may say a little bit more about this as we come to his contemporary Amos. But Jeroboam II was given by the providence of God to be an ungodly king and yet to reign during days of prosperity in the northern kingdom. There was great prosperity as we'll find in Amos. The people were so prosperous that they had winter houses and summer houses. They had wine in abundance. Their provisions were great. And so it is in Hosea's time that in this time of material prosperity, there was also a spiritual bankruptcy. Prosperity isn't usually a good thing for the church, for the people of God. That's a sad reality. We get satisfied with our riches. We get distracted with our earthly things. We don't sense a need of God when the next meal or the next string of meals seems to be already provided. Sadly, it's in times of hardship that we're more persuaded that we're needy. We're more ready to confess our need and seek His face. And so Israel, sadly, in Hosea's day, was in no mood to hear the prophet's warning. And he, like Amos, brought a warning to the northern tribes of impending judgment. But Hosea was also, like really all of the prophets, though they preached judgment, the day of the Lord is a theme that permeates the minor prophets. A day of God's visiting their sin, and also words of hope connected with that, the Lord blessing them and bringing them back to Himself. The most notable thing about Hosea, and this is really where we'll give our attention tonight, is that Hosea's life, his own circumstances, were ordained of God to be a picture of God's relationship with Israel. What we've read gives us a chronicle of Hosea's marriage. of children born to his wife, and of the difficulties of her unfaithfulness, and Hosea's having to deal with that unfaithful spouse. I don't want to get overly technical, except that in wrestling with some of the questions, ultimately I think there's great blessing But there is a problem. There's a difficulty that commentators, at least conservative, believing commentators, have to wrestle with. God instructs Hosea, as we read in chapter 1, verse 2 again, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms. Take unto thee a wife of whoredoms. This presents a difficulty. It was scripturally wrong. You can go to the Pentateuch and see for priests, there were great stipulations as to who they could and could not marry. And a woman of immorality would not be a candidate for the wife of a priest. That's by direct statement in Scripture. It would seem that by implication, the same would be true for prophets. that would not have been according to God's will and according to God's design for Hosea to take to himself an immoral person as a wife. And so it presents a difficulty. Is God for, can we say, illustrative purposes, setting aside a requirement of a faithful spouse? Or is there something else that's going on? Some conservatives take the view that the marriage between Hosea and Gomer is allegorical. That it's not a literal marriage, it's not literal circumstances, it's not literal whoredoms and immorality that are in view. It's just an allegory that sets the stage for the rest of his prophecy. The difficulty with that interpretation of Hosea's marriage is there's nothing in the text that indicates it's allegorical. It reads like narrative. It seems on the surface to be exactly what it appears to be. He's given to take this immoral woman as a wife. And so the one way around it is that it's allegorical. It didn't really happen. It's just a picture. Those, again, conservatives that can't view it allegorically view it then that it's a literal marriage. She was impure at marriage, and God has just set aside the normal requirements in order for this picture to be enacted. I think Calvin himself takes this particular understanding of the situation. There's a third view that many conservatives take. It's called the proleptic view. I said I wouldn't get technical. I have to help myself along when things get technical. But what this means, prolepsis is a figure of speech. And I guess the classic illustration of that is, and now I'm going to have to call on Kevin or somebody that can pull out such things at will, the date that Queen Elizabeth was born in, what was it, 1928? I don't know. If anybody knows, tell me later. That's prolepsis. because when she was born, she wasn't Queen Elizabeth. The person who became Queen Elizabeth was born in whatever year she was born, but she wasn't queen then. And so the understanding is that what we see in these instructions to Hosea are prolepsis, that it is with hindsight, that these instructions are given, if you will. That it's written perhaps later in his life and ministry and reviewing what transpired. And it's kind of like it was a secret at the time, known only to the Lord, but that here's a way out of this wrong instruction, it seems. Dr. Barrett takes what he calls a hybrid view. He appreciates the proleptic understanding because it removes some of the difficulties, but it doesn't relieve them all. Because even if it is proleptic, God knew what it would be. His understanding is that it is proleptic in a sense, but that it's not that Gomer was impure at the time of marriage. God isn't giving him to enter into a marriage wrongfully, but that she was impure in heart. She's not guilty of these sins at the time. It is a pure, a normal marriage, if you will, but yet the tendencies and ultimately the enactment of these sins belonged to her. And Hosea having married her in her purity is wounded by her in her unfaithfulness and impurity. And really when you take that understanding of the marriage itself, the picture of God and Israel shines through quite brightly. Israel, if we look at the history, was given to God Old and New Testament imagery. The Bride of Christ. The Bride of Jehovah in the Old Testament. She, as we read in Jeremiah's prophecy, walked after Him in the wilderness in the beauty of her espousals. She was pure. They entered into the land. And you can see in those seasons where the book of Deuteronomy was preached to them prior to their entering in. And then as they are there reading the Law, Mount Ebal and Gerizim, and they're hearing the blessings and hearing the curses and said, all that the Lord has given, we will do. Israel says, as it were, at the appropriate time when the minister puts forward the question, I do. She took God at His Word and owned Him as her God. But how quickly Israel, like Gomer, broke those vows. No matter perhaps how sincerely uttered, the power of temptation overwhelmed her. And so here we come and we see this prophet who has married the wife of his youth. She is pure at the time of their marriage. She has said her I do's, but then she follows her paramours, her lovers. This is a picture, it's one of the words we found often in seminary, of contra-expectation. Everything that we would expect of Hosea and his bride, certainly of the Lord and of Israel. I mean, what weakness, what insufficiency, what poverty, what lack of beauty does the Lord of the earth possess? And yet Israel, who was joined to this perfect spouse, fails to render faithfulness. is drawn away by the idols of the land in which she dwells, those surrounding peoples. One of the interesting things as you read that second chapter in its poetic form, the things that Israel possessed, her grain and her grapes and the vintage and the silver and the gold. These things she said, well, my lovers have given these to me. And she doesn't even recognize that out of the silver and the gold she makes the idols of Baal. How could Baal make or give things out of which he's made? The prophets could almost sarcastically say. But we wouldn't have expected unfaithfulness. We would have expected Israel to rejoice. When you read Hosea, when you read all the prophets, in some ways, these are preachers that are expounding the book of Deuteronomy. You read the Old Testament Scriptures, and we said something, I believe, last week about this and the liberal view of the Bible, denying inspiration, taking, many of them, an evolutionary view of the Scriptures and how Israel evolved in her understanding of religion and suggesting that it was these prophets that wrote the books of Moses in part, and they were taking their own matured understanding backwards. And the opposite was the case. These weren't innovators that were trying to present new truth. They were reformers that were calling Israel back to truth she'd had at the beginning and had denied and walked away from. And so as they preach what Deuteronomy had given, I say the text, and you could turn up passage after passage. The Lord had said to the people, I'm bringing you into the land. I've taken you out of your bondage in Egypt, and I'm placing you in a land of promise. But there were threatenings in that covenant as well as promises. Disobey. Walk according to the heathen. Follow on in paths of idolatry. And I'll take you out of the land. I'll put you back into another bondage." But Israel is blind to her own Scriptures. Will not heed them. They are enjoying in these days prosperity. Ascribing that to their false gods. You remember, idolatry in the Old Testament, really idolatry always, is an expression of spiritual adultery. And it is spiritual adultery that is always at the root of actual physical adulteries. It's in the pursuit of false gods that such actions are ultimately worked out. Israel is blind to those threatenings. and blind to the covenant. And here, this broken covenant of marriage and the broken heart of Hosea sets the stage for God's description, really the reality that existed between Israel and her God. When you go through and see the broken covenant itself, Again, the blindness that is apparent here. The pursuit of what seems at least at the first and on the surface to be pleasurable ultimately brings misery. The lovers that appear to be so alluring and attractive and worthy of attention and affection will soon abandon. the unfaithful spouse. And she comes, as we see here, ultimately, almost as the prodigal to find himself with the swine. And Fain would have filled his belly with the husk the swine did eat and say, it was better for me before. Idols always let us down. But when you consider the imagery of that broken covenant, of that marriage where Gomer should indeed be cut off. And you read the story and you see the particular names that are given of the Lord for the children. It appears from the text that as Hosea marries Gomer, she conceives and gives birth to Jezreel. And the name and the implications there, we won't follow it all, but Jehu, God is going to bring judgment on the house of Jehu just as He used Jehu to bring judgment on the house of Ahab. The fact that Jehu was an instrument in God's judgment against Ahab's sin and the sins of his house doesn't give him a pass to commit his own sins and not have his house ultimately to be judged to. But the names bear interesting significance. Jezreel bears the meaning of scattering. Israel and the tribes of Israel are going to be scattered among the heathen. You come and see the names now of the children that follow. It is quite possible, indeed probable, that these two children were not the children of Hosea. They were the children of the lovers, the paramours. And so when we come to see these names, Lo-Ruhamah, not having obtained mercy, and Lo-Ami, not my people, the significance of the names is striking indeed. how aptly named that they weren't really Hosea's. And for everything that, can we say, the very presence of these children is a reminder of the awfulness of unfaithfulness and sin. The situation in the marriage becomes so bad that a separation is necessary. And we see that in the second chapter. Verse 2, "...plead with your mother, plead, for she is not my wife, neither am I her husband. Let her therefore put away her whoredoms out of her sight and her adulteries from between her breasts." So here, the state became so that a separation was necessary. But as we go into the third chapter, We read here, "...then said the Lord unto me, Go, yet love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love flagons of wine. So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver." Commentators suggest here it's not explicit in the text, but this appears at the time to have been the common price for a slave. And it may be that Gomer in her infidelities and in her separation had pursued her lovers as the prodigal and yet either become enslaved to one of them so that her true husband must purchase her in order to bring her back to his home. Whether that is actually the case or not, There is a price that we see Hosea gives for the restoration of Gomer. Well again, it's not difficult to see the parallels. Israel, we as God's people having sinned against Him so greatly that we deserve to be cut off indeed from Him forever. and yet in love. In His own faithfulness to the covenant, in spite of our unfaithfulness to the covenant, provides a ransom whereby we are brought back unto Him. But I think in some ways, it is in the names of the children that some of the Gospel truths come forth fully. The name Jezreel, Jehovah scatters. There is the aspect of scattering and Israel scattered among the nations. Those tribes really never recovered. Commonly spoken of as the ten lost tribes. Because the restoration we'll see in the post-exilic prophets really had reference to Judah. The Samaritans and the mingled half-breeds of the northern tribes were at odds with Judah in the days that went forward. And those that were scattered that never returned, well, were lost among the Gentiles, unless you go into some strange British Israel philosophies and views that are quite wrong. But Jezreel doesn't only have the reference of scattering. There's another application of the name. It has reference to sowing, as in the scattering of seed. Scattering that ultimately issues in a good thing and not an evil thing. And how has the Lord sowed the gospel? not only among Israel and Judah, but among the Gentiles now in these days of New Testament blessing. These prophets, while they dealt with their own times and particular contemporary problems and circumstances, very often, even in their preaching of judgment, had the message of hope. Sometimes the hope was in their own future. We'll see even about the rebuilding the second temple and fulfillment of such hopes as that. But often their hopes reached forward to days that are still future for us. I mean, if we think here of Israel and Judah together, The last verse of chapter 1. Appointing themselves one head and coming up out of the land. The children of Israel coming to David their king. Their days of future hope. And we read there of these people at the close of chapter 2, verse 23, I will sow her unto Me in the earth. Which is real. looking for a future day of blessing. And then I will have mercy upon her." Again, verse 23, "...that had not obtained mercy. I will say to them which were not My people, Thou art My people. And they shall say, Thou art My God." What do we read in the New Testament Scriptures You don't need to turn, but 1 Peter 2. As Peter would write to the nations scattered, as Peter would write to us. We read, But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light, which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." Hosea's marriage is a gospel picture. The sorrow, the unfaithfulness, the awfulness of the sin, We can, in a sense, see it in that one case and it impacts us greatly. But looking at the bigger picture, what of our unfaithfulness? What of our breach of that original covenant? What of our going after paramours? God could rightly have written us off. God could rightly let the names of not obtaining mercy, not my people, scattered stand. But He looked on the unlovely. He looked on the unfaithful. He looked on the undeserving. He looked on those deserving of being cut off and lost forever. And he chose to love them because he chose to love them. And Hosea is given as a great picture of Christ. To love Gomer still when she had forfeited any right to that love. To bring her back to himself. To take these children unto himself. to bring the family back together. We'll come, Lord willing, in the latter section. Really, the book divides into the first three chapters, which we've read as a narrative of Hosea's experience. The obvious parallels in his message from chapter 4 to the end. But I say, what a gospel picture. It's awful in many ways, and yet sin is awful. It's beautiful and powerful in that we see the covenant loyalty of God, His faithfulness unto Himself, His love for the unlovely, and His willingness to forgive and bring us home. Hosea's life. was marked with hardship because it was an example of the difficulties of the gospel. Let's bow our heads together. Lord, we come tonight and have read and quite hastily considered this narrative of Hosea's own life experience. But how aptly it pictured Israel's unfaithfulness. How rightly it pictures a chastening, a separation that Israel endured in the captivity. And yet how aptly it pictures your sovereign grace in promising even things still to come of a future day of restoration and wholeness and grace. Lord, help us in this and in looking at the other words of these preachers in the Old Testament Scripture. And may there be challenge and encouragement for us in our own times. We ask and pray these things in the worthy name of Jesus. Amen.