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Hosea Overview (Part 1)

Bible Book Overviews
Bible Book OverviewsSteve Gregg

In this overview of Hosea by Steve Gregg, we learn that Hosea was a prophet in the Northern Kingdom during a time of spiritual decline and idol worship. Gregg explains that the book of Hosea includes a personal story of Hosea's marriage as a metaphor for God's relationship with Israel. Additionally, the prophet's prophecies include charges against Israel for promiscuity and forsaking knowledge of God, but also calls for restoration and salvation. The lecture explores the theme of the Messiah and the Messianic period in the Old Testament, and how this differs between Christian and Jewish interpretations.

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Transcript

Alright, so Hosea is a book that was written around the same time as Isaiah. In fact, the four kings of Judah that reigned during the ministry of Isaiah are the same four kings that Hosea mentioned were reigning during his reign. So it would appear his ministry spanned at least 45 years, which would also be true of Isaiah, and at the same 45 years.
The difference
is that Hosea was in the northern kingdom of Israel, and Isaiah was in the southern kingdom of Judah. Now, the nation had divided some 300 or 400 years earlier than this, and they were hostile nations to each other, although they had at one time been one nation. The twelve tribes of Israel were now divided into a northern kingdom that had ten of the tribes, and a southern kingdom that had the other two.
And they were independent nations, just
like some people talk about the United States becoming, maybe in the near future. It's all talk at this point. So, if it happened, it would be very similar to that, frankly.
What
happened was ten of the nations just broke off from the other two, and they had two independent nations adjacent to each other. And the problem is the northern kingdom never had a good day, spiritually speaking. They were in rebellion from the very beginning.
The king, the first
king, whose name was Jeroboam, set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan, which were the two extremities of their country, north and south. And they were the places that he said the Israelites of his kingdom should go and worship rather than in Jerusalem. The problem being that Jerusalem was in Judah, which was now a rival nation.
And Jeroboam didn't want his
people going down to Judah, which was under a different king, to Jerusalem. So, he set up rival worship sites in Bethel and Dan. And these were, took the form of golden calves, which is a pretty bad way to start the nation.
I mean, that's kind of what happened when
Israel first came out of Egypt and became a nation. They made a golden calf, and that was a bad idea then. It was even a worse idea for Jeroboam.
And they had a series of kings
over the next few hundred years, 19 kings in the northern kingdom. All of them worshiped idols. They all, as the history tells us in First and Second Kings, but they all continued in the sins of Jeroboam.
That's what the Bible says, which means they kept worshiping the
golden calves. And there were other crimes and sins that became commonplace. Of course, once you depart from the living God and start worshiping false gods, you lose more than you thought you would lose, as our culture has recently found.
It's become more evident
in the past year or two, but it's been happening for some decades that in our country, which used to know a lot more about the true God and used to know, have a lot more respect for his word, those things, respect for God, respect for his word, have been kind of shoved out of the center, maybe all the way out of the boundaries of social and political plot for the most part. So that's a secular alternative or an idolatrous alternative to Christianity is now basically the worldview of the majority in the universities and in Hollywood and those who are the opinion formers. Also, frankly, too many families, too many parents have simply raised their children without the knowledge of God.
And we I'm sure
that the thought was we can be a good people without God. That's what Richard Dawkins like to say. It's a Christopher Hitchens like to say, you don't have to.
You don't believe
in God to be a good person. Well, but the problem is, you need God to tell you what a good person is. You see, a person might see themselves as a good person because they are doing what is right in their own eyes.
But when you don't have God telling you what's
right and wrong and you don't recognize God, then you don't know if you're being a good person. You can say, I don't believe in God. I'm a good person.
Well, one of those two
statements is correct. But the second one, you have no way of knowing whether that's true or not. If there's no God, what is good? And of course, therefore, when a nation departs from the knowledge of God, and that's one thing Hosea mentions a lot, the knowledge of God there without the knowledge of God, they don't know the Lord.
You'll find that
to be one of the most common repeated statements in Hosea. They have lost, they've forsaken the knowledge of God. Well, what happens then? Well, when you don't know God, you don't know good.
And therefore, although you might think yourself to be none the worse for the lack
of God, you nonetheless find that sexual morals begin to be compromised. Business morals begin to compromise. Telling the truth is no longer a value.
And frankly, these are
the things that Hosea said had happened to his own nation. And those things, I would say most of us who are paying attention, though, have happened to our nation, too. I mean, there are certainly many believers in God.
Some of them are here, and there's many more
like us around the country. But we're not the opinion formers in the nation anymore. We're not the news media.
We're not the educators in the universities. We're not the movie makers.
We're not the ones who are shaping culture anymore.
I don't know why we're not, but it's
just a fact. We're not, and we haven't been for about probably 40 or more years. And as a result, two generations have come up since the days when we were little, when I was little.
And for the most part, they've grown up in a society that does not formally acknowledge God. And because they don't acknowledge God, but they think they're good anyway, they have lost sight of what good is. Therefore, we have the murder of over a million babies a year before they even come out of the womb.
We have children being forced, or at least
permitted when they're too young to make wise decisions to change their gender. I mean, these are things that are like, where did this confusion come from? There was a confusion like that 20 years ago. Why is everyone so confused now? Well, it's because, as it says in Jeremiah, they have forsaken the knowledge of God.
What wisdom is in them? And you have
to realize that you lose more when you lose God than simply God. Because the Bible says in James, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the father of life. And therefore, you lose the father of life.
You lose every good gift
that he's given us a society. And that's why, if you wonder why society that we now are looking at, not just in this country, you go to Europe the same way. I mean, it's happening all over the world.
There's a loss of a foundation, and that foundation was the knowledge of God.
Even in our society, when I don't I don't know if there's ever a time when we could have called our society Christian. It may have been.
I wasn't there at the time, so I can't really
assess it. But there certainly was a time when everyone was either or almost everyone was either Christian or they were God fearing and they respected God's word. The Ten Commandments were on every courtroom wall.
And I mean, this was something that was permeating our
culture. Hosea lived at a time when Israel had forgotten God. Israel had departed from God and didn't know God.
And therefore, we find a litany of crimes and sins that God
complains about through the prophet Hosea. Now, Hosea was one of the very few prophets in the northern kingdom who wrote anything. As far as we know, only he and Jonah were writing prophets in the northern kingdom.
Now, Amos spoke to the northern kingdom. Much of
his prophecy was against Israel in the north, but he was from the south. And so also prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, they all wrote.
Well, not that Ezekiel, because
there were there was no northern kingdom when he wrote. But Isaiah and Jeremiah, at least they wrote against both the northern and the southern kingdom. But as far as native prophets in the north, there weren't many.
There was a time when in the seventh chapter of John, the
Pharisees were very angry at Nicodemus because he spoke up moderately in favor of Jesus. And and they snapped at him and he says, what are you also a Galilean? Search and look for no prophet arises out of Galilee. Well, that was not quite true.
Hosea rose out of Galilee. So
did Jonah and previous to them, Elijah and Elisha. In fact, just the king was before the king to whom Hosea spoke.
The kings in the north had been conferred by Elijah and Elisha. So
Hosea is in the same country as those two prophets. And also a little later than him came along.
Jonah in the same area, their ministries overlapped, but they weren't. Probably Hosea was
the older man and he prophesied earlier. The actual years of Hosea's ministry were probably about 755 to 710 B.C. So about seven and a half centuries before Christ is when he prophesied.
Now, the nation actually fell about 30 years. After he began to prophesy. The nation
fell in 722.
So it's like practically in the middle of that period of time, which is also true
of Isaiah's ministry, which was over the same period of time. So part of Isaiah and part of Hosea would have been written probably before the fall of his own nation in the north. And perhaps some of it was written after the fall.
There is there are prophecies of restoration in the book of
Hosea, and those may have been written after the fall. That'd be the time when the message of restoration would become needed. So we don't know that there's no actual date given for the different chapters as there are in some cases like Isaiah and Jeremiah's prophecies and Ezekiel's.
They have usually it's in the such and such year of such and such king, this oracle or this vision came to the prophet. We don't have anything specific like that. We just know the range of time when he prophesied.
So the prophecy of the book, as we have it now, divides into three very different kinds of
section. The first section is the first three chapters, which tells the story of the prophet himself. He's some of the prophets.
We don't know anything about them, but many of them, we have a little bit of
autobiographical information or at least one aspect of their life. We have quite a bit about Isaiah and a fair bit about Jeremiah and Ezekiel. But the minor prophets and Hosea is the first of the minor prophets in terms of the arrangement of the canon of our Old Testament.
He was not chronologically. In the minor
prophets, we don't always have information much about the prophet himself. In this case, we only know one thing about Hosea's personal life, and that was about his marriage.
And the reason we know about it is because
God told him that the domestic unhappiness that he was going to experience and what he did was going to be a portrayal of God's domestic unhappiness with Israel. We have to understand that the subtext of this is that God was married to Israel. This was the way it was understood to be true from Sinai on when they first came out of Egypt and they're brought to Sinai.
God made the covenant with them. That was a marriage covenant, or was it at least
analogous to a marriage covenant so that God forever afterwards spoke of himself as Israel's husband and Israel was his wife. And so that idea permeates the book because just as a man who is married to a woman is greatly offended if she goes out and sleeps with other men.
So God was offended by his wife going out and worshiping other gods which he saw as
rival to himself as you know the first and only love of his wife. And what we have here is that Hosea is told to go and marry a woman he's told in advance that she's going to cheat on him. So I'm sure he entered that marriage with a little bit of emotional misgiving.
I would if I entered it at all and I would obey God but it would be very unhappy situation to get yourself into
deliberately because you have children. I mean if you have a wife and no children and she keeps on you and leave that's that's not a happy situation if you get your children and then you with another man that were mindful of your children's suffering as well and yet this is really hard because it would seem that of his three children two of them were probably bothered by different man than himself. God told Hosea what the name of the name that he gave the second and third child seemed to indicate that he didn't recognize them as his own.
He was told before he married this woman who was Gomer that she would be a faithful to that she'd be promiscuous and sure enough she was now the first chapter tells us about her promiscuity and gives rise to a prophecy about God complaining about Israel's promiscuity because Israel had worshiped other gods many other gods than himself and therefore he calls them. He sometimes called Israel his wife and sometimes he refers to it is probably the individual people in it as the children. So you've got this shifting of the metaphor from time to time sometimes he talked with him like they're the children who are of foreign occasion and other times it's referring to the nation as a whole as the fornicating wife in any case in chapter one we read of the children being born after the marriage.
Now the story
breaks away in chapter two and just kind of gives prophecy begins with a charge against Hosea's wife because she is a picture of God's wife in fact the wording of the property that we morphed into God Israel as the wife. Up until around verse 13 of chapter two and then a chapter 14 to the end of the chapter there is a prophecy of restoration and salvation now we're going to find a few of these in the book as we find in all the profit. Basically a profit hardly had any use for profit at all unless he was going to tell not only what God was finding wrong with the people of the time but how God was going to show mercy and restore them in the end.
Now these prophecies of restoration
are probably the most controversial part of the book and of any of any Old Testament prophet. The reason is because all of the profit when I say all I might have to exclude Jonah because Jonah is largely just the story not a prophecy but you know when the prophet prophesied whether the major or minor profit they never neglected to talk about even if it was a single person in a profit one chapter long God restoring his people and then there's all this flowery talk about how much still they'll prosper and enjoy his favor and things like that. We call these the kingdom have to get the messianic passages because sometimes they mention the Messiah sometimes they don't but it's understood in the Jews understood that these profits will be fulfilled when the Messiah.
In the Old Testament they were waiting for the Messiah the king
the deliverer of the Savior who would save them from the Gentiles from their enemies and would restore them as a great people in the favor of God and and they have a righteous society after that under that right thing that the Messiah that was expected now the fire is mentioned in quite a few passages of the Bible but. Many of all the profits whether they make the Messiah person or not they talk about this error that the fire would rain and that's having God restore his people and when he and his king now the reason that and there's several of these passages that you the last chapter of the day is such a path that you know about half of chapter two is such a path we got a few verses of the same at the end of chapter one so and I think two verses of the chapter three for these these messiah passages although they don't always make them the fact that for three that but they're all part of the same thing when you're in either Jeremiah or Amos or you know that the right you name it when they talk about the messianic period they sometimes make the Messiah himself being the one who causes it to be a right to frame other times they just mentioned the features of that right but it is the one hope of Israel and the old Testament is the Messiah will come and he'll reestablish things that the reason that most Jews. I think Orthodox Jews today do not receive Christ as the Messiah is because they say when the Messiah comes he'll regather the diaspora of Israel from all the land and bring them back to Israel and he didn't do that.
And so they have to assume he's not the Messiah now Christian believe he's the Messiah even though he didn't do that but there's a in the New Testament there's an explanation given that the distinctly Christian explanation of that Jewish hope and it's a different explanation than the Jews themselves and just but the reason these messianic passages are the most controversial passages in Hosea or in any problem is because there are two camps in the church and there have been for some at least the last two hundred years one can't understand these in the distinctly New Testament that is they see it as Jesus is the Messiah he did come he did bring salvation to his people he did call together to himself not only the remnant of Israel but also sheep that they did not know about that he would go and bring himself off to the Gentiles and that he has done exactly what God said he would do though the Jews thought of the all Jewish people would be gathered to Israel but the New Testament pages know it's a remnant of Israel and when you read the Old Testament prophecy carefully you find it's always referred to the remnants of the document and it was only the faithful remnant of Israel that Jesus gathered to himself and then of course the Gentiles and so the Christian understanding has been from the beginning of the apostle time to modern that these properties were fulfilled by the coming of Christ when he died and rose again especially when he ascended and was in Rome that's the infirmity of the day that the most common Old Testament passage quoted multiple times in the New Testament is from a hundred and one the Lord said to my Lord that my right hand and telling me your enemies your footstool that the power of God and throwing Christ at his right hand and giving Christ the commission to win over his enemies and he's got a rain there right now God until he's made all of them in the New Testament right make a very plain they believe that happened when he was offended. They quoted all the time in fact the last person to book a market that Jesus ascended out of their sight and sat down at the right hand of God although no one thought that happened they knew it happened because of the following hundred and ten verse one they knew that was his attention to have a wonderful. So according to the historical view of the church.
The path that you think in spiritual terms of God calling a spiritual people the faithful remnant of Israel and Gentiles who are who met them in their faithfulness to Christ and that that group is. It is. It is.
Really enjoying all the features of the kingdom of the messiah messianic as Paul said in Romans. It's the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy although things are what the prophet said the Messiah's age would be the beginning of God is right to the joy in the Holy Spirit. There's not not political peace and joy that he's not talking about a political kingdom.
He's got a spiritual thing which is why he's a total nicotine if you're not born again with a very you want to be. Not a political entity it's a spiritual reality that God has called himself all those who are faithful. All.
To have him to break him is the king or Lord and they are thinking that the new testament teaches in every every writer of
the new testament. And we don't have to go there right now but the reason that controversial. Is because.
About two hundred years ago there was another view which has actually become very very dominant in evangelical circle
and and the people who hold are very adamant about it in fact they consider the historical the church to be here. Ironically they call it a last day. Which is ironic because it's the view the church held until the last day.
Their view the critics are the ones who
do began in the last day of the last couple hundred years. But the point is they see it as a demonic heresy what the church is always thought and what the apostles thought actually they wouldn't agree. And that is that they believe the Jews were right not the apostles that Jesus.
Well they say he of course they believe he is the Messiah but they believe he didn't do the Messiah thing.
They they believe he came to do the Messiah thing but the Jews rejected him and for Jesus and for God his whole plan of the ages forwarded by these few people who crucified him and therefore he had to put his tail between his legs and flee back to heaven until later when the Jews would be more agreeable and then he'll come back and then he'll do the Messiah thing he'll set the kingdom for a thousand years on earth. So those who hold that view.
Believe that these messianic passages that talk about the glory of the Messiah's reign are going to
fill that the second coming of Christ. He's going to come back set up this kind of kingdom that we read up here for a thousand years. Ironically the Bible always says it lasts forever never mentioned a thousand years but the point is that their view they say this is they call it millennial.
They said these are millennial passage. Well what we can all agree about is they are messianic age passages whether the messianic
ages of thousand years or forever like the Bible says we can discuss that. But the point that I'm making is the real difference is this messianic age begin at the first coming of Christ like the apostles.
Or will it come at the second coming of Christ so they'll agree more
with the Jewish expectation. And that's that's where the controversy is. Now I'll just tell you where I stand.
I stand on the side of the
apostles when they say it was fulfilled. I agree it was fulfilled. And we and they quote from a fair bit to let us know that they did believe that.
And I believe that you know to take the view of the Jews that is the unsaved Jews today who still believe the Messiah is going to come
and set up this kind of kingdom to take their view is to take the view of the ones frankly who crucified Jesus and why they crucified him. He was that they weren't ready for Messiah. They've been looking for Messiah.
They even wanted to do the right thing in John 6 15 after
Jesus said the multitude of when he saw that people were about to take him by force and make him king. He sent the people away went up into a hill. They were ready for him to do that.
It was not the truth who rejected him as a messiah. It was they rejected his model of
salvation. They wanted him to be the messiah according to their description.
They wanted to force that we take them and make him that's
exactly what you today think that messiah will do to become a king like that. I don't know. But.
That's not that's not what you have in my thought we got had in mind and of course the kingdom has come Jesus said it had even in a day that if I'm not even by the God the king of God had gone on. And Matthew 12 20 and Luke 21 the first is demanded of what is the kingdom of God going to appear. Now why did they ask him that because they assumed he was the messiah or at least claiming to be and yet he wasn't doing what they thought the five should do it for the bring in the kingdom of God.
What is the kingdom going to appear. If you're
the messiah. The kingdom doesn't come visibly it doesn't come with observation you won't be able to say low here it is or low there is but the kingdom of God is already in your midst.
It's already here. In Colossians 1 13 Paul said that God has translated as Christians already
out of the power of darkness into the kingdom of the Lord your son. Why.
Because he's our king and we're his servants and that's what makes
the kingdom that is the kingdom of God and his righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That's why righteousness peace and joy are the holy. Because the kingdom fruit.
Is spiritual and it requires the Holy Spirit and dwelling to produce their fourth spiritual kingdom
if they have a real physical people. But we have a connection spiritually in Christ under the headship or the Lordship of the kingship of Christ that we're his kingdom and so he did it. He didn't know that you didn't want him.
How could they for him. I mean when you
think about it God waited fourteen hundred years from the time of finite to the Jesus coming because the Jews were not. Agreeable and then what he chose to come and then they still were agreeable and so forth and oh man I thought they'd be ready by now you know I mean God does not afforded by man and Jesus kingdom was not one thing we can say is if we can't say anything else we can make this there's not a line in the scripture that suggests that the kingdom of God because of the use of.
And yet that's the main
point of the alternative system to what I'm holding. So I find these kingdom passages and I say this much about them because it is controversial and because we're going to talk about the fact that it is very important they're probably the most important passages of the book and I just want you to know there's two different views about it there's one that church always held until eighteen thirty and then there's a view that came up in eighteen thirty which I think is the true view now not everyone. But which many of the church's.
So with that in mind we need to be paying attention.
So the first three chapters which contain three of these passages actually. Is the story of Jose he marries a woman she commits adultery.
She bears children and a couple of them a couple of children are not the first one seems to be his. Then we don't hear about
her again until chapter three because chapter two breaks off into this whole prophecy thing it's not part of the end of her directly when it comes back to her three. Jose is told I got to go get her again and buy her back and marry her again.
Well we hadn't even
heard that they've been divorced so it's not surprising. She was so unfaithful but more than that we haven't heard that she'd come into slavery. She had to be bought back the first time he married her he just took her as an available woman to marry somehow through her thing she'd become in bondage.
Perhaps to him. I mean we don't know. I mean he had to buy her from somebody and so he
paid for her and got her back and he told her OK don't do that anymore.
You'd be faithful to me. I'll be faithful to you and and
things will be OK which is a very magnanimous thing for a man to do. Especially if you're a woman who's shown no evidence of true reform you know but he's.
He loved her. That's the point. God loved Israel and Israel.
Cheated on God profusely. Now what happened to Israel because they were destroyed. About 30 years after Jose began to talk by the Assyrians came in 722 B.C. and wiped out the nation of Israel doesn't exist anymore.
There were people from those tribes that had escaped to Judah before that war and therefore there are still people who survived from the different tribes but only the remnant of those 10 tribes in the north survived because they joined themselves with Judah and Judah later went into Babylon but came back to Judah has still continued and those are people we call the Jews but but most certainly vast majority of the 10 tribes north they they went into captivity and they did not retain their Jewish or their Israeli identity very well they intermarried with Gentiles they've been doing it for centuries and therefore there isn't really. You know. And Israel.
Which is represented by those 10 tribes anymore. They were never restored in other words in fact the people who are called the Samaritans when Jesus was here were the descendants of those people and. One reason the Jews didn't like the Samaritans was because they were mixed breed they had their ancestors had interbred with Gentiles and they lost their Jewishness and there's really no way to get that back you can't put a genie back in the lamp again.
To get back to what about so they're done but of course the nation of Judah survived it even survived an attack from the same people who wiped out the people of Israel because about 20 years later. The affair came down against Jerusalem and would have done the same but God intervened and that's mentioned in the chapter one that that would happen. We'll talk about that when it is so we have this restoration of Gomer to Hosea in marriage.
We don't know how that
worked out because the story isn't told beyond that point hopefully it worked out but then there's a brief application in the last couple verses of Chapter 3 saying that this is what God will that's what's going to happen with Israel will be restored to him now. Going further that's the first section of the book Chapter 1 through 3 the second section is Chapter 4 through 13 by far the largest section of the book Chapter 4 through 13 now this section really defies. Outlining you really can't outline it you can't analyze it like OK you've got this they move to the subject of the project it's more of a rant that goes on and on and reintroduces a lot of the same point at many points it basically gives a catalog of the things that Israel was guilty of and what God intended to do he actually predicts from very.
Severe horrible things that would happen to them which did when you've been to war if you had to be at not some of your Vietnam era people from here maybe Afghanistan or Iraq era you know a lot of people come back from war with. Whatever. Not quite.
Thank you. OK. Post-traumatic stress syndrome.
And. Yet. As horrible.
As Vietnam and Afghanistan and Iraq are. You ain't seen nothing unless you've been attacked by the Syrian. I mean the Syrian.
They were totally unchecked by the United Nations or by any body that could make them be civil even if they were not it's getting people alive they disembowel pregnant women they would put hooks and people go and drag them off into captivity they just they had no mercy. It's horrendous I know that there's people like that in some of these countries where there's modern work to because they also are mostly nations not affected by the gospel. Fortunately the gospel tends to civilize nations when it has an impact but these were people without God to get like Israel had become and they were monstrous and so in addition to cataloging in this catalog in the sins of Israel.
God mentioned some of the horrible things that they will face as a judgment of that. And. If there's not much there's not any glimmers of hope in this section there are some themes that brief that I will mention in a moment but I'm just trying to believe that I'm still trying to give you the outline of the book and that's the only three parts of that how long it takes to tell you about three parts and now you've got this lengthy section chapter four through thirteen which is.
God's complaint actually God bring charges it's like you call them to the courtroom and say hey I'm taking you before the judge because I got some complaints about your valid complaint and he uses the word charges even in Chapter two when he talks about in verse two bring charges against your mother meaning Israel. In Chapter four it says in verse one here the word of the Lord you children of Israel for the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land. So it's like the courtroom complaint that God is logging here and he's got a lot of evidence you've got a lot of exhibits to show that his wife deserves severe punishment and will receive it but of course we also have the passages of restoration and reconciliation which is what is represented by Jose taking his adulterous wife back and these passages as I mentioned are sprinkled throughout there's there were three of them in the first three chapters but the main one is the last chapter Chapter fourteen that's the third section of the book and that is the prophecy of restoration of prophecy of the messianic age.
So the three sections are the first one is. Basically a historical story about Jose and his wife and then there's a bigger section which is God just kind of laying out his exhibits that is trial of his faithless wife and then the last section of the last chapter which is about restoration in the end OK now. I want to say.
Let me read some of the material in the first three chapters so we can get that story clear here and tell you and interpret a few things are from names. Maybe I should tell you this before you there's there's some names that are symbolic. Principally the names of the children of that will be.
Beginning of the book is one one of the word of the Lord that came to those days from a beer I in the days of the fire job from a half of the kind of things that you know and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash king of Israel the Jeroboam reign for fifty. Fifty two years or fifty years of that a long time and this is not the first year of Jeroboam the founder of the nation that would set up the golden calf and that's all again. He had been long dead this is a much later king and we call him Jeremiah Jeroboam the second.
The Bible just called him Jeroboam and figured people won't be confused him with the other and so many generations between them but scholars refer to this as Jeroboam the second. He was also the one during whose reign Jonah prophesied and of course Isaiah in the kingdom and Michael. But interestingly although they have done to have much to say to you that he mentioned the king of Judah as well as the king in Israel.
And if you look at the span of the king of Judah they get to include the guy that would take it long after the reign of Jeroboam in the north. In fact it would take us all the way to the end of the northern kingdom. So I don't know why he mentions only Jeroboam it may be that the prophecies that we have recorded here were all in the reign of Jeroboam but that he also prophesied.
Unwritten prophecies that he just gave out on three quarters or whatever during the whole reign of Hezekiah which would include all the last kings of Israel because last kings of Israel didn't last long individually they were the last six kings of Israel. I think four of them were assassinated by the predecessors or the successors and so forth. So he actually prophesied from the time of Jeroboam the second to the end of the northern kingdom history and apparently beyond that too.
So it says when the Lord began to speak by Hosea the Lord said to Hosea go take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord now when God says go take a wife of harlotry some modern translation say a promiscuous life. I think the king James is a wife of Hortum an older word. Many preachers have said you know God told Hosea to marry a prostitute and there are some who believe that that is true some believe that she might have been one of the temple prostitutes but I don't have any reason to believe that necessarily.
She to call her a wife of harlotry doesn't mean that she's already committing harlotry any more than he speaks of the children of harlotry as if they were already born. He's talking about a wife who would become a harlot and children who would come from harlotry. This is in all likelihood he married a woman who was young and chaste and her later misbehavior was not foreseeable.
It was foreseeable and God tells you it's going to happen but not that you'd know it by knowing the girl and God is telling him before he goes in there you're going to get married you're going to have children and I'm afraid it's going to be a bad domestic. Now by the way I I had a wife when I was young that did she don't mean I know that that's a I know that's a very very painful thing. In fact it is said that adultery is the most cruel nonviolent.
That a person can commit and I can't think of one that's more so. You know all the other ones we buy the fact but adultery is not a violent act nobody gets physically hurt or killed but it's as cruel as many violent acts are and certainly more cruel than any other nonviolent act. So he's going in there probably with great trepidation and he doesn't know how much it's going to hurt because he hasn't been married before but he found out.
So he went to go over the daughter of the land and she can see them bore him a son. Now she bore him a son which means he was the dad you'll see that him is missing with the next picture of the board. She can even more jobs and the names that they are given to get they were not not.
She bore him a son and God said to him. Call it a real. For in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Israel on the house of J. And bring an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel it shall come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of just real.
Now what is just real.
Kind of awful repeated word you're going to see it again at the end of the chapter where it was a great will be the day of just real. What is that just real with the city.
In which. A half and just about. That I think there's some or maybe the winter they had a place in some area also but just real was like their summer cottage or their winter cottage or whatever.
And. When it was time for a half and just about to. To be off.
The life of the prophet went and found a general who served under them named Jacob and anointed him with oil and said God is anointed you to be the next king and to you know you've got the power of a half. So this is going to be a military coup and it was authorized by God a prophet of God told him and so J. Who he was all for it so he called the army who were on his side of the general anyway for the army for already with him and he went to just real now on his way there he encountered a half and killed him. And I know.
Yeah OK you killed a lot of people the story you have to go back and read it in Kings but he killed a bunch of people he did kill Jezebel or actually he persuaded her servant to do it and they did it but he didn't stop there I mean that was when he was authorized by God to do that he killed everyone else in sight that was related to any king you know there was even there were even servants of the king of Judah who are coming up and had heard nothing about this coup and they're just coming up to pay their regards to the king like forget how many important were 70 of them and he killed them too he killed a whole bunch of innocent people he also killed guilty people he went killed all the priests of Baal so he thought he was being a good guy and it was a good guy or bad guy well he was kind of a good guy and that he was a weapon in God's hand just like a theory it was a weapon in God's hand to punish nation J. Who was a weapon in God's hand to punish Jezebel and Ahab but he went too far and he just had a lot of it to work and when it says here in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Israel on the house of J. Who is saying you know it's been four generations since J. Who did that but it's time for me to avenge the blood at least of the innocent people that he killed in Israel now God prophesied to J. Who that his dynasty would reign for four generations. Which meant it couldn't rain a few or any more than that and. Jeroboam was the fourth generation descended from J. Who so it was time for punishment to come on that generation and he's going to destroy Israel now there were a few short lived kings after J. Jeroboam but they didn't count for basically Jeroboam was the last of that dynasty and he died and then within a few years after that the whole nation was destroyed so that's the thing predicted here and so just real is referring to that slaughter you talk about the blood of J. Who is going to avenge it on the on the house of J. Which would mean on your own.
It should come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Israel now the bow of Israel would be the military strength of Israel. It's the fact that it was without with with Jeroboam gone it would be destabilized to a degree that would never recover and the overwhelmed by the Syrian. So he's breaking the nation basically in its military power.
Now. It's important for us to know that the name just real means God so or God. It was often used it was a sense of scattering seeds so God knows is an alternate view of what we should call it and that fact will be worthy of note later in the book because I've been talking about selling and it's a play on words to this word just really.
Got. Now. For the child is named just real.
And then said and by the way. Because God is going to scatter. You think just really means God's got it and so God's going to destroy the nation of Israel what kind of scattered scattered them to the four winds and scattered among the Gentiles and they're still scattered.
So that was God's selling or God's gathering them like feed out on a field but not in a good judgment then comes the second job for six and she can see begin and for a daughter doesn't say she can see by her there or more human daughter she bore a daughter and God said him call her name low Ruhama which means no mercy. Or some modern translation paraphrase to unloved. That she was not loved.
Because you. Illegitimate now. I don't want to talk I don't anyone who may have been illegitimate here don't you think that that means that you're less of a person than a legitimate job but in that society.
A child born out of wedlock was simply not OK and. So it looks like you're saying that she's not going to be loved by her father because he's not her father. And God says call her low Ruhama for I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel but I will utterly take them away yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah I will save them by the Lord their God and will not save them by both nor by sword or battle but not by horses or horsemen now here he's referring to what would happen in the year 701 B.C. when the same nation that conquered the northern kingdom of Syria came against Jerusalem and against against Jerusalem when the kind of the king but there was a different outcome because of the kind of a different kind of king he was a godly king and while many were telling him to take aid from a Syrian from Egypt he rejected that the council by the simply trust in God and God and an angel.
Who killed a hundred eighty five thousand Syrian soldiers that were kept outside the gates of Jerusalem and when the survivor of the world can solve something very freaky had happened. If we got to the left and so Jerusalem survived and did not fall to the appearance of Israel had done. Twenty years earlier when you're very it's interesting because God is unfair to.
From that particular threat of Syria and I'm not going to buy a sort of our war and it was Israel or Judah didn't have to fight they just prayed and God killed the enemy so God did it without normal warfare which is. Now. He's saying to the different and it's going to be in different circumstances but he still has some bad things about you later in the book there's a Jewish not really OK but when has a kind of praise he was OK and God saved the nation because of him for a day now when she had weaned lower harm.
She can see them for a time now again doesn't say that she can see that my whole day or more to him and that's one particularly appears not to be his child because God said call his name low on me for you are not my people and I will not be your God now low on me means not my people are from. Some. Paraphrase of under it no can of mine.
There's a baby born and he said no can of mine you know it's not my time and God you're not my people. And I'm not your God that's the interesting thing. Because there are people who think that because God made a covenant with Abraham and then about five I was more than the people that somehow Israel always got people no matter what they do.
God said no you're not my people I'm not your God why because they were a billion. What was is no longer. Well they have a wife apparently was divorced eventually were not told about the divorce only the restoration but she wasn't his wife anymore she wasn't his people and.
So I mean God to be God's people require that you meet some conditions. When God spoke to Israel about five I said if you will obey my voice indeed and if you will keep my covenant you will be a peculiar people and treasure to be a holy people in a nation to me a kingdom of mine kingdom of grace to me now you know you'll be my people you'll be my nation if you obey my voice and if you keep my government. Well that's a couple of important.
Can anyone remember a time when Israel did that like was there a year or two somewhere in their history where they obeyed God and kept his covenant there were some there were some years but mostly not. And at this point he says I'm done with the northern kingdom anyway. Now they were just as much as the southern kingdom they were just more rebellious they were just more disobedient at this point later and frankly at this time and before Judah also was disobedient but not as bad as the northern kingdom.
So now we have three kids and we don't read any more about the marriage in chapter three instead what we get is more like a prophecy in verse 10. Yes the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea which cannot be measured or number and it should come to pass in the place where it was said to them you are not my people there it should be said to them you are the sons of the living God then the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and appoint for themselves one head which means the Messiah and they should come and come up out of the land for great will be the day of just real say to your brother and my people and your sister's mercy shall be shown which is the reverse of lower and lower me. That's not my people say to them my people and no mercy mercy shall be shown and this is a passage which on the basis certainly appears to be saying that God's going to restore the people of Israel.
But they vanished. They were they were in a mix they actually never they don't exist as a distinct people anymore. Now people Judah and from remnant of these people could but but actually we don't have to guess what is referred to here because Paul actually quote.
This birth and a similar version chapter two and give a very clear indication of who is talking about as does Peter both Paul and here quote from the path to just and tell us who is talking about now we have to understand. That this begins to say the children of Israel shall be as the fan of the sea which cannot be number what that referring back to the word first here words like that other than anyone in the Bible. Genesis twelve.
God said you know I'm going to make you father many nations and your feet will be like the fan of the sea shore for most. Many. Yeah he said you know your your people be a blessing to all the family that the earth.
In other words it's not just about you. The Jews are not the chosen people that you were elected to be the blessing to all the family that they were and that's why Jesus came and he is the. All that the.
Jesus. Is the case with the gospel going for all the world many people enjoy the blessing of Abraham which Paul says is just my favorite three. I can read the blessing of Abraham is just my favorite that has come to all the time here through the preaching of the gospel.
With. So who are the children of Abraham. What Paul said in the last verse of Galatians three if you are Christ that if you belong to Christ then you are Abraham's feet.
And errors according to the problem. So he told the Gentile Galatians in the church is primarily Gentile in Galatia that's why he told him not to get circumcised he never told you. To get.
But he told them that they got circumcised and they'll be under the law well. And I've never had. The writing to Gentiles and he said if you belong to Christ you are now Abraham's feet you're now the heir to the promise you are now in that multitude like the fans of the seashore you see this is talking about the true Israel which is made up of the faithful remnant of ethnic Israel.
Combined with the faithful remnant of the Gentiles who come and embrace Israel's God and Israel's Messiah. If they had very clear from Roman chapter 11 the picture of the olive tree which is Israel that the Jewish branch of the natural interest that did not leave were blocked off part of the tree anymore but Gentiles who did leave were grafted in along with the believing do along with the natural branches that remain came Gentile branches and this is the only thing in the old tree in Israel in the Bible is Israel and so the Israel of God now as always is ethnically mixed you know when God made his covenant with Israel about Friday. It was a mixed multitude came out of Egypt it wasn't just Israelite there are probably Egyptian and you know Ethiopians and others who came out with them as a mixed multitude of Bible says and they were conformed into a group that was based not on race but on covenant that's why God said if you obey my covenant.
You'll be my people. He told them that right when he made the nation the first day if you obey my covenant and he said in the law if a stranger wants to. eat the Passover with you what he can get circumcised he can become part of you they'll be like a neighbor of the land there is not ethnic.
It's covenantal if a Gentile wants to keep the covenant he can do so. He can be part of this too he can be part of Israel the nation of Israel but not everyone in Israel is ethnic Israel and not everyone who is ethnic Israel is Israel according to Paul. They're not all Israel who are Israel you think our problem is we rebuild as if God chose a race of people as if as if God favors one race over another which by definition what we call racism actually.
God has made it clear the old and the new that he's not a he's not a respecter person and what Paul says that three times it's always talk about Jews and Gentiles God doesn't respect you more than that he's not racist he doesn't care what race you are a Jew. In the old record we cut off from the people we no longer part of Israel if you want to worship bail or more like or murder something else like that is when we got that we cut off from the people got it until they were able to get rid of the cut off from the people and your children were not recognized their car they're not part of people you think we have to make we just have a variety of Jacob. And even part of the nation of Israel for a while and if you violate the covenant you're not part of it anymore agenda wants to become part of it and that's why Paul says that all of Israel has only on it the original break that believe that they need to cut the terms of the covenant.
And the other broken off and Gentile who made the terms of the covenant there and now Israel in the old and the new is not strictly ethnic. It is a group of people that were primarily made up of the defendant favor my thinking about any Gentile to be part of it and you can be cut out of it. It's it's defined by covenant.
And so Jesus came to the remnant of Israel who we call the desire to faithfully go to receive the Messiah and he said this cup is the new company. Now we keep that help that covenant is in Christ so anyone who's in Christ. According to the Bible is the Israel of God.
Galatians six fifteen. We're the church and it's all good and going to be if you're a price and you're the children of Abraham you're the heir of the promises according to the New Testament writer are fulfilled in not the whole nation of Israel being gathered from the diaspora but rather the gathering of the faithful remnant of Israel. Every day you know that there are faithful remnant of the prophet often referred to.
While they're denouncing the rest of the property. But my remnant I'm going to bring them in I'll say my remnant and that is in fact what he did when he did fulfill the problem but we have to when you think that God has come true Israel but it's not that it's not all our Israel who are of Israel you're you're not defining Israel like all that. You're not defining it like God.
You're thinking of it as a racial thing it's a covenant thing. And anyone who's faithful to Israel God and Israel Messiah is part of God's part of that kingdom of the Messiah and is one of God's people and they're part of that that's the Israel of God. Now.
He said that and Paul when he quotes the verses I'll just look ahead with you to chapter two verse twenty three where I will show her for myself in the earth and I will have mercy on her who had not obtained mercy that I will say to those who were not my people you are my people and you should say you are my God I know that. Her who had not received mercy or the word that referring to low. The name low.
Those who are not my people will be called my people and we're going to take a break and we're going to come back and finish that but I just want to give you a reference here and we'll take a break and let you stand up we've done almost an hour. And we'll have a second hour but we'll give you a break the runaway from people. OK I would like to first Peter chapter two verses nine and ten.
Now Peter is writing to Christian. You've made that very clear. He's writing to people who have been elected according to the four knowledge of God the father and the sanctification of the spirit for the obedience and the blood of Jesus.
That's Christian chapter one verse two that and who've been received great and who are kept by the power of God you know salvation. The whole book is addressed to Christian I was just reading from the first. But with that knowing that his audience we can do chapter two verse nine.
He said to them but you are a chosen generation a royal priesthood a holy nation his own special people. Now these are the things that God said about the idea that Israel would be if they kept his covenant Peter says the church you are then he says who once were not a people. Verse 10.
But are now the people of God who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy is a very clear allusion to chapter two of Isaiah verse 23. Her she would not receive mercy will receive mercy she was not my people will be my people. And he is echoing that very clearly they were no one's not a people but are now the people of God.
Now the fact that they were once not a people means he's writing to get out because Jews were a people even before Jesus came to Jews were a people but the Gentiles were not but his readers are Gentiles you were once not a people but you're now the people of God and I was told they had chapter two verse 23 is about you you had not obtained mercy that you now have obtained mercy what he's saying is this is the church in this case a primarily primarily Gentiles because the church has been primarily Gentiles over Jews in it to the remnant. Part of the church but you thought of the church as a whole including and primarily Gentiles are the ones that hold a talking about and Paul agreed if you look at Romans chapter nine verse 23 and following through 26. He said that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had prepared beforehand for glory even whom he had called not of the Jews only but also of the Gentiles as he says in Hosea.
Now what is called just a firm that he's going to confirm from Hosea he is a firm that the vessels of honor are not only Jews but also Gentiles that's the point is making and here's how I make the court of that I will call them my people who were not my people and her beloved who was not beloved and it shall be come to pass in a place where it was said to them you are not my people there they'll be called the sons of the living God according from the. The truth I believe of the whole day of 223 and who is it all of that proof that the people of God are Jews and Gentiles. Now the church and in case we didn't get it the next two verses equal by the end of the same point he said I know also cries concerning Israel for a seven.
Though the number of the children of Israel be of the family the remnant will be. God is only from a salvation to the faithful remnant not to every lap apart they do. Certainly core of what was followed up by the earth and you get the area and I have.
Who were Jewish as Peter Paul and James and John. They're not saying they're just as Jewish but they're not as they. Because only the remnant will be God never promised that all Jews would be there all ethnic Israel be there he promised that the remnant we didn't get it out of you.
God said that you're going to be like the end of the people but only the remnant will actually be. And he said I said before I'm not the Lord of Sabbath had left a seed or in Isaiah one where he's quoted as a remnant we would have become like bottom and would have been like the more we've been wiped out entirely there wouldn't be any of it left if God had reserved a remnant. Now what's Paul getting it he said that Hosea and Isaiah both tell us that the people of God are consisting of the remnant of Israel who are saved and Gentiles who are saved on the same basis that is faith in Christ as Hosea said it was our present version so Paul is certainly interpreting Hosea's verses as applicable to the church not true if you read it out that says Israel but Paul has no problem calling the church Israel he does so in many ways.
Calls us the seed of Abraham because of the Israel of God Peter calls us a chosen generation a royal priesthood a holy nation all these were Israeli title in the Old Testament so this is that gets us through chapter 2 the rest is easier because the introduction of what took so long.

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