Hosea

1. Hosea God’s Amazing Love Lesson 4 May 2, 2010

2. Outline • God Expresses His Love • God Pursues Israel • God Reminds Israel of His Redemptive Love • God Reminds Israel of His Great Gift – the Land • Why did Israel Go Astray • The Power of Sin • The Plan of God “What Hosea says about God’s making a covenant with Israel (2:18) and the nation’s subsequent breaking the covenant (6:7; 8:1) encapsulates the thoughts of divine grace, displeasure, and faithfulness.” (“Love Divine and Unfailing: The Gospel According to Hosea”, by Michael Barrett, p. 9)

3. God Expresses His LoveGod Pursued Israel • God Used His Love as the Standard for Hosea Hosea 3:1 – “And the Lord said to me, ‘Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins’” • 39 Hebrew words for Love used in Hosea Hosea 11:1, 4 - “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son… led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.” • God’s Love is due only to His grace Deut 7:7,8 - “It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.”

4. God Expresses His LoveGod Reminds Israel of His Redemption Love • God reminds Israel of their redemption from Egypt Hosea 13:4 – “But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt; you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior.” • God’s deliverance is from the bondage of sin Josh 24:14 – “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.” • God’s sovereign mercy reminds us of who we were Exo 33:19 – “And he said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name The Lord. And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.’” • God’s salvation is only through atonement • Passover

5. God Expresses His Love God Reminds Israel of His Great Gift • We walk by faith and not by sight, but God gives his children gifts Psa 84:11 – “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favor and honor. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” • God’s gave the Land to Abraham as an everlasting possession Deut 8:7-9 – “For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper.” • Israel isliving in the promised land should have been a reminder of all the Lord had done, butthey had forgotten God had provided their possessions. Hos2:5, 8 – “For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink’… And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.”

6. Why Did Israel Go Astray?The Power of Sin • Israel broke the covenant because of sin Hos 7:11 – “Ephraim is like a dove, silly and without sense, calling to Egypt, going to Assyria.” • Not all Israel is truly Israel Rom 2:28, 29 – “For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical. But a Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man but from God.” Rom 9:6-7 – “But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring…” “…the nation as a whole broke covenant with God, and God dealt with the nation accordingly. In spite of the presence or preserving power of the spiritual remnant (Isa 1:9) … the simple fact that not all Israel is Israel explains how Israel could break the covenant” (Michael Barrett)

7. Why Did Israel Go Astray?The Plan of God • Israel broke the covenant because it was part of God’s unfailing purpose and plan of redemption – Paul quoted Hosea 2:23 and 1:10 Rom 9:22-26 – “What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea, ‘Those who were not my people I will call my people, and her who was not beloved I will call beloved. And in the very place where it was said to them, You are not my people, there they will be called sons of the living God.’” • Israel’s rejection was the means of bringing the gospel to the Gentiles Rom 11:11 – “So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous.”

8. Closing thoughts “The command (to love Gomer again) is not merely to pity, but to love as God loves and to seek to save her from herself. True there is pity, but it is a pity born of the steadfast faithfulness of the covenant love of God. It is not a little humanitarian aid, but a commitment to restoration with transformation. God will seek his Israel, though they have completely estranged themselves” (“Wayward But Loved”, by Ray Beeley, p 49 – concerning Hos 3:1) “More than once we have been reminded of the bright promise of Israel’s youth, so rapidly to fade. The promise arose out of God’s grace rather than their good qualities, and the fading of it out of their sheer perversity – for it is one of Hosea’s emphases that Israel’s sin, so far from springing from ignorance or hardship, was their reply to heaven’s kindness and concern.” (“The Message of Hosea”, by Derek Kidner, p 101 – concerning Hos 11:1) “We ought to remember that the Lord may have infinitely wise and gracious motives for his most severe and terrible judgments.” (“An Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans”, by Robert Haldane, p 532)