Hosea 1

1:52The main things that happen are battles, right? It's hard to have your whole army on a mountain, right? To be traveling through all over the mountains and things like that. It's better, if you're going to wage warfare, to have your army in a big valley where you can see everybody and the two armies can meet instead of trying to meet at the top of a mountain or something like that. So there's a lot of battles that happen there. I don't know if you remember the story of Gideon and his 300 men that the Lord narrowed down and narrowed down to 300. And they went and attacked a camp by banging the pots and blowing the trumpets. And the enemy soldiers ran away. That was in the valley of Jezreel. And several things like that happened in Israel's history. Well, another thing that happened there was what we just read for the scripture reading. The story of Naboth's vineyard, that Ahab really wanted this vineyard because another thing that's good about a wide open plain in between the mountains is that it's really fertile. And so Naboth had a good vineyard there, and it was right next to Ahab's house. And so Ahab wanted it because he wanted to put his vegetables. Garden there because there's such fertile land. And just like we read earlier, he pouts, and Jezebel finds a way to get rid of Naboth, has him killed so that Ahab can have the vineyard in Jezreel. It's that same place. And then there's a curse there that Ahab's descendants are going to die there in Jezreel, and that in the city of Jezreel, Jezebel is going to die in a very specific way also. Well, we are going to read one more backstory. It's a little bit long, but I think it'll be important as we study the text of Hosea, which we'll get to in a little bit. But first, we're going to study 2 Kings chapter 9. Pray with me before we start. Father, we pray that you would help us as we seek to read the prophets in a way that's full of understanding, as we seek to read the prophets in a way that understands the names and the places and the history, so that we can know what you're saying to your people.

4:10And so we pray that you'd help us pay attention and get immersed in these stories. Help us to learn. And in so doing, help us to know more about you, more about your character, more about your amazing faithfulness. Help us be encouraged in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, 2 Kings chapter 9. Before we jump in, Ahab, the king we were just reading about, Ahab and Jezebel, the one who stole Naboth's vineyard in Jezreel, he was the eighth king of the king of Israel. Now we are on the 11th king. Okay, he's about to be anointed in 2 Kings chapter 9. Then Elisha, the prophet, called one of the sons of the prophets and said to him, tie up your garments and take this flask of oil in your hand and go to Ramoth Gilead. So this is about 30 years later. Instead of Elijah, who is ministering to Ahab, now we have Elisha. And God tells him, go to a place and bring your oil. In verse 2, when you arrive, look there for Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nemshe, and go in and have him rise from among his fellows and lead him to an inner chamber. Then take the flask of oil and pour it on his head and say, Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. Then open the door and flee. Do not linger. Okay, so that's a pretty specific message for Elisha, right? He's to go anoint this new guy as king and then run away as fast as he can. Verse 4, so the young man, the servant of the prophet, went to Ramoth Gilead. And when he came, behold, the commanders of the army were in council. And he said, I have a word from you, O commander. And Jehu said, to which of us all? And he said, to you, O commander. So he rose and went into the house. And the young man poured the oil on his head, saying, Thus says the Lord, the God of God. Of Israel, I anoint you king over the people of the Lord, over Israel, and ye shall strike down the house of Ahab. So Ahab's descendants that are still living, they are going to the house of Ahab's going to be struck down by Jehu. Strike down the house of Ahab, your master, so that I may avenge on Jezebel the blood of my servants, the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord. For the whole house of Ahab shall perish, and I will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel, and I will make the house of Ahab like the house of Jeroboam, the son of Nabot, and like the house of Basha, the son of Ahijah. And the dogs shall eat Jezebel in the territory of Jezreel. There's our place. And none shall bury her. Then he opened the door and fled. Okay, so this servant does as the Lord asks, and he goes and anoints this king and says, You, Jehu, the new king of Israel, the 11th king of Israel, are going to go, are going to be responsible for killing the whole house of Ahab and avenging the blood of the prophets by killing Jezebel as well, who won't be buried. Verse 11. When Jehu came out to the servants of his master, they said to him, Is all well? Why did this mad fellow come to you? And he said to them, You know the fellow and his talk. He said, You know why he came. You heard him. And they said, That is not true. Tell us now. And he said, Thus and so he spoke to me, saying, Thus says the Lord, I anoint you king over Israel. Then in haste, every man of them took his garment and put it under him on the bare steps. And they blew the trumpet and proclaimed, Jehu is king. Okay, so you kind of have this funny scene where they're waiting outside and they're like, Why did that insane guy just come and talk to you? And maybe he walks out and he thought he heard what they said, and he's expecting them to already have the cloth on the steps and things like that. And he's like, You heard what he said, come on. And they're like, You're not, you're lying. We didn't hear what he said. And then he told them, He said, I'm king. And so then they scramble and cover the steps and blow the trumpets. And here's the king, right? Jehu is king. Verse 14: Thus Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, the son of Nimshe, conspired against Joram. Now, Joram, with all Israel, had been on guard at Ramoth Gilead against Hazael, the king of Syria. But King Joram had returned to be healed in Jezreel of the wounds that the Syrians had given him when he fought with Hazael, king of Syria. So Jehu said, If this is your decision, then let no one slip out of the city to go and tell the news in Jezreel. Then Jehu mounted his chariot and went to Jezreel, for Joram lay there. And Azariah, king of Judah, had come down to visit Joram. Now the watchman was standing on a tower in Jezreel, and he saw the company of Jehu as he came and said, I see a company. And Joram asked, Take a horseman and seek to send to meet them and let him say, Is it peace? So a man on horseback went to meet him and said, Thus says the king, is it peace? And Jehu said, What do you have to do with peace? Turn around and ride behind me. And the watchman reported, saying, The messenger reached them, but he is not coming back. Then he said, out a second horseman who came to them and said, thus, the king has said, is it peace? And Jehu answered, What do you have to do with peace? Turn around and ride behind me. And again, the watchman reported, he reached them, but he's not coming back. And the driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nemchi, for he drives furiously. So apparently Jehu had a reputation for going real fast, right? Fast and furious. Verse 21, Joram said, Make ready. And they made ready his chariot. And Joram, king of Israel, and Ahaziah, king of Judah, set out, each in his chariot. So the king of the northern kingdom and the king of the southern kingdom set out together in their chariots and went to meet Jehu and met him at the property of Naboth the Jezreelite.

9:47You can already see the prophecies, right, coming together. This is where they're meeting him. Verse 22. And when Joram saw Jehu, he said, Is it peace, Jehu? And he answered, What peace can there be so long as the whorings and the sorceries of your mother Jezebel are so many? Then Joram reigned about and fled, saying to Ahaziah, Treachery, O Ahaziah. And Jehu drew his bow with his full strength and shot Joram between the shoulders so that the arrow pierced his heart and sank in his chariot. Jehu said to Bikdar his aide, Bidkar, his aide, take him up and throw him on the plot of the ground belonging to Naboth the Jezreelite. For remember, when you and I rode side by side behind Ahab his father, how the Lord made This pronouncement against him, as surely as I saw yesterday the blood of Naboth and the blood of his sons, declares the Lord. I will repay you on this plot of ground. Now, therefore, take him up and throw him on the plot of ground in accordance with the word of the Lord. Okay, but we're going to keep going. When Ahaziah, the king of Judah, saw this, he fled in the direction of Beth-Hagan. And Jehu pursued him and said, Shoot him also. And they shot him in the chariot in the ascent of Ger, which is by Eblim. And he fled to Megiddo and died there. His servants carried him in a chariot to Jerusalem and buried him in his tomb with his fathers in the city of David. In the eleventh year of Joram, the son of Ahab, Ahaziah began to reign over Judah. When Jehu came to Jezreel, Jezebel heard of it. She painted her eyes and adorned her head and looked out of the window. As Jehu entered the gate, she said, This is Jezebel speaking, Is it peace, you Zimri, murderer of your master? Zimri was another one who had a coup like this, but his was very short-lived. And so I think Jezebel's saying, you know, you're going to be just like Zimri. Yes, you killed a king, but you won't last long. Verse 32, and he, Jehu, lifted up his face to the window and said, Who is on my side? Who? Two or three eunuchs looked out at him. He said, Throw her down. So they threw her down, and some of her blood splattered on the wall and on the horses, and they trampled on her. And he went in and ate and drank. And he said, See now to this cursed woman and bury her, for she is a king's daughter. But when they went to bury her, they found no more of her than the skull and the feet and the palms of her hands. And when they came back and told him, he said, This is the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servant, Elijah the Tishbite, in the territory of Jezreel. The dog shall eat the flesh of Jezebel. And the corpse of Jezebel shall be as dung on the face of the field in the territory of Jezreel, so that none can say, This is Jezebel.

12:27So just as the Lord prophesied, Jezebel is taken care of. She's not offered a noble burial. Well, I was going to go on and read chapter 10, but it's getting kind of long. But Jehu goes on in this incident to keep spilling blood in this valley. He kills all of Ahab's descendants in this valley, and then he'll strike down all of the prophets of Baal. He'll deceive them into coming to sacrifice to Baal. And while they're there, he'll kill them all. So he spills a lot of blood. But turn over to chapter 10, verse 28.

13:042 Kings 10, verse 28. Thus Jehu wiped out Baal or Baal from Israel. But Jehu did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nabot, which he made Israel to sin. That is, the golden calves that were in Bethel and in Dan. You guys remember those? So Jehu has wiped out Baal. He's done a good thing. He's wiped out the prophets. Of Baal, but he still worships at the altar of Bethel with the golden calf. Verse 30, And the Lord said to Jehu, Because you have done well in carrying out what is right in my eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel. But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin.

14:00Okay, you can turn to Hosea. Chapter 1, the first of the minor prophets in our Bibles. So we have this story of Jezreel, this place called Jezreel, this valley where battles had been fought and won. And then we have the story of Ahab, the eighth king of Israel, who took a vineyard in this place, Jezreel. And it was promised to him that his blood and the blood of Jezebel would be spilled there. And that's done by the 11th king of Israel, Jehu.

14:44Jehu did well. He did what he was supposed to do. The prophet, or the servant, the crazy man who came and anointed him and said, Your king said, This is what you're going to do. You are going to be the tool of the Lord's vengeance on the house of Ahab. You are going to be the one who spills the blood. In accordance with the prophecies. And so he does it. Jehu does this. And he was faithful to the Lord in this, but he wasn't faithful to the Lord in everything because he still worshipped at the false temples. Well, as we turn to Hosea, the time period has changed a little bit more. This is another 50 years or so later. And if you remember, this is around the same time as the prophet Amos, maybe a little bit after Amos. Maybe they even met each other. We don't know. But Amos, remember, was mainly targeting in the northern kingdom. He was mainly targeting those cities of Bethel and Gilgal towards the southern border. And Hosea seems to be targeting kind of this more northern part of the northern kingdom around the same time. And so it's about 760 BC, 750 B.C. And if you remember, what's happened in the kingdom of Israel is Jonah had a prophecy there, the prophet Jonah that we have the book Jonah from. Jonah had a prophecy there that in spite of their wickedness, they still would prosper. And it was this great time, Jeroboam II, it was reigning in Israel. It was this time where they expanded the land. It was a good time to be in Israel. They were wealthy. The land was, the northern kingdom was as big as ever. It was a good time, and the people used that good time to go and worship at the altar of Bethel. And as we'll see in the book of Hosea, they're also going to worship at the altar of Baal, of Baal.

16:30So it's a time of prosperity for the people, not because they were so righteous that God blessed them with that prosperity, but just because God was merciful to them. That was a message through Jonah. And you can look at 2 Kings 14 later for that. But God's message was that in spite of your unfaithfulness, I'm still going to bless you. And he did. So it was a good time to live in the northern kingdom. But Amos came and said, you're taking advantage of the poor in this kingdom. You're worshiping at these wrong altars, and so you're going to be wiped out. And as we looked at, that was around the year 760 BC, and that comes true. The northern kingdom is gone, never to be the northern kingdom again in 722 B.C., so less than 40 years later. Well, Hosea is right in there, too. And he's another prophet to the northern kingdom, and he has almost the same message as Amos. Different issues, different sins that he's addressing, and definitely a different way to address those issues, as we'll see. But it's the same northern kingdom, this unfaithful kingdom that's about to be destroyed in about 30 or 40 years. And God is telling it to them very plainly, because that's what God does for his people. He tells them very plainly what's about to happen.

17:46Hosea chapter 1, verse 1. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Bere, 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. Now, before we jump into the prophecy, that's kind of a strange way to introduce this prophecy because he's speaking to the northern kingdom. That's the main audience. And Hosea will also have some words for the southern kingdom. But he's speaking for the northern kingdom, and yet first he lists all these kings for the southern kingdom. And it shows that Hosea has this long ministry that spans maybe 50 or 60 years that starts in the ministry of Jeroboam, but then goes all the way through the end of the 8th century, all the way through the end of like 700 BC. So this lasts for like 50 years, but he only mentions one king of Israel. He's a prophet to the northern kingdom, but he mentions all these kings that he's going to prophesy to, prophesy during for the southern kingdom, but he only mentions the first one for the kingdom of Israel. We don't know why he does it. It might be something like, you know, after Jeroboam, after this king that reigned for a long time in the 700s, that after that it was just so messy, and there were so many quick kings, and there were so many coups and assassinations and things like that as the northern kingdom got closer and closer to 722 that Hosea just didn't recognize. Those kings, or something like that, but for whatever reason, he doesn't list out all the kings of the northern kingdom that he ministers during the reign of.

19:39But let's jump in. Hosea verse 2, chapter 1, verse 2. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take yourself a wife of whoredom, and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. That's the first thing the Lord says. When the Lord began to speak to Hosea, he says, you need to go and do this. You need to go and take a wife of whoredom.

20:21And now, as you can imagine, there's all kinds of opinions about what he's saying there. You know, is the Lord really saying, go and marry a prostitute? Is it okay for the Lord to say something like that? Is he maybe saying, go and take yourself a righteous wife, but know that she's going to commit adultery later, something like that? But I think the most natural reading is just to say that he's telling Hosea, go and take this wife of whoredom, this wife who is a previous past of prostitution, or at least of adultery, or something like that. Now, why would the Lord ask Hosea to do this?

21:01Go take yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. The land, the people of Israel, should have been faithful to the Lord who loved them. Faithful to the Lord that was committed to them, that brought them from Egypt and brought them to the land. They should be faithful to that Lord, but instead, they're not. They've abandoned that Lord. And we'll find out in future weeks, Lord willing, as we go through Hosea, that they've abandoned that Lord for Baal, the same one that they were worshiping 80 years earlier under King Ahab, the same one that Elijah ridiculed on the mountain.

21:51They have forsaken the Lord, the one that was faithful to them. And so God is setting up Hosea as a sign. Now, we're going to get back to this sign next time in chapters 2 and 3. But in chapter 1, he doesn't spend a whole lot of time there. What he does spend a whole lot of time on is the children. And that's what we're going to focus on tonight as we step through this. The children of Hosea. The Lord tells Hosea to find this wife. And so he finds Gomer. They get married. And the Lord has told him to have children. And now each of them is... Children, God is going to tell him what to name the child, and each child is going to be a prophecy. The name of the child is going to be a prophecy. Okay, so let's look at these three children. Verse 4: And the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel.

22:50For in just a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. Okay, now we know all about Jezreel, right? And you can understand what's going on here. The first son that Hosea has is named Jezreel. That's what the Lord tells him. Because Jezreel is this place where so much prophecy is being fulfilled. Jezreel means God sows. That's going to be important next time we study Hosea. God sows, like sowing a seed. God sows. But he said, Call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. Now, what is the blood of Jezreel? What is he talking about? The house of Jehu. Why are they being punished for the blood of Jezreel? What happened in Jezreel? Well, I think he's talking about all the stories we just read, where Jehu goes down and kills the king.

24:01And is responsible for the death of Jezebel, is responsible for the deaths of the descendants of Ahab, and is responsible for the deaths of all the prophets of Baal. Okay, that's the bloodshed that took place at Jezreel. But if you remember, God told him to do that, right? That was the word through the servant, that Jehu was going to be anointed to do this, to punish the house of Ahab. And then at the end of Jehu, after all this had been done, God said that scripture says that it was well for him to do this, that he followed the Lord in this. What he did wrong in was that he didn't get rid of all the altars. But in terms of punishing the house of Ahab and getting revenge on the house of Jezebel for the Lord, he did it righteously. So the question is: when we come here, call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

25:13So what is he saying? I think you could say something like, maybe God appointed for him to do these things, but he did it with a certain amount of bloodlust or something that was unrighteous, and so he ended up needing to be punished as well. You know, we have other examples of that in the Old Testament, right? Assyria was the rod of the Lord's anger against the northern kingdom, but they're going to be punished for that. Babylon was the rod of the Lord's anger against the southern kingdom, but they were punished for that. Something like that. It could be something like that. I think it's more of, instead of punish, I think it's something like he's going to return onto the house of Jehu the same bloodshed that's been on the house of Ahab, that was caused by Jehu.

26:02So maybe something like, since Jehu was faithful to the Lord to spill this blood, but then unfaithful to the Lord, and let the kingdom go right back to worshiping Baal, let the kingdom go right back to those sins, now he's going to be punished with the same punishment in Jezreel. Okay? So Hosea has named his first son Jezreel. For in just a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. Remember, that's coming in like 30 years. And on that day, verse 5, and on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. So the son's name has really more than one significance.

26:48And the Lord will add another significance on in chapter 2. But for right now, he's already said that it's because Jehu's going to be punished or the blood that was spilled is going to return. To Jehu. That's one reason why his name is Jezreel. Another reason is that the kingdom of Israel, as they go out to battle against Assyria, presumably in the valley of Jezreel, they're going to be dominated there and they're going to be taken into captivity. Okay? So, Hosea's first son is a prophecy. His name is Jezreel, that the dynasty of Jehu is going to be over, and the kingdom of Israel, the northern kingdom, is going to be over.

27:32Next, verse 6. She, Gomer, conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, Call her name no mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. So, next, Hosea and Gomer have a son, or at least Gomer has a son, if she's not being faithful to Hosea at this point already. But it seems like this is Hosea and Gomer's son, or a daughter. They've already had their son, Jezreel. Now they're having a daughter. And the daughter's name is. To be no mercy. That's what they named the daughter, no mercy. And the reason is that God has been merciful to this northern kingdom, as his people, for all this time. You know, we've read the story how God prophesied through Jonah that in spite of their wickedness, God was still going to bless them, expand their land, let them be prosperous. And they took that and abandoned the Lord even more. Well, now, God's not having mercy anymore. He's saying, the time is coming. There's no more mercy. It's locked in. You're going to be overtaken by this kingdom of Assyria. No mercy. I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. Remember, we saw that same dynamic in Amos, right? Towards the end, where the Lord is going to send something, and Amos prays, and the Lord relents. And then the Lord relents again. But then the next time, the Lord says, don't ask me again to relent. There's no more mercy. There's a deadline coming where the kingdom, northern kingdom is going to be gone. But when this happens, verse 7, I will have mercy on the house of Judah. If you remember, you can write down 2 Kings 19 for this. But if you remember, it's at the end of that chapter, at the end of 2 Kings 19.

29:52The king of Assyria, Sennacherib, after Assyria has wiped out the northern kingdom. Sennacherib comes and surrounds Jerusalem. He's already overtaken several of the main cities. He surrounds Jerusalem and maybe is even about to be successful. The odds are not looking good for Jerusalem. But then in the night, do you remember what the Lord does? He sends the angel of the Lord, right? He sends the angel of the Lord to defeat Sennacherib's army. And so I think that's a direct fulfillment of God's prophecy through Hosea's daughter. No mercy.

30:38Verse 7, but I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. I think he's saying the same people are coming against the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. The northern kingdom's not receiving mercy anymore. They're about to be wiped out. But the southern kingdom, I am going to have mercy again, and I'm going to save them. But it's not in the way that you think.

31:08Verse 8. When she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, Call his name, not my people. For you are not my people, and I am not your God. Can you imagine how devastating that is? Hosea has a son who's prophetically named Jezreel, saying, The end is coming. You're going to be wiped out in the valley of Jezreel. Then he has a daughter named No Mercy, saying, The end is coming. I'm not having mercy anymore. You're about to be cut off. Now he has another son, perhaps the most devastating of all, a son named Not My People.

32:03For you are not my people, and I am not your God. I am not yours, God says. The people of Israel have been rejected. The Lord has turned his face from them, at least temporarily, like we read in Amos 9 last time, where the Lord said, I am allowing you to be uprooted, but someday I'm going to plant you forever in the land. We'll see that in just a second. But at least for now, God has turned his face and said, You are not my people.

32:44You have been unfaithful. You're like a wife of whoredom. The Lord has blessed you and been faithful to you. And yet, you're worshiping at the altar of Bethel. You're worshiping the Baals. Therefore, you are not my people, and I am not your God. If you want to go worship those other fake gods, go for it. You're not my people, and I'm not your God. But it doesn't end there. Okay, so all three of Hosea's children are negative prophecies. Their names themselves are prophecies about how the end is coming, how they've sinned so much that now there's no chance for repentance before the end comes. But still, verse 10. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living God, sons of the living God.

34:08Let me read that again. You pay attention. Verse 10. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. What does that make you think of? Abraham, right? That was the promise. You can write down Genesis 22 for that. Abraham's promise to Abraham that his descendants would be as much as the sea. Sand of the sea, the stars of the heaven, the dust of the earth, cannot be measured or numbered. God is saying, You have been unfaithful.

34:45You have been a wife of whoredom, but I'm still going to keep my promise. The number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said of them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living God. This new arrangement where the Lord has turned his face and said, You are not my people, and I am not your God, God is making it clear that is not going to last forever. They are not rejected forever. It's temporary. And someday the Lord is going to turn his face back to them, and in the very place that he's about to kick them out of, he's going to bring them back there and say, You are the sons of the living God.

35:37Verse 11. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Verse 11 again. The children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together. Okay, so there's a problem right now in the northern and southern kingdom, and that's that there is a northern and southern kingdom, right?

36:17If all things were right, there would just be one kingdom, all of Israel, and one king. But it hasn't been that way since the days of Saul and David and Solomon. But God is saying, one day it is going to return to that. The children of Israel and the children of Judah are going to be back together again, gathered together in this land, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. They shall appoint for themselves one head, one leader, one king. We're going to get another hint at who that is in chapter 3. But you have all the children of Israel. They're not lost. You know, I don't know if you've ever had that thought as you read the Old Testament. You know, we hear about how the northern kingdom goes away in 722 BC.

37:20And then we hear about how the southern kingdom goes into exile later, 150 years later, but they're only gone for 70 years and they. Get to come back, right, and live in Jerusalem again. And you kind of wonder: well, what happened about them? You know, they were gone for a lot longer, 200 years. Did they all come back when Judah came back? But God, like we read in Amos, I think God is clear that even though they're getting kicked out, it's not like God has lost track of them. It's not like God has forgotten who his people are. And in verse 11, I think that's a promise that he's saying, and the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together again. They're going to be one kingdom under one head. They shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

38:13I think the day of Jezreel is another name for like the day of the Lord, an end times thing. This valley is the valley that borders Megiddo, which we've talked about before in some of the prophecies where some of these end times battles are going to happen. But for now, all it says is that the whole kingdom is back together. They're under one ruler, and it's going to be a day of greatness. Great shall be the day of Jezreel, and they shall go up from the land. And I think that idea is they're going up to Jerusalem. That's the phrase. They go up to Jerusalem. And when people go to the feast, it's always they go up to the feast, they always go up to sacrifice. Because Jerusalem is on a mountain, right? And so I think the picture is that if they're down in the valley of Jezreel, they have to go up from the land. And so I think the promise there, what he's emphasizing, is that you're going to be living here. You're going to get to go to the right temple to worship in the right way, but you're going to get to go from your land. You're going to go up from the land. Does that make sense? The children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land. For great shall be the day of Jezreel. They're not going to be traveling from foreign countries to come to the temple. The Jews aren't. The Jews are going to get to live in their land. I think that's the promise. Okay? Say to your brothers, chapter 2, verse 1, you are my people, and to your sisters, you have received mercy. These names will be reversed. It is temporary. Right now, Hosea's children are a prophecy to the northern kingdom that they are going to be defeated in Jezreel. God's not going to have mercy, and they are not God's people. But someday, God's going to bring them back.

40:14And they'll be called sons of the living God. They'll be called, you are my people. You have received mercy. These are blessings on God's people. As we come to a text like this, what do we take out of it? Or what do we apply? How do we think? I think it's clear, number one, that the Lord keeps his word, right? We saw that in those big, long readings we read before we even got to Hosea, right? That over and over he's keeping his word meticulously to this specific detail about Jezebel, about Naboth, and about all that went on in Jezreel and the blood that would be spilt there.

41:11And now the Lord is prophesying through the children of Hosea, and everything came to pass just as the Lord said. The northern kingdom was defeated. The house of Jehu was defeated. You could finish 2 Kings chapter 10 to read the rest of that story. The house of Israel stopped receiving mercy, but the southern kingdom did receive mercy again, but not in a victory in battle, but in an astounding victory, a mysterious victory where the Lord sent out the angel of the Lord. All of this is so specifically fulfilled.

42:00Lord said, You are not my people, but he says, It's not going to last forever. Someday you are going to be gathered. And we can expect that prophecy to come true as well, that the Lord is faithful. Another, that is another application, another thought for us to think about, is the character of God, that God is the one who is faithful to a people who didn't deserve it. That's the northern kingdom's whole history, that he was blessing them, and they never deserved it.

42:29He was faithful to them over and over and over, like a husband who is faithful to his wife, even when his wife is a wife of whoredom. We're going to see that more and more in the next two chapters. But our God is the God who keeps all of his promises, the God who refuses to go back on his promise to Abraham to make their children like the sand of the sea. The God who keeps his promises is faithful no matter what. The people have broken their promises to the Lord. The people have been unfaithful, and yet the Lord is unwaveringly faithful to them.

43:13I think that's something we can certainly rejoice in, right? Because we also have been unfaithful. We also sin in great ways, even after we become believers. And yet. The Lord is astoundingly faithful to us, and there's no way he's going to go back on his promises. He keeps his word always. That's something we can rejoice in, right? Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your message through the prophets. We thank you for your message through Hosea.

43:54It's hard for us to imagine how hard that calling would have been for Hosea. It's hard for us to imagine even having to name our kids such strange names. But when people ask Hosea why his kids' names are so strange, he gets to explain again the prophecies that you gave. So, Father, we pray that you would help us trust that your word is always true, that you never go back on it, that you make things come to pass in exactly the way that you said you would.

44:48Help us to trust you, knowing that you are in control. And help us look forward. To the day of Christ's return. We know that when you tell us about the future, it is certain, just as it was in Hosea's day. And so we trust that Christ is coming back. And we say, Come, Lord Jesus. In Jesus' name, amen.