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All right. Good evening. I appreciate the Hosea-themed music this evening. I feel like I hardly need to even be up here and preach. Y'all seem to have gotten the message. But I am excited to be here, and whether you want me here or not, I'm preaching anyway. So here we go.

You can turn in your Bibles to Hosea. And we're going to spend some time in chapter one. And I hope you did your finger stretches today because we're going to be flipping back and forth quite a bit. But we'll start and end in Hosea chapter one. So I think I should address the elephant in the room just because a lot of people have asked me.

No, Abeth is not pregnant. And no, we are not going to name our next child Habakkuk. I know the rumor got out, something I said last week may have done some damage, but no, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you can watch the video from last week.

But it happens to be a pretty good segue to the book of Hosea because Hosea chapter 1 has a lot of baby names in it. A lot of baby names. So I just want to take a poll, just for curiosity's sake. How many of you guys know what your name means?

Okay. I would say more than half of it. Half. That's awesome. Would anyone care to share what their name means? Marilyn? Bitter. Bitter. All right. Okay, okay, there you go. Yeah, I recognize the Mara from the book of Ruth. Anyone else? Jehovah is God. Okay, Joel. I love that.

I love that. If you're curious, John means God is gracious. Hosea, the name of our prophet, is a variation of the name Joshua, which means salvation, same name, different form. I think that's pretty interesting. Okay, a different question. How many of you guys are a namesake named after someone else?

Relative, Bible character, famous person, something like that. Okay, yeah, our children are namesakes. Ellie is named after Elizabeth Elliott. Charles is named after Charles Spurgeon. He's got a long way to go to get there, but we like namesakes. We like them because there's some measure of honor and respect that's associated with a namesake, but there's also a certain way of saying, I hope you grow up like this person.

I hope you emulate some of the same qualities, some of the same attributes as this person. My point is that names are important. Names are a way for us, especially when we name our children, to bestow. A sort of living legacy on them. Whenever someone sees this person and hears their name, whenever they go out and they do things, we want them to represent something bigger than themselves.

We want them to represent something long-lasting, something eternal, even. So, in the book of Hosea, we're going to encounter some pretty interesting baby names, but before we do that, we're going to take some time to lay down the groundwork. There's a lot of historical background for the book of Hosea.

You may have noticed that I've titled this lesson Hosea Part 1. And I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but I really, really, really did intend to cover each minor prophet in one sitting. But as I started preparing for this lesson, I quickly realized that I was in big trouble.

One, because Hosea is 14 chapters. It's a pretty lengthy book of the Bible. But not only that, just in chapter 1, there are so many specific and nuanced biblical references that I think are really crucial to understanding the overall picture and message of Hosea. And so, early in my studies, I made a decision.

I said, okay, we're going to take the first night, that's tonight, to lay down the groundwork, to look at the historical context, to go back to the Old Testament narrative and see, okay, who exactly is Hosea talking to? Let's key in on some of these. References. And then the second night, we'll have the whole picture.

We can look at it, we can gaze on it, we can see what is God saying through the ages through the book of Hosea. So, if you'll indulge a metaphor with me, think of the book of Hosea like a puzzle. And my kids are really into puzzles. We dump them out, we turn over all the pieces so that they're all face up.

And the reason we do that is because we can examine each piece individually, and we need to before we can see how it fits into the whole picture. So, that's our goal tonight. We're going to look at five, I'm going to call them puzzle pieces, in the first chapter of Hosea.

And we're going to build to what I believe is the theme of Hosea, the central message that's going to pervade the entire book of Hosea. So, that's our goal. And then, next time I'm up here, we will gaze at the picture and its beauty, and we'll talk about some application for you and me.

Sound good? Well, let us begin. You can go ahead, and if you're not there already, go to Hosea chapter 1, verse 1, which says, The word of the Lord came to Hosea, the son of Barry, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, the king of Israel.

All right. So, the background piece that I want to mention here in this first verse is the divine. Divided kingdom of Israel. The divided kingdom of Israel. This may be some old news for a lot of y'all here, but this is very important that we establish this fact, not just for Hosea, but for the rest of the minor prophets.

When they were alive and when they were ministering, Israel was not one nation. Now, it started out as one nation. You know, the descendants of Abraham, you know, they all went to Egypt, they were in bondage. God redeemed them out of the land of Egypt and then established a covenant with them.

That's the Mosaic covenant, and established them as his people, his nation, his possession. And then they came into the promised land. That was their inheritance from the Lord. And you know the story, you know, through the book of Judges, they rebelled from the Lord, but then God gave them a king.

And then the kingdom reached its might under King David and King Solomon. But King Solomon did not follow the Lord with all his heart. And so it says in 1 Kings chapter 11 that God raises up adversaries. And these adversaries, they came from the outside and they came from the inside, both foreign and domestic.

And one of those adversaries was a guy named Jeroboam. And you'll want to remember that name because he'll come up again. God gives Jeroboam ten tribes of Israel to rule over. And those tribes split. From the Davidic king. And the Davidic king is just now, which is Rehoboam, is just over the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.

And so the vernacular we use is the northern and southern kingdoms. And so you may hear me refer to that several times tonight. The northern kingdom is the ten tribes in the north, and it's commonly referred to as Israel. But there's some other words that Hosea calls the northern kingdom.

You may hear it referred to as Ephraim, which is the largest of the ten tribes up there. And you may hear it referred to as Samaria, which is the capital city of the northern kingdom. And the bottom, the southern kingdom, is the two tribes, and that's usually just called Judah.

You know, just shorthand there. Here's a picture of the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. Now, this is important context as we dive into the narrative. Now, even though the northern kingdom has ten tribes, there is something special about the southern kingdom. The southern kingdom has Jerusalem. Now, why might this be important?

That the southern kingdom has Jerusalem? Any guesses? Yes, bingo. The temple. The temple is in Jerusalem. And that's important because the law of God requires that every Israelite travel to the temple for the feast days. And so if you're in, actually, I don't think you've turned there yet.

Go to 1 Kings chapter 12. 1 Kings chapter 12, verse 20. 21. And we'll read together. This is the narrative account of the splitting of the kingdom. And Jeroboam has declared that he wants nothing to do with the line of David, which is Rehoboam. And there's tension. The kingdom is splitting.

And this is where we pick up. 1 Kings 12, 21 through 29. It says, When Rehoboam came to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin, 180,000 chosen warriors, to fight against the house of Israel and to restore the kingdom to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.

But the word of God came to Shemiah, a man of God, saying, Say to Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all the house of Judah and Benjamin, and to the rest of the people, Thus says the Lord, You shall not go up and fight against your relatives, the people of Israel.

Every man return to his home, for this thing is from me. So they listened to the word of the Lord, and they went home again, according to the word of the Lord. Then Jeroboam built Shechem, in the hill country of Ephraim, and lived there. And he went out from there and built Pinuel.

And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David. If this people goes up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their Lord, to Rehoboam, king of Judah.

They will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah. So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

And he set one in Bethel, and he put the other in Dan. Okay. So this is the history of Israel. This is long before Hosea shows up on the scene. But this thing that Jeroboam does is significant. I want to see two things from this passage here. One, I want you to see that both the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, both of them are beloved by God.

God considers both of them his people. There is no distinction in his mind. And to prove that, God is going to send both kingdoms, prophets, to prophesy about repentance and turning to the Lord, to warn them of their sin and the punishment for their sin. So God clearly sees these two kingdoms as one people.

That's the reason he doesn't want them fighting each other. But there's another thing. In the northern kingdom, you see that they are prone to a very specific sin. This is going to be referred to as the sin of Jeroboam. And you see that this sin is political in nature.

He is a crafty statesman, and he says, okay, I don't want people to defect to the southern kingdom. And if they go to Jerusalem like the Lord commands, then they're probably going to be swayed. They're probably going to end up joining the southern kingdom. Kingdom. And so I'm going to make an alternate place of worship.

I'm going to make one way up in the north in Dan, and then one in the southern part of the northern kingdom, that's Bethel. I'm going to make altars. And instead of going to Jerusalem, they're going to go to these places and worship there instead. And so that's what Jeroboam does.

This is his solution to the problem of them going to Jerusalem. And if you go through the stories of the kings, you see that king after king of the northern kingdom falls into this sin, this sin of Jeroboam, specifically with these golden calves. Generation after generation. And this includes the generation of Hosea.

Hosea is a prophet to the northern kingdom. So he's familiar with these places of worship. Now, as we look at the book of Hosea, we'll see that he's got several messages for Judah, but he is primarily speaking to Israel, to the northern kingdom. And he's going to concentrate on this idea of the people of God being seduced away from Yahweh worship at the temple and being seduced to these other idols, these carved images.

So that's an important puzzle piece. That's something to remember as you read the book of Hosea, this idea of the split kingdom. So here's another puzzle piece. Number two, spiritual adultery. If you go back to Hosea, chapter 10, Chapter 1, verses 2 through 3. It says, When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go and take to 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 Debliam, and she conceived and bore him a son. All right, strong language. How many of you have seen an object lesson before? Anyone know what that is? If you've been to pilgrim days, to snacktivity in particular, you know that we've done a lot of object lessons in snack tv.

It's usually a science experiment. You know, it's something kind of fun and flashy, but the point of an object lesson is to give a visual experience, something to reinforce the lesson that's being taught. And this is what God commands Hosea to do. Now, he is to conduct his life and his marriage as an object lesson for the people of Israel.

Now, that's a pretty high commitment for a prophet, wouldn't you say? God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. Now, there's some doubt among scholars as to whether Gomer was a prostitute before Hosea married her or if she became a prostitute after Hosea married her. We're not going to go into that now.

Either way, She is meant to represent the spiritual adultery of Israel. But what is that? And what is spiritual adultery? And how is it affecting Israel? Well, we have a nice little time stamp in verse 1. We know that Hosea was ministering under the kings of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Jeroboam.

So that puts the life of Hosea around 755 B.C. So let's look at what was happening around that time. You can turn to 2 Kings 14, 23. 2 Kings 14, 23. And we're going to look at the section of history that deals with Jeroboam II. So there are two Jeroboams, not to be confused with the first one.

This is the second one. 2 Kings 14, 23 says, In the 15th year of Amaziah, the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, began to reign in Samaria, and he reigned 41 years. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

And he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, which he made Israel to sin. He restored the border of Israel from Lebo Hamath as far as the sea of Erebah, according to the word of the Lord, the God of Israel, which he spoke by his servant Jonah, the son of Jesus.

Son of Amide, the prophet who is from Gathhefer. And by the way, yes, that is the same Jonah who was eaten by the fish and went to Nineveh and that old story. This is what Jonah said, or this was his message to the king. He said, For the Lord saw the affliction of Israel was very bitter, for there was none left, bond or free, and there was none left to help Israel.

But the Lord had not said that he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven. And so he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam, son of Joash. All right. So, two things to notice here. One, that during the time of Hosea, the leader of Israel was a wicked king.

He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, going after the sins of Jeroboam. These are the golden calves, idol worship. And as the king goes, so does the nation go. This is idolatry. Hosea is speaking to idol worshipers. But you see something else that's interesting during this time.

You see prosperity. During the reign of Jeroboam II, the territory increases. There's security from their enemies. There's wealth. And this is an odd thing to encounter, right? But I think it's a good reminder that prosperity does not equal godliness. Prosperity does not equal godliness. This just happens to be a time in history that God has ordained the wicked to prosper.

And there are other times in history that God has ordained the wicked to prosper. David writes about it in the Psalms. Job laments about it to his friends. I think we even see this often today. Why do the wicked prosper? And sometimes the Lord answers that question. And sometimes he doesn't, like in the book of Job.

But here, I think he does. We read this in our passage. The Lord saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter. And there was no one else to help Israel. And he doesn't want the name of Israel to be blotted out from under heaven. And so the Lord intervened out of pity, out of compassion, out of what have you.

He didn't want them to end yet. And so he intervened through a wicked king so that Israel would not be destroyed. But what happened after that? Did Israel's prosperity bring them closer to God? Well, think about it for yourself. Does prosperity always bring you closer to God? Do you always see prosperity bringing people to the Lord?

Sometimes. I think sometimes it can. With a heart of thankfulness, sometimes... It spurs us on to be generous to others. But sometimes you see the opposite happen. Sometimes prosperity has, it emboldens us to turn away from God. It can produce forgetfulness. It can produce complacency. And that's what's happening to Israel.

Who needs God? We have secure borders. You know, we have a king who's been reigning for 40 years. That's pretty good. You know, we have peace from our enemies. Who needs God? You see how this spiritual condition is so vulnerable to temptation? And Israel has walked right into the trap.

And this is what spiritual adultery is: is this idea of forgetting your first husband, forgetting the one who redeemed you out of Egypt, who made a covenant with you, who loved you, and has given you blessing and prosperity and saying, you know what? Thanks, but no thanks. I'm going to take the blessing.

I'm going to do what I want anyway. You see how this is spitting in the face of the God who saved them, the God who brought them out of bondage, who loved them? And Hosea, he lets them know. He lets them know by his prophecy. He also lets them know by his marriage.

This is the. The object lesson. Hosea is told to go marry Gomer. And Gomer is going to leave. Gomer is going to go out and search after other lovers. She's going to reject Hosea. She's going to reject his provision. He's going to reject his name. She's going to seek other lovers, assuming that they will satisfy her more.

But ultimately, they are going to leave her destitute. So we'll pick up on that thread later. But for now, let's move on to the next historical background piece. If you read in Hosea chapter 1, verses 4 through 5, I know we're flipping back and forth. This is good.

It keeps us awake. Verse 4 says, And the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel. This is the son that is born to Gomer and Hosea. For in just a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel. I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

And on that day, I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. Okay, let's talk about baby names. This is Gomer and Hosea's first child. His name is Jezreel, and this is a prophetic name. And as I said, this is presumably so that anyone who encounters this child as he's growing up will be reminded of this prophecy.

Associated with the child. So I think it's important for us to associate ourselves with what does this mean? What is the prophecy of Jezreel? Who is Jehu? What are we talking about? So again, please turn to 2 Kings. This time go to chapter 9. 2 Kings chapter 9.

We're going backwards on the biblical timeline. This is about 50 years before Hosea shows up on the scene. And this is the time of Elijah and Elisha. 2 Kings 9, starting in verse 1. 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.

And when you arrive, look there for Jehu, the son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshe. And go in and have him rise from among his fellows and lead him to an inner chamber. And 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. All right, we'll pause there for now. Okay, you see what's happening. This is kind of weird, right? You know, Elisha tells his guy, Go and anoint Jehu, the king of Israel, but then don't stick around. Get out of there as quick as you can.

Now, why might he tell him that? Well, there's the whole treason thing. There's already a king of Israel. Israel at this time, and so this is a second king of Israel. There's a reason for that, because the king of Israel at this time is wicked. He's a wicked king, and God has judged him, and God has appointed Jehu to enact his judgment.

But I think there's another reason Elisha tells his guy to get out of there quickly. It's because Jehu isn't exactly known for a calm and gentle spirit. We read what Jehu does next in chapters 9 and 10, which is too long to read. Feel free to skim it if you want.

But let me summarize a few points for you. First, Jehu is going to meet Joram, the other king of Israel. He's going to meet him and kill him in cold blood. Then, Jehu is going to chase down Ahaziah, the king of Judah, and he's going to kill him in cold blood.

And then Jehu is going to go to kill Jezebel, the wife of Ahab. And then Jehu is going to kill all of Joram's relatives. And then Jehu is going to kill all of Ahaziah's relatives. Any guesses on where all of this bloodshed takes place? The Valley of Jezreel.

The Valley of Jezreel. So this is a real place. This is a place that you can visit in Israel today. This is a satellite map of kind of the northern part of Israel. You can see the Sea of Galilee up in the top right. But kind of that green space, right, kind of in the bottom middle, that's the Jezreel Valley.

You know, it's this wide, expansive plain surrounded by. By rocky mountains, but the plain itself is fertile. There's a lot of farm life there. Naboth's vineyard was there. But because it is flat and it is prosperous, it's also the location for many battles in Scripture. God says through Hosea, I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel.

Now, I think that statement is almost certainly a reference to 2 Kings chapter 9. You know, this event of Jehu kind of going out and killing all of these people, just kind of going on a rampage here. But there's a catch. There's a catch that it's worth noting.

If you're still in 2 Kings, you can see this in chapter 10, verse 30. This is after Jehu has ruled in Israel. And the Lord says 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 to the fourth generation will sit on the throne of Israel.

So if Jehu's bloodshed was according to the will of God and according to the plan of God, why was there a punishment for him? Why did Hosea say that I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel? It's a hard question. And maybe we don't know.

Exactly why. We have to read between the lines a little bit. Maybe it's the manner in which he carried out the bloodshed. Maybe it was a sort of bloodlust. Maybe he took pleasure in it. But I think it's likely that God punishes the house of Jehu for the next verse, verse 31.

It says, 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 aside from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin. So there it is again, the sin of Jeroboam. You see, I think this is why Jehu was punished.

He was not careful to follow the Lord with all his heart. Let me ask you a question. Is it enough to follow God with half your heart? Three-quarters? Maybe 99% of your heart? Of course not. Of course not. You cannot honor God and entertain sin. Paul says you can't drink of the cup of God and the cup of demons.

It's the same idea. That would be like saying it's okay to have a husband and then a lover on the side and say, well, I'm still faithful to my husband. And you say, no, that's not how faithfulness works. That defies the definition of faithfulness. Faithfulness is a zero-sum game.

You are either faithfulness. Faithful totally 100%, or you are not faithful at all. So, getting back to Hosea, the Lord prophesies through this child's name, Jezreel. This child is to be a living testimony of what the Lord has done and what the Lord is going to do, linked together in this geographical location.

So, just as Jehu put an end to the house of Ahib in the valley of Jezreel, so will God put an end to the kingdom of Israel in the valley of Jezreel because of their unfaithfulness. Because they did not follow God with all their heart. This is the meaning of the name.

And this was prophesied in 755 BC. And then 30 years later comes the Assyrian Empire. This is going to be our next puzzle piece. Assyrian Empire. Let's go back to Hosea chapter 1, verses 6 through 8. So Gomer conceived again, this time she bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, Call her name no mercy, for I will have, 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. And 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. All right. So, two more children, a boy and a girl, two more baby names. And these are rough. I'm glad Hosea was not my dad. The girl is named No Mercy.

The boy is named Not My People. You can go to 2 Kings 17. I'll set the scene a little bit. You remember there's a split kingdom. There's a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. And if you know your biblical history, you know that both kingdoms get carried away into exile.

But they get carried away at different times, and they get carried away by different nations. The northern kingdom is conquered by the Assyrian Empire in 722 BC. This is about 30 years after Hosea is prophesying these things. So you can see it, here's a map of the Assyrian Empire, you know, way up there, kind of modern-day Syria, Iraq.

And it's huge, especially compared to Israel, right there. It was huge, it was powerful, it swept away every nation in its path, except for one. And we'll get there in a minute. Go to 2 Kings 17. We'll start reading in verse 7. And this, speaking of the exile, occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the Lord.

The Lord their God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and had feared other gods, and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel, and in the customs that the kings of Israel had practiced.

I'm going to skip to verse 13. Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all the law that I have commanded your fathers, and that I sent you by my servants the prophets.

But they would not listen, but they were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe the Lord their God. They despised his statutes and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and the warnings that he gave them. They went after false idols and became false.

And they followed the nations that were around them, concerning whom the Lord had commanded them, that they should not do like them. And they abandoned all the commandments of the Lord their God, and made for themselves metal images of two calves, sin of Jeroboam. And they made an asherah and worshipped all the host of heaven and served Baal.

And they burned their sons and their daughters as offerings, and used divination and omens, and sold themselves to do evil things in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. Therefore, the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them out of his sight, and none was left but the tribe of Judah only.

All right. This is what happens in 722 AD. The Assyrian Empire comes down from the north, utterly devastates the northern kingdom. And the northern kingdom never comes back. It never recovers. There's no more lineage, kingly line in the northern kingdom. Why is that? Because the people are scattered.

And yes, many of the Jews do make it back to the land eventually, but in the meantime, God is fulfilling this prophecy from the prophet Hosea. In this time, God does not have mercy on the land of Israel like he did in the days of Jeroboam. In this time, God only has mercy on the house of Judah.

Now, why does he have mercy on the house of Judah? This is a great story that we don't have time to read, but it's in 2 Kings 18 through 19, if you want to write it down. This is the story of Assyria as they come through the north and they conquer the northern kingdom.

Their next stop is the southern kingdom. You know, they're coming down, and they're going to just completely wipe them out. They have the numbers to do it. And so they get to Jerusalem and they surround Jerusalem. They lay siege. And Hezekiah is king at this time. And Isaiah is the prophet at this time.

And you get this awesome story of Hezekiah crying out to the Lord. And the Lord hears him. The Lord hears him. And you remember what happens? An angel of the Lord goes out, and in a single night, he strikes down 185,000 Assyrians. And then the Assyrians go home with their tails between their legs.

And you go back to Hosea, and you see him prophesying this 30 years before. He says, I will have mercy on the house of Judah. 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.

Because he saves them by the very hand of the Lord. You see prophecy being fulfilled in the biblical narrative. Judah is spared by the hand of God, but the northern kingdom is scattered. And going back to Gomer and her children, she has another child named Not My People.

Again, what a name. And this is reinforcing that the nation of Israel at this point is no more. When the nation of Israel is scattered, the children that are born to these Israelites, they don't inherit the land that's promised to them. They are disinherited. They are cut off from worshiping Yahweh at the temple.

And that could have been the end of Hosea's object lesson. One prostitute, three kids, all bad omens. That could have been the end of the book of Hosea. And that would have been the end of Israel as we know it. And the thing is, It would have been just.

They would have deserved it. But Hosea's message doesn't end there. And we've got one more puzzle piece to consider. And we get this one in Hosea 1, 10 through 11. And we'll read it together. 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. 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.

Okay. So this is a passage where the conjunction is very, very important. There's a few passages in Scripture like that. Again, if you're tracking with the prophecy here, you have three children who are all prophecies, and all of them are bad. Bad prophecies, doom. And then you have the word yet.

Yet what? Well, turn to Genesis 22. Hosea says, Yet Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured. Now, does that remind anyone of some similar language that we hear in the book of Genesis? This is the Abrahamic covenant. And you can read it, or at least one iteration of it in Genesis 22:17.

God is talking to Abraham, and here's what God says: He says, I will surely bless you. I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, as the sand that is on the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

What is a covenant? What context do we use this word covenant? I don't think I really hear it, besides that church, I don't really hear it in modern usage except for one place, and that is marriage. Marriage. In a wedding ceremony today, a bride and a groom stand at the altar and they make vows to one another.

We've all seen this. I, John, take you, Beth, to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, unless you do something to make me really, really mad. Unless you hurt me, unless you sin against me. Is that a marriage covenant? No, that's not what a covenant is.

A marriage covenant is unilateral. It's no matter what you do. No matter how much you sin against me, no matter how much you hurt me, in sickness or health, for better or worse, till death do us part, you are mine, I am yours, and I will never stop laying my life down for you.

Why do we have marriage covenants? Well, we get our cues from God and the covenants that he makes with his people. And this is the kind of covenant that he makes with Abraham and all of his descendants. And this is the covenant that God invokes through Hosea and through this marriage to Gomer that has gone totally awry.

Gomer has abandoned her marriage covenant with Hosea. She's left Hosea. You read about this in chapters 2 and 3. She goes, she plays the harlot with other lovers. And then in chapter 3, God tells Hosea to do something extraordinary, to do something completely unexpected. He tells Hosea, go to the markets.

And presumably, Gomer is there being sold into slavery because her lovers have abandoned her and left her with nothing. And so God tells Hosea, go to the markets and go buy back your wife. Go redeem her. And God says, that's what I'm going to do for Israel. Though you have rejected me, though you have despised my blessings, and though it will cost me dearly to redeem you, I am a God of steadfast love.

I am a God that is faithful to my word. And this is the final prophecy in Hosea chapter 1: that although Israel will be scattered from the land, although they will be temporarily nationless and leaderless, God will bring them back. Why? Because he made a covenant to Abraham.

And because the God we serve is faithful, even when we are faithless. This calls to mind another Bible verse that begins with a conjunction. And we sang about it just a few minutes ago. Lamentations 3:21 through 23. It says, But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

Steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. And that, my friends, is the picture of Hosea. When we put these pieces together, when we see the audience that Hosea is speaking to, and we see these references back to who God is.

Into what God has done, we get a crystal clear message coming out of his prophecy that God is a God of steadfast love through the ages. Many people call Hosea the prophet of love, and I think that's accurate. You know, we can say that. But I also think it's important that we don't trivialize it.

We don't make the mistake of thinking that this is the same type of love that the Hollywood movies glorify. This isn't a type of love that is emotionally driven. This isn't a type of love that ignores sin and its consequences. You'll notice that God isn't chasing Israel, begging her to come back.

Oh, please be with me. Oh, I just love you so much. No, no, no, no. God is going out of his way to lay his life down for Israel, not because she is lovely, but because she is his. You can turn, last place, I promise, Romans 5. And we'll see more examples of how this theme moves through the book of Hosea, the next 13 chapters.

We won't do that tonight, don't worry. But this is the clear picture. Now that we see it, now we can move through it, and we can see that this is the God that we serve today. And we can see how this applies in our worship and in our practice and how we love one another, how we love our wives and our husbands.

But here's one little application: as John said as we were worshiping, he referenced Romans 9. Romans 9 quotes Hosea to talk about Gentiles. You know, you were once called not my people, but you have been grafted in to this steadfast love of the Lord. You are now his people.

The love of God applies to you. It applies to you. And Romans 5, starting in verse 6, tells us just how deeply God loves us. As for while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly, for the unlovely, for the adulterers that we are.

For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for a good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son. Much more, having been reconciled. Shall we be saved by his life? Please pray with me. God, thank you for our time together tonight. Thank you for the book of Hosea. And Father, I pray that we would take confidence that even when we are faithless, you are still faithful because you cannot deny yourself.

Lord, that is your character. So help us to be faithful. Help us to love like you have loved us, to understand the meaning of that word as you define it. God, let us look to you. In Jesus' name, amen.