A Name Given to Us

So if you have a Bible, open it to the book of Hosea.

Hosea chapter 1.

Hosea 1 · chapter mention

Hosea's a minor prophet.

He's about uh yay two-thirds into your Bible.

Um, so don't go too fast because he's a minor prophet.

You might skip over him.

It's minor because he doesn't have that much content.

Not that he doesn't matter that much.

Uh, but uh Hosea chapter 1, verses 3 through 11.

Hosea 1:3–11

If you don't have a Bible, we have Bibles in the back we'd love to give to you and have as a gift for you to study God's word uh on your own free time uh during the week.

Or we're gonna have everything up on the screen for you as well.

You can follow along that way.

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You'll see up here words highlighted in yellow.

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So Hosea chapter one, verses three through 11.

But here's here's what we've got today.

So Hosea's kind of, we kicked it off last week, and it's kind of a um, I don't know, goofy book in some sense, right?

When first glance, if you just read Hosea, it's goofy.

Lot of foul language, and then a bunch of people with really bad names, right?

We're gonna look at that.

We're gonna look at some like four people with just bad names.

Now, three of them were actually commanded by God, and then you had Gomer.

Her dad just, her family just made a bad mistake.

Like they just made a bad life choice by naming their daughter Gomer.

It wasn't commanded by God, you shall name her Gomer.

It wasn't anything of that nature.

They just said, yeah, Gomer, when they looked at it.

And in that time, too, I kind of made this joke last week, but it's kind of true, maybe.

Uh, in that time, they actually didn't name the children until after they were born.

They didn't have ultrasounds to do like 4D imagery to find the gender at 16 weeks or anything of that nature.

So they had to wait until it was born, and then they looked at it, and then they named it.

And so they looked at this poor little girl and was like, Gomer.

And uh that's what she was stuck with.

But then they had three children, and we're gonna walk about that.

But thinking of like just bad names, I've been thinking about like, okay, so how does this relate to today?

And so I did some studying on like just bad names that parents give their children.

Now, these are not actually commanded by the Lord either, these are just what we would call cultural stupidity.

But here is, according to Huffington Post in 2017, I just want to kind of give you some of the names that parents gave their children.

Twelve girls, now here, hear this out.

Twelve girls and six boys were named ESPN.

No, don't don't you dare applaud that.

Don't you dare applaud.

These poor girls have to grow up being called Espen.

Or is that ESPN?

I don't know.

Okay, so 24 boys were named Lucifer in 2017.

And then 11 girls were named Get Semine.

How do you shorten that?

Get or Sammy?

Semine?

Hey, Samy.

It's even worse, it just sounds like a foodborne illness that you have to.

Alright, then a sum total of 106 children.

This is a mix of boys and girls, were named one of these names riot, havoc, arson, furious, or slayer.

So some total of 106 children.

Hold on, we've got more.

Uh now these these just this is just pretentious.

Like if you name your child this, you just are probably one of the most pretentious people on the planet.

But 21 people said, I'm gonna take that step of faith.

I'm okay with that label.

And they named their boys I am.

21 kids named.

So for those of you who might not know why there's this shock and awe, I am is the name that God reveals himself as to his people in the book of Exodus.

He says, I am, that is my name.

So apparently there's also 21 other boys who are named I am, who probably have really goofy screen names on Snapchat.

Uh seven girls and six boys were named Moo.

Just Moo.

And this is the last one.

Uh six precious little girls in 2017 were named A B C D E.

That's it.

There's yeah, I don't even know.

There's too many consonants together in one abcada or something of that nature.

But maybe their parents were language arts teachers or something of that nature.

But anyway, A, B, C, D.

Sometimes I wonder if like there these are like international people.

You know when we get Chinese tattoos and we don't know what they really mean?

I feel like maybe these were international people.

They're like, oh, here's some English words that could have deep meaning, and then they find out later in life when their kid's like 21 that it didn't mean anything at all.

But anyway, so we're gonna be looking at four bad names and what that could mean to us today in 2019.

So let's read the text and then we're gonna work through it.

We have Hosea 1, 3 through 11, and it declares this.

So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Deblam, and she conceived and bore him a son.

And the Lord said to him, 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.

And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.

She conceived again and bore a daughter.

And the Lord said to him, Call her name no mercy, for I will have no 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.

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.

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.

This is the word of the Lord.

May God bless the reading and the proclamation of his promises.

So here we are.

We've got to preach a sermon on kids with bad names, right?

But we have to try to understand what this means for us as the church today.

And so my hope is that you see Jesus really big and really clearly in the midst of this kind of confusing and weird and ambiguous in some nature passage of scripture.

But I want to kind of set up some historical aspects to it too, because as we approach Hosea and as historically the church has approached Hosea, they've come at it from different viewpoints.

So I'm just giving you where Mystio lands, um, so that hopefully that'll build some sort of historical context.

So Hosea's wife was named Gomer.

Now, for those of you who wonder what Gomer means, it means completion.

And at first you might think, man, that's beautiful, the complete woman, this fullness of femininity.

No, it doesn't mean completion in that sense, it actually means the ripeness of consummate wickedness.

Completion.

So, yeah, bad name.

So his wife Gomer, who we talked about in last week's sermon, was this adulterous woman, right?

That she at least had an adulterous heart, a heart of infidelity that caused her to be follower of a different god and worshiper of false gods in the land.

And that did at later times, as we'll discover in the narrative of Hosea, lead to promiscuity literally and physically.

But at this time, there's no sense to make any type of assertion that that's actively happening in the passage now.

However, we do see that Hosea then and Gomer consummate and they have children.

Now, some people might say that these children were born out of some of Gomer's adulterous relationships or that they aren't really Hosea's.

Honestly, it's hard to kind of navigate and tell, but there's nothing very clearly asserting that that would be the case.

We have nothing outside of assumption than to dictate and say that these are all Hosea's children.

So we see that he has his first son, his name's Jezreel.

Jezreel means to sow.

But we're gonna find out later that the meaning of his name isn't really that important.

It points to something else.

So his first son's named Jezreel, his first daughter's named No Mercy, and his second son is named Not My People.

So we're coming from the position that all three of these children were Hosea's children, uh born by Gomer, and that the Lord had commanded that they would name their children these names.

And our hope is to understand why he would say that, and then how that points to Christ for us now.

So if we look through verses three through five, what we're gonna see is that the heart of infidelity that the people of Israel hold will not go unpunished by God.

You see, this is the only prophetic statement out of the three.

If we look at the names that God was giving his ch these children, they were to be living parables of what he was actually executing among his people himself.

And so they were to actually carry this name and carry this mark as a message or proclamation reminder of what God was going to do.

And so Jezreel is the first one born, and it's actually the only one that doesn't have a reversal.

The other two children, as we're going to discover, has a reversal to the initial statement or prophetic utterance that God gives them, but Jezreel does not.

There is no reversal.

The punishment of Israel for their adulterous hearts will be executed.

You see, the union of Hosea and Gomer produce a son as their firstborn.

And like I said earlier, the Lord tells Hosea, name him Jezreel.

While this name could refer to a sense of reaping what you sow, if we look at the adulterous heart of Israel and that the in that kind of spirit of infidelity that they carried in the way that they worshiped false gods and went after weaker lovers, we could think, okay, Jezreel means to sow, and they're gonna reap what they sowed because God is going to execute judgment and punishment upon them.

But what we really need to see is that Jezreel carries a heavier weight in reference to place.

You see, Jezreel was this valley.

It still is there today.

And in this valley there was a lot of bloodshed and war and destruction.

Here battles were fought that both brought Israel victory and defeat.

And here, according to 2 Kings 9:1 through 1 through 9, or 9-1 through 9.10, I'm sorry, uh, after Jehu, so he he uses this another weird name, he says, I will punish the house of Jehu.

2 Kings 9:1

So what happened is Jehu kills King Jehoram, and he confronts this woman you might know from the scriptures named Jezebel.

And she is confronted in the valley of Jezreel and urges her eunuchs to kill Jezebel.

So Jehu's saying, Eunuchs, these ones who you've served Jezebel, now kill her.

And what they do is they throw her out of a window.

And they leave her in the street to be eaten by dogs.

The Bible declares that only Jezebel's skull, feet, and hands remained in that valley.

And so Jezreel was this valley of great bloodshed.

It was a place where God had commanded bloodshed to happen for the benefit of Israel, to overthrow wicked powers and wicked kings, but it was also a valley where Israel would face their own defeat and bloodshed as well.

So when he points to Jezreel, he's not necessarily repointing to the meaning of his name, but to the place that would have great uh somber understanding and importance to the people of Israel.

As they had seen their own loved ones fallen.

They had had to clean up the mess of war.

And so the Lord's proclaiming through Hosea that he was going to punish Israel in a brutal and bloody fashion.

He says, You've seen what's happened in the valley of Jezreel.

It's going to happen to you.

They would not be able to stand as a powerful war horse against the Lord, but they would crumble from the pouring out of his wrath-filled punishment.

You see, this punishment was not promised a reversal, like we said before.

It was a punishment that must and would take place against the house of Israel.

So the firstborn son is named Jezreel, and with it carries a weight of an unreversed prophetic utterance that Israel would be punished.

But then verses six through seven, we see that another child is born.

And what we see from this name to claim no mercy, that actually this is the first one now that carries a reversal behind it.

The Lord will not withhold his mercy forever from his people.

So while the next child that Gomer would bear, this daughter, that the Lord commanded them to name no mercy, he's initially very harsh and without hope.

But through it, it carries a reversal.

As we see on the back end of verses six through seven, he says that it almost seems like God himself is contradictive or that he's almost double-minded.

Because he says, Name her no mercy, for I will have no mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all.

But then right in verse seven, he flips it and says, But I will have mercy.

So the Lord would hold mercy from his people forever?

No, no, no.

However, this demonstration of mercy would not be through just this militant deliverance.

He declares that I will initially not have mercy upon you, but I will give you mercy.

And it's not that I will deliver you by the sword or by war or by horses.

It was going to be through the power of God.

And after this child was weaned, then Homer and Hosea and Gomer bear another child.

Homer Simpson does, you know.

It was a miracle.

A cartoon male had a baby.

Um, Gomer and Hosea have their third child, and it's a son.

And God commands him to name this son, not my people.

So the summary of verses eight through ten is that the Lord's covenant with his people, it's been broken, yet he will re-establish them.

And so this another prophetic utterance by the Lord, for these children to bear these names that carry such weight, this is the second one that carries a reversal on the back end of it.

You see, Hosea and Gomer's third child was a son that the Lord commanded to call, not my people.

God was making a clear statement that his people had broken the covenant that he had made with them.

Not only was the Lord going to orphan the people that he had called to be his own, but the great I am would cease to be such for them.

The Lord they once knew with all of his benefits, with all of his care for them, his provision for them, would no longer be for them.

He would say, You are not my people, and I am not your God.

But like the prophetic utterance before it, this one would carry a reversal.

The Lord would ultimately not allow his covenant to be determined by the failures of men.

His covenant would be initiated, upheld, and fulfilled through the power and strength of himself.

You see, the reversal would be from orphans without the provision and care of their father to children in full benefit.

We see at the very end of verse 10 that he said to them, it shall be said of them, children of the living God.

And so what we have in these three different children being named is we see God unfolding his plan of action of what he's going to do with the people of Israel, both of the northern and the southern kingdom.

And he's using Hosea and his family as a way to live this out in a parable of sense.

And so he says that you're going to be punished.

You're in heart of infidelity that has pursued other lovers, you are going to be punished.

And that's not going to be reversed.

It's going to be executed.

Justice will be seen.

And for a time, you're going to experience the absence of my mercy.

And for a time, you're going to experience the absence of my loving care.

But one day you will know my mercy again.

And one day you will be known by my name again.

And verse 11 kind of culminates this truth for us.

It says, 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.

So Jezreel sees ultimately in the end redemption.

The Lord's people will be unified once again through his mighty work.

Through the work of the Lord, a people shall be gathered together.

They shall no longer be divided, but be brought into unity under a ruling head.

All of this, all of this here is a foreshadowing of the work of Jesus to come.

Now, for a minute, as we kind of unpack this section of scripture, think about the names that these children would have to live with.

Think about the weight that they would carry.

This isn't just something that they're named at birth and then it's kind of forgotten and let go, but with every utterance of their name, whether they were in public or in the temple or in the marketplace or wherever they would be, as their name was spoken, it would remind everyone around them what God was planning to do.

How God was so torn and hurt, how he was offended, and how his righteousness and holiness had been sinned against.

And how he was going to see justice fulfilled.

They had to carry the weight of this.

Think about what it would do to them in their culture.

Think about what it would do to them in their society as they bore these names, and they had heard Hosea proclaim to them the message of what the Lord was going to do, and then they see it as a living reminder in these children.

Think about the message that the mention of their very name would bring to remembrance.

Their name might be a personal reproach, but ultimately it would be a public rebuke.

And so as we look at the main idea of this passage of scripture, I think this is fair to say as we try to understand how this applies to us here today, is this that God's relationship with his people through mercy is not absent of justice.

God's relationship with his people through mercy is not absent of justice.

Here's what I mean by this.

We see this in the very prophecy itself.

While God would bring both mercy and relationship to his people, he would not do it without justice.

Why?

God demands justice.

God in his very nature demands justice.

You see, God is this, and we've talked about this before, but God is this complex being.

In his personhood, he's not simple or one-sided, but he embodies in his very personhood these different attributes of who makes him to be him.

And there's an aspect of God and an attribute of God that is just.

God demands justice.

And so when there has been sin and rebellion, when there has been cosmic treason against his lordship, then he demands that justice be executed.

We see this in the complete narrative of all the scriptures.

There must be justice for mercy to be extended.

Even in the garden, as Adam and Eve were in rebellion by eating the fruit and breaking the law and commands of God to cover them in their nakedness, he brings justice upon an animal and he kills that animal and he clothes them with it.

And so the justice that was poured out on the creature was so that mercy could be poured out on the image bearer.

In sin, there is a demand for punishment.

Sin demands it because it's a rebellious act of treason against God and his lordship.

And in God there's a demand for justice.

God is a just God, and he is obligated unto himself to uphold that aspect of his personhood.

You see, if God did not uphold what One single aspect of his personhood, he would fail to be God.

We don't understand that.

We see mercy as sweeping stuff under a rug.

We see mercy as not dealing with the issue or passing over it and letting it be forgotten and dismissed.

But that's not who God is.

And we're not better than God because we understand mercy in a perverted way.

You see, God is both fully just and yet fully merciful, and so therefore he works to uphold that aspect of his personhood.

In God, he is both just and merciful.

This seems like a contradiction to us as people.

One of the primary reasons this seems a contradiction is because we don't think the way that the scriptures were written.

You see, the majority of the scriptures were written by Hebrew people.

And Hebrew people use something called Hebrew block logic.

So they're okay with God being two things at once.

They don't have to have these competing aspects.

When you ask someone that uses Hebrew block logic, well, does God choose man or does man choose God?

They're fine saying both.

Is God just or is God merciful?

Both.

We have to understand that this is who God has presented himself to be, and he's presented himself through these people who are communicating who God is through the revelation of the scriptures.

We are used to something called Greek linear logic.

We have to have one plus one equals two.

God cannot be just and merciful, but actually it's only in God, in this suspended harmony, can he be both fully and truly.

We even see this in the doctrine of who Christ is in the hypostatic union.

It's hard for us to wrap our minds around the fact that Christ was fully 100% God and fully 100% man.

We can't fathom that reality.

But according to Hebrew block logic, both of those things are simultaneously true and don't contradict one another.

However, we can't have that be.

50-50 makes 100.

100-100 does not make 100.

And so when we look at God, we have to try to force ourselves to not look at God through the way that we understand logic and reasoning.

We have to look at God for the way that he has communicated himself who he is.

If he says that he is just and he says that he is merciful, then let it be so.

If he says that he is love, but he says that he is wrath, let it be so.

If it says one thing about God and it says another, as long as he has communicated it to us in his holy word, then let it be so.

There is not one aspect of God's personhood that can be negated by another.

For God to be merciful, we have to understand this, he must be just as well.

His love will not overcome his wrath.

His mercy will not overcome his justice.

They will both be fully upheld in his power and might.

But here's how we battle this.

Here's how we wrestle against this.

Ultimately, we want the mercy of God without the justice of God.

Ultimately, we desire only one part of who God truly is.

Rooted in selfishness.

Because we only want the parts of God that benefit ourselves.

His kindness, his mercy, his love.

These are the desired, expressed attributes that we want to see from God because they are the attributes that actually benefit us most.

You see, when we approach God in relationship with Him, we approach Him in selfish endeavors.

We want the parts of God that benefit us, and you can keep the rest.

Ultimately, we don't want God Himself.

We want what we think He can give us to benefit us.

We don't want to worship or be in relationship with who God really is.

We hate the truth of God's justice.

I would argue for two primary reasons.

So when we're talking about this aspect of who he is and his personhood and his character, I will make the argument that there's two primary reasons when we come to his justice, we kind of pull back or we uh uh uh wrestle with this so greatly.

Number one is this it demands that there has been sin committed to require justice to be executed.

It demands that there has been sin committed to require justice to be executed.

You see, when we look at the aspect of God's justice, the reason we hate it is because it screams we are guilty.

We don't want to admit our sin.

We don't want to be honest about how our lives have incurred his injustice, how we have brought destruction and condemnation on ourselves, and we have poured it out on others around us.

Because, see, ultimately, if we can be guilt-free, then there's no need for justice.

When we only want to work look at God's love and his kindness, and we don't want to look at the aspect of our sin, what we're really trying to do is just cover up the fact or hide and push down and sweep under the rug the reality that our actions and our heart posture is the very thing that has incurred his justice to be executed.

We don't want to deal with that.

And the second thing is that it demands for punishment so that justice can be upheld.

You see, there's no justice without punishment.

Justice demands, in its very function, we get what we deserve.

When an injustice has come upon someone in our community or someone in our culture, and we know without a shadow of a doubt, this is injustice.

We cry out for what?

We cry out for that person to get what they deserve.

We want justice.

It's in our very being.

Why?

Because we're image bearers of the one who is just.

We want justice.

We want to see it executed.

Think about some of the big headline trials and things that have gone around in our culture.

And when the person got what they deserved, we were happy.

We were satisfied.

Justice had been executed, but justice could not be executed without punishment.

So if we truly are sinful against God, then justice can only be upheld through the punishment of that very sin.

This is why we squirm at the statement of God is just.

We don't want to admit that we're actually guilty and deserving of it, and we want to avoid the punishment that comes along with it.

So what do we do?

We fabricate a false God to worship that's simply just loving and kind and merciful and good, right?

You see, to be fully in relationship with God, we must seek to fully know him in all of his attributes.

We cannot pursue having a relationship with only certain aspects of who he is because ultimately we will be worshiping a false God.

To know God in his justice, to know God in his mercy, to know God in his wrath, to know him in his loving kindness, to know God fully is to not let one aspect of his personhood be dismissed because of our uncomfortable nature toward it.

So we as a people cry out, Lord, I want your mercy, but I don't want your justice.

What would happen if God gave us what we deserve?

You see, we don't think about that.

We don't think, one, that we truly are sinful.

And two, we don't, because we don't believe we're truly sinful, we don't believe that we should incur justice.

But if God gave us what we deserved, we would cease to exist.

You see, we say it miss you all the time.

When God looks at us, he doesn't think about rainbows and butterflies and happy faces.

No, when God looks at us, it makes him want to kill his own son.

And that's what he did.

Our hope in the gospel this morning is this that Christ endured the justice of the Father in our place so that we might become his people through mercy.

Christ endured the justice of the Father in our place so that we might become his people through mercy.

Mercy was able to be extended to us because justice was extended to Jesus.

You see, our sin demanded punishment, but Christ stood in our place and he took it.

This is the crux of the atonement.

Sin was going to be met with God's justice one way or another.

And if it wasn't for Christ, who stood in our place to take the punishment on our behalf, we would have never been able to be a people to know the mercy and loving kindness and goodness of God.

We would have only known him in his wrath and in his justice.

But because Christ, our elder brother, stood in the gap where we should have stood and absorbed the consequence of our sin, punishment was poured out on him so mercy could be poured out on us.

You see, Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophecy that God has through Hosea.

Jesus was Jezreel.

He stood in the bloody valley as his blood was poured out for us in punishment for our sin and our rebellion.

Jesus was no mercy.

There was no mercy shown to him.

The Father turned his back on him and he said that I couldn't even look upon him as Christ called out on the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

So there Jesus becomes not my people.

Christ faced the bloodshed of God's justice.

Through Christ were extended mercy, and in Christ were made the children of God.

Jesus is the fullness of the prophecy of God through Hosea.

And upon Christ's crucifixion, there was given to him a name.

Right?

We talked about these four horrible names.

We had to try and figure out what the world they mean for us today.

But there's something about a name.

There's something powerful and weighty about a name.

And as Jesus was going and marching to the place of his crucifixion, and as he was raised up for all to see, upon his head was placed a sign.

And he was given a name.

Jesus, the King of the Jews.

A name proposed to expose his condemnation of guilt.

Yet they didn't understand it was a true name.

And it would become a name that would be hope and victory for his people.

Jesus was given a name.

So that we might be given new names in Christ.

And so our gospel vision this morning is this is that as God's children, we live with new names.

We live with new names.

You see, scripture reminds us that nothing is more central to our identity than the names by which we live.

Some of us have been branded with names that have shamed and wounded us deeply.

We've been called names, given names, that leave scars and marks upon our very souls.

And regretfully, some of us have deeply hurt others by the labels we've placed on them.

All of us stand in need of mercy.

All of us stand in need of mercy, which is readily and freely given to us in the gospel.

So let's look at Revelation 2.17, where we see that God gives us in Christ a new name.

It says this He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.

To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone, so that no one knows except the one who receives it.

Whether or not there's literally a new name given to us in heaven as individual people, it's enough that we can look at the truth of the scriptures and the proclamation of the gospel that Christ Jesus addresses us as Christians as a new name.

Beloved, mine, saint, child, desired.

These are new names that we are called because of the truth of the gospel.

Where once we bore the name of no mercy, where we once bore the name of not my people, we now bear the name of beloved child of the living God.

It's the power of the gospel to rename you, it's the power of the gospel to renew you, and it's the power of the gospel to release you from your old destructive names, including the crippling ones that you've even given yourself.

But as much as we should love our new gospel names, let the name of Jesus, King of the Jews, stir within us the greatest affection.

Because it's by that name that we're fully forgiven and declared righteous.

It's by that name that we're being healed of every disease.

And it's by that name that we're freed from every bondage.

And it's at that name that we will gladly bow one day with everyone in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, declaring, Jesus King of the Jews, is Lord to the glory of God.

Philippians 2, 9 through 11 says this.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

So at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

And it's only because Jesus overcame sin and death for us on our behalf that we can claim the name Overcomer.

It's only because he drank the cup of our judgment that we'll get to feast on the hidden manna of eternity.

It's only because he loves us that we love him.

So, church, exalt the glorious name of Jesus and walk in the new name that he has given to you.