"Covenant" Hosea 1: Senior Pastor Daniel Reese

Good morning everybody.

Good morning.

God bless you.

God bless you.

If you have your Bibles, be Ephesians. My goodness.

Hosea chapter 1.

Hosea 1 · chapter mention

If you're using the church Bible, page 751.

751.

We're going to start a new book today that will take us through the

summer. We'll not be able to dive in as deep as we have been in Ephesians,

but we will hopefully still understand the book better than at the end of this thing than we do now.

One of the questions that I have received over the last few weeks once word got out that we were going to do Hosea is,

why?

Why are we doing Hosea?

That seems pretty random.

So I haven't been here long enough for you all to understand that I like to rotate between New Testament and Old Testament books.

There are some denominations who will say that the New Testament is the only part of the Bible that we should teach from.

I disagree.

I think both are the Word of God.

I think both have important application points for our lives.

And I think the gospel is woven in through every book of the Bible.

And so I like to rotate.

Now on a practical side, when we are planning the summer, we are looking for a book that we could go through during the summer.

And Hosea seemed to fit those parameters of the amount of chapters it had and the amount of time we had.

And so I've never preached through the book of Hosea.

Pastor Mark had not preached through the book of Hosea, so we thought we'd give it a try.

All right, so that's where we are today.

So with that in mind, let's look at Hosea together. We're going to do the entire first chapter this morning.

Before we jump into it, let me give you a little bit of background.

Hosea is considered or is a minor prophet.

A minor prophet was only assigned that classification based on the length of his book.

It has nothing to do with the importance of the book.

It has nothing to do with the length that he prophesied.

It's simply the length.

And so it's not any less important than Jeremiah or Isaiah, which are considered major prophets.

It really just comes down to the length of the book.

Other minor prophets include Amos and Haggai and Obadiah plus a few others.

All are just as important as other books in the Old Testament.

All right, so that's who Haggai is.

Now, or Hosea, confused.

Hosea was a prophet at the latter end of 50 years of great peace and prosperity and military expansion under the reign of King Jeroboam II.

That prosperity and that peace was not good for the spiritual climate of the nation who had become so spiritually bankrupt that they were so unrecognizable as the people of God.

Yet they were so blinded to it that they just kept coasting along as if nothing was wrong, as if they were doing really, really well.

It was in this context that Hosea calls Israel to return to God.

Now, this is one of the darkest periods of time for the nation of Israel.

Kings were ascending to the throne by murder, by overthrow.

Idolatry was running rampant, especially the worship of nature.

There was robbery, oppression, adultery, murder, all those things.

And one thing you can always see through history, and even in America today, is that God will always send some people to warn the nations of their sin.

So he sent Hosea to Israel.

But unlike the rest of the prophets, God did more than just give Hosea a message.

He made Hosea a living illustration.

Now, this book is to remind the Israelites, as well as us today, that God is a loving God, and he is dedicated to His covenant people with an unwavering love.

Now, there are some warnings in this book.

There are some judgments in this book.

There's a lot of metaphors in this book.

But each week, I hope that you will understand that sin has consequences.

But God's love is always there.

It's always consistent.

He never wavers.

But so, at times, sometimes it feels like the things that He's doing, the way that He's disciplining, is unloving.

But He's, in order to get the attention of His people, it's one of the most loving things that He can do.

Alright, so let's jump in chapter 1, verse 1.

It says,

We wanted to see how many times we could say,

Hore and Horedom throughout a Sunday morning.

Alright, so that's that side.

Alright?

But what I love about this is God does not bother to ease us into the storyline, does He?

I mean, verse 2, He's into it.

He doesn't try to gloss over the facts.

So, as we read that, and we wonder if it really means what it says it means.

The story of Hosea's marriage to Gomorrah is so troubling that most commentaries and most Bible studies I've read in preparation of that,

they spend a great deal of time debating whether or not there's some other explanation for what took place than what the text says took place.

Some people say that there was no Gomorrah.

There was no children.

They believe that this is a parable, a made up story to try to teach us a spiritual lesson.

They believe this not because the text of Hosea indicates it,

but because they just can't believe that what it says happened actually happened.

Other people have a stronger argument when they say that Gomorrah was not immoral before the marriage,

that she became that way later.

They believe this because they feel God would never ask Hosea to marry a woman who lived so immorally before marriage.

Now, while this interpretation carries more weight than the first, I still do not believe that that's the correct understanding of this text.

The plain reading of this text tells us that Gomorrah had a shady background before she ever married Hosea.

One should also note that the marriage is to illustrate our relationship to God, God's relationship to His people.

God does not marry Himself to a people that have a pure past, does He?

Just the opposite is true.

Romans tells us that while we were yet still sinners, Christ died for us.

We should also point out that it seems self-evident that in marrying Hosea, Gomorrah was willfully giving up her sinful life

and committing to live with Hosea in a pure relationship.

So it's not as if Hosea was marrying someone who was living immorally at the time they were wed.

I believe the text means exactly what it says.

So then the question then becomes, why would God command such a marriage?

The marriage was going to serve as a living illustration of God's relationship with Israel.

The people of Israel were going to see acted out in front of them, lived out in front of them, God's love for them.

Their unfaithfulness towards God and the reason for the judgment that was about to come on them.

While this kind of living illustration seems unusual to us, a lot of the Bible studies I was reading were like,

this can't be, it seems too harsh.

God wouldn't do that.

It was not unusual for God to ask His prophets to do some radical things to get the message across.

Isaiah's children, like Hosea's, were given names that communicated God's judgment on Judah.

Later, Isaiah was told to walk around through the city streets naked as a vivid illustration of the horrors of the impending judgment

that was going to happen to the land.

Jeremiah was instructed to lie on his side and eat a starvation diet.

He had to cook his food over animal dung.

He did this to dramatize the difficulties that people would face in the days ahead.

Ezekiel was commanded by God not to grieve the death of his wife.

And so these were certainly strange requirements that God placed on the prophets,

but their obedience, the prophets' obedience gave the nation visible symbols and signs of what God was going to do.

So now we have Hosea, verse 2, go marry a prostitute.

Go commit your life to a whore is what he's saying.

Can you even begin to imagine?

Now think about it, God is the one who ordained marriage.

He's the one who created marriage.

And then you get to Hosea and it kind of feels like he's asking Hosea to make a mockery of it.

So we need to understand a marriage covenant.

We need to look at a marriage covenant because this is what God is asking Hosea to enter into.

Now, I know a lot more about marriage today than I did the day I said I do.

I didn't know all the difficulties that were to come in my marriage.

At the same time, I didn't know all the joys that would come either.

God said in Genesis chapter 2 that a man shall leave his father and mother and he will become one flesh with his wife.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

Now, Sina and I were not an arranged marriage.

It's not like our parents got together and said, this is how both of our families will benefit if we get these two kids married.

I went through my fair share of girls before I understood what I wanted.

I had to do some sampling.

And when I started to figure out the type of girl that I wanted to marry,

my litmus test for figuring out if I wanted to spend my entire life with that person was to take them on a road trip.

If I could see things getting serious with someone, I would take them on a road trip, usually a few hours one way and then we'd come back.

Now, most of the girls I had dated had many of the characteristics that I was looking for.

Most of them are really great people who love the Lord, who have great families now.

But you can really like somebody.

You can enjoy being around somebody but not want to spend the rest of your life with them.

So many times we would take a road trip.

And I could usually tell by the time we got to wherever we were going, this thing's not working out.

Time and time again, that's how it happened.

And so on the way back, now I'm planning, okay, how do I break this thing off?

Like, I got to figure out the timing.

Because you don't want to do it before you get back home.

But you don't want to waste a lot of time once you get back home either because there's no point.

Well, Sine and I were getting serious and an opportunity arose for me to pick her up and take her back to school.

And it would create an environment where we could be alone in the car for four hours as we head back.

Now, she didn't know it at the time.

But it was a test to see if I could still stand her when we got back.

I already knew I thought she was somebody I could marry.

But I didn't know if I could spend the rest of my life with her.

That's a big commitment, isn't it?

When you're talking about, I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you.

Well, obviously it worked out.

And I'm so grateful for that trip in the car.

Marriage is not something you take lightly.

I didn't take it lightly.

God doesn't take it lightly.

You sacrifice.

You love.

You give.

Even if you don't get anything in return.

That is what you were committing to when you marry someone.

This is what God was asking Hosea to do.

So I think that Hosea did have feelings for Gomer.

Maybe they grew up together.

Maybe they dated in high school, but she made some bad decisions and they separated.

And God's bringing them back together.

I don't know how it went back then.

I'm assuming at one time or another that there was some mutual affection.

I don't view this as an arranged marriage.

This marriage is going to represent God and His covenant people.

Our relationship with God isn't an arranged marriage.

There was mutual affection.

The people of Israel had mutual affection for God.

The people had seen God do incredible things throughout their history.

For a period of time they worshiped Him.

God provided for them.

But time and time again the people began to wonder.

They would begin to worship other things.

Something shiny would come along and it would distract them and take their focus off of Him.

But God is saying through the image of this marriage is, I am committed to you.

Even when you don't give me the attention that I deserve.

Even when you don't show me the love that I am owed.

I am in this thing.

I'm not going anywhere.

Our relationship to God is a covenant relationship.

And He is committed to it.

Then things as you keep going things begin to take a bad turn pretty quickly.

They begin to have some children.

So let's look at the family covenant.

The family covenant if done right and it done in the right order is a result of a marriage covenant.

When you have children you are entering into a covenant as well.

You are entering into care for them.

For their growth, for their health and hopefully for their spiritual life.

Now I am aware that many of us in this room have had to deal with some of the consequences of divorce.

I know everybody in this room knows somebody or has watched somebody go through a divorce.

Some of you might be going through it right now.

And it's hurtful and it's painful.

When there is a break and a marital covenant.

There is going to be some painful things that occur.

There is going to be custody battles.

And there is going to be counseling sessions.

And there is going to be a time of grieving and other things of that nature.

Those things are unavoidable when you choose to get divorced.

Well God is trying to communicate some of the consequences that are going to occur

because of the breakdown of the marriage covenant.

Now back in the Old Testament when you were given a name.

When your parents named you that name carried a lot of meaning.

It was who you were.

It was who you were, what you were known as.

God is communicating something to the people through the names of Hosea's children.

Their first child is to be named Jezreel.

Now I don't know any Jezreels.

I don't think we name our kids that anymore.

But this carried a lot of meaning.

Jezreel means scattered.

And Israel would soon be scattered and would cease to be a nation

once the Assyrian army came in and conquered them.

It also refers to the Jezreel Valley where Jehu who was the founder of the dynasty

massacred all the descendants of Ahab.

This is the dynasty that Jeroboam was a part of.

And so you can read about that in 2 Kings chapter 10.

2 Kings 10 · chapter mention

But what God was communicating is that the reign of the dynasty was about to come to an end.

God was about to allow the kingdom to fall.

The people would be scattered.

And he would break the bow of Israel.

Which is significant because the bow represents power.

He's about to say, I'm about to take away all of your power.

Now that's a pretty significant judgment for breaking the Merrill covenant, isn't it?

Then it says that Gomorrah conceived a daughter in verse 6.

But Hosea is told to name her no mercy.

The nation of Israel, you've got to remember, they're broken up into two kingdoms.

The nation of Israel was not going to be shown any mercy.

But the nation of Judah was.

The kingdom of Judah had proven to be more faithful to God during this period of time.

2 Kings chapter 18 tells us the story of Hezekiah.

2 Kings 18 · chapter mention

He was a good king. He honored the Lord.

So they get mercy.

But you have to remember, mercy is only shown to the guilty.

Therefore it is within the wise and loving heart of God to show mercy to whom He will show mercy.

No one is ever unfair for not showing mercy.

None of us deserve it.

But there are times that God gives it anyway.

Finally, Gomorrah conceives another child this time of son.

His name is to be called not my people.

Think about that.

Every call to this unfortunately named child reminded Hosea and everyone else of the people of Israel

that they had pushed away God.

That they pushed away the Lord and should no longer be considered his people.

Now since Gomorrah did not give up her life of prostitution, there may have been a cruel irony in the name.

Perhaps this son really was not the son of Hosea, but of another man.

Perhaps the appearance of the child made that very evident.

The message that God had to deliver to Israel through Hosea was hard enough.

But God also made Hosea live through it day after day after day.

The reality is this is just a simple statement of fact.

It wasn't as if the people of Israel were wanting to be God's people and God wouldn't have them.

That's not what was going on here.

Instead the people of Israel rejected God.

They turned from God.

And here the Lord simply recognized that fact.

He's not going to play, hey let's pretend now.

You pretend to be my people and I'll pretend to be your God.

No, he's saying the time for games is over.

It's over.

So what should we gather from this chapter?

Put yourself in the sandals of Hosea for just a moment.

And imagine what it would be like to have a spouse that is known like Gomorrah.

This isn't the type of woman you bring home to meet your parents.

Then every time you call your children's name, you're reminded the judgment is coming.

Every time you call their name to come eat dinner, to behave, to come inside,

you're reminded judgment is coming.

You're reminded that your own people have rejected God.

This is what's his life.

In light of all that we should understand, in light of this chapter, that our sin is shameful.

It's shameful.

I have seen the look on a husband or wife when they confess infidelity.

They don't share it like it's a badge of honor.

I have seen the look on my children's face when they get caught in a lie.

They put their heads down.

They won't look at me.

I mean if you have a dog, you know that dogs understand what shame is, right?

You walk in your dog and they get busted for getting in the trash.

They get busted for tearing up a piece of furniture.

What do they do?

They know it.

Even dogs feel shame because that is what sin does.

There is a reason that it is so hard to confess sin.

It's shameful.

It's humiliating.

It's humbling.

Every day, Hosea had to walk around with that.

Every day, Gomer had to walk around with that.

Now I know she gets a bad rap, but I have to believe that Gomer felt the weight of not being faithful.

I have to believe that Gomer carried around that weight of shame, of messing up again,

of not finding contentment and joy in her marriage to a faithful man.

Shame is heavy.

It changes us.

It keeps us from being who God created us to be.

Now we give Israel a hard time, don't we?

How could they not see it?

I mean how many of us have said that?

How could they not see it?

How many times did God have to prove himself to them?

How many times did it need to go badly for them to realize that idol worship is not really a good idea?

We read stories about this all the time throughout the New Old Testament,

and we're like, what a bunch of idiots they are, right?

Like how hard-headed do you have to be?

He parted the Red Sea.

How do they respond?

They go make a golden calf.

Bunch of idiots, right?

And then a few generations later, the same group of people knowing the story of the Exodus,

knowing that it went badly when they made the golden calf, what do they do?

Hey, let's make two instead.

Like they just don't ever seem to get it.

This is a people that does not get it.

And yet we are so much like them.

Every single one of us is so much like them.

Seeing God perform miracles, experiencing Him move powerfully in a worship service,

seeing Him answer prayer after prayer after prayer, and what do we do?

We go back to the same stuff we know we shouldn't.

And then what happens?

He begins to feel distant, doesn't he?

Then the worship services don't seem to be as powerful anymore.

They must be doing something wrong.

They lost their mojo.

Now he isn't answering my prayers the way I want him to.

The reality is maybe it's because you are covered in a mountain of shame and you can't get it off of you.

Maybe you just give in to it.

The enemy wants you to walk in shame every single day.

He wants you to keep going back to the things that only satisfy you for a minute.

The reason sin is so shameful for those of us that consider ourselves believers is because we have already been exposed to the goodness of God.

We know what's right and wrong, but we choose the other things so often.

I hope that your sin shames you.

I hope you understand it.

I hope it shames you.

I want you to imagine for a moment if Hosea was living today.

This story was happening today.

A man of God, a powerful man of God dedicated to the ministry, dedicated to God, faithful every step of the way, grieving for a people who know better, and yet his life is consumed by scandal.

Every night on the news is another story about how his wife is sleeping, God caught sleeping with somebody else.

Every night his ministry is deduced to a cheating wife.

That's what he's known for, and yet he remains faithful.

We have to understand that because God's love for you and for me is scandalous.

It's riddled with scandal.

Now, we don't normally think of God's love as scandalous, do we?

But in a very real sense, it is.

The scandal of it all is seen in the ways we try to get God out of a jam when we read books like Hosea.

We say things like, oh, it's an allegory.

It never really happened.

God didn't tell Hosea to marry a prostitute, but he messed up and God decided to take a bad situation and make it a teachable moment.

Hosea didn't know what was going to happen.

Why do we work so hard at trying to give God a way out of what he says happened?

Because it seems so shocking to us because it's a scandal.

I suppose it does.

It shocks us to think that Hosea could love a woman like Gomorrah, but that is exactly the point of the story, isn't it?

It's shocking that God could love someone like me.

God has always, always, always been scandalizing people with his love.

When God came to earth, in the person of Christ, he was in full scandal mode all the time.

He scandalized crowns when he touched the lepers.

He scandalized the religious leaders as he enjoyed a meal and fellowship with some known sinners and the hated tax collectors.

In Luke chapter 7, we find that Jesus scandalized Simon the Pharisee in his own home.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

A sinful, immoral woman came into the home, broken alabaster jar of ointment over Jesus to anoint him.

She stood behind Jesus, her hot tears falling down her cheeks onto his feet, and kneeling down, she took her hair and wiped the feet of Jesus.

Simon reasoned in his own mind that there was no way that Jesus could be a man of God.

If he was truly a man of God, if he was truly a real prophet, he would have known what kind of woman that was.

If he knew what kind of woman that was, he wouldn't want anything to do with her.

But not only did Jesus know everything about this woman, he knew far more about her than Simon could have possibly imagined.

But he loved her anyway.

As a matter of fact, he loved her so much that while she wept over him, while she washed his feet, he was making plans to die for her.

That's what a scandal the whole scene was to Simon.

How could God love a woman like that so intensely?

The whole thing shocked him to the core of his being.

Jesus even scandalized his own disciples with his love outside the city of Samaria.

He was out there talking to a woman, not just any woman though, a Samaritan woman.

A woman that had been married and divorced five times.

But even more than that, she was living with another man at a wedlock.

Yet there was Jesus engaging in a spiritual conversation about her soul, about who she was.

They stood there together, the Son of God and the sinful woman, and Jesus was not the least bit embarrassed to be seen with in her company.

Thereby that well outside the city of Samaria, Jesus offered himself to her as the water of life.

To the shock of even as close as friends.

Jesus loved the sinful woman of Samaria.

Do you know what the real scandal is today?

The real scandal is that God would love me.

That is a scandal of God's love.

My life has been filled with spiritual adultery.

I have loved other things and other people more than God.

I have at times rejected his love for me.

Some days I completely ignore him altogether, and other days I accuse him of not loving me.

He has found me time and time and time again being unfaithful to him.

The astonishing thing though is that he still loves me.

That is the real scandal.

That he is not ashamed to call me his son.

Now my children, for those of you who know them, are not perfect.

They are moody.

They are difficult.

And they disappoint us sometimes with their actions.

Every time that we have to discipline them, we always explain why they are receiving the discipline.

But after we explain the why behind the discipline, we tell them to pick up their heads,

to look us in the eyes, so that we can tell them that they are still loved.

They are still loved by us.

Our love will never end for them.

No matter how many times they mess up, no matter how many times they disappoint us,

they go to bed at night, every single night knowing that they are deeply loved by me and their mama.

I am their dad, and I love them.

And I want them to never doubt my love for them even in the midst of discipline.

Some of you, if not all of us, are walking in some sort of shame.

And I am telling you to look up.

Look at the cross and know that you were loved.

Stop walking in shame.

Humble yourself before the Lord and confess those things to Him.

Because in this story of Hosea, we are not Hosea.

We are Gomorrah.

We are the bride.

We are the whore.

We have betrayed Him over and over again.

We have been unfaithful.

And yet as we will see later in the story, God bought us back from our Hordom.

He buys us back.

He bought you with a great price.

When you look at the cross, that's what you need to see.

He bought you at a great price.

And when you surrendered your life to Him, when He saved you,

you entered into a covenantal relationship with Him.

And it cost Him His Son.

When you look at the cross, forget your shame.

Because it's been covered.

And so if you're walking around in shame,

if you're walking around in sin that you can't seem to overcome,

pick your heads up.

Look up.

Look at the cross.

Because you're loved.

You might have to go through some discipline.

You might have to go through some hard times.

But in the midst of all of it, you're loved.

That's the story of Hosea.

That's the story.

God's committed to you.

Even when you're unfaithful, time and time and time again.

But don't walk, our sin should shame us.

Because we've sinned against the Holy God.

It should shame us.

But it doesn't define us.

The cross defines us. His love defines us.

Totally accepted.

Because when He looks at you, He doesn't see your shame.

He doesn't see your baggage.

He sees His Son.

Let's pray.

Father God, I pray that as we...

as we respond and as we sing,

as we meditate,

I pray God that you'll speak to our hearts.

Help us get our eyes on the cross.

Help us no longer hang our heads in shame.

So Father, I pray that as we sing,

that your voice will just be heard in us.

I pray that you minister to our hearts.

I pray God that you give us the boldness to walk in obedience,

to respond however that looks.

So God, I pray that you fill this room with your presence.

Where it's undeniable that you are moving.

I pray for the person that feels like they're walking in the desert right now.

It feels distant from you God.

I pray that you will speak to their hearts.

I pray that you will remove the mountain of shame.

That so many people are carrying it.

That so many people are buried underneath.

Help us see you as faithful and committed and loving.

I pray God for new identities today.

God, we love you.

Thank you for your love for us.

Thank you for Jesus.

It's your name and prayer.

Thank you.