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Hosea – God’s Unfailing Love & Faithfulness Hosea . Hosea: a living example of God’s love and faithfulness to His people. Background : Hosea means “salvation” Hosea preached to the northern nation of Israel His ministry spanned almost 40 years. .
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Hosea – God’s Unfailing Love & FaithfulnessHosea • Hosea: a living example of God’s love and faithfulness to His people. • Background: • Hosea means “salvation” • Hosea preached to the northern nation of Israel • His ministry spanned almost 40 years.
The nation began to experience serious moral and spiritual decline. • God sent Hosea to teach the people an object lesson about His character • Lessons from Hosea: • The Severity of Idolatry • The Consequences of Unfaithfulness • The Demonstration of God’s Love & Faithfulness
1. The Severity of Idolatry • God often uses marriage to describe His relationship with His people. • Hosea 2:2-3 [NLT] - “But now bring charges against Israel—your mother— for she is no longer my wife, and I am no longer her husband. Tell her to remove the prostitute’s makeup from her face and the clothing that exposes her breasts.” • God also describes Himself as a jealous God.
Exodus 34:14 [NIV] – “Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” • A covenant is a special agreement made between two parties. • God promised He would be there God if they would obey Him and follow His commandments with all their hearts. • Exodus 24:3 [NIV] – “When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.”
The Israelites bought into the lie giving Baal credit for what they knew were really gifts from the Lord’s hand. • Hosea 2:8 [NLT] – [Israel] doesn’t realize it was I who gave her everything she has – But she gave all my gifts to Baal. • Worship of Baal promised everything the people wanted without having to obey God’s commands. • The moral decline of God’s people was reaching a climax.
Hosea 11:1,2 [NLT] - “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called to him, the farther he moved from me, offering sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning incense to idols.” • Hosea married a prostitute a real life example the spiritual prostitution the people of Israel were involved in. • Israel was guilty of idolatry • Webster: idolatry is excessive attachment or devotion to anything
You will never meet a person who is not religious. Not that everyone goes to church, studies religious books, or faithfully carries out religious rituals. But event the most secular of modern persons has a reverence for something beyond himself. Business success, political power, financial gain, intellectual prowess, material comfort, sensual pleasure are just a few ambitions that people are willing to devote themselves to. Measure a person’s use of time, weigh the attention given to various topics of conversation and you will get a picture of what that person worships. Such worship is dangerous because it crowds the true living God out of our lives. (David Hubbard, Themes from the Minor Prophets)
The New Testament also warns against idolatry: • 1 John 2:15–16 [NIV] - “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.” • James 4:4 [NIV] “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.”
2 Corinthians 11:2–3 [NIV] - “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” • Have you ever stopped to evaluate your own life and identified any “idols” that you have elevated above your devotion to God? • We still serve a jealous God.
2. The Consequences of Unfaithfulness • God really had no option but to judge Israel. • The names of the three children of Gomerforeshadowed the judgment of God on His people: • Son: Jezreel: means “God will scatter” • Daughter: Lo-Ruhamah: means “Not pitied” • Son: Lo-Ammi: means “Not my people” • Israel had violated the covenant they had made with Godand He was going to separate Himself from them.
God’s punishment fit the crime. • Hosea 8:13b [NLT] – “I will hold my people accountable for their sins.” • God will hold each one of us accountable for the sin in our lives as well. • Romans 14:10–12 [NIV] – “You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat…So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
God doesn’t want a superficial relationship with us. • Hosea 6:6 [NLT] – “I want you to show love, not offer sacrifices, I want you to know me more than I want burnt offerings.” • “know” in the Bible notknowledge of facts and information • It speaks about intimacy • When we refuse to give God our total devotion He will allows us to experience the negative consequences of our own poor choices or He may bring trials into our lives to draw us back to Him.
3. The Demonstration of God’s Love & Faithfulness • Hosea 3:1a [NLT] - Then the LORD said to me, “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover.” • Hosea’s love for Gomerwas unconditional. • The kind of love God wanted His people to see in Him. • Hosea 3:1b [NLT] - This will illustrate that the LORD still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.”
God is the God of judgment and the God of love and compassion. • Hosea 11:8,9 [NLT] - “Oh, how can I give you up, Israel? How can I let you go? How can I destroy you… My heart is torn within me, and my compassion overflows. No, I will not unleash my fierce anger. I will not completely destroy Israel, for I am God and not a mere mortal. I am the Holy One living among you, and I will not come to destroy. • In His justice God punishes sin but in His love, He never abandons His people.
How much do you understand the love of God? • Romans 8:37–39 [NIV] - “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“True love reveals itself the strongest of all passions when your impulse to hate those who hurt you is fully felt.” (Larry Crabb, 66 Love Letters) • Hosea was called to demonstrate the kind of love and faithfulness God would show His people. • God calls His people to come back to Him. • Hosea 14:1-2a [NLT] – “Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for your sins have brought you down. Bring your confessions, and return to the LORD.”
Hosea 2:16,19,20 [NLT] – “When that day comes,” says the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’ instead of ‘my master’ …I will make you my wife forever, showing you righteousness and justice, unfailing love and compassion. I will be faithful to you and make you mine, and you will finally know me as the LORD. • This is the kind of love God showed us through Christ’s death on the cross. • He is willing to restore His relationship with us at the highest cost.
Hosea 2:14,23 [NLT] - “But then I will win her back once again. I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there. …I will show love to those I called ‘Not loved.’ And to those I called ‘Not my people,’ I will say, ‘Now you are my people.’ And they will reply, ‘You are our God!’ ” • Romans 5:8 [NIV] – “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” • God wanted to illustrate His unfailing love & faithfulness through the experience of Hosea • He calls us to love like that.
1 John 4:7–12 [NIV] – “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love…This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.” • God calls us to love one another with the same unfailing love He demonstrated to us.
