Thursday
Evening Bible Study
February 16, 2006
Introduction
In the days of Hosea, Israel
was a divided kingdom. The southern kingdom was known as Judah
after the largest tribe, while the northern kingdom was called either Israel,
Ephraim (the largest tribe) or Samaria
(the capital city).
Hosea ministered to the people of the northern kingdom.
Hosea lived at the time of the fall of the northern kingdom. In a way his
ministry was similar to that of Jeremiah’s several hundred years later, warning
the people of the coming judgment. It is thought that Hosea’s ministry started
somewhere around the year 750 BC, about 30 years before the fall of the
northern kingdom.
There were several other prophets with ministries at this time. Amos was
alive in Hosea’s day, and he too ministered to the northern kingdom, as did the
prophet Jonah. At this time, there were two prophets in the southern kingdom,
Isaiah and Micah.
Hosea’s ministry began at the end of the reign of Jeroboam II, who reigned
41 years over the northern kingdom, one of the longer reigns for a king of the
north. Even though he is called an “evil” king, as all the northern kings were,
he did bring prosperity and actually enlarged the northern kingdom.
Under Jeroboam II, Israel
lived in material prosperity but spiritual bankruptcy. Judgment and destruction
of the nation would sound pretty unlikely. Sounds a little like the time we
live in. About twenty years after Hosea’s ministry, the city of Damascus
would fall to the Assyrians. By 722 BC, the northern kingdom of Israel
was fallen.
The first three chapters of the book will deal with Hosea’s personal life. The
remaining chapters contain messages given through his ministry. In the
prophetic sections there are three main themes woven throughout: The sins of
the people, the certainty of judgment, and God’s loyal love.
:1 The word of the LORD that came to Hosea the son of Beeri, in the days of
Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam
the son of Joash, king of Israel.
Hosea – Howshea‘– Hoshea
or Oshea = “salvation”
(Uzziah, 790-739 B.C.; Jotham, 750-731; Ahaz, 731-715; Hezekiah, 715-686;
Jeroboam II, 794-753)
When you look at the dates of when these kings ruled, the very smallest
time frame of Hosea’s ministry would be from at least 753 BC (the end of
Jeroboam’s reign) until 715 BC (the beginning of Hezekiah’s reign).
:2-9 What a family!
:2 When the LORD began to speak by Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea: "Go,
take yourself a wife of harlotry And children of harlotry, For the land has
committed great harlotry By departing from the LORD."
This has got to be one of the most bizarre things God has ever asked anyone
to do. If it weren’t for the fact that we KNOW that Hosea was a real, live,
bonified prophet, we might question this kind of a thing. “Yeah, sure …”
Hosea is asked to go marry a gal who was a prostitute. And he’s supposed to
have children with her.
Some have suggested that she didn’t become a prostitute until after they
got married.
Hosea is going to be a living picture of God’s relationship with His
people.
It was not unusual for God to have a prophet do something to get a message
across:
At times Isaiah was asked to do things as a picture of some prophecy. One
time God asked Isaiah to go naked for three years, foreshadowing when the
Assyrians would conquer Egypt and make their captives walk naked and barefoot
(Isaiah 20).
The prophet Ezekiel was told to make bread out of certain vegetables and
cook it over manure (Eze. 4), symbolizing what the people in Jerusalem
were doing.
With Hosea, he will be representing God, who has been married to His
people, but His people are like a harlot in that they are not faithful to God. How
will God treat these people who have been unfaithful?
Lesson
Painting a picture
I find it interesting that our lives are also a picture of God’s
relationship with man.
We are a living picture of Jesus and the church
(Eph
5:22-32 NKJV) Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. {23} For
the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He
is the Savior of the body. {24} Therefore, just as the church is subject to
Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.
Paul is going to tell us that the marriage relationship is
a picture of Jesus’ relationship to the church. The wife represents the church
and Jesus represents the husband.
Submission is a difficult thing for anyone to swallow. We’re
all supposed to be submitting to one another (Eph. 5:21), but here the focus is on the wives submitting to
the husband.
Wives, the way you submit to your husband is a picture. It
is telling the world about how the church submits to Christ. Does your marriage
show the right picture?
Illustration
Going For The
Juggler
A juggler, driving to his next performance, is stopped by
the police. “What are these matches and lighter fluid doing in your car?” asks
the cop. “I’m a juggler and I juggle flaming torches in my act.” “Oh yeah?”
says the doubtful cop. “Lets see you do it.” The juggler gets out and starts
juggling the blazing torches masterfully. A couple driving by slows down to
watch. “Wow,” says the driver to his wife. “I’m glad I quit drinking. Look at
the test they’re giving now!
Do people get the wrong idea when they watch our lives?
{25} Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ
also loved the church and gave Himself for her, {26} that He might sanctify and
cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, {27} that He might present
her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
but that she should be holy and without blemish.
The way a husband treats his wife is another picture. Men,
what would life be like for us if Jesus treated us the way you treat your wife?
Scary, isn’t it?
A man’s love for his wife ought to be sacrificial. He laid
down everything for us. A man’s love for his wife changes her for the good –
she grows more and more beautiful under the right kind of love.
{28} So husbands ought to love their own wives as
their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. {29} For no one ever
hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the
church. {30} For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.
{31} "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be
joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."
Jesus is not only a husband to the church. He is also the
“head” of His own body, which is also the church. A head is sure to take care
of it’s body just as Jesus takes care of the church. When a man and woman are
married, they are “one flesh”, like a head and a body. You are doing yourself
good by taking care of your body. Take care of your wife. It’s good for you.
{32} This is a great mystery, but I speak
concerning Christ and the church.
But Paul really isn’t talking about marriage after all. He
wants us to focus on the whole idea that our marriage is a picture of Jesus and
the church.
I’m glad that we get to be a picture of Jesus and the
church and not Israel
and God.
:3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and
bore him a son.
Now you know something is definitely wrong when a man marries a woman named
Gomer.
Gomer – Gomer –
“complete”. Was her last name “Pyle”? Gawwwwwwleeeeeee!
:4 Then the LORD said to him: "Call his name Jezreel, For in a little
while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu, And bring an
end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
Jezreel – Yizr@‘e’l – “God
sows”. Sometimes a prophet will name his child because the name itself means
something. Here I think the focus is on the fact that Jezreel was the name of a
famous, important place.
Jezreel was a valley in the north of Israel.
It was where wicked King Ahab had his summer house. It would be the place where
one of Ahab’s captains, Jehu, would kill Ahab’s son and wife, Jezebel, and
eventually wipe out all the descendants of Ahab.
Even though God had warned Ahab and his house that he and his descendants
would be wiped out because of Ahab’s sins, that didn’t mean that whoever killed
the house of Ahab would get an automatic gold star in God’s eyes.
Jehu was commended by God for what he had done in wiping out Ahab and
wiping out the worship of Baal (2Ki. 10:29-31),
but he didn’t do all that he should have done in that he left the golden calves
to continue.
God promised Jehu that his descendants up to the fourth generation would
rule over Israel
as a reward for the good things he did (2Ki. 10:30), but on the other hand they
wouldn’t go past the fourth generations because Jehu didn’t go all the way with
his faith, he only did part of what God wanted him to do.
The current king of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam II, was the third
generation after Jehu. Jeroboam’s son, Zechariah, would only rule for six
months before being killed (2Ki. 15:8-12).
:5 It shall come to pass in that day That I will break the bow of Israel
in the Valley of Jezreel."
There’s a bit of a play on words in the Hebrew between Israel
(Yitsra-el) and Jezreel (Yetsre-el). Jezreel was one of the great battlefields in
Israel, and the
nation would be overthrown by the Assyrians, including battles at Jezreel.
Trivia note: The valley of Jezreel
is also the location of the future battle of Armageddon.
:6 And she conceived again and bore a daughter. Then God said to him: "Call
her name Lo-Ruhamah, For I will no longer have mercy on the house of Israel,
But I will utterly take them away.
Here, the name of child will mean something.
Lo-Ruhamah – Lo’ Ruchamah –
“no mercy”. When she grew up and kissed her first boyfriend, he didn’t cry
(Elvis voice), “Mercy, mercy”, but he cried, “No mercy, no mercy” J (the name could also
be translated, “not loved”, pretty tragic really)
:7 Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah,
Will save them by the LORD their God, And will not save them by bow, Nor by
sword or battle, By horses or horsemen."
Even though the northern kingdom would be wiped out by the Assyrians, the
southern kingdom was not. When the army of the Assyrians came against Hezekiah
at Jerusalem, God promised to save
the city. The people trusted the Lord. They prayed. And God sent an angel that
wiped out 185,000 Assyrians in a single night (Isa. 36-37).
:8 Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son.
:9 Then God said: "Call his name Lo-Ammi, For you are not My people,
And I will not be your God.
Lo-Ammi – Lo’ ‘Ammiy –
“not my people”
It kind of makes me wonder if Hosea was unsure if he was the father of this
child or not. What would people think when they asked Hosea what the boy’s name
was and he answered, “not my people”, which would sound like, “not my son”.
I will not be your God – the phrase could literally be translated,
“and I AM not I AM to you” and could possibly refer to God’s famous talk with
Moses, where Moses asked what God’s name was, and God replied, “I AM that I
AM”.
Now God would be no longer “I AM” to those people.
:10- 2:1 Hope
:10 "Yet the number of the children of Israel
Shall be as the sand of the sea, Which cannot be measured or numbered. And it
shall come to pass In the place where it was said to them, 'You are not My
people,' There it shall be said to them, 'You are sons of the living God.'
:11 Then the children of Judah
and the children of Israel
Shall be gathered together, And appoint for themselves one head; And they shall
come up out of the land, For great will be the day of Jezreel!
great will be the day of Jezreel – it could be talking about how
great the day will be when God “plants” the people again in the land. I wonder if the “great will be the day of
Jezreel” could even refer to the battle of Armageddon (taking place in the
valley Jezreel), where God wins, and evil is defeated.
Lesson
God isn’t finished with me yet
Sometimes all we can think about is how we’ve failed God. It’s hard to see
past the guilt and condemnation.
But the truth is, God isn’t finished with you yet. He certainly isn’t
finished with the nation of Israel.
We have several promises that remind us that God is still working on us:
(Phil 1:6 NKJV) being confident of this very thing, that He who has
begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;
(1 Th 5:24 NKJV) He who calls you is faithful, who
also will do it.
Remember the verses about the husband and wife? The husband (Jesus) keeps
washing the wife (the church) in the water of His Word, removing the spots and
wrinkles, getting her (the church) ready to meet His Father.
Keep going. Don’t give up. God hasn’t.
Hosea 2
:1 Say to your brethren, 'My people,' And to your sisters, 'Mercy is
shown.'
This probably fits better with the verse at the end of chapter 1. The time of restoration will be a time when
God once again says to Israel,
“You are my people” and “You are loved”.
The chapter break could probably be better placed after this verse.
:2-13 Divorce
:2 "Bring charges against your mother, bring charges; For she is not
My wife, nor am I her Husband! Let her put away her harlotries from her sight,
And her adulteries from between her breasts;
It is often the case nowadays that after the kids are born, that a wife
might go back to work. Apparently Gomer
has gone back to work.
:3 Lest I strip her naked And expose her, as in the day she was born, And
make her like a wilderness, And set her like a dry land, And slay her with
thirst.
It’s possible that there is a parallel here between what Hosea will go
through with Gomer and what God does with His people. It could be that these are simply the words
of God to His people.
The words used in verse 2 are very close to the words used in a formal
declaration of divorce.
The Law of Moses allowed for divorce by saying that if a woman “finds no
favor” in the eyes of her husband, he could give her a certificate of divorce,
and the marriage was over (Deut. 24:1-4).
In Jesus’ day, there were some who interpreted Moses’ statements to mean
that even if she burnt his toast, that was reason for divorce.
(Mat 19:3-9 NKJV) The Pharisees also came to Him, testing Him,
and saying to Him, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just
any reason?" {4} And He answered and said to them, "Have you not read
that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female,' {5}
"and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be
joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? {6} "So then,
they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together,
let not man separate." {7} They said to Him, "Why then did Moses
command to give a certificate of divorce, and to put her away?" {8} He
said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, permitted
you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. {9} "And
I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and
marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced
commits adultery."
God’s original plan was for there not to be divorce. God’s original idea was that when a man and
woman became “one flesh”, that it was inseparable. But by the time of Moses, God made an
allowance because of the “hardness” of a heart.
And Jesus clarifies that when sexual immorality was involved, that this
was a justifiable reason for divorce. I
think the idea works like this – when a person has been betrayed at the level
of sexual unfaithfulness, then their heart can become so hard that it just
can’t go on in the marriage. And God
allows for this. But I think Jesus is
hinting that even this wasn’t God’s original intent. It’s just an allowance.
Does Hosea and Gomer’s marriage qualify for a divorce? It seems so.
Would God’s marriage to Israel
qualify for a divorce? It seems so.
:4 "I will not have mercy on her children, For they are the children
of harlotry.
:5 For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has
behaved shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, Who give me my
bread and my water, My wool and my linen, My oil and my drink.'
She went back to work. Just as Israel
was unfaithful to God and worshipped other gods.
:6 "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way with thorns, And wall
her in, So that she cannot find her paths.
Perhaps speaking of how God would make it difficult for Israel
to go after other gods.
:7 She will chase her lovers, But not overtake them; Yes, she will seek
them, but not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go and return to my first
husband, For then it was better for me than now.'
:8 For she did not know That I gave her grain, new wine, and oil, And
multiplied her silver and gold; Which they prepared for Baal.
God provides us with all we have.
And yet we pervert it and use it to go after other gods.
Baal – though this was the name for the chief god of the Canaanites,
the word itself means “lord”, “owner”, or even “husband”.
:9 "Therefore I will return and take away My grain in its time And My
new wine in its season, And will take back My wool and My linen, Given to cover
her nakedness.
:10 Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, And no one
shall deliver her from My hand.
:11 I will also cause all her mirth to cease, Her feast days, Her New
Moons, Her Sabbaths; All her appointed feasts.
:12 "And I will destroy her vines and her fig trees, Of which she has
said, 'These are my wages that my lovers have given me.' So I will make them a
forest, And the beasts of the field shall eat them.
:13 I will punish her For the days of the Baals to which she burned
incense. She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry, And went after her
lovers; But Me she forgot," says the LORD.
There would be a time of judgment because of Israel’s
unfaithfulness.
:14-23 Restoration
:14 "Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Will bring her into the
wilderness, And speak comfort to her.
allure – the word speaks of “enticing”. God is going to win the girl back.
I wonder if this isn’t speaking of the coming Assyrian and Babylonian
captivities (the wilderness), where God would refine the nation.
:15 I will give her her vineyards from there, And the Valley of Achor as a
door of hope; She shall sing there, As in the days of her youth, As in the day
when she came up from the land of Egypt.
:16 "And it shall be, in that day," Says the LORD, "That you
will call Me 'My Husband,' And no longer call Me 'My Master,'
My Husband – the Hebrew is “Ishi”
My Master – the Hebrew is “Baali”
In reality, the two words are pretty interchangeable. There are actually times when God Himself is
referred to as “ba-al”. But here the
obvious idea is that the people aren’t going to be confused anymore as to who
their God is. They’ll stop worshipping
the Canaanite God “Baal”.
:17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals, And they shall
be remembered by their name no more.
:18 In that day I will make a covenant for them With the beasts of the
field, With the birds of the air, And with the creeping things of the ground.
Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, To make them lie down
safely.
:19 "I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me
In righteousness and justice, In lovingkindness and mercy;
betroth – technically this refers to something similar to being
“engaged”, though in the Hebrew culture, betrothal was much more binding than
our idea of being “engaged”. In the
Hebrew mind, you didn’t break an engagement, you’d have to actually get
divorced to break a betrothal.
One commentary, (Kidner) points out that the word betroth marks ”a
new beginning, with all the freshness of first love, rather than the weary
patching up of differences“ (Love for the Loveless, p. 34).[1]
Lesson
Renewing
When Jesus wrote a letter to His bride in Ephesus,
He wrote,
(Rev 2:4-5 NKJV)
"Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your
first love. {5} "Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and
do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your
lampstand from its place; unless you repent.
There is a way back to the “first love”. It works in our relationship with the
Lord. It works in our marriages.
Remember – think about what “first love” was all
about. After all, that’s where you’re
headed, back to “first love”.
Repent – if there’s anything that’s taking you away
from your lover, get rid of it. If
there’s anything that keeps you from loving God with all your heart, get rid of
it. If there’s anything that is causing
you and your spouse to grow distant, get rid of it.
Re-do – Get back to doing the kinds of things you
used to do when you were first in love.
As a Christian that probably means doing things like reading your Bible
as much as you can, praying, singing praise songs to Jesus, and going to church
all the time. In a marriage it probably
means doing all those “little things” you stopped doing – saying nice things,
opening the door, spending as much time together as you used to do. We often think that we’d only do those things
if the feelings would come back. The
truth is that the feelings will come back if we get the actions back where they
ought to be.
Renew the “betrothal”.
:20 I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness, And you shall know the LORD.
:21 "It shall come to pass in that day That I will answer," says
the LORD; "I will answer the heavens, And they shall answer the earth.
:22 The earth shall answer With grain, With new wine, And with oil; They
shall answer Jezreel.
:23 Then I will sow her for Myself in the earth, And I will have mercy on
her who had not obtained mercy; Then I will say to those who were not My
people, 'You are My people!' And they shall say, 'You are my God!'"
All this speaks of a restoration between God and His people and the
blessings that will come from it.
In our human marriage, there is also great blessing when we renew and
strengthen our marriage.
Hosea 3
:1 Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by a
lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the LORD for the
children of Israel,
who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans."
We now get back to Hosea’s marriage.
God is telling Hosea to buy his wife back from prostitution.
:2 So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and
one-half homers of barley.
:3 And I said to her, "You shall stay with me many days; you shall not
play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so, too, will I be toward you."
:4 For the children of Israel
shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred
pillar, without ephod or teraphim.
:5 Afterward the children of Israel
shall return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They shall fear
the LORD and His goodness in the latter days.
Lesson
Marriage and Divorce
I understand that there’s great pain that many go through in a difficult
relationship. And though there are
allowances for divorce, divorce doesn’t have to be an “automatic” thing.
Hosea would have been justified in divorcing Gomer for good. But he took her back.
Divorce is not always the best solution.
Sometimes the best solution is to work through the reconciliation – like
God did.
Lesson
God’s grace
This is the wonder of God’s love toward us.
We are just like Gomer.
And yet He searches for us to “allure” us back to Him.
Why would He ever do that? Because
He loves us.