Grace Bible Church
Tree of Life
A Weekly Review
Week ending 110412
A look at the deceitfulness of faithlessness. Hosea. Part 3.
We continue our study of Rom 9-beginning with ROM 9:22-26, What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so in order that He might make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles. As He says also in Hosea, “I will call those who were not My people, ‘My people,’ And her who was not beloved, ‘beloved.’” “And it shall be that in the place where it was said to them, ‘you are not My people,’ There they shall be called sons of the living God.’”
Hosea is the story of the Great Reversal of the Great I-Am. I AM is the name God gave to Himself - “I am who I Am was given to Moses at the burning bush.” The name, in the Hebrew, is translated YahWeh, which, in modern English is translated as Jehovah. However, the name Jehovah is never used in the Bible (unless you are a member of the sect known as Jehovah’s Witnesses). Instead, the Jews believed God’s name so sacred they refused to print it, using the word Adonai instead (the Lord).
On one occasion in the New Testament Jesus called Himself “I am” much to the shock of the Jewish authorities where Jesus claimed to be God.
For example, Jesus said, “I AM the Bread of Life” JOH 6:35,41,48,51.
“I AM the Door” - JOH 10:7, 9.
“I AM the Good Shepherd” - JOH 10:11, 14
“I AM the Way the Truth and The Life” - JOH 14:6.
“I AM the Light of the world” - JOH 8:12; 9:5; 12:46; LUK 2:32.
“I AM the True Vine” - JOH 15:1,5
“I AM the Resurrection and the Life” - JOH 11:25.
“I AM the First and the Last” - REV 1:17; 2:8; 22:13.
No other messenger gives us so complete an outline of the ways of God with His people as does Hosea. It was the best of times and the worst of times...” They thought it was the “best of times,” but God’s perspective was just the opposite-it was the worse of time and that’s why He sent Hosea to correct their interpretation of the truth.
Israel was to maintain loyalty to the Lord by worshiping Him and obeying His doctrines. So Hosea emphasized idolatry, and compared Israel’s relationship as spiritual adultery, using his own marriage to an unfaithful woman as an illustration.
JAM 4:4, You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
We will see how Hosea’s own reconciliation and forgiveness toward his faithless wife illustrates Israel’s ultimate restoration with God. The major themes of Hosea’s message are the sins of faithlessness and spiritual adultery as well as the lack of the promises made by Gomer, Hosea’s faithless wife, although he was still madly in love with her.
Let’s begin our study with an introduction:
HOS 1:1-4, The word of the Lord which came to Hosea the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, {and} Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and {have} children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.” So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, “Name him Jezreel; for yet a little while, and I will punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.”
“Call his name Jezreel”-God will sow. Just as there are natural laws, so there are spiritual laws, which cannot be broken. Jezreel is specifically stated to be the child of Hosea Gomer bore him a son, (HOS 1:3), this is not said of the next two children.
HOS 1:5-8, “And it will come about on that day, that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” Then she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Name her Lo-ru-hamah, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel, that I should ever forgive them. But I will have compassion on the house of Judah and deliver them by the Lord their God, and will not deliver them by bow, sword, battle, horses, or horsemen.” When she had weaned Lo-ru-ha-mah, she conceived and gave birth to a son.
Call her name Lo-Ruhamah (which means no mercy). The Northern Kingdom will receive no mercy in the coming judgment. The reason for this, as shown through the book, is that they rejected the Word of God.
HOS 4:1-9, Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, For the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, Because there is no faithfulness or kindness Or knowledge of God in the land. {There is} swearing, deception, murder, stealing, and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, And everyone who lives in it languishes Along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky; And also the fish of the sea disappear. Yet let no one find fault, and let none offer reproof; For your people are like those who contend with the priest. So you will stumble by day, And the prophet also will stumble with you by night; And I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. For the Lord brings a charge against the inhabitants of the land: And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi, for you are not My people and I am not your God.”
Lo-ammi = “not my people” symbolic name given by the prophet Hosea to his second son by Gomer.
HOS 1:10, Yet the number of the sons of Israel Will be like the sand of the sea, Which cannot be measured or numbered; And it will come about that, in the place Where it is said to them, “You are not My people,” It will be said to them, “{You are} the sons of the living God.”
One of the main problems that Hosea's wife whose name was Gomer had with Hosea was that her faithlessness toward him led her to a lack of respect as noted in EPH 5:33. Hosea’s own reconciliation also illustrates Israel’s ultimate restoration. Gomer actually turned on him, stole from him, lied about him, and then entered into self-denial, self-justification self-absorption. This is why the woman is to have respect and honor for her right man not because he deserves it but for the Lord.
Many individuals go to the cosmic system to offer their affections and their emotions to the cosmic system and end up being led astray. Remember our emotions can lead us astray and betray us. Our thinking can deceive us! Love may enflame the mind, then die down. Love, as a feeling, is never constant which is why respect is a necessity. A soul rapport is based on thinking which develops a love that goes far beyond feeling. When Adam and the woman fell in the garden you will note that they still had their right-man-right-woman relationship. And although she went to the serpent for help, she didn’t stay with the serpent; she went back to her man, Adam.
Hosea is going to illustrate this to us. He is going to forgive Gomer experientially. She will become an illustration of the grace of God accepting her even though she was unfaithful to her right man. Though the parameters changed, their relationship remained intact. Forgiveness became the order of the day. Forgiveness means to give up resentment, excuse a guilty party, to release from payment, to forget an offense never bringing it up again not even to discuss it. This means that if someone asks for your forgiveness, and you forgive them, then integrity and loyalty to doctrine demands that you forget whatever was done against you.
It also means that you never again recall what the individual has done to you or penalize the individual for doing so. However, remember the principle: arrogance has no ability to forgive. And if you desire to know how many times you should forgive someone, LUK 17:4 says, “If someone sins against you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times, saying, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
The ultimate expression of forgiveness was the Cross of Christ. The greatest illustration of forgiveness is the Cross itself, where all the personal sins of the human race were imputed to our Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father judged every one of those sins in Christ. This was why our Lord screamed out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
By His work on the Cross, the Lord Jesus Christ opened up the way for God the Father to forgive us!
EPH 1:7, In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace,
And the principle is the fact that your sins have been paid for so I must respect the "payment" i.e. the blood or the saving work of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Therefore, ultimately when people sin, they sin against God. This is why David said in PSA 51:4, after he sinned with Bathshiba and Uriah, “Against Thee, Thee only I have sinned, and done what is evil in Thy sight,”
So, we do not have the right to remain angry or bitter toward someone who has legitimately wronged us or hurt us because Christ paid for that sin and they really have sinned against God even though it may have been directed toward us! And this is why not forgiving others is actually to sin against God.
The pattern for such pardon and forgiveness is found in ISA 43:25, “I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for My own sake [because of My honor and integrity]. Furthermore, I will not remember your sin.”
This pattern of forgiveness is applied to the believer as part of the Royal family honor code,
COL 3:13, Bearing with one another and forgiving each other. Whoever has a complaint against anyone else, just as the Lord forgave you, so also you should forgive others.
EPH 4:32, Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ has also forgiven you.
This command is for the believer who has attained spiritual self-esteem, spiritual autonomy, and spiritual maturity. This describes the winner. He is tender-hearted and forgives others on the basis of the fact that God has forgiven him.
MAR 11:25, “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your transgressions.”
COL 2:13, And when you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions,
1JO 2:12, I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven you for His name’s sake.
Notice that it is for His name sake that our sins have been forgiven. It is the word used in MAR 2:10, where our Lord said, “The Son of man has power to forgive sins.”
So it means to remove guilt, release from penalty and give righteousness. And in EPH 1:7, we are told that this all comes from grace, “we have forgiveness according to the riches of His grace” (we don't deserve it or earn it).
This type of forgiveness was prophesied in the O.T. in JER 31:34, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
It is also noted in Heb 10.
HEB 10:14-17, For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws upon their heart, and upon their mind I will write them,” He then says, “and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” Now where there is forgiveness of these things, there is no longer any offering for sin.