The Faithfulness of God
The Book of Hosea
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU5rkpSe22Y
Today we’ll be looking at the faithfulness of God. And to do so we’ll be looking at the Old Testament book of Hosea. But before we turn there, would you please turn in your Bibles to 2 Kings 17.
If there is one verse within the Bible that I would say sums up the book of Hosea, it is what the Apostle Paul says to Timothy in his second letter to him.
“If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13 NKJV)
And as we proceed in our study, we’ll see why this verse is so apropos.
Hosea was the prophet to the Northern tribes or kingdom of Israel, prior to their captivity to the Assyrians. Often, we’ll hear of Hosea being the 11th hour prophet.
Hosea began his prophetic ministry when Jeroboam II reigned as king. It was considered a profitable time and was known as the golden age of prosperity. Unfortunately, this didn’t include their spiritual life, because Israel did not repent of its sins, its immorality, nor its idolatry. It was in this setting that Hosea wrote this prophecy.
After Jeroboam II’s death, the Northern kingdom went into a very steep downhill slide, where four of the last six kings were assassinated, and one was taken into captivity. And because of their continual sin and overall spirit of unrepentance, God would then remove them from the land as He foretold in His law.
The Lord said, “But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you.” (Deuteronomy 28:15 NKJV)
Then the Lord lists out a pretty lengthy list of what this would look like, and in verse 64 we are told of the one that would now apply to the Northern kingdom.
“Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve other gods, which neither you nor your fathers have known--wood and stone.” (Deuteronomy 28:64 NKJV)
And this is exactly what happened.
“So they left all the commandments of the Lord their God, made for themselves a molded image and two calves, made a wooden image and worshiped all the host of heaven, and served Baal. And they caused their sons and daughters to pass through the fire, practiced witchcraft and soothsaying, and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, to provoke Him to anger. Therefore the Lord was very angry with Israel, and removed them from His sight; there was none left but the tribe of Judah alone.” (1 Kings 17:16-18 NKJV)
“For the children of Israel walked in all the sins of Jeroboam which he did; they did not depart from them, until the Lord removed Israel out of His sight, as He had said by all His servants the prophets. So Israel was carried away from their own land to Assyria, as it is to this day.” (1 Kings 17:22-23 NKJV)
And so, God sent Hosea to Israel to let them know of their condition before He exacted justice so they couldn’t say, “We didn’t know.”
Now, God used the prophet Hosea in a very unusual way. He didn’t just preach God’s message, he literally lived it out in front of them. And the message was both shocking and horrifying.
It began with God telling Hosea to get married. (Now, this is not the horrifying part.) It was shocking because God told him to marry a harlot by the name of Gomer. And what we see is that she was unfaithful to the marriage vows because the children born from their union weren’t his, but rather they were the children of her lovers.
You see, the purpose of Hosea’s marriage to Gomer was an object lesson about the people’s relationship with God, that is, their unfaithfulness as God’s wife.
We are told throughout the Bible how God was Israel’s husband, like in Isaiah 54:5.
“For your Maker is your husband, the Lord of hosts is His name; and your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel; He is called the God of the whole earth.” (Isaiah 54:5 NKJV)
Now, while many are tempted to say this refers to the nation of Israel, and doesn’t apply to us today, let me say that just as Israel was betrothed and married to the Father, the church is betrothed and married to Jesus Christ. Paul relates this best in his second letter to the Corinthians.
“For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:2 NKJV)
So, we would do well to pay attention to what the Lord may be saying to us as well.
What Hosea was called upon to do is to remain faithful to Gomer, even if she was unfaithful to Him. And what the Lord was showing is that He would remain faithful to His people even if they were unfaithful to Him through committing spiritual adultery.
And so, from what we see from this book and Hosea’s marriage to Gomer, and what is a reoccurring theme throughout it, and that is, God’s Unbroken Love from a Broken Heart.
In other words, God will not give up on His people regardless of their unfaithfulness. Take a moment and linger upon that statement. Let it be like that familiar song that you can’t get out of your mind. And that is, God chose us even when we have rejected Him. That there is no depth that we can sink that God will not seek to bring us back.
Unfortunately, this was the last thing the people wanted. And so, God let them know the outcome of their decision through the names He give to these three children. This is seen in Hosea 1:1-9.
The first name, “Jezreel,” has to do with a valley that carries this name. It was a valley associated with great bloodshed under the rule of king Ahab, and queen Jezebel, who for a time ruled over the Northern kingdom.
Now, I’m not going to elaborate on what happened to both of them in the valley, just in case any of you want to go have lunch afterwards. And so, Jezreel was synonymous with one of the bloodiest times in Israel’s history, and it was a name associated with violence, murder, and bloodshed.
And it was in this valley that the king of Assyria, in 733 B.C., swept through and defeated the Northern kingdom of Israel and took them into captivity.
The second name was “Lo-Ruhamah,” which means, “not pitied,” or “not loved.”
It was through this name that the Lord was going to give Israel what she always wanted. In other words, through their actions, what they were conveying to God was that they no longer wanted His love or mercy, and so God called them by the name that expressed this desire.
Basically, what He was saying is, “If you’re going to act like you don’t want My love, then that’s exactly what you’ll get, no love.”
And I’m kind of getting that same sense today where by our actions, we’re telling God that we don’t want or need His love either. If we say we love Him, then why do we spend so little time with Him?
Yet the people were still not repentant, even seeing that the kingdom was going to end, and that God would show no mercy. And so, God pronounces His final judgement on the people in the third and last child’s name, “Lo-Ammi,” which means, “not my people.”
What I find disturbing in this whole scenario is of how closely it describes the spiritual condition of our own day. What we see are churches abandoning the teachings and basic tenants of the Bible and are following the dictates of our society and culture by proclaiming what the Bible calls evil or sin as being okay, while at the same time saying that what God declares as good as found in the Bible as being wrong or evil.
What I see is that we are grieving God by resisting His love and grace by choosing for ourselves the way we want to live.
But going back to the central theme of Hosea, that is, God’s Unbroken Love from a Broken Heart, we also see the faithfulness of God revealed, or God’s Restoration and New Life.
Look at what the Lord says right after he pronounced his judgment and again, we see this through these three names.
“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.' 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!” (Hosea 1:10-11 NKJV)
But this brings us to an interesting question in God placing the plans for His restoration after He pronounces His judgment. And the reason is that it is only when we hear the horrifying judgment of God that our hearts will be prepared and receptive for the good news of His restoration.
For us today, God’s pronounced judgment is that all have sinned and have fallen short of God’s holy and righteous standards for life, and that the wages of our sin is death and complete separation from God for all eternity with hell as our eventual outcome. But the good news is that God wants to restore us and bring us into a loving personal relationship through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Now, for Israel, the restoration that God is referring to here is its final restoration at the end of days. And this is seen in what God says, that great will be the day of Jezreel. You see, the valley of Jezreel is the eastern half of a much larger valley known as the Valley of Megiddo, where the greatest battle will be fought of all times, and the bloodiest, known as Armageddon, where the forces of the Antichrist will be defeated by the return of Jesus Christ, and the slaughter will be so great that it says that the blood will come up to a horse’s bridle.
And this restoration will not only be for the Jewish people, but for everyone who calls upon Jesus as their Messiah, which is seen in Paul’s writing to the church in Rome.
“As He says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people; and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one,” and, “In the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘children of the living God.’” (Romans 9:25-26 NIV)
Now, if I could, what I find so neat about this restoration, that God is bringing about, is how God uses the names of His judgment against them, that is, the names of the three children, now as the focal point of His restoration.
We saw the first in how Jezreel will be the place of their final restoration, but also how Lo-Ruhamah, those that God would show no love in His judgment would now be called those that God loves, and Lo-Ammi, or those who in God’s judgment would no longer be called His people, are now referred to His children and His people.
And so, we’re not even out of chapter one and we see the great faithfulness of God, even in the light of Israel’s unfaithfulness. Now, in chapter two God’s emphasis is upon what Israel’s unfaithfulness looked like.
Today there is a theological term for this it’s called, Syncretism – An attempt to unite as one two opposing principles.
When God gave to Israel the Promised Land, the told them not to adopt the ways of the gods of the people that were in the land. And the reason was to prevent them from committing spiritual adultery by following these false gods.
Now the main god of the Canaanites was Baal. And what happened is the very thing God warned them against. They began to worship Baal, probably thinking what harm was there, and why not cover all their bases. And so, the worship of Baal became firmly entrenched.
We see an example of this earlier on when Elijah called out the prophets of Baal during the reign of King Ahab and Jezebel to a duel for the hearts of God’s people.
In this challenge, Elijah said to the people, “How long will you falter between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.” (1 Kings 18:21 NKJV)
But so entrenched was the people’s worship of Baal that even after this great victory and the people’s recognition twice saying, “The Lord, He is God,” they continued their worship of Baal. In fact, it became so bad that the names of both the Lord God and Baal became intertwined.
This is seen here in Hosea 2:16.
“‘And it shall be, in that day,’ says the Lord, ‘That you will call Me 'My Husband,’ and no longer call Me ‘My Master,’” (Hosea 2:16 NKJV)
This is a remarkable insight, but it is hidden in the translation. For you see, the Hebrew word for “master,” or “lord,” is the same word and name for Baal. In other words, they were worshipping Baal, thinking that they were worshipping God. That is how bad it had gotten.
And we’re seeing this Syncretism happening within our culture and within God’s people, where we are setting all these other things up in our lives and making them equal with God. How will we know? Well, if we’re spending more time with these other things than we are spending with God and with His people, along with His word, then these are our Baals, or masters.
Now, even after Gomer’s defection, which parallels Israel’s and our defections, we see God’s faithfulness exhibited in God’s instructions to Hosea.
The Lord told to Hosea, “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.” (Hosea 3:1 NLT)
Now, the rest of the book details this message of the Faithfulness of God that we’ve just looked at and studied.
But if I could, I’d like to give an outline of how we can experience God’s faithfulness even when we have been unfaithful. And we find this outline in Hosea 14:1-4.
Accept Responsibility for Departing
“O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.” (Hosea 14:1 NKJV)
The reason why many of us stumble in our walk with God is because we wander away from our relationship with Him, and from His word, hence our departure and need to return.
And so, accepting this responsibility comes from confession and repentance. It is an acknowledgment of our departure and our sins, and then a turning away from them and a returning to the will and ways of God.
Make an Honest Confession
“Take words with you, and return to the Lord. Say to Him, ‘Take away all iniquity; receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips.’” (Hosea 14:2 NKJV)
What an interesting take on confession, how we come to God with our words, where they become a sacrifice as we ask God to take away what has drawn us away. In other words, what was it that started us to drift away from God? What was it that tempted us to depart?
We are to come openly and honestly before God and tell Him, because the truth is, He already knows, He just wants us to acknowledge them so that we can turn from them.
Place Total Trust in God
“Assyria shall not save us, we will not ride on horses, nor will we say anymore to the work of our hands, ‘You are our gods.’ For in You the fatherless finds mercy.” (Hosea 14:3 NKJV)
We have to stop trusting in everything and everyone else to get through this life and start trusting wholly and completely in God Himself.
We have to stop our own form of syncretism. We need to stop trying to unite man’s principles with God’s. We need to truly make Jesus Christ our Lord, and not just a scapegoat to be used when we get into trouble.
And what the Lord shows us and tells us that when we do these, then God’s healing of our waywardness and faithlessness will take place.
“Then I will heal you of your faithlessness; my love will know no bounds, for my anger will be gone forever.” (Hosea 14:4 NLT)
Now, in all honestly who of us would not want this?
Conclusion
And so, we can trust in the faithfulness of God to see us through, even in times of difficulty and trials, even through those times when our sins cause God’s judgment to be pronounced and poured out, but even so, we can be confident in His faithfulness, confident in God’s grace, mercy, and love and that these will rule and win out in the end.
And so, even though we are in so many ways faithless, God is in many more ways, faithful.
