“God’s Tough Love”
Hosea 1:3-9
Steve Hanchett, pastor
Berry Road Baptist Church
January 21, 2001
So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. 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. It shall come to pass in that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.”
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. Yet I will have mercy on the house of Judah, I will save them by the Lord their God. And I will not save them by bow, nor by sword or battle, by horses or horsemen.”
Now when she had weaned Lor-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said: “Call his name Lo-Ammi, for you are not My people, and I will not be your God.”
Toward the end of the ninteenth century, Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel awoke one morning to read his own obituary in the local newspaper. It read: “Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who died yesterday, devised a way for more people to be killed in a war than ever before, and he died a very rich man.”
Actually, it was Alfred’s older brother who had died; a newspaper reporter had bungled the epitaph. But the account had a profound effect on Nobel. He decided he wanted to be known for something other than developing the means to kill people efficiently and for amassing a fortune in the process. As a result Nobel established the Nobel Prize for scientists and writers who fostered peace.
Nobel said, “every man ought to have the chance to correct his epitaph in midstream and write a new one.”
Reading Hosea is reading the obituary of a people who had not died when it was written. The prophecies of Hosea were an opportunity for repentance and in a sense the offer of a chance to correct the eulogy in midstream and write a new one.
Not many people get a chance like that. Imagine if you died today and that every person who showed up at your memorial service were compelled to tell the truth about you. Imagine what they would say. When we hear the word of God we are given an opportunity to correct the eulogy in midstream. The message of Hosea was a call to change the eulogy in midstream.
One of the great difficulties we have in communicating and understanding our relationship with God is maintaining the tension between the just wrath of God against our sin and the holy love of God that provides forgiveness and salvation from sin. One the one hand we can become so comfortable with the idea of forgiveness and grace that we lose any fear of God. On the other hand if we only see wrath and justice and are blind to love and grace we might give up in despair of ever really knowing God. When we read Hosea we find that both the wrath and judgment against sin and the love and forgiveness of God are intertwined.
This morning our text is about the judgment of God that came upon Israel because of their sin. What I want you to understand is that God’s love is not incompatible with His love. It is not either or. Some people read the Old Testament and say that it has a primitive view of God. They are convinced that the New Testament teaches us about a God of love and the Old Testament about a God of wrath. But the book of Hosea is at the top of the list when it comes to communicating to us how much God loves us.
We have already seen that the first three chapters are about Hosea’s marriage to Gomer. That marriage and the children of Hosea and Gomer became a divine drama that illustrated God’s relationship with Israel. Last week we saw how great God’s love for His people is. He loves those who have not earned His love and His love is steadfast. He does not cease loving us because of our sin. Our sin breaks the heart of God and it is a violation of the sacred and spiritual relationship that we have with Him. Sin is spiritual adultery against the husband of our soul.
Some people though have some spiritually dangerous logic and reasoning about God’s love. Some people believe that since God is love than He would never punish sin. Surely if God loves me He would never send me to Hell, nor would He ever discipline me.
This is the same logic we see in parents who won’t discipline their children because they are afraid that their children will think they don’t love them. But God, in dealing with His children, has a different idea. God says just the opposite. He says, “Whom He loves He disciplines.” So when you undergo the disciplining of God it is not because you are not loved, it is because you are loved.
Now, the children of Hosea and Gomer were named in order to continue the divine drama that was unveiled through their marriage. Children are the product of a relationship. What these children’s names picture is the fact that something has gone terribly wrong in the relationship between God and Israel. And their names represent the outcome of the failure in Israel’s relationship with God. So let’s look at what these children represent and then we will draw some general principles from this story.
Jezreel was the first born son of Hosea and Gomer. It is a name that was filled with significance and prophecy. The name itself has two meanings in Hosea and elsewhere. It literally means “God scatters.” That can be taken two ways. Its original idea was that the valley was so fertile and productive that it surely was God Himself that had scattered the seed that made such a great production of crops and tree continually in the valley.
The secondary meaning is to scatter in the sense of throwing out away from oneself. Not necessarily to plant like seed, but simply to cast away and apart. That which is scattered is not thrown in one spot but taken and cast away, not only from the one who throws, but also from each other. This is a part of the way that Hosea is using the word in chapter one. He is stating what we know eventually happened and that is that God scattered the people of Isreal throughout the world. So that, now there are Jews in New York as well as Nazareth, Minneapolis as well as Moscow.
Another idea behind the name Jezreel is alluded to in the passage. It mentions Jehu and God’s vengance upon him. This takes us back to the story of Ahab and Jezebel. Ahab was one of the most ungodly kings of Israel. In one of his most cowardly and wicked acts he allowed Jezebel his wife to have Naboth killed in order that he might have Naboth’s vineyard which was in Jezreel. Through Jezebel’s wicked plot and Ahab’s sinful acquiesence, Naboth was murdered and his land in Jezreel taken from him and his family.
As a result God pronounced doom on the reign of Ahab and declared that both Ahab and Jezebel would die horrible deaths for what they had done to Naboth. Jehu was the instrument of God to bring about God’s judgement on Ahab and Jezreel. The problem with Jehu was that he went too far. He had the seventy sons of the king beheaded and slaughtered his forty-two brothers. He then turned on the priests and the worshippers of Baal and had them killed.
What made the whole incident so awful was that it was not an act of obedience to God, nor was it holy zeal that brought this on. Jehu’s motives were not about the glory of God. The slaughter of these people was nothing less than bloodthirsty political power broking. As a result the one who was intended to become an instrument of God’s judgment on a wicked king, himself became the object of God’s wrath.
All of Jehu’s bloodshed took place in the Valley of Jezreel. After this horrible moment in the history of Israel whenever a person heard the name Jezreel they would remember the bloodshed of Jehu. Before the early 70’s if someone said Watergate a person might think of a hotel in Washington D.C. But since then the word “Watergate” is synonomuous with political corruption. So much so that every political scandal since that time has the word “gate” as a suffix. Think of all the names of places that now signify more than just a building or city: Tienemen Square, Murrah Building, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, Normandy. The names of these places will always carry a significance that goes beyond the geography and location. In the same way Jezreel never had the same meaning after Jehu slaughter that it did before that incident.
The relevance to Hosea’s preaching was because Jeroboam was a descendant of Jehu and was in the linage of Jehu’s dynasty. God had already swore that his dynasty would not last past the fourth generation after Jehu. Jeroboam was the third, his son was the fourth and he only lasted one month before he was assassinated. Hosea announced the end of the reign of Jehu’s dynasty just before it happened. And the end of Jehu was just the beginning of the end for the nation of Israel. The military might and strength of the nation would be broken in the Valley of Jezreel. Hosea’s son became a walking prophecy of that message.
The next child, Lo-Ruhamah was an indication that the people were no longer going to experience the tender-mercies of God. The name comes from the root word which was used to describe the womb of a mother. As a result of that primary meaning it came to mean the tender love of a mother.
What exactly was the judgment that was pronounced here? The judgment was that God was going to give them exactly what they wanted - to live independently of Him. Year after year the people of Israel had proclaimed by their actions and attitudes that they really did not want God interfering in their affairs. They looked to the idols of baal for their physical needs to be met. They had all but abandoned the law of God’s Word. They had not been worshipping God for a long time.
God was giving them what they had been asking for. When we look at our own spiritual state we need to realize that where we are is usually exactly what we have been asking for. (Read Romans 1:21-32) “God gave them over” are the sad words to describe the nature of God’s wrath. So it is here. God was giving them over.
The next child, a son, was named Lo-Ammi. His name meant “Not My people.” It as if God was saying he was disowning the people of Israel. If they did not want Him, then He would leave them to themselves.
This was a convenant idea. It is covenant vocabulary turned into a formula for divorce. The word for God is the same word given to Moses at the burning bush. Literally God was saying, “I am not your I AM.” Notice also that when you get to the third child God is speaking directly to the people. This indicates how serious thing had gotten.
So what are some of the prinicples we can learn from this passage.
1. The love of God and the judgment of God are not incompatible. When we persist in our sin God’s love can be very tough. We should not presume that we can continue in our sin without consequence.
2. There is always the danger that we will get to the point where we no longer hear the voice of the Spirit. We can resist so long that we no longer desirre to respond to what God has called us to be and do.
3. God may remove His presence from our lives if we chose to persist in our sin. When in this passage God says they are not His people and He will not show mercy to them any longer, we have to ask if God is contradicting Himself. The Bible says God’s mercies are everlasting. And He promised Abraham that the Jewish people would always be His people. So we must ask how God can change that at this point? The point is that God was going to remove His visible presence, and as far as the experience of the people was concerned it was going to be as if they were not His people. But in the counsels of God they would always be His people. And even in when they were scattered throughout the world, God was still going to watch over them. They just wouldn’t see it that way. The book of Esther is a good illustration of this priniciple.
4. We must live our lives in obedience, faith, and love toward God or we will suffer the same fate - we will get exactly what we ask for.
