notes here with you that might help as we look together at this passage. I am told that not that I have personal experience with catching monkeys but those who do such things have said that one of the ways that you can trap a monkey is not by some elaborate trap but rather putting some bananas in a bottle with kind of a narrow neck and if the neck of the bottle is big enough for the monkey to stick his hand into by itself but not big enough to allow the monkey to pull the banana out then you've got the perfect bottle you put that bottle with some bananas in it out where the monkeys are and tie the bottle to a tree or a big rock or something so that the monkey can't take the bottle with them and what they have noticed is that the monkey will come along see the banana in the bottle like any monkey would be expected to stick his hand into the bottle to get them said banana and try to get the banana out but when they can't get the bottle or the banana out that's in their grasp they will just fight furiously trying more and more to get it out making such a raucous that of course the monkey catcher hears and comes with his neck and as the monkey catcher comes closer the monkey just gets more frantic trying to get the banana out of the bottle but will not let go of the banana so that they're able to scoop the monkey up and put it in a cage. Man monkeys are stupid but this passage of God's word says we're a lot like that monkey that willfulness that that desire to have what I want not just a banana but this lifestyle this pattern in my life this thing at work this thing in my neighborhood or my family whatever it is we tend to grab a hold of those things and be unwilling even as the catcher comes to let go we're in the midst of this series on the book of Hosea and as we've seen in Hosea it has these kind of three main parts to the whole of the book the first three chapters is giving the illustration to drive home just how much like the monkey we are and God uses the example of of having his prophet Hosea now Hosea is just the Hebrew form of Joe okay so you can just call him Joe he calls Joe and says Joe take a wife of harlotry go marry a prostitute so that I can show what my love relationship is like with the people of Israel and God unpacks that that illustration and shows exactly how bad off we are and then the second section of the book is the divorce court that is God saying you are precisely like gomer the prostitute in your relationship with me and so I'm going to divorce you as my as my wife but he doesn't leave us there all of that is to show the ultimate purpose of restoration and that third section of the book that we're in now that picks up at the back end of chapter 9 going through 14 is this section of kind of reflection of God having this walk down memory lane if you will of thinking about his relationship with his people remembering all of the ways in which they have been unfaithful and disobedient but in all of those reflections considering also how he is going to save them and last week and this week he makes a point of diving under the surface of showing the roots of the problem and he does this to show not just how how we got so bad off but also to demonstrate to show how it is he is going to heal his people how it is he is going to take us from these unfaithful this being an unfaithful bride to being a holy and spotless bride before him in this section in chapter 11 we see these three things work out that we're going to discuss first of all God's fifth-necked people the heart of the problem but then we're also going to look at the second area of God's faithfulness how patient he is in his loving kindness towards his people and then third the strength of his will that his will is stronger than our own okay so that's where we're going first of all let's look at this whole idea of our being fifth-necked or willful I've entitled this section wooing the will willful that that's what God is all about in terms of changing us in wooing us courting us we've had this this passage of talking about how he has divorced his people from himself but he doesn't leave us there he who's us back he is going to be reunited with his people in this covenant relationship and so we we see God's people as being fifth-necked or stubborn or willful I don't know if you've ever had this experience but I have this all the time in reading through the Old Testament you know you might have said okay this year I'm gonna read through the whole Bible and you've gotten you know some one year thing that helps you go through that or you may have even gone to the extreme of going to the Christian bookstore and getting you know they have the the Bibles that are divided up for you you know which is helpful for me because I always lose the little sheet of paper that tells me what I'm supposed to be reading on this on this good day so they've got these Bibles that you can just look you know okay what's today's date and and then read that that pass it one of the things that that you find as you go through the Hebrew scriptures is this recurring theme a stupid monkey that as you go through the Old Testament reading going how dumb can you be they did it again and again and oh look today's passage what they're doing it again and it's easy for me at least to read that and say man I'm so glad that that I'm not there trapped with that group of bombs doing such stupid things over and over again and then I close my Bible and and go into the rest of my life where the kids are screaming again where all kinds of things in my life are not the way that I would like them to be and being a control freak like I am that bothers me and so even though I have said again and again you know I'm just not gonna let that bother me I'm gonna respond lovingly to these beautiful children that God has blessed me with when they screech for the umpteenth time for the thing that I told them they can't have no I'm gonna be you know this is Father's Day I'm going to be loving and patient with that and what happened I get angry I respond not graciously but simply again and again and again see God is showing us that this root problem that we've got going on in our life is not the behavior it's not the explosion of anger it's not the the ways in which we demonstrate our simpleness no the problem is that we've got wicked heart that we do not love as we ought to love that we are willful that we want what we want when we want it and one of the difficulties in church is to dress that up with all kinds of niceties and find acceptable ways to be simple right so well in this particular congregation these three big well you don't do those or people get upset with you real quick but you know as you're talking over coffee well of course you're gonna gossip because nobody has any you know that's that's one of the okay one oh well you you know you're struggling with adultery well what a horrible person you are well yeah I lied on my taxes but I mean like the government needs that much you see we rationalize we have our own sinful hearts that we don't want to look at we want to spend our time looking at other sinful things that we don't really struggle with and God says no the heart the root problem is our willfulness it's our stubbornness however that gets expressed it's not just our doing wrong thing but it's our proclivity to rebel looking verse five he's talking about again he's reminiscing about his relationship with his people says will they not return to Egypt and will not a serial rule over them because why what's the reason for God's judgment falling upon them they refuse to repent later on in verse seven he says my people what characterizes my people my bride this this one that I am moving to myself that I am loving and caring for in all these ways says they're determined to turn from me it's our rebellion it is our hardness of heart it's our willfulness that at every opportunity we look for ways to get what we want instead of what God is commanded this other rebellion is the root of our problem and it points us to God's response that second area of God's patience his loving kindness you so see unlike me as a father God is incredibly patient the the judgment that God is is calling out to through Hosea to say this is the judgment that I'm bringing upon you is not after God's people had blown it a couple of times or even a hundred times or even a thousand times this is after God has called his people back to covenant faithfulness time after time generation after generation and they continue to refuse to repent we see in this God's tenderness God's patience in the way that he moves us to himself in the way that he puts up with all of our the stubbornness the literary form if you look at chapter 11 and and compare it with other passages in scripture the the literary form that he uses is calling back to Deuteronomy it's it is the the plea of a parent whose child is being brought on charges of rebellion and sometimes this is hard for us to get a handle on because it where we're so removed from the culture that this was going on in you see in in the Pentateuch the the first five books of the Bible God outlines how do people are to live and one of the things that he holds up is incredibly important is a child's respect for his parent so much so that he puts it into the ten commandments the summary of of all of God's law says your honor your father and mother and this wasn't just you know it's on the ten commandments okay we hang it up well do we hang it up in the courtroom or not do we hang it you know where do we that's not the point the point is this is God's law this is God saying how we are to direct our life that were to honor our father and mother and it's it's the the the commandment that has a promise with it if you do this I will bless you I will give you long life in the land but it's also such an important command not only is blessing attached with it for obedience but the law goes on further to explain that if children were disobedient if they were to grow up and hit their teen years and decide whatever and to go their own way that was so important to be shown as not obedient to God not just the parents but to God that a that a rebellious child was to be brought out into the middle of the town square and stoned to death but we'll wait a minute you know we're getting trouble if we spank our kid at shots you know what you know what's going on it's not the outward expression what God is getting at is the heart that is deceitful that we saw last week but also the heart that is willful the heart that is in rebellion against God the reason that the law prescribes such a horrendous penalty for a rebellious child is because it's not just an against the parent that it is treason against the king and yet God here uses that same language that a parent whose child is being dragged to the to the middle of the city town sorry city square would use the same legal language of that parent rushing before the town elders to say wait wait I know that they rebel but allow him that we will teach him our way it's a plea it is God saying you are my child and while my holiness demand punishment and wrath for your disobedience your willfulness yet how can I give you up I have set my love upon you you are my child and I will have you and I will redeem you the impending judgment is always sent in the context of this redemption this winning back this wooing back look here as he talks about these cities in verses in verse 8 how can I treat you like Adma how can I treat you like Zebulin we have trouble even pronouncing those what what what what are those cities what do they have to do with remember how all throughout Hosea God refers back to give you the the Benjamin city that he poured out his wrath on not like Sodom and Gomorrah just like even though their sin was the same the outward actions were the same in both Sodom and Gomorrah and give you and yet God treated give you differently why he treated give you differently because give you was a city of the covenant it was filled with people like Seth who have received the sign and seal of God's promises so even though he brought up brought about great destruction he scattered them he he had horrible things happen there he didn't utterly destroy them he didn't rain down fire and and lightning upon them and wipe everybody out no he disciplined them so that he could woo them back this points us to the third area that is in all of our willfulness in all of our rebellion against God and all of our sinning against him that monkey who holds on tenaciously to the banana we find in God one whose will is stronger than our own we find in God not just someone who comes and spanks us for our willfulness but one who comes to change our will we find in God not just someone who shows us that the terrible condition of our heart but one who comes with a heart transplant to give us a new heart his will is stronger than our own look in verse one as he mentions his relationship with Israel he's using this as an illustration as an example of his relationship with him he says when Israel was a child I loved him and out of Egypt I called my son remember he had sent his people down into Egypt with Joseph he blessed them there but then through the generations they get brought into slavery and then he brings them up out of Egypt out of Egypt I called my son but then the new testament picks up on them and points to Christ Jesus who was born in the promised land in the city of David please for his life his parents take him where to Egypt so that he's not killed with the infants and that's why and then Jesus comes up out of Egypt back into the promised land you see Jesus comes not just to sprinkle you with with a little blessing not just to kind of to clean you up a little bit and say they're there you're all better now but Jesus comes to fulfill everything that Israel was supposed to do he keeps the law entirely as the people came out of Egypt and were supposed to go into the promised land in obedience and faithfulness and yet stumbled again and again in disobedience Jesus is brought up out of Egypt in faithfulness in obeying all of the commands and doing everything that we are called to do for all of our intentional rebellion you see his redemption is more deliberate it's more persistent it's more effectual he changes our heart he changes our will so that we might obey him and look in verse 11 he says that he will roar and they will come trembling like words from Egypt like does from Assyria he says I will settle them in their homes now so the Israelites that Hosea was proclaiming this too they were dragged off into slavery and then they were brought back into the land but I believe it's not that restoration that that God is ultimately pointing to but rather Jesus comes and again fulfills everything that Israel was supposed to do and he dies in our place and he rises again from the grave victorious over death itself and then what does he do he ascends to the father he goes up into heaven why he says I go to prepare a place for you mansions home so that when he comes again he will gather us to himself and settle us into our home where we won't battle anymore where we will be hid and rain over all of creation together with him let's pray Lord Christ we do praise you and thank you that your will is stronger than ours that you don't just point out the the root of the problem but you come to solve it we do praise you and worship you in Christ name amen