We are starting a series in the summer of all the preachers that will be preaching and you'll hear from most of our pastors this summer a series on the minor prophets. Now they're not minor. They're not called a minor because they're unimportant. They're called minor simply because they're shorter books than the longer prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and so forth. You know that. And also what's kind of interesting is all 12 of them. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Michael, Bidad, Zephaniah, all of them were on one scroll in the ancient Hebrew synagogue. All 12 of them were able to go on one scroll because all 12 were about the length of half of Isaiah. And it was called the Book of the Twelve. And we're going to do Hosea, Joel, and Amos this particular summer. So we're starting four weeks now in Hosea. So let us begin. Hosea, chapter 1, listen to the story. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Mary and the days of Hosea, Joseph, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the second, 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 a children of harlotry. For the land have committed great harlotry by forsaking the Lord. So Hosea went and took Gomer, the daughter of Bebleim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to Hosea, call his name Jezreel. For in just a little while, I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel. And I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day, I will break the bowl of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. Gomer conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to Hosea, call her name No Mercy. For I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. When Gomer had weaned No Mercy or in the Hebrew Low Ruhama, that's literally her name, Low Ruhama, which she had weaned her, Gomer conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, call his name Low Ami, not my people. For you are not my people and I am not your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel should be like the sand of the sea which cannot be measured or numbered. And in that place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them children of the living God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together and they shall appoint for themselves one head and they shall go up from the land. For great shall be the day of Jezreel, the Word of the Lord. I said pay attention to the story because the story is really the great thrust of the book of Hosea. Hosea of the Prophet was one of those eighth century prophets that is he prophesied in the 700s BC, 700 plus years before Christ. He will recognize the immediately therein the first verse that the kings of Judah are named and the kings of Israel. You know at this point the kingdom is divided between Israel and Judah. Judah and the south had four kings during this period of time. These are the same four kings you'll find that are listed in chapter 1, verse 1 of Isaiah. In other words, Hosea and Isaiah were contemporaneous prophets, one prophesying in Jerusalem to the southern kingdom that is Isaiah. And then Hosea prophesying in the northern kingdom to Samaria to Jeroboam the second, the king who had a powerful, prosperous, incredibly magnificent reign in the northern kingdom during this period of time. There were a couple of other prophets that were prophesying along about this time. There was another prophet in the north alongside Hosea and that was Amos and we'll be looking at Amos a little later in the summer. Then there was another prophet in the southern kingdom that was prophesying at this same time along with Isaiah and that was Micah. You got it all straight? Oh, this is the simple part. Wait till we get into the history of what the Lord is talking about here. But the story, we want to know the story. The story is real simple and the story is stark and vivid resting and just a little risqué. The story is this. Hosea married in his youth a wife. Her name is Gomer. No doubt a very beautiful and wonderful woman in many ways. Hosea took to himself this wife and he bestowed upon her the love and the devotion and the faithfulness and the everything that he could possibly give to the wife of his youth. And in the early years of their marriage, they had three children, first a boy, then a girl, then another boy. And probably within the four, five, six years of their marriage, they had these three children. But it's interesting that God was the one that assigned to their names and each name that God assigned to this little boy, then this little girl, then this little baby boy again was extremely significant in terms of what was going to be the message of Hosea's ministry and life. Sometime goes by, we don't know how much, but Gomer began to become unfaithful. She was unfaithful to Hosea. In fact, it's the worst kind of unfaithfulness because she began to worship the idols that were so prominent there in the northern kingdom. King Jeroboam I remember who had started the kingdom as he had an insurrection against Solomon's son, Ria Bohem. And it set up the great northern kingdom which comprised the greater part of Israel and certainly most of Israel's wealth and ten of the twelve tribes were the northern kingdom and King Jeroboam I had set up holy places in Dan and Bethel and other places so that they would not go down to Jerusalem in the south to worship but would stay in the north and would have their royalties there in the north. And these were places of idolatry. Idolatry and apostasy is what this book is all about. Idolatry and apostasy. Idolatry is the worship of a false god in a true manner. Often in the Old Testament you'll find the worship of the false gods was the same as the worship of the true god. There was singing and praises they had sacrifices. There was no distinction in the ritual but the god was false. So it was true worship of a false god. The god was not the true god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, the living god, the god high and lifted up but it was a god of their own making. It was the fertility gods of the bull and the calf. It was the the star gods, the gods of the heaven, the asterole. It was the trees and the totems and all that comprise. That ancient, incredibly godless and sensual and sorcery that was part of Canaanite religion. There is another way to do it wrong and that is to worship the true god in a false way. To worship the true god in a false way, to set up idols and to set up various symbols that are not true to his nature, that somehow limit or combine the worship of Jehovah god, the true god with the other gods. And that was apostasy. That was called turning away from god. Unfaithfulness to god. You haven't detected already in your study of scriptures. You'll notice the key terms in the Bible is faith and faithfulness. Faithfulness is what god is toward his people. Faithfulness is what god's people have toward god. Faithfulness, unfaithfulness is that turning away, that backsliding, that apostasy, that moving away from, that rejecting god. And both idolatry and apostasy are part of the story of Hosea. Gomer turns from the faithful loving husband and family she has to another man. And it gets to be extremely, extremely bad. For one thing she begins to attribute all of her blessings, including her own children, to the blessings of the false gods and the men who worship that, those false gods. Gomer becomes unfaithful in every way. Now some have said, well Gomer was a common prostitute when Hosea married her. Well first of all the word for prostitute is never used in the book of Hosea. The word for the unfaithful wife is used and the wife begins to be faithful. But I think all arguments about whether Hosea married a prostitute and whether the children were actually his or were they illegitimate children? And there's some of them. It's just simply study the parallel. The parallel here is unmistakable. This is god and Israel. Hosea and Gomer represent in almost a one-for-one relationship god and Israel. And if you want to know the story of how it tracks out completely, and I wish we had time to do it this morning, but we know that there's an extensive allegory spelled out in Ezekiel chapter 16. I would encourage you to read it during the course of these four Sundays as we study. Read Ezekiel 16 and there's a long chapter that tells the story about what the Lord did for Israel. Let me summarize it for you briefly. The Lord found an abandoned bloody disease baby girl in the wilderness. And the Lord took that baby girl and cleaned her up and washed her and gave her medicine and care. And then in time that baby girl grew to age. In fact, the Bible says she came of age. Her breasts were formed and she became a woman, a young woman. And then the scripture's going to say, oh, you got to read the story. There's just incredible detail in there, incredible detail in that story. Then the Lord went to the wilderness and passed by again and saw this lovely young woman at the time of love. She was in the time of her maturity and he took her in as a bride. And he cleaned her up and he anointed her and he put fine garments upon her and gave her fine food and adorned her and even put a crown upon her head and placed her upon a throne. He took this young woman and made a queen out of her royal splendor. And then this woman began to go after other men and began to pursue other gods and was unfaithful and was unclean and was viled. And not only that, this woman began to attribute all of her blessings and all of her prosperity and everything that God had given her, she began to say it was the result of the faithfulness and the largest of these lovers. And read the story as it continues along. And finally, the Lord has to pursue and to redeem and to punish with a long period of silence and isolation, a purge this woman and then bring her back to himself and restore her to the full love of his bosom. Beautiful story. Now if that's the allegory of what Ezekiel says God did for Israel, then I think it's pretty incumbent upon an interpreter to look at it pretty clearly and say that's the story of Hosea and Gomer. That he was a faithful wife that became unfaithful. But the story ultimately is it's a faithful husband who never, never gives up. He goes through the phases of bitterness and anger. He goes through the frustrations of trying to plead with her and deal with her. He must go through the discipline of pursuing her and finding her. He must go to the great cost of redeeming her and buying her back out of literally the slave market of harlotry. He has to pay a price. He has to redeem her back to himself. But the language of Scripture is clear. He buys her. He takes her to himself. She becomes his wife and then he restores her completely. Now in the story by the way, the first three chapters tell the story and then chapter four and following the rest of the book of Hosea are oracles and sermons and sayings and proverbs and probably various feces of various sermons that Hosea preached. We don't have the full-blown sermon. It's not near as elaborate as some of the others. It's much more condensed and pithy. And of course the book of Hosea is often accused of having undergone a whole host of redactors and editors and compilers and all of that. And it's difficult to weave. It's the most difficult book of the prophets to interpret in many ways. And he's also somewhat vague, whereas Amos calls names. Isaiah names names. Jeremiah is right in the middle of everything. But Hosea is a little more vague and a little more general. Which I think is a good thing because the situation is what's important. It's not the historical events, although they are immediately relevant and historical to be sure. Hosea is very much on target historically, but the allegory and the teaching has a certain universal quality to it. Instead of being specific to that day, only it applies to a later day. And in that sense there is a lot of prophecy and the book of Hosea is eschatological. That is, it's talking about that last day, that final day. And you'll see that here when you, as we talk about these three children. And I mean, just briefly introduce these children to you and then we're going to talk about them a lot in the next three weeks. The first is a little baby boy named Jesreel. Why in the world would you name a baby Jesreel? Well, because Jesreel was extremely significant place in the life of Israel. The valley of Jesreel was considered eventually in the history of Israel to become the valley of blood, the valley of murder. Do you remember your Old Testament history? The first thing we find out about the valley of Jesreel was it was a beautiful place. And there was a man that had a beautiful vineyard, Naboth. Naboth had a beautiful vineyard and wicked King Ahab, whose father, Amri had begun the dynasty and had conquered the land, wicked King Ahab with his vile wife, Jesreel, coveted the land of Naboth. And he tried every way he could diplomatically being a descendant of the kings of Israel and having a certain morality. He tried to negotiate the acquisition of that vineyard. But Jesreel, who was a descendant of the kings of Cydon as entire in Cydon, wicked kingdoms, Jesreel said, you're the king, just take it. And eventually that's what he did. He took it by murdering Naboth and all of Naboth's descendants, where you see that was an inheritance that Naboth would not give up because God had given his father's that land in the land and he wanted to keep that piece of property for a thousand generations. And Ahab came in and took it away from him and seized him. That was the first horrible thing that happened in the valley of Jesreel. But tick forward in the history book just a little ways and you find his time went by. We could King Ahab had a son and his son had a son. And these were the descendants of the house of Omri and as they began to rule over Israel. In time God raised up a renegade, a military man, a vicious man, and God commissioned him to purge the house of Omri. And he took off with a zeal that was way beyond the call of duty. A man by the name of Jahu, Jahu came to power and he began to take on the task of purging the house. And he not only killed Joram, Ahab's son, who was the king of Israel, but he killed all of Ahab's seventy sons. And then he killed all of Ahab's friends and relatives and even the Levite priest that had served King Ahab in his dynasty. Purge that whole group. But while he was at it, while Jahu was at it, he had killed Joram in the valley of Jesreel in a valley by using the archers bow. And he had shot him right between the shoulder blades. And he had gone to die and bloodshed was everywhere. But while he was at it, he went over and killed Joram's cousin. His cousin happened to be the king of Judah, the southern kingdom at the time, Ahaziah, Ahaziah. Ahaziah, he killed King Ahaziah and the same by the same way with the archers bow, splitting right through his shoulder blades, dropped the king of Israel, dropped the king of Judah at the same time. And Jahu wasn't complete. He went back to Samaria there in the valley of Jesreel and he killed Jezebel. And he just kept up his. He went back to the southern kingdom and killed everybody that was related to King Ahaziah, 42 of his relatives. Jahu then piled up all of these skulls in a big pile and went to the prophet and said, come with me to see my zeal for the Lord. Now at the time, God had empowered Jahu to purge the house of Ahmari, Ahab, and his wickedness. But Jahu had gone way beyond the call and he'd become a bloodthirsty, bloodshedding man. And eventually he elevated himself to the throne and he was given a promise that his dynasty would last for four generations, which of course it did. In Israel there were seven generations or seven dynasties that were changed by assassination. The people in Hosea's day had seen four assassinated kings in less than 20 years. That's the condition the land was in. The valley of Jesreel was a bloody, bloody place. And God says, name your little boy, Jesreel. Why? God says because I'm going to do a couple of things in the valley of Jesreel. The first thing I'm going to do in the valley of Jesreel is I'm going to break the bow of Ephraim or Israel. Ephraim was the largest tribe in the northern kingdom and so often the word Ephraim is used in place of Israel. The one tribe, the big tribe represents all the tribes. And so in the other prophets it's called the breaking the bow of Ephraim in the valley of Jesreel. And God says, I'm going to do that. And eventually that's exactly what God did. He will hear a little more about the history as we go along. But another thing God was going to do in the valley of Jesreel was after the bloodshed, after the bloodshed God was going to raise them up. He was going to restore them completely. Oh, that's what God does after the bloodshed. There's a resurrection. Now I've run out of time. But let me mention these two other children real quickly and then just one more thing in conclusion. The second child was a little girl. He said, low Ruhama. What a sweet name for a little girl. That just sounds feminine and sweet in the Hebrew. But that word low is the Hebrew negative preformative. It means no or not or negative. In other words no mercy, no pity. God was unknown as a God of pity. God had pitted Israel when they were in captivity there. You read about it in the first of the book of Exodus. God had pity on his people and he raised it. When they send in the wilderness with the golden calf with the pleading of Moses, God had pity and mercy. He said, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. I will have pity upon whom I will have pity. God says, I will exercise my compassion. And now God says for some reason, name this little baby girl, no pity, no compassion. What did God have in mind? Well, we'll see what God had in mind as we go along. God had the absolute destruction, the eradication, the annihilation of the nation Israel in mind. And then he named the last little boy, low Ami. Ami means people. It's the possessive. The eye on the end is possessive. My people. I will be your God. He said and you will be my people. That was the covenant promise that they would be the people of God and that God would be their God. And I am the Lord thy God. And now God says, name this little boy. No, you are not my people. Aminus, prophetic, warning to the nation Israel. Now in conclusion, let me just look at that last paragraph. We're going to talk more about these children as we go along and what it means. But look at that last paragraph says, he repeats the covenant promise. The number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea. When you pass verse 9 and move into verse 10, you are moving into the area of new covenant fulfillment. We're in the new testament now, beloved. When we get here, this is God saying there will come a day when the Bible says at the latter day and the last times in that day, behold the days come. All of those phrases refer to the days of fulfillment, the days of Christ, the days of resurrection, the days of uplift. And so that's what the Lord has promised. There's an eschatological. It says in the place where it was said you are not my people. That is in the valley of Jezreel, they will be called the children of the living God. And then at the very end it says they shall appoint for themselves one head. Who do you think that is? This is a prophecy of Jesus Christ, the head of his church, the head of his people. There's going to come a day. This is 700 years before Christ. They shall have one head. This is Hosea preaching Christ. And then look at that last little phrase, and they shall go up from the land for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Let's don't miss one thing. They shall go up from the land. They shall go up from the land. Is that resurrection?