Restoration and Condemnation

Whenever someone disobeys a parent, friend, boss, or person in authority there is generally a consequence. This is true in the Old Testament as well. Whenever people would disobey God, there would be a punishment that would follow. We left off last week looking at and we saw how God straight up told Hosea that the people of Israel are no longer His people. This is a very negative situation to have left off at, however as we discussed last week with the background of Hosea, Hosea finds himself in a very difficult situation. He is commanded by God to marry a woman of promiscuity and to name his children (or the children that his wife had) names that are very negative in nature. Gomer was likely cheating on Hosea during this time and Hosea stayed with her. This example between Hosea and Gomer is a similar depiction of the relationship between Israel and God. Israel had gone to worship Ba’al and they had forsaken Yahweh. They had abandoned the God of their ancestors in order to worship a Canaanite idol. Because of this, there were consequences. What we will look at tonight is a two-part follow up to chapter 1 of Hosea. First there will be restoration, but there will also be condemnation that follows. The lessons found in chapter 2 are extremely timely for our society today. With that in mind, let’s look at .

Hosea 1:10–2:13 NASB95

10 Yet the number of the sons of Israel Will be like the sand of the sea, Which cannot be measured or numbered; And 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.” 11 And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel will be gathered together, And they will appoint for themselves one leader, And they will go up from the land, For great will be the day of Jezreel. 1 Say to your brothers, “Ammi,” and to your sisters, “Ruhamah.” 2 “Contend with your mother, contend, For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; And let her put away her harlotry from her face And her adultery from between her breasts, 3 Or I will strip her naked And expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, Make her like desert land And slay her with thirst. 4 “Also, I will have no compassion on her children, Because they are children of harlotry. 5 “For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’ 6 “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. 7 “She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, For it was better for me then than now!’ 8 “For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, And lavished on her silver and gold, Which they used for Baal. 9 “Therefore, I will take back My grain at harvest time And My new wine in its season. I will also take away My wool and My flax Given to cover her nakedness. 10 “And then I will uncover her lewdness In the sight of her lovers, And no one will rescue her out of My hand. 11 “I will also put an end to all her gaiety, Her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths And all her festal assemblies. 12 “I will destroy her vines and fig trees, Of which she said, ‘These are my wages Which my lovers have given me.’ And I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field will devour them. 13 “I will punish her for the days of the Baals When she used to offer sacrifices to them And adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry, And follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me,” declares the Lord.

Covenant Renewal (10-11)

The opening two verses of this passage are very positive! We see that even though in verse 9, God has said that these are no longer His people, that the son’s of Israel will increase. This is surely an echo of the Abrahamic Covenant from as we see in that Abraham’s descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens! God made an ancient covenantal promise to Abraham and this covenant would come true. We have to ask ourselves, how would people in Hosea’s day have understood this message? They probably would have laughed in his face! In 738 BC, it is observed that Israel had about 60,000 land holders whereas the Assyrian empire was expanding at a rapid rate. Israel was a tiny, insignificant nation in the grand scheme of the empires of the world at this time. Because of this, only faith in God could foresee a reality where the children of Israel will be this numerous. The reason that the people are at this point, though, is because they have been unable to live up to the law from Mt. Sinai. They have not kept the law, yet the people could not nullify God’s promises to His people. Aren’t you thankful for that today? Regardless of your biggest mistake, you can’t frustrate the promises of God. That is refreshing to hear because we can get hung up on our mistakes and errors, however we have a God that is all the more powerful to work in spite of our mistakes and weaknesses.

The phrase “Sons of the living God” is significant for us to look at in verse 10 because it acknowledges that the people have regained their status and are now acknowledged by God yet again. This is good news compared to verse 9. It also shows us that God is “alive.” We have talked about the idea that some nations had in this time that the winning nation or army had the stronger God. In some instances whenever a nation was defeated, and their temple destroyed, they believed that they had killed the opposing god. What we see in verse 10 is that these are children of the living God. This is important because what “living” essentially means in this text is “true.” These are people who serve the one true God - and He is able to give victory to His people as we see throughout the Old Testament. Third, we see that this living God is able to give life. Because God is the giver of victory and life, He will defeat the powerless idol, Ba’al.

Verse 11 is interesting to note as well because it talks about the children of Judah and Israel coming together and having 1 head. During our study of King Asa in Chronicles, we noted that the people of Israel were split into 2 kingdoms (the divided kingdom) - Israel to the North and Judah to the South. This verse makes it appear that this never should have happened in the first place! Israel and Judah are one people and should be one nation, not two! Obviously this did not happen in Hosea’s time, however we know that hundreds of years after his death, the Messiah would come and unite the people. The reconciliation of Israel and Judah is depicted by them following the same leader. The once decimated population of Israel will rebound and find their ultimate fulfillment as they stand united under their single head, Christ. This is the great day of Jezreel - whenever God sows.

This is a very positive couple of verses to start us off tonight and get our blood pumping as our revival is coming up 1 week from tonight! We know that God is the one who sows and brings in the harvest, however it is our duty to plant and water seeds. Our responsibility the next week is to do exactly that - invite people, encourage them to come and stand united as a church. We should drop useless and senseless quarrels in order to prepare and ready our hearts for the coming time of spiritual revival.

Condemnation (2:1-13)

The following verses in chapter 2 are not as positive - in fact they are very negative. Verse 1 is an imperative command calling for Israel to return to the one true, living God. However, the people will not do that.

Hosea talked primarily about the children in chapter 1, and in chapter 2 he deals with the mother of the children - his wife, Gomer. The children of Gomer were children of adultery who were in danger of falling the path of their mother and Hosea calls for the children to rebuke her. To set themselves apart from their mother so that they do not suffer the same fate that she does. Hosea continues to state that she is not his wife and he is not her husband. This is why the children must denounce their mother! Israel believed that they were God’s people solely because they were Israelites. God had a covenant with them and because they were Israelites, they had a special relationship with God. Now God declares through Hosea that this relationship is void. Israelites can only become God’s people by renouncing Israel! The identity in which they trusted had become the greatest impediment between them and God.

This might sound harsh. It would be harsh to call a child to leave his own mother and disown her. In Hosea’s family this must’ve been difficult. Did Jezreel and his siblings disown Gomer? Maybe, but we really don’t know. The point of this verse is that the Israelites were expected to denounce their culture because it was idolatrous, cruel, hypocritical and selfish. This is certainly not an easy task because no one wants to openly admit that they are a part of an evil society and that they played a part in it. The people of Israel were called by Hosea to turn back to God in order to become a righteous remnant by rejecting their own perverse society. This is extremely relevant in our society today! We might say that we live in a “Christian” culture, however our world is extremely perverse as well. We are living in an unholy nation and in an unholy world yet we are called to be holy as our God is holy. This is quite a difficult thing for us to understand and live out in our lives, is it not? We must follow Isaiah’s confession in “I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell among a people of unclean lips.” We must ask ourselves if our church culture is leading others towards or away from God? We could transition here and talk more about the holiness of God, however we will be doing a more in-depth study of that topic in November as we look at both Isaiah and Job.

As the rest of verse 2 shows us, this woman is called to turn her whole person away from faithless behavior. She is to abandon her old ways and everything that went along with them. We see some very graphic details in verse 3 that show us that this was a serious offense. Since the people were acting like prostitutes, God would treat them like prostitutes and shame them publicly. He would no longer claim the nation as His wife because she had broken her marriage covenant and worshipped idols. Adultery in Hebrew law was a capital crime and could be punishable by death. God, though, announced that he would punish her but not destroy her. Unfaithfulness to God is a serious sin. It was serious back in Hosea’s time and it is serious now as well. Think if a husband told you that he was faithful to his wife 95% of the time. In school that means that he got an “A” but we would all acknowledge that being faithful 95% of the time to your spouse is actually being unfaithful. The same principle applies to worshipping and following God. We are good at following Him during church and throughout our Bible studies, however do we follow Him constantly in our lives outside of church? The Israelites were tempted to forsake God and worship golden calves and idols, the American church is tempted to forsake God and worship money and a watered down Gospel message that is inclusive and politically correct. We must be careful not to follow suit. We must stand firm on the Word of God and not conform the world but be transformed by the renewing of our mind!

Verse 5 is interesting for us to see because we see that Gomer has been unfaithful and has acted shamefully. This verse also alludes to the alleged benefit of worshipping Ba’al - fertility. This woman has conceived children and been given gifts from her lovers. These two things were two compensations that the fertility cults promised their devotees. If Gomer was a follower of these cults, as we believe she was, she probably believes that her three children are her rewards from Ba’al! To look at this in a national sense, we know that the nation of Israel forged alliances with neighboring nations instead of relying on God’s power to save them. They made alliances with powerful nations for the benefits that they “supposedly” could offer them in return. Isn’t this interesting? Gomer probably felt as though her children were a confirmation from Ba’al that she was doing what she was supposed to be doing and she was being blessed accordingly. She was incredibly ungrateful to the one true God who had blessed her, because she gave the credit to Ba’al.

The final section, verses 6-13 show us the redemptive punishment of Israel. There is a cycle of sin, punishment and redemption in these verses.

Verse 6 shows us that there is punishment for the wife and her transgressions. Israel has attempted to get what she needed from foreign nations, but God will hedge her up and build a wall against her so that they will not be able to pursue this option. An example of this would be that followers of these Canaanite gods would be tempted and enticed to make a pilgrimage of sorts to visit a temple in order to worship this idol. During this time there would be sacrifices and perhaps very personal favors would be exchanged as well, however verse 6 shows us that this “husband” puts up a hedge around his wife so that she cannot stray away. The reason behind this is redemptive! We think of punishment as always being a bad thing, because who really wants to be punished? No one! With that said, spiritually speaking, we know that we are supposed to be held to a higher standard and it takes our brothers and sisters in Christ to help us stay on the right track. Sometimes it takes loving discipline to help us out on our way. We must understand that this type of punishment is redemptive in nature. The goal of it is to help someone come back to God, not primarily make them feel less than or embarrassed. It is about bringing the person back to where they should be - into fellowship.

As the outline shows, verse 7 shows upcoming redemption. It does not promise immediate redemption, but it anticipates it in the future. We see this because the wife states that she will return to her first husband. This shows that Israel will seek Yahweh. How can she have this type of change of heart? How do people have changes in their heart in our world? The Word of God changes lives and we see throughout Scripture that we are pursued by God. We do not even see if the husband will forgive his wife, but we do see that there was a time in which things were well in this marriage because the wife states that it was better for her than her current situation. How often are we in this type of situation? We try to do things on our own power only to realize that things didn’t work out and that we need to turn back to God because things were better whenever we did it His way? I feel like that is a common thing in our lives. Yet, whenever the redemption happens and whenever we are back in line with God’s Word, we never stay there. We eventually revert back to our human nature and try to do things our way. That is exactly what we see in the coming verses.

Verse 8 shows us that the people have been blessed and they attributed it to Ba’al. These people who worshipped Ba’al genuinely thought that Ba’al was blessing them, but in reality Ba’al is a powerless idol and God is the giver of all things. God is the true fertility God, not Ba’al. God has given them plenty of things, children, resources, harvest, and wealth but they continue to attribute it all to Ba’al. This is yet another example of ingratitude by the people of Israel.

In verses 9-12 we see the punishment for the sin of the people as they did not acknowledge that Yahweh had been the one who had blessed them. We see here that the punishment is severe and dramatic! What we must keep in mind, though, is that Yahweh is only taking back what is rightfully his. He is retrieving his property from his wayward wife. This punishment operates on 3 levels: 1) a warning of coming captivity 2) a depiction of destitution and 3) a mark of public humiliation. Verse 10 shows that this woman was shamed. Shame was extremely impactful in the ancient world and would have brought about the idea of moral or spiritual failure to the individual. Hosea contrasts the power of God to lay waste with human inability to protect this woman. Neither military strength nor even prayer will be effective, no one will be able to stop what is coming their way! The Lord will expose Ba’al powerlessness so that Israel will know that there is no other God than Yahweh.

Verse 11 shows us that there had been corruption in the Israelite way of life. The festivals and feasts had been corrupted by Ba’al. Possibly sexually, but certainly spiritually. These festivals were a crucial part of Israel’s covenant life. They were the way that Israel expressed love and gratitude towards Yahweh and were expressions of joy - as we talked about this morning followers of God should show joy in all seasons of life because of their relationship with God. This is important stuff that had been corrupted! We have see that even though they were worshipping other gods and idols, they still continued to do the outward duties of their worship of Yawheh. They thought that they could do the works of their faith and worship false gods during the other days of the week. The tragedy in this verse is not that the people were disobeying God’s commands but that so many people had fallen so far from God and simply did not realize it. There are certainly some points for us to take away from that, are there not? These people thought that they could worship God and Ba’al. She (Israel) thought that she was practicing sound principles of religion and that she was experiencing covenantal blessings! The people had been blinded and they were fixated on their successes that they missed out on the fact that they were not worshipping Yahweh like they were called to.

We might think that Christians today are so much better than the Jews in Hosea’s day were. That we are far more obedient and faithful. However, I think that whenever we really examine our hearts and our Christian culture in general, we see that we really aren’t all that far removed. We deceive ourselves easily into thinking that we are worshipping God and Him alone, however many people have made their own idea of God up in their head they think that they are worshipping the true God when in actuality they are worshipping a “god” that is made up and not biblical at all.

Verse 13 provides us with a summary of sorts. One of the greatest ways that God can judge people is to simply give them over to their own way. That is what we find here. Israel will cry out to Yahweh, however He will turn His back on her just as Israel turned their back on Him.

This is a very depressing way to close, so we will preview next week’s message a little bit and look at verse 14. Here we see that God is going to show mercy on Israel. He will draw her back and restore her.

Conclusion

This is a very interesting text for us to read. It starts with some positive news but then goes through the failures of the woman (Israel) and talks about the punishment coming her way. The worst part of this for a 21st century reader is that we must realize that we are not “that” much different than this woman. We have gone astray. We have turned to idols as well. We see that God is holy and we are sinful human beings. How can we rationalize these two things? Jesus Christ. We must look to the cross and thank Christ for His gift for us. Even though we have all gone astray, we know that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross has made us “perfect” in the eyes of a Holy God for those who are adopted into His family. That is great news, church, because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

With that said, we know that there are some people out there who genuinely believe that they are following God like the Israelites thought they were in Hosea’s day. They were doing the work, they were going to Sunday school and church, yet they were also worshipping other gods and not praising and thanking Yahweh for His many blessings in their lives. We must recognize this and we must lovingly help one another out during this journey. Speak the truth to others in love as commands us to do. Let’s strive to do that and be that type of Church - let’s pray.

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