Sermon Tone Analysis

The main concern of Hosea is not God’s love toward an unfaithful people.

The main concern of Hosea is idolatry and God’s hatred for this wicked practice.

“Their homicides and fornication, their perjury and theft, their idolatry and impiety, are censured and satirized with a faithful severity.”

Introduction

The book of Hosea is part of the Jewish book known as the 12.

The Jewish canon: The Torah, The Nevi’im, The Ketuvim (what we call the historical books are categorized under the prophets.

Counted as one: Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah, and the minor prophets.

For those who read the lesson, I want to offer a different perspective:

The gospel of Christ and the redemption of God’s elect is nothing whatsoever like a princess fairy-tale.

Unregenerate sinners are not like a princess who needs rescuing.

We are more like a married woman turned prostitute on crack, meth, and heroin who loves both her sexual deviance and her chemically produced altered states.

Hosea lived in the eighth century.

According to Jewish tradition he was the first of the Jewish prophets: “The Lord Spoke First through Hosea.”

(Babylonian Talmud: tractate Baba Barthra 14b, 15b)

The book of Hosea is regarded as one of the most difficult in all the OT because of its dialectical idiosyncrasies.

Hosea was from Northern Israel.

Hosea’s ministry took place during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah and Jeroboam II, King of Israel.

Hosea was a contemporary or at the very least live in close proximity to the time of Amos and Isaiah.

Remember that Jeroboam I had started what is known as the golden calf cult.

He was afraid that if Israel went down to Jerusalem to sacrifice to the Lord, the kingdom would be reunited.

He sat up two golden calfs, one in Bethel and one in Dan.

Jeroboam II was the son of Jehoash who had done evil in the sight of the Lord.

He continued, as did the kings before him to promote idolatry in Israel.

Uzziah, Jotham, and Hezekiah did right but Ahaz did evil in the sight of the Lord.

So the ministry of Hosea spans .

This all took place up to the time the Northern Kingdom would be taken into captivity by the Assyrians (722).

Judah would be taken by the Babylonians finally in 586.

Of the 43 kings between Israel and Judah, only 7 did what was right in the sight of God throughout their entire reign.

An Unfaithful People Receive Love

4-10

Jezreel sounds phonetically just like Israel in Hebrew.

Judgement is coming.

Lo-ruhamah: No Mercy

Lo-ammi: Not my people

Lo = no/not

Ruhamah is the feminine for the Hebrew word REHAM, or mercy.

Ammi is the Hebrew word AM, or people, with the suffix “mi” attached= my people.

My husband: Ishi

My husband, master, owner: Baali.

The word is related to the word Baal, to own, describes the act of getting married or the state of being married.

This is part of the difficulty in interpreting Hosea.

The word was used at times, at least until Hosea’s time, as a title for Yahweh.

It was Jezebel who started co-mingling Baal worship with the worship of Yahweh.

How do we potentially contaminate the worship of with our own cultural idiosyncrasies?

What are some ways God’s people today demonstrate unfaithfulness to God?

REPLACE THIS QUESTION

Unfaithfulness is not the best descriptor here.

It implies that born again people are capable of fixing their hearts on idols and engaging in all sorts of immorality.

Hosea is being used to show Israel that in God’s eyes, they are like a whore who is married to a holy prophet.

It is scandalous and outrageous that a whore would become the wife of a holy prophet.

God is saying to Israel, you are the whore.

What are some ways today that humanity demonstrates unfaithfulness to God?

What about the churches in modern American culture?

How do they often demonstrate an outright betrayal of and departure from the sacred covenant?

We do so when we tolerate sin, false doctrines, and our worship becomes a show designed to entertain us and evoke emotions for the sake of emotions rather than truly create a sense of thankfulness to our Lord for his great faithfulness, love, and mercy that he shows toward us.

Finally, a lot of the preaching we see in modern American churches is little more than be happy feel good lectures.

God’s Love Pursues His Unfaithful People and Purchases Them Out of Slavery

God is Love: The imperfect love that human beings share between one another is a dim reflection, a sign that points to the perfect love that resides within God.

The greatest act of love by God toward humans isn’t the giving of earthly goods but the giving of himself in Christ so that we might become reconciled to him.

What does the purchased price of Christ that God paid to redeem sinners reveal about His love for humanity?

What else does the cross demonstrate about God’s character?

God’s Love Invites His Unfaithful People to Repent

Invite is hardly the right choice of verbs here.

Return in the Hebrew is an imperative.

God demands that all men everywhere repent.

What characteristics mark true repentance of sin?

How does God’s work in salvation attack our pride?