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Introduction - marital faithfulness
Marriage vows: In most marriage ceremonies, there are promises made by each person to the other as they stand before God.
These promises run the gamut of life’s circumstances - sickness and health, richer or poorer, adversity and prosperity, for better or for worse, till death brings separation.
Other than death, NOTHING is supposed to separate those who covenant before God in this way.
And, just about everyone who stands before a preacher and makes these vows firmly believes they will keep them.
I’m sure there are very few, even among unbelievers, that on their wedding day are thinking about ways to break up their marriage.
Everyone believes they can make it work.
Why?
Well, love, of course.
They’re in love and we all no that nothing is stronger than love.
We sing songs about love - All You Need is Love, I Will Always Love You, I Wanna Know What Love Is.
But, what does love really look like?
How do we really know what love is?
And, is love all that matters?
Sometimes, we act as if love is the ultimate force in the universe.
We sometimes act as if 1 John says “love is God” rather than “God is love”.
Is love really all we need.
Does a feeling of love justify any relationship?
What is love?
I.
The Love Story
A. The Minor Prophets
Last portion of the Old Testament (New is not necessarily better just because it is “new”)
Shorter than the Major Prophets (not minor in importance) - not like major league and minor league
B. Hosea’s Background
The first of the minor prophets is Hosea.
The unusual thing you will notice if you look at each of the minor prophets is that the book of Hosea is rather long.
It, along with Zechariah, has 14 chapters.
We’re not exactly sure why Hosea is the first book in this grouping, but it could have to do with the fact that it one of the oldest of the Minor Prophets.
That is, it was written earlier than most of the other books.
Hosea, Amos and Micah were all written before the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to Assyria.
By contrast, the last three books of the Old Testament, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi were written some time in the 5th Century BC, that’s the 400’s, after the return of the exiles from Babylon.
Another interesting thing about Hosea is that, unlike most of the other major and minor prophetical books, it centers around the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
Most of the other prophets ministered and wrote to the southern kingdom of Judah and, specifically, the capital city of Jerusalem.
Of course, most of the other minor prophets were written after the fall of the northern kingdom, so it wasn’t even around when they were prophesying.
The northern kingdom of Israel existed because of the failure of Solomon to remain faithful to God.
He married many foreign wives and, as the Bible describes, they carried away his heart after foreign gods.
As a result, God said that He would tear away 10 tribes from Solomon’s son and give them to Jereboam to rule.
Thus began the split between Israel, with the capital city of Samaria, and Judah, with the capital city of Jerusalem.
As you read through the books of Kings and Chronicles, one thing you will notice is that, from the very beginning Israel proved to be a rebellious people with rebellious leaders.
They were idolatrous from the beginning as Jereboam built two golden calfs and claimed they were representations of Israel’s god.
This idolatry was disastrous for the nations, bringing with it all kinds of evil and trouble.
At the time Hosea was prophesying, centuries had passed and Jereboam II, who is no relation to the first Jereboam, was in power.
But, his power was on the decline.
And Assyria was on the rise.
He and Amos were prophesying in the northern kingdom around the same time Isaiah and Micah were prophesying in the southern kingdom.
Hosea contains some personal information about the prophet’s life that you don’t see in most of the other minor prophets.
It also has a lengthy section, chapters 4-14, with prophecies relating the incidents in Hosea’s life to the nation to which he was prophesying.
It is a book of sinful unfaithfulness, pronouncements of judgment, loving forgiveness, covenant faithfulness, and glorious restoration.
In the account of Hosea and his wife, we see a beautiful picture of a God who, despite our own unfaithfulness, pursues those He loves and brings them back to himself.
We see a God who never fails and is always faithful.
And we learn a lot about what that type of love looks like.
C. Hosea and Gomer’s Story
Verse 1 tells us who his father was and when he lived, but more importantly that God spoke to Him and through Him.
God told Hosea to marry a woman and so he did.
The woman’s name was Gomer.
She is said to be the daughter of Diblaim and, unfortunately for Hosea, very unfaithful.
Most of the rest of the book is the actual prophecy that God gave to Hosea regarding the sin and judgment of His people.
God speaks through Hosea to His people as a husband would to an unfaithful wife.
Hosea and Gomer come back into the narrative in chapter 3:
So, first, Hosea has married a woman who is called unfaithful and then that unfaithfulness plays out.
Gomer had left and become an adulterous woman.
Perhaps she had even gone into prostitution in the temple of Israel’s gods.
The one true God tells Hosea to pursue Gomer and buy her back and love her without fail.
And, that is the sum total of all we know of Hosea and Gomer.
He never speaks of himself again.
So, what do we make of all this?
Why did God have the history of His prophet and his unfaithful wife included in sacred Scripture?
In chapter 2, God begins to show how these historical events in the lives of Hosea and Gomer relate to God and His people.
Throughout Hosea’s prophecy, God and Israel are characterized as husband and wife.
At times in this prophecy, God is very blunt in His description of Israel’s unfaithfulness and His impending judgment.
The first warning of God’s judgment is contained even in the names of the children born to Hosea, Jezreel and Lo-Ruhamah.
In chapters 4-14, God promises many judgments that will come on His people: they will be devastated, destroyed, rejected, shamed, punished, struck, pursued by enemies and ultimately cut off.
All of this, God promises, is His judgment against His people.
And the reason God gives for this judgement is the unfaithfulness of His people.
II.
The Unfaithfulness of God’s People
The whole reason God spoke to Hosea was to confront His people for their sin.
They had consistently rejected the Lord and His Law and refused to listen to Him when confronted by His prophets.
In chapter 4, God describes them as “stubborn, like a stubborn calf” (4:16), calls them “adulterers” in chapter 7 (7:4), and in chapter 13, He declares that they had “forgotten [Him]” (13:6).
Again in chapter 4, we are told that God’s people had “[broken] all restraint” (4:2), have “rejected knowledge” and “forgotten the Law (4:6), “sinned against God” (4:7), and “ceased obeying the Lord” (4:10).
As if that wasn’t enough, in chapter 8:1, they have “rebelled against God’s law” and in so doing are describes as having “rebelled against God” in chapter 13.
In fact, they were determined to have it so.
They wanted it this way.
This is how God’s people treated God - like an unfaithful wife who hate her spouse.
This isn’t some abstract, impersonal act against an arbitrary rule or law.
This is a breaking of a sacred vow or covenant, just like a marital covenant.
They have cheated on the only One who ever really loved them.
So, this is how God describes his people generally.
And he has good reason!
He goes into great detail in chapters 4-14 about the specific sinful unfaithfulness of His people.
A. Specific Acts
Unrighteous Rulers
They were deceitful
They were murderers
They were adulterers
This all showed up in their idolatrous worship
APPLICATION - deal with sin of idolatry and it’s results
B. Root Cause - Pride
RESULT - they forgot their God
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