Sermon: Hosea’s Family

Would you turn with me in your Bibles to Hosea chapter 1, page 751 of the Pew Bibles. Should be after the Book of Daniel. Hosea chapter 1. We're looking at the whole chapter tonight, 11 verses. I'll read to chapter two, verse one as well.

This is the book that we're going through in our evening series for the next few months. And Hosea is a wonderful book, showing us the depths of God's love in the face of our sin. So would you pray with me?

Our Lord, some of the most precious words to us in scripture are two words that we find in Ephesians: but, God. Our Lord, we know that in those two words, there is a storehouse of mercy and grace. We come to you this evening as sinners in need of your rich mercy and grace. So we ask tonight that you would show us our sin so that your grace would be sweeter to our parched lips. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

Hear the word of the Lord from Hosea chapter 1, verses one through 11, and then I'll read chapter two, verse one.

"The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, 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 whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.' So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she

conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, '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 bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.' She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, '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 she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, 'Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.

And in the 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. Say to your brothers, You are my people, and to your sisters, You have received mercy.'" Amen. This is the word of God.

Hosea is an attention-grabbing book. Even people with little knowledge of the Bible know the basic premise of Hosea. And I think that's because of how shocking Hosea's life story was. He was commanded by the Lord to marry a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom.

In Hosea's time, this was actually quite fitting. It was fitting that the Lord would use such a shocking illustration. His marriage and children served as a wake-up call to the people of Israel. Hosea represents the Lord who faithfully loved Israel, while Gomer represents Israel who spurned his love.

You see, in this way, Hosea isn't primarily about his personal life. But his personal life is God's means of communication. The Lord uses Hosea to show us how heinous sin is. It's equivalent to the highest degree of adultery.

But in the same breath, he extends the grace of God to those serial adulterers.

Hosea preached the gospel. That's what he did with this message. And so Hosea is for two groups of people The wonderers and the wanderers. The wonderers are those who are wondering about the love of God. What is it? Who is it for? And what does it look like? Sadly, it's easy for us to become confused about the love of God. We tend to reduce love to a feeling. It's a flitter in the stomach or an uncontrollable passion,

but that's far from how God displays his love. And so Hosea expresses God's love, and he does it much like Paul or John. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And in this is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. So Hosea is for the wonderers, those who are wondering about the love of God. And Hosea is also for the wanderers,

from the full-fledged prodigal, to those who are prone to wander.

Hosea preaches a message of super abounding grace. Where sin increases, grace far surpasses.

Now, Hosea does not excuse sin. He talks about it in pretty plain terms, the egregiousness of it. But neither does Hosea close the door of grace.

So Hosea writes for the prodigal. He also writes for those who are prone to wander, and I think that's many of us here today.

As he exposes sin, he shows that the seeds of wandering lie deep in our hearts. So Hosea's warnings are for us, too.

To make sense of Hosea's message historically, we need to know where we're at in redemptive history. Hosea's symbolic family tells us about the crisis in Israel, and God doesn't describe the Israel of Hosea's time in pleasant terms. They were guilty of whoredom and subject to imminent divorce by exile.

And when I speak of Israel, I'm speaking of the 10 northern tribes, the tribes that split off after the time of Solomon under King Rehoboam. And this is also the Israel that was crushed by the Assyrians in 722 BC. This is the Israel that I'm talking about. And Hosea began his ministry about 30 years before Israel's collapse in 722. It's important to remember that because his children would witness it. We hear more about his children later on.

Hosea, like many of the prophets, was a covenant theologian. In Hosea's context, that meant that he preached the terms, conditions, and implications of God's covenant with Israel that began at Mount Sinai in Exodus. And as a preacher of this covenant, you could say that he expounded on one text primarily. That was the blessings and curses of Deuteronomy 28.

And this text tells us how Israel would receive blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience. And the Israel of Hosea's day received many curses because of their disobedience, and that ultimately led to the greatest curse, that they would be exiled, banished from the land. So we need to understand this historical context in order to rightly apply Hosea to our context. We're at a different place in redemptive history,

so there are some different things. Christ has come. In Hosea's time, they were looking forward to Christ. He was signified to them. And we need to remember that we're at a different place in redemptive history because the blessings and curses that Hosea proclaims were in large part for Israel. It's a distortion of God's Word to apply the blessings and curses directly one to one to us. For example, Deuteronomy 28:61 says

that sickness would fall upon Israel if they disobeyed. If you have a sniffly nose or a cough, that doesn't mean that God is cursing you right now. So we need to keep these things in mind. We need to remember where we are. And under the Mosaic Covenant, what Israel was under in Hosea's time, these curses, they served an important purpose, and this is the purpose that we need to hold onto when we're looking at Hosea.

You see, disobedience often deceives.

We often don't realize how disobedient we are, how sinful we are, unless there are consequences. So these tangible curses that Israel received, they were sure indicators that they had gone astray. They showed Israel that God was serious about sin, and that sin would be punished. So when we think about how Hosea applies to us, these principles apply, but the administration of it differs. We're under the same God who made the same promises and warnings,

both to be received and heeded in the same way, but it looks a little bit different. God is still serious about sin, even if physical curses don't accompany it.

So our passage, it holds our feet to the fire. Even if these curses weren't directly for us, we can still feel the heat of the flame.

They show us how serious God is, not about their sin, but about our sin.

So that's how we can make the connection from Israel, represented by Gomer, to us today. This passage in Hosea as a whole, it also shows us that God is serious about grace. He's serious about sin, but he's serious about grace, too. And God has always been serious about grace, across every page of scripture.

So Hosea preached the gospel, even if it looks a little bit different in our text. He preached that the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

So I do all this setup because Hosea is challenging. It's a difficult book. There are things that we're going to read here that are hard to confront. But again, Hosea is holding our feet to the fire so that we can feel the consequence of sin, but also to give us the sweetness of grace. This was pictured for us in Hosea's family, and that's what we're going to focus on today. His wife, Gomer, and his children, Jezreel,

No-Mercy, and Not-My-People. And we're going to look at this in three points tonight. We're going to see how God used Hosea's family to symbolize our problem of sin, the discipline we deserve, and the restoration we don't deserve. Our problem of sin, the discipline we deserve, and the restoration we don't deserve.

So again, the Lord gave Hosea a shocking command to take a wife of whoredom to show the Israelites how far they strayed from the Lord. Their sin of idolatry is expressed in terms of adultery. Like unfaithfulness to a spouse, they've forsaken God. And you see, this isn't just an Israel problem. We're prone to the same sin. Paul says without distinction, "No one seeks after God. All have turned aside." This is both our natural condition

and our ongoing struggle. Now, if you're familiar at all with the Old Testament, God's people have received warning after warning to not forsake the Lord. It's the first commandment. "You shall have no other gods before me." And it's reiterated several times in many ways across scripture because the people needed to hear it. These warnings are necessary and repeated because just like adultery, idolatry begins very subtly.

It begins with discontentment with God, dissatisfaction with who he is. So you begin to wander, looking for something or someone to satisfy what you think God is withholding from you. This craving leads to small actions. It starts small, remains hidden for a while, flies under the radar, and goes undetected for a time. But it's long, corrupting, and it's a process that begins in the heart and flows out. Hosea's wife of whoredom portrays this corruption.

On the surface, it seems like God commanded Hosea to marry a prostitute, but there's actually something much deeper going on here. The point of the symbol is to show how Israel had forsaken the Lord, not just the fact that they had forsaken the Lord.

Israel was guilty of adultery, meaning that they ran after other gods while they were united to God.

At first, Israel, if we look at Israel's history, they declared with confidence in Exodus 19, "All that you say, God, we're going to do. We'll do it. You have our hearts, our obedience." But then 40 days later, they've made a golden calf. They're worshiping an idol. They went from, "Yes, God, we love you, and we will worship you," to idolatry. Full-fledged, complete departure from the true worship to the Lord. So where does that come from?

How does that happen?

It doesn't happen overnight. You see, the word for whoredom in our passage, it communicates an inward promiscuity, an inward inclination that exhibits itself in outward behavior. Though Israel may have been pure, or at least appeared to be pure at first by their commitment to the Lord, their true colors showed.

So that's the picture that we get with Hosea and Gomer. She was inclined to sexual immorality in her heart at first, which then led to her actions. Look at verse three. "She conceived and bore him a son." Now, look at verse six. "She conceived again and bore a daughter." Did you catch what's missing? Him. Hosea was not referenced. Now, look again at verse eight. "She conceived and bore a son." Again, Hosea is missing.

Gomer's inward inclination towards promiscuity didn't quite show in their first child, but it did in child number two and child number three.

It's important to understand Gomer in this way to understand our hearts.

Sinful hearts lead to sinful actions.

It might happen slowly but surely, but there's a wandering that accompanies it.

In Israel's day, this happened through syncretism, a blend of true and false worship. Gomer was married to Hosea, lived with him, bore children, and raised them in his house. But as it says in chapter two, verse five, she played the w***e. She was caught between two worlds.

Sin starts in the heart and divides it. You might not be bowing down to idols, physical, wooden idols right now,

but where is your heart at?

Every day that we live on this earth, we will have hearts that are prone to wander. It's a fact of this life. And by nature, all we did was wander. In Paul's words, we followed the course of the world, the prince of the power of the air, just drifting about, living in the passions of our flesh. Whatever cropped up inside of us, we had to obey it, and carrying out those desires in the body and the mind.

Gomer's situation tells us a lot about our situation, both what we were and what we continue to be.

It tells us a lot about our problem of sin, that it starts from within. Second, verses four to nine, we hear of the discipline that we deserve. The discipline that we deserve. Each child, Jezreel, No Mercy, and Not My People, are products of the problem that we just heard about. Look back at verse two. They're described as children of whoredom. This both refers to their mode of conception and their lifestyle. They grew up to be just like Gomer.

And these children show us what the nation of Israel became. They were products of the nation. And yet their names served another purpose, to show God's discipline. As God unfolds his plan of discipline against the children of Israel, remember where we're at in redemptive history. Each child represents God's just punishment against the Israelites for breaking the covenant. And through them, he talks about humbling the nation of Israel, exiling the

nation of Israel, and rejecting the nation of Israel.

These are things that don't necessarily apply to us. We're not going to go into exile. We're not necessarily going to be rejected on a national front. But we would be fools to ignore what God has to say to Israel about these children. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10:6 that Israel's experiences took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did.

Each child shows us the evil of sin and the disastrous effects that it produced. Like I said, Hosea holds our feet to the fire so that we can feel the heat.

So the firstborn son, born to both Hosea and Gomer, is named Jezreel. Jezreel would have been immediately apparent to Hosea's listeners, but not so to us. Jezreel symbolizes Israel's pride and strength, which made them ripe for judgment.

Now, Jezreel was the place where Israel became what it was. They even sound similar. Jezreel, Israel. Israel loved Jezreel. It was the place of all of their agricultural development and success. It was in a prosperous valley. The valley was also called Jezreel. It had enviable real estate, too. It's like the Silicon Valley of Israel.

But that love and zeal that Israel had for Jezreel led to egregious sin. In 1 Kings 21, King Ahab and Jezebel murdered Naboth, an innocent man, in order to take his vineyard in Jezreel and set up their vacation home.

And in our text, the Lord tells us more about the sins of Jezreel. He says, "In a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel." And the blood of Jezreel takes us back to 2 Kings 9 and 10, where Jehu, King Jehu, took the throne of Israel in a bloody massacre.

What's interesting about this is that the Lord commended Jehu for what he did.

But in our text, the Lord punishes Jehu.

What happened? Jehu's zeal in Jezreel led him to the prototypical sins of Israel. You see, Jezreel is ironic. It's like in Shakespeare, you have the tragic flaws of characters. Like King Lear, he was proud and arrogant, but that led to the downfall of his family. And Romeo, his passion burned within him, which led him to rash decisions. Jezreel was a similar way. It was an ends justify the means mentality. That's how Israel was operating.

Jezreel was the stepping stone for Israel's illegitimate success, and Jehu was a prime example of this.

Jehu was the only king of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, that received any commendation from the Lord. Of all the kings of Israel, Jehu had the longest dynasty. Under Jehu's sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons, Israel enjoyed relative peace and prosperity in the land. But the irony is that his peace was earned by blood. Even the most peaceful times brought by the most successful kings were despicable to the Lord because how they were brought

about.

Jehu brought peace by extreme violence and compromise. Jezreel, which was Israel's pride and joy, its source of strength, was offensive to God. Jezreel was a kind of Tower of Babel,

building up in a proud display to try to usurp and overthrow God.

Jezreel leaves us with two questions.

What are you most proud of? And what do you desire most?

Your answer reveals where your heart is.

Jesus talks about, and warns about, a Jezreel attitude when he says, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." When Christ isn't your treasure, you will be much like the man who gained the whole world, who had the most accomplishments, and yet forfeited his soul in the process. Jezreel gained success, peace, and prosperity, but forsook the Lord in order to get it. The next two children, No Mercy and Not My People

are much less ambiguous in their meaning, but far more ominous.

With each child, the Lord gives less and less explanation for his discipline, and we see that his discipline is much more severe. One commentator says, "The message of 'no mercy' and 'not my people' is as tragic as it is transparent. In no uncertain terms, God withdraws his mercy and disowns Israel."

Now, this happened in Israel's exile when they were banished from the land. Initially, God was merciful to the people of Israel, making them a people for his treasured possession, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. But this mercy was conditioned on their obedience. He gave them the land to worship in and rest from their enemies so long as they worshiped him and him alone. But they became imposters and trespassers. They claimed God in name

but used his land for idolatry,

and so they spurned God's mercy, his good gift, and they lived like they weren't his people, so he removed them from the land.

But in the middle of this grim section, we find verse seven.

Look at verse seven with me. "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."

What's this here for? We're talking about Israel and then just a sudden transition to Judah, a people that he will save and have mercy on. And he's very specific, isn't he? "Not by bow, by sword, by war, by horses, by horsemen." There's an entire army there. We've pictured it for us.

It's part of the rebuke against Israel. Israel knew the judgment that they incurred. Israel knew that God would withdraw his mercy from them,

but they tried to save themselves by bow, by sword, by war, by horsemen.

So the Lord called Israel to look at their neighbor, a people that would not even touch any of those things and would be saved, would use no other instrument than God's saving mercy alone.

All the judgment that Israel was about to experience would stop if they just yielded to the Lord. There's a valuable principle for us in this.

The Lord gives mercy to those who yield to his saving power by faith.

Trying to save yourself is actually going to incur more judgment.

The Apostle Paul calls them dead works that only store up more wrath for us.

But strangely, we try to do those dead works. No mercy shows us that it's foolish to save ourselves or to even think that we can be saved apart from God's work alone. And now immediately after no mercy was weaned, our text says that, "Not my people was conceived and born." No mercy leads to not my people. Hosea's point is that Israel became unrecognizable to God. A nation that once trusted God's mercy has now turned to their own ways.

So when God looked upon Israel and saw what they had become, he said, "These aren't my people. I don't know who they are. My people trust me as a child would trust a father, but they're running after other gods."

The Lord looked upon them and said, "I don't know who you are anymore." This was the darkest point in Israel's history. Verse nine literally translates to, "I am not I am to you." I am not I am to you. Remember where that I Am name came from? Exodus 3, when Moses said, "What should the people call you?" And he said, "I am who I am." It was a name of blessing, a name of rich sufficiency, a name that showed that in God they had

everything that they needed. All fatherly care would rest upon God alone for His people. But now God says, "I am not I am to you." God revokes the name He told Israel to call Him.

Again, this judgment on each of these children is realized in Israel's exile.

And this was the worst curse that they could receive. In Deuteronomy 28 it says, "The Lord will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other, and there you shall serve gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known."

And there's a message here for us.

We know that God irresistibly draws us to Himself, that He changes our hearts by His sovereign grace to walk with Him and love Him.

But we still have to heed the warnings of scripture. Do you love God?

Do you want to know Him? Do you enjoy His care?

Pastor Nate told us this morning that it's Christ's commitment to us that saves us, not our commitment to Him.

But God also engages our affections to love Him, to desire Him.

Not my people should make us reflect, perhaps on the past year of our lives. And reflect on this question: Have you wanted to be His child, sin and all? Have you wanted to be under His care?

Hosea seriously addresses the discipline we deserve for our sin, and he used a shocking symbol to do it. In case we've forgotten what our sin is, Hosea is always going to remind us.

We deserve to hear Jezreel, no mercy, and not my people.

Because by nature we're swollen with pride, building our lives upon proud rebellion rather than humble obedience, and by nature we spurn God's mercy with our dead works, thinking that our decency will make us right with God. And by nature, we reject His fatherly care.

God has every right to say to us, "Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness, for I never knew you."

Hosea's family illustrates what's wrong with us and what we properly deserve.

But he doesn't stay there. And this is the great thing about Hosea.

Just when you think that the Lord will let you go, He shows that He's been clinging to you all along. The Lord uses the extreme lows of Hosea to magnify the heights of His gracious love.

So we see in verses 10 and 11, in chapter 2 verse 1, the surprise of grace, the restoration we don't deserve. Jezreel, no mercy, and not my people are reversed in a dramatic fashion.

And that should leave us with a question. How? How does this happen? God was just disowning Israel, and now they shall be called children of the living God. God was just speaking about his imminent destruction, and yet their children shall be like the sand of the sea, plenteous, innumerable. God was just planning to break Israel in the valley of Jezreel, but Jezreel shall be the place of their restoration.

How? How does this happen, this dramatic reversal?

One pastor said it well, "Sin always has its consequences, but it does not frustrate grace." He uses a word that's not a word, but I'm going to use it too, because it's a good word. Grace is unfrustratable.

Now, he doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want and hope for the best. He means that God always accomplishes His gracious purposes, even in the face of extreme sin. That's how grace works. It's undeserved altogether. No part of us can deserve it.

And so if God desires to be gracious, He will be gracious. You cannot frustrate His plan.

And this is a common theme in scripture, going all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Immediately after the fall of sin, Adam received a gracious promise that Christ would crush the head of the serpent and defeat death, the very thing that his sin brought into the world.

And immediately after God judged the world, scattered the nations at Babel, and confused the languages, He promised through the family of Abraham, through the one offspring, Christ,

to unite His people again.

Hosea draws on God's unfrustratable grace to encourage His people. In the face of egregious sin, three-quarters of our passage is sin. God extends grace.

And in our passage, he reiterates the promise given to Abraham, that the children of Israel will be like the sand of the sea. He reiterates God's promise to David that there will be a Messiah, one who will unite God's people and reign as king.

Sin doesn't throw God off course. God doesn't change His plans.

He wasn't surprised by Israel's disobedience. He stays the course and fulfills His promises, even if they were crowded out by sin in that moment.

Ultimately, such a dramatic transition points us to the work of Christ. Christ is the end of all God's gracious promises, and He's the only answer to how such terrible judgment can be uttered and then reversed in a moment.

And that's because He bore that curse

in order to give His people His blessing.

In His love for His adulterous bride,

He was hurt, personally hurt, and betrayed, and He has the wounds to bear it. He shows his disciples on multiple occasions. After He rises, He shows them his wounds,

validating what He went through, what He suffered for His people who have wandered, who by all means were far gone. You strike the shepherd, the sheep are scattered.

But by His wounds, He heals His bride of her sin.

Hosea is a messy book.

Our text today is messy. There are things here that are just hard to work through.

And later on, we'll read of things that are even hard to think about.

But Hosea doesn't leave us in the mess. He shows us the way out.

And the only way out is through Christ, for as deep as Hosea takes us into our iniquity, he pulls us up to the infinite heights of His grace.

In Psalm 130,

the psalmist says, "With the Lord, there is steadfast love and plentiful redemption." I think that we see those two things in our text tonight. An exact reversal, a plentiful redemption in Christ alone.

So if you struggle to see the horrors of your sin for what they are,

Hosea will show you in no uncertain terms.

If you struggle to comprehend God's grace and you're stuck trying to earn it, just trying to appease God, trying to earn His favor, Hosea will assure you that God's grace is free. No strings attached.

And if you're confused about the love of God,

Hosea will overwhelm you with it.

Let's pray.

Our Lord, we read several times throughout your Word that your steadfast love endures forever. Yet we confess we don't know what that means.

But we pray that you would show us the heights, the depths, the breadth, the length of the love of Christ that's unsearchable, vast, immeasurable, that makes us cry out in praise to you because it is far beyond our comprehension. We pray that you would show us that love, for we desperately need it. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.