God’s Unfailing Covenant Love

I’d like for you this morning to survey the book of Hosea. So it’d probably be good for us to turn to that book. It’s the first of the minor prophets. It’s not too difficult to find in the Old Testament. After the Psalms, you have the four after the poetic books, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, you have the four major prophets. And after the book of Daniel, which is the fourth of the major prophets, you have the first of the minor prophets, which is the book of Hosea. We’re going to hopefully, the goal this morning is to take a good look at this book to get an understanding of the outline of these 13 chapters and to make application to our hearts through the message that God has to the people of Israel through Hosea and through them to us.

Let me pray for us before I read anything. And then we’re going to read a few select verses from this book. Let’s pray.

I think I’m going to begin, we’re going to be looking at, you can turn to chapter one if you want to. We’re going to begin really there. But I’m going to begin reading by reading a verse that you heard recently. Jared quoted this verse about two weeks ago. And it’s in chapter six and verse six. I think that’s right. Well, no, it isn’t. But the verse I’m going to quote, I’m just going to quote it.

I desire mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.

For I delight in loyalty. I’m going to read a different translation.

For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice and then the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

So this is the heart of the covenant. It has to do with the authentic love and mercy of God. And it is 6:6. I just happened to turn to the wrong spot in my Bible there. So it is 6:6. Delight in loyalty or mercy rather than sacrifice. And then the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. And that’s the place I think I have to begin with dealing with this book. Because in a great sense, that’s the heart of the message of the book of Hosea, that God delights in our wholehearted devotion to him.

The Meaning of God’s Covenant Love (Chesed)

And for us to understand it, I want us to go back and repeat some of the things that I’m pretty sure that Jared shared with you. And it has to do with the meaning of this verse. He read the verse from Hosea. He turned to Matthew’s gospel and he quoted the two times that Jesus quoted this verse. Jesus quoted this verse to the Pharisees twice. And he says, learn what this means.

That I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

Learn what this means. And what is he talking about? The first thing I wanted you to notice about this verse is that it’s translated in different ways. It’s very interesting because with the verse, you have I quoted two translations. The first one that I read from was the American Standard 1901. And the second one that I read was from the New American Standard 1995.

The first one says, for I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

The second one says, for I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice.

You could throw in, if you look at different translations, you might find different words there. You’re going to find words like you could find the word loving kindness there. You could find certainly mercy is a common translation there. You find unfailing love and steadfast love. Now, what’s going on is these new translations confusing us? Should it really be mercy because that’s what it says in some of the older translations? No, what is going on here is the meaning of that Hebrew word chesed. What does that word mean? And this is what I’m sure Jared explained to you. This is what the word means and this is why it’s so difficult. If the word is translated mercy, it’s translated mercy in this passage because it means mercy. If the word is translated as it is in loyalty, it’s translated loyalty because it means loyalty. If it’s translated as steadfast love, it’s translated that way because that’s what it means. You see the Hebrew word chesed has no English equivalent. There’s no English equivalent. And what this word means, it means loving kindness. It means mercy. It means unfailing steadfast love. It means all of those things at one time. All of that at once. And then you begin to get the idea of the word. It’s talking about people in a covenant relationship with God. That’s part of the idea of that word, a covenant relationship. A covenant relationship like a marriage.

Yesterday our family was attended a wedding, a wedding of my great niece. And they committed their vows to each other and they entered into a covenant relationship with each other. And part of that covenant relationship and what you presume is that they will commit their love to each other, to love each other to death till death they part. And that’s what a covenant is. And so that’s part of the idea of this word. It also means that the person in that covenant is faithful to keep the covenant. They stay faithful in the relationship. If you have chesed love, if you have that type of love, then you’re faithful in the covenant relationship that you’ve entered into with the other person. And the reason that you’re faithful to keep that is because you love that other person. It means all those things at once. So that’s what we’re talking about here.

And Jared when he was explaining this a few weeks ago, he also quoted the words of the great Shema in the Old Testament, the Deuteronomy 6:4 and 5.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

The first word there is Shema. Shema Yisrael in Hebrew and that’s why the Jews call that the great Shema. And it’s saying it’s like a mother who’s talking to a child who’s beginning to disobey and she says, listen. She means obey me. Listen to me. Obey me. That’s what this word means. That’s what the word Shema means. It means to hear so as to obey.

Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God.

Listen to him. Obey him. And then the next verse gives the commandment. All this goes together. The commandment.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

That’s what you’re to obey. And that’s what God most wants. And so the message that Hosea has for Israel is that you don’t obey in little ritual practices that you’ve picked up from Jewish practice. You’re not to just have a perfunctory obedience by coming to church or giving an offering or anything that you can come up with a list of things like that. You don’t make yourself right with God by keeping and doing any of these things. You make yourself right with God first of all, and you do these things because you love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. It’s the heart attitude to God that God is looking for. And that’s the number one priority for the people of God, is that they love God with all that they are and with everything that they have.

Hosea’s Symbolic Marriage and Children

The book of Hosea begins with Hosea, the first three chapters is a description of Hosea and the relationship with his wife. And we meet them in some very surprising verses at the beginning in chapter one. It says,

The word of the Lord which came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, during the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel.

Hosea was a prophet of God. He was a prophet of God that was sent to the northern kingdom of Israel. It says in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash. That’s the second Jeroboam in Israel. And so in that king’s reign, Hosea began his ministry, and he began to serve and minister to the people of Israel. He was a prophet to them. He’s giving the word of God to them. And it says when the Lord first spoke through Hosea, this is what he said.

The Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry, for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord.” So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore a son.

Well, here’s a very surprising couple of verses. We meet two people. First of all, we meet a man whose name is Hosea. And I should tell you, the name Hosea means God saves, Yahweh saves. The name itself, Hosea, means salvation. God saves. And he marries a woman whose name is Gomer. Now, Gomer is not a very common name. I expect you’ve only known one Gomer in your life. And that was on a television program in the ’60s. It was an uncommon name in biblical times. You have a man who’s named Gomer, who’s one of the descendants of Japheth, and you can find his name listed in Genesis 10. His name was Gomer, and his name is repeated once more in the Bible, and then you have this Gomer who is a woman. And as far as I know, this is the only reference in ancient Jewish literature of a woman whose name’s Gomer. The name was rare for men. It was rare, certainly rarer for women. But we have this woman and her name is Gomer. And I think it’s interesting that God has brought them together, this man whose name is salvation, and this woman who is named Gomer. And Gomer means full measure. Full measure.

Now, I don’t know what you think of if you think of completion or full measure. But the first thing I thought of when I learned that was Genesis 15:16. It says, God is talking to Abraham, and he is promising Abraham that you’re going to inherit this land. We’re going to bring your people and your people are going to possess this whole land, but not yet. The land belongs right now to the Amorites. And the Amorites, we’re going to give them 400 years, and in 400 years, their evil will be made full. It will be made complete, and then we’ll bring judgment on the Amorites, and you will possess the land. That’s the first thing I thought of. And that’s exactly what it comes to mean here. Because the marriage of Hosea and Gomer is like a parable. It’s reflecting the nation of Israel and their relationship with God. And so just as Gomer is the one whose iniquity is filling up, Hosea is like the God who brings salvation, judgment, and salvation. Her unfaithfulness brings Israel’s sin to full measure, bringing on the coming judgment. And Hosea is the one who represents God in that relationship. And so that’s the picture of their marriage.

He gets married, and there’s nothing in this verse that would think that she had a life of harlotry before they got married. The point is that he married this woman, and God had given him the word ahead of time that she’s not going to be faithful to you, but you need to marry her. Go ahead and marry her. That was the message. She’s going to be to you just like Israel is to me. Unfaithful. Unfaithful. It’s like a lot of marriages that we know. I know marriages that worked out quite a bit like this. I had a good friend in seminary, in Bible college, he was headed to seminary. He was an outstanding student, he was brilliant, he was a godly man. He had planned on his seminary worked out. He was a leader in the school. He was very accomplished. And he had found the perfect wife. And it was incredibly tragic because she was already seeing someone else before they even got married. And they were only married a few months when she left him for the other person. And it ruined his ministry, and his ministry hopes. He left seminary and ended up pursuing a different career. It was a tragic thing. Unfaithfulness. And we know you can think of relationships quite a bit like that. Every one of us has been exposed to have friends or relatives or people who’ve gone through similar things, but this story’s different. This is an extraordinary story because of the way it ends up.

The first thing that happens in their marriage is that they have children. The first child that is born is it says that Hosea seeks the name of this child from the Lord. And the Lord tells him exactly what to name the child, and he’s to call this child Jezreel. Jezreel. Now, Jezreel probably sounds okay to you and me, but that would have been a shocking name in the 8th century BC in Israel. Because there had been an incident in Jewish history that had taken place. You might remember the story of King Ahab, the wicked king of Israel, and Queen Jezebel, the Phoeniciaan princess who became the wife of King Ahab. Jezebel is pretty infamous because she promoted Baal worship in Israel. And when she promoted and was persecuting the prophets of God, and she was promoting Baal worship, and so she ran into conflict with the prophet Elijah. You might remember some of that. She put to death the prophets of Yahweh, and she put to death a man by the name of Naboth so that her husband could take his vineyard. And as a result, Elijah condemned them both, King Ahab and Jezebel for their actions concerning Naboth, and he foretold a grim fate for the queen.

prophesied that dogs would devour Jezebel by the walls of Jezreel.

By the walls of Jezreel. And years later, this prophecy was fulfilled with horrifying exactitude. Jezebel’s son, King Joram was put to death by a man named Jehu, who became the king. And he was his mission, he believed to put to death the house of Ahab. He was killing the people of Ahab, the children of Ahab, the descendants. And when Jehu rode into the city of Jezreel, Jezebel, who was adorned and was on a balcony and looked out of a window. She sees him. She’s all dressed and made up. And she sees Jehu riding in and she starts taunting him from a window. And in a rather dramatic turn of events, Jehu commands her eunuchs to throw her down. And they do. They take her and they threw her over. And which kills her and Jehu’s rides his horses over her. And she’s put to death. And then a little later, he decides that maybe since she’s of royalty, we should go back and bury her. But when they go back, her body’s been eaten by the dogs and there’s just a few little parts left. Not much to bury. That’s a terrible terrible thing. That kind of thing would stick in your mind, wouldn’t it?

Jezreel. It means to cast out, to sow. That’s what it means. And the imagery here that God is using for this firstborn child of this marriage is you’re going to name him Jezreel and as you see him and you call him in the market, you’re going to be saying Jezreel and people are going to be thinking about this incident and they’re going to be thinking about to cast out, to sow. And what God is saying here is I’m going to take you, the nation of Israel, the people of Israel, the northern kingdom. I’m going to scoop you up into my hand and I’m going to sow you across the land, across the world. I’m going to scatter you. That’s the idea to sow, to scatter. It was a message and a warning of judgment on the house of Israel. So name him Jezreel.

For yet a little while and I’ll punish the house of Jehu for the bloodshed of Jezreel and I’ll put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.

And then there’s the other children. Luruha, who is a daughter. Lo Ruha means the Hebrew word Lo means no. And Ruha means compassion or pity. And God is saying, I’m not going to have pity on you. Because of your sinfulness, House of Israel, I’m not going to pity you. And then the next child was born, his name is Lo Ammi, not my people.

Name him Lo Ammi for you’re not my people and I’m not your God.

Israel’s Unfaithfulness and Divine Judgment

That’s what God is saying to these Jewish people who live in the northern kingdom. There’s that side of it. And then there’s the side that was personal for Hosea. When you get to this last child and God tells you, name this child not my people. That’s telling you something about the relationship. And God says that you’re going to have children of harlotry. That is your wife Gomer is not going to be faithful to you and the children that you have are not going to be yours. That’s what’s going on here. So you have this woman who is obviously a pretty wicked woman. At least in terms of her heart relationship to Hosea, doesn’t care about him. Doesn’t love him. Probably started out their marriage and things seemed so good and tried to find comfort and blessing in that marriage, but she couldn’t do it. She had other powerful desires. And she wanted to better herself. If you want to know what her motivation was for this, it tells us in the next chapter, in chapter two,

for she said, I’ll go after my lovers who give me my bread and water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.

She wants better things. She’s going after lovers who’s going to give her the things that she desires and the things that she wants. And that’s a big part of her motivation for this. And there’s a great irony here. Because she leaves Hosea and she’s living with someone. And one of the interesting things that’s going on is that Hosea because he still loves her, wants to meet her needs. He recognizes that the person that she’s living with is not going to be able to take care of her the way she needs to be taken care of. And so, look at verse eight.

For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain and the new wine and the oil and lavished on her silver and gold which they used for Baal.

He’s talking about Hosea and they’re talking about Israel. They’re both here. She didn’t know. Can you imagine how that could have played out? Hosea goes to this man and says, I’m the husband of the woman that you’re living with. And then you can imagine the kind of conflict that might raise in his heart and what he does next though has to be shocking. He says, what I want to do is I want to give you some things so that you can meet Hosea’s needs better. I want you to take care of her so that she has enough to eat and she has the good clothing. I want you to take care of Gomer. I’m saying Hosea. I want you to take care of Gomer. And meet the needs that she has. That’s what Hosea is saying to this man and he must think that he’s crazy. What a crazy person this is. And yet he would take it. So that’s the interesting thing. When that continues and she doesn’t respond in any kind of a way, Hosea begins to withhold that. And as he withholds that, she comes to a place of poverty. And as they become more destitute, the time comes where this man feels like he has to do is sell his wife, sell this woman. Gomer’s his possession now. He’s going to sell her. So he takes her to a slave market and puts her up for sale. He takes her to a slave market and she puts her up for sale.

Now, I want you to picture that in your mind. I’m going to have to wrap this up quickly. I don’t know how, but I’m going to. Here’s a woman who has pursued all this life of her pursuing her pleasures and her desires and her wants to get the things that she wants. It hasn’t worked out for her. The more she’s done that, the more destitute she’s become to the place where now she’s brought to a slave market, stripped of her clothing. Put on public display and auctioned off. Now she’s the one who loves wonderful things and here she is in a market where you can probably smell all the animal smells and all the things of that, not the perfumes that she wants and desires. That’s where she is. On the slave market. Offered for sale. Who knows what’s going to happen? I’m going to be a slave. It’s going to be awful. It’s going to be worse than it’s ever been. I mean, a place of completely destitute and desperate at your very end. That’s where she is. Do you think she’s happy there? God has brought her to this place. And God does something remarkable right there where she’s there in the slave market.

Now, I need to point out the rest of the book quickly and I’m going to take just a couple minutes to try and do some of that. What takes place next and it’s important enough that I should mention it is that God opens up the throne room of heaven, the courtrooms of heaven and God as judge begins to bring the accusations on the people of Israel. They have been practicing idolatry since this nation split off from the southern kingdom. From the very beginning, every king, all nine 19 kings of Israel were wicked kings. All of them kept them in idolatry. Every one of them pursued idolatry and the people practiced idolatry. They practiced a hybrid religion so that they were trying to keep the law of the Old Testament. And yet, when God gave them grain, and when God gave them new wine and oil, they were giving praise to Baal and Ashra and the other gods. And that’s easy when you’re thinking about that to condemn them and to condemn Gomer for such foolishness. But it’s easy for us to do the same thing. God gives blessing to you and it’s easy for you to thank everybody, your employer, thank the waiter waitress who brings you the food or the cook, to give praise to your own strength and wisdom and to never give thanks to God. God is the one who gives blessing. God’s the one who gives grace and mercy and brings blessing. And so one of the great sins of Israel was to fail to give thanks and recognition to God. And they worshiped in order to pursue, they would make a contract with the God Baal to send the rain. And they would offer sacrifices to Baal. And God because of that opens up the courtroom and he begins to tell them about all their sins. And so over these next chapters, he begins to outline their sins. He begins to explain to them why their priests have become corrupt, how they practice things like lying and murder and there’s no truth in the land. And all of the, there’s no knowledge of God. There’s no relationship with God. They practice a form of religion and thinking that they’re pleasing to God Yahweh, but they’re not. They have no heart for God at all. And so because of that, God is giving his verdict and that verdict is exile. The nation, because they have sown to the wind, that’s the words of Hosea.

Because they’ve sown to the wind, they would reap the whirlwind.

And yet, God is judge even as he makes this judgment, he says, how can I give you up, Ephraim? He calls the nation, the northern kingdom here is referred to as Ephraim.

How can I give you up?

Isn’t it an incredible passage. The idea is like a judge. If you were a judge, and you’re a just judge and you always render right. And one day, into your court is your own son. Your son is brought into court and he’s on trial for murder. And as the trial takes place, it becomes absolutely clear that he’s guilty of murder. So at the end, you as the judge has to render a just verdict, which is guilty. You have to declare your own son guilty and then render the judgment. Can you imagine what that would do to your heart? Can you imagine how incredibly hard that would be? That’s exactly as you read through the book of Hosea, that’s exactly the language that God uses to describe his relationship with Israel, with these people. He was there. He taught Ephraim how to walk. That’s what he says. He nurtured them like as a child. He watched him grow up. He gave him all that he needed and he grows up and he loves him just like a child. And now the time comes when he has to bring judgment. He has to bring him and bring about the sentence. It’s an incredible thing. It’s like what happened to Gomer. She is left to her own iniquity, brings to the place where her own sinfulness leads her to despair and to extreme poverty and there she is. God brings judgment on Israel. He doesn’t back off from that.

He says in chapter 10, I will chasten them and the people will be gathered against them and they’ll be bound in double guilt.

He singles out the Assyrians to come and the Assyrians come and they attack Israel, they attack them, they scatter the people and Israel, this northern kingdom never comes back to the land. They’re scattered away. They’re brought away and they never return. That’s all the myths of the 10 lost tribes of Israel. That’s where that comes from. They’re scattered.

It says you’ve plowed wickedness, you’ve reaped injustice.

You’ve eaten the fruits of lies because you’ve trusted your ways, your numerous warriors.

They trusted everybody but God. They put their trust in everything, in false gods and in other nations, the very nations that actually brought about their destruction. And so God left them to all that to this judgment.

God’s Unconditional Redemption and Future Hope

And yet God yearns over his people.

When Israel was a youth, I loved him.

And out of Egypt, I called my son.

The more they called them, the more they went from him. They kept sacrificing to the Baals. That’s what it says. And yet he loved them. He loved them. And he promises to restore them. Promises to restore them.

Picture Gomer on that slave block. She’s being offered for sale. Price of a slave is 30 pieces of silver. They’re auctioning her and somebody offers 15. Maybe 15 and an Omer of barley. And Hosea is there. Yes, Hosea is there seeing this auction. And Hosea says, I’ll give you 15 shekels of silver and Omer and a half of barley. And the auctioneer says, sold. And Hosea buys Gomer back. Why does he buy her back? To punish her for all of that she’s done? No. He buys her back to redeem her. And he speaks literally to her heart. And he says, come home to me. And no more harlotry, no more other men. You be faithful to me and I will always be faithful to you, no matter what. He loved Gomer with a kind of love that never turned loose. Never turned loose. What kind of love God loves you with? He loves you with a love that is not conditioned because of your behavior and your actions. The things that you have done in your past, God loves you despite that. That’s the divine dilemma. The fact that God is just and he must punish sin and yet he is the savior who loves. He’s the one who brings salvation. That’s what Hosea pictures when he goes and purchases Gomer out of the slave market, the slave market of sin. That’s what Jesus does for us. It’s exactly why Jesus came into this world. Jesus entered this world in Bethlehem. He entered into our slave market of sin. He came into this world for the one purpose of redeeming us. He is the true Hosea, the true savior. He’s the true God who comes with salvation. And he doesn’t purchase us with 15 shekels of silver and Omer and a half of barley. He purchases us with his own blood and we’re washed in the blood of Jesus Christ so that our sins can be washed away. The judgment that we deserve is completely paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ and his great sacrifice for us. That’s what Hosea pictures. He pictures this great work that God has done. And as a result of God’s grace and deliverance, God promises future blessing for these people that he scattered. He sowed them into the world. He says, I’m going to take you up and all of the names that are given are undone. He will take them and sow them back into the land. He promises that in the last days it says. He says that the one who is called no mercy, I will call, I will give mercy to. He turns that name around. The one who is not my people, he says, I’m renaming you my people. You are not my people, but I’m making you my people again. God promises salvation and Israel’s future blessing. And that’s very clear. He’s talking about here about these very people who’ve been scattered and who have not yet returned to the land. So God brings great grace and salvation.

Responding to God’s Grace: Desperation and Redemption

When God works in our lives to bring us to the end of ourselves to a place of desperation. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. Should Gomer be happy when she’s on that auction block? Well, in a sense, no, she’s come to the end of herself. Oh, but what Jesus says of that?

He says, blessed are the poor in spirit.

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

See, you come to the place where you’ve got nothing. You’ve got nothing to offer God. There’s nothing in you at all. That’s the place where you can receive grace. That’s the place that God has brought you so that you can know what is true, what is right and good. You get to that place where you’re weeping because you have nothing. And Jesus says,

happy is those who mourn.

For they’re the ones who will be comforted.

That’s true for Gomer. It’s true for us. We’re going to celebrate the Lord’s table. And I’m going to pray for these elements. And this is what Jesus did for us. Jesus made a sacrifice of his own blood and body to purchase us, to pay the redemption price, to purchase us out of the slave market of sin. So that we would love him with our whole heart. So that we would not be trying to earn our place before him. But that we would love him because he has paid the debt for us. Let’s pray.

If you would come, the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way he took the cup also after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Let me just pray one more time for us.

If you would please stand as we close our time together with the doxology. It’s number six in your hymnals.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above the heavenly host. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.