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Confidence to Come Back
Confidence to Come Back
Hosea 6:1–3
ILL: Christmas Eve or on the eve of one of our children’s birthdays—these were often far from the peaks of our most spiritual moments of marital bliss. The stubborn thought that often came out of my mouth, “Who needs those written instructions, dear wife, when the picture is right here, plainly showing us how to put this slide or bicycle?” Many of those times concluded with a serving of crow. Just a couple of weeks ago I read from a woman who hilariously described her and her husband’s success in putting a bookshelf together in harmony. She ended her description of that experience with, “God is real!”[1] The picture that God has painted through the life and message of His servant Hosea possesses a messy clarity as well—a powerful clarity that places a most unexpected marriage front and center.
Notorious and scandalous are not beyond the bounds of what any thoughtful reader might describe in evaluating the book of Hosea. No doubt that most of us shared a similar sense of shock when we understood for the first time what God was actually demanding of the prophet: Go and say “I do” to a prostitute.
It is the very life of Hosea with his adulterous wife Gomer which projects and symbolizes Israel’s unfaithfulness at the time of his own prophetic ministry. Within that unfaithfulness other words could be mined from the book as a whole—promiscuous, indifferent, ungrateful, obstinate, trivial, half-hearted, and wild. Many descriptors of modern marriages, really. Yet here’s the strength of Hosea’s message: Israel’s stubbornness could not exhaust God’s redeeming love. Hosea’s overarching priority? To have Israel see her own darkness, to have Israel lay spiritual eyes upon the greatness of her God, and to see Israel turn back to Him who loved her first and best. For these things to happen, Hosea must declare some hard truths to hard hearts. In fact, his prophecy often takes on the mood of being sharp and bitter, and has the marks of a judicial indictment.[2] But there’s another mood of the text—that of a living hope, rooted in the character of a God who will always be there for His people.
I. Tough Love
Many scholars note that there are 6 basic “hope” sections in Hosea—3 in the biographical section, chapters 1-3, and 3 in the preaching sections, which are chapters 6 to the end. Our text is the first section of hope contained within Hosea’s proclamations to the nation.[3] Yet note the parentheses that hems in our text. This is Hosea’s own plea. It’s personal. He’s identifying with the people, just as every good prophet and leader. He’s calling the nation to return back to fidelity with the God who has filled Israel’s history with His lovingkindness. And through a message like this one, we can see clearly that God’s grace never stops annexing these people’s lives.
Hosea prophesied a couple hundred years after the days of Saul and David, approximately the mid 700’s BC. This is 200 years after the split of Israel into the Northern Kingdom which was called Israel, and the Southern Kingdom called Judah. And Hosea’s prophetic ministry is strictly geared to the north. For 100 years leading up to Hosea’s time, God had raised up Elijah, Elisha, and Amos to declare the rank idolatry of the people and her leaders. And this northern kingdom, in fact, never had a king that repented. Judah, the southern kingdom, yes, but not Israel the north. The shared message from Hosea and Amos was acknowledge, confess, and turn from sin, to place a renewed trust in the Lord, and to be astounded by the fragrant riches of His faithfulness and grace.
[1] “Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
How has God torn them, and how has He struck Israel down? Considering chapter 5, it seems as if there’s an already but not yet aspect to the Lord’s judgment. It’s quite clear that the splitti[...]
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By South Woods Baptist ChurchConfidence to Come Back
Hosea 6:1–3
ILL: Christmas Eve or on the eve of one of our children’s birthdays—these were often far from the peaks of our most spiritual moments of marital bliss. The stubborn thought that often came out of my mouth, “Who needs those written instructions, dear wife, when the picture is right here, plainly showing us how to put this slide or bicycle?” Many of those times concluded with a serving of crow. Just a couple of weeks ago I read from a woman who hilariously described her and her husband’s success in putting a bookshelf together in harmony. She ended her description of that experience with, “God is real!”[1] The picture that God has painted through the life and message of His servant Hosea possesses a messy clarity as well—a powerful clarity that places a most unexpected marriage front and center.
Notorious and scandalous are not beyond the bounds of what any thoughtful reader might describe in evaluating the book of Hosea. No doubt that most of us shared a similar sense of shock when we understood for the first time what God was actually demanding of the prophet: Go and say “I do” to a prostitute.
It is the very life of Hosea with his adulterous wife Gomer which projects and symbolizes Israel’s unfaithfulness at the time of his own prophetic ministry. Within that unfaithfulness other words could be mined from the book as a whole—promiscuous, indifferent, ungrateful, obstinate, trivial, half-hearted, and wild. Many descriptors of modern marriages, really. Yet here’s the strength of Hosea’s message: Israel’s stubbornness could not exhaust God’s redeeming love. Hosea’s overarching priority? To have Israel see her own darkness, to have Israel lay spiritual eyes upon the greatness of her God, and to see Israel turn back to Him who loved her first and best. For these things to happen, Hosea must declare some hard truths to hard hearts. In fact, his prophecy often takes on the mood of being sharp and bitter, and has the marks of a judicial indictment.[2] But there’s another mood of the text—that of a living hope, rooted in the character of a God who will always be there for His people.
I. Tough Love
Many scholars note that there are 6 basic “hope” sections in Hosea—3 in the biographical section, chapters 1-3, and 3 in the preaching sections, which are chapters 6 to the end. Our text is the first section of hope contained within Hosea’s proclamations to the nation.[3] Yet note the parentheses that hems in our text. This is Hosea’s own plea. It’s personal. He’s identifying with the people, just as every good prophet and leader. He’s calling the nation to return back to fidelity with the God who has filled Israel’s history with His lovingkindness. And through a message like this one, we can see clearly that God’s grace never stops annexing these people’s lives.
Hosea prophesied a couple hundred years after the days of Saul and David, approximately the mid 700’s BC. This is 200 years after the split of Israel into the Northern Kingdom which was called Israel, and the Southern Kingdom called Judah. And Hosea’s prophetic ministry is strictly geared to the north. For 100 years leading up to Hosea’s time, God had raised up Elijah, Elisha, and Amos to declare the rank idolatry of the people and her leaders. And this northern kingdom, in fact, never had a king that repented. Judah, the southern kingdom, yes, but not Israel the north. The shared message from Hosea and Amos was acknowledge, confess, and turn from sin, to place a renewed trust in the Lord, and to be astounded by the fragrant riches of His faithfulness and grace.
[1] “Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
How has God torn them, and how has He struck Israel down? Considering chapter 5, it seems as if there’s an already but not yet aspect to the Lord’s judgment. It’s quite clear that the splitti[...]