EXPOSING A BROKEN RELATIONSHIP

DECEMBER 2, 2012

·         The Minor Prophets dealt with the fact that God's people had broken the law of God. 

·         This necessarily puts an emphasis on works, good works. 

·         For this reason the liberals and the promoters of the social gospel have used the Minor Prophets a great deal.  Unfortunately they have missed the main message of these prophets.

·         Hosea lived during the time of the divided kingdom. 

·         He was a prophet to the northern kingdom which is called the kingdom of Israel -- distinguished from the southern kingdom called the kingdom of Judah.

·         The capital of the northern kingdom was Samaria which was destroyed when the kingdom was invaded by the Assyrian armies.

·         Hosea was a contemporary of Amos, another prophet to Israel. 

·         He was also a contemporary of Micah and Isaiah, prophets to Judah.

·         His ministry extended over fifty years, and he lived to see the fulfillment of his prophecy in the captivity of Israel.

·         Judgment, righteousness, brotherhood, and even God were forgotten by the king and the people. 

·         The Assyrians had taken control of Israel in 733 B.C. by Tiglath-pileser III after overthrowing Pekah and replacing him with Hoshea.

·         After Tiglath-pileser III died in 727 B.C., Hoshea formed a kind of alliance with Egypt and withheld tribute from Assyria (2 Kings 17:4). 

·         Shalmaneser V, of Assyria, pounced upon Israel like a hungry cat. 

·         Samaria fell in 721 B.C., and its citizens were exiled.

·         The story behind the prophecy of Hosea is the tragedy of a broken home.

The style is very concise and sententious, above any of the prophets; and in some places it seems to be like the book of Proverbs, without connexion, and rather to be called Hosea's sayings than Hosea's sermons.

-Matthew Henry Commentary on the whole Bible

His name is the same with Joshua and Jesus, and signifies a saviour; and he was not only, as all the true prophets of the Lord and faithful ministers of the word are, the means and instruments in the hand of God of saving people; but he was a type of Christ the Saviour, as well as prophesied concerning him, and salvation by him.

-John Gill Commentary on Hosea

1.     SOMETHING’S NOT RIGHT HERE (HOSEA 1:1-2)

1 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.

2 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, 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."

NASB

·         Hosea is told to marry a woman worthless in character.

·         This is a picture of His people; how they remained the object of God’s love, in spite of their sinfulness.

1. That the whole is an allegory or parable. This is the view of Calvin, who objects to an actual marriage of the prophet with an unchaste woman on the ground that it would discredit him with the very people whom he wished to influence.

…

2.   Some think that Hosea actually married a woman who was leading an unchaste life; that she bore    three children to him and then lapsed into her old life once more, sinking into a condition of slavery from which she was bought by Hosea and restored to his home, though not at first to the full intimacy of married life. This view, it must be confessed, would seem the most natural to a plain reader. The chief objection is moral. How could the Holy God direct a pure-minded prophet to form such an unnatural union?

…

3.   Others hold that Hosea was directed to marry a woman given to idolatry, an idolatry which was often   associated with licentiousness, although his bride was not an actually unchaste woman at first, but only a spiritual adulteress. She bore to the prophet three children, to whom symbolical names were given. Later on, idolatry brought forth its natural fruitage, and Hosea's wife became an actual adulteress.

-B.H. Carroll, An interpretation of the English Bible Volume 7, Chapter 7

2.     YOUR SINS WILL COME OUT (HOSEA 2:2-5)

2 "Contend with your mother, contend, For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; And let her put away her harlotry from her face, And her adultery from between her breasts,

…lay before her, her sin in rejecting the Messiah, the Head and Husband of his true church and people; endeavour to convince her of it; reprove her for it; expostulate with her about it; argue the case with her, and show her the danger of persisting in such an evil, as the apostles did,…

-John Gill Commentary on Hosea

 3 Lest I strip her naked And expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, Make her like desert land, And slay her with thirst. 4 "Also, I will have no compassion on her children, Because they are children of harlotry. 5 "For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.'

NASB

·         Hosea married a girl who had become a harlot, and, even after they had been married for some time and had three children, she went back to prostitution again; all the while he loved her.

·         Applying this to our own lives, we can ask what is the greatest sin a Christian can commit? 

·         Many people feel that it is murder or lying or even coveting, but the greatest sin is unfaithfulness to God who has redeemed us and who loves us.

The mother here is Israel taken collectively and is represented as a wife, unfaithful to the marriage relation. The threat of stripping her naked is in accord with the Oriental custom of dealing with the harlot, which is the method also of the Germans in dealing with an adulteress. … Her children are the children of Israel individually who are also barred from the privileges of the covenant and there are no blessings for them. Her lovers mentioned here are her idols to which she had turned for support, for which the Lord pronounces the curse upon them, that will turn them back to himself.

-B.H. Carroll, An interpretation of the English Bible Volume 7, Chapter 7

3.     REDEMPTION CARRIES A PRICE (HOSEA 3:1-5)

1 Then the LORD said to me, "Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the sons of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes."

·         Hosea is to follow the way of the Lord insofar as the Lord's relationship with Israel is concerned.

·         For God still loves Israel even though they keep turning "to other gods".

·         The whole history of Israel was one of defection, sin and apostasy; but, God never gave her up.

 2 So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. 3 Then I said to her, "You shall stay with me for many days. You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you."

·         The deprivation of religion is compared to the deprivation of Hosea's wife. 

4 For the sons of Israel will remain for many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols.

·         Applied to Israel it means simply that persistence in Baalism will bring tragic consequences - the loss of identity as a nation.

·         Today, all the holy places in the old Jerusalem are in the hands of the Moslems, the Russian Catholics, the Armenian Church, or the Roman Catholics.

·         Israel does not posses these sacred spots, and they dare not touch them. 

·         Israel does not possess the temple area, and they do not have a sacrifice today. 

·         The only holy place they have is the western wall.

5 Afterward the sons of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king; and they will come trembling to the LORD and to His goodness in the last days.

NASB

This is an illustration of God's great and boundless love for depraved unfaithful Israel, though like the unfaithful wife, she had forsaken Jehovah, her husband. The prophet kept her many days exercising the restraint upon her necessary to bring her to repentance. So the prophet explains that the children of Israel shall abide many days without king, etc., after which they shall return and seek Jehovah, their God, and shall have his favor upon them in the latter days.

-B.H. Carroll, An interpretation of the English Bible Volume 7, Chapter 7

·         " the last days " are yet in the future. 

·         They refer to the nation Israel and to the time beginning with the Great Tribulation and going through the second coming of Christ and on into the Millennium.