Last year for the Westpres, I wrote about twelve disciples of Jesus. This year, I thought we would move back to the Old Testament. Even though we have just finished the sermon series in Exodus and have previously preached through Genesis, much of the Old Testament remains uncharted territory for Christians.
The are 39 books of the Old Testament. The first five are generally known as the Pentateuch and often are referred to as the “Torah” or the Law. After those first five, the next twelve books tell how God’s people entered the Promised Land, grew into a kingdom, and then fell under judgment. Then, there are the “Wisdom” books including Job, Psalms and Proverbs. After the Wisdom and poetry books, there are the prophets.
The prophet section is usually divided between the “major” and “minor” prophets. The division has more to do with the length of the books as it does with their importance. There are twelve “minor” prophets – and these are going to be the focus of this year’s Westpres articles. The twelve are: Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi.
Ok, enough background. Let’s look at Hosea.
Hosea begins with an instruction from God to take an adulterous wife, Gomer. “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” (1:2) This sets up the rest of the book where three themes play out: first, the consequences of breaking the covenant made at Sinai are detailed; second, the call to repentance is repeated; and third, the promise of an eventual reconciliation and re-establishment of the covenant relationship.
Hosea’s marriage was not happy. Gomer conceived three children, who received rather unusual names. Jezreel, the firstborn son, was named because God “will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.” The second child was a daughter, Lo-Ruhamah, because God “will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them.” The third child was a son, Lo-Ammi, which means “You are not my people, and I am not your God.” Those are not happy names. Yet, in how they are interpreted and developed throughout the rest of the book, they show the depth of God’s faithfulness and love for His people.
Consequences for unfaithfulness are a reality in Hosea’s prophetic call. Though poetic, the language is clear about how unfaithfulness will yield consequences. “I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst.” (2:3) “I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them.” (2:6-7) “I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes – a people without understanding will come to ruin!” (4:14) “For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a great lion to Judah, I will tear them to pieces and go away; I will carry them off, with no one to rescue them. Then I will go back to my place until they admit their guilt. And they will seek my face; in their misery they will earnestly seek me.” (5:14-15) “Woe to them, because they have strayed from me! Destruction to them, because they have rebelled against me!” (7:13)
Even the priesthood has failed; those called and ordained to lead the people in worship to Yahweh have strayed and become corrupt. “The more the priests increased, the more they sinned against me; they exchanged their Glory for something disgraceful. They feed on the sins of my people and relish their wickedness. And it will be: like people, like priests. I will punish both of them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.” (4:7-8)
There are repeated calls for repentance. Throughout the book, the accounts of Israel’s foolishness and rebellion are detailed in sorrow. A charge, listing the places where Israel was unfaithful, is included: Baal-peor – here they first consecrated themselves to Baal (9:10); Gilgal – here they crowned Saul king and compromised Yahweh’s sovereignty (9:15); Bethel – here they desecrated Yahweh’s name and Jacob’s memory with the golden calf (10:5-6); Gibeah – here they unbridled lust stained your history book with the gruesome tale of gang-rape. (9:9; 10:9-10; referring to Judges 19). Rebellion and unfaithfulness are not pretty. Further, the foolishness of the people is illustrated through metaphors describing their character: stubborn calf (4:16); a loaf half-baked, yet mouldy (7:8-9), a silly dove (7:11), a baby too stupid to be born (13:13). The point of these harsh characterizations and the recounting of unfaithfulness is to wake up the people to God’s holiness, God’s faithfulness, and God’s deep desire for the joy of the covenantal relationship with His people.
Reconciliation is a recurring theme. It does not eliminate nor mitigate the consequences for the people’s rejection of God and breaking the covenant; but it does establish who is sovereign and who will have the last word. In 1:10-2:1: “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited, and they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel. “Say of your brothers, ‘My people,’ and of your sisters, ‘My loved one.’” In 2:14-23, there is a love song of how God will court and win the love of His people. In 3:1-5, Hosea is ordered to redeem Gomer from her life of prostitution, to symbolize how God will redeem the people from the consequences of their sinful behavior. In 11:8-11, God speaks of his longing for the restoration of the relationship and how He will accomplish it, “My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.” Finally, in 14:1-7, Hosea exhorts the people to return to the LORD, so that God “will heal their waywardness and love them freely, for my anger has turned away from them.”
There are several things to note about Hosea’s message as it applies today. First, the people were comfortable and not concerned about the holiness of God. Their day-to-day lives were marked with ritual and habits that seemed acceptable because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.” The calls to wake up and pursue faithfulness went unheeded. As a result consequences followed. The point? God is serious about calling us to fidelity and faithfulness with him. The covenant is real.
Second, the marriage illustration and continued references to sexual fidelity show how important faithfulness to God is for us. Sexual relations within the covenant of marriage are celebrated; outside, condemned and rejected. One commentator wrote, “Hosea’s answer to the harlotry with the Baals was not a prudish rejection of the love relationship but an absolute claim to it.” How different that is than the message the people were receiving from their priests and culture; how different that is than the message that our people are receiving from this society’s priests and culture. The imagery demonstrates the exclusivity of God’s claim on us, and how we are to be completely committed to God.
Third, the promise of reconciliation is the hope onto which we hold. We know, as the people in Hosea’s time did not, that God has provided for that reconciliation in the life, death, resurrection and glory of Jesus Christ. Even so, throughout Hosea, God’s faithfulness and love are constant. The accounts of how God had been faithful gave rise to the hope that God would continue to be faithful. Ultimately, that hope would be rewarded and fulfilled. So, too, today, we can have confidence in the hope of the realization of the victory of the kingdom of God and our participation as co-heirs of that kingdom with Jesus. Hosea calls us to look at our own lives, to repent of the ways in which we have strayed from God’s command, and to hold on the hope that we have of God’s faithfulness.
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