How angry can God get when we disobey? We’ve seen God’s wrath in the Great Flood, Sodom and Gomorrah and we’ll see more of God’s wrath during the Great Tribulation. Yet, God loves His creation. He loves us. He doesn’t want us to disobey. God sends us prophets to warn us. He sent prophets to Israel and Judah. We have major prophets: Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Daniel. We’ll get to those in due time. As we go through the History of Israel, we’ll jump from the prophets to the historical accounts, where what the prophets warned the people about actually happens. First, we have some of the minor prophets (check out the video at the bottom), whom God sent to proclaim His Word to the people of Israel and Judah.
What’s interesting about these prophets is their message from God isn’t just for the people back then, it’s for us right now! They include God’s promises for the people who KNOW HIM and LOVE HIM and FEAR HIM. The prophets explain how God can turn disobedience, failure and exile into a story of hope and restoration.
Hosea served Israel between 760-710 BC. His life mirrors God’s relationship with Israel. It’s a story of both warning and hope. Let’s dig in…
Hosea 1
The Lord gave this message to Hosea son of Beeri during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.
Hosea’s Wife and Children
2 When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.”
3 So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son. 4 And the Lord said, “Name the child Jezreel (“God Plants”), for I am about to punish King Jehu’s dynasty to avenge the murders he committed at Jezreel. In fact, I will bring an end to Israel’s independence. 5 I will break its military power in the Jezreel Valley.”
6 Soon Gomer became pregnant again and gave birth to a daughter. And the Lord said to Hosea, “Name your daughter Lo-ruhamah—‘Not loved’—for I will no longer show love to the people of Israel or forgive them. 7 But I will show love to the people of Judah. I will free them from their enemies—not with weapons and armies or horses and charioteers, but by my power as the Lord their God.”
8 After Gomer had weaned Lo-ruhamah, she again became pregnant and gave birth to a second son. 9 And the Lord said, “Name him Lo-ammi—‘Not my people’—for Israel is not my people, and I am not their God.
10 “Yet the time will come when Israel’s people will be like the sands of the seashore—too many to count! Then, at the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said, ‘You are children of the living God.’ 11 Then the people of Judah and Israel will unite together. They will choose one leader for themselves, and they will return from exile together. What a day that will be—the day of Jezreel—when God will again plant his people in his land.
Hosea 1 NLT
Hosea 2
“In that day you will call your brothers Ammi—‘My people.’ And you will call your sisters Ruhamah—‘The ones I love.’
Charges against an Unfaithful Wife
2 “But now bring charges against Israel—your mother—
for she is no longer my wife,
and I am no longer her husband.
Tell her to remove the prostitute’s makeup from her face
and the clothing that exposes her breasts.
3 Otherwise, I will strip her as naked
as she was on the day she was born.
I will leave her to die of thirst,
as in a dry and barren wilderness.
4 And I will not love her children,
for they were conceived in prostitution.
5 Their mother is a shameless prostitute
and became pregnant in a shameful way.
She said, ‘I’ll run after other lovers
and sell myself to them for food and water,
for clothing of wool and linen,
and for olive oil and drinks.’6 “For this reason I will fence her in with thornbushes.
I will block her path with a wall
to make her lose her way.
7 When she runs after her lovers,
she won’t be able to catch them.
She will search for them
but not find them.
Then she will think,
‘I might as well return to my husband,
for I was better off with him than I am now.’
8 She doesn’t realize it was I who gave her everything she has—
the grain, the new wine, the olive oil;
I even gave her silver and gold.
But she gave all my gifts to Baal.9 “But now I will take back the ripened grain and new wine
I generously provided each harvest season.
I will take away the wool and linen clothing
I gave her to cover her nakedness.
10 I will strip her naked in public,
while all her lovers look on.
No one will be able
to rescue her from my hands.
11 I will put an end to her annual festivals,
her new moon celebrations, and her Sabbath days—
all her appointed festivals.
12 I will destroy her grapevines and fig trees,
things she claims her lovers gave her.
I will let them grow into tangled thickets,
where only wild animals will eat the fruit.
13 I will punish her for all those times
when she burned incense to her images of Baal,
when she put on her earrings and jewels
and went out to look for her lovers
but forgot all about me,”
says the Lord.
The Lord’s Love for Unfaithful Israel
14 “But then I will win her back once again.
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her there.
15 I will return her vineyards to her
and transform the Valley of Trouble into a gateway of hope.
She will give herself to me there,
as she did long ago when she was young,
when I freed her from her captivity in Egypt.
16 When that day comes,” says the Lord,
“you will call me ‘my husband’
instead of ‘my master.’
17 O Israel, I will wipe the many names of Baal from your lips,
and you will never mention them again.
18 On that day I will make a covenant
with all the wild animals and the birds of the sky
and the animals that scurry along the ground
so they will not harm you.
I will remove all weapons of war from the land,
all swords and bows,
so you can live unafraid
in peace and safety.
19 I will make you my wife forever,
showing you righteousness and justice,
unfailing love and compassion.
20 I will be faithful to you and make you mine,
and you will finally know me as the Lord.21 “In that day, I will answer,”
Hosea 2 NLT
says the Lord.
“I will answer the sky as it pleads for clouds.
And the sky will answer the earth with rain.
22 Then the earth will answer the thirsty cries
of the grain, the grapevines, and the olive trees.
And they in turn will answer,
‘Jezreel’—‘God plants!’
23 At that time I will plant a crop of Israelites
and raise them for myself.
I will show love
to those I called ‘Not loved.’
And to those I called ‘Not my people,’
I will say, ‘Now you are my people.’
And they will reply, ‘You are our God!’”
Hosea 3
Then the Lord said to me, “Go and love your wife again, even though she commits adultery with another lover. This will illustrate that the Lord still loves Israel, even though the people have turned to other gods and love to worship them.”
2 So I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and five bushels of barley and a measure of wine. 3 Then I said to her, “You must live in my house for many days and stop your prostitution. During this time, you will not have sexual relations with anyone, not even with me.”
4 This shows that Israel will go a long time without a king or prince, and without sacrifices, sacred pillars, priests, or even idols! 5 But afterward the people will return and devote themselves to the Lord their God and to David’s descendant, their king. In the last days, they will tremble in awe of the Lord and of his goodness.
Hosea 3 NLT
God’s Message to Us
- God sees Israel’s worship of other gods — pagan worship of idols — as prostitution and adultery.
- He gives Hosea’s children prophetic names. How bad is it when God says to “his children” — “You are not my people”?
- Hosea’s home was to reflect the house of Israel. Before Hosea could go out to reveal God’s word to the people, he needed first to feel what God’s feels — His wound, His hurt, His broken heart. The people rejected and betrayed Him.
- God’s wife, Israel, committed spiritual adultery. They shared worship, which should have been solely to Him with the false gods and pagan, man-made idols.
Our Future Confident Hope
The 2nd half of Hosea chapter 2 (v 14-23), shows us what our relationship with Christ should look like. All this is revealed throughout the Bible. Check out these studies…
- Are you a Child of God?
- Are you one of the Chosen?
- God provides
- The Wedding Feast
- Jesus’ Parable of the Vineyard
- Gentiles are cultivated into God’s Olive Tree (Romans 11)
John wrote
See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! But the people who belong to this world don’t recognize that we are God’s children because they don’t know him.
1 John 3:1 NLT
“They don’t know Him.” That is SO SAD! Many people know WHO Jesus is — the Son of God — 2nd God-head of the Trinity — however, they don’t KNOW HIM in their hearts.
You can’t KNOW JESUS in your heart and still…
- Worship Mary
- Pray to saints
- Be prideful, greedy and vain
- Follow meaningless robotic religious rituals expecting salvation
- Worship anyone or anything above or beside Jesus Christ
When Jesus moves into your heart, all that fake, evil stuff has to move out.
Jesus didn’t suffer torture and die so we could have religion! He died so He could have a Relationship with YOU!
Are YOU missing that crucial step in YOUR RELATIONSHIP with Jesus?
What are you waiting for?!
Invite Jesus into Your Heart and Receive the Gift of Grace, Joy, Peace, and the Confident Hope of Eternal Life…
The Prophets
An Overview of the Book of the Prophet Hosea
Top image by Arabs for Christ from FreeBibleImages.org, (CC BY-SA 3.0)
