Spring26 Bible School- Hosea- Meg Nurcombe and Evy Quin

Meg takes us through the book of Hosea as we see the loving-kindness  of God declared through words, and acted out by the prophet Hosea. The study is followed by a devotional reflection led by Evy Quin

Transcript

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Yeah, so there's a reason that every Bible school you come to will probably hear 2 Timothy 3:16, that all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. And we keep returning to this verse because it's the reason that we're gathered here this evening. We're here because we believe the Bible is the word of God, given by Him to the communities that first received these texts, and also given to us thousands of years later. For us as followers of Jesus, reading and meditating on the word of God is not an optional extra. As Jesus says in John 8 31, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. This is the foundation of our lives with God. As I mentioned last week, if you're here, we are here to increase our knowledge of the Bible, but also to deepen our relationships with God as we learn how to better hear his voice through his word. We want both our minds and our hearts to be enriched and expanded by our study this evening. So it's my prayer that we'll be able to approach the text of Hosea with humility and openness as we seek to learn more about God. Okay, so this evening we'll be looking at the first and the longest minor prophet. I uh first studied Hosea in depth when I had quite a lot of time on my hands in one of the COVID lockdowns, and it quickly became one of my favourite books in the Bible. Um, which, yeah, maybe that will become clear, it might also confuse you. It is a difficult book because it has themes which are frequent in the Old Testament, but which we really struggle with in our contemporary social contexts. Um, so I hope, yeah, we'll be able to look at some of those questions and wrestle with some of those challenges. Um, but I it's my real prayer that we'll be able to together uncover the profound spiritual truths that are on these pages. Just so you know where we're going, the plan for this evening is to first discuss the immediate historical and social context of Hosea, then we'll move to the literary composition of the book and the major themes found in the text. And after that, we'll then dive into the book itself and read quite a lot of it. Um, it is 14 chapters long, we can't read all of it, so we're gonna pick out some of the key sections, um, and hopefully that will be that'll be good. Okay, so last week Tim gave us a wonderful introduction to the minor prophets and the geopolitical context within which these prophets lived and ministered. He's briefly gone over that again this evening, um, and I've just borrowed his slide to show where Hosea falls. So Hosea is ministering here after the division of the kingdom of Israel into the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Um, and if it might be helpful to know, you might know already, but the um northern kingdom of Israel was made up of ten tribes of Israel, and the southern kingdom of Judah was made up of the remaining two tribes. So Israel had 12 tribes. When the nation divided, 10 became the northern kingdom of Israel, and two became the southern kingdom of Judah. So Hosea was a prophet who lived and prophesied in the northern kingdom of Israel, around the latter half of the 8th century BC. So scholars think probably 753 to 722 BC. Um, it was a few hundred years after the separation of the kingdoms and before the fall of the northern kingdom. So he was called to be a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II. Um and this the important thing to note about this king was that this period was kind of the last time of economic and political stability in the Northern Kingdom before a rapid decline and then invasion by the Assyrians. So this period, although seemingly politically stable, was marked by significant spiritual decline, rampant idolatry, moral decay, and severe social injustice. There was relentless oppression of the poor and exploitation of the weak, and the religious decline that resulted in these social and moral failings ultimately led to that northern kingdom being taken into captivity by its powerful neighbours, the Assyrians, which you know we learned a lot about last week. So mass deportation and destruction followed. So to note really, the prophet Hosea is prophesying to a nation in rapid spiritual and moral decline, a nation that has turned its back on God. Through his words, these public speeches or oracles that Hosea gives, he communicates to the people the severity of their spiritual state and the implications that their apostasy, which means their rejection of faith in God, will have. So in his actions and in his personal life, it's actually through his marriage and his children that we catch a glimpse of this story in Hosea where Hosea embodies the message of his prophecy. We're gonna get into that as we read the first few chapters of Hosea, but I just want to note now that it's really important for us to remember as we read Hosea that Hosea is not in and of itself a story. It has narrative moments, it has short narrative chapters, but which which frame the text and kind of give depth and significance and insight into the ministry of Hosea, but ultimately it is a book of prophecy. And that will come, that we'll see as we read, that's really quite significant for us to remember that. Okay, so I've said quite simply Hosea is made up of 14 chapters, most of which are prophetic messages describing judgment on Israel because of their rebellion, their spiritual apostasy, and their unfaithfulness. These prophetic messages urge Israel to return to God and they describe the love that God has for his people. These messages would have been given to Israel over the long period of Hosea's ministry. The first chapter and the third chapter, as I've said, are narrative chapters. And they describe events in Hosea's life when God asked him to embody an action, a prophetic message of God's faithfulness, despite Israel's unfaithfulness. How is he asked to embody this? Well, God asks Hosea to marry a woman who was sexually promiscuous and unfaithful to him, and to love her and to commit to her despite her actions. This narrative of Hosea's life is a living metaphor for God's steadfast love and mercy towards us. Hosea's marriage offers us a vivid picture or a sign of our relationship with God, which startles us, can make us quite uncomfortable, but it is intended to pierce our hearts and minds more deeply with the reality of our sin and the extravagance of God's love. So before we discuss the themes of Hosea in more detail, I just want us to consider the literary context and composition of Hosea. So Tim mentioned this last week. Fundamental to biblical interpretation is an understanding of the literary genres and techniques that we're reading. To properly discuss the book of Hosea, we must take into account its genre and the techniques that the prophet is using to convey spiritual realities. We will not be able to grasp the message and significance of the book if we do not pay attention to what the prophet is doing in a literary sense. So, prophetic texts are filled with rhetoric and poetry, and scholars associate the majority of Hosea with poetic formulas and characteristics. Much of the book is comprised of poetic oracles, which make use of vivid imagery and rich metaphors. Biblical scholar Francis Landy describes finding metaphors for God as the business of the prophets. And he says that the multiplicity of visions and similes that we find in prophetic texts indicates the ultimate inadequacies of all our metaphors. What does that mean? Well, if we turn to the book of Hosea, we can ask why do we find so much dramatic and diverse imagery in the prophetic books? In Hosea, for example, God is described as a husband to Israel. Quite explicitly in chapter 2, verse 16, which you'll read, where God asks to be called husband. But later in the book, he's also described as a parent in chapter 11, which we'll look at as well. In chapter 5, God is described as a fierce lion that carries off prey. And then in chapter 11 is described as a lion whose powerful roar of hope draws the Israelites back to their homeland. In chapter 13, God is described as a lion, a leopard, and a mother bear that devour and destroy Israel. And then in the next chapter, God is described as a morning dew that causes Israel to flourish and blossom. How do we make sense of these paradoxical images and metaphors? Why is God described as both a bereft husband and a loving parent? A fierce lion of judgment and a lion of hope? Getting our heads around this is key to our reading and interpretation of Hosea. The book is laced with sharp paradoxes, which can initially be very off-putting, because we wonder how these metaphors relate. What is true? Can God be both lion and Jew, devourer and life giver? As suggested by Francis Landy, the metaphorical complexities of Hosea, I believe, are an illustration of the fundamental inadequacies of our language about God. Ordinary language cannot clearly and effectively communicate knowledge of God because God is so much bigger than our language, and so much bigger than what our human language can capture and convey. Our words can approach truth about God and reveal aspects of his nature and character, but they cannot ever completely describe God. All our language about God is approach, not arrival. And yet God has given us the ability to speak about him. Scholars, Daniel Costello and Bo Lim, in their very good commentary on Hosea, put it like this: In one sense, words cannot circumscribe or describe God in God's fullness, so that speaking of God is impossible on simply rational grounds. A divine entity, especially one who is said to be the beginning and end of all things, cannot be limited or controlled, which are features associated with the act of description. And yet, within the covenant bond, God discloses God's self so as to be available to human speech. And so how do the biblical writers approach speech about God? Well, it's often through metaphor, simile, poetry, allegory, and other creative literary forms and techniques. Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a really interesting book presenting a theory of human language about God, which emphasizes the habits humans have to turn what he describes as strange or defamiliarizing modes of speech when faced with representations and descriptions of God. This seems to be what we turn to. The abundance, the glory, and the holiness of God puts what Williams describes as an immense pressure on our speech. What does that mean? Well, it means that the abundance and glory of what we behold in God strains and stretches our language. Ordinary language does not suffice. We cannot effectively describe the abundance of God. So what is our response? It's to refer to strange habits of speech, such as metaphor, rhyme, rhythm, and many other characteristics of poetic language. And this is what we see happening in Hosea. We might be tempted to turn away from the text and gravitate towards books that might be slightly easier to understand, but instead of doing this, I hope this evening we can be encouraged to understand these poetic modes of speech as ways of acknowledging the utter transcendence of God's character and person. We try to describe God, an ability which is itself a gift from God, but our descriptions and our representations are always incomplete. The paradoxes, metaphors, poetry, simile, and the traversing of a dramatic spectrum of images in the text of Hosea arises as a result of the poets and prophets grappling with and trying to communicate both the holiness and the heart of God. He's trying to communicate the ways that we can understand God through human relationships and pictures, as well as the ways that God completely supersedes our experiences and logic. Humanly we try, but we ultimately always struggle to hold God's transcendence and immanence together, because only God has the ability to do that. Hosea offers images and metaphors which might allow us to explore this tension that we perceive there to be within or between God's imminence and transcendence, to explore the tension that we sometimes feel, particularly in the Old Testament, between God's heart and his holiness, between his divine justice and his tender mercy. So in this way, Hosea does not offer easy answers to some of our questions about who God is, but it does offer us rich language that bears great depths of significance and if we are willing, can reveal a little or actually a lot about who God is and who we are to God. Okay, so before we actually read Hosea, I just want to discuss the key theme in Hosea, or the key themes, which are marriage and covenant and idolatry and adultery. So the motif of marriage is the framework for the book of Hosea. Hosea's own marriage is the focus of the first and third chapters of the book, and is what we can call a synact. So a synact is a nonverbal, theatrical, or symbolic action commanded by God through which a prophet demonstrates or visualizes a prophecy. So Hosea's marriage and his family is the Synact in the ministry of Hosea. Here, as seen elsewhere in Scripture, God chooses to describe his covenantal relationship with Israel in the terms of a marriage covenant. This marriage picture helps us to understand the covenantal commitment required of Israel. Here, Israel's spiritual idolatry, its turning away from God and turning to false gods, is understood as adultery. They have been unfaithful to the covenant. And Hosea, with his poetic oracles, unveils God's response to this unfaithfulness. As we've said, it reveals both God's heart and his holiness, his justice and his mercy. So the framing of the relationship between the Israelites and God in the language of marriage is very powerful imagery. For example, at the end of chapter 2, God says, And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. It's startling to hear God's desire to be called husband and not Baal. And Baal was a god that was worshipped at that time by other nations, but the word Baal actually means owner or master. So here we we hear God's desire to be known intimately, to be loved. And this is still surprising for us to hear today, even when so much of our contemporary language about God is language of love. But in the ancient Near East, at the time of the writing of Hosea, this language is shocking. And that is the beauty of the book of Hosea, summed up in the verses we have just read. God does not want to be called master, he wants to be called husband. Now, the image of marriage in the book of Hosea is not without its challenges. In fact, many people find the marriage motif in Hosea to be extremely off-putting, confusing, and difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly, we inevitably project our views, experiences, and understandings of marriage onto the text. This can raise significant issues for many readers. And as a God-given covenant, but one that is always lived out by humans, marriage as an image can raise some challenges as we try to untangle our own failings, our own flawed understandings from God's ways. But perhaps even more disorienting for us as readers is the language of violence that we read in the text. And this is described by some critics as bordering on pornographic and abusive. These are very serious claims to be making about the word of God, and so it's not something that we can skip over or disregard, and that's why I wanted to acknowledge it. There are very real things to wrestle with in this book, and it needs to be read wisely and intelligently. Some recent feminist trauma theologies have concluded that Hosea is a book of violence, a misogynistic account of national suffering that does not offer us truth about who God is. Now, this is a conclusion that I absolutely cannot agree with, but I mention it here to acknowledge the complexities and difficulties in reading Hosea and many other Old Testament books that were written in a time and a culture where retributive violence was commonplace. As we read some of Hosea, I will touch on this, but I don't have time to consider in greater depth this significant topic of violence in the Old Testament because the rest of our time could definitely be taken up talking about this. I would encourage you to dive deeper into this topic if that's something that you need to do. I I think everyone needs to at some point. Someone who writes and speaks really well on this topic is Helen Painter. And she's spoken at Woody's before on this topic, and she has a book called God of Violence Yesterday, God of Love Today, wrestling honestly with the Old Testament. So I'd recommend that if you're interested in looking into this a bit more. Okay, so how can Hosea be a book that causes such intense negative responses and confusion from some, while also being a book that people have described as the greatest love story ever told? The book of Hosea has inspired many novels and movies and other things that have captured the imaginations of so many people. How can this book have such polarizing responses? In their commentary on Hosea, Daniel Castello and Bo Lim describe two different approaches to Hosea. The first is a hermeneutic of trust, and the second is a hermeneutic of suspicion. Hermeneutic means a method of interpretation and can be easily understood as a lens that you read the text through. So for some, Hosea is read through a lens of trust, and the focus remains on the amazing and extravagant love of God. For others, Hosea is read through a lens of suspicion, and the focus remains on the pictures of violence in the book and the one-sidedness of the narrative. So if we remember the overarching verse framing this evening and really the whole of Bible school, we are here because we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, that it is breathed out by God, that it is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training. This means that we approach the Bible believing that God will speak to us through it, and believing that it reveals who God is to us. In this sense, we approach the book of Hosea seeking to wrestle with and work through its challenges to discover what it tells us about God. We mustn't let a hermeneutic of trust override legitimate concerns over the way the Bible has and continues to be wielded as an instrument of manipulation and abuse by people intent on doing harm. If someone reads Hosea looking for an excuse for gendered violence, they'll find verses that they can take out and use for those purposes. So I don't want to brush over that. But the answer, I strongly believe, is not to throw out the parts of the Bible that we don't understand or that seem to contradict what we believe about God. The answer is to dive deeper, to increase our understanding, and to be willing to learn from the books that require more from us as readers. Okay, that was a lot of information. So we're gonna have a bit of a discussion time now. So if you just want to take a couple of minutes, turn to the people next to you, and yeah, feel free to discuss some of these questions. Okay, so we're gonna concentrate now on the first three chapters of Hosea. Um, scholars generally separate these from the remaining chapters, and these three chapters focus on Hosea's personal circumstances, his marriage and family, and linking those circumstances to Israel's spiritual state. We're going to start by reading Hosea 1 in full. I'm going to be reading from the English Standard Version because it's generally considered a good literal translation, so a word-for-word translation, and that makes it helpful for this kind of in-depth study when we'll be looking at um certain words and everything. The other side of that is that in Hosea, the ESV translation translates the Hebrew word xenonim as whoredom, which can be another difficult thing or a difficult word to hear in our contemporary context as a woman, particularly because it's often used in a very sexist derogatory way. So I'm prefacing that what we will be reading will use the word, will translate the Hebrew word xenonym to whoredom, but I want to note that that Hebrew word literally means fornication or illicit sexual activity. Many people have painted Hosea's wife as a prostitute, and this could be the case, but actually many scholars agree that it's most likely that the word is used to describe her actions like being sexually promiscuous. It doesn't actually literally translate to prostitute. And it is actually even widely considered that this sexual promiscuity might not have been the case prior to marriage. So it could be that Hosea likely married Goma, his wife, in obedience to God, knowing that she would one day be unfaithful to him. Okay, so I'm going to start off by reading chapter one. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Biri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take to yourself a wife of Hordom, and have children of Hordom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Goma, the daughter of Deblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. She conceived again and bore a daughter, and the Lord said to him, Call her name no mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen. That's what we heard about last week with this supernatural protection over Judah. Right, when she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son, and the Lord said, Call his name not my people, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered, and in the place where it was said to them, You are not my people, it shall be said to them, Children of the Living God. And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Okay, so this chapter describes the Synax Hosea enacted in obedience to what God asked him to do. He married Goma, a woman he knew would be unfaithful to him, to embody the prophetic message God was speaking. Then he named his children, well, we actually don't know if they all were his children, but he named them three symbolic names, which I'm gonna be honest aren't very catchy, but they are Jezreel, which means God will sow or God will scatter. The next one, Lo Ruhama, which means no mercy. And then the third one, Lo Ami, which means not my people. And all these names reference God's judgment upon Israel for their spiritual adultery. So the message of Hosea comes not just through his words, but also through his life and actions, and through the names of his children. Immediately in the first chapter, though, God does not let judgment and relational separation have the last word. As he says, and in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, children of the living God. So even in the very first chapter of Hosea, we are getting a glimpse of where it's gonna end up. There is judgment and there are consequences, but there is restoration and there is hope. Okay, so following on from chapter one is probably the most controversial and difficult passage in the book. Some of the imagery and language in this second chapter comes across as particularly violent. It describes the stripping and humiliation and punishment of the metaphorical unfaithful wife. And what is absolutely imperative for us to grasp here is the jump from the narrative in chapter one to the poetic oracle in chapter two. Chapter two is not biographical detail describing Hosea and Goma. It is a poetic reflection which encapsulates the entire purpose and theme of the book and it explains the synax in the previous chapter. So what chapter two does is it connects Hosea's personal life to the state of Israel. It is a warning of punishment for sin, not a description, and not a direction for action, obviously. Castelo and Lim, in their commentary, note that the language in this chapter that we find so offensive would have actually been very common in ancient Nerys treaty curses. Israel would have understood these texts as warnings of political and military catastrophe that would befall them in the case of a treaty breach. So the first half of chapter two, then, verses one to thirteen, is a warning of punishment for sin. So in the language of ancient Near East treaty curses, we are hearing God say there are consequences for your spiritual adultery. When we talk about sin, we usually think of personal or individual sin. And that we can kind of understand. However, Hosea's warnings are about punishment for corporate or structural sin. Corporate sin is the sin of a community, and it's a sin that has become accepted and integrated into society. We actually find this harder to understand, but it's important to kind of grasp in this chapter that God's judgment is not against one person, it's against a nation, and that is what this chapter is prophetically warning of. So, as a microcosm of the whole book of Hosea, chapter two does not finish with a prophecy of punishment, but it moves from that prophecy of punishment into a description of God's mercy in verse 14 onwards. And I think Catherine is going to read for us, yeah, chapter two, verses 14 to 23.

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Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her vineyard and make the valley of April a door of her. And there she will answer as in the days of Eva. At the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, I said the Lord, You will call me my husband. And no longer will you call me my God. I will remove the names of the God from her manner. And if you remember my name, no Lord. And I will make them a covenant on that day. And I will burn it by the sword and water. I will make you my down and say, I will be trying to meet the heaven. I will be trying to make sense and justice. I will be trying to be fairly and you shall know the Lord. And I say I will answer the early Lord. I will answer the heavens, and I shall answer the earth. And the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and I shall answer Jezreel. And I will show her myself in the land. And I will have mercy on my mercy. And I will say to not my people, You are my people. And he shall say, You are my God. Thank you.

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So this is a description of future restoration and return. Punishment and separation are not the end. Here we read of God speaking tenderly to Israel and replacing her suffering and trouble with hope. A particular biblical scholar describes it as this following the condemnation of the previous verses comes a series of divine promises. At its heart is a new Exodus experience. Yahweh will take his people back to the wilderness to where the relationship began, and there he will renew his commitment to them. So following this poetic language of chapter two, we will return to the narrative of Hosea's own life in chapter three. And the Lord said to me, Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins. So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethek of barley, and I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days, you shall not play the whore or belong to another man, so will I also be to you. For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without epod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days. So some scholars disagree on the identity of the woman in chapter three, but it's the clearest way to interpret these verses is to understand them as a continuation of the narrative in chapter one. In this case, Goma appears to have left Hosea and have found herself in trouble, necessitating a payment to secure her restoration. Hosea is told to go again, to rescue, to restore, and to forgive her. And in that first verse, that is linked right back to God and the Israelites as it says, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins. So I find that funny. It's not saying there's an issue with Welsh cakes or whatever, your chosen raisin cake. Cakes of raisins were uh used in idol worship. That's most likely the case, so it's an example of idolatry. Um yeah, so it's Jose is told to go again, to forgive, to love. And it's interesting because the writer has purposefully given very little biographical detail, because the important thing is the symbolic message. So many people spend a long time searching for clues as to what's actually happening here. Why was there a payment? Was it slavery? Was it prostitution? Was it, you know, so many different things. And it's actually purposefully quite sparse the biographical detail. It's not about that, it's about the symbolic um message, it's about the metaphor. And the symbolic message is God does not give up on us despite our continued unfaithfulness and our spiritual infidelity. He pursues us and he pays the price needed to restore relationship. It's kind of beginning to sound familiar, isn't it? Okay, we're gonna have another quick, brief um discussion break. Um, and these are some questions you might want to discuss, or just turn to the person next to you, what stuck out to you. Does the marriage of Jose and Goma evoke a strong response into you to you? And what about God being called husband? Just some ideas to start discussion, but we're gonna keep it brief, so you've got about a minute. So um, I don't want us to run out of time, so um, we're gonna move on. So, okay, following on from the first three chapters, um, the oracles of Hosea then expand on the key themes introduced in those first chapters, continuing to describe the relationship between God and Israel. And and this center of the book focuses on applying the symbolic nature of the first few chapters to the current socio-political state of Israel. So Israel's current circumstances, their impending capture by the Assyrians, and their declare-political decline acquire symbolic depth when considered in light of their covenantal unfaithfulness. We don't have time to read the remaining chapters in full, so I'm just going to pull out some significant sections. Okay, so chapter four opens with the words Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love. There is no knowledge of God in the land. So this word, knowledge, is really significant. Um, God is saying, okay, there's no steadfast love of God to be found, but this Hebrew word for knowledge is yada, which is the same word used to describe intimacy within marriage. And it is understood to be an experiential knowledge, knowledge that only comes through relationship. And here God is lamenting the fact that the people of Israel have no personal knowledge of him. This word is an expression of God's deep desire for relationship. And this is made clear a few chapters later, um, in chapter six, when God says, What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Now to note, um, Ephraim is one of the ten tribes in the northern kingdom, but it was probably the largest tribe, and it is used to reference the whole of the northern kingdom. So that is what that word means. So, what shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes early away. Therefore, I have hewn them by the prophets, I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and my judgment goes forth as the light. For I dis desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Again, here God describes the fleeting nature of Israel's love, vanishes quickly. And God doesn't want fleeting love, he wants commitment and relationship. This is reiterated in the powerful words of verse 6, which articulate the very desire of God. He desires love over religious ritual. He wants that yada relationship. But the Israelites are not keeping their side of the covenant, they turn away from God, and God's judgment will come, as described by the prophet's words in verse 5. God is leaving them to the consequences of their sins. Which is seen when the Assyrian Empire conquered them. The action of God leaving the Israelites to the consequences of their sin is described a few verses before, in chapter 5, verse 15, where God says, I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and see my face and in their distress earnestly seek me. This verse describes a letting go from God, a giving over to the realities of Israel's sin. It's a withdrawing. And this kind of withdrawal is noted a few other places in Hosea and then linked back to some psalms as well, where the same action is described. The consequence of sin is the withdrawal of God. Okay, so moving on, we're gonna read chapter 11. And chapter 11, we find a poetic passage describing the unfailing love of God for his people. So we're gonna read chapter 11, verses 1 to 9. And I was gonna read that.

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The Lord's love for Israel. When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the baths and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught everything to walk. I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I killed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love. And I became to them as one who eated a figure on their doors. And I went down to them. They shall not return to the land of Egypt. But Assyria shall be dead because they refuse to return to Egypt. The sword shall rage beyond their cities, consume the parts that they get and develop them because of their own counsel. And then they call out the most.

SPEAKER_04 47:26

Yet they walked away from him, and Assyria will now be their king and rule over them. But then in a beautiful verse, God says, How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? He references two cities, Adam and Zeboyam, which were smaller towns near Sodom and Gomorrah, which were also destroyed. So for those, just as a refresh, for those not aware, Sodom and Gomorrah and these two towns that Hosea references were destroyed by God as a result of extreme wickedness and immorality. So here God is expressing a desire for his children to return to him. He does not want to hand them over forever. Again, separation is not the last word. God does not want to let Israel go. The final chapter of Hosea, chapter 14, concludes the book with a chapter aptly titled A Plea to Return to the Lord. And Gloria is going to read chapter 14, verses 4 to 7. So here the book concludes with a picture of return and restoration. This passage makes three references to Lebanon. Lebanon was known widely for the exportation of its magnificent cedar trees and other agricultural produce. So the Israelites would have associated Lebanon with abundant plant life and flourishing and prosperity. For the Israelites, as an Assyrian conquest loomed, this message would have brought great hope and comfort that the suffering that they will experience as a result of their sin would not last forever. It is a promise that they will once again flourish. And for us, as we read these words, the message of return and restoration can be equally life-giving, as we too long and wait for a life and world free from suffering. In this passage, we get a greater glimpse of who God is. He longs to heal and restore and give life. And the very final verse of Hosea concludes with this declaration. You know, we've focused initially on the immediate uh like social and historical context to understand the book. But as we read about these messages of return and restoration and hope, we're reading that in a world that is still suffering and that's needs God just as much. And so, from our perspective, we're reading this, you know, understanding that this is a message for us as well. This is a message for our world, this is this is a message for the church.

SPEAKER_03 51:47

Um it says you can always return. That's what the message to me is.

SPEAKER_04 51:51

You can, you know. You can return, absolutely. That that that final chapter, a plea for return to the Lord. Absolutely, and that is the conclusion that we have come to um on this journey, but it's a conclusion that Hosea comes to. And I would say that ultimately Hosea is a book about redemption, restoration, and the salvation of the people of God. The name Hosea literally means salvation, and that's kind of a clue as to what the whole book is about. God laments the sin and spiritual infidelity of the Israelites, and they experience the consequences of their sin. But ultimately, Hosea offers a message of restoration and return. For me, what I read on the pages of Hosea is the gospel. Because how can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? Through the image of a faithful husband, we sense the unfailing, pursuing love of God that crosses the divide of our sin and our unfaithfulness and makes a way for relationship. Hundreds of years before Jesus takes that lonely and long, long walk to the cross, we have a piercing prophetic insight into the heart of God which takes him there. With these words, how can I give you up? The book of Hosea offers not just a prophecy for the people of Israel, but a prophetic glimpse of the gospel. Not only did Hosea reveal the purposes of God in the nation of Israel, but as we said, it reveals the ultimate purposes of God for us and our future. Though we are unfaithful, though we turn to other gods and we search for fulfillment in all the wrong places and pursue life outside of God's ways, the Holy Creator God says, How can I give you up? He makes a way to eradicate our sin and unites us with him once again. So as we read Hosea, as we follow the ark of redemption in this book, we are reminded in a powerful way of the ultimate purposes of God, to heal us and to restore us to life with him. We are gonna just finish with a reflection that Evie is gonna give us on Hosea and just say take the opportunity to pray and let that sit in our hearts. So thanks, thanks, thanks.

SPEAKER_01 54:39

Thank you, Meg. Um, I really honestly don't feel the need to add anything. Um, you have so eloquently shared so much about your heart for the book, and yeah, I just hugely appreciate that. So thank you. Um we wanted to end these Bible school sessions with a short devotional or reflection time because whilst this intellectual study of the word is really important, um, it's also important for us to take time to consider what impact the words have on our hearts, on our lives, and on our actions. Um, and so if it's okay with everyone, I'm just going to spend the next less than 10 minutes um sharing some of my initial thoughts reading Hosea. Um, a lot of them mirror Meg's, um, and then I'll lead us in a short time of guided prayer. So when I first picked up Hosea, a lot like um what Meg said, I felt quite uncomfortable reading about Hosea and Goma's story. Um initially, for me, it seems really odd that God calls a prophet to marry a promiscuous woman and then for her to have several children and to be given, give them pretty sad names. Um, but I think what's so unsettling about the story initially for me is it forces the reader to think, what would I do if I was a victim of adultery? How would I react if I found out that my husband or wife was having several long-standing affairs, probably in public with several different people, with kind of no shame around it? Would I still be able to love my spouse? And it's a really confronting challenge for us all because, as Meg so well unpacked for us, Hosea and Goma's family are a living symbol of God's message of judgment. In front of Israel, Hosea and Gomer's marriage acts out the relationship between God and Israel. Goma's marital adultery mirrors Israel's spiritual adultery. And just as Goma dishonored the marriage covenant, so the nation dishonored its covenant with God. There's that warning of judgment against Israel in chapter two. Um, and then in um chapter three, God commands Hosea to go and show your love to your wife again. Though she is an adulteress, love her as the Lord loves the Israelites. He even had to pay silver and barley to take her back. We know a price had to be paid. He shows her love that she had in no way earned. And this picture illustrates the completely counterintuitive, awe-inspiring love that God shows us daily. He continues to pay the price for all of us, remaining faithful even when we are not. And I think we need to keep this picture in mind when we read the rest of Hosea because, as we've unpacked, we then go on to read 10 chapters giving great detail of Israel's failures and God's righteous anger towards the nation. Now, I myself am not a parent, but I imagine that the parents in the room will know the deep anger and frustration that comes when your child does something that is just really, really wrong. You spend so much time pouring energy, even wisdom, so much of your life teaching your child, and then they can just turn around and do things that make you go, really? For those of us who aren't parents, I'm sure we can all think of close friends or other relationships in our lives who, for whatever reason, just leave us feeling really frustrated. As was so beautifully read earlier in chapter 11, which is actually titled God's Heart for Israel, it says, and I'm just going to read this again because I think it's so important for us to hear God's heart. It says, When Israel was a child, I loved him. Out of Egypt I called my son. But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the balls and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms, but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with a cord of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like the one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them. God named Israel. God watched Israel grow and develop. God saw Israel's metaphorical first steps. It is no wonder that the creator, provider, father of the nation is absolutely furious when they turn from him. When we read a book like Hosea, where God is frankly really angry about Israel's sin, and some of the language is so jarring, it can be really difficult to hear about his angry, critical side. But I personally am so glad that God isn't indifferent. I'm so glad that God isn't some passive, cuddly teddy bear that just lets his chosen people lead themselves to self-destruction. I'm glad that God is moved when we let him down because I think it shows his heart for us. God's anger isn't uncontrolled. It's not like a vengeful human lashing out. Through the book of Hosea, God calls out where his people are turning from him. He warns them of the consequences of that, and he offers them an alternative course of action. I'm so grateful that God isn't indifferent towards our sin. Rather, he is lovingly angered by it, just as a father who wants what is best for his children. So I think the father's heart is revealed through the book of Hosea in both his forgiveness, his redemption plan, and in his anger. But having revealed this heart, the book of Hosea is then a call for us to genuine repentance. Everybody in this room will know that there is a stark contrast between a sorrowful, real, I'm sorry, and a yeah, sorry, I guess, fine, whatever. Hosea's prophecy ends with a call for the nation of Israel to pursue genuine repentance for their sin with the promise of God's healing, mercy, and abounding love. The book ends with a final plea, encouraging the reader that, like Goma, the most wayward sinner can receive forgiveness and be reconciled with God. Chapter 14 begins with return Israel to the Lord your God. It is not a mere obligation, but a holy opportunity for all of us. It is not a begrudging practice, but rather it is an enormous privilege. But how do we genuinely repent? Like Israel's called to in verse 3 of chapter 14, genuine repentance requires us specifically identifying our sin. When we confess our sin only in general terms, we miss the opportunity to praise God for how he has been particularly gracious to us. We confess specific sin and we enjoy the blessing of remembering God's specific character and his promises. Then, genuine repentance gives us the opportunity to rediscover God's mercy for us every day. Jesus Christ, who never sinned, took on our punishment. Unlike Israel and unlike us, Jesus was consistently faithful to his loving Father, even until the very end. God's anger towards sin was laid upon Jesus at the cross. We rejoice in God's eternal pardon and forgiveness, his acceptance of us in Christ, and the peace that we now enjoy, knowing that God's anger has forever turned from us. So let's pray to finish. Heavenly Father, like Goma in her marriage to Hosea in to Hosea, we have not been faithful to you. I leave space now for each of us to reflect on the day that has passed, to confess our specific sins to you, and to receive your loving mercy. Thank you for your invitation to genuine repentance and the offer of a new life in relationship with you. Thank you for the richness of your word and for all that we have learnt in the book of Hosea tonight. I pray that as we leave this place, we will take the lessons learnt into our daily walks with you. Amen.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:21

Well, a really big thank you to Meg for all the hard work you put into preparing that and Eve as well. Thank you so much for that.