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The theme for this week is Coming Home to God's Love. I love that theme because Hosea is a difficult book, I want to admit that right up front. This is a very, very difficult book, and yet it is a book that tells us something about the love of God that, perhaps, we learn no where else in the Bible, as we are going to find out today, and throughout the days of this series. We're going to see that God uses Hosea in a very, very strange and unique way to prove His love for His people.
You know, a young man from Brooklyn went off to war one time and shortly after going into battle, in one of the fiercest of the battles of the war, he lost both of his arms. And he asked a friend of his to write back to his sweetheart back home, to release her from their engagement because he felt he was unworthy of her love. When she received the note, she did not answer him. Instead she rushed to where he was, threw her arms around him, and said, "These hands will never let you go, because I love you."
You know, that's a lot the way it is with us and with God. We are so undeserving. We don't have anything to commend ourselves to God. But God throws His arms around us and He says, "I love you, anyway." And we can come home to God's love any time. Some of you may be far from the love of God, today. You've wandered away from the life of the church. You've wandered away from the life of God's family. And you're here searching and seeking and wondering what it's all about.
My prayer is that during the time we spend here in this Book of Hosea, that you will learn what it's all about, and that you will feel the hard tug of God's arms around you, pulling Himself close to you as well.
Well the theme for the Book of Hosea is a very difficult theme. Basically there are three things we're going to learn from the Book of Hosea and they are these.
Number one: sin always brings judgment. You can mark it down, friends. It'll happen every time. Sin always brings judgment. That's the first part of the theme.
The second part of the theme is: repentance always brings salvation. And that's the good news. Sure, sin brings judgment, but if we repent of that sin, God draws us back to Himself and we receive His salvation.
And the third part of the theme is this: underlying all this, my friends, is the unfailing love of God for His people.
Now, we want to focus on the love of God. We want to learn something about the love of God. Here we are in Hosea 1, beginning at verse l. "The word of the Lord that came to Hosea son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam son of Joash, king of Israel." Now, let me stop there. We're not at the end, obviously, even of the sentence, but I want us to think about this man Hosea. Just as I say, this is not a very popular book. This is not the kind of person you go to often. The name Hosea in Hebrew means salvation.
Do not confuse Hosea with Hoshea. Hoshea was the last of the kings of Israel. You can learn about him in 2 Kings 17:1. It says, "In the twelfth year of Ahaz king of Judah, Hoshea, son of Elah became king of Israel in Samaria, and he reigned nine years." Now it's the same name, but one has an 'H' in the middle and one does not. Hosea means salvation. Hoshea was the original name, by the way, of Joshua. Remember when God was calling those 12 spies to go into the land, Numbers 13:16. "These are the names," He says, "of the men who Moses sent to spy out the land. And Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua." He changed his name. Now that happened a lot in the Old Testament.
And you recognize that Joshua in the Old Testament is the same root name for Jesus in the New Testament. So, Hosea's name means salvation in the Old Testament, as does Joshua, as does Jesus in the New Testament. It's great to have a name in which you're bringing people back to the love of God and your name actually means salvation. I get excited when I think about people's names. And this name, Hosea, is a name that ought to be on all of our lists, friends, because Israel needed the salvation of God more than any other people on the face of the earth. And yet God called them back to His love, because He's just that kind of God.
Well, I think we need to establish, right at the beginning of our study of Hosea, what kind of times these were--what kind of things were going on in the land during this period of time. Because, let's face it, these people were living in some pretty good times. Economically, things were wonderful for these people. Hosea is the prophet of the Northern Kingdom. That would be the ten tribes to the north. So what it says in verse one, that it was during the reign of Jeraboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel, he's basically that king we're going to deal with in this series.
So, Hosea is the prophet for the northern tribes. He is the man who is prophesizing just prior to the fall of Samaria, the capital of the Northern Kingdom. And so, he's living in the last days. The only thing is, the people don't know they're living in the last days.
See, they don't have a clue what's about to happen to them. They're economically very strong. They're morally very weak. They're having good times. Everybody has a lot of money. They're taking vacations. They're going to the south, to the beach. They're going to the north country to the mountains. They're living a lot like we are in America today. And they just don't know what's right around the corner, because sin always brings the judgment of God.
I think there are some really significant 21st century lessons that you and I can learn right from this Book of Hosea. So when Hosea prophesied, no one could have guessed how close the end would be. But it was right around the corner.
Now, it says there that Jeraboam was the king during this time. And in order to understand a little bit about Jeraboam and why these times were so good, let me have you put your hand in there, Hosea. I don't want you to lose that because it's too hard to find. Let's have you put your hand in Hosea and turn back with me to 2 Kings 14.
I want to read to you just a little bit of the historical account of Jeraboam II. This is Jeraboam II, 2 Kings 14. Let's get some historical perspective on these last days before the fall of Samaria. 2 Kings 14:23, "In the fifteenth year of Amaziah the son of Joash, king of Judah, Jeraboam the son of Joash, king of Israel, became king in Samaria, and he reigned forty-one years. And he did evil in the sight of the Lord." (vv. 23-24)
Now, let me stop there. If you think the political system in the U.S. and Canada or in Western Europe is bad, how would you like to have a bad ruler for 41 years? It's bad enough to have a bad ruler for a term or two as President or Premier or whatever, but this is a king who was king for life. So for 41 years, this man does evil in the sight of the Lord. Let me read on.
"He did not depart from all the sins of Jeraboam the son of Nebat." Now, this is another Jeraboam. This is the first of the kings of the northern tribe. "He did not depart from all the sins of Jeraboam the son of Nebat, who had made Israel sin. He restored the territory of Israel from the entrance of Hamath to the Sea of the Arabah, according to the word of the Lord God of Israel, which He had spoken through His servant Jonah, the son of Amittai, the prophet who was from Gath Hepher."
"For the LORD saw that the affliction of Israel was very bitter; and whether bond or free, there was no helper for Israel. And the LORD did not say that He would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven; but He saved them by the hand of Jeroboam the son of Joash. Now the rest of the acts of Jeroboam, and all that he did--his might, how he made war, and how he recaptured for Israel, from Damascus and Hamath, what had belonged to Judah--are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Israel? So Jeroboam rested with his fathers, the kings of Israel. Then Zechariah his son reigned in his place." (vv. 24-29)
Now, I took the time to read all of that, because tucked away in those verses, those historical verses, are the reasons why they were having good times. Now let's step back just a moment to see what we've learned.
This man Jeraboam was a very remarkable king. He had great influence. He's the man who restored the northern and the eastern borders of Israel to the way they were during the time of Solomon and David. This is the man who had significant conquests to the north and to the east. And he had great influence down the Mediterranean coast as well. In the south, Uziah was the king at the time, the king of Judah. And he did pretty much the same thing. So this is really a second golden age for the people of Israel and Judah.
Before Jeraboam II, before this man came along, their situation was vastly different. In fact, during the reign of Jehoahaz, who would be the grandfather of this man Jeraboam, during his reign, the Bible tells us that the army of Israel was reduced to 50 horsemen, only ten chariots and ten thousand soldiers. They were decimated. The country was almost wiped out. But, God in His great wisdom did not allow the king of Syria to come in and completely destroy Israel. You can read all about that in 2 Kings 13:7 in fact. He did not allow it to happen.
Jeraboam began to restore the country, began to bring the country back, began to build the armies again, began to allow for economic recovery. This was the golden age of Israel. And Jeraboam was the man who was almost solely responsible for it. Obviously, the hand of the Lord God was on him.
But the interesting thing about this man Jeraboam was this--the wealth abounded. Everywhere you looked, the stock market was doing very well. Everybody was tucking a little away for a rainy day. In fact, they were tucking a lot away for a rainy day. They had never seen economic prosperity like this. But as is usually the case, folks--we're going to find this out very quickly in chapter one--when economic prosperity abounds, usually the social conditions in the country deteriorate.
I want you to think about this with me. Side by side with wealth, there was significant poverty in this realm. Side by side with those who were making a great deal of money, were those who were making almost no money at all. And the gap between the poor and the wealthy was getting wider and wider in the economic good times of Israel.
Development programs today, the United Nations tells us that one-fifth of the population of the United States consumes 86 percent of the resources of the United States. And the lowest one-fifth consumes 1.6 percent of the resources. Now what that means is that the wealthiest one-fifth of people in the United States consume almost everything we have in the United States. And the lowest--see, while economic times are prospering, booming--sometimes social inequity gets wider and wider, farther and farther apart. That was happening in Israel.
Justice was almost nonexistent at this time. Amos, the prophet, who was a contemporary of this man Hosea--Amos the prophet, in Amos 8:5-6 speaks of those who use false balances by deceit so that they can rob the poor. The rich, robbing the poor, in their markets.
In fact, even Hosea himself, chapter 12 in this book, verse 7, says that they have deceitful scales, because the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and nothing seems to be done about it. That's the way it was when Hosea was the prophet. There was significant economic boom, but not very significant social boom. And you know, friends, every time there is a significant economic boom, social things do not follow. Usually moral things do not follow as well.
And while this country was strong physically, while this country was strong economically, morally they were a mess. I mean, just think about the things that were going on. Let's just notice a couple of them here in the introduction to this Book of Hosea.
Look at chapter 2, verse 8. Hosea 2:8 says this, "She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold--which they used for Baal." This is God speaking here. He's saying that, "My people have not acknowledged that all the blessing that they have comes from Me. I'm the one who gave them the grain. I gave them the oil. I gave them the silver and the gold."
What did they do with it? They used it for another god. Morally, these people were becoming corrupt. Skip ahead to chapter 11. There are only a few chapters in this book so we're going to look at all of them in this series.
Chapter 11, verse 1 and 2, "When Israel was a child, I loved him," God said. "And out of Egypt I called my son. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals 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."
The economic times were booming. Social times were not. And moral times were in the pits. So, anytime you have a great, great, economic boom, social things do not seem to follow and morality seems to decline, you know what's going to happen to that country. These people didn't know and I am afraid we don't know in the United States of America either. But if we know anything about history--if we can see what happened in Jeraboam II's day--after this man Jeraboam was finished, after he was no longer the king, the fortunes of the country just sky-rocketed downward.
Think about this. Jeraboam's son, Zechariah, I read about him a few minutes ago, Jeraboam's son was killed by Shallum after he only reigned six months. And then Shallum was in turn killed by Menahem after he reigned only one month. Now, how would you like to go through economic times that are good because of the stability of a 41 year old reign and then suddenly, a man succeeds him six months and then one month. The man who came in after him, Menahem. He ruled for 10 years, the Bible tells us, 2 Kings 15. And even though he ruled for ten years, his son was put on the throne and his son was killed almost immediately by military leaders. There was a coup in the country. And things fell to pieces.
The fortunes of these people went down the hill very dramatically. And it wasn't very long until the next Assyrian king came along, Shalmaneser V. Shalmaneser V marched right into the region--marched right into Samaria, the capital. And Shalmaneser V took the capital of the ten northern tribes in 722 B.C. And all that we're going to learn about occurred just prior to the fall of the capital.
You see, that's what makes this book so up to date, because they did not have a clue what was coming. And it was right around the corner and they were living it up. But they were not living for God. Hosea prophesied in the days that are strikingly similar to ours. And while these people were, the nation, were living it up, they had no idea how soon the judgment of God was going to come. And you know what? I'm not sure we know how soon the judgment of God is coming.
But remember the themes of this book. Sin always brings judgment. Repentance always brings salvation. And underlying it all, there is always the love of God for His people.
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