-I’ve been looking forward to this series for a while! Since I came here I’ve been trying to alternate between OT & NT, trying to cover an assortment of genres and themes. Last time we were in a minor prophet was 2021 when I preached through Amos. This time I’m going to take a different approach, we’re going to look at 1 entire book each week, looking at the themes of the book, see what they teach us about God, and how we are to respond as God’s covenant people today. 

-If you didn’t pick up, I just said a “Minor prophet.” When we hear that we generally think of something like the minor leagues in baseball, we hear it as if they’re “lesser than.” When the Bible was being compiled into parchments, all 12 prophets were put on 1 scroll because they were smaller, it was often referred to as “the book of the 12.” So when you heard minor prophet, if it helps, just replace the word minor with “smaller.”

-One note for you before we read the text, we’d been doing a monthly memory verse, I’m doing something different with this sermon series – instead of a monthly verse, there will be a weekly key verses that I think helps summarize the content of the book. If you want to continue memorizing them, by the end of this series you’ll have a good grasp on this section of Scripture!

READ/PRAY – Hos. 1 (pg. 797)

1. Why and How Should We Read the Prophets?

-Before we dig into this book, we need to do a little work on the why and how we should go about understanding these books, because there’s some things that to us are confusing, but to the original audience would have been completely understandable. These books recall specific historical events, reference various kings and nations, and address God’s desires for His people in how they’re supposed to behave. If we don’t know those events and kings, we’re going to miss some of what the prophets are trying to teach us. First the why, then the how: 

-The first and most important reason why we should read and study these books is fairly obvious, but I don’t ever want to assume it. These books are a part of God’s Word. We don’t have the right to pick and choose the portions that we read and study and ignore the rest. Yes, these take some more work for us to understand and apply to our lives and context today, but they are all inspired by God, which means according 2 Tim. 3:16, that they are “profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness.” Because they are a part of God’s inspired Word, we read them!

-Now for the how to read them. The first thing we need to do is some history. One of the books I read for this series said there are 2 primary reasons we struggle to interpret these books: One is all the authors assume you know everything that has taken place in Israel’s history, the story of God’s people. The other is that they’re dealing with current events to their day. So we need to know both the story of Israel and the events that happened that the prophets are focusing on. These books were written over the course of 3 centuries: 8-6^thcenturies BC. 

-One of the most significant events in Israel’s history was the splitting of the kingdom. The heyday of Israel was under the rule of King David, the shepherd boy and giant slayer. But the glory days only lasted for 2 generations. David’s son Solomon was led to worship false gods by his variety of wives and concubines, which led to God taking tearing the nation apart, but for Solomon’s son, Rehoboam. 10 tribes went to the north and appointed another king (Israel) 2 tribes stayed in the south and were called Judah (if you need help remembering all this, ask the kids, they’ve been learning this story with actions!)

-The king in the north (Israel) was worried that if his citizens traveled to Jerusalem regularly to worship he would lose their allegiance, so he set up 2 alternative worship sites with their own priests and altars, 1 in the far north side of the nation and 1 in the far south side of the nation (1 Kings 12). 

-Because of their idolatry, God punishes the people, first with the Assyrians in the 9^th century BC, who eventually destroyed the northern kingdom in 722 BC (hence why most of the prophets focus on Judah), then came the Babylonians, then the Persians, and under the Persians, a group was allowed to return to Jerusalem and begin to rebuild the temple.

-If you want to read about this history, you can find it all in 1 & 2 Kings! So these prophets are writing and preaching during the reigns of various kings. 

-The other important aspect that sits as the backdrop to all the prophets is an assumption that everyone knows about the covenants God has made with His people. I like the way this professor from TEDS defines a covenant:

-A few things to note. See that it’s enduring, that means there is no sunset clause to this covenant. There are no “outs” and no expiration date, it’s eternal.

-Then notice it’s a “binding obligation to specified stipulations” that means there are expectations for how the parties are to behave toward each other. This is why the first 5 books of the Bible (referred to as the Pentateuch) are so important for us to know if we want to understand the prophets. Those books give us the stipulations God had for His people. And with that covenant, God promises His people that if they keep their side, He will bless them, provide everything they need, and protect them from other nations. But it required them to obey.

-Next, it’s taken under oath. Both parties are agreeing to this, and if they break their side of the covenant they will be punished. 

-Ratified, made sure by a visual act. Think of when you buy a house, you sign your life away dozens of times, it’s a visual act with a visible reminder (all those pages with your signature that show you’ll pay off your house in a date that feels incredibly far in the future).

-There are 5 key covenants in the OT: Noah, Abraham, Israel, David, and New. Just so we can see what they look like, we’ll take a look at 2 of them, the first and the last. Noah, after the flood had receded and the earth was dry, walked out and God made this covenant with him. It’s between God and all the earthly creatures, God won’t destroy the world again with a flood, and humans are expected to honor life. And the sign for this covenant is a rainbow.

-Repeatedly throughout the Bible, God’s covenant partner fails to uphold their side of the bargain. So the culmination of the covenants in the Bible is one that God’s people CAN’T break. God says He will literally write His law on their hearts, their desire will be to obey Him and God will forever deal with their sin. Notice God says “The days are coming” So often when we hear the word prophet our minds jump to telling the future, and there is some of that in here, but most of the time the prophets aren’t talking about the future, they’re calling out the ways the people aren’t living up to their end of the covenant and reminding the people what God said the consequences were going to be!

-The way I’ve often heard this said is foretelling vs. forthtelling. Foretelling is talking about the future and forthtelling is speaking out to a group of people. A majority of the prophets are doing a lot of forthtelling and only a little (if any) foretelling.

-One of the things that we need to realize about the foretelling though is that the prophets don’t always distinguish between the near and far future. Some of the future are things that are fulfilled in Jesus, and other future things are things that will be fulfilled at Jesus’s second coming, but from where the prophets are looking they can’t see how long the difference is. I was taught this when I was in CO, so this was the illustration they used to teach me this concept. I lived on the front range, which is the flat part at the base of the Rocky Mountains. From the front range, you look at the mountains (like this) and it looks like just a wall directly in front of you, you can see there’s some smaller hills building up to the big mountains. But what’s harder to see is those aren’t the only mountains. There’s valleys in between, some other hills in between, so if you were to go up closer to that mountain you’d start to see this is a whole lot bigger than it looked like from the plains! So my (pretty rough) attempt to draw this would look like this:

-The prophets predict that something good is coming in the future as 2 distinct future events, but they don’t know the space between those 2 events. The point of the foretelling is for God to tell His people about these 2 realties, a near future hope and a far future hope. This will make more sense as we work our way through the books,

-Another component to the prophets is sometimes God has them do show & tell. They’re commanded to act certain things out as an illustration, a picture of something God wants them to understand, and some of them are kind of weird. In Isa. 20, the prophet Isaiah is commanded to walk naked and barefoot for 3 years to show that the king of Assyria was going to defeat Egypt and Cush and lead the captives out naked and barefoot. In Hosea, the prophet Hosea is commanded to take a wife of promiscuity and marry her as a picture of how Israel is treating their relationship with God. 

-Lastly (after this we’ll FINALLY look at Hosea) we need to understand the job description of a prophet. This is Moses speaking, I know we don’t often think of him this way, but Moses is the model that all future prophets are supposed to emulate. Notice who appoints a prophet? God does! And whose words does this prophet share? God’s! And what’s the consequence? God will hold all those who hear it accountable.

-What’s most amazing about the one true God is we don’t have to guess what He thinks! All the other gods at this time were mysterious, people didn’t know what they expected or how to please them, so they had to continually try different things. The only true and living God doesn’t work like that! He sent prophets to tell His people what God wanted, He sent His Son to tell His people what He wanted, and He left us His Word so that we could know what He wants, and He will hold us accountable to His commands in His Word.

• A Picture of Love (1-3)

-The first thing we learn is the name of this prophet and the time period he was called to serve. And remember the 2 separate nations, so you’ve got 4 kings of Judah listed and 1 king from Israel. You can read about this in 1 Kings 14-15. This also shows us that Hosea was a prophet at the same time as Jonah, Amos, Isaiah, and Micah. 

-And Hosea’s ministry starts out with a bang! God commands him to marry a woman of promiscuity and have children with her. This is meant to serve as a sign to Israel about how God views the nations lack of commitment to and trust in Him.

-And unfortunately for the kids, they also get to serve as part of the signs to the nation. Up first is Jezreel. This is the location of bloody battle where King Jehu kills the whole house of King Ahab for their wickedness (2 Kings 9). It’s a little bit like being named something like “Iwo Jima” it would remind everyone of a specific battle. But the names get worse.

-Gomer has a daughter and is called to name her “No mercy.” Her whole life her name was supposed to be used as a reminder to the nation that God wouldn’t have mercy on them. And remember what’s distinct about Gomer: promiscuous. Did you notice that for the first child it says that she bore HIM (Hosea) a son, but these next 2 kids it doesn’t mention Hosea, it just says she conceived. Which means it’s possible that these other kids that Hosea is raising aren’t even his!

-The last child is named “Not my people.” God is rejecting them for their lack of faithfulness to the covenant.

-In chapter 2, after explaining the significance of this sign, God explains why He views Israel as an unfaithful spouse, and it begins with a play on the names of Hosea’s children: My people and compassion or mercy (same words!). God will reverse their fortunes if they repent. Israel has looked for their prosperity in other gods expecting them to provide for them. God says they don’t realize that He’s the one who’s provided everything they need. They’re assuming God’s blessings AND trying to get more benefit and wealth from other gods (particularly Baal, the fertility god, who was believed to bring bountiful harvests).

-But God’s not giving up. He knows there will come a day when they won’t look to anyone else, the people will come to God and acknowledge His provision in their lives. 

-In the last chapter of the sign, Hosea has to go buy back Gomer, pull her back out from her promiscuity and be faithful to him. Just like Israel will spend time in exile, but eventually come back to God and pursuing Him.

-Before we take a look at God’s accusations against Israel, I want to think about some ways we need to respond to this. I read a book recently that talked about “main character syndrome” referring to people assuming that they’re the hero and center of every story. If you want to see an example of this, just look at TikTok. People read a story like this and automatically assume they would be Hosea who would faithfully pursue a straying spouse. But friends, if we were in this story, we would be Gomer, playing the harlot. We run to other things instead of God to attempt to find meaning and purpose in our lives. We distract ourselves with devices so we don’t have to sit in silence and wrestle with our sins. See, the point of the Bible is you’re NOT the hero! You CAN’T save yourself! That’s why Jesus had to come. Augustine writing in the 4^th century said, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Humans are born to be in relationship with God but because of sin there’s a chasm that separates us, so we look to anything to fill that void that nothing except God can fill it. Which is why we need God to continue pursuing us, which is what God talks about through Hosea next:

• The Meaning of Love (4-14)

-This whole book is broken down into 3 sections, all starting with the same Hebrew word to begin a new list of indictments from the Lord (2:2 “rebuke” 4:1 “case” 12:1 “dispute). We already looked at some of these things from chpt. 2, and that same pattern continues throughout the book. God lists accusations against the nation, then talks about the judgment that will come as a response to those accusations, and lands on the ultimate restoration. 

-The whole nation is corrupt, even the priests are joining in the sin! (4)

–5 God accuses the people of looking to Assyria, another nation, for help instead of trusting in God to protect and preserve them.

–6 The people refuse to repent from their sin

–7 uses some ridiculous pictures to describe Israel’s trust in political alliances. The first is they’re like a baker who doesn’t know what he’s doing! If you’ve ever made pancakes, it says they’re like a baker who only bakes 1 side of the pancake and doesn’t bother flipping it. Similarly, one side of Israel is being destroyed but they’re refusing to admit it.

-The second picture is like a dove that flies randomly around, running to any nation they think might help them in the moment, so God will catch them in a net

-The last picture is they’re like a faulty bow, imagine a bow that can’t shoot straight. They keep aiming for the wrong things instead of looking to God.

–8 is the closing arguments of this section, God lists out all the ways they’ve sinned against Him, so He will destroy them. 

9-10 God shares how He will destroy the people for their sins, which are exactly like the sins of the previous generations, there’s nothing new, it’s the same old story.

11 but God refuses to give up on His bride! Matt. 2:15 quotes this verse in reference to Jesus, showing us some of the ways that God works in similar patterns throughout Scripture. Hosea’s readers would have heard this referring to the Exodus story, we hear it referring to the New Exodus in Jesus, which shows us that ultimately this story is pointing us to the coming of the Son! And look at how God talks about His relationship!

12 starts a new round of accusations where God compares the nation to their father Jacob, who was a liar and a trickster who selfishly tried to take advantage of others and improve himself

13 God shares the penalties that will be coming for their continued disobedience

14 God shares what redemption will look like for the nation if they return to the Lord in repentance

-So how should we respond to this book? God tells us He is the source of good, the only one who actually loves us and wants us to be blessed. So friends, what else are you tempted to look to for how you should define the “good life”

-Politics. I feel like our political world is being turned upside down right now! It’s hard to know who to trust! I’m completely fine talking about what’s going on in the world, but I’m not interested in either playing the blame game, or playing the justifying game. The 2 things that most trouble me are “they” and “yeah but.” If you ever want to meet and talk about what’s going on in the world, let’s do it (face to face), but don’t lump an entire group of people together and call them “they,” as in “If only they would…” “They” are human beings who are worthy of dignity, honor, respect, and love simply because they’re humans. The other piece that’s off the table is “Yeah, but what about…) (fill in the blank on any issue that you think is worse than what’s being discussed. Friends, if you can’t disagree or find issues with whatever your political party says, then I think your political party is shaping you more than the Bible is.

-Technology. Technology offers us the illusion of control and ease. We can ask ChatGPT to solve problems for us (or even worse, ask to be counseled by it!) We tend to look to technology to usher in a utopian vision where all is right with the world and we can sit in a circle singing kumbaya. How many people are looking to technology for salvation? Most of this is above my head, but I read a lot, so did you know that if it weren’t for AI and the companies making AI the stock market would be in a major recession? There’s our picture of our whole country placing our hopes in technology! 

-We could also talk about financial resources, are you looking to retirement, a house, a car, a trip to bring healing and wholeness to your life? I just talked to my kids about this: if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these things.

-At the end of the day, we either get God and blessing, or we run from God and receive neither Him nor blessing, we get only death

-Even as we are determined to sin and run to earthly things to satisfy us, God is even more determined to redeem and restore us. Did God ever stop pursuing Israel? And will God ever stop pursuing us?