Dysfunctional Family Dysfunctional Faith

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Dysfunctional FamilyDysfunctional Faith

• Hosea 1.1 2.1

2
Prophetic Object Lessons

• Ezekiel
• Now, son of man, take a clay tablet, put it in
  front of you and draw the city of Jerusalem on
  it. Then lay siege to it Erect siege works
  against it, build a ramp up to it, set up camps
  against it and put battering rams around it.
  Then take an iron pan, place it as an iron wall
  between you and the city and turn your face
  toward it. It will be under siege, and you shall
  besiege it. This will be a sign to the house of
  Israel. Then lie on your left side and put the
  sin of the house of Israel upon yourself. You
  are to bear their sin for the number of days you
  lie on your side. I have assigned you the same
  number of days as the years of their sin.

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Prophetic Object Lessons

• Ezekiel
• So for 390 days you will bear the sin of the
  house of Israel. After you have finished this,
  lie down again, this time on your right side, and
  bear the sin of the house of Judah. I have
  assigned you 40 days, a day for each year. Turn
  your face toward the siege of Jerusalem and with
  bared arm prophesy against her. I will tie you
  up with ropes so that you cannot turn from one
  side to the other until you have finished the
  days of your siege (Ezekiel 4.1-8).

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Prophetic Object Lessons

• Isaiah
• at that time the LORD spoke through Isaiah son of
  Amoz. He said to him, Take off the sackcloth
  from your body and the sandals from your feet.
  And he did so, going around stripped and
  barefoot. Then the LORD said, Just as my
  servant Isaiah has gone stripped and barefoot for
  three years, as a sign and portent against Egypt
  and Cush, so the king of Assyria will lead away
  stripped and barefoot the Egyptian captives and
  Cushite exiles, young and old, with buttocks
  baredto Egypts shame (Isa. 20.2-4).

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Prophetic Object Lessons

• Jeremiah
• You must not marry and have sons or daughters
  in this place (Jeremiah 16.2)
• Hosea
• 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 (Hos 1.2b-c).

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A Prostitute?

• That she is called metaphorically
  prostituting woman in 12 cannot be taken as a
  literal statement of her profession or practice.
  She is merely an Israeliteall of whom are
  prostitutes To marry any Israelite woman was
  to marry a prostituting woman, so rife was the
  religious promiscuity of Hoseas day (Stuart
  1987 11-12, 27).

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A Prostitute?

• At least five or six year would have been
  required for all the events described in 12-9.
  The marriage and the three pregnancies, at least
  one of which followed a weaningwhich in ancient
  times was at age two or three (Stuart 1987 25).

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Naming Children

• Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel
  more than Leah. And he worked for Laban another
  seven years. When the LORD saw that Leah was not
  loved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren.
  Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son.
  She named him Reuben Look! A son, for she said,
  It is because the LORD has seen my misery.
  Surely my husband will love me now. She
  conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son
  she said, Because the LORD heard that I am not
  loved, he gave me this one too. So she named
  him Simeon.

9
Naming Children

• Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to
  a son she said, Now at last my husband will
  become attached to me, because I have borne him
  three sons. So he was named Levi. She
  conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son
  she said, This time I will praise the LORD. So
  she named him Judah. Then she stopped having
  children (Genesis 29.30-35).

10
Jezreel

• This is not punishment for Jehus zeal in the
  slaughter at Jezreel rather it is punishment for
  not learning the lesson of Jezreel. Jehu himself
  had been the agent of Gods fury and personally
  had seen how terribly it fell upon an apostate
  dynasty. But he and his household went on to
  repeat the apostasy of the Omrides and their
  predecessors (2 Kgs 1031 131). God visited
  the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu
  because, in the final analysis, his dynastys
  rule was little better than that of Jeroboam I or
  Ahab and Jezebel (Garrett 1997 57).

11
Lo-Ruhamah

• God said, Call her Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no
  longer show love to the house of Israel, that I
  should at all forgive them (Hosea 1.6b-c).
• Yet I will show love to the house of Judah and
  I will save themnot by bow, sword or battle, or
  by horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their
  God (Hosea 1.7).

12
Lo-Ammi

• With the naming of the child Not my people,
  God declares the covenant between himself and
  Israel to be null and void. The line You are
  not my people, and I am not your God reverses
  the familiar covenant language of Exod 67 and
  Lev 2612. God is rejecting Israel and
  abandoning her people (Garrett 1997 70).
• However, This does not mean that Yahweh is done
  with Israel, but now he deals with them as the
  enforcer of the covenants curses of those who
  break it, and as the God who having betrayed by
  his bride must find a way beyond marriage to
  overcome their unfaithfulness (Mays 1969 30).

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Glimmer of Hope

• 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 (Hosea 1.10 2.1).

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• Projecting
• into
• the New Testament

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Hosea New Testament

• Once you were not a people, but now you are the
  people of God once you had not received mercy,
  but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2.10).
• There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
  male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
  Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are
  Abrahams seed, and heirs according to the
  promise (Gal 3.28-29).