Hosea

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Hosea

• Love me, or else?

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Tuesday February 8, noon, 2011

• Richard Bauckham, PhD

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This is what I require

• Believe this
• A
• B
• C
• Do this
• A
• B
• C
• Signed..

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Chronology
Judah Prophets Israel
931 BC Rehoboam Jeroboam
Abijah Nadab
900 BC Asa Baasha
850 BC Jehoshaphat Elijah Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Joram
800 BC Jehoram, Ahaziah, Queen Athaliah, Joash Elisha Jonah Amos Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II
750 BC Amaziah, Uzziah, Ahaz Hosea Micah Isaiah Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah
722 BC Hezekiah Isaiah Pekah, Hoshea
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The Setting

• The LORD says, Wine, both old and new, is
  robbing my people of their senses! They ask for
  revelations from a piece of wood! A stick tells
  them what they want to know! They have left me.
  Like a woman who becomes a prostitute, they have
  given themselves to other gods. At sacred places
  on the mountaintops they offer sacrifices, and on
  the hills they burn incense under tall, spreading
  trees, because the shade is so pleasant! As a
  result, your daughters serve as prostitutes, and
  your daughters-in-law commit adultery. Yet I will
  not punish them for this, because you yourselves
  go off with temple prostitutes, and together with
  them you offer pagan sacrifices. As the proverb
  says, 'A people without sense will be ruined.

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• The people of Israel are under the spell of
  idols. Let them go their own way. After drinking
  much wine, they delight in their prostitution,
  preferring disgrace to honor. They will be
  carried away as by the wind, and they will be
  ashamed of their pagan sacrifices. (Hosea
  411-19)

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Unfaithful Gomer Unfaithful Israel

• When the Lord first began speaking to Israel
  through Hosea, he said to him, Go marry a
  prostitute who will bear illegitimate children
  conceived through prostitution.
• This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a
  prostitute by turning against the Lord and
  worshiping other gods. (Hosea 12)

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• My children, plead with your mother---though she
  is no longer a wife to me, and I am no longer her
  husband. Plead with her to stop her adultery and
  prostitutionShe said, I will go to my lovers
  they give me food and water, wool and linen,
  olive oil and wine. So I am going to fence her in
  with thorn bushes and build a wall to block her
  way.
• She would never acknowledge that I am the one who
  gave her the grain, the wine, the olive oil, and
  all the silver and gold that she used in the
  worship of Baal. (Hosea 22,8)

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• So I am going to take her into the desert again
  there I will win her back with words of love. I
  will give back to her the vineyards she had and
  make Trouble Valley a door of hope. She will
  respond to me there as she did when she was
  young, when she came from Egypt. (Hosea 214-15)

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• The LORD said to me, Go again and show your
  love for a woman who is committing adultery with
  a lover. You must love her just as I still love
  the people of Israel, even though they turn to
  other gods and like to take offerings of raisins
  to idols. So I paid fifteen pieces of silver and
  seven bushels of barley to buy her. (Hosea
  31-2)

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Religious

• They take their sheep and cattle to offer as
  sacrifices to the LORD, but it does them no
  good. (Hosea 56)
• The LORD says, Sound the alarm! Enemies are
  swooping down on my land like eagles! My people
  have broken the covenant I made with them and
  have rebelled against my teaching. Even though
  they call me their God and claim that they are my
  people and that they know me, they have rejected
  what is good. Because of this their enemies will
  pursue them. (Hosea 81-3)

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• They are doomed! They have left me and rebelled
  against me. They will be destroyed. I wanted to
  save them, but their worship of me was false.
  They have not prayed to me sincerely, but instead
  they throw themselves down and wail as the
  heathen do. When they pray for grain and wine,
  they gash themselves like pagans. What rebels
  they are! (Hosea 713,14)

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What is the fundamental problem?

• My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
  Because you have rejected knowledge, I also
  reject you as my priests (Hosea 46 NIV)
• There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no
  knowledge of God in your land
• My people are being destroyed because they dont
  know me. It is all your fault, you priests, for
  you yourselves refuse to know meThe more priests
  there are, the more they sin against me. They
  have exchanged the glory of God for the disgrace
  of idols. (Hosea 41,6,7 NLT)

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• The people say, Lets return to the LORD! He
  has hurt us, but he will be sure to heal us he
  has wounded us, but he will bandage our wounds,
  wont he? In two or three days he will revive us,
  and we will live in his presence. Let us try to
  know the LORD. He will come to us as surely as
  the day dawns, as surely as the spring rains fall
  upon the earth. But the LORD says, Israel and
  Judah, what am I going to do with you? Your love
  for me disappears as quickly as morning mist it
  is like dew, that vanishes early in the day. That
  is why I have sent my prophets to you with my
  message of judgment and destruction. What I want
  from you is plain and clear

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• I want your constant love, not your animal
  sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me
  than burn offerings to me. (Hosea 61-6)

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• On Zion, Gods sacred hill, there will be
  nothing harmful or evil. The land will be as full
  of knowledge of the LORD as the seas are full of
  water. (Isaiah 119)
• How precious, O God, is your constant love! We
  find protection under the shadow of your wings.
  We feast on the abundant food you provide you
  let us drink from the river of your goodness. You
  are the source of all life, and because of your
  light we see the light. Continue to love those
  who know you and to do good to those who are
  righteous. (Psalm 367-10)

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• And eternal life means to know you, the only
  true God, and to know Jesus Christ, whom you
  sent. I have shown your glory on earth I have
  finished the work you gave me to doI have made
  you known(John 173-6)
• We know that the Son of God has come and has
  given us understanding,
• so that we know the true God. We live in union
  with the true God---in union with his Son Jesus
  Christ. This is the true God, and this is eternal
  life. (1 John 520)

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• I reckon everything as complete loss for the
  sake of what is so much more valuable, the
  knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I
  have thrown everything away I consider it all as
  mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ and be
  completely united with him. (Philippians 38,9
  GN)
• I have not stopped giving thanks to God for you.
  I remember you in my prayers and ask the God of
  our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, to
  give you the Spirit, who will make you wise and
  reveal God to you, so that you will know him.
  (Ephesians 116,17 GN)

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• When the Judgment Day comes, many will say to
  me, 'Lord, Lord! In your name we spoke God's
  message, by your name we drove out many demons
  and performed many miracles!' Then I will say to
  them,
• Go away. I never knew you. (Matthew 722-23)

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Marriage

• When you were born, no one cut your umbilical
  cord or washed you or rubbed you with salt or
  wrapped you in cloths. No one took enough pity on
  you to do any of these things for you. When you
  were born, no one loved you. You were thrown out
  in an open field. Then I passed by and saw you
  squirming in your own blood. You were covered
  with blood, but I wouldn't let you die. I made
  you grow like a healthy plant. You grew strong
  and tall and became a young woman. Your breasts
  were well-formed, and your hair had grown, but
  you were naked. As I passed by again, I saw that
  the time had come for you to fall in love. I
  covered your naked body with my coat and promised
  to love you. Yes, I made a marriage covenant with
  you, and you became mine. This is what the
  Sovereign LORD says. (Ezekiel 164-8 GN)

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Marriage

• Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved
  the church and gave his life for it.Men ought to
  love their wives just as they love their own
  bodiesAs the scripture says, For this reason a
  man will leave his father and mother and unite
  with his wife, and the two will become one.
  There is a deep secret truth revealed in this
  scripture, which I understand as applying to
  Christ and the church. (Ephesians 525-32 GN)

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Marriage

• Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The
  first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and
  the sea vanished. And I saw the Holy City, the
  new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from
  God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to
  meet her husband. I heard a loud voice speaking
  from the throne Now Gods home is with people!
  He will live with them, and they shall be his
  people. God himself will be with them, and he
  will be their God. He will wipe away all tears
  from their eyes...They will see his face.
  (Revelation 211-4 224)

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• In the history of the Western Church since the
  era of Constantine, God as stern-moral-sentencing
  Judge eclipsed God as loving Story-teller, who
  weaves a transformative tapestry of faith, hope
  and love through the ages.
• Wayne Northey

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• The truth is I slipped by mere carelessness into
  saying that the Enemy really loves the humans.
  That, of course, is an impossibility. He is one
  being, they are distinct from Him. Their good
  cannot be His. All His talk about Love must be a
  disguise for something elseHe must have some
  real motive for creating them and taking so much
  trouble about them. The reason one comes to talk
  as if He really had this impossible Love is our
  utter failure to out that real motive. What does
  He stand to make out of them? That is the
  insoluble question.

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• His throne depends on the secret. Members of His
  faction have frequently admitted that if ever we
  came to understand what He means by Love, the war
  would be over and we should re-enter Heaven. And
  there lies the great task. We know that He cannot
  really love nobody can it doesn't make sense.
  If we could only find out what He is really up
  to! Hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried,
  and still we can't find out. Yet we must never
  lose hope more and more complicated theories,
  fuller and fuller collections of data, richer
  rewards for researchers who make progress, more
  and more terrible punishments for those who
  failall this, pursued and accelerated to the
  very end of time, cannot, surely, fail to
  succeed.

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• The people of Israel are as stubborn as mules.
  How can I feed them like lambs in a meadow? The
  people of Israel are under the spell of idols.
  (Hosea 416,17 GN)

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Gods Wrath

• I will attack the people of Israel and Judah
  like a lion. I myself will tear them to pieces
  and then leave them. When I drag them off, no one
  will be able to save them.
• I will abandon my people until they have suffered
  enough for their sins and come looking for me.
  Perhaps in their suffering they will try to find
  me. (Hosea 514, 15)

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• When Israel was a child, I loved him as a son,
  and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I
  called to him, the more he rebelled, offering
  sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning
  incense to idols. It was I who taught Israel how
  to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he
  doesnt know or even care that it was I who took
  care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of
  kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his
  neck, and I myself stooped to feed him. But since
  my people refuse to return to me, they will go
  back to Egypt and will be forced to serve
  Assyria. War will swirl through their cities
  their enemies will crash through their gates and
  destroy them, trapping them in their own evil
  plans. For my people are determined to desert me.
  They call me the Most High, but they dont truly
  honor me.

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• How, oh how, can I give you up, Ephraim! How, oh
  how, can I hand you over, Israel! How can I turn
  you into a Sodom! How can I treat you like a
  Gomorrah! My heart recoils within me, all my
  compassion is kindled. I will not give vent to my
  fierce anger -- I will not destroy Ephraim
  again. (Hosea 11 1-9 Phillips)

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• The God that holds you over the pit of hell,
  much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome
  insect over the fire, abhors you, and is
  dreadfully provoked his wrath towards to burns
  like fire he looks upon you as worthy of nothing
  else, but to be cast into the fire he is or
  purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight
  you are ten thousand times more abominable in his
  eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is
  in ours. Jonathan Edwards

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• Tell them that as surely as I, the Sovereign
  LORD, am the living God, I do not enjoy seeing
  sinners die. I would rather see them stop sinning
  and live. Israel, stop the evil you are doing.
  Why do you want to die? (Ezekiel 3311)

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What will God do to rebels?

• When Israel was a child, I loved him as a son,
  and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I
  called to him, the more he rebelled, offering
  sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning
  incense to idols. It was I who taught Israel how
  to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he
  doesnt know or even care that it was I who took
  care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of
  kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his
  neck, and I myself stooped to feed him. But since
  my people refuse to return to me, they will go
  back to Egypt and will be forced to serve
  Assyria. War will swirl through their cities
  their enemies will crash through their gates and
  destroy them, trapping them in their own evil
  plans. For my people are determined to desert me.
  They call me the Most High, but they dont truly
  honor me. Oh, how can I give you up, Israel? How
  can I let you go? How can I destroy you like
  Admah and Zeboiim? My heart is torn within me,
  and my compassion overflows. (Hosea 111-8 NLT)