Hosea Lesson 3
Parallel, Hosea talking to Gomer, God talking
to
Turn to Hosea 2. The book of
Hosea, chapters 1-3, deal with God establishing a parallel between Hosea’s
relationship with his wife and God’s relationship with
This principle of Hosea’s suffering for a testimony, suffering that he
might help us, is given to us in the New Testament. 2 Corinthians 1, where Paul goes into this in
a way which we haven’t got time to but nevertheless, this will give you reason
why oftentimes trials will come into your life and you’ll wonder why, why is this
happening to me, and you’re going to get frustrated, going to get angry, and
when you do, just remember those six reasons why believers suffer. Here’s one of them. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, “Blessed be God, even
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all
comfort,” notice how God is attached to the word “comfort.” [2] “Who comforts us in all our tribulation,
that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble, by the comfort with
which we ourselves are comforted of God.”
There’s the principle: in other words, God will put you in a jam, will
show you how He works in your situation, then with that added wisdom that you
receive through that experience, you will be faced with an open door some day
of ministering to some other believer.
In fact, you may actually be comforting another believer and never even
know it, because your life may be being observed by your neighbor, unknown to
you, and they may be very encouraged by what they see. Oftentimes this is a surprise to believers
because often you look at all the shortcomings and you see where you fail and
so on, get your eyes on all your failures and yet other people can be greatly
blessed, even though you think you’re failing by this principle. That’s the principle of Hosea.
Now turn back to the book and I want to introduce you to some of the
outlining or some of the patterns that we’re looking at in Hosea before we go
any further. This analogy between
For example, take marriage, the second divine institution. When Adam and Eve were married in the Garden,
they did not know all that marriage pointed to; they had no idea of the
implications of what they were going through.
Yet in the New Testament thousands and thousands of years later, we find
what the big picture is all about, that marriage was to train categories of
understanding into the human race, so that on down the line, when God went to
reveal the relationship between Jesus Christ and the Church it could have some
framework of reference. Let’s take
another divine institution, the first one, the institution of works and labor,
an institution that is greatly maligned in our day. Let’s observe what happens. As soon as you destroy the first divine
institution, that is, the free market, as soon as you have government telling
businessmen how much they can produce or telling a man how much he can sell his
goods for because of wage and price controls, in any way that you destroy the
first divine institution, you are destroying actual categories of thought. For example, when Jesus Christ goes to teach the
concept of salvation in the New Testament, He does so using analogs from the
first divine institution. Jesus Christ
often teaches about the fact about, “lay not up for yourselves treasures in
heaven.” Now that’s a sweet sounding
little verse except it doesn’t make sense unless you have an economy with
individuals earning something by production in history. It doesn’t do us any good to hear that our
salvation has not been purchased “with silver and gold but by the precious
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ;” that statement doesn’t mean anything except a
little pious slogan unless you understand the concept of exchange and money as
a commodity that’s involved in the exchange process. So in order that men may understand what
grace is even, God has instituted these principles into economics. Therefore, when He wants to illustrate grace
He will use it with reference to economics.
Now in Hosea God wants to illustrate His personal relationship with
believers and He’s going to do so by an analogy with marriage. Look, if the second divine institution has
collapsed in any social order, if through divorce, if through free love, if
through homosexuality, we have a breakdown in the second divine institution,
then the whole society collectively has lost certain categories of experience,
so that when God goes to reveal Himself as the husband of Israel, this means
absolutely nothing to people who have no understanding of marriage, with the
result that when you see society destroying these institutions you are going to
see large numbers of people actually make themselves incapable of understanding
divine truth.
When you have socialism destroy labor and responsibility, when you have
the equal rights people and all the extremists destroy the second divine
institution, when you have the state invade the home and take custody of the
children, when you have these institutions broken down and destroyed, you are
going to see a generation that literally will be incapable of being
evangelized. They will not have the
framework of reference to understand Bible doctrine. They will no longer understand what love
means and so when God says He is love they won’t understand it. They will not understand what a father is and
how a father acts in the home and therefore when it says God is your Father
they are going to have no concept of what that means, and you can go on and
multiply this ad infinitum, but when
these divine institutions are destroyed, you are going to destroy the teaching
of the Word of God. It will always
happen and has always happened.
So when we come to Hosea, fortunately in his day the second divine
institution had not been destroyed. So
he is going to rely heavily on that second divine institution to teach
fundamental points of doctrine. Now to
understand Hosea we want to notice something about the structure. I said the first three chapters of this book
deal with God establishing this parallel between Hosea and Himself and
Tonight I want to introduce you to a new vocabulary word which will help
you see and get a handle on certain parts of Scripture. The word is a chiasm. A chiasm in the Bible is a certain kind of
structure in the way the Bible is written.
It comes from chi, the Greek letter Chi, this looks like an X, and we go
A, B, C, D, and we draw out something like this. A on the upper left; B on the upper right; C
in the lower left; D in the lower right.
Now when you outline something, suppose we divided a passage into
section A, section B, section C, section D.
If the passage is written with a chiasm, when you outline it you will
find section B and section C go together, and section A and section D go
together. So you have A, B, C, D. In other words, you divide your passage into
four parts, the two middle parts are linked somehow, and the first part and the
last part are linked somehow. And the
Greeks developed this and they called it chiasm after this letter Chi.
Now often times in Scripture, for some reason that’s unknown, we find
the Word of God loaded with chiastic structures. Hosea is one such book. Let me illustrate this. Let’s take the first three chapters; I’ll
give you the outline, the four major parts of these first three chapters and
you’ll see how chiastic it is. Chapter
1:1 to 2:1, first section—God orders Hosea to marry to show judgment; that’s
the whole point of that first section.
God is ordering Hosea into a situation where his experience will
illuminate the whole process of divine judgment. Hosea is going to be asked to marry a whore
and he is going to be asked to stick with this woman when she violates his
covenant, the oath of marriage. And this
is going to be a picture of
Now I think you can see the chiastic structure. See the first section is God ordering Hosea;
last section, God orders Hosea. The
second section amplifies the first one; the third section amplifies the fourth
one. That is a chiasm, and Hosea is
written in this chiastic fashion. But
this isn’t all. Each one of these
sections in turn is a chiasm. So
tonight, since last week we studied the first part of this, tonight we’re going
to study 2:2-13 and there we discover
another chiasm. So this is a chiasm
within a chiasm. I point this out
because I hope when you read the Bible by yourself you’ll learn to think in
terms out outlining the content in your own words. This is a discipline, a mental discipline
that if you cultivate you’ll get a lot more out of Scripture.
Now let’s look at 2:2-13, the specification of God’s judgment. The chiasm, remember to have a chiasm you
have to have four parts. This chapter
breaks down this way: 2:2-5 there is a command to take action in the present
tense in order that
Now let’s look at the chiasm, the first four verses. Notice four verses, how many verses in the
second part of the chiasm? Two. How many in the third part of the
chiasm? Two. How many verses in the fourth part of the
chiasm? Four. Four, two, two four structure, it’s not an
accident, this is part of the literary design of this document. Now the command to repent is a present tense,
it’s centered to the nation, do this and this will follow. The last part of the chiasm is an announcement,
now
Notice something else about the structure. The theme of repentance is common to the
first two parts of the chiasm, but drops out in item three and four. Items one and two, the possibility exists for
Now let’s look at the first part of this chiasm, verses 2-5. I want to go through this slowly and explain
all the different words and what they mean, and I am certain it will be an
eye-opener for some of you. By the way,
I hope you’ve noticed, if you followed through the Samuel series, and if you
make it through Hosea, the reason the prophets describe divine truth in every
day terms that are quite explicit is because they are trying to do
something. Their first priority is not
being orators; their first priority is to communicate doctrine. And if you have to use the language of the
street to communicate doctrine, then use it.
That is the model. Not that’s not
condoning the destruction of the English language or something but that’s just
saying that you’ve got to communicate.
And if you have a choice of twenty-syllable words that don’t mean
anything or a one syllable word that communicates, use the one syllable
word.
Hosea 2:2, “Plead with your mother, plead; for she is not my wife,
neither am I her husband.” The word
“plead” immediately is a technical word.
You have to know the background of this word or we’re going to lose the
whole thing. First, who is doing the
pleading? Remember the parallel and
always keep the parallel in mind. God to
God is going to speak in the same vocabulary as Hosea would speak to
Gomer. And so when it says “Plead with
your mother, plead,” it is an address by Hosea to the children that have been
raised in the house and he’s telling them to go to their mother with this
message. He’s apparently an older man by
this point, his children are raised, he says now go to your mother and tell her
this. But at the same time Hosea has the
experience in his home and family, God is having the spiritual experience with
Israel, and so He’s addressing, through Hosea (Hosea is addressing his literal
children), God is addressing the regenerate believers of the nation to turn
around, and their mother isn’t Gomer, their mother is the nation in this
analogy. The mother of
“Plead with your mother, plead,” the word “plead” in the Hebrew is rib, but the “b” is pronounced as a “v”,
and it means to press a lawsuit; it is a legal term and has very, very
important doctrinal implications. Rib is a verb which means to enter into
lawsuit proceedings. Why is this so
important? Because you can’t have a
lawsuit unless you have a corpus of law.
You can’t have a lawsuit unless there was a covenant violated. And so the very nature of this verb proves
that the Old Testament prophets were not social innovators as liberalism always
makes them out to be. Still professors
in religions courses on the college campuses are following the old, old classic
liberal line, abandoned twenty or thirty years ago by most people incidentally,
but that’s when those men went to school and they haven’t read a book
since. And they are still teaching
students this line that the prophets of the Old Testament were innovators, they
were the forward thinkers, they were the men that campaigned and they were the
men that changed things. Not so. The Old Testament prophet, if anything, was a
reactionary. He was calling the nation
back to prior law. The best illustration
you today would be an ultra-reactionary of constitutional thought. Say, for example, a man who believes in a
firm constitutional law, a strict interpretation of the constitution. That man would cause radical changes but it
wouldn’t be in the sense of left-wing radicalism, it would be in the sense of
ultra ultra rights, always backwards, not forwards.
So when it says “plead with your mother,” it means enter into lawsuit
with her. Plead on the basis of the
violated contract; the contract here is marriage, it is the berith or the covenant mentioned in
Malachi 2:14. So since there is this
prior covenant in Hosea’s marriage with Gomer, when Hosea married Gomer there
was a marriage, this is divine institution two, there was an oath taken under
Malachi 2:14, we know that oath is a berith. Therefore there is a covenant controlling the
relationship between Hosea and Gomer. In
the Word of God marriage is primarily a contractual agreement. Now it is true you can have the contract and
not the reality, but don’t ever get fogged out with the human viewpoint that
impresses itself upon you today that you’ve got to have love in order to have a
marriage. Bologna! You have to have a framework of law in order
to have the love. And the marriage does not begin with love, the marriage begins
with the oath, period. You can have the
oath and the oath is the only seed bed, it’s the greenhouse alone where love
can grow; only there can love grow to its Biblical fruition. Only within stability of law can there be
true love. So notice this.
When the conflict comes up it isn’t treated as a personality conflict
with Gomer. You don’t read in verse 2,
come, we will both enroll in a personality training course. You don’t read anything about that horizontal
relationship, which we don’t deny is important.
But the primary thing is the violation of the oath, the covenantal, the
contractual agreement, rib, enter
into lawsuit with your mother,” enter into lawsuit. It is plural, it is addressed to the many
believers in Israel as well as Hosea addressing his own children. So keep the parallel going. God now is talking to the regenerate, +V
believers in the nation Israel and He’s telling them to enter into lawsuit, in
other words, call the nation back to the Mosaic contrast. The Mosaic Law is the norm and the standard
for all the prophet’s cries against social evil. Keep that in mind next time you debate the
social gospel issue. The social gospel,
in a sense, there is a social aspect to the gospel but you only have it by the
Word of God. It’s the Word that gives
you the norm and standard.
So, “plead with your mother,” then it says “for,” and this is the reason
for the entry into lawsuit proceedings, “for she is not my wife, neither am I
her husband.” Now again let’s treat it
by the parallel, first Hosea talking to Gomer, then God talking to Israel. In Hosea’s personal experience Gomer has
left. In Hosea’s personal experience he
sends his children to start lawsuit proceedings against their mother to tell
her that she has violated her contract. And
the reason for this doing is that she is no longer my wife. Now why does he say this? Doesn’t this indicate the contract is
broken? No; the expression “she is not
my wife and I am not her husband” does not mean the legal relationship has been
destroyed but the experiential relationship has been destroyed.
Remember the three parts of sanctification; when you trust the Lord
Jesus Christ there’s your positional sanctification. All the time that you live until the time you
die or the rapture, whichever occurs first, there’s the second phase of
sanctification or experiential sanctification, it is always incomplete and then
you have the third phase, ultimate sanctification or glorification. Now during this process of time, this second
phase, you have an incomplete sanctification.
This sanctification has its ups and its down. Over here you have your position. Your position in Christ never changes. Legally you are never out of union with Jesus
Christ. But in experience you are; in
experience you can be way out of it. In
experience you can act like the biggest clod that ever walked the face of the
earth. In experience you can look like
the worst unbeliever and you can still be a Christian. Why?
Because there’s a difference between position and experience.
Now it’s the same thing in Hosea’s marriage; positionally and legally he
is still married to Gomer, but in experience she is not his wife and he is not
her husband. This way of stating it is a
dramatic way of getting the point across.
It’s exaggeration in a sense, it’s dramatic. Therefore, verse 2 should
tell you how God looks upon us when we are out of fellowship. Here’s our top circle, our position; here’s
our bottom circle and we’re out of it. When we’re out of it God would say you
are not My child and I am not your Father.
Now that doesn’t mean that legally you’ve lost your salvation but it
does mean in experience you don’t act like God’s child, you don’t bear any
resemblance to God’s child, and God would say that; God would react this way. Remember I said when I introduced this book,
as we work through these verses you are going to see the God of the universe
react. Now this is where you get to know
God, not from sitting in a closet contemplating your naval or having an
ecstatic experience; you don’t know anything except how your emotions work and
you already know how your emotions work.
What you want to know is how the God of the universe thinks and how the
God of the universe reacts. And here’s the place to find out. God is going to react and is reacting this
way. He’s reacting as Hosea is reacting
to Gomer God is reacting to Israel. That
is the way God reacts to us. When we’re out of it… if He were here, present,
and could say something immediately He would say, you’re not My child and I’m
not your God, and it would shock, but He would say it in the same
language.
Now in verse 2 is a plea. Please
notice the context, “Let her, therefore,” the purpose clause, verse 3, “Lest” I
do this. So the possibility, however we
interpret verses 2-5 clearly show the theoretical possibility that Gomer could
have come back at this point, though she’s not going to. And by analogy it shows the possibility the
northern kingdom could have come back, though she didn’t.
Now when he begins to talk to her, he is going to use very explicit
language and the reason he is doing this is to get his point across. “Let her, therefore, put away her whoredoms
out of her sight, and her adulteries from between her breasts.” Now the “fornications” literally, which
should be the words “whoredoms,” the fornications and adulteries, plural
noun. Again keep our parallel. What is Gomer’s fornications and adulteries? Her prostitution business. It’s plural because she has a good
business. She was a popular prostitute
before she married Hosea and she’s a popular prostitute after she married
Hosea, so she’s got plenty of business and that’s why the plural noun is used
here, plural of intensification. “Let
her put the fornications and adulteries away from her,” except this is very
anemic.
Let’s look at what it really says.
“Put off,” in the Hebrew means to lift a burden that’s bearing down, and
the picture you have, very bluntly in verse 2, is a person in the position of
sexual intercourse and she is having sex with a man and he is telling her to
push him off of her, so when it says “take your fornications out of your face,”
literally, in other words, this is looking eyeball to eyeball, usual
position. And her “adulteries from between
her breasts,” lift him off literally is what he is saying. Stop it.
When the message comes to Gomer she’s actually involved in a sex act and
Hosea is saying now push him off. This
is the kind of language that God is addressing the nation. He’s saying the nation Israel basically is involved
in a sex act involving idolatry.
Now why is the tie-in made between sex and idolatry. Okay, let’s go back to chaos of the heart and
look at it for a moment. Chaos of the
heart, or the condition of compound carnality, begins with negative volition. Then you have the darkness involved because
the Holy Spirit stops His illuminating ministry. When the Holy Spirit stops His
illuminating ministry you have a neglect of the Word and darkness ensues. The next step is acquisition of human
viewpoint and with this you have the corollary, the rise of doubt. This can all happen to a believer. After the rise of doubt you reach the stage
where there is an actual hatred of God; where God Himself becomes the focal
point of hatred. There is an antagonism
between the authority of the triune God of the universe and the authority of
negative volition, and in this collision it becomes very heated at this point
and here’s where idolatry begins.
Idolatry begins when negative volition cannot stand God’s authority but
since we’re finite we always need a point of reference outside of ourselves and
so we begin to erect this point outside of ourselves and that, whatever it is,
becomes an idol. As a result of the
idolatry we have frustration because we’re looking for happiness and we can’t
find happiness apart from God, at least permanent happiness, and so therefore
idolatry always ends up in total and complete frustration.
Now why is this illustrated in the Word of God by fornication and
adultery. Let’s go back to the second
divine institution. In the second divine
institution you have man and woman; this is the classic picture, not man and
man as we have some innovators trying these days, man and woman. Each has a particular role in Scripture and
each role parallels God and Israel. The
man is the lover and he is the one who initiates. He is the one who is to woo the response from
the female; the female is basically a responder and she is going to respond to
the initiation. This ranges all the way
from anatomically, physically, all the way up to psychologically. The man is the one who initiates and the
woman is the one who responds. Now the
woman becomes, in this picture, the picture of a believer; the man becomes a
picture of God. God loves believers; God
in grace initiates to believers. We, as
believers, are basically responsive; we can’t do anything until God first loves
us, until God first takes the initiative we will not respond. Therefore, and this is the analogy with the
woman here, the man is to initiate and the woman is to respond.
Now here’s the problem and here’s where this analogy between this second
divine institution and this idolatry enters in.
The woman who is built to respond to her right man, the man of this
marriage relationship, when something goes wrong in that relationship she can’t
stop being a woman, just like when something goes wrong in the relationship
between the believer and God we can’t stop being people; we still need somebody
to take the place of God. We need an
idol. We can’t turn off our humanity; we always need this external point of
reference. We’ve got to have it, that’s
the way we’re made. So similarly the
woman is made to compliment a man. She
is made to respond to a man and if she has a falling out with her right man,
she is going to go fill that up with some substitute. She has got to respond, she is made, she is
created, she’s got to function this way, to respond to something. So therefore
she will take an idol and fill it up.
This explains a lot if this charismatic stuff; and their theological
problems would be solved if they’d just straighten out their marriage
life.
Now let’s go to Hosea and follow through what he is saying. He’s saying let her get these John’s off her,
that’s what he’s saying. Now that
communicates, that gets the point across what God’s saying, now get them
off. [tape turns]
Verse 3 is the purpose clause, “Lest I strip her naked, and set her as
in the day that she was born, and make her as a wilderness, and set her like a
dry land, and slay her with thirst. [4] And I will not have mercy upon her
children; for they be the children of whoredoms.” Now let’s look at this purpose clause. “Lest,” first again let’s look at Hosea and
the analogy and then God and the analogy.
Hosea has given this message to his children; the children are to
deliver this message to their mother; their mother is out some place where
she’s conducting her business of prostitution. She’s in the middle of a sex act
and the children show up, and they are to give her this message, that you’re to
get him off you, lest Hosea come in here and he’s going to strip you naked and
put you out in the street. That’s the
message on one side of the analogy.
The other message is that God insist that He was going to do this to
Israel. Now what is the significance of
stripping “her naked, and set her as in the day that she was born.” This goes into the theology of clothes, so
you might have a little new doctrine here, the doctrine of clothes. Clothes are a theological statement in
Scripture, very seriously, they are a theological statement. Genesis, if you’re going to take it literally
is teaching something about why the human race wears clothes. Did you ever stop and think, if evolution is
correct we shouldn’t be wearing clothes, no other animal does. Why does man seem to be the only character
running around with clothes on. Did you
ever see a lion or monkey wandering around with clothes on? That’s stupid, isn’t it. Now there’s something different man. Why do
all men, everywhere, basically wear clothes.
A few tribes that are degenerate don’t but usually men wear
clothes.
Now why? The Bible gives a reason
for this. We don’t know all that’s
involved but we know that clothes obviously were not worn originally at
creation. Originally at creation the
first couple were in the nude completely, no problem. After the fall it says they became aware of
their nakedness. Now why is the human
race aware of its nakedness but no animal is. All the animals are naked but
they don’t know it; why is man naked and he knows it and it bothers him.
There’s something different, obviously, about man than animals. And the Bible
points out what this is is the existence of the sin nature. The sin nature has affected us in our minds
and in our bodies. Now the story in
Genesis as it’s presented is stressing the external result. We don’t know what the human body looked like
before the fall but there were some changes made after the fall, and whatever
these changes were made it made the person ashamed of their body relative to
what it was before the fall occurred.
Again we can only speculate what these changes were, but there was a
definite introduction of shame. The body
became deformed, physically, as a result of the fall. Whatever that beautiful body was it was
changed drastically to the point where man is the only living creature that is
ashamed of himself; there is an inherent shame.
But the Bible doesn’t say it’s just because of the body; it goes far,
far deeper than that. Because of the sin
nature we are ashamed of anything that exposes us. This is why the fig leaves were put on. True,
that’s talking about the external but there are fig leaves that we cover our
innermost secrets with. This is why no
person since the fall is going to be compatible with anyone else. So don’t by this stuff that two people are
incompatible for a marriage; everybody is incompatible for marriage, don’t
worry about it. People are incompatible
because you’ve got two sin natures and here’s the battle in marriage. You’ve got these two people with sin natures
colliding. Because of their creation
they want to have union, they want to have love, they want to have
communication, they want to have a personal relationship that satisfies. So this drives people into the
relationship. That’s your creature-ness
that’s doing that; that’s the way we were built. But then no sooner does that process start
than we feel this thing, driving us apart, pushing us; I want to know you but I
don’t want you to know me too well; there’s an inner reservation.
Now that psychological effect is one of the results of the fall and
clothing historically is associated with covering this up. Clothing is a theological statement that man
is in need of righteousness. Now you may
not take this too seriously but if you ever get a chance sometime and read some
of the propagandas for nudism you will notice in the serious ones, inevitably
they are always talking about the fact that we must get back to nature. The idea that somehow nudism is an expression
of the real state of affairs, when actually as far as the Word of God is
concerned nudism is a theology which denies man’s sin. It is trying to say the fall never
happened. And unfortunately for all
those people, the fall did happen and its irreversible. Clothing then, from the time of the fall
onward in history is always identified with man’s need of imputed
righteousness. That’s why the human
race… biblically that’s what the Bible says, all men have this sensation, this
need for clothing. You may never have
thought about it before but why is it every civilization has always had this
judgment that we ought to be clothed, and why is it that no matter how
sophisticated the ape, they’ve never come to that conclusion. The dolphin doesn’t wear a bathing suit;
always there’s this difference.
Now when it says “I will strip her naked, and set her as in the day that
she was born,” what God is saying, I am going to let Israel’s sin nature be
exposed; I am going to take the normal process of cause/effect and I’m going to
let it play out so that whereas before I have kind of coddled her along, I have
blessed her economically, I’ve blessed her agriculturally, even though she has
sinned, sinned, sinned, sinned, sinned, I still have blessed her. Now God is concerned lest people get the idea
that negative volition will still reap blessing. So what God is going to do, He says I’m going
to strip the clothes off, I am going to strip my gracious provisions for this
nation off of her and I’m going to let people see Israel the way she really
is. And he’s going to go on to how this
happens in a moment. But keep in mind
the analogy, Hosea threatens to come in and strip the clothes off Gomer if she
doesn’t get out of her prostitution business.
And he threatens, the word to “set here as in the day,” that word “set”
means to put on public display. We don’t
know whether they had stocks like the Puritans had or not but he’s going to set
her out in the public square, sort of like some of the French did after World
War II, they had a lot of women that used to collaborate with the Nazi soldiers
and you can see pictures when the French regained control of Paris, they took
those women, they stripped them and they let them march down the street. They
figured if they liked to go nude with the Nazi’s they can go nude in public,
and they shaved all their hair off and really disgraced them, and that was how
the French treated these collaborators.
So this is a similar situation where God is going to do the same thing.
“…make her as a wilderness, and set her in a dry land, and slay her with
thirst.” All that is the lack of water
and in the Bible the lack of water is the lack of life. There’s going to be a lack of that which
sustains life. I’m going to dry up every
resource of Israel’s prosperity. Now
it’s explained why he’s using this in verses 4-5 and here I think we’re going
to be introduced to maybe a little bit clearer why God disciplines some of us
the way He does. Now it’s always been
clear that God disciplines us, because of our carnality but now you’re going to
see why certain kinds of disciplines come into your life and why God allows
these disciplines. What is it that you’re
doing that brings this stuff on in other words.
Hosea 2:4, He says, “And I will not have mercy upon her children; for
they be the children of whoredoms.” Now
this means that God is saying to the nation Israel, don’t think because you’re
a citizen of Israel you’re going to be spared.
You, the entire generation in this day, in Hosea’s day, the entire
citizenry, all the citizenry are going to be involved in this judgment; there
is no faithful remnant. There are
obviously a few but there is no significant remnant here. So the remnant is
left out of the picture. “I will not
have mercy upon any of her children,” in Hosea’s case these were the children
that were born before he married her, “they be the children of whoredoms.”
Hosea 2:5, “For their mother has played the whore. She that conceived them has done shamefully,
for she said…” now here is the most significant statement of all and here is
human viewpoint in a capsule form which shows you what God gets angry about in
all of us. There’s something that we
entertain in our minds that God wants to get permanently erased from our souls
and He will use all sorts of things to do it.
Let’s first look at the illustration of Gomer, the simple illustration
first and then the complex one. “I will
go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax,
mine oil and may drink.” Now notice what
it is she’s saying, the bread and the water, these are the necessities of food
for life; the wool and the flax are the necessities for clothing. And the oil and the drink are words for that
which can only be bought by the rich. So
those last two items on the list, the oil and the drink are luxuries.
So what this woman is saying, remember she’s on negative volition, she
has a right man over here; this right man is Hosea. Gomer was built for Hosea because God planned
this marriage. Now she is built to
respond to Hosea but because on negative volition she has rejected God’s plan
for her life and now she can’t respond to her right man, but because she’s a
woman she can’t turn that response mechanism off, she’s got to have something
to respond to and she is trying to find it in all these customers. And she thinks that those customers are
providing her with what she wants; all those things listed, all those six items
of verse 5 are basically provisions, the idea, the lovers provide; love
provides, so she thinks that the lovers are providing her with these things and
she wants to go to them because she responds to what she thinks is providing
her needs. This is the basis of
idolatry. Keep in mind that female
nature, to respond to someone who loves.
And the woman, Gomer, is deluded.
She can delude part of herself but not all of it. She can delude who it is that’s doing the
initiating toward her, in other words, Hosea is the one who has provided for
her, Hosea is her right man, Hosea is the one who loves this woman, through
thick and thin he loved her. He is the
one that is going to give her stability and only he is the one who can provide
the need of her soul. But because she’s
on negative volition she rejects that, but since she’s female she can’t reject
this, so she has to react and she reacts against these customers.
Now transform it. What is God
saying about the nation Israel. God is
saying that the nation Israel is in the middle of one of the biggest business
booms in her history. This was recorded,
by the way, it’s true, it happened in Jeroboam’s time, Jeroboam II. Business was never more prosperous than in
the time of Jeroboam II. From the human
point of view it looked absolutely foolish for Hosea to go around making these
ridiculous statements that the business was going to fail. Business had never been better. Crops were flourishing; there was plenty of
rain. The farmers were raking it in on
their crops. All these products,
agricultural products were in tremendous abundance. Later on we’ll see in the future verses how
she had tremendous production of gold and silver coinage. So economically and
business wise the country had never been better than this; it was extremely
good. In the middle of this business
boom what had happened, theologically to the nation.
Well, if we’re to read verse 5 in the analogy, she was attributing her
business boom to the gods and idols. She was attributing the business boom to
the Baalim, she was saying because I have left Jehovah and because I have put
that behind, because we now have these rival sanctuaries that Jeroboam I set up
many, many years before and no Ahab, who by the way was the king of the north
who married a girl who was the daughter of a Canaanite priest, Jezebel, and
through Ahab and Jezebel you have one of the most vicious forms of Baalism in
history come into the nation; because of this you have an extreme heresy. She
attributes all the blessings, this business boom is grace.
Now look at the principle, we’re about to see something very
interesting, how grace works. The
business boom was God’s grace toward a rebellious nation. God was very gracious
because Jeroboam, remember, was the house of Jehu, and Jehu had been promised
survival to the third and fourth generation, so they were on a gracious
extension of the third divine institution.
All of this business boom was the result of grace, grace, grace, grace,
grace, grace, and the nation said no, it’s not the result of grace, it’s the
result because we’ve gone to the high places.
We’ve manipulated the gods, we’ve clapped and the gods come to our aid;
we’ve gone to the genies and rubbed their tummies, so to speak. We’ve
manipulated deity, we have brought
this. Ultimately all heresy is the
kingdom of works, man does the doing.
Now let’s develop this into a principle we can apply in our life. Grace is a dangerous thing at times because
God in His grace makes up for our mistakes.
For example, suppose we deserve that much suffering, let’s make a bar
graph and suppose we deserve that much suffering. In other words, if God just took His hands
off and let everyone of our mistakes play out, and have its rightful course, we
would suffer that much. Now every day of
your life God minimizes your suffering, “thy mercies are renewed every
morning.” And the mercies are renewed
not just to believers but to all men; this common gracious restraining ministry
of the Holy Spirit operates in every man’s life. And so maybe we suffer that much. Though we deserve that much suffering we are
actually suffering far, far less than what we deserve. If God took His restraining hand of grace
off, just in one area to cite a specific illustration, and let the biochemical
mechanisms in the human genes become as chaotic as they would normally under
the direct curse, every one of us when we have children would have deformed
children; every single person. Now the
very fact that normal children are born is a cause for thanksgiving for
grace. The fact that every mother can at
least have the possibility of normal children, the possibility; it wouldn’t
even be a possibility apart from grace.
It’s a testimony to common grace.
Now watch what happens. God is
suppressing suffering; He’s suppressing suffering because He loves humanity and
if He allowed us to suffer the whole human race would phase out, there would be
no one left to be saved, so he suppresses the suffering, He suppresses the
suffering, He suppresses the suffering, in the case of Israel if He had allowed
economics to play out the way they were acting they would be bankrupt
overnight. If He had allowed the natural
creation to respond to this collusion they wouldn’t have any rain to grow their
crops, but God is gracious and gracious and gracious.
Now watch the principle.
Eventually you will have a group of believers who respond to grace ala
verse 5; you will have believers that begin to misinterpret grace and when that
happens a very dangerous point has been reached. When believers begin to assume that because I
got away with it I can therefore get away with it again, then we have a very,
very subtle heresy, grace misinterpreted.
How does God solve the problem?
He solved the problem by stripping us, by taking off the clothes, which
are a picture of grace, and letting us see the ugliness for what it is. And so there will be certain kinds of
discipline that can come into our lives that we will call… we could coin a new
term, the stripped discipline, and it’s to strip off grace for a moment. Now even this is done in grace because if God
didn’t love us He’d just let us get buried.
But here again, going back to the graph, this is how much we deserve,
this is how much we’re getting, we begin to misinterpret, well, I got away with
that, etc. well God really doesn’t care, I know what the Word says but I can
get away with it and it doesn’t make any difference, I know hundreds of people
that got away with it. Fine.
Now you are beginning to misinterpret grace. Now apparently in Scripture there’s only one
way that God works with people when that begins to happen. When that kind of mentality gets rooted in
somebody’s soul, God has a system of undoing it, and He starts to peel off the
grace, and as God peels off the gracious restraints this suffering starts to
increase and it increases some more, and increases some more, and increases
some more until we realize we don’t get away with it. God’s laws still function, and therefore at
times and in places, selectively, the exact details we don’t know but He will
strip off this suppressing grace, even He does it graciously to teach us the
lesson.
Now this is what He is going to do when He predicts back in verse 3, “I
will set her like a dry land and I will slay her with thirst.” What He is going to do is let the
climatological geophysical cause/effect work out. He’s going to say okay, see God has over the
northern kingdom, maybe He has a legion of angels, 10,000 angels here that are
working with the weather. And in spite
of the fact that decay processes are operating in the universe, these angels
work around the condensation and so on and they manipulate, and they keep rain
coming over and over and over and over and over the farmlands of this nation
that is in rebellion, where the farmers go to Baal to get their good luck
charms for their crops for the next year. And as this goes on, finally God says
okay, we’ll cut down to 300 angels now.
And we’ll just cut back and let the climate go to pot, see how they like
that. They’ve got to realize that I’m
the One that provides, not Baal.
Now here’s what happens. These
people are going to, for a while, they’re going to say oh Baal, oh Baal, oh
Baal, where’s our rain, where’s our rain, where’s our rain, you always gave us
rain before, and they’re going to ray to Baal.
This is brought out later on in the chapter. What’s going to happen? Ever time they pray to Baal God takes off a
few more angels. Pray to Baal again,
takes off a few more. So whereas before
every time they prayed to Baal they got rain; now every time they pray to Baal
they get drought. What’s happened? They’re getting an education on who is Lord,
that’s what. So maybe with very little
creativity you’ll see places in your life where this kind of discipline
functions. These are the kinds of things
we’ll be discussing in chapter 2.