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Imagine naming your children with a description of the state
of the nations today!
It seems to be a normal thing - names had far more
significance then. We choose names expressing parental hopes. Their
names referred back to recent events or current affairs.
Eg. Daughter in law of Eli named her
child Ichabod - no glory - the glory has
departed from
Eg. Isaiah’ son - Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz.- ‘Speed the
spoil, hasten the prey’ signifying the speedy removal of
Hosea’s childrens’ names were a
commentary on the state of the nation.
The
story so far…
Hunky
prophet of God, Hosea, is on a mission. He has to marry Gomer - a woman of dubious morals and loyalty, who
bears three children; older son Jezreel,
daughter, Lo-Ruhamah and younger son Lo-Ammi - each name chosen as a statement of their
relationship. Eventually she turns on Hosea and flees. At first her life of
freedom dazzles but age is not on her side. Her high class liaisons turn to
cheap prostitution, drink, drugs and iniquitous debt. The bright night life
turns to the grey of disillusionment as her desperate plight dawns on her.
Broken-hearted Hosea discovers her up for sale as a sex slave. He buys her back
and takes her back home to live together again. Both Gomer
and Hosea have had serious lessons to learn but will they learn them? Now read on!
Names of people and places are often significant in prophetic
work. Like other prophets Hosea played with them, bringing irony, and puns to
work in what they say.
Let’s look at Hosea’s childrens’
names.
1. Son - Jezreel - 1:4f - Then the
LORD said to Hosea, "Call him Jezreel, because I
will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel,
and I will put an end to the
Jezreel is his son - the name means ‘The
seed of the Lord’ or ‘The arm of the Lord’ or ‘The Lord will scatter’ It was also the place Jezebel fled to
for refuge in the face of Jehu’s purge and where she and others met their
deaths. It was a place of defeat too, the valley was
strategic to anyone trying to get control over
Hosea initially called
2. A daughter he
believes is not his - Lo-Ruhamah - not loved ‘no
natural affection’ ‘For I will no longer show love to the house of
Previously God had made great play on how close the nation
was to Him - how much he loved them. In Hosea
Is this the way you repay the LORD, O foolish and unwise
people? Is he not your Father, your Creator, who made you and formed you? Remember the days of old; … For the Lord's
portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. In a desert land he found him, in a barren
and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the
apple of his eye, like an eagle that
stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch
them and carries them on its pinions.
The LORD alone led him; no foreign god was with him.
Cf also a promise claimed by David in
Ps 17:6
& Zechariah 2:8 whoever touches you touches the apple
of his eye.
3. A Son - again not his - Lo-Ammi ‘no kin of
mine’ ‘Not my people’ - ‘For you are not my people and I am not your God’
Flies in the face of God’s covenant promise - Ex 6:7 I will
take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Repeatedly God makes
this promise through the OT. That is the covenant - the agreement - God’s last
will and testament!
Here is Hosea saying God has revoked it!
Why?
Because the people had gone so far away! - they had ignored God, their husband, and gone after the gods
of other nations.
4:1-3.
God would be perfectly within his rights to revoke the
covenant, to remove His love for the people.
Indeed she would decline, frantically chasing after those
who might support her. Forgetting that God supplied all she needed in the first
place. - 2:5
Therefore God would leave her to her own devices - 2:9 -
13
There would be serious disaster because of rebellion.
Though you know God loves you, don’t presume on God’s love
and mercy! It is of mercy not a right!
He calls for a true return -
At times the people had half heartedly returned to God - 6:4
- love like the morning mist and dew. They concentrated on ritual rather than
life - 6:6,9&10. They needed a heartfelt
return to the Lord - 6:1-3.
Because they refused
to return God could give them up and be perfectly justified
BUT can he really do
this?
Ch 11.
The people are unloved because they have turned from God’s love, they are not God’s people because they have disowned
God rather than Him disowning them.
‘My people are determined to turn from me’. (11:7)
But God will not deal with her as He said.
He can’t bring himself to do it, he’s promised to love and cherish
her, how can he go back on it. He may allow decline to show what she is capable
of but He will reverse what is deserved.
2:14-17, 19-23. - restoration
Lo-ruhamah - unloved - becomes Ruhamah
- loved - The one for whom there is no natural affection is accepted, cuddled
and given all the family affection.
Lo-Ammi - not my people - becomes Ammi
- my people. The one who is not my kin is accepted and brought in and made an
heir as much as the others.
The
terrible day of Revenge and defeat in Jezreel becomes
the victorious day of Jezreel!
There is a divine reversal! God turns our expectations on
their heads! He turns our lives around, he turns the
negative to positive, the false positive to negative.
Mary sang of the way God exalts the humble and brings down
the mighty. The sinner becomes a saint, the thief becomes the benefactor, the rebel becomes the follower. The gentile becomes the
inheritor of eternal life- what the Jews always thought was theirs.
2 Corinthians
The early church knew and used Hosea...
Romans 9:25f /Hosea 1;9-10
1 Peter 2: 9-10
- referring
to our sin and rebellion - and the fact that we are gentiles outside the
promise of God - But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy
nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who
called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 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.
And that mercy, Peter
says, is found in Jesus.
Come to Him for mercy
Or do you insist on
being Lo-Ammi or Lo-Ruhamah,
or devastated in Jezreel?