Let's open our Bibles to the
book of Hosea. Hosea. You'll find that right
after the book of Daniel at the end of the New Testament. Hosea. I wanted to read that verse in
Jeremiah. He that scattereth Israel will
gather him. I've titled this message Gathering
the scattered. And that is the message to the
book of Hosea. The Lord scatters his people
and much of Hosea's prophecy is what the Lord has purpose
to do in scattering them and chastising them for their idolatry. But all throughout this wonderful
book, the Lord in every word of judgment gives the hope of
redemption. And he reminds them that though
he is going to scatter them, he will gather them again. This is our hope. This is the
message of the gospel. It was such a blessing to me
to study the book of Jonah over the last couple of months on
Wednesday nights that I thought, if the Lord enables, I'd like
for us to go through the rest of the minor prophets in the
Old Testament. So, as the Lord enables us, we'll
plan to do that on Wednesday nights. I don't think I've ever
actually preached through any of the minor prophets like we
did with Jonah. Someone might be wondering, why
do we call them the minor prophets? Certainly not because their message
is any less important or less inspired than the other prophets.
But as we come to the end of the Old Testament, there are
12 very short prophets, and that's why they are referred to as the
minor prophets, because they're smaller in volume. But the message
is, as with all of Scripture, is the message of Christ, and
it's the gospel. And I pray that by God's grace,
we'll be able to enter in and the Lord will be pleased to speak
to our hearts by the words that he's given here. I remind you
that when the Lord said, when the scripture says in the New
Testament, all scripture is given by the inspiration of God, when
the Lord said to the Pharisees, you search the scriptures because
you think in them you have eternal life, but these are they which
testify of me, He was referring to the Old Testament when the
Lord met with those disciples on the road to of Emmaus and
he expounded unto them from Moses and the Psalms and the prophets
those things concerning himself. When the apostles preached when
Peter preached at Pentecost, and when Paul traveled and preached,
the only scriptures that they had was the Old Testament. And
so, this is God's word, and it is the gospel, and by his grace,
I pray that he will enable us to discern the meaning of these books to the prophet of
our souls, that they will point us to Christ and reveal to us
our Lord's work of redemption in gathering those whom he scatters,
that he will have mercy upon us and draw us to himself. There's such mercy in the book
of Hosea, such hope, such words of comfort in this little book
of Hosea. It begins with Hosea being told
of God to take to himself a harlot as a wife, and he marries Gomer. Gomer's name translated means
waste. It means waste. She is a picture
of those who have been scattered by sin to waste their lives in
the worship of false gods, idolatry. And when the Lord is pleased
to show us what we are by nature, we see that that is who we are. It's interesting, oftentimes
these Old Testament names have more than one meaning. And the
name Gomer doesn't just mean waste, but it also translated
means complete, complete. and how Hosea as a type of Christ,
Hosea's name means salvation, how Hosea as a type of Christ
takes this harlot to be his wife. And then as she becomes more
and more unfaithful to him and sells herself into this life
of harlotry, Ending up on the slave block,
he goes and purchases her to himself. What a glorious picture. The Lord Jesus took us when we
were in our harlotry. I remember a professor in seminary,
I took a class on the book of Amos and Hosea when I was in
seminary, and I remember my professor was saying, well, you know, the
Lord would not have told Hosea to marry a woman that was already
in harlotry, that she must have done that after he married her. That's not what the Bible says.
And that certainly would not even be consistent with what
this story is a picture of. This story is a picture of the
Lord Jesus coveting himself with his father to be our husband
in the covenant of grace while we were in harlotry. We were
dead in our trespasses and sins. And we continued to pursue that. And the Lord scattered us until
he was pleased. to gather us again, coming to
the slave block and purchasing us and making us his own. All of these Old Testament stories
are gospel stories. Someone asked me just night before
last what I thought about Israel and what was going on in the
Middle East. And I responded by saying to
him, well, I said, you know, Israel's probably the best ally
that we can have politically and militarily in that part of
the world. And for that reason, I'm supportive
of having them as our ally. But this idea that we're going
to obligate God to bless us because we are standing on the side of
Abraham, That's a misinterpretation of
the Bible. The scriptures are clear that
he, in the New Testament, he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly,
one who's been circumcised in the flesh by the hands of men. But he is a true Jew who has
been circumcised by the spirit in the heart. It's an inward
work of grace. The New Testament church is the
recipient of all the blessings and all the promises that God
made to Old Testament Israel. And so what God said to Abraham,
I will bless them that bless you, we're not gonna, we've got
a good ally over there, best we can have, I'm sure, with Israel,
but this idea that the the fundamentalists have and the dispensationalists
have that we're going to obligate God's blessings on America because
we're behind Israel is a total misunderstanding of the Bible.
And the same people who had that idea are the ones who stand most
firmly against the new Israel, the New Testament church, the
people of God and their blindness is evidence of God's judgment
against them because of their not standing with the true Israel. The children of God, the children of Abraham, is the
New Testament church. When the Lord said to those Pharisees,
when they said, we'd be the children of Abraham, we've never been
in bondage to anyone. And what the Lord said, I can
raise children of Abraham from these stones. And when the Lord
takes our heart, our stony heart, and makes it a heart of flesh,
that's exactly what he's done. He has made from the stones,
the dead, hard, cold heart of stone. And he's made us to be
children of Abraham, the father of the faithful. So these Old
Testament stories, they have a historical context to them. Hosea is the first of the 12
minor prophets. All of these prophets were during
that period of time after the death of Solomon and before and
during the Babylonian exile. And you know that after Solomon
died, the nation of Israel divided. There was a man by the name of
Jeroboam, and it's not the same Jeroboam that's mentioned in
our text. You see in verse 1 of Hosea chapter
1, there is Jeroboam the son of Joash. Well, this is Jeroboam
II, and he's about 10 generations after the Jeroboam that led the
revolt against the son of Solomon, Rehoboam. and led 10 of the tribes
of Israel to break away from the southern kingdom. So now, during these minor prophets,
we have Israel, often referred to as Ephraim in the north, and
the kings of the north were basically the ones who were able to overthrow
their predecessor. There was not a lineage from
the line of David in the Northern Kingdom. And the Northern Kingdom
only lasted about 200 years after the death of Solomon. And Hosea
is prophesying to Israel, to Ephraim, to that Northern Kingdom,
who are in idolatry. And he's telling them that God's
going to send them into bondage. And he did. The Assyrians overthrew
them and took them into bondage. And in the New Testament, when
we read of what Jeroboam did, the first Jeroboam, is he set
up the worship of idols on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. And that became the northern
kingdom and that became the place of worship. We remember from
the New Testament in John chapter 4, when the Lord was speaking
with that Samaritan woman. Those are the descendants of
these northern tribes. After they had been taken off
into captivity, they came back and they established that land
of Samaria. And the hatred that the Jews
had for them went all the way back to the time of Rehoboam
and Jeroboam when the kingdom was divided, and they considered
those ten tribes of the north to be nothing but idolaters. The southern kingdom, made up
of Judah and Benjamin, always had a king on its throne that
was a descendant of David. until they were carried off.
The southern kingdom lasted about 150 years longer than the northern
kingdom, but they were carried off into Babylon. But when they
came back from Babylon after 70 years in captivity, they reestablished
the worship of Jehovah and rebuilt the temple and found the scriptures. And that's the whole story of
Nehemiah and Ezra and all that took place. in the southern kingdom. The word Jew, the name Jew comes
from the word Judah and it means praise. Now this is all important
history because as we read these prophets, we understand what
the Lord is revealing in light of the New Testament and in light
of Christ and in light of the true church being represented
by the Southern Kingdom, being represented by Judah, those who
give to God all the praise for their salvation, for he did it
all in the glorious person and the accomplished work of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Whereas the tribes of the North,
Sometimes you might hear about the 10 lost tribes of Israel. Well, those are the 10 tribes
of the North. There's not a single Jew that can trace their lineage
back to any of these tribes. They were scattered. But when
God says, I'm going to gather you together, This passage in
Hosea is given to us twice in the New Testament. Once in Romans
chapter 9 and once in 1 Peter chapter 2. The Lord said, I'm
going to scatter you and then I'm going to gather you. So the
fulfillment of all these promises was made in Christ. The scriptures
are clear that all the prophets and all the prophecies were fulfilled
in the Lord Jesus. Hosea chapter 1, verse 1, the
word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beri, in the
days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah. These were all the kings of Judah. If we take those four kings and
we look at their dates and we assume that maybe Hosea became
the prophet of God at the end of Uzziah's reign and died at
the beginning of Hezekiah's reign, then Hosea was God's prophet
for 75 years. Much different from Jonah. Jonah
had one message delivered at one time, there's no other. Hosea
continued to declare the same message his whole life. For 75,
at least 75 years, perhaps longer. And he was pronouncing God's
judgment against idolatry and saying that God is going to scatter
his people because of that. But in his mercy, And in his
grace, he's gonna gather them together again. The beginning, verse two, the
beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said
to Hosea, go, take unto thee a wife of Hortums, and children
of Hortums, for the land hath committed great Hortum departing
from the Lord. Really, the nature of all sin
is that we end up worshiping a false god. We set ourselves
up on the throne of God. We look to the Lord's commandment
to not have any other gods before him. Don't put any other gods
before my face. Not just in matter of priority.
but have no other gods before the Lord. And only by his grace,
only as he gathers us, we're naturally scattered in idolatry. And idolatry is whoredom. It is spiritual whoredom. It is giving ourself as the wife
of the bridegroom. to another man, another husband,
and how desperate we are to be delivered from that. So he went and took Gomer. I
don't know if I finished what I was going to say about Gomer's
name. Yes, it means waste, but it also
means complete. and how in Christ we are complete. Everything that God requires
for our perfection is in the person of our Redeemer, our Hosea,
our husband. And though by nature left to
ourselves, we are nothing but selling ourselves to other false
husbands. The Lord, in his mercy, gathers
those whom he scatters. He went to Gomer, the daughter
of Debalaim, which conceived and bare him a son. And the Lord
said unto him, call his name Jezreel. Now Jezreel means to
scatter. Paul is named Jezreel. And yet a little while and I
will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu and will
cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. So God is
saying that because of their idolatry, the house of Israel
will not stand. I'm going to scatter them and
they will no longer be those 10 tribes in the north. Verse 5, and it came to pass
at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley
of Jezreel. The Assyrians ended up conquering
all the people of the northern tribes and carrying them off
into captivity. And the valley of Jezreel was
an actual place. But the spiritual meaning here
is that I'm going to, I'm not just going to destroy them politically
and militarily and religiously. I'm going to scatter them abroad.
They're going to be taken away. And she conceived again and bear
a daughter. And God said unto him, call her
name Lo-Ruhamah. Now, Ruhamah means mercy. And
lo, like we're going to see in the next name, means no. And so the first son of Hosea's
name is Jezreel. I'm going to scatter my people.
The next child, which is a daughter, is named No-mercy. I'm going
to have no mercy on the judgment against the idolatry of Israel. And I understand in this type
that our God had no mercy on our substitute. No mercy could
be had. The full wrath of God's justice
had to be executed on our sin bearer, on our savior. The law cannot show mercy. The
law can only execute justice and judgment. And that's exactly
what the Lord did. I will not allow the guilty to
go unpunished. And so the only hope that we
have as Gomers is that we be found in Christ. There's our
only hope. Otherwise, there will be no mercy.
In the judgment and wrath of God, in his eternal judgment
against all idolatry, there will be no mercy. There cannot be
any mercy. If God's holy and if God's just,
he cannot show mercy in the exercising of that justice and of that law. And he didn't show any mercy. He forsook his son. He poured
the full wrath of his justice on him to where our Lord suffered
all the shame and all the sorrow and all the separation that our
sin deserved and suffered the very depths of hell. We see that
in what our Lord went through on Calvary's cross. We can't
understand the depth of what he suffered, but how thankful
we are, how thankful we are that he did that, that we might be
delivered from a wrath and a judgment that is beyond our comprehension. Lo Ruhamah. For I will no more
have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take
them away. And verse seven, and this whole
book of Hosea is like this. There's so many words of mercy. And this is why I wanted you
to have a brief outline of the difference between the Northern
kingdom and the Southern kingdom. Because in the southern kingdom
of Judah, a descendant of David is always on the throne. And
the fulfillment of God's promises in this eternal kingdom, which
was ultimately fulfilled in Christ. That's why it's so important
that the Lord Jesus be the son of David. And in the flesh, he
had to be in the lineage of David. because he is the fulfillment
of that prophecy and of that promise. In order that verse
seven might be our hope, because though Israel and all the idolaters
of Israel were scattered with no mercy, but I will have mercy
upon the house of Judah and I will save them by the Lord their God. That's Christ. I'm gonna save
them by Christ. And I will not save them by bow,
nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. Not
by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. There's
nothing they're going to be able to do to save themselves. They're
not going to be able to fight against sin and win the battle. They're not going to be able
to establish a righteousness, Not, not, that's not, that will
satisfy the law. The battle's not theirs. Comfort
ye, comfort ye my people. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem
and tell them that their warfare is accomplished and that their
iniquity is cleansed and that they've received of the Lord
double for all their sin. God made him who knew no sin
to be made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness
of God in him. There's the double blessing.
The double blessing is the taking away of all guilt and all shame
and the giving of righteousness in Christ that enables us to
stand in the very presence of a holy God, enables us to come
boldly before the throne of grace and find help in our time of
need. Oh, what a glorious. All these prophecies are fulfilled
in Christ. These Old Testament people, all
they could see was what was going to happen with Assyria and Babylon
and all that happened politically and historically. But these stories,
in that context, have no profit to our souls. They have no benefit
to us unless we can understand them. in the fullness of what
the Lord Jesus did. I will have mercy upon the house
of Judah, the true Jew. What does Judah mean? Praise.
That's what Jew means, praise. They're the ones that are going
to praise me. that are going to offer worship
to me, that is honoring to me, because they're going to acknowledge
that they're gathering together all of their salvation, all of
the hope of their redemption, all of the forgiveness of their
sin was not done, it was not done by bow, nor by sword, nor
by battle, nor by horses, nor by horsemen. but it was done
by the Lord, their God. He's the one that did it. He's
the one that gets all the glory. He's the one that gets all the
praise. And the true Jews, the only one that can do that, the
true Jew, the one who's been circumcised by the spirit in
the heart. Now, I remind you what the circumcision
of the heart is. Circumcision is the cutting away
of useless flesh. That's what circumcision is.
Physically, and it's what circumcision is spiritually. And when the
spirit of God reveals to us the glory of Christ and the accomplished
work of the Lord Jesus Christ, he cuts from our heart any hope
that we would have to be saved by any fleshly means. That's
why the scripture says that we are the true circumcision, which
worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no
confidence in the flesh. We can't find any confidence
of our salvation in any fleshly means. Had an opportunity just
the other night to speak to a man very religious man very involved
in his church and he was telling me all the different ministries
retired so he has time and he's a widower so he has all the time
in the world and he spends all of his time involved in all these
ministries in a free will works gospel false church And we had a good conversation. I was very hopeful. Talked to him about the gospel
and about a God who could not be God if he was waiting for
us to do something in order for him to be able to save us. And
as soon as he heard that, he said, well, that wouldn't be
much of a God at all, would it? And I was so encouraged. No,
it wouldn't be. Wouldn't be much of a God at
all if he needed us to do anything in order for him to be able to
save us. And here's Judah's hope. And here is the praise of the
true Jew who's been circumcised in the heart and has no confidence
in the flesh that they've been saved. I'm gonna save Judah. Now the Lord scattered Judah
also, and there are other prophets that are gonna prophesy against
Judah. Hosea was a contemporary of Isaiah, and Isaiah prophesied
against Judah and against Israel, but the Lord gathered them together
and there was a remnant And you know, even in the scattering
that the Lord does in fulfillment of Jezreel, when Nehemiah and
Ezra came back from Babylon, the Jewish nation changed in
Babylon. When they were taking captivity,
it was an agrarian society. They were all farmers and shepherds.
And that was their culture. They went to Babylon. And they
became business people. And they became tradesmen and
have been ever since. And when they came back, a lot
of the Jews that were in Babylon stayed. They stayed there. That was their new life. They
were born in Babylon. They were raised up in that culture.
Babylonian Empire now is over and the Medes and the Persians
are favorable towards the Jews and Cyrus had let the children
of Israel leave and go back to Jerusalem. So there was no reason
for that. They had no interest in going
back to worship Jehovah. They were happy in Babylon. What
a difference. God gathers together those who
need to worship him. Those that have to come back
to that temple and see that blood sacrifice. Those who have to
make a sacrifice in worship to God.
Those who cannot be satisfied with Babylon. They're the ones
who came back. Nehemiah was, Daniel, was the prophet during
that Babylonian captivity. And Daniel wept over what they
had lost in Jerusalem. And when Cyrus finally came and
let them go back, the ones who longed to worship the living
God, they were gathered together. In verse 8, and when she had
weaned Lo-Rehama, her daughter. I have no mercy. She conceived and bear a son.
Then said God, call his name Lo-Emi, for you are not my people,
and I will not be your God. Yet the number of the children
of Israel shall be of the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured
nor numbered. And it shall come to pass in
the place where it was said unto them, you are not my people,
there it shall be said unto them, you are the sons of the living
God. Then shall the children of Judah
and the children of Israel be gathered together. So all these
lost tribes There's going to be a remnant
and God's going to gather the remnant together and appoint
them one head. We know who that is. We know
who that is. And wherever God has scattered
his people, he knows where they all are. You know, people want
to argue against election because they say, well, what if there's
someone out in the far reaches of the world that got elected? How are they going to hear the
gospel? The Lord will get them to the gospel. He'll get the
gospel to them. Don't worry about that. One way or the other, not
one of the sheep's going to be lost, doesn't matter where they've
been scattered to. It doesn't matter what tribe in Israel they're
part of. Here they are. and they're gonna have one head. The one thing that all of God's
gathered people have in common is that they are the body of
Christ, that Christ is their head, and that the body cannot
live without the head, and every function of the body is dependent
upon the head, that Christ is all. and he is in all. And they
are looking to Christ alone for all the hope of their salvation.
Then shall the children of Judah and the children of Israel be
gathered together and appoint themselves one head and they
shall come up out of the land and shall, and great shall be
the day of Jezreel. Tirmidhi, Romans chapter nine. Romans chapter 9. As we go through Hosea, we're
going to find that there's... Remember when the Lord said to
the Pharisees, go and learn what this means, I will have mercy,
not sacrifice? That's from Hosea. What a glorious picture of the
gospel that is. Here in Romans chapter 9, verse 21, hath not the potter
power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel of honor
and another of dishonor? the whole lump of humanity, all
the scattered tribes. The potter has the right to gather
whom he will, to circumcise whom he will, to make whom he will,
to praise him and to need him and to come back to Jerusalem
where the blood sacrifice is made. And what if God willing
to show his wrath and to make his power known endured with
much long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction?
Why would he do that? Why would God leave some to themselves
and make them to be vessels of destruction? Now as believers,
we don't look at someone who is who is involved in some sin
and say proudly, but for the grace of God, there go I, we
could be just as easily brought into any sin that anyone else
is. But we can, and we do look to
those many scattered people the idolaters of the world, the unbelievers,
the unregenerate that God has left to themselves. And we can
say, but for the grace of God, there go I. I would be there
if God didn't have mercy upon me. And that's exactly what the
Lord's saying here. Why would he do this? Look at
verse 23. In order that he might make known
the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy. which he had afore prepared unto
glory. He chose them. He elected them. He redeemed them. And he's going
to have mercy upon them. And all the people that have
been scattered by their own sin and by their own idolatry and
unbelief, he's going to gather together a remnant. even us whom
he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles,
as he saith also in Hosea." Here's the prophecy of Hosea. And this
is the fulfillment of that prophecy. That prophecy was not fulfilled
when God brought the children back from Babylon to Jerusalem. The prophecy of Hosea is being
fulfilled right now, right now, as the spirit of God and the
gospel of God's grace is going out into the Gentile world and
God is gathering together unto himself those who've been scattered
out into the world. As he saith also in Hosea, I
will call them my people which were not my people, as low am
I Lo, am I, not my people. But now God's saying, those who
were not my people, I'm going to make them my people. Those
who were scattered by their idolatry, I'm going to gather them together,
which were not my people, and her beloved, which were not beloved. And it shall come to pass that
in the place where it was said unto them, you are not my people,
there shall they be called the children of the living God. There's the fulfillment of Hosea's
prophecy. I'm going to have mercy on Judah.
Oh, they've sold themselves for naught. Into idolatry, they've
served false gods. But I'm going to have mercy upon
them. And they who were not my people are going to be my people.
And they who I had not have mercy upon, I'm going to have mercy
on them. And I'm going to take Gomer, and I'm going to make
her to be my wife. And I'm going to love her. And
she's going to love me. There's the story, and there's
the prophecy of the prophet, whose name, Hosea, means salvation. Salvation. Salvation is of the
Lord. All right. Let's stand together. Adam, what
are we going to sing? 294. 294. Let's stand
together. 294.