to the book of Hosea, Daniel is the first of what the
commentators refer to as the lesser prophets or the minor
prophets, not that they were lesser or minor in their message. but just simply that they weren't
very long books at all compared to Ezekiel and Isaiah and Jeremiah. The historians place this book
some 200 years after the writings of Daniel, and yet its subject
matter is a whole lot the same. I've heard quite a few messages
out of Hosea And there's a multitude of subjects contained throughout
this book. But what I'm trying to do in
these minor prophets is just to get to the heart of the matter,
which is Christ. To Him give all the prophets
witness. And that's what we want to see.
That through His name, whosoever believeth in Him shall receive
remission of sins. And it is my hope and my prayer
and as much as I can muster my expectation that God will bless
his word and the gospel to the saving of your souls. This is
why I prepare, this is why I come here every week and try to stand
up here and tell you what God has said. Now I titled the message
this morning Betrothed in righteousness. Now, in order for that to have
any impact on you, you have to go back to the beginning of Hosea. And I hope to have four things
that I want you to see this morning in these writings. And the first
is this, a true picture of chosen sinners, what they really are,
where God finds them, why he saves them the way that he does,
a clear picture of chosen sinners. And then also in this book, in
these chapters, is a clear, a great mystery, a great mystery revealed. And then a gracious revelation. And then what God does in the
heart of his harlot bride. So let's begin where the gospel
always begins with a vivid declaration of the sinner and how things
really are. I never one time thought of myself,
in fact is we had a fella come visit us one time. He worked
with one of the guys here in the church in the timber business
and he came over here and he was telling me before church
what a vile sinner he'd been and all of these things and after
church he left He went home and told the fellow that he worked
for, he said, I wasn't all as bad as what that preacher made
me out to be. And he said, I was bad. I was a viper. But he said,
I wasn't as bad as what he said I was. He said, I hated God. Well, you do. You do. He said, the carnal mind. What's that? That's the mind
of every fallen son of Adam. The carnal mind, now listen,
is hostility toward God. Hostility. You don't get that. If I was to come up to you and
say, well, I don't like this particular brand of meat, I like
this kind. Well, you wouldn't get mad. Or
if I said, you know, I really don't like pork chops. I like
steak. Well, you might thank God, but
you wouldn't get mad. But I can tell you something
about God, and man, your face will get red. People start quivering. Why? Because their mind is enmity
against God. It's hostile. It's hostility. God begins his word to us. by
saying this. He's going to give us a picture
of the sinner here. He wants this to go through his
prophet. He wants his prophet to understand
exactly who he's ministering to. Exactly why he's ministering. And in order to do that, he has
to begin with the nature. So now he's going to establish
the picture of the sinner. And so he tells his prophet He
said, you go marry a harlot. You go marry a whore. That's
what he's telling you. A prophet. A prophet of God. You go marry a whore. When the
Apostle Paul began to preach the gospel to the Epicureans
and Stoics, they said, thou bringest certain strange things to our
ears. This is strange to the natural
man. He don't understand this kind
of language. He doesn't know what he is by
nature. The gospel indeed is a great
mystery to men, and perhaps the strangest thing of all in this
mystery is the sinner himself. He knows he hadn't always done
the right thing. There's not a person out here
who won't admit that to you, that at some time they've not
always done the right thing. I did this, I said that, I thought
this. But God uses some of the most
gross and repulsive things in the world to describe the sinner. Isaiah said, we are all as an
unclean thing. Now I challenge you, you go back
under the law of God and see what was unclean. And he said,
all our righteousnesses, our prayers, our worship, our thoughts
toward God, all of our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. Now there's only Three things
mentioned in the scripture about cloth that's unclean before God. One was dead men's clothes, what
they were, those wrappings that they wrapped around those dead
men, dead men's clothes. They were considered unclean.
If you touched those clothes or handled those clothes or whatever
you did, you had to go through this big procedure of sin offerings
and so on for cleansing. The other is a minstrel's cloth,
a woman's minstrel's cloth, unclean. And the third thing is the leper's
cloth that he covered that pus-covered mouth with and nose, and he had
to cover himself, and if he saw anybody coming, he'd have to
yell out, unclean, unclean, unclean. Isaiah said, all of our righteousnesses,
not our evil deeds, not our daily doings, but all of our righteousnesses. are as filthy rags. We are all
together as an unclean thing. Job said this. He doesn't put
any trust in his saints. Huh? God doesn't put any trust
in his saints. God puts his trust in Christ. That's right, that's right. He
putteth no trust in his saints. Yea, the heavens are not clean
in his sight. How much more abominable and
filthy is man that drinks iniquity like water? He doesn't think
a thing. He'll have evil thoughts just
flood his head continually the whole time, every waking hour,
even in his sleep. Filthy dreamers, that's what
the scripture calls it. But we don't think anything about
it. That's what he's talking about. We drink iniquities like
water. Romans 3, 10 through 18, paints
another gross picture of the sinner, saying in fact that within,
he's an open grave. If you were to, when he opens
his mouth, if you could see within a natural man, if you could see
him as he really is, you'd see putrid, rotting dead men's flesh. That's what you'd see. But here
in Hosea and in many other places, he likens these sinners to a
whore. He's likened to a whore here
because of the influence of false religion on Israel. In Revelation
17, antichrist religion is given two titles, two names. And this
is true all through the scriptures. Two names by which he's been
known from the very beginning. Mystery Babylon the Great. You remember what happened in
Babylon. They came together and they said,
we're not gonna follow God's way. We're gonna build us a tower
into heaven. We're gonna make our own way
into heaven. and God confounded their speech
and scattered them throughout the world. That's Babylon, Mystery
Babylon the Great. And it was an attempt by man's
thinking and man's power and man's talents and man's will
to devise their own way into glory. And then the second title
here is The Mother of All Harlots and Abominations of the Earth. Nothing is more wicked or vile
before God than false religion. And nothing has a greater judgment
than false religion. Not even Sodom and Gomorrah.
Our Lord said to Capernaum and those cities that rejected him
and rejected his gospel, it'll be easier on those in Sodom and
Gomorrah than it's gonna be on you. Your judgment is greater. In the book of Hosea, the Holy
Spirit of God zeroes in on the spiritual adultery of chosen
sinners. They've gone a-whoring, he said,
from under their God. They've left their God and they
went a-whoring. They sacrifice upon the tops
of mountains and burn incense upon the hills. and under the
oaks and poplars and elms because of the shade. The shade there
is good, so we go up there. It's pretty up there. Gonna make
us a little garden. I noticed that the, I guess it's
a Baptist church over there in Taylor. Here a few years ago,
somebody donated some money and they went out there and built
a little garden outside, so when you come out, you can walk through
that garden. That same principle as was in the groves that God
condemned. Instead of going into his temple,
instead of worshiping God as he laid down how to do it, they
wanted to go up on the mountaintop and do it. And they built these
groves and little waterfalls and all this stuff to go up to.
Sin manifested itself in all of its vile nature But nowhere
is it more prominent than it is in false religion. Our Lord said, here's condemnation,
here's judgment. Everybody's looking at each other,
I'm not a sinner, I'm not any of those things, I'm not an adulterer,
I'm not a whoremonger. Well, not any of those things.
Our Lord said, here's the condemnation. Light has come into the world.
Men love darkness rather than light. That's the judgment. False religion is a product of
satanic influence. And according to Ephesians 2,
we all walked according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.
We're all religious prostitutes. Why would anybody do such a thing? The promise of reward. This prostitute
bride of the prophet, she follows after her lovers because she
thinks her lovers are leaving the wine and the bread and all
the things that they leave behind these gifts. She goes there for
reward. They follow him because of power
and signs and lying wonders, but especially, it says in 2
Thessalonians 2, the deceivableness of unrighteousness. They make
you to think your unrighteousness is righteousness. That's what
that's talking about. That's how Satan, Satan makes
you, he makes you believe that if you will tithe, if you'll
pay 10% of your income, if you'll tithe according to the law, that's
a form of righteousness and godliness. And if you'll keep the Sabbath
day and don't work on the Sabbath day, which is Saturday, not Sunday,
but if you'll keep the Sabbath day, honor the Sabbath day, that's,
that contributes to your righteousness. It's a deceivableness of unrighteousness. He'll make you to believe it's
righteousness. Ask Him, any of them. I'm doing the will of God.
I don't work on Sundays. In Hosea chapter four in verse
one, God the Holy Spirit says, the Lord hath a controversy with
the inhabitants of the land because there is no truth. There's no
mercy, there's no knowledge of God in the land. Those who worship
God, worship him in spirit and truth. You can't worship God
because you have a good feeling. You can't worship God because
you can play some music with a rhythm and get everybody in
there to do this. That's not worshiping God, that's
worshiping another God. Those who worship God worship
Him in the Spirit. It's the Spirit of God that drives
these things home to us, teaches us the truth, takes the things
of God and reveals them unto us. We worship God in spirit
and in truth. We worship God in the perfections
of His character. the glory of his Godhead and
the beauty of his holiness. And you can't worship some peanut
God that can't do anything. Man has to let him do everything
he does. He has to give him permission.
Can you even imagine such a thing? They all wanna say he created
the world, but he don't have enough power to override your
will. That's nonsense. You can't praise him singing
songs glorifying man and his feelings. God can only be worshiped
in truth. And this is where and how God
discovers his bride to be in the arms of antichrist religion. And then secondly, a great mystery
is declared. Hosea 2 verse 23. He said, and
I will sow her unto me in the earth. This harlot bride, this harlot bride, I'm gonna
have children of my seed. Can you imagine? That's what
he's telling this prophet. He's giving him this picture
of his elect, his bride. Now he said, you go marry a harlot.
I want you to understand what it is I'm saying and who I'm
ministering to. He said, I'm going to sow her
unto me in the earth. I'm going to have children by
her. And I'll have mercy upon her
that had not obtained mercy. And I will say to them which
were not my people, thou art my people. And they shall say,
thou art my God. Now this is a mystery. And I'm
going to show you that mystery. Hosea had three children by her
prostitute bride. Jezreel. And here's what he says
about that name. I will cause to cease the kingdom
of the house of Israel. That's how he named this boy. His name means that God gonna
cause the house of Israel to cease. And then he had a daughter
that was born, Lo Rahama. And he said, I'll no more have
mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them
away. And then he had this other son,
Lo-Ammi, for he said, you are not my people,
and I will not be your God. This is the three children. This
is their names. This is what they mean. So first he says, they're not
my people. I'll cause them to cease to be.
I will not show them mercy and I will not be their God. And
then he says, I will. I will. Now we know God can't
lie and God can't change. So how can these things be? Well,
turn with me to Romans chapter nine and I'll show you. In Romans 9, our God is likened
to a great potter who of the same lump makes one vessel under
honor and another under dishonor. And this is Paul's conclusion,
Romans 9, verse 22. What if God, willing to show
his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering
the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. And that he might make known
the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy which he had
aforeprepared unto glory." Now watch this. Even us whom he hath
called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles, as
he also saith in Hosea, I will call them my people, which were
not my people, and her beloved, which was not beloved. And it
shall come to pass in the place where it was said unto them,
you're not my people, there shall they be called the children of
the living God. Now God has a people he chose
in Christ. Some of them are Jews, some of
them are Gentiles. But the fact that they're Jews,
the fact that this prostitute bride is married to a prophet
does not make them children of God. And that's what he said.
Here's your name, Israel's gonna cease. And here's your name,
you're not my people. And here's your name, I'm not
gonna have any mercy on you. Natural Israel, that's exactly
what happened. Exactly what happened. And they
would do these things because of what they did and what they
thought and how they acted. But he also has a people and
they're all not Jews. Some of them are Gentiles. Some
of them are Gentiles. And this is what he's showing
back there in those verses. In love, he predestinated them
under the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will. Now Israel is a nation in a natural
sense, and they're all the offspring of Jacob or even Abraham. But God has a spiritual Israel. This is his elect. and he's gonna
save them and keep them and gather them to himself. Now that's just
so, that's just so. You read the book of Galatians
and see what it says. You are all the children of Abraham
by faith in Christ and you're children of God. That's how you
know you're a child of God, by faith, not because you're a Jew. And then Hosea gives us a gracious
revelation, Hosea 2.19, I will betroth thee unto me forever. Now the bride is a harlot, whether
she's Jew or Gentile, she's a harlot. He makes that clear up front.
But he has a people, and he's gonna save them. And he's gonna
save them out of their adultery. He's gonna make them his bride,
his bride. And he said, I'm gonna betroth
you. When God put us, when he chose
us and put us in Christ, he betrothed us forever. There was no conditions
put upon us. All the conditions were put on
Christ. Not on you. We went the way of the harlot.
We went after our lovers. We went after them. We did what
we wanted to do. We went our own way. We turned
our back on the word of God, our known God, and we went out
and lived our lives the way we wanted to. Every one of us, harlots,
same as those. But God has a people that he
betrothed to himself. He said, I'll betroth thee unto
me forever. Period. Nothing's gonna separate
us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. In love, he said, I predestinated
them unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will. And God has a spiritual Israel,
his elect. And he's going to save them and
keep them and gather them to himself. And Hosea gives us a
gracious revelation, Hosea 2.19. He said, and I will betroth thee
unto me forever, yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness
and in judgment. Now wait a minute. She's a harlot. How you gonna betroth her unto
thee in righteousness? Ain't talking about her righteousness.
Talking about the righteousness of Christ. I'm gonna betroth
thee unto me in judgment. I'm gonna judge you. but he didn't
kill her. You read on in the book of Hosea,
you'll find her down on the auction block, used, old, unwanted, filthy,
dirty, penniless, and she's down on the auction block and nobody
will bid on her but her husband. And her husband goes down there
and buys her. How does he buy her? He buys
her with silver. That's redemption. He redeemed
her from the auction block. I betroth thee in righteousness
and in judgment. Not yours, but his. His. And watch this. He just keeps
putting and in there. You see that little word and? I will betroth thee unto me in
righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness." Woo! Loving kindness. You know what she found out?
She found out it wasn't her lovers leaving the corn and the wine
and the bread. It was her husband. Wasn't her lovers. She gave them
the credit for it. What we do as religious prostitutes
out here in religion, practicing religious idolatry in bed with
them, what we do, what we do, we give them all the credit.
Didn't give God any. God's putting that food on your
table. God gave you that car you drove
here in this morning. He gave you all these things.
Oh, when a believer finds out what he is by nature, and what
God has done for him in loving kindness, it'll change his mind
about how he worships God. It'll change his whole idea about
God. I will betroth thee, what's that
mean? I promise marriage unto you. That's what
that betrothal means, a promise of marriage. I promise I'm gonna
marry you in righteousness, judgment, loving kindness, now watch this,
and in mercies. Now watch this, I will even betroth
thee unto me in faithfulness. I'll be faithful to you. Yeah,
but she's out here running around with everything, comes down the
road. Not him. Not him. He's faithful. He's
faithful. He's not talking about your faithfulness.
Talking about his. And when you see all these things,
now listen to this. Thou shalt know the Lord. Now you're going to know what
love is. Now you're going to know what kindness is. Now you're
going to know what mercy is. Now you're going to know what
judgment is, what righteousness is. You're going to know these
things. Now you're going to know the
Lord. You know what it is to know the Lord? That's eternal
life. That's eternal life. That's what
that is. The Lord says to his people,
according to my covenant promise, I will betroth thee unto me forever. No possibility of change, no
chance of him changing his mind, no conditions to the promise.
I will, saith the Lord. You see that? I will. And when
God says I will, he will. He don't use that word loosely
like we do. When he says, I will, he will. I will, he continues to say,
betroth thee unto me in righteousness and in judgment. And how can
this be? We're all prostitutes. We're
all religious whores, sinners, every one of us, and none righteous,
no, not one. Oh, before God's awful law, we're
all guilty. Every mouth's been shut. We've
nothing to say in our defense. So he says in Romans 3.20, therefore
by the deeds of the law, no flesh shall be justified in my sight. But, but, now the righteousness
of God without the law is manifested. Now listen, being witnessed by
the law and the prophets. This is God's witness right here
in the book of Hosea. even the righteousness of God,
which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that
believe. For all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace
through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. Betrothal is
the act of the promise of marriage, and in the Lord's case, the promise
of our eternal union with the Son of God. And this, he said,
is betrothal. It's a betrothal of righteousness
and judgment, loving kindness and mercies. And here's the thing I want you
to take away from this. God's promises are based on the
faithfulness of his Son and not on you. If it was based on us,
we'd fall 1,000 times. We could never have any assurance
before God. We can't even pray a prayer without
sin poppin' into it. How could we ever have any assurance
toward God? But it's not based on us, it's
based on him. Our justification is based on
his righteousness and shed blood. Scripture said God shall see
the travail of his soul Not mine, his. This is what I've got against
these old writers who are talking about their experiences and stuff
and trying to push you to their experience and trying to push
you to this level and that level. They're just, instead of going
to the law and going uphill, they're going downhill. And they're
trying to make this experience a part, actually a part of your
righteousness. You've got to get to this point.
It's not when he sees the travail of your soul, it's when he sees
the travail of his soul. And now he's satisfied. He's
satisfied. Oh, God's promise is based on
his son, not on his bride. And then fourthly and lastly,
I want you to see how God deals with his harlot bride. He says
back in verse six of Hosea 2, behold, I'll hedge up thy way
with thorns and I'll make a wall that she shall not find her path. Things ain't gonna work out. God's gonna intervene, and he's
gonna intervene first with his providence. First with his providence. Things ain't gonna go right.
He's gonna turn things upside down. God intervenes in the lives of
his harlot bride with his providence. And listen to this, verse seven,
and she shall follow after her lovers, but shall not overtake
them. She's still gonna run after them,
But she's not going to have any success. She's not going to overtake
them. And she shall seek them, but shall not find them. And
then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband.
For then was it better for me than now. God intervenes in her
life and supplies of substance. These
things are all taken away. Oh, how selfish and self-centered
the sinner is. It's always about them and never
about God. Verse eight, for she did not
know that I gave her the corn and the wine and the oil and
multiplied her silver and gold, which they took and prepared
for Baal. And I'm gonna take it all away.
I'm gonna leave her nothing but her guilt. Nothing but her guilt,
verse 14. Now, he said, when she's stripped
of everything and she's in her guilt, now she'll listen. He said, now,
he said, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness
and I'm gonna talk to her. Now I'm going to talk to her
about my love for her. Not her love for me, my love
for her. I'm going to say comfortable
things to her. Until he leads the sinner into
the wilderness, a place of nothingness, he can't speak any comfort to
her. Now, he said, I'm going to give
her her vineyards. from thence, and from the valley
of Achor, for a door of hope. Anybody know what the valley
of Achor is? You remember the story of Achan?
He took the forbidden thing. He took the gold and silver.
And after Moses told him not, or Joshua told him not to do
any of those things, and then they went out to battle, and
they were just getting slain. And they come back, and they
said, somebody took the forbidden thing. And it was Achan. And he was stoned there and all of
his family and all of his possessions in that valley. And they called
it the Valley of Acre. But she wasn't taken to this
valley to be stoned, but rather to be shown some hope. Took her
out here in this valley of guilt, this valley of reality, and then
opened up hope to her. It was to see her guilt and repent
of it and to see her faithfulness in the light of
His. Now listen, and she shall sing
there in the valley of Acre. She's gonna sing there, because
he's gonna speak to her. And she's gonna sing there. As
in the days of her youth, as in the day when she come up out
of the land of Egypt. See, he's talking here to his
people, his elect people. Victorious, deliberate, set free. And it shall be at that day,
verse 16, sayeth the Lord that thou shalt call me Ashi, That is, my loving husband, and
shalt call me no more, Baal-ai. Now, Baal-ai has to do with the
bride's concept of God as it was manifested in the deceit
of false religion as Baal. That's what he's saying. A cruel
dictator, harsh ruler. And now she sees her husband
as a loving, caring, merciful husband. For I will take away
the names of Baal out of her mouth, and they shall no more
be remembered by their name. And then one more verse, and
I'll quit. Hosea three, verse one. Then said the Lord unto
me, go yet love a woman, be loved of her friend, yet an adulteress. Now watch it now. According to
the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel. Even in our adultery. Even in
our religious fornication. He loves us. He loves us. And
who look to other gods and love flagons of wine. According to our Lord in Romans
5, God's love is manifested to believers in that while we were
yet sinners, Christ died for us. That's where we see his love.
Did you know that? You can't discover his love in
a side of religious righteousness and now you all need to be better. You're not gonna see his love
in that. You're gonna see his love in the Valley of Acre. You're
gonna see his love when he strips you of everything and reveals
the truth to you. And he loved you even while you
was a whore. That's right. And you didn't have any righteousness. You had no ability to justify
yourself, but he justifies you in Christ. And he makes you righteous
in Christ. And he puts the bride's clothes
on you. He puts them on you. He makes
you beautiful before Him. And when He presents you to the
Father, spotless, spotless before the presence of His glory. Oh,
may God give us some understanding of what He's saying through His
prophet. Thank you.