Students ask me to send them study notes all the time. Here is all my teaching through the exciting book of Hosea. These notes are designed to help you study with your Bible open, verse by verse. Let me know if anything is unclear!
Understanding God: What Happens When We Keep Willfully Sinning?
The book of Hosea was originally given as a series of prophecies between 755 and 722 BCE (during the waning years of the Northern Kingdom before their deportation to Assyria). The prophecies were given by God to His followers through the ages understand His heart in times of discipline and estrangement from Him – to fully grasp what is GOOD and RIGHT about God in the difficult times of our walk with Him (Hosea 14:9). Hosea walked with God for more than 50 years when that bucked the trend around him! Further, the book offers a graphic picture of four characteristics of God:
Israel’s Sin Illustrated: Ch. 1-3-God is Faithful
Israel’s Sin Intolerable: Ch. 4-7-God is Holy
Israel’s Sin Punished:Ch. 8-10-God is Just
Israel Restored: Ch. 11-14-God is Loyal
In the first section (chapters 1-3) God instructed Hosea to offer three prophecies (verbal in 1:1- 11; 2:1-23; by example in 3:1-5). These prophecies expose four themes:
1:1-11 Seven Principles of God’s Judgment
2:1-7 The Love in God’s Judgment
2:8-13 Seven Results of Willful Resistance to God
2:14-3:5 The Purpose of Judgment Pain – The “Long View” of Restoration
In our first session, we want to explore the revelation of God concerning the important subject:
“Prone to Wander – Seven Principles of God’s Judgment” (Hosea 1:1-11)
What General Principles govern the ground rules of God’s use of judgment?
– Principle 1: Sin Hurts – Our sin “feels” like a personal betrayal to God (1:1-3).
– Principle 2: Sin Matters – God does keep track of specific acts of sin and refers back to it in judgment of individuals and nations (1:4).
-Principle 3: Judgment is measured – The judgment is often measured commensurate with the sin that caused judgment (1:5). In fact, in trying to stop the rightful line of Israel from ascending to the throne, God obliged Jehu’s attempt by taking it away from all of them!
-Principle 4: God Offers Warning – God offers grace time before judgment, which is the greater purpose to most prophecy (1:6).
-Principle 5: Judgment Levels – The uneven field is often leveled by God’s judgment (1:7,8). God used the judgment against Israel and the abstention of Judah to rebalance their respective power bases.
-Principle 6: Warnings are His Deterrence – God’s warning of impending judgment offers us a unique look at His way of thinking. God wants us to see the horror of losing a specific walk with Him and repent now (1:9)!
-Principle 7: Judgment is carefully controlled – God does not discipline His people RASHLY, but with a view toward pulling them back to His love (1:10-11)!
Hosea 2: 1-13 Understanding God: “The Love of God involved in His Judgment”
In this section we are again we are examining God’s judgment, this time from the perspective of His Love:
1. Initiative: God calls the sinner from a wounded heart to turn to Him (2:1).
2. Realistic: God calls sin what it is, and tries to get the sinner to turn by acknowledging a coming break in the relationship if they will not turn back (2:2). We cannot cling to sin and be close to God, one will drive us from the other! (2:2b).
3. Conditional: Privileges are removed based on the choices of the violator:
a. Circumstances destroyed (3).
b. Fruits of life sifted (4).
4. Specific: God accurately diagnoses will disobedience as exactly that! He does not beat around the bush concerning the cause of the judgment. He also notes how desperately we cling to our sin (5b).
5. Purposeful: God uses judgments (disciplines) to:
a. make further defiling difficult (6)
b. push His children back to Him (7).
As the chapter continues, note how the theme of resistance to God is presented:
Seven Results of Willful Resistance to God (2:8-13)
1. Memory loss (2:8).
2. Material loss (2:9).
3. Exposure (2:10).
4. Joy loss (2:11).
5. Future withered (2:12a).
6. Plunder: others get the benefit of their work (2:12b).
7. Withdrawn relationship with God and the truth (2:13).
Hosea 2: 14-3:5 Understanding God: This passage offers ten steps back to restoration:
A. First, it happens where they are! GOD MEETS US IN THE ASH PILE.
1. The Lure in the Ashes: Though the rebellious believer forgets the Lord in their thinking (2:13), yet God “lures” them back into a walk by taking them to the wilderness (the place of need) and speaking “to their heart” (literal Hebrew translation – 2:14).
2. The Lesson of the Ashes: God gives them back a future provision from the unmistakable place of their own failures. It is a literal rebirth from the midst of the ashes of destruction (2:15a).
B. Second, it happens inside them! GOD PROVIDES EMERGENCY HEART
REPLACEMENT.
3. Replaced Hope: A renewed joy swells up inside the repentant believer as God floods the memories of failure with powerful images of His victory (2:15b).
4. Renewed Thankfulness: The wound of the failure gives way to a renewed sense of humility and overwhelming appreciation that God loves us. The “list” gives way to “love” (2:16).
5. Returned Strength: God pulls the hooks of the old selfish life out of the renewed follower, and crushes the memory and hunger for the old lifestyle. The wicked past seems a distant memory (2:17).
C. Third, it happens around them! GOD ARRANGES REST.
6. The struggle against everyone and everything gives way to rest and peace at God’s hand (2:18).
D. Fourth, it happens between them and God! GOD RENEWS AND STRENGTHENS THE RELATIONSHIP.
7. Security: The security of the relationship with God becomes a strong bond, causing their decisions to reflect the love they have for God (2:19-20).
8. Desire: The desire to talk to God – and for God to answer – becomes the most important and common part of life (2:21).
9. Empowering: The former struggles will now give way to a firm understanding that all things come from my Father’s hand, at His will (2:22).
10. Testimony: God will openly use the testimony of their renewed walk, and publicly proclaim them to be His alone (2:23)!
The picture:
3:1 Go love a current adulterous (example of “where they are” principle above).
3:2 Purchase her from her bondage with the full price of her slavery.
3:3 Put her in a secluded time of cleansing (this will explain what Israel will go through when I
turn and leave them leaderless, until their return 3:4-5)
Hosea 4:1-19 Israel’s Sin is Intolerable – And God is Holy! “Straight Talk From a Holy God”
I. The Indictment: God offered a seven-part indictment of His wayward children that brought judgment on their houses (4:1-2).
-Charge #1: No firm stand (4:1a) “Hear what God says about you: you take no firm stand for God…”
-Charge #2: No loyalty to defend His ways (4:1b) “…you have no enduring loyalty to His ways, you do not perceive Him in your daily life!”
-Charge #3: No “close connection” in daily walk (4:2a) “Your faithless walk works out in misusing your mouths…”
-Charge #4: Deceitful words (4:2b) “…walking deceitfully…”
-Charge #5: Violence (4:2b) “…killing…”
-Charge #6: Ill-gotten gain (4:2b) “…smuggling…”
-Charge #7: Lustful lifestyles (4:2b) “… and sexual unfaithfulness – sinning constantly and in rapid succession.”
II. Chances Suspended (4:3-5): God offers an explanation to those who He knows will feel cheated when they suffer after trying to do good works.
1. First you will sense a decline in prosperity and position (4:3). “Therefore I will reduce the prosperity of your land and work.”
2. You will attempt to find another to blame, hoping that changing the others will avert judgment (4:4). “Don’t bother trying to change each other!”
3. Because of the sin, even those who have made attempts to follow will suffer with the brash sinners (4:5). “When judgment comes, even the religious will go down with you as your nation is torn apart.”
III. The Nine Penalties (4:6-19):
-Penalty #1: Your special blessed position is lost for a time because your heart left following Me! 4:6 My people are crushed by their dullness of heart toward Me, so I will remove your special status before Me for you and your children.
-Penalty #2: You will feel the void of loneliness when I back out of the relationship. 4:7
With each generation you longed to live apart from My walk, so I will give you the loneliness you desire!
-Penalty #3: Shame will depart your streets. 4:8 People now hunger to do wrong
shamelessly.
-Penalty #4: The self-justifying religious leaders will lead many by spewing their own rules to a special judgment! 4:9 They have followed the religious nonsense of leaders, and they will bring on themselves the punishment they deserve.
-Penalty #5: Family and physical security will fleet away as the relationship with Me slips away. 4:10 They will be unfulfilled in all they want, supplies and security of children – for they left their walk with Me.
-Penalty #6: They will find no lasting peace, though trying drugs and people relationships. 4:11 They will seek comfort in each other and a bottle, but draw further from true help.
-Penalty #7: Truth will die – they will reinvent righteousness and truth to their own standard, but it won’t produce what a walk with Me does! 4:12-13 Their false
religious practices keep them believing they are “trying” to do good, but nothing
good comes of it.
-Penalty #8: Sin will grow and be unpunished. 4:14 I will allow sin to go unpunished and
unrighteousness to fill the land with loyalty left trampled under foot.
-Penalty #9: I will withdraw My Word and your testimony from those who do not want truth. (4:15-18) Let the people of Israel go after their sinfulness stubbornly, and do not try to intervene from Judah. Do not exchange religious participation with them – let them alone in their sin. (19) The judgment will come, and they will have their day!
Hosea 5:1-15 Israel’s Sin is Intolerable – And God is Holy! “The Vacuum Effect- God’s Wrath Explained”
The Problem (5:1-5): What the people did –
1. As the Leaders go, so goes the nation! (5:1).
2. People will get a hunger for the externals without a solid understanding of the correct path, and they will fail to understand correction (5:2).
3. God has not withheld judgment because He has not seen it! He knows and sees. (5:3).
4. There comes a time when people prefer the “spiritual” externals more than the truth! (5:4). They enjoy the “violating spirit” of their own standards.
5. There is a snowball effect to the sins of a nation, and God looks for a softness and vulnerability in the hearts of men to direct them (5:5).
The Pronouncement (5:6-15): What God will do –
6. God will withdraw from the people no matter if they keep practicing the right things or not! (5:6)
7. In their deception, they have born fruits of falseness, and God will bring their system down (5:7).
8. Judgment is sure (5:8) and will be swift (5:9). Your borders have been breached by your own works, and the fences have now removed protection from you! (5:10).
9. God is about to let you fall in line with His prophesied course (5:11) and decay as promised (5:12).
10. When I sent warnings to you, you dug in further by reaching for contentious ones that only increased your pain (5:13). As a result, I will pull back my protections and cause your calamities! (5:14).
11. I will await only one thing – your repentance before Me (5:15).
Hosea 6:1-7:16 “The Party Is Over and The Place is a Wreck!”
Introduction: God hurts over our sin. He expresses both pain and a parent-like desire for us to learn from life’s temptations. Tonight we will look at how our sin moves His heart, and how He desires us to change. Have you ever walked in coldness toward God? This message will tell you (from God’s perspective) what that time felt like to Him! Now, let’s look at “God the Father’s” perspective on the post-party mess made by His sons:
I. The Call of the Prophet (6:1-3)
1. First Call: Turn Back to the Lord (1) and God Will Heal Our broken
nation (2a). It will take time (2b), but we WILL LIVE IN HIS PRESENCE!
2. Second Call: Focus our Perception on the Lord (3), and God will SURELY return to us (cp. Ps. 78:23).
II. The Works of the People (6:4-11a)
1. Your love evaporates (4), so I have sent HARD words, and REAL troubles
(5)! (cp. “first love” of Ephesian church in Rev. 2).
2. Your outward work has replaced your heart (6)! (cp. Lk. 11:37ff)
3. Your heart has strayed into unfaithfulness (7).
4. You love violence (8).
5. You fleece people out of greed (9).
6. You have raised up idols (10).
7. You force a stored up judgment (11).
III. The Cry of the Father (6:11b-7:3)
1. I feel totally robbed – when I want to reach out to you, you cheat me out of the blessing (11b-7:2).
2. I feel trashed because you flaunt sin in front of Me (7:3).
IV. The Four Examples of Deceit (7:4-16)
1. Example #1: Unstirred Fire – Hot and Ready Sin (7:4-7)
2. Example #2: Unevenly Burned – Blind Victims (7:8-10)
3. Example #3: Lost Homing Pigeons – Directionless and Purposeless (7:11- 15)
4. Example #4: Unreliable Weapon – Useless to Reach Out (7:16)
Hosea 8:1-14 “Selling Myself Short”
Introduction: How do people end up “stuck” in a sin pattern? It begins with a misunderstanding about God and themselves. Tonight we will look at the pattern to help us avoid the “potholes” of life. As we begin a new section, we see God calling out a pattern that many people become stuck inside. Consider the description of the believer that has walked away. They walk in:
-Dread: God has made it clear that disobedience leads to judgment. They know
something is wrong, and see the coming of judgment, but do not change (8:1).
-Distance: They have walked away from their own promise to follow, and feel
guilty – yet do not change (8:1b).
-Defiance: They have rejected truth they know and believe, because they choose a path of their own making (8:1b).
-Double-mindedness: They claim a desire to follow God, but do not DO the things
He desires of them (8:2-3). What have they done?
1. Choose and support leaders that don’t reflect God’s standards (8:4).
2. Put other priorities and things in the place of God (8:4b). Stop this (8:5)! Do you not see that YOU have made the things you worship (8:6; cp. 1 Ki. 12:28- 33) and I will destroy all of it!
3. Choosing to sow evil reaps:
a. a mountain of evil compounded (8:7a).
b. a useless productivity (8:7b).
c. a slavery to greater forces (8:7b).
Four Problems in the Specific Case of Israel:
1. She is becoming a consumed commodity (8:8).
2. She has made a conscious choice (8:9).
3. She faces a conspicuous result (8:10).
4. She keeps a religious appearance, but makes her own rules (8:11-13).
a. She ignores the Biblical prescriptions, and treats them as strangely irrelevant (8:12).
b. She plays out a self-affirming religion without a heart to obey Me (8:13).
Result: God will not forget, even if we do (8:13b-14). Judgment will come as promised.
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The end of Hosea 8 offers an interesting closer look on the subject of the slide into sin. Note the operation of the principle:
Evil repays ten-fold (8:7)
1. I become a consumed & used commodity ( 8:8)
2. I make a conscious choice to follow (8:9)
3. I give a conspicuous result (8:10)
What does the slide look like?: ( Six steps down)
1. I can keep looking religious- but it is a religion of my own rules (8:11)
2. I will view God’s principles as unrealistic & foreign (8:12)
3. I will build a religion of self-benefit (8:13a)
4. I will reduce the message of judgment (8:13b)
5. I will take my joy & success in other ventures (8:14a)
6. I will live to see the vanity of them (8:14b)
Hosea 9:1-17 God’s Great Invitation: Turn Before It’s Too Late!
God offers people at least one opportunity (and often more than one) to turn from sin and get His help. Tonight, we will look at the invitation, and then at the steps that follow the rejection of it. Our passage ends with God view and the prophet’s view of the tragedy of the wasted life.
Section One: “Ten Truths to Grasp for those who are sinking but think they are enjoying it!”
1. Stop mindlessly joining in to the frivolity of the nations, one who understands the seriousness of eternity values cannot simply escape truth (9:1).
2. Recognize the reality of sin and its sad consequences in the strained relationship with God – the most devastating consequence (9:2a).
3. Understand the bondage of the sinful lifestyle – you will act with short term values that lead to destruction (9:2b).
4. Acknowledge that your stubbornness is causing you to lose past blessings of God (9:3a).
5. Grasp the reality that your desire to be like the world will force you into the mold of the world (9:3b).
6. Face the sobering truth that freedom to choose a walk with God will be withdrawn from your next generation (9:4a).
7. Feel the pain of sin left uncared for – the distance from God will grow and grow (9:4b).
8. Note the practices of religion as they become more and more empty and meaningless (9:4b).
9. Remember the great moves of God of yesteryear – with only envy. They are long gone! (9:5).
10. Surrender to the trapped feeling (9:6a) and watch as the victories of the past become buried under dust (9:6b).
Section Two: “Eight Signs of the End of the Joyride!” Days of punishment are coming! (9:7) How do I know?
1. People of God are increasingly viewed with contempt by the masses (9:7b).
2. People will set traps to rid society of God’s spokesmen (9:8).
3. People will do despicable things to trick the people of God (9:9).
4. Many people who once followed God with great promise will show themselves to be selfindulgent and uncommitted (9:9b-10).
5. The previous marks of blessing will become a burden, and My face will turn away from them (9:11-12).
6. People will search even the unthinkable options in hopes of blessing when the realize their emptiness and trouble (9:13).
7. Nothing they try will seem to really work, and they will blame the sources of blessing with praising the sources of trouble (9:14).
8. Eventually, overt judgment will come, and they will feel its power (9:15-17)
Hosea 10:1-15 Looking for Truth in all the Wrong Places “Ignoring the Guilty Heart”
Introduction: Did you ever spend alot of time trying to fix a problem that you knew in your heart was caused by your own sin? Did you do it while refusing to deal with your sin? Let’s look at what God says about clearing the path of problems like this!
The Description of the Wayward (10:1-2)
1. You had prosperity, but were self-oriented (10:1a)
2. You were religious and showy and used your prosperity to decorate your religious life (10:1b).
3. Key: You didn’t deal with personal sin and have it forgiven (10:2)!
The Penalty to the Wayward (10:3-7).
1. Lost freedom: The Lord will remove your freedom to worship (10:3)
2. Lost values: When your freedom is gone people will know they lost it, but not see the real value of it anyway (10:3).
3. Lost cohesiveness: Without the truth that comes from proper worship, the bond that holds society together will break down into unending legal actions of dishonest people (10:4).
4. Lost sense of truth: The lost love in captivity of your idols, false gods and all that is wrong will bring more tears to your eyes than a loss of truth (10:5).
5. Lost power: Your false gods (all that you trusted so dearly) will be powerless to help you in the disgrace and shame of your captivity (10:6).
6. Lost leaders: The power and influence of those who enticed you into wickedness will evaporate (10:7).
The Move of God and Its Purposes (10:8-11)
1. Removing the Influences: God will help you by destroying THE wickedness of your kingdom – a love prostituted to other gods (10:8a). He will bury your shameful altars and symbols of rebellion (10:8b).
2. Refocusing your eyes: He will make clear your sin to you! You have been motivated by a deep desire to forsake God and hurt those around you to have more for yourself (10:9).
3. Reestablishing the Truth: (YOU ARE ALREADY SPIRITUALLY IN BONDAGE!) God will choose the time of discipline, using any tools He decides to among the nations (10:10). He will enslave you to finally bring you to see the fruits of their sin (10:11).
The Great Invitation to Come Home (10:12)
1. Open to God’s Healing Hand: Deal openly with your heart and invest yourself in a right walk with God, and you will experience the HESED of God (10:12a).
2. Recognize your Individual Power: The secret to national salvation is personal
confrontation of your own sin, personal hunger to seek God until God refreshes you (10:12b).
The Sadness of your choice: (10:13-15)
1. Living in Deception: Yet you sow evil, reap bad fruit and consume it as a lie (10:13).
2. Living in False Hope: You think you have the strength to make it on your own (10:13b), yet you will be proven helpless when the real battle comes (10:14-15).
Hosea 11:1-12 Israel Will Be Restored: “Eight Methods God used to raise His adopted children”
When a couple adopts a child that strays it is intensely painful and heartbreaking to the faithful family. God experienced this pain and describes Himself in this unique portrait view into God’s heart!
1) 11:1 I loved him and called him out of the crowd of despair.
Selection of you: I remember when I walked into the room and chose and adopted you from a home filled with hopeless and hurting children. You came home with me and accepted a place in our family, but then turned. Your rebellion has left me empty and hurt, with a strong feeling of injustice.
2) 11:2 THEY (Not “I” as in NIV) cried louder and louder their allegiance, and yet they moved away from Me, bowing themselves to false gods. Battle for you: I watched you say you wanted to be a part of the family even as you kept pulling
farther away. I watched you lower your standards and you left me tear-filled and empty.
3) 11:3 I taught them to walk and lifted them when they fell, but they didn’t understand that I cared for their pains. Teacher for you: I taught you how to take your fist steps and winced when you took your first tumble. I was there for every scrape and cut, and yet you have no concept of my love!
4)11:4 I bonded them with our family and united them in love. I patiently taught them to have direction and stooped to feed them. Guardian over you: I guarded you through life with a strong loving tie of belonging to all of us, watching out for those influences that would bind and blind you. No place was too far, no job to low to stoop, if it protected you.
5) 11:5-7 Is it not inevitable that you will end up imprisoned because of your relentless pursuit of trouble? 11:6 Violence, trouble and destruction will be their certain future. 11:7 Because you have determined to pull far from me, the time will come when I will be unable to lift you from the pit you have dug, no matter how willing you will be! Warning for you: I will not sugar-coat your future, you are heading for real trouble! You will be hurt and taken advantage of, and at a certain point you will move beyond turning back, as terrible as it pains me!
6) 11:8 No matter what you have done, I simply cannot turn and walk away. I love you too much to be unaffected by your life! Enduring for you: I can’t turn off my love for you, even if I know it will just keep hurting me. My love for you was so long ago ignited, there is no way for me to turn the clock back!
7) 11:9 No matter how hurt I am, I will not unload my pain by putting you through all that you truly deserve. I will feel like truly hurting you, but I will not – for I am God and not like man! Reserving for you: You break my heart and make me want to visit pain on you for what you are doing – but I will not. I will hold back what you deserve, because I can.
8 ) 11:10 They will come back and follow me. They will see their needs, turn and call many back to me. 11 They will flock back into the safety of my house, and they will desire to live again under the rules and protection of my security. Hoping for you: You will eventually turn around, I will wait and watch in earnest expectation that you will learn from you painful mistakes.
Hosea 11:12-12:14 Israel Unmasked: Sinners in the Hands of a God Who Sees
Think you can out wit God? You can’t! He has a message to you:
#1: The heart of your problem is the lie you are telling – making yourself a victim! 11:12 You say I abandoned you, but you lie! YOU rebelled against Me! I have been faithful!
#2: The symptom is compromise in your life that you feel inside! 12:1 You sustain yourself on empty nonsense, lie and intrigue, you fill your lives with fallacies and compromise! The northern tribes pastures (raw-waw) on wind (ruach) and pursues (rawdaf) eastward or east winds (qadeem)
#3 The tricks you pull will come back on you – you have tricked others and I will use them to trick you! I will do this because I want you to remember Me! 12:2 God has an indictment against you: You tricked the people and I will sting the trickster!
12:3 You were born in struggle against others.
12:4 You lived in struggle, and God granted you room to grow in grace. He met you at Bethel and talked.
#4 There is a way out! You must come back and remember Me, you must trust Me!
12:5 Don’t you recall Yahweh Elohim Tsabaw is His Zayker (Memorial)!
12:6 Now you must turn back to God. You must guard your faithfulness and judgment and bind your weakness in His strength.
#5 Listen Carefully! I see past your surface veneer, and I am able to peel you back to a place of vulnerability. I keep warning you!
12:7 The trader cheats on the scales in delight.
12:8 Your nation believes it can use its wealth to hide its guilt in its prosperity.
12:9 I brought you from the wilderness and can make you live like then as I do in Sukkot!
12:10 I have warned you repeatedly in prophetic messages!
#6 Stop acting and start following! I see your religious rites, but they are no help to you!
12:11 Is Gil’ad troubled? It’s people are dangerously empty. They observe religious rites in Gilgal, but the altars are like danger stone piles in the plowed field!
#7 Know my plan! I will take you away again, as I have in the past, to bring you back into blessing. I will lead you out, and I will lead you back in, but not until you have paid your bill!
12:12 Israel had to leave his land to go and tend sheep and earn a wife.
12:13 Israel used a prophet to bring him home again from Egypt.
12:14 Yet, Israel has provoked God such that He will leave their guilt on them until they have paid for their crimes.
Hosea 13 and 14 Israel Will Be Restored: Judgment’s Rain Bears Righteous Fruit
Introduction: The book of Hosea was originally given as a series of prophecies between 755 and 722 BCE (during the waning years of the Northern Kingdom before their deportation to Assyria). The prophecies were given by God to His followers through the ages understand His heart in times of discipline and estrangement from Him – to fully grasp what is GOOD and RIGHT about God in the difficult times of our walk with Him (Hosea 14:9). Hosea walked with God for
more than 50 years when that bucked the trend around him!
(Chapter 13) As we close the book, in this lesson we will see how God viewed the discipline He placed on the people, and what fruit He saw as the outcome. This helps every believer understand WHY GOD DOESN’T REMOVE CONSEQUENCES immediately when we turn to Him:
1. Testimony Principle: The only clear way for the nation to see the need to follow God is for them to live with the results of their sin. Slighter disciplines sometimes don’t work, and the entire reputation needs to be carefully considered. Israel used to be powerful, but idolatry killed her. (13:1) Their sin has only increased in discipline (13:2) They have a fixed reputation as idolators, so they are dissipated in discipline. (13:3)
2. Assertion Principle: God needs to assert His rights to our obedience in graphic ways that help us understand truth. Real love insists on exclusivity! Since I am the Lord, and I redeemed them from Egypt- I took care of them in the wilderness and fed them, I have the right to insist they exclusively stand with Me, but they were filled and proud, and forgot Me. (13:4-6)
3. Measured Severity Principle: God brings discipline on nations in direct proportion to their insistence to walk away. He is tougher in discipline when they are harder in heart, For their pride I will bring judgment – powerfully pounce like a lion, quietly sneak up like a leopard, viciously rip them as a bear protecting cubs, consume them as a lion – tearing them apart. (13:7-8)
4. Effect Principle: When sin is conceived, it bears fruit. You chose to stand against Me, and that choice will destroy you. Kings and rulers cannot protect you – I gave them and took them away! Your sins are recorded and will not be overlooked. Your pains are like a woman in breach labor, unable to deliver. (13:9-13)
5. Remembrance Principle: Even in judgment, God remembers mercy! You will face death, but I will buy you from permanent death – you will live again! (13:14).
6. Justice Principle: There is a just repayment penalty for every transgression, measured by the transgression. You will face judgment without compassion though you have flourished, for Assyria is coming to destroy you and plunder you. You must pay for your rebellion with the lives of your women and children. (13:15-16)
The Expected Outcome of God’s Remembrance Hosea 14:1-9
God’s offer: Return to Me (14:1) and bring true words of offering, asking deliberately for forgiveness (14:2). Commit to finding all your help in Him (14:3).
God’s promise: I will turn back to you (14:3), and renew the land, transplanting you back to your home (14:4). I will make you prosper again with gifts I give (14:5-6). I will offer security, care, abundance, rebirth and a new reputation (14:7). Since you turned to Me, I will refresh your life and vitality – and you will know where it comes from! (14:8)
God’s expectation: Wise men will see the truth in the discipline, and know I am just for doing all of this! (14:9)