It was that I saw Hosea Sexpo?

It 'very graphic - the Book of Hosea - and full of passion. For what is at stake, believes that Hosea is not only a nation, to break a few commandments, but a whole people who have left the lover of their souls.





"Ask your mother, plead - for she is my wife, and I am not her husband - who has put away her whoring from her face and her adultery between her breasts, because I do not strip naked and do as they do during the day she was born, and makes themlike a desert, and do it like a dry land and kill them with thirst. "(Hosea 2:2-3)





No, we're not at Sexpo, but one might wonder what place such words as these should be in church, or be assigned in the Bible! Ah, but we are in the Book of Hosea, which must be one of the weirdest books in the Bible, and certainly contains one of the most bizarre stories.





Last week we looked at Amos - my favorite prophet. This week IHe knows his companion's strange, imagine Hosea - another figure who prophesied a message of appeal, in northern Israel in 8th century BC





These men may actually have been comrades! Sure, they were to preach in the same place at about the same group of people at the same point in the history of Israel. Many scientists believe that Hosea could have his only work as Amos began his production. However, it may also have been some overlap.





Of course they arewere talking the same generation of people in the same place, and both were equally dark delivers messages of doom, but despite these similarities, there is no doubt a prophet for the others!





Amos, you will recall, was a farmer from the south, who are called to be heard and to preach to the people of the North, which presumably returned to his farm. Hosea seems to start a northerner, and we do not know what his professional backgroundwas, but he seemed certain to have had a strong connection with the sex industry!





Although Hosea married a sex worker. This is clear. What is not so clear that after the divorce from his first wife, was then married to a sex worker second, or if, like most of the scholars who have tried to beat to reconstruct its history, has returned to its first wife and married again - caught directly from the brothel, apparently, to take home!





But wePut together the final details are two things about Hosea





Which has a highly dysfunctional family.


That his life, and most tragic of her marriage, was his message!


Christian couples who give a ministry priority has always recognized that there is no shield your family from work, and I mean not only people in the ordained ministry. Each family that acknowledges the fact of service and mission, which givenot for God and other people within a limited frame 9:00 to 5:00. All of your family made.





Each couple moves into the mission, their children with them. It 's inevitable! But nobody in the history of mission work of the people of God, to my knowledge has ever the envelope further in this regard as Hosea was pushed!





Hosea is not enough to drag his family with him in battle (so to speak), while doing his best to protect them. Rather, hemore or less his family accused him and stood behind them! He did not only of his wife - a living sermon illustration of infidelity. He did it for her three children, each of which received a symbolic terrible name!





I admit, I tried to feel at a time when our baby son called, 'Doom', but because I liked the game (the first 3D shooter in the world) has been.





Hosea called his son, "Jezreel" that does not soundbad until you realize that the place of Jezreel, where Jehu, after killing King Ahab and Queen Jezebel, her whole house was killed - children, family, friends, colleagues, and indeed anyone who was actually says have had a friendly conversation with the royal family deposed. Everyone had thrown his head in a basket of Jezreel.





Calling your son Jezreel was as she calls him, '9 / 11 'or even' Auschwitz '- a name that evokes memories of violence andJudgement. And the two girls did not go much better. The first was "not complain", and the second, "not my people." Certainly not bad in their names in Hebrew - Lo'-Lo'-Ammi and Ruhama - but I also believe that it was a difficult time at school. In fact, I can not imagine their teacher to keep a straight face during the appeal:





Jessica (gentleman)


Jacob (Sir here)


Not my people ...


E 'Hosea's wife Gomer, although thewas in fact the central message of the prophets, for the thought in his mind, Hosea, which illustrates the essential problem in the relationship between Israel and her God





It does not matter if the marriage Hosea tragic start only after receiving his prophetic calling, or if he and Gomer had always fought, as a couple and as individuals. It 'clear that Hosea Gomer inability to remain faithful saw it as a reflection of the failures in the fidelity of his nationto their God Gomer flirted and played, but I have sex with a variety of partners. Even so, Hosea said that Israel is the "Baalen''flirten, and still wake up in bed with strange gods cowardly!





It 'very graphic - the Book of Hosea - and full of passion. For what is at stake, believes that Hosea is not only a nation, to break a few commandments, but a people who had left the lover of their souls. They had theirBack to the one you loved and had always loved.





"But I am the Lord your God from the land of Egypt, there is no God but me, and besides me there is no savior. It was I who knew you in the desert, the land of drought, but when they were grazing, were filled, they were full, and his heart was lifted up, so I have forgotten "(Hosea 13:4-6).





Hosea prophesies verdict, but an end verdict. PunishPeople, the Prophet, he hopes to be that they go to increase his partner and true God, and bring them back to him.





[Israel] prostitute ... For she said: "I want my lovers that give me my bread and my water, my wool and flax, my oil and my drink to go." So I hedge on her way with thorns, and I want to build a wall against her so that she can not find their way. Pursues her lover, but not overtaking, andwith her but can not find. Then he will say: 'I will go and return to my first husband because it is better for me now. "(Hosea 2.5 to 7)





The main problem, says Hosea, is a lack of commitment to the relationship by Israel - a staunch marriage-like commitment, embodied in the Hebrew word, "Hesed ', usually translated as" covenant faithfulness "or" grace. "





"Because I want to say grace ("Hesed"), "says the Lord," and not sacrifice, knowledge of God as a sacrifice. "(Hosea 6:6)





Religion, as a series of empty rituals, he says, is not enough. Sacrifice and the Sacraments are not in themselves an affair with no more than a wedding ceremony will be a useful marriage Almighty! And 'love, required: true love, loyalty, sacrifice, dedication, hesed'.





Now I'm not to plow moreby Hosea today. This can be done in about half an hour, it really is a book with a single subject and a single message. What I want is the end to think more, a bit 'more about this prophet Hosea, with his contemporaries, Amos respect.





The two were, as I said, addressing about the same group of people around the same time, and certainly the exact same place! But if you do not do the work out of their every ChronicleSupply, one might think that will appeal to very different situations taken!





message of Amos' seemed to be basically a request for social justice! His words of the Court and the decline came in response to the systematic oppression of the poor, that events in Israel. The people of Northern Ireland has been the development of an unfair system where the rich and powerful, crushing the poor and weak have been. The judges were corrupt, and there was no justice in the courts.The bottom line was the bottom line, and all the moral and human needs have been set aside in the interest of a good deal!





Hosea just mentioned anything about it. Yes, he just mentioned the social situation at all. Instead, it focuses almost exclusively on the personal relationship between the people of Israel and their God, as her lover, her husband presented, and their only companion in real life.





So we must ask, were the only two prophetsmean completely different things? They have ministries for free - a focus on problems of worldly people and the other on their spiritual needs? It would be fair to say that Amos and Hosea cover various topics within Israel - the injustice and oppression on the one hand, idolatry and infidelity, on the other. A prophet challenges of priests and ministers with spiritual matters that other political and business challenges with economic issues.




This is how this couple prophets were often portrayed, and I think this is a mistake, because I know that the distinction we like to do, I think one of the religious themes and questions of justice, between the spiritual and economic, is a distinction that is alien to the Bible.





In the Bible, God's love and love of neighbor are not easily separated. As the apostle John would later say: "If someone says 'I love God,' and hates his brother is a liar"Not that the two are incompatible easy. They are contradictory. "Who does not love his brother whom he has seen can not love God whom he has not seen." (1 John 4:20)





If we are for justice and protect fundamental freedoms for those in need, we participate in a spiritual and religious act.





"Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord," says the writer of Proverbs (19:17). Similarly, for the weak is an act of love not onlyto that person, but to his God! On the contrary, neglecting for the next, the last of your brothers, the Bible as an act of infidelity to God himself understood!





What we see in the prophecies of Amos and Hosea two men do not see two different sizes on a national problem. You see the same problem, but describe it differently!





When Amos criticized those who help sell the righteous for silver and the needy for aA pair of sandals "(Amos 2:00), was not upset because it was unconstitutional! Amos saw this as an insult to God, who has been personally and would not tolerate a society in a segment of the population to another are used.





Similarly, if the loss of Hosea hesed '(ie the love of God) in the country can have, is inextricably linked with the crimes of violence do you feel closest to him.





"There is no faithfulness or kindness, and no knowledge of Godthe country, there is swearing, lying, murder, theft and adultery, they break all bounds and bloodshed follows bloodshed "(Hosea 4:1-2).





Friends, if there's one thing I want to take home from our two weeks in eight venture-century prophets, is this: that there is no distinction between spiritual and secular world. There is no wall of separation between physical and spiritual, between the religious and economic issues between the human and divineQuestions, between faith and politics.





All truth is God's truth! Every love is the love of God! All acts of mercy and justice are the spiritual and religious activities, and authentic worship of the God of the Bible is always in the community, justice, mercy and love radiate to be incorporated.





As Amos would say, if you really worship the God of the Bible, then "justice flow like the 'water and righteousness like and ever-flowing stream" (Amos 5:24), or as Hoseasay, while those who "sow the wind reap the storm" (8:7), and if you see justice for sowing, harvesting the bounty. (4:12)

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