Our God is jealous for His people. He will not tolerate false gods before Him. He will redeem what was stolen from His people by their unbelief. In His relationship with Abraham we are all blessed.
God said to Abraham, “I will make you into a great nation…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:2-3).
My passport bears multiple stamps from the nation of Israel. Pharaoh, Haman, and Hitler attempted to eradicate the Jews and failed. Modern-day neighboring nations have sworn to erase Israel from the map. They will fail as well. There are Jews all over the world. God preserves their unique identity because he plans to use them in the end.
God has blessed the world through the seed of Abraham. We have the prophets. We have King David’s psalms. But greatest by far we have a Savior – we have Jesus Christ. We have his Word, his church, and the blessed hope of his return. God kept the seed promise that he made to Abraham. Max Lucado
Hosea and Gods’ love for His Covenant people
The prophet Hosea intentionally marries an unfaithful woman to symbolically portray God’s relationship with unfaithful Israel. Hosea’s prophecies elaborate on this metaphor, calling Israel to account for idolatry and foretelling judgment, but also promising God’s faithfulness despite Israel’s mistakes.
Like others before and after him, Hosea discovered that being a prophet had its occupational hazards. The Lord sometimes required His prophets to perform difficult and even humiliating object lessons to complement their messages. At the beginning of Hosea’s prophetic ministry, the Lord told him to get married and announced that Hosea’s chosen bride would be unfaithful to her marriage vows. Her adultery would vividly illustrate Israel’s unfaithfulness to her covenant Lord. Hosea chose Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, as his wife and they had three children, each of whom received a symbolic name from the Lord. The firstborn son’s name Jezreel was a reminder of the atrocities that had occurred at Jezreel. God would soon judge Israel for these sins, appropriately through a military defeat at this same city. Their daughter Lo-Ruhamah’s name, meaning “Not Loved,” announced that the Lord would temporarily withdraw His love from Israel. The third child’s name Lo-Ammi, meaning “Not My People,” anticipated the severe disruption of the Lord’s covenantal relationship with His people.
Because of Gomer’s adulteries, the marriage disintegrated, and she eventually became the slave or concubine of another man. However, the Lord instructed Hosea to buy back his wife. Hosea’s act of mercy toward his wife was a striking picture of the Lord’s great love for Israel. The NKJV Study Bible
1 John 4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.
1 John 15:23 And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.
Matthew 16:13 When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”
So they said, “Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus asked His disciples who others say that He is? Peter answered with You are the Christ the Son of the living God. They had no knowledge that salvation would come to all people even the hated Gentiles. The Gospel of Grace to the Gentiles is that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and through His sacrifice on the Cross we are saved.
1 Corinthian 1:23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
Paul was enlightened to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles for the preaching of the Cross is the power of God to save all who believe in Him. To the Jew it is a stumbling block and is foolishness to unbelievers.
1 Corinthian 1:15 For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
The wrath of God was put on Jesus so that we, through Him, could be seen by God in His righteousness, and not our own. The Creator of the universe shed His blood so that we could live in Him. In Him we have peace with God. Carla
Hosea is the first of the 12 Minor Prophets (named for the relative brevity of their prophecies). The heading introduces the prophet Hosea and orients his ministry to the eighth-century bc reigns of four kings of Judah and the king of Israel, Jeroboam II. Hosea prophesied to the northern kingdom of Israel in the years leading up to its fall to Assyria in 722 bc. Faithlife Study Bible
Hosea is supposed to have been of the kingdom of Israel. He lived and prophesied during a long period. The scope of his predictions appears to be, to detect, reprove, and convince the Jewish nation in general, and the Israelites in particular, of their many sins, particularly their idolatry: the corrupt state of the kingdom is also noticed. But he invites them to repentance, with promises of mercy, and gospel predictions of the future restoration of the Israelites and of the Jews, and their final conversion to Christianity. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary
Jeremiah 3:1–2
“They say, ‘If a man divorces his wife,
And she goes from himAnd becomes another man’s,
May he return to her again?
’Would not that land be greatly polluted?
But you have played the harlot with many lovers;
Yet return to Me,” says the LORD.
“Lift up your eyes to the desolate heights and see:
Where have you not lain with men?
By the road you have sat for them
Like an Arabian in the wilderness;
And you have polluted the land
With your harlotries and your wickedness.
Jeremiah 50:4–5
“In those days and in that time,” says the LORD,
“The children of Israel shall come,
They and the children of Judah together;
With continual weeping they shall come,
And seek the LORD their God.
They shall ask the way to Zion,
With their faces toward it, saying,
‘Come and let us join ourselves to the LORD
In a perpetual covenant
That will not be forgotten.’
1 Kings 12:28–32
Therefore the king asked advice, made two calves of gold, and said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!” And he set up one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan…
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