Hosea [Part 2] - Harlotry Enslaves the Heart

Read the transcript below, or watch a video of the teaching by Joseph Shulam.

Shalom, my name is Joseph Shulam, and in partnership with Brad TV, we have started a series about the prophets of the Old Testament.

We started with Hosea, and had the first lesson talking about this strange command by God, for him to marry a woman by the name of Gomer, who is a prostitute, and Hosea marries her. Then all of chapter two is God’s description and reprimand for the immorality of Gomer. It’s a parable of how Israel is behaving as the bride, as the wife behaving toward her bridegroom, towards her husband, who is God.

See, the people of Israel thought that the oil, the wheat, the water, the food is coming from the neighbors, the pagan idol worshiping neighbors. Israel started to trust those neighbors and prostitute herself as a nation, in rebellion and unfaithfulness to her husband.

God does not divorce Israel. Even in the case of her unfaithfulness, He fences her in. He provides for her needs. He tells her, “It’s not your idol worshiping neighbors who are giving you all these good things. I am your God; I am your husband.” And that’s toward the end of chapter two. And here comes a text that is used in almost every Orthodox Jewish wedding.

In the West, it’s called vows; what the bridegroom and the bride exchange. In the old days, only the bridegroom vowed to the bride. And here we have these words, that are used in almost every Jewish wedding that I have attended; these words were used from Hosea.

I’m reading them in English from verse 19 of chapter 2:

The prophet continues,

Very interesting text.

It’s a beautiful oath that God takes here to His unfaithful bride. But at the end of that oath, He says something that would be called double meaning. “To those who were not My people,” who would betray Me, who prostituted with the idols, those who are not My people. “Now I will say, ‘You are My people,’ and they shall say, ‘You are my God.’”

I said that this text has a double meaning. It has a meaning with unfaithful Israel, becoming faithful. Like Paul and Isaiah and the other prophets prophesied numerous times, “All Israel will be saved.”

In Romans 11:25-26, Paul states it clearly, “All Israel will be saved.” In spite of our unfaithfulness, in spite of the fact that God caused the land of Israel, the land of Canaan, to cast us out into diaspora for 2,000 years. But there is so many numerous prophecies and promises of God that He will shine His face on us, and restore us back into the land.

It’s in Hosea and it’s in Amos. In fact, the one from Amos 9 is quoted by James the apostle (whose real name is Jacob) in all the other languages, except English. Only in English, you find “James” in the Bible at all.

And the reason is, King James paid for the translation, the King James translation, and he requested the translators to put his name in the Bible. So everywhere in the New Testament that there was a “Jacob,” Jacob, the brother of Jesus, Jacob, the apostle, every Jacob became James, only in the English.

Now we return here to Hosea, God says, “Those who are not My people, now, I’m going to make them My people.” And that takes us back to Deuteronomy 32, chapter 32, from verse 17 to 21 where it says that:

The prophet is calling Israel to come back, back to God. Come back to the one who provides for her the wine, the oil, the grain, the sustenance of all good things.

Now, one thing about Hosea, Amos and all the prophets, not only the 10 minor prophets, but also the big prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, all of them are not only interested in spiritual things, and not only interested in the relationship between Israel and God. They are also, I would say, social warriors.

They’re against the injustice that is happening in the land, among the people. They’re against the rich people fleecing the poor people. They’re against the priest eating the fat of the sacrifices to God, and not being sensitive to the social conditions, to the poverty of the people.

So the prophet Hosea, is one of those major prophets. Minor prophet, but major prophets who are engaged in this care for the poor people, for the people who are being, I would use the word “persecuted”; financially at least, by the powerful and the rich people in the society. Yes, the prophets are social warriors, worried and concerned about the social and economic injustice of the people.

The time that Hosea is prophesying, is actually the middle of the eighth century BC, in the days of Jeroboam II, and in the days of the threat and the invasion of the Assyrians, Tiglath-Pileser in 743 BC. Tiglath-Pileser III,is a launching campaign against the land of Israel, against the people of Israel.

And so, it’s a time of war. It’s time of social injustice, and it is a time when Israel has fallen into idolatry, and essentially put the Lord God, the creator of the universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Israel, on the shelf; because they were so influenced by their powerful neighbors both from the north, Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt and from the south.

Israel has always been the hot dog in the middle of the sandwich. The sandwich is the northern empires and the southern empire, Egypt. These were strong and wealthy and powerful empires that fought with each other.

That’s why the valley of Jezreel is called Armageddon in the New Testament. It is Hebrew, spelled in Greek, the mound of Megiddo, and became Armageddon in Greek.

But it is a real place, it’s an archaeological site. It has 24 layers of different civilizations that have ruled that place.

The reason it’s so important, is because it guards the gateway to the Jezreel Valley, which was a natural arena for people that made war with horses and with chariots to fight, because it was a big flat mountain, an enclosed theater for war. So it received that reputation even for the eschatological war in the book of Revelation.

Back to this issue that is very, very important for all the prophets, and especially the minor 10, minor prophets. The men of God, chosen by God to represent God, to speak in His name, couldn’t speak in God’s name and ignore the social injustice in the country, in the community.

What do we have to learn from it? That God not only worried about our souls and about salvation eternally after our deaths. God is worried about the social condition of His people now.

Yes, that’s true in the New Testament too. It’s true for Paul who says to the churches in Macedonia and Acaia and in Rome, to contribute money for the poor saints in Judea. Romans 15:26-27, he says, “You owe it to them. If you have enjoyed the spiritual wealth of Israel, received the Messiah of Israel, received the covenants of Israel.”

According to Ephesians 2:10-12. “If you have done that, you owe it to your Jewish brothers in Jerusalem, to the saints of Jerusalem, to share your physical wealth.” It’s not my words.

In the TV, we don’t beg for money. We pray to God and He provides it through good brothers and sisters from Korea and from many other places around the world. He only provides what we need.

We are not in a case in which we received more than we needed, and we are not in a case ever, that we really needed something and God did not provide it. That’s our situation.

But we, as believers in the land of Israel, must be sensitive, aware, and do our best to bless the people of Israel, in Israel. If you live in Zimbabwe, in Zimbabwe. If you live in Kenya, in Kenya. If you living in Mauritania, Mauritania. If you come from Jamaica, help the Jamaicans. If you are from Haiti, help the people in Haiti. Wherever you are, we have to have social sensitivities.

Yeshua taught it very clearly in the judgment scene at the end of Matthew where people said, “We cast out demons in Your name. We praised in Your name; we did things in Your name. As much as you didn’t do it to one the least of these, you didn’t do it to Me.”

That’s Yeshua’s paradigm, but that’s also the prophetic paradigm of all the prophets, all the classical prophets. Not the popular prophets so much, but the classical prophets. All of them are worried and deal and command and instruct the leadership to be sensitive to the social condition of the people that they serve. And that’s true in Hosea, in Amos, in all the prophets.

And God is worried. God is worried and claims that this is one of the sins of the generation of Hosea, and Amos, and the other prophets; that they were willing to sell a poor person for a pair of shoes. That they didn’t lift a finger to help those that are less fortunate. And he calls that also, harlotry. I’m going to read to you a little bit more here from chapter 3, verse 11:

…the shade of these trees.

No, I didn’t read that wrong; that’s the way it is written. Why didn’t I do it? Because that’s the normal reaction; somebody that sins, somebody that does terrible things, we punish them.

We think the punishment is going to fix them, but that’s not God’s way. Listen to what God says. Verse 14, chapter 3:

Such a principle, such a wonderful principle for the men, for the husbands who are supposed to be the leaders of their home; supposed to be the teachers, the rabbis, the godly examples of their homes, and always blame the women.

God says, “No, I’m not going to punish the women. I’m going to punish you. You are responsible over your house, over your wife, over your daughters, over your children. And because you are the one that is responsible, you are going to be the one who I will punish.”

Yes, Hosea is a very strong prophet. He is a very strong moral prophet who God used and he was obedient. He listened to God, he married the harlot to be a parable, to be an example, to be a paradigm for Israel to understand the greatness of their sin.

I’m going now to the more forward chapters, because I think it’s essential for us to understand this complexity. And of course, I’m going now to chapter six of Hosea. Listen, after the punishment, after the wars, after the pillaging of Assyrian kings of the land of Israel, this is the reaction of Israel.

Chapter 6, verse 1:

Ah, what beautiful words, so beautiful. We pray these words many times during the holidays, especially the day of Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Atonement. Let us go back. Go back means repent. Return means repent here. It’s the same word in Hebrew for repentance.

It’s interesting, that Yeshua rose on the third day. On the third day, He will raise us up, and He will provide the early rain and the latter rain and water the land and make it green again. And now, our responsibility, dear brothers and sister, verse 3:

That’s a very, simple truth; but very important.

“My people perish for a lack of knowledge,” said the apostle in the New Testament. If the Jews then and now, the Israelites then and now perish for lack of knowledge, what will I say? What will God say? What will the prophet say about the Christian world, about the pastors?

Almost every time I go to a new church somewhere in the world, I ask the pastors, the leaders, “How many times does the word Christian appear in the New Testament?” Most of them, by far, more than 90% know only one.

The disciples were first called Christianos in Antioch, in Assyria, not in Jerusalem, not in the land of Israel. Acts 11:26, most of the pastors know that one time, but they don’t know that there are more times that the word Christian appears in the New Testament; not many more times, a total of three. And I’m not going to tell you where they are, you find them for yourself. Because if you call yourself a Christian, you at least should know where in the Bible Christian is mentioned.

None of the apostles called themselves Christians. None of the elders called themselves Christians. None of the people in the churches called themselves Christians. Not the Jews in the land of Israel and not the Greeks in Athens or in Thessalonica, or in Beriah or in Corinth. What did they call themselves? Disciples. Disciples of the Messiah. Disciples of Yeshua, disciples of Jesus in Greek.

The prophet Hosea says, to the people after they repented:

Dear brothers and sisters, studying the prophets can be painful for all of us, because all of us have fallen short from the glory of the Lord, in our actions, and sometimes with our mouth. We need this refreshing, hard, hard rain, (playing on the last text that I read), to revive us, to energize us, to make us not religious, but faithful disciples of Yeshua, our Lord.