Hosea [Part 3] - Do You Want to Bear Fruit?

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

Shalom from Jerusalem. My name is Joseph Shulam, and in partnership with Brad TV, we are continuing our study on the prophets.

We started with Hosea and this is the third last lesson on Hosea. And I just jumped to the last chapter of Hosea, Chapter 14, because you can’t talk about Hosea without talking in detail of the last chapter of Hosea because it has in it some very, very important principles that were not only valid in the eighth century BC for Israel, they’re extremely important for the 21st century for the Jewish and the Christian world.

We spoke in the first lessons about Hosea’s interest in the social climate and in the social behavior of Israel in relationship to the poor, to the sick, to the suffering. We spoke about Hosea’s attitude toward the neighbors of Israel and toward God and the relationship with Israel, which started in the book of Hosea on a terrible note, with Israel described as a harlot; a harlot wife of the bridegroom, of God himself.

So now we’re at the end of Hosea, chapter 14, and I’m going to start with verse 1:

That’s verse 1 and 2 of Hosea chapter 14.

First of all, the word ‘return’ is ‘repent’ in English. Normal English is repent. Now in the Greek, in the Septuagint and in the New Testament, repent receives two Greek words. One is essentially in the New Testament. Both are in the New Testament. The one that’s essentially in the New Testament is metanoia, which means renewing your mind, changing your mind. And the other one is epistrepso which means take steps backwards, return.

And here, Hosea, in his last chapter, calls on Israel and says, “Return to the Lord your God”. Why? “You’ve stumbled because of your inequity. Take words with you and return to the Lord and say to him, ‘Take away our inequity. Receive us graciously’”. Why? “Because we are going to offer words of praise, words of sacrifice of our lips.”

Now, this is a very novel idea. Normally when people talk about sacrifices in a religious context, they’re talking about going to the temple with your goat or with your sheep or with your bull, or with your calf, or with your two pigeons, or with your money, and offering blood of animals on the Lord’s altar. Not the normal use of the word sacrifice.

But here Hosea does something very, very novel, new. He says, “Come, repenting. Ask God to be gracious to you because you are going to offer sacrifices of your lips, words, songs, whatever comes out of your mouth”.

Why is that? Why did Hosea, in days where there were sacrifices, in days where there was a temple, in days where there were priests, in days where the smoke rose from the altars of Israel, Northern tribes and of Judah in Jerusalem?

Why does it say, offer the fruit of your lips, or the sacrifices of your lips instead of bulls, instead of goats, instead of sheep, instead of animals we will offer the fruit of the sacrifices of our lips?

This is the same paradigm as in Isaiah chapter 1. See, it’s easy to offer sacrifices. Essentially, you’re offering money or money’s worth. We see the relativity in the book of Leviticus, chapter 5, that if you are rich and you’ve sinned, you have to offer a bull.

A bull is several hundred pounds of beef, expensive. But if you’re not so rich, you can offer a sheep or a goat. And if you are still poor, you can offer two birds. And if you’re still more poor you can offer a handful of grain anointed with oil.

God is judging His citizens, His people, His worshipers, relatively according to their ability; financial, social ability. So if you’re poor, you can bring just grain anointed with oil and it’ll be as valuable for your repentance as the rich man’s bull.

Here, Hosea brings a similar paradigm, but very different. He says, “No, it’s easy for you guys to bring sacrifices; animals. You’ve shed their blood, you don’t care. You go to the temple, you worship, and then you come out of the temple and you sell your brother for a pair of shoes.”

Doesn’t hurt you a bit. You don’t have feelings for the animals that you sacrifice. It’s only the money’s worth for you.

But now what you really need to do is pour out your souls from your mouth, your sincerity from your mouth, your praise and gratitude from your mouth, from your lips. It’s more valuable to God because your mouth reveals your heart. That’s also a New Testament doctrine, that your mouth reveals your heart.

Hosea, in the last chapter of his book, is calling Israel to repentance, not to religious repentance, not to religiosity, but to exposure of your inside; through your mind, through your heart, and coming out of your lips. It’s much more valuable, although I can say that today, worship has become a little bit of Hollywood, in most evangelical churches, even in some synagogues, even though they worship acapella, without instruments, at least in Orthodox and in conservative synagogues. And the words have also lost their values in our 21st century with the icons and the emojis and all these things that young people correspond with.

But still, Hosea says, “Repent. Repent of your iniquity. Because if you don’t repent of your iniquity you are stumbling through life and your relationship with the Lord is unstable.” But in addition to this call of repentance, Hosea is addressing the political influence on the spiritual status of Israel in its day, then and now; the same problem.

And not only in Israel, it’s true for the West, for the Americas, North and South. It’s true for Europe, it’s true for most of the world, especially in the Christian world, but not only in the Christian world.

So in verse three, Hosea is addressing this seam, this connection, between politics and our faith in God. Verse 3 says:

Wow. Actually, right now I got goosebumps just thinking about this.

I could interpret this and say to Israel today and to Korea and to Japan and to the rest of the nations that are kind of leaning on the west, leaning on America. America will not save you, nor will their F-35’s and F-22’s and F-18’s, nor the tanks, nor the nuclear weapons that you have. It’s not going to save you.

And above all this, we will no longer call the works of our hands, “our gods” because we are in the post-industrial revolution, but still have the paradigm of the industrial revolution in which economic success, industrial success, electronic innovations, have become the things that we value more.

We value our jobs more than our synagogues and more than our churches. We trust our bosses and our job security more than we trust God.

That’s what Hosea is actually addressing in the last chapter of his prophecy. And it’s relevant for us today. Especially, we will no longer say any more to the works of our hands, “You are our gods”. For in you, the fatherless find mercy; you, in God, in Jehovah, in the Lord God of Israel the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You are the one that shows mercy to the fatherless to the widows and to the orphans and to the poor, and to the suffering. And you answer, Hosea is answering, is speaking the name of the people, but he’s also the announcer of God’s will, speaking the words of God.

So when God hears this repentance that Hosea is suggesting to the people of Israel, God’s answer is,

Aha.

These three verses, there’s 4, 5, 6, Hosea 14, have so many illusions that have influenced the New Testament. Especially the one that I want to point out is,

This influenced Paul in Romans chapter 11, verse 18 on, where he says that there are two olive trees. One, a cultured olive tree, a fruitful olive tree. And one a wild olive tree that grows in the forest unattended, and the branches of the wild olive tree are cut off the wild olive tree and grafted into the natural olive tree, which is Israel, in Paul’s teaching in Romans 11.

Now, these wild branches are sucking life from the root, from the root of Jesse, from the Messiah, from King David, sucking life. The root gives life to the branches, not the other way around.

So Hosea says, “When you repent,” when Israel repents, “it’ll be like dew, refreshing, and it’ll be like the lily, like the rose, the lily rose, and the roots will be as deep as the Lebanon.” Lengthened, like the Lebanon, its branches will spread, the beauty will be like an olive tree and the fragrance like the Lebanon.

Those who dwell under the shadow of this olive tree, those who dwell under the shadow of the olive tree that is repented, renovated, cultured. Those who repent, they shall be revived like grain and grow like the vine. Their scent, their smell, shall be like the wine of Lebanon.

God’s fruit is found in us. What an ending for this very, very harsh prophecies of Hosea.

Hosea is one of the harshest books. He calls Israel a prostitute, an unfaithful wife, an idol-worshiping wife that rejects her husband that provides all the wealth and all the wine and all the oil and all the food and all the blessings to Israel and goes to worship, strange, unfaithful, dishonest lovers; the Baals and the Asherah’s and Marduk and the gods of the nations. And verse 8, “Your fruit is found in me.”

God says to Israel, “You want to be fruitful? You want to have fruit? Where are you going to find your fruit? In me.” In God. “That’s where your real fruit is going to be found. The good fruit is going to be found in Me,” God says, and then He turns in verse 9 and says, “Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent? Let him know them for the ways of the Lord are right, the righteous walk in them but the transgressors stumble on them.”

How true is this last verse, verse nine of chapter 14 of Hosea, the last verse of Hosea? What the world thinks foolishness, is the wisdom of God. What the world thinks stupid, is what saves humanity. What the world thinks rubbish, is the heavenly gold, the heavenly presence of God in people’s lives.

That’s what makes them fruitful, it makes them clean, it makes them righteous, it makes them productive, with fruit and with heavenly taste and smell.

I’m going to read verse 9 again and end with this. Who is wise? Are you wise? Am I wise? Are we wise? You better understand this principle, Hosea says, if you’re prudent, which is more than wise, practically wise, you better know what I’m talking about, Hosea says:

They fail and fall because they raise their nose up. They think they’re smarter than God, who created us. They think they know better than the word of God that is living in us through the Holy Spirit. They know these things. They make fun of believers.

I grew up in a home where my father made fun of religion and of religious people. And if he could harm a religious person, he did it. He would get on the bus, and if there was an Orthodox Jew sitting there, and there is an empty seat behind him, my father would sit behind him.

He would tie his tassel, his tzitzit, on the pipe of the chair and move to another chair and watch while the Orthodox gets up, how he falls back down because he is tied to the chair, to his tzitzit, and gives it a yank and tears his tzitzit. And under his mustache, my father would snicker; until he became a believer and repented of his attitude.

Yes, the foolish stumble on God’s word. They stumble on God’s commandments but the wise live by them.

Be wise, my brothers and sisters. Take God’s word seriously and live by it. It’s good and righteous. It’s like a rose, like a lily, and it is like a treasure to guide your life and make it fruitful. In Yeshua’s name.