The Hosea Generation (Part 3)

We continue our look at the Hosea Generation as we dive into the story of Hosea, a prophet commanded by God to marry a prostitute, reflecting on the symbolic significance of their first child, Jezreel and its connection to the Hosea generation - a group of passionate people consumed by their love for the Lord. This narrative parallels with the tale of Jehu from Second Kings, a king anointed to bring God's wrath upon Ahab’s dynasty. Drawing on these ancient stories, we reflect on the evangelical mission that echoes in the lives of modern-day Christians.

But our conversation doesn't stop there. We also confront a perennial confusion within Christianity - the complex relationship between faith and works. Many profess faith in Jesus outwardly yet harbor distance in their hearts. Through Proverbs, we illuminate how mercy and truth are God's tools to clear this confusion. Join us as we uncover how God invites us into a deeper understanding of faith and works, and how this wisdom will bring about a more fruitful ministry.

Chapters

• 0:02 The Hosea Generation and Jehu's Anointing
• 13:47 Relationship Between Works and Faith in Jesus

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Hello and welcome to the Redeeming Love Bible broadcast. My name is Phil Duddy. He vanshes with Grace Baptist Tabernacle of King, north Carolina. Very happy to have you with me on the program today as we continue to unfold and unpack the Hosea Generation series. This is going to be part three of that series. Part one and part two should also be available. We are going to continue on in that series. We'll be in the book of Hosea today. We'll also be in the book of Second Kings. I want to thank you again so much for joining us. Please do feel free and welcome to contact us at redeemingthelostaticloudcom. We would love to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 0:45

Where have we been so far? We have seen that the Lord is in the process of raising up a particular generation of people to perform a particular type of ministry. This is a charitable, tender, joyful and strong ministry toward salvation. It's an evangelistic ministry and it's going on in the midst of a very, very divided time. And we've also seen that, functionally speaking, there is nothing really holding the church back from this type of ministry. And today we're going to see that one sort of basic in its essence. This is a very honest, very genuine group of people. There's a genuine heart before the Lord. There's a genuine love for before the Lord, there's a genuine love for our neighbors, and nothing is faked or feigned or put on. There's no ulterior motives, but this is just genuine outflow of genuine love before the Lord. And we're going to see this in some unlikely places in Scripture.

Speaker 1: 1:55

We're going to start out in the book of Hosea. Let me read Hosea, chapter 1, starting down in verse 4. And the Lord said unto him, unto Hosea Call his name Jezreel for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. And it shall come to pass. At that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. Now Hosea has you know, he's heard from the Lord and he's responded and he's walking in obedience to the Lord. He has taken a wife and she's a prostitute, and they have begun to have children, have started to have children, and this is the first child from that relationship. And the Lord says call his name Jezreel. And he begins talking about avenging the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu and he goes so far to say that he will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. What is God saying here? I'm going to stop the entire northern kingdom. I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. It's not going to go any further. And so Hosea here has a message of coming judgment and a message of coming destruction. It's not happening in that specific day, but you know, if you look at history, roughly 40 years from this time, the northern kingdom was invaded by Yisrae and the northern kingdom ceased to be just according to the word of Lord. But there was still a time period of 40 years. This judgment was yet in the future.

Speaker 1: 3:53

So let's sort of keep this in mind and we're going to go back to the book of Second Kings, in chapter 10. And we need to explore exactly who Jehu was. Who was this king and what was going on and God was avenging this and what was being avenged and all that stuff. We're going to find it in Second Kings. I'm going to do my best to summarize it for you, but let's read the scripture, second Kings, chapter 10, starting in verse 29.

Speaker 1: 4:28

Talking about Jehu, how be it? From the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, jehu departed not from after them, to wit the golden calves that were in Bethel and that were in Dan. And the Lord said unto Jehu Because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes and hast done to the house of Jacob according to all that was in my heart, thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel. But Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord, god of Israel, with all of his heart, for he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam, which made Israel to sin. In those days the Lord began to cut Israel short and Haseel smote them in all the coasts of Israel, from Jordan eastward, and in the land of Gideon, the Gaddites and the Reubenites and the Manasites, from Aurora, which is by the river Arnon, even Gilead and Bashan, and so there's a whole lot going on here.

Speaker 1: 5:36

Jehu was another one of those people with sort of an unusual you might call it an unusual anointing. He was anointed to execute a vengeance upon the house of Ahab, and this vengeance was from God. He was executed, he was called to execute God's will upon Ahab's household and he physically removed Ahab's household from the land. It was a very sort of military type of a thing, and aren't we glad that as Christians today, amen. We're not called to use violence in evangelism. We're not called to physically force things, we're not called to go and burn things down and all that just to get the point across, but we're called to an evangelistic ministry. We're called to a spiritual warfare, but not a carnal or a physical warfare, and that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Jehu was specifically used by God in this situation to execute God's will upon Ahab's household, and you can read all about that in 2 Kings. And God says to Jehu you know, you've done well in executing that which is right in my eyes. You've done unto the house of Ahab, according to all that was in my heart. So your children of the fourth generation are going to sit on the throne of Israel. They're going to be kings. And going back to Hosea for a second, hosea was ministering in generation three out of four. Hosea was ministering, you know, and the king at that time was the third generation. He was of the third generation from Jehu. So generation three out of four is on the throne during the time of Hosea. So this word of the Lord is coming to pass, and so God gives Jehu four generations on the throne of Israel. But Jehu himself and this is sort of where part of the real essence of this message is going to be Jehu himself took no heed to walk in the law of the Lord, god of Israel, with all his heart.

Speaker 1: 8:10

He took no heed for that. He did not, you know, take any care or concern to personally walk in the will of God. You know, in the law of the Lord, god of Israel, he did what he was anointed to do and you know we can go back and we can look at, you know, the life of Jehu and a lot of people said you know, look, you know he didn't really take God seriously until God put him on the throne, until God gave him the power and the authority. And so, you know, some people will point to self-interest, pride, self-advancement, military glory, power. And yet you know, you know all that you know may or may not be true, but you know, looking at this, the witness of the word of God, jehu himself, he technically did something interesting and did it well, and God had wanted that done, but in his heart he did not take any heed to walk in the law of the Lord, god of Israel, with all of his heart.

Speaker 1: 9:14

He departed, not from the sins of Jeroboam and that goes way back to, you know, almost the beginning of the Northern Kingdom and there's a lot of rich history there but it was a chronic sin in the Northern Kingdom and none of the kings of the north did anything about it. They never confronted it, they never stopped it, they never took it down, they never did anything about it. And it was actually interesting that God knew that. And, looking back at when these golden calves were set up in Bethel and in Dan, when these idols were set up, the Lord had sent a man of God saying that there was going to be a, you know, basically a king from the south, from Jerusalem, who was going to come up and he named King Josiah by name, and Josiah was going to be the one to really take down this idolatry that was causing the land to sin. But there was never any Northern King who did anything about the idolatry, the longstanding idolatry that had been going on and had been going on for generations, had been going on for a long time and had been this sort of festering sin that was causing all sorts of problems in the land. And so Jehu, technically, you know, we might say he technically executed God's will, but he himself, in his heart, he took no, he had no desire, he had no care for walking in the law of the Lord God, he had no care for walking in the revealed will of God, apart from this specific thing that he was anointed to do.

Speaker 1: 11:06

But the heart, you know, we look in the New Testament. You know kind of what are we getting at here? We look at the New Testament and we see that Jesus saying things like well, you know this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And you know I want to take a minute and you know, sort of draw our attention to there.

Speaker 1: 11:32

There is a great, great, great error that has caused a lot of heresy in, you know. You know in, you might say, the modern evangelical movement, the modern evangelical churches around America. And you know and again we can go back and forth on exactly when this started happening, you know, and stuff like that. But you know, call it at least the last 50, 75, even 100 years. There's a great error that a person can pray and ask Jesus to come into their life, you know, and ask for salvation. And just because they say the prayer, just because they say the words, jesus will automatically, 100% of the time, always come in and save that person, regardless of the condition of their heart, regardless of what's going on in the heart.

Speaker 1: 12:29

And you know, and you know we've got a specific admonition that we have to read here that you can raise a hand, you can confess sin, you can get baptized, you can pray prayers, you can give money, you can give work, you can read your Bible, you can declare yourself to be a saved, born again Christian, you can declare yourself to be a member of a church, and you can do it without ever really believing in your heart, in your will, that you have sin, that your sin is against God, that your sin affects God. And you can do all of this religious work without ever wanting a savior, because you never believe you need a savior. And you can do it all with an angry heart, with a hard heart, with a numb heart, with a heavy heart, and you can always go away worse than you went away before. And that's a specific admonition. And it's a true admonition, because if you look at any sort of religious work from church attendance to you know, singing during the music times to. You know tie, you know giving up tithes and offerings, bible reading, bible memorization, even Bible preaching. I've been there, folks.

Speaker 1: 13:47

You can do all of that and be really angry at God. You can do all of that and be really self righteous. You can do all of that and be really sort of proud and full of yourself. You can do all of that believing that those works are going to atone for your sin, and you can basically do everything you know associated with an outward religious life. You know whether you're a Baptist, whether you're a Presbyterian Methodist, you know Moravian, whatever the case may be. You can do all of this stuff and still have your heart, be really, really, really far away from Jesus and be really hard and be really filled with lust and be really filled with sin and be really filled with murder or pride or blasphemy or drunkenness all this stuff. But on the outside you're doing the religious work. On the outside you're living the religious life, but on the inside there's not a belief of sin and there's no desire for a Savior, for Jesus, to come in and forgive that. There's no desire for that sin to be out. There's no desire for like to be born again. But you're doing all the religious work, and that is a great error. That's led to a great heresy, that's led to great argument and confusion, that's led to pitting church against church, pitting brother against brother, just all this stuff, and it's just a horrible thing. But it's an error that's led to a lot of damage across multiple generations in America and that damage is still being played out today as I'm speaking.

Speaker 1: 15:45

But there's this thing and God wants to deal with this thing, and how are we going to deal with that? It's going to be by mercy and it's going to be by truth. By mercy and by truth, iniquity is purged. That's what the book of Proverbs says, and so that's how God's going to be dealing with this and he wants to use you in that process. But, my friend, god's not going to give anymore. God has given the Holy Ghost. God has given His only begotten Son. God has shed the blood of Jesus. Jesus has died. Jesus has died in atoning death. Jesus has become sin. Jesus has taken the wrath of God upon Himself. And Jesus is alive today. He has risen again. He is seated at the right hand of the Father. The Holy Ghost has been given. The gifts of the Spirit are still in operation today. The Comforter has been given, the Word of God has been given, the Church has been given. Jesus is still the head of the Church today. The Holy Ghost is still sort of the Spirit that empowers the Church today. The Church today is still going on and existing by the will of the Father. God is not going to be giving any more.

Speaker 1: 17:03

God has given all of these promises too. God has said that you know, my friend, we're going to be doing greater things even than Jesus did in his earthly ministry. God has said if you have a care, cast that care upon him. God has said if you need wisdom, go to him, ask him, believe him, and he will pour that out abundantly on you. God has said ask and seek and knock. God has said if you ask anything in my name, in the name of Jesus, it's just going to be done to glorify the Father. God has given and given and given and he's not going to give any more because he's given everything.

Speaker 1: 17:48

We've got to see that church. It's not your personality, it's not your presentation style, it's not being a loud person or being an aggressive person or being a quiet person. It's not about any of that. It's not your presentation, whether you're kind of reserved or whether you're just out there and stuff like that, and your presentation it's not anything like that, but it's God moving. We see this in the Old Testament and we see this in the New Testament. God can move through a loud person. God can move through a quiet person. God can move through people who are somewhere in between amen, but God moving and God's word going forward in the Spirit, ministering, and the people make a response. The people are going to make a response. They're going to respond. However, they're going to respond.

Speaker 1: 18:45

We see accounts in the Word and we see accounts around us today of people being born again. People hear the word of God and people respond with a yes and an amen, with a faith and a trust in God. And God moves and they're born again. We see people trying to kind of game the system. We see people trying to fake it. We see people outright rejecting it. We see people outright opposing it.

Speaker 1: 19:12

We see all these different responses but generally people are going to come to Jesus or they're going to go away from Jesus and we've got to be free of those personal burdens that it's my fault they didn't get saved or it's my fault. This happened. I didn't say the right thing, or my personality is not right or my presentation wasn't right. But no, my friend, all you've got to do is stand there and give the Word of God. All you've got to do is stand there and faithfully give people the Word of God and they're going to respond. However, they're going to respond. We have to be discerning. We also have to be charitable and we have to just walk in the will of God, walk in the will of the Spirit, and we're going to see people do all of these things. People are going to be born again and people are going to be rejecting, but the thing is they're rejecting the Spirit, they're rejecting Jesus, they're rejecting the Father. We have to be about our Father's business. We have to be about doing the will of God in the way that God would have it be done.

Speaker 1: 20:34

And so, looking all of this kind of going back to Hosea here just for a second, like I said a few minutes ago, hosea ministered we can go back up with the verse one. He ministered during the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel. Again, this was the third generation out of a promised four generations to King Jehu and God announced through Hosea, god announced a vengeance that was going to be coming, and this vengeance will be coming about 40 years later. And the interesting thing about Hosea and also the interesting thing about the timing of this, coming up in America right now, and however it is in your nation we're in several nations around the world here but at least now, looking at when God is doing this, it's an interesting parallel to the time of Hosea, because Hosea was ministering in a time of surface level prosperity, but also a time of deep idolatry. Under that surface, jeroboam, son of Joash. He got some land back that Israel had lost and so Israel regained some land under his reign and that was even prophesied.

Speaker 1: 22:06

You can go back to the book of Jonah. But surface level things seem to be turning around a little bit. But under that surface there is a deep, deep, deep, long standing idolatry going on and that error that we just described, at least in America, that is a great source of that idolatry, because all of a sudden you've got all these different versions of Jesus going on and it just confuses the living daylights out of folks and it leads into a lot of harm and it leads into a lot of false conversions and false brothers and false sisters and all that good stuff. But it's an error and it's a form of idolatry and there is a deep seated idolatry in the time of Hosea. There are many versions of deep seated idolatry at this point of time in America, but God is raising up people who are going to be ministering to that. We're going to be ministering to that and we're going to be encountering that with the Word of God and in the Word of God, you know, and in the power and authority of the Holy Ghost. We're going to be encountering that in charity. We're going to be encountering that in mercy. We're going to be encountering that in grace and in truth and in joyfulness and in strength and so. But God is raising this up and there's this time going on surface level prosperity, deep idolatry.

Speaker 1: 23:46

There's also a judgment, a time of, you know, a vengeance type of a judgment. You know. God's talking about avenging the blood of Jezreel. He's talking about causing to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. He's talking about breaking the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. This is a vengeance type of judgment and it's right around the corner and, friend, you know, you know we've got to look at that in the spirit.

Speaker 1: 24:15

We've got to understand that there are personal judgments that people are going to face. People are going to stand before the Lord individually. There are national judgments, you know, that are a possibility. There's going to be a time when Jesus is returning and the church is going to be pulled out in the time of the rapture and the Father himself has that time and has that season. But we do know, looking at things, that it's, you know, it's definitely closer than it was 50 or 100 years ago.

Speaker 1: 24:54

There is an accountability, though you know that not only the church has, but that every individual has before a holy God, and so judgment is near at hand. You know again, this specific day of judgment in the land of Israel. That was 40 years in the future, roughly. To us that might seem like, you know, four decades is a long time. That is a drop in the bucket to God. But there is a day, there is a day of accountability, there is a day of the Lord, there is a time in which you and I will stand before this holy God, and so we need to keep that in mind.

Speaker 1: 25:39

We need to not shy away from that reality, but we need to embrace that in faith and people need to know that. People need to know the difference between holiness and unholiness. They need to know the difference between idolatry and the truth. They need to know the difference between holiness and unholiness. You know the difference between, like you know, the Jesus who is alive and all these fake Jesuses that are out there, and they need to know that God is alive, god is well, god is full of mercy, god is full of compassion, god is slow to anger, god is drawing people to salvation. Today, god loves everybody that you see. God loves you included, and he does not want to see anybody perish. But all men come to repentance, everybody come to repentance. Church. We need to be about that. We need to help people see that. We need to show that. We need to tell that. You know we need to go into the highways and the hedges at this point in the game and you know, and you know, and, and let this gospel be heard with all passion, with all you know, with all charity, with all affection, with all mercy, with all faith and with all boldness and with all strength. You know because, simply because, hallelujah and amen, the king wants it to be done and the king wants the church to be about it, because the days are growing shorter and this judgment is right around the corner. Amen. But you know, I want to thank you again so much for listening. I pray this has been a real blessing to you. We're going to be continuing on with this series, you know, as we record future broadcasts here Again.

Speaker 1: 27:25

Reach out to us at redeemingthelostcloudcom. We're a ministry of Grace Baptist Tabernacle. You've got information on our church at GBTministriescom. Please feel welcome and expected to come and meet us in person. You can find the address, you can find the service times on that website, gbtministriescom. Please keep on sharing these. Send these around the world. Play these for your church, play these for your family, play these for people who want to listen. Play these for people who don't want to listen. Amen. But you know, thank you again so much for sending these around the world, helping us to reach a whole lot of people with the gospel Jesus Christ, and I want to thank you again and may the Lord continue to richly bless you. Amen.