Hosea part 2.

As we continue in this journey through the Bible, I have been highlighting three things that I believe are very key as we study the Scriptures. When I say Scriptures in this particular context, I am talking about the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, not the New Testament.

There are three questions I believe we need to keep asking as we read.

• Number one: Who is God?
• Number two: What is going on?
• Number three: What is my place in whatever is going on?

When those three questions begin to find answers, something changes in the way we read. Every book has its own setting, its own people, its own immediate circumstances and its own voice. Hosea was not writing while looking over his shoulder at Chronicles to make sure the two books matched. He was not thinking, “Let me make sure Paul will understand this one day.” Paul, Peter, James and Luke were not Hosea's immediate audience. Neither were we.

This then begs another question: Is the Bible history, or is it just a story? Whatever your answer, what's the reason for your answer?

I think this is where the whole thing needs to become personal. You should not just listen to the speaker. You should not just read what Japheth Map has written. You should also go away and interact with God for yourself. Sit with the Scriptures. Ask God to help you see what is actually there. Check what you have heard and determine whether it is true.

There is a fellowship in the history of the early church that Paul never wrote a letter to. Paul visited many churches and planted fellowships in different places. Whenever there was a problem, he could write to them to correct doctrine, confront behaviour or put things back in order. But there was a fellowship he had no need to write to. Paul and Silas came to Berea and began preaching. The people there did something beautiful. They did not reject Paul because they were suspicious of him, but neither did they accept everything simply because he was Paul. Acts 17:11 says they received the message eagerly and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul was saying was true.

Think about that.

They searched the Scriptures to test the preaching of an apostle. I believe this is why he did not need to write to them.

So I challenge everybody who interacts with my material, anybody who sits in my audience or reads what I write: never take my word as the word of the Lord simply because I have said it.

Go and check.

Ask, “Is Japheth speaking in line with Scripture, or is he simply speaking his mind? Is he speaking from the text, or is he speaking from his hurt, his experience or even his pain?”

If you check it and find it to be true, live by it. If you check it and find me to be wrong, text me. “Brother, here you are wrong. Consider this text, this thoughtline or this context.”

Then perhaps together we can arrive at a better understanding.

That is the spirit with which I want us to approach Hosea. As we have already highlighted, God is using the life of Hosea, and particularly his family situation, as a picture for the northern kingdom of Israel. Through Hosea's marriage, God is showing Israel what their relationship with Him has become.

They are being confronted with unfaithfulness.

They had been unfaithful to God. They had also become increasingly hostile toward their brothers in Judah. The political division that began with the division of the kingdom after Solomon had developed into something much deeper. Israel in the north had established its own political and religious identity, with its own kings and its own centres of worship, and over time it wandered further and further from the Lord.

As you read Hosea, you begin to notice several areas where Israel's unfaithfulness shows itself.

The first is INFIDELITY.

God uses the language of marriage because Israel's relationship with Him had become like that of an unfaithful spouse. They were giving themselves to other gods while still claiming a relationship with the God who had chosen them.

Then there is INDEPENDENCE.

Israel wanted to establish itself apart from the house of David. They had their own kingdom, their own kings and their own centres of worship. There is something important here for us to think about: freedom from one thing does not automatically mean freedom for the right thing.

Paul makes a similar point in Galatians when he speaks about the freedom Christ gives. Freedom is not simply the removal of a master. Freedom has a purpose. You can leave one form of bondage and walk straight into another.

Then there is INTRIGUE.

Israel looked around at the nations and became fascinated by what they were doing. They wanted to look like the nations around them, live like the nations around them and worship like the nations around them.

That fascination eventually fed IDOLATRY.

The command was clear: Israel was to love the Lord with all its heart. Yet they began placing other gods alongside Him. Idolatry was no longer something happening somewhere far away. It had entered their homes, their hearts and their national life.

Then there was IGNORANCE.

Not ignorance in the sense that they had never been told. Rather, they had rejected knowledge of God and forgotten His law. Hosea 4:6 captures the tragedy: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”

They knew enough to be responsible, yet they chose not to live according to what they knew.

Then there was IMMORALITY.

The spiritual unfaithfulness was showing up in the way people lived. Their relationship with God was broken, and their relationships with one another were being corrupted as well. Hosea speaks of sexual immorality, but the problem was wider than sexuality. Justice, truthfulness, mercy and faithfulness were also collapsing.

Finally, there was INGRATITUDE.

They had forgotten what God had done.

The God who had brought their fathers out of Egypt, carried them through the wilderness, provided for them and established them in the land was now being treated as though He had done nothing.

They had received much and remembered little.

These failures were not limited to ordinary people. Hosea speaks against the leadership structures that had become part of the problem.

The Priests were failing because those who were supposed to teach the people were themselves corrupt.

The Prophets were failing because those who were supposed to speak God's word were becoming deceptive and unreliable.

The Kings and Rulers were failing because the northern kingdom had gone through one political upheaval after another. Jeroboam ī established the northern kingdom's separate system, and after him came a succession of kings, many of whom met violent ends. The problem was not simply that there were many kings. The problem was that the entire political system had become deeply entangled with rebellion against God.

That gives us something to think about personally.

There are times when, if we are not careful, we can appoint ourselves into something God never appointed us to, establish a ministry, a fellowship or anything else that God did not establish.

It is Christ who appoints apostles, pastors, prophets, teachers and evangelists. Not men. Christ does that. Study Ephesians 4.

Hosea forces us to ask a difficult question: Who called me into this?

Then there were the people who benefited from the system. Those who were making money from the situation had little reason to challenge it. When a system is benefiting you, you can become strangely comfortable with things that God is confronting. We have seen this principle in our own nations. People can support a government, a system or a leader purely because of what they personally gain from that arrangement. When the same system begins hurting them, their language can change very quickly.

The same thing was happening in Israel. There were people benefiting from a broken system, and their personal interests could become more important than the voice of God.

So God sends Hosea.

He comes with a message that is essentially this: “You have been unfaithful to Me.” God presents Himself as the faithful husband and Israel as the unfaithful wife.

That is why Hosea's marriage matters so much. He needed to experience the message before preaching it and they needed a picture to support his words.

The issue is not simply that Israel looked bad on the outside. The issue was what had happened inside. Just like a woman in harlotry, Israel looked good from the outside. Form fitting clothes, great perfume, prosperity, make-up and the charm that comes with it.

- They could still have temples.

- They could still have sacrifices.

- They could still have religious language.

- They could still look like God's people.

But something had gone wrong in the relationship. That is one of the things I love about Hosea. God is not simply interested in Israel changing its appearance. He wants Israel to come home. The prodigal son went home first and changed when he landed.

Then the story becomes even more painful. Hosea's wife leaves. Hosea could have said, “Finally. I am free. Now I can go and find the wife I should have had in the first place.”

But God tells him to go and love her(sleep) again, bring her back and pay the price.

Hosea 3:1–2 gives us that picture. Hosea is instructed to love a woman who has turned to another lover, and he pays a price to bring her back.

That is the picture God is putting before Israel. “You have wandered from Me, but I am still calling you home.” There is something deeply uncomfortable about that kind of love. It is one thing to love somebody who loves you but it is another thing to pursue someone who has deliberately walked away.

Yet that is what Hosea is helping Israel see about God. The Lord is not pretending their sin does not matter. He confronts it directly. He speaks about judgment, bloodshed, exile and destruction. Assyria would eventually come against the northern kingdom, and Samaria would fall in 722 BC. The judgment was real. Yet even while God announces judgment, He continues calling His people back. The people have wandered, but God has not changed.

Hosea is not simply a book about a bad marriage. It is a book about the heart of God toward a people who have become unfaithful.

Israel's story eventually becomes a warning to us. You can hear God's voice and still refuse to respond. You can see the consequences and still explain them away. You can experience God's discipline and still miss what He is trying to tell you.

So God keeps calling and waiting. The question therefore is not only, “What happened to Israel?” The question is, “What is God saying to me through what happened to Israel?”

Am I hearing the Lord or am I simply hearing the voice of my pastor? Am I checking what I am being taught against Scripture or have I become so accustomed to somebody else's voice that I no longer go back to the Word for myself?

• Who is God?
• What is going on?
• What is my place in whatever is going on?

Those three questions can take us much further than simply finishing the book of Hosea.

Because at some point, the Scriptures stop being merely the story of them. They become a mirror for us.

Part 1: https://mapstage.blogspot.com/2026/09/hosea-part-1.html