UnCommon Commitments
Hosea 1-3
It’s going to take an uncommon church, with everything in common, to share Jesus in an uncommon time, uncommon circumstances, and in uncommon places. We need a church willing to build in fields where no one else is building, to reach people no one else is reaching.
- God demonstrates absurd levels of faithfulness - extreme “stick-with-it-ness”
Hosea
Context: some of the prophets were asked to do some crazy things to demonstrate the word God was giving through them -
Hosea - asked to marry an unfaithful woman and name their kids “Not Loved,” and “Not my People;” - Hosea was tasked with pleading to the Israelites in the final years before the exile to realize their own unfaithfulness and return to God
**Spoiler alert - they didn’t, but God stayed faithful to them anyway
2 When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” 3 So he married Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
4 Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel. 5 In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”
6 Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the Lord said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them. 7 Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them—not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the Lord their God, will save them.”
8 After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. 9 Then the Lord said, “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God.
10 “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’ 11 The people of Judah and the people of Israel will come together; they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel. —Hosea 1:2-11
20 I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the Lord.
21 “In that day I will respond,” declares the Lord—“I will respond to the skies,
and they will respond to the earth; 22 and the earth will respond to the grain,
the new wine and the olive oil,and they will respond to Jezreel.
23 I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’;
and they will say, ‘You are my God.’” —Hosea 2:20-23
1The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” —Hosea 3:1
- Matthew 5:38-48 - Jesus said to go the extra mile (v. 41)
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. —Romans 5:6-8