1. Love me, or else?

2.  Richard Bauckham, PhD

4.  “Believe this:”  A……  B……  C……  “Do this:”  A……  B……  C……  “Signed…..

5. JudahProphetsIsrael 931 BC RehoboamJeroboam AbijahNadab 900 BC Asa*Baasha 850 BC Jehoshaphat*Elijah Zimri, Omri, Ahab, Ahaziah, Joram 800 BC Jehoram*, Ahaziah, Queen Athaliah, Joash* ElishaJonahAmos Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam II 750 BC Amaziah, Uzziah, Ahaz HoseaMicahIsaiah Zechariah, Shallum, Menahem, Pekahiah 722 BC Hezekiah*Isaiah Pekah, Hoshea

7.  “The LORD says, ‘Wine, both old and new, is robbing my people of their senses! They ask for revelations from a piece of wood! A stick tells them what they want to know! They have left me. Like a woman who becomes a prostitute, they have given themselves to other gods. At sacred places on the mountaintops they offer sacrifices, and on the hills they burn incense under tall, spreading trees, because the shade is so pleasant! As a result, your daughters serve as prostitutes, and your daughters-in- law commit adultery. Yet I will not punish them for this, because you yourselves go off with temple prostitutes, and together with them you offer pagan sacrifices. As the proverb says, 'A people without sense will be ruined.’

8.  “The people of Israel are under the spell of idols. Let them go their own way. After drinking much wine, they delight in their prostitution, preferring disgrace to honor. They will be carried away as by the wind, and they will be ashamed of their pagan sacrifices.” (Hosea 4:11-19)

9.  “When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, ‘Go marry a prostitute who will bear illegitimate children conceived through prostitution.  This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.’” (Hosea 1:2)

10.  “My children, plead with your mother--- though she is no longer a wife to me, and I am no longer her husband. Plead with her to stop her adultery and prostitution…She said, ‘I will go to my lovers – they give me food and water, wool and linen, olive oil and wine. So I am going to fence her in with thorn bushes and build a wall to block her way.”  She would never acknowledge that I am the one who gave her the grain, the wine, the olive oil, and all the silver and gold that she used in the worship of Baal.” (Hosea 2:2,8)

11.  “So I am going to take her into the desert again; there I will win her back with words of love. I will give back to her the vineyards she had and make Trouble Valley a door of hope. She will respond to me there as she did when she was young, when she came from Egypt.” (Hosea 2:14- 15)

12.  “The LORD said to me, ‘Go again and show your love for a woman who is committing adultery with a lover. You must love her just as I still love the people of Israel, even though they turn to other gods and like to take offerings of raisins to idols.’ So I paid fifteen pieces of silver and seven bushels of barley to buy her.” (Hosea 3:1-2)

13.  “They take their sheep and cattle to offer as sacrifices to the LORD, but it does them no good.” (Hosea 5:6)  “The LORD says, ‘Sound the alarm! Enemies are swooping down on my land like eagles! My people have broken the covenant I made with them and have rebelled against my teaching. Even though they call me their God and claim that they are my people and that they know me, they have rejected what is good. Because of this their enemies will pursue them.” (Hosea 8:1-3)

15.  “They are doomed! They have left me and rebelled against me. They will be destroyed. I wanted to save them, but their worship of me was false. They have not prayed to me sincerely, but instead they throw themselves down and wail as the heathen do. When they pray for grain and wine, they gash themselves like pagans. What rebels they are!” (Hosea 7:13,14)

16.  “My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests” (Hosea 4:6 – NIV)  “There is no faithfulness, no kindness, no knowledge of God in your land…  My people are being destroyed because they don’t know me. It is all your fault, you priests, for you yourselves refuse to know me…The more priests there are, the more they sin against me. They have exchanged the glory of God for the disgrace of idols.” (Hosea 4:1,6,7 – NLT)

17.  “The people say, ‘Let’s return to the LORD! He has hurt us, but he will be sure to heal us; he has wounded us, but he will bandage our wounds, won’t he? In two or three days he will revive us, and we will live in his presence. Let us try to know the LORD. He will come to us as surely as the day dawns, as surely as the spring rains fall upon the earth.’ But the LORD says, ‘Israel and Judah, what am I going to do with you? Your love for me disappears as quickly as morning mist; it is like dew, that vanishes early in the day. That is why I have sent my prophets to you with my message of judgment and destruction. What I want from you is plain and clear:

18.  I want your constant love, not your animal sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me than burn offerings to me. (Hosea 6:1-6)

19.  “On Zion, God’s sacred hill, there will be nothing harmful or evil. The land will be as full of knowledge of the LORD as the seas are full of water.” (Isaiah 11:9)  “How precious, O God, is your constant love! We find protection under the shadow of your wings. We feast on the abundant food you provide; you let us drink from the river of your goodness. You are the source of all life, and because of your light we see the light. Continue to love those who know you and to do good to those who are righteous.” (Psalm 36:7-10)

20.  “And eternal life means to know you, the only true God, and to know Jesus Christ, whom you sent. I have shown your glory on earth; I have finished the work you gave me to do…I have made you known…”(John 17:3-6)  “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding,  so that we know the true God. We live in union with the true God---in union with his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and this is eternal life.” (1 John 5:20)

22.  “I reckon everything as complete loss for the sake of what is so much more valuable, the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have thrown everything away; I consider it all as mere garbage, so that I may gain Christ and be completely united with him.” (Philippians 3:8,9 – GN)  “I have not stopped giving thanks to God for you. I remember you in my prayers and ask the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, to give you the Spirit, who will make you wise and reveal God to you, so that you will know him.” (Ephesians 1:16,17 – GN)

23.  “When the Judgment Day comes, many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord! In your name we spoke God's message, by your name we drove out many demons and performed many miracles!' Then I will say to them,  ‘Go away. I never knew you.‘” (Matthew 7:22-23)

24.  “When you were born, no one cut your umbilical cord or washed you or rubbed you with salt or wrapped you in cloths. No one took enough pity on you to do any of these things for you. When you were born, no one loved you. You were thrown out in an open field. Then I passed by and saw you squirming in your own blood. You were covered with blood, but I wouldn't let you die. I made you grow like a healthy plant. You grew strong and tall and became a young woman. Your breasts were well-formed, and your hair had grown, but you were naked. As I passed by again, I saw that the time had come for you to fall in love. I covered your naked body with my coat and promised to love you. Yes, I made a marriage covenant with you, and you became mine. This is what the Sovereign LORD says.” (Ezekiel 16:4-8 – GN)

25.  “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it….Men ought to love their wives just as they love their own bodies…As the scripture says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and unite with his wife, and the two will become one.’ There is a deep secret truth revealed in this scripture, which I understand as applying to Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:25- 32 – GN)

26.  “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished. And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to meet her husband. I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne: ‘Now God’s home is with people! He will live with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them, and he will be their God. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes...They will see his face.’” (Revelation 21:1-4; 22:4)

27.  “In the history of the Western Church since the era of Constantine, God as stern- moral-sentencing Judge eclipsed God as loving Story-teller, who weaves a transformative tapestry of faith, hope and love through the ages.”  Wayne Northey

30.  “The truth is I slipped by mere carelessness into saying that the Enemy really loves the humans. That, of course, is an impossibility. He is one being, they are distinct from Him. Their good cannot be His. All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else—He must have some real motive for creating them and taking so much trouble about them. The reason one comes to talk as if He really had this impossible Love is our utter failure to out that real motive. What does He stand to make out of them? That is the insoluble question.

31.  His throne depends on the secret. Members of His faction have frequently admitted that if ever we came to understand what He means by Love, the war would be over and we should re-enter Heaven. And there lies the great task. We know that He cannot really love: nobody can: it doesn't make sense. If we could only find out what He is really up to! Hypothesis after hypothesis has been tried, and still we can't find out. Yet we must never lose hope; more and more complicated theories, fuller and fuller collections of data, richer rewards for researchers who make progress, more and more terrible punishments for those who fail—all this, pursued and accelerated to the very end of time, cannot, surely, fail to succeed.”

34.  “The people of Israel are as stubborn as mules. How can I feed them like lambs in a meadow? The people of Israel are under the spell of idols.” (Hosea 4:16,17 – GN)

35.  “I will attack the people of Israel and Judah like a lion. I myself will tear them to pieces and then leave them. When I drag them off, no one will be able to save them.  I will abandon my people until they have suffered enough for their sins and come looking for me. Perhaps in their suffering they will try to find me.” (Hosea 5:14, 15)

36.  “When Israel was a child, I loved him as a son, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called to him, the more he rebelled, offering sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning incense to idols. It was I who taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him. But since my people refuse to return to me, they will go back to Egypt and will be forced to serve Assyria. War will swirl through their cities; their enemies will crash through their gates and destroy them, trapping them in their own evil plans. For my people are determined to desert me. They call me the Most High, but they don’t truly honor me.

37.  “How, oh how, can I give you up, Ephraim! How, oh how, can I hand you over, Israel! How can I turn you into a Sodom! How can I treat you like a Gomorrah! My heart recoils within me, all my compassion is kindled. I will not give vent to my fierce anger -- I will not destroy Ephraim again.” (Hosea 11: 1-9 Phillips)

39.  “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards to burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is or purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.” – Jonathan Edwards

40.  “Tell them that as surely as I, the Sovereign LORD, am the living God, I do not enjoy seeing sinners die. I would rather see them stop sinning and live. Israel, stop the evil you are doing. Why do you want to die?” (Ezekiel 33:11)

43.  “When Israel was a child, I loved him as a son, and I called my son out of Egypt. But the more I called to him, the more he rebelled, offering sacrifices to the images of Baal and burning incense to idols. It was I who taught Israel how to walk, leading him along by the hand. But he doesn’t know or even care that it was I who took care of him. I led Israel along with my ropes of kindness and love. I lifted the yoke from his neck, and I myself stooped to feed him. But since my people refuse to return to me, they will go back to Egypt and will be forced to serve Assyria. War will swirl through their cities; their enemies will crash through their gates and destroy them, trapping them in their own evil plans. For my people are determined to desert me. They call me the Most High, but they don’t truly honor me. Oh, how can I give you up, Israel? How can I let you go? How can I destroy you like Admah and Zeboiim? My heart is torn within me, and my compassion overflows. (Hosea 11:1-8 – NLT)