Our passage this morning is found in

in Jose chapter 2 verses 14 to 23.

Therefore behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.

And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Aecore a door of hope.

And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,

as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

And in that day, says the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my

Ba'all. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more.

And I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the creeping things of the ground,

and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety and I will betrot you to me forever.

I will betrot you to me in righteousness and injustice in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betrot you to me in faith. in says the Lord, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall

answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel.

And I will sow him for myself in the land, and I will have pity I will sow him for myself in the land and I will have pity on not pitied and I will say to not my people you are my people and he shall, thou art my God.

The book of Hosea falls into two sections.

Chapters one through 3 deals with Jose's marriage to Gomer, the Harlot, and is a symbolic parable of God's relation to Israel.

And chapters 4 through 14 are excerpts from Jose's preaching

over the 30 or 40 years leading up to the destruction of Samaria, the Northern

Kingdom in 722 BC. These first three chapters of Jose are so powerful and so personal.

What I want to do this morning is just walk through them with you. We won't look at the other half of the book because I think if you get what is in

chapters one to three you've got the book the rest of it is simply unfolding what the first three chapters are about.

And the main point that I want to unfold out of these first three chapters for Bethlehem

at the end of 1982 is this.

...