Amen, amen. Good evening. Welcome. You can be seated. Glad you're here tonight. Welcome. How you doing?

Yes. Okay, good answer. Those of you online, we're glad that you're joining with us as well.

Hope you're as blessed as the people that are here are.

Two more chapters tonight, chapters nine and ten, as we make our way through the book of Hosea, the prophet,

Josea.

I have to confess though something about the two chapters before us.

They are among the most difficult in the entirety of this book of Jose.

How's that for an introduction?

We have to a good start.

I mean I just wanted to full disclosure, get that out of the way let you know

the two these for those of you that read ahead to stay ahead you already know what's ahead and i'm telling you

i'm on my face before the lord going god uh this is painful to read. How am I going to teach it?

So should we close in prayer? And then you can let me explain something though about this

because there's actually more to this.

Northern Israel is in the throes of one of the darkest periods in their history.

They're steeped in wickedness, disobedience, and if that weren't bad enough they have no clue and one of the

reasons why we'll see it more in chapter 10 but it's it's there nine as well

the reason is is because things are going well smashing smashingly well. I got to use that word.

Any chance I get I'm using that word, okay? Things are going smashingly well. They are actually

fruitful, prosperous, and when things are going good, you're not as in tune to or as sensitive to the Lord.

And as we saw last week, they had forgotten the Lord.

And even the great things in the Word of God were strange to them. They were, you know, kind of foreign to them.

...