And good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Those of you online missed a good roast beef supper and all the fixants, and we wish you were here. That's right. We had a good time. A fellowship. So sorry we're a few minutes minutes late. I was telling John it's harder every week to get them in here, but it's good fellowship. Yeah, we'll start serving bad food. That'll do it. Who is it? Red Skelton. This will not get me in a good situation with the ladies, but Red Skelton says something like, I don't want to say my wife's not a good cook, but she sure broke the dog from begging. Anyway, he's dead now. So we come to Jose tonight after word of prayer. And Patsy? How's she doing? Pneumonia is getting better. The other stuff's a balance. And you've got another sisterinlaw that has COVID, correct, in Oklahoma. And by the way, Robin Saunders has scoped right now, too. She's fighting that Ed and Nancy trash that are often here. They took turns. It's Nancy Stern now, but anyway, they're both on the mend. Anyway, Robin is slowly on the mend. And Robin is caring for her mother now, too, in her home. So we'll keep her in our prayers. And let's see the binners in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They're always with us. And Dr. Mike Benner had some kidney stones and was in the hospital all day yesterday. And Laura's dealing with some cancer treatment issues that she's been going back and forth. So pray for the dinners also, and no doubt lots of others we could pray for tonight. But let me lead us into word of prayer and let's get started in Hosea. Your Heavenly Father, we're grateful for friends and family. We're grateful for people near and far that are able to lift us up in prayer and to encourage us and to fellowship with and we're grateful for the fellowship that we've had here in the building and now the fellowship we have in the Lord as we gather together with others, and it is a blessing. And for this journey through the book of Hosea, we're intrigued already at what we have learned and what is yet to come. And we ask this in Jesus name, amen. And with that, we come to session four, Hosea, chapter two. We're going to go to verse 14 and verses one through 13, really beginning even in verses. I think it was verses nine and ten of chapter one, we had the I think I called it God's poetic condemnation of Israel. Poetic because it was really talking about Hosea and his wife Gomer in one sense, but in the other sense, it was really talking about God and Israel more specifically even, and we'll see this tonight, the Messiah. We didn't know his name at that point, but we'll call him Jesus and Israel and the relationship that Israel would have with her Messiah. And obviously the Lord threw that. And chapter two, verses one through 13 were, again, I said, God's poetic condemnation of Israel. But it was a stinging condemnation. It was about as brutal as you could get in the condemnation. And the things, if you imagine a marital spat that is as bad as it can get and goes public, that's what you got there. It is out there for the whole world to see. But again, clearly from the beginning, I think we look at it and we say, well, there's there's much more than meets the eye here. This is surely more than a story about Hosea and his wayward wife. Gomer, there's a lot more to this story here, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to get to know that, right? I mean, you can read it and you can see it and understand it. I read a quote the other day, and I mentioned this this morning in our asthma theologian program, too, for those of you who may have watched that, I'm going to repeat myself, but it was by Rabbi Jonathan Sachs. He was the chief rabbi of Israel for a while, and he was writing about Bible study and how you study the Bible. Now, for him, he was talking specifically about the Torah of the first five books of the Bible. But whatever portion of it is, and it fits to us as well, and what interested me is he was talking about reading the Bible through, and he says, sure, we read the Bible through, that's a great thing. And he didn't speak about Christians, but I almost wonder if he didn't have Christians in mind because he grew up in England around Christians and Christians. Every end of the year, they start to read the Bible through in the year program. And it kind of sounded like he was talking about the read the Bible through programs. He said, sure, we read the Bible, we read it through every year. We have granted they have a smaller Bible than we do. He said, for ages and ages. We've had a program where, you know, this week, you read this much in the next week, and it's fairly common. But what he said is if you only read the Bible in its literal content, then you miss its meaning. And of course, I'm one that says read the Bible literally, take it literally, all that kind of stuff. And so I was intrigued by that. But then I began to think about Hosea. Well, if you only know literally what Hosea says, then you think it's about a marital spat between a man and his wife, and you wonder, why is this in the Bible? So you have to certainly go deeper than that and figure out not only what does this say, but what does this mean? Or what is this about? And digging into that. It again, is not very hard in the book of Hosea to figure out what it is about here. And so let me tell the computer that what do I do? Just push that X right there. Nathan there don't need updates, especially during church. So we see that it's about something else. Now, Joe, chapter two, verses one through 13, this amazingly strong condemnation. But when we get to verse 14 right here, we see that all of a sudden there really is a great unbelievable change that takes place. And you begin to have what I will call God's poetic call. Not condemnation, but God's poetic call to Israel. And let's just start with verse 14 where he says, therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably unto her. Now, this is the first time that there has been any kind of kindness or tenderness at all. It really had been, I am going to humiliate her out in the public square. Everybody is going to know her sin. And again, very explicit conversation in verses one through 13. Now all of a sudden changes. I will allure her, I will bring her to the wilderness. And now right here, if it just stopped right there and we read verses one through 13 and stopped right here with I will bring her under the wilderness. And I were to say, especially if you'd never read the book before, I were to say, what do you think happens next? And I suppose we'd say, man, he's going to tie her up to a post and whoop her? There's not going to be anything left for her. But it totally changes here. I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her. From here to the rest of the chapter, it is going to be this very tender picture of a man who loves his wayward wife and is willing to receive her back and is working to do everything he can do to bring her back. So the word therefore, by the way, I of course, always use that old line, whenever you see the word therefore, you stop to see what it's there for. This one's a little bit different. Normally you would say, because of all of this based upon that therefore, here's what I'm going to do. But this one doesn't really logically make sense. This is kind of saying that Warren is robbing me blind and therefore I'm going to invite him to Thanksgiving dinner. It's like, wait a minute, he's robbing you blind. Why would you invite him to Thanksgiving dinner? This doesn't make sense. So therefore here really is, yes, I recognize this fact. And in spite of that, here's what I'm going to do. It's a therefore that sort of turns the corner a little bit. So the Lord says, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness. Now, again, we're talking poetic. Is wilderness the wilderness? I'm going to go ahead and say, yeah, it's part of it. But there's this draw for Israel. And we convinced ourselves last week this is what we're talking about is Israel. There's a draw for her into the wilderness and the Lord is going to speak tenderly to her. Now, I think that this definitely gets us when we pick up, right, say here in Verse, verse 14, it picks us up in this place where now we are clearly from here on talking prophetically, that is Prophetically. God is promising to do something to the Nation of Israel. What is it that God is going to do? Well, he's going to lure her into the wilderness, okay? And there he is going to speak tenderly to her or speak comfortably unto her. And so Prophetically, then we let Scripture interpret Scripture and we say, well, is there any place in the Scripture where it talks about Israel being in the wilderness in the last Days and God and Israel sort of kiss and make up? Is there anything about that in the Scripture? And lo and Behold, we come up with quite a few Scriptures. Let's look and see how Ezekiel puts this here in Ezekiel, what is It? Chapter 20, beginning in Verse 35, it says, and I will bring you into the Wilderness of the People. And there I will plead with you face to face like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of the land of Egypt. So I will plead with you, saith the Lord, and I will cause you to pass under the Rod and will bring you into the Bond of the Covenant. Now Think of those words right there, bring you into the bond of the Covenant. That sounds a little bit like maybe marriage. I'm going to get you out. We're going to come into this Covenant that we are to be in and I will purge out from among you the rebels and then the trends against Me. I will bring Them forth out of the country where they sojourn, and they shall not enter into the Land of Israel. And then it concludes with this right here, ye shall Know that I Am the Lord. Okay, both of these have obviously the Ezekiel Passage has more detail to it, but both of these are something happens in the wilderness. It appears to be in the Last Days when you put it into the context here and it ends and we'll see later in the Hosea Passage, but it ends in Israel knowing that I Am the Lord. Now Israel is represented by Gomer in the book of Hosea. And if Gomer knows that he is Lord, she certainly doesn't act like It. So it's going to come along to I will know or Israel will know. Let's look at another one. Let's go in the New Testament again, we're thinking about this, I will allure her into the wilderness. Let's go to Revelation, chapter Twelve, verse Five, where it's giving this Vision that takes place in Heaven. And it has a woman and it says, she brought forth a manchild who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron and her child was caught up unto God. I'm one verse off here. Here we go, verse verse six. And the woman fled into the wilderness where she had the place prepared of God that they should feed her there 1203 score days. Well, that's kind of interesting. The woman, if you read in Revelation, chapter twelve and you put all the, allegory that's there, the woman happens to be Israel. Israel is the one who gives birth to this son and the son is going to be the king speaking of the Messiah. But here the woman fled into the wilderness. Well, why did she flee into the wilderness? Well, partly because she was being persecuted. She was being chased and run into the wilderness, unlike the guy on the horror movie who always runs upstairs to the attic. Where can I hide? Where can I get away? Okay, go out into the wilderness. But not only because she's being chased, but the Lord allures her, brings her out. What can I do to get her out in the wilderness? So the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared of God, and in that place prepared of God, they should feed her there 1203 score days, that's 1260 days. And that happens to be three and a half years, which happens to be half of seven, and the Tribulation is seven years. So let's get back here and put some of these things together. Let's get back here to Jose, chapter two, verse 14 and see if I can get that right there. Jose, chapter two, verse 14. Therefore I will allure her, bring her into the wilderness, speak comfortably unto her. There's a place in the wilderness that God has prepared that is going to take care of her. I'll bring her out into the wilderness and there I will enter into a covenant relationship with her and she shall know the Lord. All these passages go together and there are a number of other passages that we could look at as well in the Lord bringing her, getting her in some way into the wilderness and speaking comfortably unto her. That's sort of a shorthand for we're going to make up, we're going to make a sentence here and we're not going to yell at each other anymore. I'm going to take care of this, and brings that unto her. Now that if we put the Revelation chapter twelve passage seems to happen at, let's say, approaching the midpoint of the Tribulation. And Israel has undergone terrible persecution already during the days of Jacob's trouble, as it's called in one of the other prophets. And now she is allured unto the wilderness. About the midpoint of the Tribulation, by the way. The midpoint of the Tribulation is when the Antichrist sets himself up in the temple to be God and stops the sacrifice. The Jewish sacrifices basically says, don't worship the way you've been worshipping, worship me. And Jesus also said, when you see the abomination of desolation spoken up by Daniel the prophet, that's the Antichrist sitting himself up. He said, when you see that, flee into the wilderness, okay, go to the wilderness. So they've got instruction from Jesus already. Go to the wilderness. They've got instruction from their prophets. God is going to have a place for you in the wilderness. They see that there is no way to win this thing that is now up against us. We got to get out of here. We got to go to the wilderness. So they go to the wilderness, and there God will feed her. God has a place for her. God will protect her. Now, where exactly is that? There is some passages we could put. Let me go to Isaiah 63 and look at one more of these wilderness passages here. Isaiah 63. Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments from Basra? This is oh, who is this, this that is glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength? I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. Okay, now let me put that obviously it's part of in the middle of the context, but Isaiah comes and says, who is this? There's somebody coming from Adam, coming from Basra. Who is it? He is coming in glorious in his apparel, traveling in the greatness of his strength. Who is it? Does anyone want to guess? You got it. It's their messiah. Here comes their messiah. We would say Jesus in the second coming, but who is this in the greatness of estrange? And the answer is, I that speak in righteousness, mighty to save. That's who it is. Let me answer. I'll tell you who it is. I'm the one who is mighty to save. Okay. The messiah comes. He comes from Edom and from Basra. Now, let's pick that up in just a moment. But as we carry on in verse two here wherefor now speaking of the Messiah again, wherefore art thou read in thine apparel and thy garments, like him that treadeth in the wine fat? Now, I don't know. I think when I hear that verse, I always think of I Love Lucy. Yeah, the rest of you are old enough, except there's some in the back over here. Like, why does that remind you of Lucy? But anyway, you can Google it, okay, he's got a garment of red or like one that treadeth in the wine fat. Obviously you've got grapes read. Let's just say that's a poetic way of saying why is there blood on your garment? What's up with this? And then the answer comes in verse three. I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the people, there was none with me. For I will tread them in my anger and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. Now, he comes and says, OK, I've been there already. I've experienced the suffering. Now I'm coming in judgment. And it begins to go down there in judgment. As the next verse says, for the day of vengeance is mine. But let's back up to verse one. Who is this that cometh from Edom? By the way, remember, Edom is let's call it the nickname of another famous guy in the Bible. Edom and this other guy are the same person. Does anybody remember? Esau? You got it. And you might remember if you graduated 8th grade, Sunday school, you might remember that. Esau, what color was his skin? Rusty. Rusty. Okay, red. It means red. Rusty. Kind of this was him. Whether it was red hair, red skin, from being out in the sun, whatever it was. That's what his name meant anyway. And if you go back to the story, you remember Isaac was blind at that point. But there were some things about his skin there. Well, edom actually means red. So this is poetic also. And there's a little play on words with the Edom and the red here. Who is it that come from Edom? And down here, wherefore art thou read in thine apparel? If you actually were reading in Hebrew here it says Edom. Here. It says Edom. Says Edom in both places. But you can tell one of them is a proper noun. You don't translate a proper noun. The other one is the color red. So who is this that cometh from red? He's red in his apparel. But Edom is the place now eat them. And the Edomites, if you remember this, this was from the 9th grade class. Edom is east of the Dead Sea. If you remember the little map of Israel there you should go. We'll see we'll look across to Edom. And the Edomites over there. Actually, from the Dead Sea, it's moab across their roof. The Moabitus just to the north, say, where the Dead Sea starts. And north that is Edom over there. It's modern day Jordan. That's where Esau live. The Edomites all over there, modern day Jordan. And Bazra is that location about the northern tip of the Dead Sea. If you were just go straight into Jordan, you would come up on Basra. Now he comes from Edom and Basra. This has led many to speculate and it's not a bad speculation that over there in Jordan and Jordan is definitely the wilderness. I'll call you out into the wilderness. There are places that you can go in Jordan that you would get quite lonely before you ever find anybody. And very rugged terrain. Some every now and then some movies that are done over there because they want something that looks like Mars. And it's got red dirt. Edomites is red. It's all there. It's red dirt. Kind of like we see some places here. Very, very desolate. Desolate mountains, I guess you would say. It's also the place, especially here, near Basra is the place that you know as Petra. Well, Petra is that hidden city out there, a fabulous place. I say hidden city, it's really a hidden cemetery. They didn't actually live in Petra, they buried people in Petra. But unbelievable, the work that was done and it was hidden for a long time. So there is the idea that maybe Israel is going to be taken to Petra or out there somewhere like Petra, and there Israel during the time of the Tribulation is going to be protected in the place that God has prepared for them. Now, a lot of Bible teachers will, I think, oversimplify too much and say that during the Tribulation, Israel is going to Petra. I've been to Petra quite a few times, it's a fabulous place, but the only thing I don't like about it is it takes forever to get there and takes forever to get out of there, but once you get there, it's this fabulous place. So I hear a lot of Bible teachers say this is the place where God's going to protect his people during the last half of the Tribulation. And I always want to say, well, you're kind of with you on it, but is Petra really the place? First of all, Petra is not that hard to find. It is kind of a World Heritage site, right? So if you're trying to hide, maybe that wouldn't be the place to go, but there's so much vast wilderness out there that I would say there's nothing wrong with saying the place they're going to be taken in the wilderness is going to be Petra like, very hidden. And the entrance into Petra is absolutely stunning. You go through this huge little cleft in the rock, I guess you would call it, and then you come out and lo and behold, wow. I'm just absolutely amazed. In fact, we always trick people as we go there and bring them down. I know how far you can go and then before you can see in there, I say, oh, look, way up there, everybody look there. No, you got to come out this way just a little bit and if you walk out that way about 3ft and then turn around whoa, there is this unbelievable view of Petra up there and you're like, well, how did that get there? So it's an amazing hiding place. But when I say that Petra is this place where the Lord is going to find his people and then bring them out of Edom. As we'll see here even more in just a moment. I wouldn't necessarily. But I would say out there in that direction. I think in the Tribulation. There is enough remodeling of the Earth that I don't even know if Petra will exist at that point. And that is unlikely. On the rift that goes up from Kenya, you would know the name of it if I said the something Rift, the Rift Valley and all that is a name for that. Anyway, it's a great fault line that goes from really from Kenya all the way up to the Dead Sea in that area. It's highly earthquake prone. They don't have a lot of earthquakes, but when they do, boy, is it an earthquake. So I think probably unrecognizable by the place that God is going to prepare in the wilderness. He's probably going to prepare a place that's not even there as we know it right now. Now, let me again get back to Hosea, chapter two, verse 14. So here we have a hint of it. I will lure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfortably to her. Obviously, you couldn't take everything I have just said about Israel in times hiding place in the wilderness and get it just from here. But when you have all those other verses that add together and you're looking at this and saying, this is not about Hosea and gomer, this is something deeper, so what is this? Then you begin to put it together, okay, this is in the last days and I will go and speak comfortably with her now. So taking that as the last days and there's going to be this wilderness experience for Israel. In that wilderness experience, God is going to speak comfortably. Sometimes that word is translated tenderly to her. Israel is going to, I don't know, shall we say, wake up and realize, hey, I got a good suitor right here, what have I been doing? And she will repent of that and come back to her. Now, when does this happen? It is all in the future, says our friend Bollinger. Let me back up to verse 13. He says, I will visit upon her the days of the Bailim, where she burned incidents to them. She decked herself with earrings, her jewels went after her lovers, and she forgot me. Say it. The Lord. Therefore. Now, Bollinger says, here between 13 and 14, right there is where we are. He says, One through 13 are Israel in the past, 14 and down as Israel in the future. And so to quote from him, the whole of this present dispensation comes between 13 and 14. He's talking about our dispensation now. He could be right, but I wouldn't be surprised if all of this punishment upon Israel that's been spoken of, if it's not all future, it's talking about the first half of the Tribulation going down to verse 13. And the second half of the Tribulation beginning in verse 14 is how I would take that if we put it together. Okay, so there's 14, I'll lure her into the wilderness. Verse 15. I will give her her vineyards from thence and the valley of a court for a door of hope, and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt. So there in the wilderness, I will give her her vineyards. Now, that sounds to me like I'm going to protect her, I'm going to take care of her, I'm going to make sure that she has bounty out there. Kind of reminds us of Revelation Twelve Five, which, if you remember when we said, there the woman in the wilderness, she's there 1260 days, and they feed her. Who's they? Well, it doesn't really tell us they feed her. Well, here. The Lord says, I will give her her vineyards, her prosperity, her care out there will come out in the wilderness. And I think, by the way, Psalm 91, we won't go there. But Psalm 91, I think, is about her wilderness place. It says if I Paraphrase, if I can get even close to Paraphrasing, that it's about dwelling in the shadow of the Most High, in the secret place of the Most High, who dwells in the secret place of the Most High. And that's the passage that talks about 10,000 will fall at thy right hand, 1000 at thy left hand, all the way around, perhaps, but no evil shall befall thee, no plague will come upon you. It goes on and on, all these things of protection. And I think it's talking about the secret place of the wilderness. It's not talking about some spiritual experience you and I have. It's talking about the secret place of the wilderness. And there I will give her her vineyards. That's always been a place of a picture of bounty. Think of Jonah, you know, when he went off and the Lord blessed him with a vineyard for a day and then took it away. But the vine has always been that picture of blessing. It's spoken of the millennium when it talks about every man will sit under his own vine. Kind of gives that picture of, hey, I got my own gazebo. I'm just sitting here drinking lemonade. This is what I do. And so, really, this is a term of blessing, a poetic term of blessing. I will give her her vineyards, and then and the valley of a core for a door of hope. Now, the Valley of Acorn, let's see, if I gave away a Ford F 150, would anyone get it? If I ask you where the Valley of Acorn was, or what it had to do with, this is what I was thinking. So. The Valley of Acorn. You do remember Aiken? Remember Aiken who took the garment and the goblet, I believe it was from Jericho, and everything in Jericho was under the ban. They were not supposed to take it. He took it, caused Israel to be defeated at the next battle. And finally they figure out who it is, they punish Aiken. They put a monument there, and it's kind of this monument of we should be obedient to God when he's giving us stuff, we should be obedient to Him. Well, the Valley of Acorn is that monument. If you. Will. And that becomes a door of hope. Now, that's kind of a dual thing. First of all, it was a place of curse and a reminder of the curse, but now it becomes a door of hope. But beyond that, if you look at it in a different way, accord was the place where from there on, they conquered the promised land back in the Book of Joshua, and they got their land. So this is kind of, hey, I'm going to give you your vineyard. This is the door. You're going to be out in the wilderness, just like the children of Israel were out in the wilderness. And they came across the Jordan River from Edom, and they came to the valley of a corps. And it was a place of loss for them at the time, but then they got things right and it took care of. And so all this picture sort of being mirrored here, the valley of a corps for a door of hope. Now, again, it looks like end of days. God lures Israel out into the wilderness, protects her there for 1260 days, and then who is this that comes from Adam? They begin to come back. He begins to lead them back. And now they've got their vineyards, they've been taken care of. They come to the Valley of Acorn. That becomes a door of hope. She shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt, singing, celebrating. I think when I think of this, I think of May 14, 1948, when Israel was declared to be a state. And the Jewish people, of course, had worked for that for, shall we say, 2000 years. And there were spontaneous singing and dancing out in the streets in the middle of the night as the word came out in Israel. And here they sing again, because now they really do have a promised land. Shall sing there as in the days of her youth. Verse 18. It shall be at that day is. That phrase always is a reference to we'll call it the Second coming. It's a day of when the Lord comes either to judge or to establish his kingdom, which he does at the same time. So that day could be the great and terrible day of the Lord if you're on the judgment side. Or it could be the wonderful day of the Lord if you're on the blessing side. So here is more of a blessing. It shall be at that day, saith the Lord, that thou shalt call me Ishi and shalt call me no more. Bailey well, that was meaningful, wasn't it? On that day you will call me Ishi. Ish is the Hebrew word for man. But both Hebrew and Greek, man and husband is the same word. It's only by context do you say, sometimes Shelley will say, this is my man, or sometimes she'll say, this is my husband. In the English, we have two words in Greek and Hebrew, both there's one word, ish is the name for man. Now, any Hebrew word that ends in an I, that's the possessive. In English, we would have apostrophe s it's mine or an apostrophe. Anyway, to make the possessive ish is man, ishi is my man. Now, let's take this as husband, because that's the context we have it in here. So that's how we would take it. So it shall be on that day, saith the Lord, that thou, Gomer, shall say to me, hosea ishi gomer is going to say, you are my husband. But Gomer is representative of Israel. Israel is going to come and say to the Lord, and especially the Lord here is Hoshia, yeshua, Jesus, jesus, their messiah going to say to her, messiah, you are my husband, thou shalt call me no more. Bail e. Notice the e, it's my something. And bail, well, you've heard that word bail is like a pagan god, right? But actually, the word bail means master always in a negative sense, master like taskmaster, that kind of master, the one that he says jump, you say, how high? That sort of slave master almost you would look at, you will call me husband and no longer my taskmaster. Now, again, this is poetic. And you see the poetry go on here in the next verse and the play on words here, where it says, for I will take away the names of the Baylim, okay, bao, bao, bailey, bailey. Well, and I am at the end of a Hebrew word, means it's plural. So I will take away the names of your masters out of her mouth. I will take away the names of her masters out of her mouth. Now, her masters, in the context here has been the fake gods. She's been going and she has been enslaved, if you will, by these fake gods, these Baals, and she has been calling them bailey, Bailey, bailey, and looking at the Lord, even as maybe one among many of the Bailey, or maybe even in a negative sense, as some people sometimes do, god is just he's such a horrible taskmaster for us. He's just never been good to us at all, and a very negative way. But she will no longer call me Taskmaster. Now, she's going to call me husband. And I will take the names of her old can we just say here, her old boyfriends, her old gods, her baleen out of her mouth. They shall no more be remembered by their name. And furthermore, in that day, in verse 18 or 18, in that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven and the creeping things of the ground, and I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth, and I will make them to lie down safely. Now, I think the end of that verse is easier to understand in the beginning. So let's start there. In that day, the day she calls me her husband, in that day I will end of the verse here. I will break the bow and the sword and the battle out of the earth and make them to lie down safely. Well, I'm going to defeat her enemy in that day. Break the bow, he'll no longer be able to shoot at you. I will break the bow and break the sword. Get the battle out of the earth, make them to lie down safely. Remember the 23rd Psalm, by the way? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down and green pastures he leads me beside the still waters, he restoreth my soul. He makes a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. My cup runth over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. I think that Psalm 23 is also prophetic of the coming millennium or the coming kingdom. The day in which Israel, in Psalm 23, looks to her Lord and says, you're my shepherd, and here looks to the Lord and says, you're my husband. So he is going to make them lie down safely. Finally, Israel is going to be at peace. How long has it been since the Jewish people, whether they were Israel or no nation at all or whatever, how long has it been since they really, truly had peace? Forever. Yeah, I would say, well, I got to go back further than that. I actually started to say I would say you have to go back to prior to Nebuchadnezzar defeating Judea and carrying them off to Babylon, because since then there's always been something as someone after them. But even before that, if it wasn't Nebuchadnezzar, it was the Assyrians. If it wasn't the Assyrians, it was the Egyptians. You can go back, I suppose, to Abraham's day, and somebody was always out to get them. If they had a few years of peace, it was a good thing. And so here to make them to lie down safely. What a blessing that is. I think really we've got here a description of the millennium, god and Israel together, or the Messiah and Israel together, and they are finally at peace. Some of this terminology again, like, say that right there, I will break the bow and the sword. Not exactly that verse, but the other verses that say almost the same thing. Like what? They will beat their swords into plow shares and their spears into pruning hooks. Here you got the sword, the bow that is given. And mankind has tried to say, we'll do this, we will bring an end to all wars. Remember Woodrow Wilson? He's the one that blessed us with peace. We've had ever since excuse me, he just thought the word end all wars. Now we got the League of nations and now there's a wonderful world peace. Well, not really. It doesn't last long. Finally, the Lord will make them to lie down safely. I suspect, by the way, this is talking about Israel. Obviously, in our lifetimes at least, going back to World War II, israel has been at the center of every world conflict there's been even now you say, no, it's Ukraine and Russia, and yet what? Putin said he was going to the Ukraine because there were Nazis there. So the Jews still gets caught in the middle here and all of this finally, I will make them lie down safely. Okay, now that part makes sense. But let's go to the first part of the verse here when he says, I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field and the fowls of heaven and the creeping things of the ground. Okay, why do you need a covenant with creeping things or with the fowls of the air or with the beasts of the field, a covenant for them? Well, I don't know exactly why you need it, except that well, except that it is nice to go out in the dark and not be scared of what's going to get you, right? That would be nice to sleep in safety and peace. But more than that, remember Isaiah, chapter eleven, verses six through nine, talks about the millennium as a time when the wolf will lie down with the lamb and the ox and the whatever lie together, and the lion and the sheep and the child will play with the ASP and it won't harm him. The millennium really is a time, I'll say a Garden of Eden kind of time, where the world is brought back into its harmony, where there is not a viciousness that takes place even in the animal world against humanity, if you will. And so when this marriage takes place, it is going to be a marriage in which God even makes a covenant for them with the beasts of the field. Noah didn't seem to have a hard time getting all the animals into the ark, did he? Or getting them to behave. Why? Well, because I think there used to be a covenant with them. This is the way it's going to work. After the flood, things began to change and we could look at that in another day, but it's going to be restored, creation as it was supposed to be. So not only creation in the world of existence, animals and all that, but in the people relationships here and the one nation against another, all that will come. And then in verse 19, I will betroth thee unto me forever. Yea, I will betroth thee unto me in righteousness and in judgment, and in loving kindness and in mercies. I will even betroth thee unto me in faithfulness. And there it is. Thou shalt know the Lord. Now, remember hearing about what it is to know someone in a biblical sense. Adam knew his wife and they brought forth children. I think this is in that marriage genre here, as it's talking in this poetry. I will betroth thee unto me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. This says there is going to be a marriage and that marriage is going to be real. That marriage is going to be consummated, if you will, in the poetic picture that is given here. Now, the sad part is that here, when you get to this, this I will betrath you have it actually three times. Betroth, betroth, betroth. And it is the idea of I'm entering a marriage covenant with you. I'm going to come into this marriage covenant with you forever unto I will betray thee in righteousness judgment, lovingkindness, mercy, faithfulness, and you will know the Lord. This is talking about the bride of the Lamb or the bride of the Messiah. Unfortunately, Christians have come along and tried to put themselves in that place. It's not uncommon to go into an evangelical church and say, hey, we're the bride of Christ. But actually, when you read this, Israel is the bride of Christ, that's the picture that's given here very clearly. Israel is the bride of Christ. And he says right here, I will betrothy. And some try to overcome this by saying, oh no, baldheaded preacher, you got this wrong. Actually, they would say God the Father marries Israel, god the Son marries the church. So God has his bride and the son has his bride. Now that's convenient, but I don't think there's any way you can look at Hosea, chapter two, and see Hosea as representing God the Father. Hosea is representing Hoshia. Yeshua, Yesus, Jesus, he is their Messiah, and this is the picture of their Messiah. Furthermore, if you say no, he's the picture of God. Well, who's that? That comes from the wilderness. And do we have the first coming of God? No, god doesn't come to Earth and rescue Israel and bring her that's Jesus, the second person of the Trinity that does that very clearly. So to make this to be the bride of God instead of the bride of his Son the Messiah, I think just gets you into all sorts of logic problems, so many that I finally decided to give up those logic problems and just say, we're not the bride of Christ, we mistook ourselves as the bride of Christ. But actually, it says here that Israel is the bride of Christ. It says in so many places that Israel is the bride of Christ. Ultimately they shall know the Lord and this marriage will be accomplished and committed. And of course, that is something that is all to take place in the future. So with that, we'll conclude verses 14 through 20. Anyway, we still got three more verses in chapter two. Chapter three is a short chapter, so we'll probably get through it next week also. But what we see here is God is saying Israel is faithless. Israel is running out after other gods, after other masters. But someday, after a time of punishment, I'm going to allure her into the wilderness. And then when I allure her into the wilderness, I am going to make her my bride. And she is actually going to look at me and say, my husband. And that will be a time of safety and a time of prosperity and a time in which all God's people said, Amen. Let's pray. Heavenly Father. As we see this prophetic scripture here. Given in the picture of Hosea and Gomer. We're grateful that it gives us some understanding of what's going to happen in the world today. In the world in the future. I should say. With the Jewish people. The things going on today are of a different dispensation. A different section of scripture. And it's helpful to understand where we are and where Israel is and keep that separation different and pray that we've done that faithfully. In Jesus name, amen. God be with you till we meet again. Which will be Sunday morning at 945 for hermeneutics class, 1045 for Abraham carrying on. And Madison was going to remind me of having a sign up sheet, weren't you? For Potluck. We'll have it. She'll remind me tomorrow and I'll get it online and in paper here. For Potluck, the 13 November. By the way, those of you online, it's not out of the question for you to get here by November 13. We would love to have you, potluck and the Lord suffer celebrating Thanksgiving. God bless you. You're all. I dismissed.