Sabbath: Spiritual Adultery (Hosea)
Read for This Week’s Study: Hos. 1:1-3, Ezek. 4:1-6, Hos. 2:12-18, 4:1-3, James 5:1-7,Rev. 14:6-12.
Memory Text: “‘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 2:23, NIV).
Key Thought: Even amid spiritual adultery and divine judgment, God’s love for His people never wavers.
The prophet Hosea ministered at the close of a very prosperous period in Israel’s history, just before the fall of the nation to the Assyrians in 722 B.C. At that time, God’s chosen people no longer worshiped the Lord alone but also served Baal, a Canaanite god.
Placed at the head of the Minor Prophets, Hosea’s book addresses the central question of the prophetic proclamation during this time of apostasy: Does God still love Israel, despite the spiritual harlotry? Does He still have a purpose for them despite their sins and the coming judgment?
Hosea’s personal story and prophecy are inseparably tied into his book. Just as the prophet had forgiven his unfaithful wife and was willing to take her back, God is willing to do the same for His people.
What can we learn from the experience of Hosea and the Lord’s way of dealing with wayward Israel?
Study this week’s lesson to prepare for Sabbath, April 6.
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The book of Hosea is one which is so hard to understand from the human point of view but GOD sure does have a way of us drawing a lesson from it.am hoping to learn more from this weeks study
Hos 2:23 expirience of God people. To be called not people but now people of God.
What a wonderful god we serve inspite of (insert your name) sins he still forgives and loves us.
The book of Hosea is one of the difficult and emotional books of the bible from human stand point. Imagine a modern pastor being told to go and marry a prostitute his congregation knows very well. That will be "Breaking news" but thank God for the spiritual lessons of forgiveness. That God, irrespective of my sin is willing to forgive me and call me his child. What a wonderful God we serve?
When the SDA church participate and honor Christmas, Easter, Birthdays, holloween, or any of this world's customs and traditions in the name of Jesus, this is spiritual adultery. Also the adoption of false doctrines. All these are the worship of Satan in the precious name of our Lord & Saviour Jesus Christ. The 2nd. angle's message of Revelation 14: 8; is a warning to the nations to not participate in partaking of the wine of her fornication or the Spiritual Adultery of the Beast (False Worship). We must be a peculiar people and totally depending on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Cheers!!!
Amen. Your statement is one of the hardest to face. But the truth will set a person or group free.
Jesus will set us free! He is the Truth, the Way and the Life.
When we focus on Him at Christmas, at Easter, on birthdays, these seasons become seasons of spiritual delight. We are moved to contemplate the wonder of the incarnation, the sacrifice of His death, the glory of His resurrection, and the incomparable gift of creating life that He shared with humanity. And we can praise Him for His life-sustaining power.
It all depends on our focus -- whether we focus on Him or on the distractions with which the devil so easily besets us. We will eventually arrive at the destination of our focus -- either with Christ in heaven or with Satan in hell. (Also see my other comment on focus.) https://ssnet.org/blog/2013/03/easter-pascha-what-is-it/comment-page-1/#comment-47834
[Moderator Note: Please use full name when commenting] Your answer was guided by the Holy Spirt, all depends on our focus, not how the world or other chuches celebrate these events we must show Jesus and Jesus Crucified. That is our message.
I am in total agreement with you. It is sad when we as Seventh Day Adventist when we incorporate Holi-days and not HOLY Days to our Christian Communities. They have no meaning to us and don't glorify the KING of Kings and LORD of Lords. We become double minded people which is crossing dangerous grounds to satanic worship. Matthew 16:13-18- tells us who our Rock should be and what Rock our Church should be build on.
Jay, I think that classifying all that the church does with Christmas, Easter and so on as being spiritual adultery is probably taking it too far. At a time when people is most so-called Christian countries at least are aware of their Christian heritage it provides an opportunity to speak about Jesus. Why give Satan press when we have an opportunity to speak of Jesus and reflect his love. This is not adultery but taking the opportunity of showing the true source of our salvation
I agree Maurice. How can we serve our community and encourage others to come to Christ if we are so separate that we cannot interact when them? It is an opportunity that should not be missed.
We should not take the lesson out of context. The spiritual adultery is doing things contrary to the will of God. Not Christmas or Easter. The mark of the beast will be placed upon those who choose to disobey God's commands, while the seal of God is placed upon those who choose to obey God's commands. Let us be reminded that partial obedience is disobedience. God requires total obedience to all His commandments. The spiritual adultery is claiming to have a relationship with God while being disobedient to God and by so doing we are having fellowship with Satan. What is of importance is for all of us to look into our lives and see where Satan is taking center stage, where we are being disobedient, where there are things in our lives that's preventing us from serving God the way we should and ask God to forgive us and take us back from our spiritual adultery and help us by His enabling power to be faithful in our relationship with Him. Let us not allow Satan to distract us from the real issue that will determine our eternal salvation.
The Book of Hosea is a symbolic book of which God made used of marriage as a relationship betweeen HIM and HIS people(Israelites)."God told Hesea to go and take a wife of harlotry to have children of harlotry,for the land commits a great harlotry by forsaking the LORD"Hosea 1:2.Here God use the wife (GOMER) as the Israelites,Hosea represent God and the harlotry is the sins that commit against the Lord.
Thank you, Maurice Ashton, for the wise thoughts. Our focus should be on outreach during anytime we have the opportunity.
As to the question at hand, I do think that God is telling us that the issue is who and what has our heart. We must realize just how much God loves us before we can really pass on that love to others, but, just as He takes us back repeatedly when we are unfaithful, He can give us the power to forgive others who are unfaithful to us. We must be healed first, then we can help in God's process of healing others. God has forgiven each of us individually more than we will have to forgive others who have hurt us, but the healing and forgiveness we receive from God is what helps us to be able to have mercy for others. Praise Him!
Personally, I take the story of Hosea symbolically. God knew that his own people (church) are not perfect. Beside their iniquities, God loved them with an everlasting love, John 3:16. Moreover, God has the power to transform people's lives even those whose sins are condemned by society (including us, SDA). Mary Magdalene is an example of repentance and the love of Jesus Christ. His blood on the calvary is the price that Jesus paid for our sins.
[Moderator Note: Please use full name when commenting]
Guilty as Charged! If there is a commandment that "easily besets" adventists is "thou shalt not commit adultery." Sadly, it is true to us both literally and spiritually. Pause and think about it. Look at your recent past. How faithful have you been, both ways? In this frame of mind we shall fully comprehend this week's study. There could not be a better allegory God could have use to suit us. As at now, we are Gomer, and Gomer is us.
When we think about adultery, many of us tend to lean on the part where one spouse cheats on the ones they claim to love. But we do see that adultery can be even more damaging when one cheats on the Creator of all things. Here we see how ugly ADULTERY can be when given an image of how ugly and dirty it can be. The book of James chapter four, and verse four says this: "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God." Israel was constantly being made an example of because they wanted to make friends with the enemies of God. We should be thankful today as Christians for the complete word of God. We can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24) for that is a form of committing adultery against our Lord.
Typical of many Adventist discussions, we get hung up on whether the story is literal or not, or what we, the church, other churches are doing wrong. That is sad because there is so much in this story that provides hope and encouragement.
Hosea persisted with Gomer. When she went back to her old ways Hosea went down and brought her back home. He even paid for her. He persisted far beyond what any normal husband would do. That I think is the point that we need to remember. God persists even when the fight gets dirty.
I love the story Randy Pausch tells in “The Last Lecture”.(P5 of the transcript) He tells of his days playing football as a kid.
“And the other Jim Graham story I have is there was one practice where he just rode me all practice. You’re doing this wrong, you’re doing this wrong, go back and do it again, you owe me, you’re doing push-ups after practice. And when it was all over, one of the other assistant coaches came over and said, yeah, Coach Graham rode you pretty hard, didn’t he?
I said, yeah.
He said, That’s a good thing.
He said, When you’re screwing up and nobody’s saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up
And that’s a lesson that stuck with me my whole life. Is that when you see yourself doing something badly and nobody’s bothering to tell you anymore, that’s a very bad place to be. Your critics are your ones telling you they still love you and care.”
God is our football coach; He is our persistant wronged husband. He never gives up.
No matter who we are or where we came from, or past does not matter - God is so merciful and faithful he will never give up on us. Praise his holy name. He is just awesome.
This is so true! somebody has to keep us accountable to ensure that we make it into heaven. if they neglect to tell us it means one way or another they care less about our salvation!
[Moderator Note: In the future please use full names. Thank you. First names only may not be published.]
"if the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."- John 8:36 praise the Lord, We are free at last.. He forgot how foolish we used to be..
In human perspective, this is the hardest thing to do on our own ability. I praise God that he can instill wisdom & a forgiving spirit to forgive others.The book of Hosea reflects a lesson that only God can fully forgive and restore Israel(us) from sin.
What manner of love is God that He seeks us when we are running away from Him while fornicating and committing adultery with our enemy. We are so deceived about what true love is. God is love; true love that seeks us and desire a relationship with us in out sinful state. God is awesome. I love you Lord for seeking and redeeming me from the babylon of apostasy
Paul writes "things that I want to do I do them not, but those that I don't want to do I find myself doing them" we really nid Christ to intervene in our lives, for without Him we can not make it we will still keep on commiting adultery with the devil.
Thank you brothers & sisters in Christ; the book of Hosea was so hard for me to understand, but because of your contributions I'm now on the line, I understand how God loves his people with their sinners; & how he wants us to become pure!
It is amazing and exciting to know that Jesus Christ has given us the opportunity (His blood for us) to respond to God saying ..."YOU ARE MY GOD." Bless your name Lord. Christ's blood covers a multitude of sin.