"What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction (the Jews), and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy (the church), which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?” (Romans 9:22-24) Individuals were not chosen before the world was formed, nor in the womb, for destruction nor glory. “But in both cases the final result was strictly in accordance with prophecy.” (C. J. Ellicott)- a matter of the distinction of being called the people of God.
“As He also says in Hosea: “I will call them My people, who were not My people, and her beloved, who was not beloved.” [Hosea 2:23] — This is a “prophecy, that the Gentiles should become the new Israelites, or peculiar people of God. Hence Peter calls the saints of Roman Asia, (1 Peter 2:9) a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, (cp. Exodus 19:6) to show forth the praises of Him who had called them out of darkness into marvellous light.’” (Joseph Sutcliffe)— “And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ [Hosea 1:9] there they shall be called sons of the living God.” (Romans 9:25-26)
By recognizing Jesus as Messiah people become sons of God- yea, a part of the people of God. “Paul applies this verse to make it mean that God will in the future again speak about them as ‘His people’ and Israel as His ‘beloved’. This can only mean there will be those from the people of Israel who will believe on the Lord Jesus. They are the people who are recognized by God as ‘My people’…. It can even be applied to the nations surrounding Israel. They had always been ‘not My people’ and ‘not beloved’ because God hadn’t formed a special tie with them. But if from out of these nations, people accept the Lord Jesus as Savior and Lord, they may consider themselves as part of ‘My people’.” (G. de Koning)
Yahweh told Hosea to marry a harlot named Gomer, because the northern kingdom had gone after other gods. There are some things which no one can teach us, save the teacher of personal experience. And Yahweh named Hosea’s three children. The first child, a son, was named Jezreel (God plants) (Hosea 1:4). Indeed, it is the LORD who planted the house of Israel as the apple of His eye. The LORD told him to call the second child, a daughter, Loruhamah (no more mercy), because He said: “I will no longer show love to the house of Israel.” (Hosea 1:6) And finally, He then told him to name the third child, a son, Loammi (not my people), because he added: “You are not my people and I am not your God.” (Hosea 1:9)
“In order to understand, we need to remember that according to the New Testament, OT prophesies often have threefold fulfillment. The first is immediate and literal (in the history of Israel), the second intermediate and spiritual (in Christ and in His Church), and the third ultimate and eternal (in God’s consummated kingdom). The prophecy of Hosea takes the form of God's promise in mercy to overturn an apparently hopeless situation, to love again those He had declared unloved and to welcome again as His people of those He had said were not His people(the remnant). The immediate and literal application was to Israel in the eighth century BC, repudiated and judged by the Lord for apostasy but promised reconciliation and reinstatement. However, God‘s promise to Hosea‘s children has a further and gospel fulfillment in the inclusion of the Gentles.” (John Stott)
“Out of the land of the heathen, from out of the midst of the Gentiles, from all nations on earth, the Lord wanted to gather and is gathering to Himself His Church. He is extending His mercy, calling, converting the heathen also, making them His own, to live under Him in His kingdom, to serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness.” (Kretzmann)
Comments