Hosea 4:1-3 Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; ² there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. ³ Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

Hosea 3:1-5 And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” ² So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley.

Hosea 2:14-23 “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. ¹⁵ And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor 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.

Hosea 2:2-13 “Plead with your mother, plead- for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband- that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; ³ lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst.

Hosea 1:7, 10-2:1 But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the LORD their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.”

¹⁰ Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.

Hosea 1:1-9 The word of the LORD that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel.

² When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.” ³ So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

INTRODUCTION
Welcome to Hosea. In preparation for this sermon and this series, I read Hosea many times. I listened to Hosea many times. And I read a number of commentaries on Hosea. After having done so it seems to me that the primary message of Hosea (which I hope to clearly demonstrate and explain in this sermon and in all that follow) is this: God has a fiercely jealous love for his people.

INTRODUCTION
Well, this is it. This is the last sermon on 1 Peter. Because it’s taken us so long to get through this relatively short letter, it seems like a good idea to wrap everything up with a simple, summary sermon. That’s what I mean to do this morning. In particular, I mean to answer the four main questions of 1 Peter: 1) Why were Peter’s readers suffering, 2) What were they to do about it, 3) How were they able to do what God required, and 4) What would happen to Peter’s readers if they do obey?