The Old Testament Witness to Christ and His Kingdom, Mentor's Guide, MG09

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T H E O L D T E S T A M E N T W I T N E S S T O C H R I S T A N D H I S K I N G D O M

something about this condition that is poignant and painful; being a stranger and having no place is one of the most difficult situations to endure. Unfortunately, many millions live with this sense of not belonging and having no family or community every day. This has become the age and the time of alienation and lack of connection. One of the significant issues in OT theology is the subject of Gentile inclusion in the salvific promises of God. What is the place of Gentiles in God’s salvation plan? Are they a footnote on the page of God? Were they ever considered an integral part of God’s plan to redeem the world? How are we to understand the nations and their role in God’s great desire to destroy the devil, overthrow the curse, and redeem to himself a people who would live in his recreated heavens and earth? Hosea was a prophet in the years of the some of the notable kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam, the king of Israel. His first assignment from Yahweh was to take a wife of “whoredom” and have “children of whoredom” because the land had committed spiritual adultery against the Lord. Hosea took Gomer, and had children by her, all living visual aids of the Lord’s relationship with his people. His firstborn was called Jezreel (associated with punishment), his second daughter was called No Mercy (for the Lord would have no mercy on his people). His third child, a son, was named Not My People , for the children of Israel were declared to not be his people. Yet, in the tender mercies of the Lord, the number of children would be innumerable, and “Not my people” would come to be called “Children of the living God.” What a stark and powerful picture of the Lord’s judgment on his unjust and idolatrous people. Yet, in the prophetic application of this text to the Church, Paul reads the same text and expands its meaning to Gentiles, to those who by virtue of their alienation from the covenants of God, were not considered to be the people of God. Rom. 9.22-26 - What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, [23] in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory- [24] even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? [25] As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’” [26] “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”

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