Hosea, Faithful Prophet and Husband

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

September 15, 2013

Hosea 3

Hosea, Faithful Prophet and Husband

In the name of Jesus.

I.

There once was a church that had a pastor, who married the town harlot. Everybody in town knew that she slept around and now the local pastor had married her and she was living in the parsonage.

Shocked? Yes, you are. What more shocking is that God told him to do it.

When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, He said this to him:

Go and marry a promiscuous wife

and have children of promiscuity,

for the land is committing blatant acts of promiscuity

by abandoning the Lord.

So [Hosea] went and married Gomer (Hosea 1:2-3a)

God wanted Hosea, His prophet, to preach against the spirituality adultery of Israel. Hosea faithfully proclaimed that above all things God's people were to love God. Instead they played the field and flirted with idols and slept around with other gods.

Hosea preached this, but God wanted him to add actions to his preaching. So He commanded Hosea to marry a woman whom He knew had been promiscuous in the past and would be unfaithful to Hosea in the future.

II.

This is cruel. Especially since kids were involved. Hosea and Gomer had three children together. And God commanded that Hosea give them names that would mark them for the rest of their lives. We're Americans, so our names don't mean anything. But Hosea was ordered to name one of his kids No-Mercy and this girl would live as a breathing testimony that God would no longer have mercy on Israel. He wasn't going to forgive them any longer.

His youngest child was named Not-My-People.

Name him Not My People,

for you are not My people,

and I will not be your God. (Hosea 1:8)

God was being blunt. If you sleep around with other gods, let them try to save you from hell. But they won't and they can't.

III.

But God can and He will. And this is the most shocking part of Hosea's prophecy. After all of Israel's sleeping around, God returns and takes her back. This is symbolized by Hosea's taking back Gomer, as we read in today's Gospel.

Then the Lord said to me, “Go again; show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites though they turn to other gods” . . . So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and five bushels of barley. I said to her, “You must live with me many days. Don’t be promiscuous or belong to any man, and I will act the same way toward you.” For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols. Afterward, the people of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come with awe to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days. (Hosea 3)

The unsurprising thing here is that Gomer was still Gomer. But see how remarkable the actions of her former husband Hosea, whom she had deserted; he was going to get her back. And it cost him. It wasn't free.

She was one unfaithful woman. And now Hosea switches to the unfaithfulness of the nation of Israel. They had slept around with sacrifices to idols, had worshiped at sacred pagan pillars, had tried to see the future with magical capes, and had prayed to the little idols in their homes. They had thoroughly polluted themselves with other gods. Now their former husband, God Himself, whom they had deserted, was going to get them back. And it cost him. It wasn't free.

IV.

Later in Hosea we read,

After two days He will revive us;

on the third day He will raise us up,

that we may live before Him. (Hosea 6:2)

This passage is a striking reminder how much it cost God to buy us back from our spiritual adultery. The price was His own Son, crucified on the cross and on the third day, raised up from the dead.

In chapter eleven, God promised that He would have compassion on His people.

I will not execute my burning anger;

I will not again destroy Ephraim [My people];

for I am God and not a [mere] man,

the Holy One in your midst,

and I will not come in wrath. (Hosea 11:9)

These verses of promise come buried under verse after verse of wrath and condemnation. But they are there.

In our lives, we confess that we deserve every word of wrath. You rightly confessed that

I have done what is evil and failed to do what is good. For this I deserve Your punishment both now and in eternity.

And then what happens? We speak and then sing for Christ to have mercy on us. And as He promised in Hosea, He speaks tenderly to you (Hosea 2:14) and you'll know Him.

God, our heavenly Father, has been merciful to us and has given His only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Therefore as a called servant of Christ and by His authority, I forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.