Hedged In Love Hurts

Hedged In, Love Hurts

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

Hosea 1:2 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD."

Hosea is perhaps the most tragic and painful love story in the bible, and yet it is also the most wonderful. Today I am going to wrap up our series on spiritual hedges so that will take up part of what I have to say, but we can’t ignore the story of Hosea and Gomer, and God and Israel in the process.

If you remember spiritual hedges are barriers of protection (Job) a means of promoting fruit and prosperity (Isaiah 5) and today from our lesson a means of bringing alignment with God’s plan.

So let’s begin with the story in front of us and we will move on to see how God uses this story to bring people into alignment with His plans and to show us His feelings towards us.

We begin with a video, I need to warn you this may be painful to watch, it is a church’s adaptation about the love and betrayal of Hosea by Gomer.

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Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXvW6qywlP0&pbjreload=10 (Hosea Love story Part 1)

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

Hosea 1:2 When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD."

Hosea 1:3 So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

Hosea was a prophet for more than 60 years to 4 kings of Judah and one king of Israel. (Divided kingdom)

Early, in fact the first prophetic word God gave him, was not to any of those kings but to himself. I assume he was in his late teens or early twenties at this time. In his physical prime of life. And we can also assume that like most young people love, and dating and girls were on his mind. Also, that he was a prophet so early in life, he probably was a very zealous believer. So what God tells him to do, was way out there in left field. (As in this aint’ the God channel) If Hosea had asked me what he thought God said, I would have said he is not hearing from God.

And yet He was. Hosea was chosen by God to have a miserable married life. Not because God disliked him, most likely the exact opposite, He knew He could trust Hosea with one of the most painful assignments He would ever give anyone. He has been in heaven for the last 2700 years so I think he has quite gotten over it.

He was simply to be a living parable of the love of God and the infidelity of Israel.

A lot of scholars try to clean up the story saying Gomer wasn’t a prostitute when he married her, that she had cleaned up her life, but that isn’t what the text says.

It says marry a prostitute and have kids that are the result of adultery. (Some of them weren’t his!)

How could God do that to someone? Jesus did something very similar. After a night of intense prayer He chose 12 disciples (And God only knows how many times he prayed about that, before that night). One of them He said, have not I chosen you and yet one of you is a devil. Jesus was assigned to have his betrayer right beside Him throughout His time on earth. He had a thief on the team who was stealing from monies collected to give to the poor. Sometimes the best of people get assigned the worst of people, but it is not so they can bring you down, it is so you can bring them up.

Jesus admits in His prayer in John 17 that He lost Judas, and I believe that even as He has scars on His hands and Feet, He has scars just as real in His heart for Judas, and satan, and others that will never be saved. God is not willing that any should perish. Even the Gomer’s and Judas’s and satan’s of this world.