My wife enjoys watching movies over and over again. She’s the perfect target market for DVDs because, if she is really into a movie, she’s willing to watch that movie several times over a short period of time. I’m different. I like to watch a film and then, I won’t want to watch it again for a while. I never liked watching television re-runs in the same season, either. I wanted something fresh.
A lot of people think that Hosea 3 is anticlimactic, essentially a re-run that doesn’t add much to what happened in Chapters 1 and 2. I don’t agree. I believe that Chapter 3 is vital to understanding what happened between Hosea and Gomer and, in turn, is vital to understanding what happened between God and Israel. It isn’t a re-run. It’s Hosea’s personal testimony that affirms the prophecy God gave him in Chapters 1 and 2. Most importantly, it is the “costly grace” that counteracts any idea of “cheap grace” associated with God’s promise to take Israel, Yahweh’s adulterous wife, back.
Let’s pray for God’s guidance in really listening to this passage. [Father God, Your faithfulness trumps our unfaithfulness, but we need to learn how to live in a right relationship with You. We need to show real gratitude for your grace, and with Your help, it can be living according to Your pleasure, Your purpose. Teach us what You will from this passage and help us to live it day by day.]
Hosea 3:1 And Yahweh proceeded to say to me again, “Go, love a woman you loved greatly and she committed adultery just as I, Yahweh, loved the sons of Israel and they turned to other gods and they are lovers of raisin cakes.”
The use of the word, “again,” is sometimes translated as we have here with Yahweh speaking to Hosea again. Sometimes, it is translated with the verb, “Go, love again.” In the Hebrew text, the adverb is located between the verbs and, technically, could be translated with either of them. Usually, the adverb follows the verb it is modifying, so that would point to it merely meaning that God spoke to Hosea again, but it can occasionally precede the verb and could mean loving Gomer again.
I’m going to take the position that some of you will think is a “cop-out,” here. I think “again” primarily modifies God’s speaking, but I also recognize that Hosea’s emotions toward Gomer must have been calloused over. If he really loved her and saw her slipping off to do her duty in the temple, copulating with strangers for the glory of a false god, he must surely have hardened his feelings toward her so that it didn’t hurt so bad. Now, God tells him to become vulnerable again, to open himself to being hurt and betrayed again.
But this isn’t an occasion where Hosea can say to God what we often say to each other, “That’s easy for you to say!” It ISN’T easy for God to say. God knows exactly what Hosea must be feeling because God’s People have cheated on him in the same way that Gomer has cheated on Hosea. I like what the great Old Testament scholar, Hans Walter Wolff, has to say: “At the discovery of God’s love he perceives how he must act toward his wife.” Because Hosea was close to God, he had to take the costly step of buying his wife back and risking the reality—maybe even the likelihood—that she would cheat on him again.
And the message for you and me is that the closer we are to God, the more we are likely to love like God loves. And when we love like God loves, we risk being hurt like God hurts. God reminds us of the expectation that we love like God loves and then, we see what we must do.
Now, let’s look at the price for Hosea.
v. 2 And, as a result, I purchased her for me with 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a lethek of barley.
Unfortunately, we don’t know how much silver you can get from the sale of a homer of barley, much less from a homer and a half (a lethek). We’re talking about 8 bushels of barley all together since a homer equals about 5.16 bushels. It would be very nice if we could say that a homer and half of barley equaled 15 shekels so that we could add them together and get the 30 shekels usually paid for a slave or we could claim they equaled 35 shekels so we could add them together to get the 50 shekel bride price.
Symbolically, we could preach on buying her back from slavery like God (in the New Testament) purchased us back from slavery (with the blood of Jesus) or that Hosea was remarrying Gomer to create a new marriage like God gave us a New Covenant (in Jesus). Unfortunately, we don’t have sufficient grounds to allegorize either symbol. But I do notice something in the rather obscure pricing arrangement.
To me, it looks like Hosea didn’t have a lot of ready cash, not a lot of liquid assets. Yet, he gathers together whatever of value he can and brings it to the shrine where Gomer is plying her trade. To me, it couldn’t be any more poignant than the many stories where children have saved pennies in a jar to make a major purchase. They pull those jars of pennies out and it immediately signals how long they’ve saved for that radio-controlled car or complete set of Pokemon cards. In the movies or television, we always see the clerk’s eyes tearing up a little as they realize how much effort the child has put into saving for that day.
We don’t see Hosea as saving this redemption price, but the variety of assets seems to suggest that he grabbed everything he could and came to claim his wife at great inconvenience to himself. He doesn’t simply bring a purse of silver, he has to bring a whole wagon full of goods to redeem his love. Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it? After all, God doesn’t simply bring a purse of silver to rescue us and buy us out of bondage. It’s fatally inconvenient for God to buy us back and it is only because He is the True God of Life that He is able to rise from that fatal cost.
But here’s where a lot of people lose the message. Redemption isn’t merely costly for God. Authentic redemption requires a change in lifestyle for the redeemed. The purpose of the redemption is to live in a blessed relationship, a healthy marriage if you will, with the redeemer. So, let’s look at the price for Gomer, Israel, and ultimately for us.
v. 3 And I said to her, “Many days you shall remain for me. Do not play the harlot and do not go to a man—not even me for you.
Gomer was required to separate herself from other men and even from Hosea for a period of days. Much like the purification ritual that women underwent after menstruation and both sexes underwent after sexual relations (Why? So that worship and sex would not be confused as it was in the fertility religions, of course!). They prepared themselves to be ceremonially clean and ready to be restored into the sacred community of God.
As much as Hosea loved Gomer, he still expected her to take time to consider what she had done to him. He still wanted her to establish a new pattern of not expressing her religion via sexuality. He wanted her to establish that new pattern of loyalty to him. He knew that jumping straight from the temple of the false god to an intimate relationship was not likely to be successful, so he set some boundaries—some rules for the relationship.
And even today, we shouldn’t give people the impression that grace means that they won’t have to pay a price of any kind. God expects us to give up our lifestyles of destruction—our worship of self-centeredness and of sensuality without commitment—so that we can be responsive to God’s pure love.
Let me unload a very crude illustration. There was a time when my folks visited me and saw a bizarre arrangement in my living room. I had a nice sofa, but I couldn’t afford end tables. So, I’d taken cardboard boxes and covered them with blankets to hold lamps and magazines. It was clever, but it didn’t look nice. Frankly, it looked pretty seedy. So, Mom and Dad went to an unfinished furniture place, purchased end tables, and actually finished them for me. Then, the living room looked like a living room. They wanted it to look like a living room should look.
When God redeems us from our sin, God doesn’t want us to have a mismatched lifestyle. God doesn’t want us to just put forgiveness in there with our cardboard boxes of old habits. God wants us to experience the best and that means getting rid of our inadequate efforts.
So, Hosea doesn’t tell Gomer that it’s okay to remain in her sin. She isn’t to accept God’s love and relationship and take it for granted, anymore than we should say, just accept Jesus and keep your drug addiction, sexual practices, business ethics, violent habits, or self-centeredness. We need to strive to incorporate God’s total lifestyle into our lives—whatever God tells us.
And sometimes, God has to do something to get our attention. Look what God says about Israel in the last two verses of the chapter.
v. 4 Because, many days shall the sons of Israel live without a king and without a prince and without sacrifice and without a sacred pillar and without an ephod or household idols.
v. 5 And after that, the sons of Israel shall return and seek Yahweh, their God, and David, their king, and they shall reverently approach Yahweh and his goodness in the days that come after.”
Sometimes, God has to take away the familiar and the comfortable in our lives so that we will depend totally upon Him. We may not have kings and princes that we depend on, but sometimes God changes our employers and supervisors, professors and teachers, pastors and bishops, so that we know who is truly in authority. Sometimes, I’m sure our candidates lose elections and our favorite teachers leave us, just so we’ll depend more on God.
We may not have a sacrificial system or sacred pillars, but sometimes God has to take away the comfortable aspects of our “religion.” Sometimes, we have to learn a new song or try a new ministry. Sometimes, we have to accept a new challenge or give up a comfortable position in ministry. Sometimes, we may have to witness where we’re not comfortable or take an unpopular stand.
But the fabulous news is that once we return to God, once we reverently approach God, God’s goodness is available to us—the whole goodness of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit within our lives. But the Holy Spirit only functions when we are forgiven and restored.
So, the thrust of this message is twofold. First, we need to love like God loves. We need to forgive people multiple times—even if it costs us. Second, we need to quit promising cheap grace. God wants whole persons, not just a ring finger. God wants our whole loyalty, not just a wedding vow.
How about it? Are we going to hang out in the temple of the false god or are we going to make our lives the Temple of the Holy Spirit? Jesus, the ultimate descendent of King David, makes it possible for us to become part of that New Israel, the church. And that means we can truly become the Bride that God wants us to be instead of the bride that Gomer (and by extension, Israel) was.
