Dallas and Irene Sherman of Cincinnati had a really stormy relationship. During one of their many rows Irene deliberately wrecked two of their cars, which was the last straw for Dallas and he filed for divorce. But as time went by, he found that he couldn’t live without her, so they were reconciled and actually got married again. But it wasn’t too long before they were arguing again, only this time Irene shot Dallas in the hand and the chest – twice! She was put on probation; he recovered and promptly divorced her for the second time. But they still went on seeing each other, and during one of their attempts to get back together, Irene shot Dallas again. He obviously didn’t mind too much though as they were married for the third time in 1977.
This story so well illustrates the volatile relationship between God and the people of Israel. We all know that what God did for the Israelites throughout their history was pretty amazing. He set them free from slavery in Egypt, he parted the red sea, sent manna from heaven, brought water out of a rock, put his spirit in a cloud and it went before them by day, and lit up like a fire by night. He brought them them to a new place. The Promised Land, a place flowing with milk and honey. He rescued them from their enemies, he made them a nation, a chosen nation, his nation.
But over and over the Israelites rebelled, over and over they rejected him and turned their back on him. And that was certainly the case in Hosea’s day. There’s lying, there’s murder, there’s bloodshed. The people of God are worshipping idols, adultery is rife in their midst and there is even religious prostitution – not out in the world where you expect that kind of behaviour – but within God’s people. No wonder they were breaking God’s heart.
It was a society which mirrored in every way the one Paul describes in Romans 1:23 - a society beyond reversal and being ’given over to sin’ and God’s judgement- ‘they suppress the truth by their wickedness, they are without excuse, they degrade their bodies with one another, they exchanged the truth for a lie, woman exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones, men became inflamed with lust for one another and committed indecent acts with other men. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant, boastful. They invent ways of doing evil, they disobey their parents, they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. They not only do all these things, but they also approve of those who practice them.’
Those "exchanging God’s glory for something disgraceful.."
What’s worse- even the priest were doing the same... or at least encouraging it... not teaching what is right... and people were being destroyed by their ignorance (4:6). Physically/sexually they prostituted themselves to anyone who came their way.... and politically and spiritually they did the same.
We ain’t no different
As I look at it, I see a lot of modern day Christians, including myself, in the story of Hosea. But I don’t see us in the person of Hosea. I see us rather in the person of Gomer the prostitute. Are we very much different from those people – I think not. You know there are Christians today who wouldn’t think twice about living with their partner outside of wedlock and by doing so they become sexually immoral – oh but this is the 21st century – who gets married these days – God’s people do – that’s who.
There are Christians today who are involved with religious prostitution. They get themselves involved with horoscopes, and with mediums, and with witchcraft, and yoga, and eastern forms of meditation, and accupuncture which has it’s roots in eastern mysticism – and they say ‘oh it’s just a bit of harmless fun’ – not it’s not - it’s religious prostitution. And they will think nothing of having inter-faith worship services. Holding hands with muslims and sikhs and catholics and whoever – saying we’re all one big happy family serving one big god – no we’re not. It’s religious prostitution.
There are Christians today who are involved in idol worship – in fact everyone of us here will fall into that category. An idol is anything that takes priority over God in your life. And when that thing stops you being with God and with God’s people – then you really have given a place of worship in your life. Could be money, could be work, could be football, could be shopping, could be family, could be the tv – it could be anything that takes priority in your life over God.
You know the attendance at our evening services is very poor. In fact it is so poor that I am actually, seriously considering cancelling them all together. I was at a Church last weekend and there were 60 people at the evening service – now that might sound great – until you realise that the same church in the morning service attracts up to 4 or 5 hundred people. And I look around and say – where is everybody? Why is there no desire within their hearts to be in the house of God? David says, ‘zeal for your house consumes me’ oh how I wish that were true for God’s church today. And I say to myself, ‘well times have changed, people are busy, they just don’t have the time anymore to come to church twice on a Sunday’ – but that’s not really true, that’s just an excuse. The real truth is that ‘other’ things have become more important, more valuable, then the worship of God.
I’m being quite tough this morning – but that is part of my job – to make you question whether your relationship with God is all that it should be or all that it could be.
God’s Response - Hosea the living parable And so here we have an adulterous nation, a nation who were committing adultery against the God who said ‘I will be your God and you will be my people’. And God’s response to this waywardness and wickedness came in the form of a man named Hosea.
Now Hosea was a minor prophet. Who knows the difference between a major and a minor prophet? It has nothing to do with the weight of the message they brought or the length of time they served. Major prophets weren’t God’s superheroes and minor prophets some kind of 2nd class minister. One wasn’t super spiritual and the other not. It’s about the length of the book in the Old Testament that’s all. So you’ve learnt something this morning.
And God raised up Hosea during the darkest period in the history of Israel. Kings were ascending to the throne by murder and overthrow. Idolatry was running rampant. There was pollution, robbery, oppression, adultery, murder. And if there is one thing you can see throughout history it’s that God always sends people to warn the nation of their sins. And so he sends Hosea.
But unlike the rest of the prophets…God did more than just give Hosea a message to preach. He made Hosea into a living illustration of the message he had to preach. Hosea was told by God (Hosea 1:2).. “….Go take to yourself an adulterous wife….” He tells him to go and marry an unfaithful wife - because, he says, that’s exactly what I’ve done by pledging myself to all of you. Hosea is to live out a parable of God’s covenant with the people of Israel.
And as a living illustration of God’s message Hosea introduces us to a family that’s a reflection of the world in which he lives. A family with problems. A family that’s designed to reflect God’s relationship with his people. And in this family God is not seen as a dictator whose family dare not disobey, nor is he a husband whose adoring wife and children are his delight and joy. But he is like a husband whose wife is having an affair and whose children are like strangers in his own house.
It’s a sad picture, a broken picture, a picture of how God sees his relationship with his people.
And so in obedience Hosea marries Gomer and I won’t go too much into that because Des covered it last week. But remember Gomer is a prostitute – she is a woman of ill-repute – she is a woman who holds little or no sexual or moral values. And so it wasn’t very long before she grows discontented in her relationship with Hosea. It isn’t very long before she starts looking around at other things to satisfy her needs. Before very long she leaves Hosea, has children by other men and returns to her life of prostitution. That’s what most of Hosea Chapter 2 is about. Gomer’s return to whoredom.
Despite being taken in by Hosea, despite being loved by Hosea, despite being given respect and honour and value by Hosea, Gomer returned to a life of prostitution. She took other lovers. She broke her marriage promise.
Was Hosea angry? Sure he was! His most trusted partner had violated that trust. He was hurt and upset and yes, angry. How do you feel when someone betrays your trust. The idea that you were counting on someone and they let you down is a hard thing to bare. Especially when you would have given them anything, done anything for them, were always there for them. Never failed them.
That’s a picture of how God felt.
He had never let down His people. He never lets us down. He is always available…always there. And what happens? We betray that trust. We break our promises and we become unfaithful by chasing after the things of this world. And we hurt God. We hurt God.
But despite everything she had done, despite her prostitution, despite her unfaithfulness, God says I love you and I’m not going to give up on you. Look at verse 14, ‘Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.
Desert Places
Desert definition ‘forsaken; without life or cultivation; unproductive; waste; barren; wild; desolate; solitary’
You know God often has to lead us into desert places – where there is nothing and no-one to help us, where we become stripped of our pride, stripped of our arrogance, stripped of our self sufficiency. And only then do we have an ear and a heart to listen to what he says. Moses was a prince in Egypt, a wealthy man, an educated man, a proud man, and it took 40 years in the desert to strip him of all that Egypt had made him, and before he was ready to listen to the voice of God and to be obedient to God’s calling on his life.
It took only a couple of days to get the people of Israel out of Egypt – but it took 40 years in the desert to get Egypt out of the Israelites. Even Jesus went through a desert experience before he was ready and equipped to begin his ministry.
Are you going through a desert experience at the moment? In your family, in your relationships, in your work, in your spiritual life. Where everything seems so dry and dusty and lifeless. Forsaken, barren, lifeless. Where everything you try seems to fail. Where nothing and no-one is able to help? And you cry out in desperation ‘God where are you’.
Valley of Achor
‘Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.’
Now Achor means ‘trouble’. And we first read about the Valley of Achor in Joshua Chapter 7. The first major campaign of the Israelites as they enter the Promised Land was to take the city of Jericho. It was a long process, but God won a decisive victory. And the instructions had been very clear before the battle that all the spoils of the city belonged to God; they were sacred and nobody was to touch any of them. But a man named Achan, one individual out of the entire nation, chose to be disobedient. He took some shekels of silver, a bar of gold, and a robe for his own use, and buried them under the floor of his tent.
Immediately after the battle of Jericho, not yet knowing about Achan’s sin, they went to do battle against a very small city called Ai. It should have been an easy victory, but they lost. And Joshua couldn’t understand what was going on. And God said, ‘Joshua the reason why Israel has been defeated is because they have sinned, they have stolen and they have lied’. And Joshua found that the blame lay with Achan and so he was put to death, and the place where he was killed was called the Valley of Achor, the Valley of Trouble. It’s the place where we suffer for our own wrongdoing.
And Gomer, after she left Hosea and returned to her life of prostitution, soon found herself in trouble. She had no money, she had no clothes, she was defiled, and she was put up for sale in the slave market of those days. Gomer suffered terribly for her own wrongdoing.
Can I say that one of the greatest burdens that a Christian can be called upon to bear is that which they bring upon themselves. Samson suffered terribly. Why did Samson have his eyes plucked out? Why was he thrown in prison? Why was he made to do a horses work? Samson suffered terribly, physically, for his own wrongdoing.
You know often, when things go wrong, Christians start to blame the devil. ‘I know what this is. This is the rotten, stinking devil – he’s the one that’s brought this trouble upon me, he’s the one that’s brought this sickness, this financial crisis, this divorce, this problem’! And we curse him and we rebuke him, and we shake our fist at him, and to our surprise nothing seems to happen.
We are often too quick to blame the devil, and we should never blame the devil for that which he does not do. There’s one scripture that says, ‘O Israel, you have destroyed yourself’. (Hosea 13:9) and we can, we can destroy ourselves by our own wrong doing.
I’ve said before, I don’t believe that God punishes us as his people for our sins – that’s why Jesus died on the cross as a punishment for our sins. But I do believe that our sin has consequences. If you sleep around and pick up some nasty disease, that’s not a punishment from God, it’s a consequence of your sin and you will suffer for your own wrongdoing. If you get caught up in the world of pornography and as a result your marriage falls apart, that’s not a punishment from God, it the consequence of your sin and you will suffer for your own wrongdoing. If you get drunk and the next day wake up in a police cell – that’s not a punishment from God – it’s a consequence of your sin and you will suffer for your own wrongdoing.
A door of hope
‘O Israel, you have destroyed yourself’ But then that same verse goes on to say –‘but in me is your help’. The bible tells us that ‘the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting, as high as the mountains so great is his name’. Gomer was suffering terribly for her own wrongdoing but in Hosea 2:15 it says, ‘and I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope’.
Right there, in the Valley of Achor, in the Valley of Trouble, right there in the desert place – when life is pushing down on you, when your troubles and problems are crushing the very life out of you, where everything seems to be hopeless - God has opened up a door of hope.
There’s a great verse in Romans 4:18 which says - ‘Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed…’ Isn’t that a tremendous expression. What does it mean? Well it means that despite the reality of his situation Abraham put his trust and his faith in what God said, that’s what faith is all about. Faith says, ‘I will believe in the promises of God even though my eyes see the opposite’.
Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed’… What was it he believed? God’s promise to make him the ‘father of many nations’. That must have seemed absolutely incredible to a 75 year old man with no children. 75 is a little bit late to be starting a family. On top of that Sarah his wife was barren – talk about desert places. The promise was clearly impossible, a vain hope, wishful thinking by an old man. Nothing more.
But Abraham was a man who was God-centred, not man-centred. His life had a vertical focus, not a horizontal focus. As long as he looked at the desert of his circumstances, he could find a thousand reasons why he should give up:
I’m too old
She’s too old
Nothing like this has ever happened before
We’ve tried to have a baby for years and it hasn’t worked
Our friends think we’re crazy
Abraham and Sarah were in the desert place of old age – but ‘Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed’ and right there in that desert place God opened up a door of hope for them. And he gave them a miracle by the name of Isaac.
What was the door of hope for Gomer? It comes in Hosea Chapter 3 ‘"Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods… So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, "You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you."
And God says ‘I’m just giving you a picture Hosea, of the door of hope which I am opening up to the Israelites’.
Didn’t Jesus say, ‘I am the door, by me if any man shall enter and go through it he will be saved’. And there on the cross of calvary he paid the price. There on the cross of calvary he bought us out of slavery to sin. There on the cross of calvary we were purchased by his blood.
There’s a song in the mission praise book it goes:
There’s a way back to God from the dark paths of sin;
There’s a door that is open and you may go in:
At Calvary’s cross is where you begin.
When you come as a sinner to Jesus.
And the prodigal son found the door open and got back. Where do you find yourself today? In the desert place, with the dust and the dirt. Or are you in the Valley of Achor, where your own self induced troubles are crushing the very life out of you. Are you involved somehow in sexual immorality? Are you involved somehow in Religious prostitution – giving other religions and other belief systems your attention. Is there a little bit of idol worship going on? Other things, worldly things getting your time, and devotion and worship over and above God. Is your relationship with God and adulterous relationship – always looking elsewhere for your fulfilment and your gratification.
God says ‘return to me, repent and return to your first love, remember from where you’ve fallen’.
‘Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.’
