The King Comes for His Bride
If you are a little down, and looking for a pick-me-up, the Minor Prophets are probably not the thing to read. Usually within them are some fantastic nuggets of encouragement, and prophecies about Christ's redemption, however, most of what they have to say can be quite discouraging.
The Books of Amos and Hosea fall into this camp. Amos is written to the northern kingdom of Israel, telling them that since they have abandoned the Lord, the Lord will destroy them. God is so displeased with Israel that he is going to kick them out of the land, and that even if any left alive look for Him, they will not find Him.
The people respond by telling Amos to shut up and go away. We will pick back up with him in next week’s lesson, which includes the oldest Pun known to man!
Hosea is written to both the northern and the southern Kingdom, known as Judah. While it contains the same condemnation of sin, and promise of cleansing of the land, it includes in it more elements of prophecy relating to the redemption of God’s people by Christ. As a review, after Solomon died, the Kingdom of Israel was divided in two, with the southern half renamed Judah. Because the temple was in Judah, the king of Israel set up false gods so that the people weren’t trying to go to Judah and worship, but would stay in the Northern Kingdom.
Both Hosea and Amos put before us the bad news of how sin tears the people of God away from our Creator. The Good news is, however, that, though Israel abandoned God, God came back to redeem his people. This morning I would like to look at what it entailed for Christ to come to us, looking at two examples from the Old Testament where God shows his love for his people.
The first from Genesis 15, and the second from our Old Testament lesson in Hosea, which give us an interesting example of a man who gave of himself to seek after his bride.
Read excerpts from Genesis 15:1-10
The word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
2 But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”
4 And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” 5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
8 And Abram said, “Lord GOD, how shall I know that I will inherit it?”
9 So He said to him, “Bring Me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds in two.
Why am I bringing this passage up? It seems kind of gross creating a path with dead, bloody animals cut in half.
What we see in the animals is the picture of a covenant in blood. One ancient form of making a binding oath involved two parties cutting animals in half. Beginning by standing back to back, the two parties would walk a figure eight between the slain animals, signifying that if they break the oath on their end, what happened to these animals should happen to them.
We’ll come back to this in a few minutes.
We see clearly, in our Old Testament lesson, however, that that covenant in blood was broken. The people of God have turned away from Him, and before reconciliation can take place between the parties, something has to be done.
In Jeremiah, the Lord likens himself to the position of husband whose wife abandoned him. Jeremiah goes on to tell, however, of the new covenant to come. A covenant that the Lord promises to put upon the hearts of his people, that they would Know the Lord.
He promises to come for them.
With this as background, I would like to look at the first three chapters of Hosea. Here we see a husband who is little talked about because of the specifics of his particular problem with his wife. But I think, as you will see, that his case is a great example of what Jeremiah is talking about, a loving husband seeking after his wayward wife.
And while this is a “Love Story” of the Bible, it is a strange and shocking love story. One you might expect to find as the plot of a strange movie on the Lifetime Channel, but not one you might expect to find in the scriptures. And in this “Love Story”, the Lord uses graphic examples to get our attention
So I will just prepare you with that.
Hosea was a Prophet. Like other prophets, Hosea sought to listen for the Word of God. But when the Word of God came to him, it did not come to him in the glorious way it came to Abraham.
To paraphrase, a little, Hosea was told by God that there was some Good News, and some Bad News.
The Good news was that he was going to have a wife.
OK, that’s not bad. No comments please.
The Bad news was, that her name was Gomer.
Most of those over 40 are imagining Jim Nabors in a wig.
Well, that wasn’t even the worst part.
The bad part was, as God put it in this book,
She was a Harlot, a Prostitute!
The book of Hosea opens by saying that:
“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.”
That’s the NKJ. The ESV, as you saw, was much less delicate.
God said that Gomer was going to be a symbol of Israel’s faithlessness to Him, and the symbol of how God's people treated their wedding vows, their covenant vows with Him. The vows they made through Abraham in the walk of dead animals.
As a poetic image of unfaithful Israel…THIS is strong. But as an order for Hosea, any of us would think this is beyond extreme if it came to us. The Lord tells Hosea,
in order to serve and follow Him as a prophet,
as a man of God,
that he must go and marry a prostitute!
After he cleared the wax out of his ears, Hosea did what the Lord asked and he married the Prostitute Gomer. And following God’s command he loved her. In this unlikely union they had three children:
Jezreel which means “God Scatters!”,
Lo-Ruhamah, which means “not pitied”
and Lo-Ammi, which means “not my people”,
Names which you will not find on embossed bookmarks at your nearest Christian Bookstore.
And Gomer, seeing Hosea’s love, responded to him as Israel responded to the Lord.
Gomer abandoned Hosea for other men, leaving him to care for their three children while she went back to the life she knew all too well, and carried on adulterous relationships all over town.
Next she found a place where she could sell herself as a slave, and live again her life of prostitution.
What would you expect Hosea to do here?
What do you say to Hosea? What would our culture or society tell Hosea to do as it relates to a wife who abandoned her husband to return to prostitution?
And before you answer, remember that God says that Gomer is us! Gomer is the symbol of our betrayal of Him and our running after the false gods of this world. So telling Hosea to abandon Gomer and move on with his life in this case is the same as telling God to move on from us, due to our sinfulness.
Chapter three gives us what any would consider the ultimate picture of humility.
Hosea is told by the Lord, as this chapter begins, to again go and love his adulterous wife, in spite of her unfaithfulness. The Lord tells Hosea to Love her even as He loves His children, though they continually show their unfaithfulness to Him by worshiping other gods.
Hosea, the great prophet of the Lord, has to go to buy back his wife at the public slave market. Gomer you see, had been put up for sale again after she got old, and was no longer any value to her masters.
You can just imagine the ridicule and humiliation of the man of God, as he walked through the public slave market to buy an “over the hill” prostitute.
To walk in front of all the people who he had preached to for so many years, who would not listen to him, and to purchase back his unfaithful wife.
Some commentators also make an interesting note in the fact that the price of 15 shekels of silver was only half of the thirty pieces of silver that slaves were normally bought for, which probably says something significant about the desirability of Gomer that no one else would raise a significant bid for her. Like the Prodigal Son, she gave herself to the world, and the world finished her up and spat her back out.
But the image is clear.
Hosea loved her, and he publicly paid the price for the redemption of his beloved Bride, who had just as publicly betrayed and disgraced him. Taking her by the hand, ignoring ridicule and rebuke, he led her home, and he loved her.
The image of course, is that of Christ who loves us, who paid the price for us, in spite of our unfaithfulness. The Lord sent His Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved.
Hosea had every right to publicly condemn and disgrace Gomer, but the Lord wanted us to see the symbol and cost of his redemption.
Jesus, through whom everything in creation was created, humbled himself to take our flesh upon himself, to be born of Mary, to be mocked and humiliated for us, and to die for us. He is the King, who for our sakes, gave up His position, for us, his unfaithful bride.
Back to the Genesis passage, after the heifer, goat, ram, and the birds were placed for the walk of the covenant of blood, the Lord does something interesting, something you may miss the meaning of in reading over it.
The Lord puts Abram to sleep, and, in the appearance of a smoking oven and a burning torch, He passes alone between the pieces, consuming them.
Abram never passed between the animals which were placed on the ground. But the Lord, took up our burden, and when we broke the covenant, the Lord, who alone passed between the animals, took that punishment on Himself.
Though we were faithless, He remained faithful.
I would encourage you this morning to look to our King.
The king who left his throne to purchase us, despite our sinfulness, and the humiliation he would have to suffer for those who disgraced Him. Like Gomer, we are unfaithful of our own, and without his shed blood, unworthy of the love that he has unconditionally given to us. But, like Hosea, he humbled himself and came for us anyway.
And now Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
