The Greatest Love Story Never Told
Hosea
INTRODUCTION:
Today we’re going to talk about the greatest love story NEVER told. If you look for a list of great love stories, you’ll find Romeo and Juliet, Anthony and Cleopatra, Heathcliff and Catherine, Rhett and Scarlet … What you WON’T find on the list of great love stories is … Hosea and Gomer. But their love story is in some ways the greatest … and certainly most unique … love story of all.
(By the way, Susan read a novel based on the story of Hosea and Gomer. If any of you like to read historical romance, go see her and she’ll give you the name.)
We’ll focus on the book of Hosea today. And we’ll treat Hosea’s love story like any great literature. We’ll talk about Setting, Plot, and Theme.
1. Setting
To understand the setting for the book of Hosea, we need to set the historical stage. We’re in a series called The Story, going through the Old Testament in 20 weeks. (slide) From Adam to Abraham to Moses to David and Solomon we’ve covered thousands of years. Last week Ronnie talked about how the Kingdom of Israel was divided into the 10 Northern Tribes and the Southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
During the next years, both Kingdoms went through several kings. The Southern Kings were a mix of good and bad. The Northern Kings were pretty much all bad. These were years of wars, drought, famine, and all kinds of troubles. And during these years, God sent one Prophet after another to give His message to His people.
This is the part of the Bible where people tend to get bogged down. The books of the Old Testament are arranged by theme rather than by strict chronology. (slide) You can see approximately where these books fall on the screen. (The books that are brown on screen are historical books that give a chronological history of God’s people.)
The time of the divided Kingdom is when we read about Prophets like Elijah – who challenged the prophets of Baal and God sent fire from heaven. We read about Elisha who saw Elijah taken to heaven in a flaming chariot and was given a double portion of Elijah’s spirit. At one point during these years 50 prophets were hiding in caves trying to escape from wicked King Ahab and the infamous Queen Jezebel.
You can read the Old Testament in different ways. You can read as a History buff and try to get a view of what it was like to live in those times. During the 208 years of the Northern Kingdom, there were 19 different Kings. Meanwhile the Southern Kingdom of Judah had its own Kings and Prophets. It’s a challenge to get the history straight, but it’s a fascinating study.
You can also read this part of the Old Testament as a way of learning more about who God is and how He relates to His People. The Prophet Amos gave this beautiful description of God: He who forms the mountains, who creates the wind,and who reveals his thoughts to mankind,who turns dawn to darkness, and treads on the heights of the earth—the Lord God Almighty is his name. Amos 4:13
In the Bible, God REVEALS Himself to us. The Love Story found in the first 3 chapters of Hosea is part of that revelation.
2. Plot
The story starts this way: When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.” So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim… Hosea 1:2-3
I remember hearing this story about Hosea when I was young and thinking it was really weird. Why would God tell one of his Prophets to marry a prostitute? What kind of lesson was THAT supposed to teach? I now realize that it’s a beautiful story that illustrates an important truth. It’s a tragic story … but you’ll be glad to know it has a surprisingly happy ending.
We don’t know the details about Gomer’s past. We DO know that Israel was caught up in pagan worship. Baal worship included drunkenness, human sacrifice, and temple prostitution. It’s possible that Gomer was one of the women who was pulled into prostitution at a very young age. Maybe Hosea was rescuing her from a this pagan lifestyle.
Whatever the details, it’s clear that Hosea loved Gomer. When he married her, he did so wholeheartedly. Hosea’s commitment was complete and he remained faithful. The same can’t be said for Gomer.
But you can imagine that they were blissfully happy as newlyweds. When their first son was born, Hosea must have been as thrilled as any new dad. How shocked Hosea must have been when God told him, “Name the boy Jezreel.”
Jezreel was not a name with good connotations. Maybe you remember the story in 2 Kings 9 where wicked Queen Jezebel was thrown to her death from an upper window in Jezreel (which, by the way, was land she had stolen from Naboth by having him murdered.) When they came to bury Jezebel, they discovered their was very little left because wild dogs had torn her corpse apart. That gruesome courtyard where she fell was called Jezreel from then on. It would be like naming a kid “Alcatraz,” “Pearl Harbor,” or “Ruby Ridge.”
The Hebrew word Jezreel means “God will scatter,” and it was a warning that God would soon scatter Israel throughout the nations around them. The names of Gomers next two children were just as telling. The girl was named Lo Ruhamah which means “not pitied.” And the next boy was “Lo Ammi” which has the most tragic meaning of all: “not my people.” This had a double meaning. The child was probably NOT Hosea’s child because Gomer was living an unfaithful life. And this was a picture of how God was forced to disown Israel because Israel was unfaithful to God.
It may seem unkind to give children these names … but the names illustrate a hard reality. Children always suffer for their parents sins. Hosea’s children would suffer because of the unfaithfulness of their mother. In the same way, the children of Israel would suffer because of the unfaithfulness of their parents.
This is true for all of us. We suffer because of the sins of our parents --- and we are blessed by the faithfulness of our parents. The good news is that ANY generation can break the pattern of abuse and sin from their parents by following the Lord. I’ve seen this happen so often when people who have suffered because of parents who were abusive or addicted. They turn to the Lord and break those patterns of sin. Instead of passing pain and disfunction to the next generation, they pass on a blessing to their children.
Because Gomer was unfaithful, the children suffered. And Hosea finally had to separate from Gomer.
Hosea 2:2 shows that, whether there was an official divorce or not, the separation was complete and public. It says, “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband.”
There’s a lot of pain in that statement. If you’ve known someone who had to give up on a marriage because of infidelity, you know how painful that separation is. It’s the same kind of pain a parent feels when they have to show “tough love” to a rebellious child.
It was not easy for Hosea, to let Gomer go her way, but Gomer’s actions left him with no choice. In the same way, Israel’s continual idol worship left God with no choice but to let them go.
But all along, God had a plan to forgive and restore. And that is the happy ending for Hosea and Gomer’s love story.
The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods …” Hosea 3:1
By this time, Gomer was in bad shape. She’d gone from a life of partying where she probably felt strong and free … to a place where she was living in misery as a slave. She had either sold herself to someone to pay her debts, or she was controlled by a pimp who considered her his property.
Here’s what Hosea did about it: So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver ... 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 behave the same way toward you.” Hosea 3:2-3
The price Hosea paid was half of the 30 shekels of silver Judas was paid for betraying Jesus. For that price, Hosea redeemed Gomer.
And you can see from verse 3 that this wasn’t a grudging reunion. He wasn’t saying, “You rotten no good wife, I guess I’ll take you back since God said I have to.”
No, this was a full-hearted reconciliation --- Hosea was like the father of the prodigal, running down the road to embrace his son.
The New Testament talks about how marriage is a picture of Jesus and His church. We tend to think of a smooth, perfect marriages as being a good example of God’s relationship with his people.
But the most accurate picture is probably a marriage like Hosea and Gomer … a marriage that has come through hardship and turmol … a marriage where we see the power of forgiveness and sacrifice and redemption.
We’ve talked about the Setting and Plot of this love story, so we’ll end with the THEME.
3. Theme
The THEME of Hosea … and of the whole Bible … is that God Redeems His people. Hosea is a 14 chapter love poem where God opens his heart and mind and reveals his purposes.
We see God’s sense of JUSTICE. When bad things happen, our first response is often to ask, “Why, God, why?” In this case horrible things were about to happen, and God spelled out exactly WHY.
Look in Hosea 4:4-5 Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land: “There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land. There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.
We see here that God can’t overlook sin. He can’t have a Nation like this representing Him on earth. Imagine if Ronnie and Richard and I formed a gang … and started robbing banks on Sunday afternoons (slide) (I’ll let you decide who’s who …)
What kind of reputation would CHCC have if the preachers were breaking the law? How could our church give any kind of witness for God?
This is what had happened in Israel. Because of their blatant sin, God had no choice but to withdraw His protection and let disaster fall.
In the book of Hosea, we see God’s Justice, and we also see God’s COMPASSION. In chapter 11 we read these heart-wrenching words:
“When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. (You may recognize this prophecy of Jesus that was fulfilled when Joseph and Mary returned to Nazareth out of Egypt with their child.)
But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them. Hosea 11:1-4
God is a God of JUSTICE … but not cold Justice. He has COMPASSION even for those who have rejected Him. His compassion is as powerful as a father for his child … or a husband for his wife.
And it’s because of this great compassion that our God has redeemed His people. Even in the Old Testament we see that God was always planning the great day of RECONCILLIATION.
Look at the prophetic verses in Hosea 13:14 “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?
In the New Testament, Jesus fulfilled that prophecy when he rose from the grave. In 1 Corinthians 15:55 Paul paraphrased Hosea when He exclaimed: “Death has been swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” 1 Corinthians 15:54-55
CONCLUSION:
From the beginning it was always God’s plan to send his son to pay the price and redeem us from death. The Old Testament stories set the stage for this final and complete act of redemption.
The love story of Hosea and Gomer is a story of sin and separation and redemption. This is the story of the Bible. And it’s OUR story.
We have all been unfaithful to God. Sin has forced a separation. But Jesus came to our rescue. He paid the price of our redemption on the cross.
Today God invites you to be reconciled to Him … He has paid the price to set you free. Will you return to Him?
