Series: God’s Outrageous Love
Title: Love’s Commitment
Text: Hosea 1:1-2:1; 3:1-5
Truth: God is committed to love us with an unconditional and uncommon love.
Aim: To understand God’s love for us so that we respond with a greater obedience to God.
Life Question: How do we know God’s love is committed to loving us unconditionally and uncommonly?
INTRODUCTION
Joe loved Jill. They’d been married twenty years. The kids were happy and healthy. Maybe some of the sizzle had diminished, but by all accounts Joe and Jill had a good marriage. Lately Joe had a sense that something was amiss. Jill seemed to be spending more time with the women who were her co-workers. That’s what he thought until he discovered something on her phone.
He needed to make a call, but he’d misplaced his phone so he picked up Jill’s. Absentmindedly he checked the text messages. That’s when he noticed a flirtatious message. The message was filled with double entendre—saying one thing but obviously meaning something else. That led him to check Jill’s voicemail. There he found a recent voicemail. The man’s voice spoke of an intimate encounter and how he couldn’t get her off his mind.
Was this a joke? Was this really happening to him? He never gave a second thought to those “girl’s nights out” Jill said she was joining with the girls from the office. Now he discovered it was a ruse for an affair.
Anger began to boil in his soul. How could she? Hadn’t he been a good husband? That gave way to nausea as he became sick to his stomach and ran to bathroom to puke out his hurt.
Jill knew something wasn’t right when she stepped into the house. When she saw Joe her first words were, “What wrong?” Joe held up her phone and said, “I know about him.” That moment will be forever frozen in her memory. It did not get better. After some cruel and hurtful words, Jill slammed the door and eventually moved in with her lover.
Joe is left to explain this to their grade-school-age son and middle-school-age daughter. They all cry. No, they sob. Nothing has prepared any of them to know how to deal with the abandonment of an illegitimate love.
Looking at those beautiful kids, thinking over twenty years of history with Jill and the fact that he truly loved her, Joe decides he is going to win his wife back from her lover. Identifying where he had been at fault, he begins to seriously change those faults in his life. Whether he is successful or not, these are things he is committed to permanently change. He refuses to fight and argue over time with the kids. They will not be used by him to punish her. In fact, he talks the kids into spending time with their mother.
Months go by. Jill tested Joe any number of ways to see if he is for real or just play acting to get her to come back. Finally, the longing of a mother for her children and the permanent changes she sees in Joe causes her to come back home. They all have a long way to go, but they begin to rebuild love once more.
That’s a composite of my experiences with church members over my ministry. A man abandons his family and moves in with the woman with whom he is having an affair. A wife discovers her husband’s sexual escapades from his phone. In a pastor’s office the wife learns her husband is having an affair, and she runs from the office. The secretary finds her outside vomiting. This violation of love and loyalty is so wounding and wicked that I’m amazed by those who are able to recover from it. I have seen good come from these broken vows, but the pain is enormous. Would you believe that God uses a wife that is a nymphomaniac to teach his people about His love for them? It’s found in the Old Testament book of Hosea.
The prophet Hosea had a wife who was unfaithful to him, and committed adultery. He knew the heartbreak from someone you love being unfaithful. God used this to show Hosea that this is how Israel had been unfaithful to Him. God helped Hosea to love his wife and seek to reconcile her from her slavery. Like an adulterous wife, Israel committed spiritual adultery by turning to other gods. But the good news of Hosea is that God loves us and seeks to forgive us, redeem us, and restore our relationship with Him. God is committed to love us with an unconditional and uncommon love. When we understand this, it results in greater obedience on our part as we respond to God’s outrageous love.
How do I know that God is committed to love us with an unconditional and uncommon love? First, there is this outrageous illustration of love:
I. THE OUTRAGEOUS ILLUSTRATION OF LOVE (HOSEA 1:2-3)
(2) When the Lord first spoke to Hosea, He said this to him: Go and marry a promiscuous wife
and have children of promiscuity, for the whole land has been promiscuous by abandoning the Lord. (3) So he went and married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
What does the Bible mean by “love?” There’s a word in the Hebrew language, hesed, that defines one kind of love. It’s one of those words that doesn’t have an exact equivalent in English. It speaks of the relationship that exists between very close friends. The word includes a strong idea of loyalty where people are bound to one another in the strongest terms. This is usually symbolized by a covenant.
Another term for love, ahab, involves a passion that completely engages the will to act in loving ways. It has strong emotions associated with it. This love is not based on covenant agreements but has an “irrational power” that’s unexplainable and undeserved. It just loves without strings attached.
The Bible not only uses words that describe love, it also uses powerful illustrations to demonstrate the characteristics of love. He is our Father; we are His children. He cares for us like a shepherd cares and protects his sheep. The Bible even uses some of our greatest hardships to help us understand His love for us. One of the most outrageous is played out in Hosea’s marriage.
The first time God speaks to Hosea it is a command. The command is to marry a promiscuous wife. The word is whore. That word—or its root—is used four times in this verse. The last phrase uses the root word for whore. Let me translate it for you. I don’t mean to be offensive, but I’m just telling you plainly the shocking way God spoke to Hosea. The Jerusalem Bible translation is most accurate: “Go, marry a whore, and get children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning God.” If I haven’t offended your sensibilities enough, let me remind you that Hosea is a picture of God, and Gomer is a picture of you.
Did God really ask Hosea to marry a woman from the red light district? We struggle with this. The answer ranges from ‘yes to this is a parable’ to ‘this foresees what Gomer will become.’ The answer I’m most comfortable with is that this foresees what God knew was in the heart of Gomer and what she would become. Some have proposed she was a temple prostitute, but the Hebrew language has a word for that. It is not used. We know from Leviticus 27 that a Hebrew priest could not marry a prostitute or a divorced woman. His wife had to be a virgin. If Hosea was a priest, God would not have asked this of him. We’re only told he is a prophet. Scholars will debate this until Jesus comes but there is no debating his obedience.
The Lord says “The whole land has been promiscuous.” Literally it is “committing adultery she has committed adultery.” That’s an example of repetition for emphasis that I described last week. The whole country had abandoned the Lord.
Why did God give this outrageous command for Hosea to marry a woman with a lustful, unfaithful heart? Why did he obey with immediate and total compliance? It’s a powerful illustration of how much you mean to God. He loves you even when you are unlovely. He won’t tolerate second place in your life. He will confront you with your sin.
Jim Bakker once ruled over a religious empire through his PTL television ministry. But he was caught mismanaging funds and sent to prison. He lost his fortune, his ministry and his marriage to Tammy Bakker. At one time he sat in golden chairs on a TV set, but now he mopped around stools in a prison bathroom. Dressed in his prison overalls, sloshing that mop water on the floor of the prison bathroom, a guard came to the door and announced he had a visitor. Bakker said he didn’t want to see anyone. The guard said he’d want to see this visitor. When he came around the corner there stood Billy Graham. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Jim Bakker was the most despised preacher in the nation, and who had come to visit him—the most respected preacher in the world. Jim Bakker said he just fell into Billy Graham’s arms and wept.
I think Frederick Buechner caught the outrageous nature of God’s love in this quote:
“The love for equals is a human thing--of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing--the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing--to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy--love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.” (The Magnificent Defeat)
God loves people. The only explanation for Hosea’s obedience to love Gomer is God’s love that is in him. Hosea and Gomer is a picture of God’s commitment to love us with an unconditional and uncommon love. How is it possible to disobey such love?
Another way we know God loves us with an uncommon love is seen in the outcome of this infidelity.
II. THE OUTCOME OF INFIDELITY (HOSEA 1:4-9)
In v. 3 Gomer bares Hosea a son. This is his child.
(4) Then the Lord said to him: Name him Jezreel, for in a little while I will avenge the bloodshed of Jezreel on the house of Jehu and put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.
(5) On that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.
The name “Jezreel” means “God sows or scatters.” Jezreel is a valley in the Northern Kingdom. About a century before, General Jehu killed wicked King Ahab’s household and his wife Jezebel. He killed all the prophets of the false god, Baal. Queen Jezebel—a worshiper and fervent evangelist for Baal worship—was systematically stripping Israel of the influence of the true God. This was a huge victory. But instead of Jehu leading the people back to God, he made two golden calves and led the people to worship them. What was known as a place of great victory became known as a place of great savagery. But the fact that Jehu led the nation back to Baal worship meant God would not let Jehu’s dynasty continue. The Lord swore to “break the bow” of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. The armies of Israel will be defeated about 30 years from now by the Assyrians. Jehu’s great grandson Zechariah will be assassinated, bringing an end to Jehu’s dynasty.
It’s not uncommon to meet someone named after a place. I’m sure you’ve met a Dallas or Phoenix or Denver. But I doubt you’ve met someone named after the Nazi extermination camp Auschwitz or someone named Hell. People are going to want to know why Hosea named is child after a place where a blood bath took place.
Baal was a fertility god. He supposedly made the land fertile and provided abundant crops. In that agrarian society the people were very tempted to sacrifice and worship to this god so they could have good crops. It taught that when men had sexual relations with temple prostitutes, it would motivate the gods to have sex, and it resulted in abundant crops. Jezreel, “May God sow,” pictures God spreading seed. Hosea was reminding them that God is the true source of their harvests. But the people had gone so far into sin that God is going to scatter the people in exile. That’s the message Hosea is delivering through the naming of his son. God is going to judge them.
(6) She conceived again and gave birth to a daughter, and the Lord said to him: Name her No Compassion, for I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel. I will certainly take them away. (7) But I will have compassion on the house of Judah, and I will deliver them by the Lord their God. I will not deliver them by bow, sword, or war, or by horses and cavalry.
If Hosea had been suspecting his wife of being unfaithful, the birth of this little girl strengthened those suspicions. There’s a subtle change from v. 3 to v. 6. In v. 3 Gomer gave birth to “his son.” Here it simply says she gave birth to a daughter. The girl is named Lo-ruhamah. My translation goes ahead and gives you the English translation, “No Compassion.” God is declaring that he would “no longer have compassion on the house of Israel.” For 200 years God had protected and provided for the nation of Israel. Their stubborn rejection of Him and return to the worship of Baal meant the removal of His divine protection. The Northern Kingdom is going to fall to foreign armies due to their unfaithfulness.
I love this country. I wish we understood that our persistent rejection of God’s ways so that we can pursue our idolatry will only lead to the decline and eventual demise of the leader of the free world. I know individuals who I wish would get this message. God has sent messenger after messenger to get their attention. Their stubborn rejection has only one outcome—the bitter harvest of their sin. But we need to heed this message too.
In contrast, the weaker nation, Judah will be shown mercy. God will not allow the powerful nation of Assyria to conquer His people in the Southern Kingdom. None of Israel’s kings had been godly. About third to half of the kings in Judah had been godly. Whereas Israel survived as a nation for 200 years, Judah lasted about 350 years.
The powerful Assyrian army camped outside of the capital city of Judah after having destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel. King Hezekiah pleaded for God’s help. God sent an angel that killed 185,000 soldiers in one night! After that the Assyrians broke camp and got out of Dodge. God spared Judah without a shot being fired. Judah was spared not because of her actions but by the compassion of God.
(8) After Gomer had weaned No Compassion, she conceived and gave birth to a son. (9) Then the Lord said: Name him Not My People, for you are not My people, and I will not be your God.
Gomer conceives again and gives birth to a son. He is named Lo-ammi, “not My people.” There is no suspicion with this child. Hosea knows this is not his son. Hosea is not the father.
In those days, women often nursed their babies two or three years. In a sense, Gomer was tied down at home during this period. Hosea might have hoped that the baby would curb her lust for men. But for Gomer, the weaning of the child was a license for freedom. Soon she became pregnant again. Just like Hosea could no longer relate to Gomer as his wife, God would no longer relate to Israel as his people. Sin had cost them their very identity.
Each name was a warning from God about his coming judgment on their sin. Their sin could not and would not be ignored. Each name produces a growing intensity of the certainty of God’s punishment on sin. This is the outcome of infidelity to God.
In 1969, in Pass Christian, Mississippi, a group of people were preparing to have a “hurricane party” in the face of Hurricane Camille. They weren’t ignorant of the warnings. But their overconfidence led them to make the deadly decision to ride out the storm.
The wind was howling when Police Chief Jerry Peralta pulled up sometime after dark outside the posh Richelieu Apartments. The apartments were less than 250 feet from the surf and in direct line of the danger. A man with a drink in his hand came out on the second-floor balcony, and waved at the chief. Peralta yelled up, “You all need to clear out of here as quickly as you can. The storm’s getting worse.” But as others joined the man on the balcony, they just laughed at the policeman’s order to leave. “This is my land,” one of them yelled back. “If you want me off, you’ll have to arrest me.”
Peralta didn’t arrest anyone, but he wasn’t able to persuade them to leave either. He wrote down the next of kin for the 20 or so people who gathered for the party through the storm. They laughed as he took their names. Despite the warning, they had no intention of changing their plans.
At 10:15 p.m. the front wall of Hurricane Camille came ashore. Meteorologists clocked Camille’s wind speed at more than 205 mph, the strongest on record up to that time. Raindrops hit with the force of bullets. The waves off the Gulf Coast crested between 22 and 28 feet high.
News reports later showed that the worst damage came at the little settlement of motels, go-go bars, and gambling houses known as Pass Christian, Mississippi. It was reported that some 20 people were killed at a hurricane party in the upscale Richelieu Apartments. Nothing was left of the three-story structure but the foundation; the only survivor was a five-year-old boy found the following day, clinging to a mattress.
The messenger and the laws they mocked were sent to spare their life. They were powerless to hold back the coming storm. God’s Word is not meant to limit our life but to actually give us a life of abundance. God’s warnings are expressions of His love. Obedience is the way to continue to experience the best He has for us. It is the way we express our love for Him. There is only one outcome for those who refuse to heed God’s warnings—the loss of the fullness of the life He wants for us.
God’s love in Hosea explains his obedience to love Gomer. God’s commitment to love us with an unconditional and uncommon love is seen even in the outcome of Gomer’s infidelity. God’s commitment to love us with an unconditional and uncommon love is seen in the opportunity of redemption.
III. THE OPPORTUNITY OF REDEMPTION (HOSEA 3:1-5)
Maybe the endless washing of diapers and small children needing constant attention caused her to remember the days when men paid attention to her. She leaves. Hosea has to answer the children’s questions about where their mother has gone. He goes to bed knowing his wife is in the arms of other men. This must have been a pain worse than death. This is the man God uses to say to an adulterous nation that God loves them and wants them back. Just like this man will buy his wife out of slavery after her lovers were through with her, God buys us out of the slavery of sin with the payment of His Son’s death on the cross.
Then the Lord said to me, "Go again; show love to a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the Israelites though they turn to other gods and love raisin cakes." Raisin cakes referred to food associated with the worship of idols in pagan fertility cults. This verse is not saying that Hosea loved Gomer despite her promiscuous behavior, and then recognized in his love God’s love for Israel. That is not what is being said. Hosea sees God’s continuing, uncommon love for Israel, and in that, he sees how he is to love Gomer. Her lover had enslaved her. Hosea’s love will break that bondage.
(2) So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and five bushels of barley. Gomer is still Hosea’s wife but she must have sold herself as some kind of slave to stay alive following her separation from Hosea. The fact that he had to pay in coin and grain shows how hard it was for Hosea to raise the money. Maybe it is saying that Hosea gave everything he had to buy her. He could have had her stoned. Instead he showed outrageous love in order to redeem her.
(3) I said to her, "You must live with me many days. Don't be promiscuous or belong to any man, and I will act the same way toward you." (4) For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols.
They would not resume normal marital relationships. She must learn to control her passions and stop her sinful habits. They were starting over in learning to love and live with one another. Love is not blind. Love demands true commitment. There must be a clean break with her past unfaithfulness. The denial of sex for Hosea and Gomer is like God depriving Israel of its idolatry.
(5) Afterwards, the people of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come with awe to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days. In time, God would restore the nation, and she would enjoy true worship. The ultimate expression would be that they seek God and David their king. This is a reference to the Messiah and when he would rule them.
We’re not told if Hosea’s tough love was successful in restoring his marriage. But the rest of the Book of Hosea gives a mixed answer with regard to Israel’s response to God’s love. Israel continues to sin, but God’s love holds out hope for the future. I wonder how the story is going to end for you. It all depends on your response to God. What will be your response to God’s unconditional and uncommon love for you? Will it capture your heart, or will your heart be drawn away by the idols of this world?
CONCLUSION
Will Campbell grew up on a hardscrabble farm in Mississippi. Bookish, he never really fit in with his rural surroundings. Through hard work at his studies he eventually made his way to Yale Divinity School. After graduation he returned south and became the director of religious life at the University of Mississippi. This was the early 1960s. When his liberal views on integration became known, his stint at the school abruptly ended.
Campbell soon found himself in the thick of the civil rights battle in the south. He supervised many of the young idealistic Northerners who migrated to the south to join the civil rights crusade. One of those was a Harvard Divinity School student named Jonathan Daniels. They became good friends.
Campbell’s theology was undergoing some testing in those days. Most of his opposition came from “good Christians” who refused to let people of other races into their churches and resented those who tampered with the laws favoring white people. He found that most of his allies were agnostics, socialists, and devout Northerners.
“In ten words or less, what’s the Christian message?” one agnostic challenged him. The challenge came from P.D. East, a renegade newspaper editor who viewed Christians as the enemy and couldn’t understand Will Campbell’s stubborn commitment to religious faith. Will Campbell answered, “We’re all bastards but God loves us anyway.” P.D. East didn’t comment on Campbell’s answer but instead counted the words and said that was eight. He had two more words. Did he want to give it another try? Campbell let it stand.
The definition stung P.D. East who, unbeknown to Campbell, was indeed illegitimate and had been called “bastard” all his life. Campbell chose those words not only for shock effect, but for theological accuracy. Spiritually we are illegitimate children, but despite our paternity, we have been invited to join God’s family.
That definition was put to the test on the darkest day in Campbell’s life. An Alabama deputy sheriff named Thomas Coleman gunned down Campbell’s twenty-six-year-old friend Jonathan Daniels. Jonathan had been arrested for picketing white stores. On his release from jail he approached a grocery store to make a phone call to arrange a ride when Coleman appeared with a shotgun, and emptied it in Jonathan’s stomach.
Campbell tells of his conversation with P.D. East the night of Jonathan Daniels murder. He said it was the most enlightening theological lesson he ever had in his life. He writes:
“Yea, Brother. Let’s see if your definition of the Faith can stand the test.” My calls had been to the Department of Justice, to the ACLU, and to a lawyer friend in Nashville. I had talked of the death of my friend as being a travesty of justice, as a complete breakdown of law and order, as a violation of Federal and State law. I had used words like redneck, backwoods, woolhat, cracker, Kluxer, ignoramus, and many others. I had studied sociology, psychology, and social ethics and was speaking and thinking in those concepts. I had also studied New Testament theology.
P.D. stalked me like a tiger. “Come on, Brother. Let’s talk about your definition.” At one point Joe [Will’s brother] turned on him. “Lay off, P.D. Can’t you see when somebody is upset?” But P.D. waved him off, loving me too much to leave me alone.
“Was Jonathan a bastard?” P.D. asked first. Campbell replied that though he was one of the most gentle guys he’d ever known, it’s true that everyone is a sinner. In those terms, yes, he was a “bastard.”
“All right. Is Thomas Coleman a bastard?” That question, Campbell found much easier to answer. You bet the murderer was a bastard.
Then P.D. pulled his chair close, placed a bony hand on Campbell’s knee, and looked into his red-streaked eyes. “Which one of those two bastards do you think God loves the most?” That question hit home like an arrow to the heart.
Suddenly everything became clear. He’d just agreed that a man could go to a store where a group of unarmed human beings are drinking soda pop and eating moon pies, fire a shotgun blast at one them, tearing out lungs and bowels, and that God would set him free was almost more than he could stand. But unless that is precisely the case there is no Gospel, there is no Good News. Unless that is true we have only bad news, we are back with law alone.
That night Will Campbell learned that God not only loves the undeserving, He loves those who deserve the opposite of His grace and love. That message lodged so deep in Will Campbell that he resigned his post with the National Council of Churches and became what he called “an apostle to the rednecks.” He bought a farm in Tennessee and is as likely to spend time among Klansmen and racists as he is among racial minorities and white liberals. He decided that there were a lot of people helping the minorities but no one he knew was seeking to minister to the Thomas Coleman’s of the world. This kind of dramatic obedience is what we should expect when we grasp how uncommon and outrageous God’s love is for us.
Gomer experienced uncommon and unconditional love from Hosea when she was at her worst. Paul said while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. God’s love is uncommon and unconditional. That’s why we obey Him and we resist allowing anything else take His place.
PRAYER
INVITATION
I was watching one of those police shows on TV. The detective is questioning the criminal in the interview room. The detective already knew the criminal was guilty. The criminal knew he was guilty. The detective was simply trying to get the criminal to confess to what both of them already knew. That scene is repeated when I give an invitation.
You know you’re a sinner. I know you are a sinner. You know that you need a Savior. I know you need Christ. All I’m trying to do is to get you to admit what everyone in this room already knows is true! “If you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”
1. The NIV Application Comm., Hosea, Gary V. Smith, p.22.
2. The Sunday School Board, The Adult Teacher, April-June 1987, p. 67.
3. LifeWay, Family Bible Study, Ventures, Leader guide Winter 2004-2005, p. 129.
4. LifeWay, The Herschel Hobbs Commentary, Winter 2010-2011, p. 106.
5. Philip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace, p. 141-145.
