A Love Story: The Prophet & The Prostitute
Introduction: Many times unbelievers think that Christians believe in a bunch of fairy tales and silly things. Harry Blamires describes the two perspectives this way: “To become a Christian is to accept an extra dimension to life. From the Christian's point of view the notable thing about the unbeliever's world is how much smaller it is. The unbeliever is imprisoned in a decaying universe. Imagine you took a child to the theater to see some tragedy like, say, Hamlet, at the end of which the stage is littered with corpses. And suppose you had difficulty comforting the child afterward, so distressed was he at the spectacle of the deaths. "But the man who played Hamlet is not really dead," you explain. "He is an actor. He also lives a life outside the theater. He has a wife and family and, far from being dead, he is probably now at home with them enjoying a late supper.": If there is one word the Christian secretly wants to use to describe the unbeliever's outlook, it is literal . . . like the child who takes the play for reality.” Heaven is a reality. Hell is a reality. Spiritual wickedness in high places is a reality. The ministry of angels is a reality. Those things that are unseen by unbelievers are understood by those of us who believe.
Many times in scripture we read about certain realities that teach us spiritual lessons if we are keen enough to see them and humble enough to learn and practice them. We see Moses delivering the Hebrews from bondage to wander 40 years in the desert as a lesson that we are delivered by Christ wondering through a place we do not belong relying on him as our daily bread until we eventually reach the promised land of heaven. Or we learn from Noah's family getting in the ark that if we desire to be saved from judgment we must take refuge in Jesus. Just as there was only one door to the ark for those with faith, there is only one door to salvation for those who trust in Jesus.
Today we look at another example of a reality teaching us a spiritual truth in a prophet named Hosea.
Transition: Its been said that men marry women hoping they never change and women marry men hoping they will. Well the situation is definitely reversed here. For the purposes of our message this morning lets' break down this love story into three chapters. Chapter one is:
A Prophet's call to love a prostitute
Lets look together in Hosea 1:1-2 - “The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel: When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, “Go take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, . . .”
Sounds scandalous doesn't it? This man of God is told to find a promiscuous and wild woman and marry her. The carnal side of us might sheepishly grin at the thought of a prophet marrying such a woman, but once we realize the pain involved we will have great sympathy for Hosea (and for God). God is telling this Holy man to marry a woman with a bad reputation, a reputation for unfaithfulness. who is sure to break his heart, one that he knows will never be faithful, a woman that by her own wicked nature is certain to commit adultery, an vile woman that is destined to cause him endless frustration and monumental grief. The obvious question is why would a prophet be called to marry such a woman as this? In the second part of the second verse we learn our answer:
“ . . . because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD. So he married Gomer daughter of Diblain, and she conceived and bore him a son” v. 2, 3
You can imagine those who had some integrity left in Israel approaching Hosea and saying “You know Hosea you are very respected among the prophets. Your name is among other prophets in the land (Hosea lived during the same time as Joel, Jonah, Obadiah, Micah, Amos and Isaiah) but we have to say, your decision making is in question. Let's face it, your wife is a disgrace. Why in the world, are you married to a woman like that?!” I can picture an offended Hosea saying “The better question isn't why am I married to a woman like that, but why is such a good and loving God married to an adulterous people like you?” Hosea was married to an adulterous woman because God was married to an adulterous people. By Hosea's harlot running around with other men God was showing Israel that his people were doing the same thing with other gods. In God's eyes idolatry is spiritual adultery.
Idolatry can be subtle. The more subtle the more dangerous, because we lose the understanding of its dividing power. Separating us from Jesus. When we are more likely to speak to strangers than to pray two words to Jesus, there is danger! When we read and write thousands of texts, emails, and messages and have no time to read or hear his Word, there is danger! Jesus would say “you run to the world like Gomer runs to her lovers and you dare to say that you love me?”
Transition: In the next chapter of this love story we see God's pain and anger and our false hope in those 'other things' (Mk 4:19) that will never satisfy.
A Prostitute abandons a Prophet
If we are not too embarrassed to admit it, We may have heard the famous Waylon Jennings song 'looking for love'. Gomer was definitely a woman who was looking for love in all the wrong places.
“I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery. Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, 'I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink.'” Hosea 2:4,5
Not only satisfying her needs, but her want's and desires also. The children of Gomer were products of adultery. She had a good thing going and doesn't seem to be, in the least bit, aware of it. She not only had a loving husband but a good man the whole time she was shamelessly chasing after her boyfriends and frolicking around in bad places. Gomer thought her lovers were going to provide for her, take care of her and protect her, when it was her husband that did all those things. God loved Israel and yet they turned their back on him and tried to find what they wanted in other places and in other gods. (Anything we put before 'The God' is our god.)
In his book 'God's at war' Kyle Idelman shows that there are all kinds of “gods” fighting for the throne of our hearts: comfort, money, sex, prestige, fashion, pleasure, legalism, family, fame, success, the perfect body, and so on. He suggests that the questions we must ask ourselves is: what do you sacrifice for? What makes you mad? What do you worry about? Who do you want applauding and praising you? These people or things that steal our affection away from God reveals who or what it is that we worship.
God is the one who gives us love, provision, protection and he warns that he is the one that can take it away. Every good and perfect gift is from above and yet his people, or at least those who call themselves 'his people' go looking for love, happiness, peace, joy, and fulfillment in places that can only be found in God.
Gomer was the type of wife, much like today's church, who not only ignores her husband, but secretly wishes he wasn't around so she could go on and enjoy his money, his gifts, she loves his affection and she loves his protection and she even loves being called by his name occasionally. (Oh' How many Laodiceans today love being called “Christian” but hate being married to Christ?!) The apostle James says “You adulterous people don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefor anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” (4:4) He wasn't referring to physical adultery but like Israel a cheating people playing God for a fool. By their own spiritual adultery they make themselves his enemy.
Some people think “I just want to be left alone, I never bothered God for anything and I wish He would return the favor!” Hear this, there is nothing worse than for God to 'leave you alone,' It is literally Hell for God to leave you alone! but even if you got what you claim you wanted, you can be certain there would still be many who would be in hell shaking their fist at God because he left them alone and gave them the very freedom that they demanded.
The pain God must feel when we run from him and reject him and feel nothing about his love for us. When Hosea hurt, do you think Gomer cared? When He cried for her, she ran from him, when he loved her, she loved other men. She obviously couldn't care less. That must be what makes this so painful. And it must be so painful to God to catch us sneaking away to embrace and be embraced by the world.
In C.S. Lewis satire 'The Screwtape Letters' the demon 'Screwtape' is a wily retiring veteran tasked with the mission of mentoring his nephew 'Wormwood' on how to effectively lead people away from God. One of his ingenious strategies is to offer his patient, not only to have a parallel life but to enjoy it. This is a clever trick that devils have done on people for centuries. This way there are two sets of people he can feel superior to; he feels morally superior to those outside of church and worldly superior to those inside of church. That way this person thinks of himself as “... the complete, balanced, complex man who see round them all.”
Sometimes we want to compartmentalize our life: This is my married life over here, this is my work life over here, this is my hobby life over here, this is my family/friend life over here and way over there is my “Christian life”. Do you believe that is what God wants? No! God wants ALL of your life! He wants your married life, your hobby life, your work life. He wants it all! I can imagine Gomer nonchalantly complaining: “Hosea, why are you getting bent out of shape? I may give my body to others, but my heart still belongs to you.” If her heart belonged to Hosea she wouldn't be sharing her body with other men! We give all of our self to the one we love. If we say “My heart belongs to God” then we wont go looking for the affections of the world, endlessly searching for the approval of others. If we say “God has my heart” then we prove it with our actions. If we claim we want to please the Lord then we must do the things that please him or else it exposes the lie.
Imagine your spouse saying I only want to be with you on Mondays and Tuesdays. What about the rest of the week? “That is my business, not yours!” God not only wants all of us, he wants us always. God wants the honeymoon to continue, but by our actions we say “No. That part of our relationship is over, that was just a phase.”
Transition: As we see in the final chapter of this love story this groom doesn't want this blissful devotion to be just a “phase” - He wants it to define their entire marriage. And when she doesn't return the love he has for her, God seems to have had enough but can't help but pursue her love.
A Prophet pursues a prostitute
We read in Hosea 2:13 “I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot.” declares the LORD.”
Gomer is a woman of the night. She feels the need to chase after bright lights and big cities, she loves the revelry and loves to mingle with revelers she forgets her obligations to her husband and children. When we read these painful words in verse 13: “but me she forgot.” a flood of jilted memories haunts our souls. We think revenge is definitely in order and think the next thing we should read is “Therefore I will forget her” or “Therefore I will now abandon her” or “Therefore I will no longer care about her” but in the next verse we read
“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” (2:14)
What? If we saw a friend being treated this way we would say “I would kick that person to the curb!” or if they were 'kicked to the curb' already, we would say: “well then you need to leave them there!” but that is not what we read here at all, instead of Hosea painfully saying “let her have her lovers if that is what she wants!” or 'kicking her to the curb', What does he do? Hosea PURSUES her!?!?
We don't really see this picture of God often. We tend to think of God as a fierce and stoic figure with lightning bolts in hand waiting to punish our mistakes. But what we see here is a picture of God who is so deeply in love with his people, that he is willing to do whatever it takes to win back his bride. He seems to be like a lovestruck teenager who does everything he can to woo the young lady of his dreams, he can't stand the thought of being without her, can't eat, can't sleep, and can't stand the thought of her in another lovers arms.
In Exodus 20:5 we read that our God is a jealous God and here we seem to see him as a jealous husband constantly lowering himself to win back the affections of an adulterous wife, a wife that is obviously so beneath him that the whole relationship looks absurd! . . . But not to him. No, to him, she is worth everything, she is worth being humiliated for, she is even worth dying for – and yet even this can't seem to change the minds of those who are determined to love the world more than the one who died upon the cross.
We often hear that we are the bride of Christ, that is, that the church is the bride of Christ. We see this word picture several times in scripture (Eph. 5:25-27, 2 Cor. 11:2, Rev. 19:7-9, 21:1,2) It reminds us that the church is not about religion, it is about a relationship. We see throughout scripture, throughout history, and in our own experience a church that is constantly coming to God and then fading away, coming back asking forgiveness and Jesus says “Of course I forgive you, I love you!” sadly we fall away and go back to our worldly desires and sinful pleasures. And yet Christ will still pursues you.
Can you imagine, through the giggles and laughter, Hosea looking through the dirty streets asking shady characters if they had seen his wife Gomer. What lengths Jesus has gone to find you and court you back to him.
We see this outrageous love God has for his church in chapter 3 “The LORD said to me, '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 and love the sacred raisin cakes. 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley.”
Hosea goes searching for his wife who is now a prostitute owned by someone else. Do you ever notice How often we go from bad to worse before we come to God? We go deeper in and deeper in sin until we come to the our senses like the prodigal son “what am I doing to myself? I have a father who loves me and Savior who wants me! I will go back to him.”
You can only imagine what this must have looked like. Here is a Holy man, a prophet of God standing outside the brothel just waiting in line with strange men who are willing to pay for the affection of his wife. Hosea is willing to pay half the price of a slave and a days ration to have his own wife back with him. Talk about going into the worst places to find your love. Hosea did it. But most importantly Jesus did it- coming down from heaven and paying it all on the cross!
Ill. Ravi Zacharias shares a story from one of Jim Bakker's books where Jim Bakker recalls the time when he was cleaning the bathrooms in the prison with an old bucket and dirty water and a guard came up to him and said “Jim, there is somebody here to see you.” He said very sadly “I don't want to see anybody.” the guard said “I think you want to see this person.” He then said “I'm filthy” the guard said that Jim could change first if he wanted and Jim Bakker said he thought it over and then declined Seeing the toilet water staining his jumpsuit and humiliated by the filth he thought “No. This is what my life has come to. This is what has happened to me.” And with that thought, he then put the mop down and went to see his visitor. He said 'I walked over to the waiting room and was stunned when I saw Rev. Billy Graham standing there.' And Billy Graham took three steps toward him and wrapped his long arms around him and embraced him and Jim Bakker said I wept like a little child realizing in that moment that my name symbolized all that was corrupt with Christianity and his name symbolized all that was pure and here he is is, holding me in his arms, during that long embrace Billy Graham said “Jim, I love you.”
Wow! What kind of love is this? Why should such a pure and holy God love such a filthy and sinful people? That is a question that none of us can answer, but the better question is why an adulterous and idolatrous people refuse to come back to such a good and loving God?
Conclusion: Let me end with a reminder that the name Hosea is also pronounced Hoshea, the same root name as Joshua, and Yeshua, the Hebrew name for Jesus. He is a foreshadow and a symbol of Christ to his church.
Can you imagine Jesus' words today “There you go chasing after this and chasing after that, running her and going there, and here I am . . . . (again) . . . still chasing after you!” He wonders when will you settle down? How long will you go looking for love when you have the one who loves you right here, right now.
Jesus warned the Ephesian church “ . . . you have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent I will come and remove your lampstand from its place.” Revelation 2:4,5
Do you remember those days when you literally felt his comforting words? Do you remember the days you hungered for the Lord? You thirsted for the Lord? Do you remember when Jesus was not just your first love but your only love? He now says 'you have forsaken your first love. Consider how far away you have drifted away from me. Turn around and come back.' He warns that if you do not repent he will remove your lampstand. Understand that God will chase us a long time, but he will not chase us forever.
Even if we won't accept him for love sake, he will accept us for heaven's sake. C.S. Lewis wrote in his book 'The problem of pain' “It is hardly complementary to God that we should choose him as an alternative to Hell: yet even this He accepts.” There is no reason at all for anyone to reject Christ. The thought is ridiculous. After fully analying this small book in the old testament we Christians are left with only one conclusion: Christ's love for his church is truly amazing!
