Merry Christmas to you all. Find Hosea 3, if you will – page 955 in your pew Bibles. I’m looking forward to tonight’s Christmas celebration with the Cross Church. I hope many of you will join my family and me for a wonderful time.
Centuries before Mary and Joseph, the Wise Men, or the Shepherds … the story of Christmas was written across the pages of the Bible. Our story takes place seven centuries before the appearance of Jesus at Bethlehem. Christmas was predicted, and Christmas is a major turning point in the timeline of the plot of the Bible. Today, we seek the hidden truth of Christmas, concealed in the most unlikely of places – in a story about illicit sex and the God who pursues us. My aim is to place this power of Christmas within your reach.
There are three to four powerful metaphors throughout the Bible to describe our relationship with God. Often, God is seen as a great King who rules over us. At other times, He is a Shepherd, who guides us, His sheep. Still other times, He is a Father loving His children. But in a startling picture, Hosea tells us God is not only our Shepherd and our King, He is also our Husband. You’ll never understand God if you ONLY approach Him as your King, your Shepherd, or even your Father. While each of these biblical metaphors is important to understand the true nature of God… It’s not until you see Him as your Husband that you can understand how intimate and personal your relationship with God truly is.
Today’s Scripture
And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. 3 And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” 4 For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. 5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.” (Hosea 3:1–5)
Keep your Bibles open to Hosea as I’ll be asking you to turn to a few passages in the moments to come. All the Hebrew prophets, of course, predicted the coming of the Messiah. Of course, the Messiah would someday come at Christmas.
Sermon Preview
1) Your Relationship with God is a Marriage; 2) Your Relationship with God is a Really Bad Marriage; 3) and The Cost of Fixing Your Marriage
1. Your Relationship with God is a Marriage
And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods…” (Hosea 3:1).
The word “And” at the beginning of verse one gives you a clue that you’re stepping in “mid-stream” in the middle of an ongoing story. Hosea’s marriage is the backdrop to a larger story. Hosea’s marriage to his wife, Gomer, acts like a walking/talking parable.
God says in effect, “What you see in Hosea’s marriage to Gomer is what you’ll see in My (God’s) marriage to His people.” Now, this entire small book is dripping with passion. And throughout its pages, you’ll see God using the marriage between Hosea and Gomer as a picture of His marriage with His children. Now, we know very little about the prophet, Hosea. We are told his father’s name and only the briefest of details concerning his marriage and their children.
“When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord” (Hosea 1:2). Hosea did as he was commanded when he married Gomer.
1.1 Your Marriage is a PRIORITY
If you’re married, then your marriage comes before any other human relationship. Your spouse cannot be secondary. Your spouse comes before anyone else. Your wife, your husband, isn’t a vitamin supplement … neither is she/her an “add-on.” Husbands … never can your marriage be a moment where you say, “Oh, yea … I forgot I’m married.” God says, “I’m your husband. You have to understand our relationship as a marriage.” He’s trying to say, “I’m the ultimate priority.” My relationship with you must be the ultimate priority in your life.
1.2 Your Marriage Is Your Most INTIMATE Relationship
Marriage is the most intimate human relationship in a couple of ways. No one knows you like your husband or your wife. No one. So God says, “I want a relationship that is like a marriage,” what He is saying is this: “You can’t know Me from a distance. You cannot even know Me formally. I have to be in every nook and cranny of your life, every centimeter, every inch of your life. I must be here, there, & everywhere. There can’t be any part you hold back from Me.”
1.3 Your Marriage Has LIFE-CHANGING Power
Now, this really follows after the first two items – if your marriage is a priority and your marriage is the most intimate of all human relationships, then … … your marriage has life-changing power. If you were to say to me, “Scott, you are so incredibly patient.” But my wife and I both would say, “How I have fooled you!” Yet, you cannot fool your spouse. But if your spouse were to say, “You are so incredibly patient,” then these words are on a whole different level. Because of the radical intimate nature of your relationship, your spouse’s words have incredible power. If the whole world thinks you’re terrible, but your husband thinks you are great, then you feel great. Your spouse has that kind of power. God says in effect, “The most incredible moments, in the most incredible marriages in the history of the world, are just small hints of My love for you. If you grasp My delight in you and the kind of love I have for you, that will be the most life-changing powerful relationship in your life.”
1. Your Relationship with God is a Marriage
2. Your Relationship with God is a Really Bad Marriage
And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods…” (Hosea 3:1). God commands Hosea to marry a woman who is unfaithful. Specifically, He is to marry a prostitute. Not only is she unfaithful to Hosea, but she’s repeatedly unfaithful in the most obvious, in-your-face kind of ways. This is a really bad marriage. In Hosea 2:5, God calls Gomer (Hosea’s wife) a name we all recoil upon hearing. The Bible calls her a “whore,” or a prostitute, depending on your translation. It’s a name that I’m uncomfortable saying, and you’re uncomfortable hearing. This word appears fifteen times throughout Hosea, while the act of prostitution refers another twenty-three times. We need to pause and consider modern sensibilities toward women versus the patriarchal culture of the Bible.
Now, Webster’s Dictionary has named “feminism” the 2017 it's word of the year. In a day when the news is filled with men behaving badly & social media is replete with #metoo stories where woman are sharing their shameful stories of sexual exploitation… … the thought that Scripture could call a woman this horrible name is downright embarrassing for many.
2.1 God’s Embarrassment
But lest you “walkout” on the Bible, think of the embarrassment God is subjecting Himself to. When you see the person you love most in this life and place herself or himself into the arms of another lover… … only then can you understand the position God is in. God is saying, “Until you’ve been through the gut-wrenching experience of adultery, you can’t understand the impact of your wrongdoing and your coldness and toward me.” God does everything possible to turn His bride back toward Him. God gives His bride the “cold shoulder”: “Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone” (Hosea 4:17). When the “cold shoulder” treatment doesn’t work, God turns to “tough love”: “For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue” (Hosea 5:14). And when neither the “cold shoulder” nor “tough love” illicit the response He’s looking for, God turns to “tender” toward His bride: “Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14). Fix your mind on the embarrassment God has endured when His bride seeks the arms of another lover, another man. God has given His love to a partner who has a history. He’s done everything possible to win the affection of His people, alternating between the “cold shoulder” treatment. He then speaks “tender” compassion before even trying the “tough love” approach.
2.2 We Learn Something about Ourselves
If a King sees a citizen break one of His laws, the King becomes angry. If a Father sees His child break one of the rules, He disciplines her. And if a Shepherd sees a sheep stray, He runs after Him. But when a Husband sees His wife in the arms of another, we begin to sense just how wrong we are … how sinful we are. But not only do we learn something of ourselves, we also learn something of our Husband…
1. Your Relationship with God is a Marriage
2. Your Relationship with God is a Really Bad Marriage
3. The Cost of Fixing Your Marriage
Listen to how He speaks to His wife later in chapter 11: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8). This is an inside view … a window into the very heart of God. Witness the embarrassing love He has for us. God asks Himself, “How can I give you up? How can I turn you over?” Feel the power of the Husband’s emotions for His adulterous wife. He is overwhelmed by His love. While our actions are worthy of divorce, He cannot walk away from us. Such is the love of God… such is the love of our Husband.
Watch His love in action in Hosea 3:2: “So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley” (Hosea 3:2). So she’s up for sale in a public auction, and the bidding starts. It’s not too hard to imagine that she probably would have had her eyes closed because it’s all too much for her to take in. Closing her eyes, it’s about the only thing she had left to shield herself even a little bit from the moment of her greatest humiliation. In the midst of this auction where she’s being sold on the auction block, she hears a familiar voice. “Five shekels,” “Eight shekels,” and suddenly she realizes it’s the voice of her husband. Now a homer and a lethek of barley are nine bushels, which is another fifteen shekels, and so basically, she was bought for thirty shekels. Thirty shekels is how much it costs to buy a slave in Israel in those days. You gather from this image that Hosea has exhausted all His resources and is having to add to his meager sum of money with barley. Hosea has gone to great cost to purchase his wife back again. This is a picture of God as a Husband for His people. God is saying, “I have a million reasons to divorce you. I have paid a financial price, but I have also paid a heavy emotional price.”
Does Hosea’s Marriage Endure & Thrive? What does she do? We don’t know. Perhaps she thought to herself, “He bought me to exact his revenge against me.” The story about Hosea and Gomer ends right there. We want to know the ending, but we are left wanting. Was she transformed? Was she melted by his love? Did she get changed? Did she get back her dignity and her self-control, or did she laugh in his face?
Christmas
Embedded in our story is a prediction about Christmas: “Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days” (Hosea 3:5). At the time of Hosea, King David was dead and buried for over 200 years. So, it’s obvious the David that is coming isn’t King David; it’s a David to come. Hosea is picking up on God’s promise to David made around 300 years before. God said to King David: “When your days are fulfilled, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-13). We have seen this promise again and again over this series. This is the fundamental and foundational promise of Christmas. Look again at the language from chapter 1 where we hear the echo of God’s promise to Abraham (Genesis 12) and His covenant with David: “Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, “You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, “Children of the living God” (Hosea 1:10).
David does appear seven centuries after Hosea. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord”(Luke 2:10–11). In Jesus Christ, God entered the world. He entered the marketplace. He clothed us and covered our nakedness with His righteousness because on the cross, Jesus Christ died and paid the price to buy us away from our adultery. In Jesus Christ, God wants to be your Husband where love Him exclusively.
Prayer
