It seemed like a life time ago and when he thought about it it was a different life. She had been so beautiful on their wedding day. She was a radiant young bride and he was an aspiring man of God. They had their entire lives ahead of them and they had such great dreams and hopes for their marriage.
But the fairytale marriage soon turned into a horror story and the dream became a nightmare. It wasn’t long into their marriage that she took her first lover, the result was a son. That affair was followed by another and another. And the first son was followed by a daughter and then another son. It truly was a slippery slope that she was playing on and finally she just left him. Well you know how news travels especially bad news. He began to hear how she was seen on street corners and on the rougher side of town. It didn’t take too long for the entire community to know that the preachers wife was now a prostitute. How could it have possibly happened. What would you have done? Good question right? But what would you have done?
Probably not what this young preacher did. He went and found her pimp and paid him to release her, he bought her back.
That’s quite a story preacher, how’d you think that one up. I read it, in the bible, honest. The prophet Hosea tells his own story in the first three chapters of the book that bears his name and then he uses that true but heartbreaking story to illustrate the love that God has for his people, a people who had left their God and committed spiritual adultery by worshipping and following other Gods. As one commentator so aptly put it, “What we see in Hosea are the first few swirls as the kingdom of Israel goes down the drain.”
The book of Hosea is the 28th book of the bible and was written by. . . you guessed it Hosea, who was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. The book was written around 715 BC around the time the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria.
Why was it written? The Reason it was written was to show Israel’s unfaithfulness and God’s grace.
As Hosea’s ultimate love for Gomer illustrates God’s love for Israel we see in the final analysis God’s love for the world through Jesus Christ. And so the book of Hosea begins as he documents his personal grief and tragedy. An unfaithful wife who gives him three children, each the result of an adulterous affair. The same wife who leaves him and eventually becomes a prostitute. It chronicles Hosea’s redemption of Gomer and his forgiveness of her. It then show’s this as a lesson for Israel but finally reveals the truth of Jesus Christ’s salvation for each one of us.
Hosea 1:2 When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so some of her children will be born to you from other men. This will illustrate the way my people have been untrue to me, openly committing adultery against the Lord by worshiping other gods.”
1) Gomer Was Chosen
Now I don’t know about you, but my first question is why did God tell Hosea to marry a prostitute, wouldn’t seem to me to be the ideal requirement for the wife of a prophet. Well I don’t think that is what God told Hosea. I think that what God said was “Marry Gomer” plain and simple. In twenty twenty hind sight, Hosea sees God telling him to marry this woman who became a harlot.
Gomer was special because she had been chosen to be Hosea’s wife. Even though she was to commit adultery and leave her husband’s house to become a prostitute she was special because God had the vision and foresight to see beyond what she was and to see what she could become.
In that very same thought I believe that every person on this earth has been chosen to become a child of God. Every man, woman and child who walks talks and breathes has been hand-picked by God to become a Christian. I believe that today. I believe that Saddam Hussein , Charles Manson, and Osama Bin Laden have been chosen to be sons of God. And hold onto your seats because I even believe that Paul Martin has been chosen to be a son of God.
Now you may believe that or you may not believe that. But I believe that man is God’s masterpiece and that God has chosen man to illustrate his glory, his graciousness and his grace. Now after saying that let me say this, we have all been chosen but we all have the option of accepting or rejecting the call of God on our lives. He has reached out to us but we have to accept the grace that he offers. To put it in the vernacular the ball is our court.
2) Gomer Wasn’t What She Ought To Have Been. I might be a dreamer but I don’t think that Hosea knew what he was in for when he said “I do”. Uh-huh if you had of asked Hosea what his dream of a perfect wife was he would have said, “oh about this high, short light hair, bluish green eyes, not very big. And what characteristics are you looking for Hosea, what personality traits?
Now I don’t want to be putting words in Hosea’s mouth but I would suspect that he would have said, “kind, compassionate, understanding, trustworthy, loyal, faithful.” I doubt that he would have said, “you know I am looking for someone I can’t trust, someone who will sleep around on me, cheat lie, and manipulate me.”
Gomer started out as the perfect bride, and she came to a place in her life where she could remain a loyal trusted wife or she could take another route, and she choose to take the other path.
Mankind made the same choice thousands of years ago. God created Adam and eve and gave them the ability to make decisions and make their own choices. Then God took his perfect creation and placed them into a perfect world. And then God gave his perfect creation total control over the world in which they lived, and the opportunity to do whatever they wanted expect one thing. Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You can look at it, you can smell it, you can touch it, you can even cut it down but you can’t eat it.
Well you know the rest of the story don’t you? That’s right fruit salad for lunch. And each one of us is born with that very same attitude. The theologians call it original sin, or in born sin. But when it comes right down to the wire it simply means that we prefer to serve ourselves rather then to serve God.
Romans 3:23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God’s glorious standard.
Every person in this room, in this town, in this province in this country and in the world is a sinner. You say “That’s not fair pastor you don’t even know me.” true enough, but I know people and I know the word of God which says in Romans 3:10 As the Scriptures say, “No one is good— not even one.
But preacher I don’t smoke, lie, cheat, steal, drink or gossip. That’s great because that makes you a really wonderful person, but a really wonderful person who is on the way to hell. Until you turn your life over to Jesus then you are guilty of the greatest sins of them all and that is the sin of spiritual adultery.
Too often we get into legalistic definitions of sin, this is a sin, but this isn’t a sin , or this isn’t a sin up to this point and then when you cross over the line then it becomes sin. The essence of sin is missing the mark, not being everything that God would have us to be.
The greatest idol in the world is sitting in front of me in these chairs right now. You see I don’t know about you but I do know that I don’t have to worry about Denn worshipping the devil, and I don’t have to worry about Denn worshipping Buddha or Baal, but sometimes I catch Denn knelling at the altar of Denn. You say “that’s terrible” maybe but that’s where it’s at. And I’m sure that if each of you was completely honest, then you’d have to admit to being caught more then once at the shrine of self.
Gomer may very well have been stepping out on Hosea with different lovers, but truth be told, I fear that we are all guilty of stepping out on God and all too often the lover is ourselves. You don’t have to be a drunk to be a sinner, you don’t have to be a thief to be a sinner, you don’t have to be a homosexual to be a sinner or an adulterer or a murderer or an abortionist, or an atheist to be a sinner. Gomer was a sinner but her sin was just a little more blatant then our sins.
Romans 3:23 Says For all have sinned, not for Gomer had sinned, or Judas had sinned or Hitler had sinned or Ted Bundy had sinned but for all have sinned. Each and everyone of us, every person is a sinner and according to the word of God that means that we fall short of the glory of God. We all need to realise that like Gomer we are not what we ought to be.
Leviticus 20:10 “If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the man and the woman must be put to death.
3) Gomer Didn’t Get What She Ought To Have Got.
Now that is pretty straight forward isn’t it, ain’t no hedging, or sidestepping there. Thus saith the lord, “he who messeth around shalt be wasted.” according to Jewish law that was the punishment for adultery, death. And Leviticus isn’t the only place that it is mentioned.
Deuteronomy 22:22 “If a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the other man’s wife must be killed. In this way, the evil will be cleansed from Israel.
Boy that would solve a lot of problems wouldn’t it? And think of what would happen to the unemployment rate with all those jobs out there opening up all of a sudden.
Under the mosaic law, the law that God gave to Moses to give to Israel. The law under which Gomer lived, the law by which Gomer knew she was governed by Gomer deserved to die, period. It wasn’t open to debate and it wasn’t open to appeal. Hosea could have demanded and received the maximum penalty for Gomer’s sin. And that was her death and the death of her lovers, and he would have been justified. Why because Gomer knew the rules and she must have known the reality of Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death . . .
And when you get right down to it that statement is just as simple and just as straight forward as Leviticus 20:10 and the penalty is just as severe. If the Old Testament response to adultery was physical death, the New Testament response to sin or spiritual adultery is spiritual death. Or separation from God. And that separation happens in a very real place called Hell.
The penalty for sin goes clear back to Genesis 2:16-17 But the Lord God gave him this warning: “You may freely eat any fruit in the garden except fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of its fruit, you will surely die.”
From that point through history man has been aware of the consequences of his actions, and he has sought to justify himself ever since. And so like Gomer what we oughta get and what we get are two different things.
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Do you remember the basic theological definition of the difference between justice, mercy and grace? Justice is getting what we deserve, mercy is getting less then what we deserve, grace is getting what we don’t deserve. A lot of time we hear people say may God have mercy on you, or may God have mercy on me. But mercy isn’t really what they are looking for.
Justice for Gomer would have been death. Mercy for Gomer would have been being left alone, being allowed to carry on doing what she was doing. Grace for Gomer was Hosea picking her up, wiping away her tears and carrying her back home.
Justice for us, or getting what we deserve would be hell. Mercy would be getting less then what we deserve, period. It may not be hell but it wouldn’t be heaven it would just be nothing, annihilation. But grace for us is redemption.
Let’s not make the mistake of asking for justice, justice is the last thing we want.
Hosea 3:1 Then the Lord said to me, “Go and get your wife again. Bring her back to you and love her, even though she loves adultery. For the Lord still loves Israel even though the people have turned to other gods, offering them choice gifts.”
4) Gomer Got What She Oughtn’t Have Got. Or very simply she got what she didn’t deserve.
John 3:16 “ For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
The key word in both scriptures is love. Without love Hosea would have ignored God’s command to take Gomer back and without love Jesus would have remained in heaven. You do things out of love that would never get done out of pity, or out of fear or out of obligation. Think about for a just a second, put yourself into Hosea spot. What would possibly motivate a man to take back a wife who had done those things, vows, uh-huh, religious obligation, not a chance there had to have been one pile of love.
Hosea 3:2 So I bought her back for fifteen pieces of silver and about five bushels of barley and a measure of wine.
And you thought that metric was tough to understand. That’s about a hundred and seventy two grams of silver and 330 litres of barley. You see Hosea wasn’t content to simply take his wife back. Instead he purchased her, removing all doubt as to his redemption of her.
1 Corinthians 6:20 says of us for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body.
Jesus wasn’t content to simply take you back, instead he paid the price to redeem us to remove all doubt as to his lordship.
I’ve mentioned before that I love bumper stickers. My favourite is “I May Be Fat But You’re Ugly And I Can Diet.” but I also enjoy, “Ex-Wife In Trunk” and “Give me ambiguity or give me something else.” but I saw one that summed up the philosophy of the world it said and I quote, “I Don’t Care Who’s On Board, What You Love, Or What You’d Drather Be Doing.”
Now doesn’t that sum up the entire temperament of the world, a philosophy that says “I don’t care”.
I had a friend in high school, honest, and he used to say, “there has not been a machine made to register my indifference to your problem.” once when I was pouring out my heart to Robert he handed me ten cents and before walking away told me “Denn, call somebody who cares.”
Well two years later I found someone who cared and it didn’t cost me a cent. You see the truth of the matter is that in 2004 the world doesn’t care, not one little bit. Just as Gomer’s lover had no real concern for her, the world has no lasting concern for us. They don’t care
But when Jesus Christ hung on a cross at Golgotha two thousand years ago he wrote in blazing letters across the heavens, “I care” and that is an eternal truth, Jesus does care about you. He cares enough about you and loves you enough that he died on a cross in your place so you wouldn’t have to go to hell.
I hope you realise that if Gomer hadn’t wanted to go home, Hosea wouldn’t have carried her back kicking and screaming. Hosea paid for her but the final decision was hers and hers alone. It’s the same today Jesus won’t force you to accept him as Lord and Saviour. He has paid the price but in the end the final decision will be yours and yours alone.
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