The preacher and the prostitute
(Part 1 of a series of 3)
Hosea 1:1-11
We live in a world where images are important. As every school teacher will tell you, if you can combine a visual aid with your own words, you will get your message across to the children much better. It is just the same for adults. We respond to images. We respond to visual aids. And if you can combine a visual aid with sex, then you’re on to a surefire winner. Because there is no doubt that sex sells. Whether it’s the moderately sanitised version used by ‘The Sun’ on page three, or the more extreme stories told in ‘The News of the World’, it certainly grabs people’s attention.
The man presenting the visual aid - the prophet
And that is just where our study of the book of Hosea begins. It begins not with the story of the actress and the Bishop, but a very real visual aid about the prophet and the prostitute. Hosea, the man after whom this book is named, was a prophet. He lived in the northern part Israel in about the eighth century BC. The role of a prophet is to bring God’s word to any situation to any people. And that word or message can take all sorts of different forms. That message can be words spoken by a prophet standing on a street corner. But it can also be the visual aid that the prophet uses to illustrate God’s message. It can speak about the present just as much as looking forward to the future. It can reflect on the past just as much is it can speak to the here and now. And Hosea’s job was to bring the word of God, the message of God to the people of Israel and Judah living about two thousand eight hundred years ago. So the man presenting the visual aid is Hosea.
The shocking visual aid
Now the way that Hosea was to bring God’s word into that situation was by means of a very direct visual aid. He was told to go and get married. Perhaps that in itself was not too bad. However, what he was told to do was to go and marry a prostitute. I am a great believer in visual aids. I once took a chainsaw into church to try and get a message across. But Hosea’s visual aid is of a completely different nature. He was told to marry a prostitute. What on earth is this all about? Well, just try to imagine the situation. To avoid embarrassment, imagine that I am Hosea. And imagine that one day, I came into church and introduced to you my new wife. Imagine that she was quite obviously a prostitute, a streetwalker, a hooker. Indeed quite probably a prostitute that you knew. You would be shocked, you would be appalled, you would be offended. All of a sudden, the issues of the sex industry, the issues of sexual abuse, the issues of prostitution would no longer be at a safe distance from you, but would be right in your face. You would be forced to take notice. Your attention would have been grabbed.
And that it is what Hosea was commanded to do. V2. He was commanded to marry a prostitute to grab his nation’s attention. He was commanded to marry a streetwalker to bring God’s message to his people. He was commanded to marry a hooker because that was the way that God needed to speak to his wayward people.
Now let’s go back to your imagination again. Imagine that my new wife, the prostitute, has children. And imagine the first one as red hair, the second one has dark skin and curly hair, and the third one is a beautiful coffee colour. And imagine what you would think. Imagine the gossip. Imagine the conversations around the town. You would be shocked. Every day, the promiscuous actions of the prostitute would be right in your face. You would be forced to take notice.
And that’s just the situation of Hosea. Not only was he commanded to marry a prostitute to grab his nation’s attention, not only was he commanded to marry a prostitute as a very direct visual aid to God’s people, but the visual aid was reinforced time and again, with children resulting from the promiscuously and with names which were highly provocative.
The message of the visual aid
So what was this all about? Was it just a quick stunt to grab the people’s attention? No, it was no quick stunt. But it was a very direct reflection of the situation. It was a very direct illustration of the situation. For God was saying through this image, through this visual aid, that his people had prostituted themselves. V2. The GNB is very weak here. The Jerusalem Bible has it ‘Go, marry a whore, and get children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning Yahweh (the Lord).’ And this message is reiterated time and again. Ch2:13 – ‘she went after her lovers and forgot me.’
A number of my friends have teenage children. It is in the nature of teenagers to push the boundaries, to rebel, to tell their parents that they hate them, and think they know better than their parents. It is in the nature of teenage children to imagine themselves independent, to treat the family home as a hotel, and generally give their parents cause for worry. Sometimes, parents are forced to have very strong words with their children, and there is no amount of heartache. And although teenage years can be a very trying and difficult time for parents, we know that for the greater part, our teenagers turn into wonderful young adults.
But imagine the situation where your teenagers wilfully ignore everything you say. Wilfully ignore your love. Wilfully and deliberately to everything that they know you would not like. Wilfully become prostitutes. Wilfully seek a path that can only lead to total destruction.
You may then begin to have some idea of how God felt. You may then begin to have some idea of God’s broken heart. You may then begin to have some idea of how desperate God felt. You may then begin to have some idea of the desperate measures that God was prepared to take to get his message across. You may then begin to have a glimpse of the depth of Gods feeling that caused him to call Hosea to marry a prostitute. This is the message, this is the visual aid that Hosea brought to the people and to the nation.
The situation that required the visual aid.
So what was the situation that caused God to act in such a dramatic way? What was the situation that caused God to call his people prostitutes? What was the situation that made God feel so desperate?
Corrupted covenant
One of the key concepts in understanding the relationship between the Jewish nation and God is the idea of the covenant, and the covenant relationship. Over the centuries of God’s dealings with his people, he had made various covenants or agreements with them. This goes right back to the time of Abraham, who was the founder of the Jewish nation. And there are several words that are repeated in these covenants or agreements over God’s dealings with his people. One of them is that the covenant will be everlasting. In other words it is not to be broken. And then there is the whole idea that it is about a relationship between God and his people. So the idea of covenant is very important.
The idea of the covenant is clearly demonstrated in a marriage. There is a covenant relationship between husband and wife. There is a covenant relationship of faithfulness between husband and wife. But what we see here it is that the covenant relationship has become corrupted. In Jer 32:38, God says ‘ they will be my people and I will be their God’. But v8 makes it very clear impression of how broken down the covenant has become, for Hosea’s son is to be called ’not my people’. And in other place is the biblical covenant relationship is referred to in words like a marriage. And we see however that one party to the relationship is unfaithful, blatantly unfaithful, and blatantly promiscuous. So the whole idea of the covenant relationship with God has become corrupted by the unfaithfulness of his people.
Corrupted relationship
Now, this covenant relationship with God between the Jewish nation and God was not a distant thing. To use the analogy of marriage, it wasn’t an arranged marriage where is the parties had no relationship. It wasn’t a marriage of convenience. It wasn’t like a treaty between nations. It wasn’t a legal thing and observed at a distance. But it was a covenant about a personal relationship. It was an agreement about the way that God would relate to his people in a very personal way. Relationships are crucial to life. And where it when relationships go sour we feel it intensely. When relationships become corrupted, we feel it enormously. When our relationships with our teenage children become strained we feel it deeply. And this is what had happened here with the people of Israel. For not only had their covenant become neglected and corrupted, but their relationship with God had become corrupted. We see this in chapter 2. In v5, God’s people are described as if they were a promiscuous woman going after lovers. In v13 ‘ she forgot me says the Lord’. And this idea keeps coming back through Hosea’s message. In 6:5 the love of God’s people to him is described as morning dew that simply evaporates. So the whole idea of this personal relationship with God has become corrupted by the promiscuousness of his people.
Corrupted worship
Hand in hand with the corruption of their covenant relationship and of their personal relationship with God has come the corruption of their worship. All sorts of dubious practices had begun to creep into the nation’s worship. The worship of the local gods had become mixed up with and replaced the worship of God himself. In chapter 2:5 there is the idea of the worship of fertility gods. In chapter 4:12-13, 8:6, we can see that the people are worshipping idols, and making their sacrifices in the ancient places on the tops of the hills, and under the trees. The use of all of these places for worship was forbidden by God. The worship of the nation had become corrupted
Corrupted clergy
When society is on the rocks, one might reasonably expect that the spiritual leaders of the nation would have something to say about the situation. Despite what many politicians would say, we do need clergy and spiritual leaders to speak out into political and national situations. But this was not the case in the situation that Hosea was speaking to. For the clergy had become corrupted as well. We see this quite clearly in chapters 4 and 5. In 5:1 and 4:9, Hosea makes it clear that the judgement of the nation applies equally to the priests. ‘It shall be like people, like priest’, he says. The clergy have been more concerned about their pay and their perks, than they were about their preaching. The priests were doing very nicely from the corrupted worship. The priests were benefiting from the corrupted offerings. The priests were taking their share of the idolatrous sacrifices.
However, not only were the clergy corrupt, they were outstandingly negligent. For their failure to teach the people was a fundamental contributor to the decay in the nation. We see this message repeated that ’there is no knowledge of God in the land’ ch4:1. ‘My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge’ 4:6. The failure of the clergy to teach the people, the failure of the clergy to develop the knowledge of God among the people meant that the people had no knowledge of God and no foundation for faith.
Corrupted living
The final result of this corrupted covenant, the corrupted relationships, the corrupted worship, the corrupted clergy, was that life was corrupted. The nation suffered from corrupted living. The life of the nation was corrupted.
All the sins in the book are listed. In ch4:1-3, we read that ‘there is no kindness or faithfulness, there is swearing, lying killing, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds and murder follows murder.’ In 4:14, we see sexual immorality. We see intrigue and scheming, we see plotting and violence. We have a picture with no punches pulled which shows a nation whose living has become totally corrupted.
So this is the corrupted situation which caused God to act in such a dramatic way. This is the corrupted situation which made God feel so desperate. This is the corrupted situation into which God sent Hosea to marry his prostitute. This is the corrupted situation into which God sent to his living visual aid.
The visual aid applied
As a teenager, history was a dull subject. As an adult, I love history, and I find it very much informs my understanding of the present-day. The lessons of history often repeat themselves. As it is often said, history has to repeat itself, because nobody is listening.
We just had a history lesson from three thousand years ago. The question is now just how does that lesson apply today? What are the lessons from history that need repeating to our nation, to our situation in 2005.
To our nation
It is important initially, to sound a warning. For the words of Hosea were to a nation which was at the same time the people of God. So we cannot say that there is a direct comparison between the nation to which Hosea was speaking at the nation in which we live. For God has not made that covenant agreement with our nation that he had with the Jewish people.
That said, as a nation, we do have a tremendous spiritual heritage, in which God has had an important place in our nation and our society. Even now, in our post Christian society, approximately three quarters of the population describe themselves as Christian. But that heritage has become corrupted. We leave in a situation where people do not know and understand their Christian heritage. So that part of our heritage has become corrupted.
But even if we cannot claim a covenant relationship with God, our Christian heritage has emphasised the importance and availability of a personal relationship with God. But that too has become corrupted. In a nation which almost defines itself by its consumption and consumerism, our society’s relationship with God has become something that we consume. God is a relationship that we use or abuse when we wish, when it suits us, when we need it. Our society thinks about a relationship with God as one in which we dictate the terms. So our nations personal relationships with God have become corrupted.
We live in a world where worship has become corrupted. Our society and nation worships its prosperity, its possessions, itself. Or else it pursues alternative spirituality, reviving old religions, and inventing new ones. It mixes them all up to give a warm cosy comforting spirituality. Our nation talks about Mother Nature, but ignores the father creator. Our nation has a worship which has become corrupted.
But we also have a nation in which our church and our clergy and our spiritual leaders have become corrupted. They have failed to see the signs of the times and speak against them. They have become infected by the liberalism of our society. They have failed to teach the people, both in and out of the church. Our church our spiritual leaders have become corrupted.
And our people are corrupted. Their lives are a mess of conflicted values, unreasonable expectations, selfishness and sadness. We live in a society where people have everything and frequently nothing. We live in a society where, as Hosea said, ’there is no kindness or faithfulness… there is swearing lying killing stealing and committing adultery.’ We live in a society where there are no real boundaries. We live in a society where the solution to binge drinking is to put more policeman on the street rather than stop the drinking. We live in a society where the solution to problems of sexual health is more clinics rather than moral education. We live in a society where we ignore the problems of family breakdown in case we should have to make moral judgements about people’s lifestyles and responsibilities and relationships. We live in a society where it’s living has become corrupted.
Of course, it is relatively easy to talk about the problems of the nation. In a comfortable place like Clitheroe, things don’t seem so bad. And even when we talk about Hosea’s visual aid, and the realities of adultery and prostitution, these things are not so bad because what that they describe is at a safe distance from us. But how would you respond if the issue came closer to home. That, you see, is the issue that faces God. And I’m afraid that in this case, none of us can look on from a safe distance, tut-tutting with self-righteous indignation at what other people get up to, and lapping up every sordid detail.
Because what is happening in the nation has an impact on me. On you. We too can be corrupted. Every one of us is implicated. Because we are God’s people. As Christians, we have the new covenant relationship with God. We have a personal relationship with God.
So as God’s people, how has our covenant relationship with God become corrupted? The church is described as the bride of Christ. I wonder to what extent God’s people, the church, us, are unfaithful to our marriage vows, to our covenant relationship with God? To what extent have we, God’s people, prostituted ourselves? Now, the covenant relationship and the marriage relationship are about exclusive relationship. But I think that relationship for God’s people today it is not exclusive. Whilst we do not want to be legalistic, nevertheless, the more sporadic attendance of Christian people at church on Sunday is an indication of the lack of exclusivity in their relationship with God. God does not have the priority in many Christian’s lives that he should.
And for Christian people, our personal relationships with God have become corrupted. The balance seems to be all wrong. It is a very egocentric relationship with God. It is a relationship with God that depends on him coming to me. It is a relationship with God then only operates when I want it to.
And for Christian people our worship has become corrupted. We talk about worship in terms of what I can get out of it. We talk about worship selfishly, in terms of what I like. We are in danger of becoming so relevant to the world around us that we are no different from it, and God soon becomes absent.
And for Christian people, our clergy have become corrupted. They have become corrupted with the spirit of the age. They become concerned with advancement and status rather than service. They become concerned with being liked rather than speaking God’s word. And to our clergy face a great responsibility for the lack of knowledge and teaching of the faith.
But for us as Christian people, we cannot sit back and blame the clergy. We too have a responsibility. We talk about the priesthood of all believers, and all of us have a responsibility to speak God’s word. And most of us have not done so. We have not challenged the nation’s leaders as we should have done. We have not spoken out against the liberalism that is engulfing our society. We avoid difficult issues to avoid criticism.
And all of us suffer from corrupted living. Our way of life and our lifestyle has become compromised with the spirit of the age. We live materialistic lives and consume more than we need. Our living is corrupted.
I wonder how God feels about us? I wonder how God feels about his people and this nation? I wonder how God feels about a relationship like ours which is on the rocks?
I am sure that his feelings now are no different from his feelings three thousand years ago when Hosea spoke God’s words to different nation.
The question is, for me as an individual, for us as God’s people, and for our nation, what will he have to do to get our attention this time?
Part 1 of a series
The preacher and the prostitute Hosea 1:1-11
God must be crazy Hosea 11:1-9
The hard way home Hosea 14:1-9
