A June Wedding:
Marriage for the Right Reasons
Hosea 1:1-11
Why do people get married? A report in the British journal Health 24 lists the top six reasons people give for getting married:
6. It’s the right time. You have a solid and secure relationship and it feels like the logical next step.
5. To celebrate. Wanting family and friends to share in your happiness as a couple.
4. To start a family. The biological clock is ticking, and you want children.
3. It’s part of the culture. Marriage is what your religion believes in, or your culture accepts. It is a part of your core values.
2. To make a commitment. You’ve decided that you want to be together forever, knowing each other’s faults and failings.
1. You’re in love.
Ah! Love. That’s what marriage is all about isn’t it? But do we really understand what love in the sense of God-ordained love is in the context of marriage that makes love the right reason to get married? Sometimes I wonder.
What is this thing called love that motivates us to marry? The answer depends upon who you talk to. If we take the philosophy of the 70’s from the movie Love Story, love is “never having to say you’re sorry.” Another philosophy is that love is forever. Some would say love is something physical, others say it is something cognitive, some say it is both physical and cognitive. We use love to express emotions, feelings, and infatuation. We use the term, especially in the English language, so loosely, that we have lost its biblical meaning, the meaning that it is supposed to carry in marriage.
I want to carry us back to the Old Testament this morning for our June wedding. It is a picture of a wedding that by all our standards should never have happened. It was doomed from the beginning, and every pastor worth his/her weight in advice would have told the groom not to do it. The marriage? That of a man named Hosea to a woman named Gomer. The circumstances? Hosea was a preacher and Gomer was a prostitute. Yes, Hosea married a prostitute. What a scandal in the parsonage that must have created! Gossip in the community raged. Respect for this prophet of God dropped to zero—worse than when Jim Bakker was found to have had a relationship with a secretary. Can you hear the gossip now? “Did you hear the latest? Gomer got married. “You mean Gomer, the temple prostitute got married?” “Yep! Got herself a preacher. Can you believe it?” All we can say is that Hosea must have been some kind of a nut.
Actually, Hosea must have been one of the most patient, tender and loving of all the ancient prophets. His marriage became an opportunity to exhibit the great characteristics of obedience and faithfulness. Well, if that is true, then why in the world would Hosea marry this woman? Because God told him to! Listen:
Hosea 1:1-2
[1] The Lord gave these messages to Hosea son of Beeri during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel.
[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."
Hosea obeyed God and married Gomer, and just like God said, Gomer had children that were not Hosea’s. She had three that we know of—Jezreel, so named for a battle the nation of Israel lost at the Valley of Jezreel; Lo-Ruhamah, meaning “not loved”; and Lo-ammi, meaning “not my people”. Great names for children, don’t you think? But Hosea took them and raised them. I wonder how many times Hosea must have bit his tongue until it bled as the scorn of the community swirled around him. But he stayed married because he loved her. No, not with the love that was rooted in emotion. I’m certain Hosea was angry, and hurt, and confused with all that happened. No this love was not rooted in emotion. It was rooted in something much deeper.
Gomer kept up her wandering ways, too. She left Hosea and returned to her prostitution. This time, though, she finds herself tainted goods even on the prostitution circuit. Perhaps she is an older woman in a young woman’s world. After three children, her beauty is not what it once was. The years of adultery have left her less than desirable, and the fact that she is married to a prophet only exacerbates the situation. Gomer ends up on the auction block as a slave. And what does Hosea do? He goes down to the slave market and buys her back for the paltry sum of $12.50. Stretch out your imagination and try to picture the love it took for Hosea to carry out God’s instructions.
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."
Why would God call Hosea to such ridicule and scorn? One reason: God wanted the marriage of Hosea and Gomer to serve as a living object lesson for a nation that had drifted away from God. Hosea’s marriage was a model of love—God’s love. It was a marriage for the right reasons, even though the world said otherwise.
That’s what marriage is supposed to be—a model of love to a love-less world. But not love in the sense that we so often use the word. Love in the sense that God loves us, and our marriages are to illustrate to the world how much God loves us. I am reminded of Paul’s words to the Ephesian Christians:
Ephes. 5:25-32
And you husbands must love your wives with the same love Christ showed the church. He gave up his life for her [26] to make her holy and clean, washed by baptism and God’s word. [27] He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. [28] In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man is actually loving himself when he loves his wife. [29] No one hates his own body but lovingly cares for it, just as Christ cares for his body, which is the church. [30] And we are his body.
[31] As the Scriptures say, "A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one." [32] This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.
Paul says marriage is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one. What is an illustration but a picture? Every time a husband and wife stand before the altar and the congregation to pledge their undying love, they are painting a picture of the way Christ loves his church. They are painting a picture of love, but it is not a picture of the emotional kind of love we so connect with weddings. It is much more the cognitive kind that is rooted not in the seat of the emotions but in the mind. What am I talking about?
There are at least 16 verbs in the Greek language that express the idea of love. I’ve told you this before, but let me refresh you’re memory. There are basically three that were in wide used in the first century. The first kind of love is phileo. Phileo is brotherly love. The kind of love that is rooted in kindly affection toward a sibling or friend, or the kind of love we express toward society in general because we are basically good people. Then there is eros. This is the type of love that is rooted in passionate desire. It is purely physical attraction, and certainly there is much of this that is present, especially in the early days of marriage, but a marriage that is built on eros is one that is eventually doomed to failure. No, it is this third type of love, agape that is the right kind of love. It is this love that is the love of God that is to be embodied in marriage. It is this type of love that we pledge in our wedding vows.
Agape love is love that is unconditional, rooted not in the emotion or in passion, but in the will. This love is a choice, and it is the love with which God loves us. He chose to love us, and in his great choice, chose to die for our sins. He gave himself for us, and that is what we are called to do in marriage, give ourselves in a self-sacrificial way. Unfortunately, too many marriages never make it to the agape phase. What begins in passion often ends in defeat because one or the other, or both, fail to understand the type of love they are pledged to uphold. Too many marriages end in divorce, and divorce paints a picture, too. It is a picture that communicates that God’s love is not enduring or endearing, and that is a picture that is all too often being painted in our world today. Is it any wonder we have such a dim view of God’s love. Don’t get all bent out of shape on me now. I’m not casting dispersion upon anyone who is divorced. I am telling you now, however, to realize what marriage ultimately is—a model of God’s love for the world. Start now to show the world through your marriage, how much God loves.
It was God’s agape love that Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:
[4] Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud [5] or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. [6] It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. [7] Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
[8] Love will last forever,…
That is the love that would move Hosea to marry Gomer, and to redeem her from the auction block. It is the love that would move Christ out of his heavenly place to redeem us in our sin, and it is the love God calls us to show to others, and it is modeled in our marriages.
