August 12, Hosea 3
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.” - Hosea 3:1
God commanded Hosea to do something that would not make sense to any of Hosea's peers who knew the situation of his broken marriage to Gomer. He told his prophet to take his adulteress wife back (again). She had already betrayed his love multiple times. But God wanted Hosea to take her back again as a demonstration of his great love for faithless, disobedient Israel. Hosea showed his trust in God and his love for Gomer by not only taking her back again, but by purchasing her for the price of a slave. Gomer had not only committed adultery; she sold herself into slavery. Still, Hosea paid to bring his faithless wife back home. But this time, Hosea told her that the nature of their relationship had changed. He would take her back into his house, but not any longer as his wife. He would care for her and provide for her, but they would not have an intimate relationship as husband and wife.
Hosea and Gomer were a living parable to show the Israelites a striking portrait of God’s great love for sinful people. We need to see this picture as much as they did. This amazing love of God takes struggling, failing sinners back again and again when they turn to him. This love is the heart and engine of redemption. It is the basis of our hope for a restored relationship with God.
Jesus came to die for us because "God so loved the world." Hosea's action further illustrates God's love in his willingness to redeem his loved one from slavery. As Paul said in Romans, we are slaves to sin when we obey sin instead of God. But Christ redeemed us from that ruined state. He paid with his own life and blood to free us from Satan's cruel bondage. I do not think it is a coincidence that Hosea redeemed Gomer for the same price that the Jewish leaders paid Judas when he betrayed Jesus into their hands. (Hosea paid with cash and produce that was equal to the remaining price of a slave.) Hosea’s peers would have scoffed at paying good money for a wife who repeatedly demonstrated her unworthiness. But Gomer was worth it to Hosea, and we are worth it to God.
Gomer's bondage reminds us of how sin enslaves. Our motive for disobedience and unfaithfulness to God might be the pursuit of pleasure, a search for significance, or a demonstration of our "freedom." But the truth is that the pleasure of disobedience is short-lived and its consequences are bitter. We cannot find lasting satisfaction or genuine significance in any relationship that we put before our relationship with God. One of the darkest deceptions of sin is its promise to free us, when it really enslaves us.
Hosea took Gomer back into his house as his, but said he would never be with her again as his wife. God used that situation to foreshadow and describe what Israel's relationship to him would be in the years that would pass before Messiah came. They would continue to exist as a people; they would still belong to him. But now the relationship would be master and slave, not husband and wife. The special privileges of the covenant relationship were over. Their monarchy would never return. Their priesthood would be nothing more than a powerless relic of the past, and their idol pillars would not return. They could not inquire of God or the multiple idols they had served in their shameful past. They had no means of sacrifice and no source of legitimate revelation. Their name would still be Israel, but they were devoid of all the old nation’s privileges and power. They loved the raisin cakes they paid the idol temple prostitutes more than they loved God. And it cost them everything.
God also gave them a ray of hope for the future when he told them their descendants would seek and return to God during the times of Messiah. That promise was bookended with “afterward” and "in the latter days." Individual Jews would be among those who came to God through Christ. Saved by his grace, they would be in awe of the LORD and his goodness to them in those days.
This chapter is very short, but very important. It once again displays the wonder of God's love. It tells us what Israel's status before God would be in the period between the testaments and ever since the nation rejected Jesus as the Christ. And it describes the awe that we should have in our hearts for the majesty of our Lord and how good he has been to us.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—August 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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