Sermon Transcript
Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal, for I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the creeping things of the ground.
And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice. Justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.
And in that day I will answer, declares the Lord, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel, and I will sow for her myself in the land. And I will have mercy on no mercy. And I will say to not my people, you are my people, and he shall say, you are my God. 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. So I bought for her 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a lathim.
A small disclaimer before we get started. If you couldn’t tell by our Scripture reading, I would say this sermon is rated PG-13. And so, if you have a kid that you don’t want to hear PG-13 material, That’s up to you. If it were my kids who are already gone with Miss Alba, my 10-year-old I would say probably not, my 12-year-old I’d say yeah, go for it. You’ve been warned, you have about 5 minutes to decide.
Well, a few years ago there was an atheist blogger who posted what was intended to poke at the Christian Christian claim that humans can have a personal relationship with God. The blogger tweeted, that was back when we called it tweeting. I don’t know what we call it now. Apparently, we need a new name because Twitter doesn’t exist, but we’ll say the blogger posted and said something like, Christianity is the belief that one God created a universe 13 billion years old, 93 billion light-years in diameter with over 200 billion galaxies each containing 200 billion stars, and he did all of that only to have a personal relationship with you. The intention, of course, is to make it look silly that a God as big as that would pay any attention to us with us being so comparatively small.
Well, that post got picked up in kind of Christian social media circles and it got shared and it got reshared. It went semi-viral actually because it’s precisely what Christians find so amazing about God, that a God with that vast amount of power and resources and ability would not only notice us but love us, like be in our corner. Because, I mean, if you can believe that a God like that is for you, then it eliminates every worry. It’s a security that cannot be shaken. So Christians are thrilled that a God so big could be so personal to us.
So Christians replied to the atheist post things like, thanks for the reminder, needed to hear that to boost my faith today, or, with a God that big, whom shall I fear? We love the idea God is so big and yet so personal. We’re beginning a new series today that will take us all the way to Christmas We’re studying what are referred to as the Minor Prophets. Minor doesn’t mean unimportant, it only means short in length compared to other prophets who wrote much more than the minor ones did. Sometimes the Minor Prophets are called the 12 because it’s a collection of 12 shorter books in the Old Testament.
And while the 12 were written over a long period of time to different audiences addressing addressing different issues, and they overlap with other prophets who wrote much more. One common thread through all of them is that God is deeply involved with the affairs of our tiny planet and our tiny lives. God speaks through these 12 prophets in a way that indicates we are special to Him. As small as we are on a cosmic scale, We matter to him. What we do with our lives is of great concern to him.
So we start today with the first of the 12, Hosea. And Hosea’s focus, his primary focus at least, is the special love that God has for us. God has bound himself to us. He even aches for us. He longs for us, which means not only does he desire a personal relationship with us as it the blogger mocked, God desires a relationship with incredible depth and intimacy, and that’s Hosea’s focus.
Now if you’re someone who likes to read prophets because you want to hear all about wrath, you want to see hellfire and brimstone, you know, if that’s your jam, don’t worry, okay? We’ll cover those kind of texts at various points in our series, but since we’re starting with Hosea, we start with God’s love. And as we study this book, we learn about the depth of God’s love for his people. So today we will see God’s broken heart, what he does about it, and what it cost him. God’s broken heart, what he does about it, and what it cost him.
So first, God’s broken heart. The level of intimacy between God and his people throughout the Old Testament, but pointedly in Hosea is comparable to the love between husband and wife. So, this personal relationship that we could have through God, how He has bound Himself to us, it is so intimate that it is more like a marriage than it is, say, a friendship, and certainly more intimate than like an acquaintance relationship or a boss-employee relationship or a government to its citizens. It’s like a Because in a marriage, more so than any other relationship, everything the other person does is significant to you. Their habits, their sleep patterns, how they prefer the toilet paper to be oriented.
By the way, it’s overhand, it’s the right way. Everything carries weight. Every tiny detail of the other person’s life matters. When you walk out the door and your spouse asks you, where are you going? You can’t say, none of your business.
You can’t say that in a marriage, but you might be able to say that to a boss, a friend, even a child, right? But in a marriage, it is the other person’s business where you are going. Everything is their business. Similarly, in a marriage, everything is amplified, right? Your spouse’s criticism of you is going to hit you different than, say, a coworker’s criticism of you.
In a marriage, you’re more involved with the other person compared to any other kind of relationship, and marriages take more work than any other relationship. And God says that’s what His relationship with His people is like. And therefore, when God’s people sin or rebel against Him or ignore Him, it’s not only like when citizens commit a crime against a government and the government issues some penalty. It’s not like when your boss puts you on some kind of improvement plan. You don’t do those things in a marriage.
You don’t have improvement plans for each other. Maybe one of you needed to hear that today. I don’t know. Don’t put your spouse on an improvement plan. But offenses in marriage are much more personal compared to any other relationship.
So, our offenses against God are not best understood as only rule-breaking. They are heartbreaking. They are a rejection of him. In fact, Israel’s sin is painted throughout the Old Testament and especially in the book of Hosea as adultery, as spiritual adultery against God. When Israel is messing around with other gods, it’s comparable to an unfaithful spouse who messes around outside of marriage.
In the book of Hosea, we get these incredibly graphic descriptions of what sin does to God’s heart. It’s— maybe even it’s lewd in some places. You should read the whole book, but it’s how God feels. It’s how he feels. And in order to convey to the Israelites what it’s like for him when they sin, when they abandon him, he conscripts Hosea the prophet.
Prophet to be a living example and metaphor of God’s relationship with the Israelites. So, in Hosea chapter 1, God tells Hosea to marry an unfaithful woman. Marry someone who’s going to run around on you, Hosea. Marry someone who’s going to run around on you in a way that everyone knows what is happening. So, God leads Hosea to marry Gomer.
They have children. But as expected, she immediately becomes unfaithful to Hosea, even to the extent that Hosea names one of the children, not mine, Lo-Ammi, not my people.
It has to be one of the worst pains that can ever befall anyone.
And God says, that is what sin is like for Me. That is what it feels like for me when you reject me. To which we may question, isn’t that a little dramatic? Isn’t it a little much to equate our relationship to God with a marriage and therefore our unfaithfulness to Him as a type of adultery? Isn’t that overstating it?
And God would say, no, it’s not too much. Because God pledged himself to his people in a similar way to how husbands and wives pledge themselves to each other. God pledged his covenantal love to his people. The word for God’s love for his people in the Old Testament, which many of you know, is hesed. It’s a deeply emotional word, but there’s also commitment attached to it.
My favorite translation of the word hesed comes from the Children’s Bible that I recommend to to everyone, seriously, not just to children. Everyone can learn from it. It’s called the Jesus Storybook Bible. It’s by Sally Lloyd-Jones, and in order to capture the meaning of hesed, Sally Lloyd-Jones uses the phrase, God’s never stopping, never giving up, always and forever love. His never stopping, never giving up, always and forever love.
It’s saying, I am for you forever. With everything I have, I’m going to pursue you all the days of my life, so to speak. I promise, I pledge it to you. Which, isn’t that pretty much what husbands and wives pledge to each other on their wedding day? And it’s what God pledged to his people over and over again in the Old Testament.
He brings them out of slavery in Egypt. He says, you are my people, I will establish you. Psalm 135, he says to them, you are my treasure Zechariah 2, He says, you are the apple of my eye. Going all the way back to Abraham, God tells Abraham, I’m going to make you into a great nation. I am for you.
I am for your family forever and ever. And Abraham responds kind of audaciously. He asks, how do I know you’ll actually do that, Lord? How do I know you’re going to be faithful? How do I know these aren’t just words?
I mean, Abraham’s pretty blunt with God. It’s like he asked God, you know, God, you say you love us, you say you’re for us, but what about commitment? Right? He’s basically asking, God, are you going to put a ring on it? You know, if you want it, you better put a ring on it.
I need some assurance here. And amazingly, God tells Abraham essentially, okay, I’ll put a ring on it. We’ll even have a ceremony. I’ll make a binding commitment to you. It’s in Genesis 15, and when you read it, it sounds pretty strange to us today, but it made perfect sense to Abraham because it’s exactly how binding agreements were ratified in those days.
God tells Abraham, go get a bunch of animals, cut them in half, spread the halves apart from each other, and then I, God, will walk in between the halves of the animals, which happens. Abraham sees God manifested in this fiery pillar of smoke, not unlike the fiery pillar of smoke that would later lead the Israelites in the desert. And God, as the pillar of smoke, passes in between the pieces of the animals that have just been cut in half. The idea was, in those days, the person who passed in between the pieces of animals was saying, if I don’t fulfill my end of our agreement, then may I become like these animals who are cut in half.
It’s a pledge with your life. It’s a pledge in blood that you will honor this deal. It’s putting skin in the game, putting your life on the line, really, so to speak, with God. And that’s how God pledged Himself to His people. He put a ring on it.
He laid Himself out there. He promises all of Himself to them. He says, I will be for you even if it kills me, not unlike what you do in a marriage.
But then the Israelites rejected Him. They said, we’re going to see who else we can find.
And I’m sure there are some of you who know exactly what that betrayal feels like. You’ve pledged yourself to someone, you’re vulnerable and exposed to that person, you give all yourself away and that person says, I’d rather have someone else.
That’s what sin is like for God, it shatters Him.
There’s a place in Hosea 11:8 where God says His heart recoils or it’s changed depending on your translation, it’s a dramatic word, it’s the same word that’s used when a city is overturned by an advancing army It’s a violent eruption, and that’s what happens in God’s heart when we sin or ignore Him. It’s like the betrayal of a spouse. It’s spiritual adultery. It’s lewd. It is graphic.
Hosea does not overstate the problem. So, how is God going to react to such a personal type of offense? What is He going to do with His broken heart? What would we do if someone who we love with our whole self hurts us so badly?
One option, of course, is that you could just cut that person off, never speak to him or her again. You could do that. That’s understandable. That’s justified. If you’re in a relationship with someone who you’ve loved with your whole self and they’ve betrayed you, you know, you’re torn apart.
If you need to leave, you can leave. Some people read Hosea and conclude they must stay with any spouse no matter how abusive or unfaithful, and that is not what Hosea is saying because there are plenty of places in Scripture that outline reasons to get out of relationships, even get out of marriage. Steve preached a little while ago a sermon on divorce and then included biblical grounds for it, so you don’t have to stay. Hosea’s point is not what you should do in your tragic relationships. That’s not what he’s— that’s not his context, what he’s talking about.
Hosea’s point is what God did in His tragic relationship.
And God pursued, even when the relationship went from bad to worse to unimaginable. God pursued. He kept loving Israel. The same place where it says God’s heart recoils, chapter 11, verse 8, God asks the question, how can I give you up? How can I walk away even though you walked away?
How can I? So, he continues his pursuit. We see an image of God pursuing at least twice in the narrative. First, after Hosea and Gomer have children, she leaves him, she takes off, she runs off with other lovers and then goes through a number of them. And she believes that it’s those other lovers are providing for her, meeting her needs.
She believes they are the ones who are taking care of her, but chapter 2, verse 8, God says, even then it was me providing for you. It gets a little muddy in the narrative of when God is talking about his relationship with Israel and when Hosea is talking about his relationship with Gomer, but the point is they’re supposed to interplay with each other. So we’re not told how Hosea provided for Gomer, but it would have looked something like Hosea going to the house of Gomer’s current lover and saying to that man, I want her to be taken care of, and I don’t think you’re doing a very great job at it. So here’s some food, here’s some money, use it to take care of her. And the picture, of course, is God provided for his people even when they turned away from him and even when they believed someone or something else was sustaining them, it was really God the whole time.
The lesson for us is if you are someone who says, I don’t need God, I can make it on my own just fine, I never paid any attention to him and I’m doing great without him.
If you think the provision is coming from somewhere else, it’s still coming from God. For just most simply, for instance, where do you get your air to breathe? Where do you get your mental faculties that have enabled you to do your job? Why does your brain work the way it does? Why are you smarter than other people who can’t do what you do?
That’s not from you.
It has always been God providing for you, even when you’ve been running from Him and you don’t want to have anything to do with Him. It’s still Him coming to the house of your current lover and saying, here. She’s not with me right now, but I still want to take care of her. That’s one time we see God’s pursuit. The next time is more jarring.
In the story of Hosea and Gomer, after the children, after living with various lovers, Gomer begins living on the street. She’s selling herself for money, which would be heartbreaking enough, but it actually gets worse. Because Hosea eventually finds Gomer being sold as a slave in chapter 3. We are not told how she ended up being sold after working as a prostitute, but whatever the path was from prostitution to slavery had to be terrible. It is entirely likely that while she was working on the streets, someone had been managing her.
She did the work, but he collected the money. Type of situation. But now her manager realizes she is so worn out, broken, old that it’s not worth it to him to manage her anymore. So he just sells her, cuts his losses. Entirely likely.
During this period in Israel’s history, they adopted many of the practices of the nations around them. They adopted such kinds of slavery. It’s one of the reasons why God God was upset with the nation. It’s part of why his heart was broken for Israel. Nothing about Gomer’s situation is how God’s plan for how people should live, but there she is for sale.
So God tells Hosea, go to her, go again and love the woman who is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel. Chapter 3, verse 1. It’s pursuit. It’s a picture of how God continues to love Israel even though she has devastated Him. He’s going to woo her back.
He’s going to speak tenderly to her, chapter 2, verse 14. He’s going to provide safety where she can lay down and rest. He’s going to remove all the war and violence from the land, chapter 2, verse 18. And today, we pray He removes all war and violence from modern Israel, right? Those recent attacks, it’s another cycle and a long history, and we long for the day and we pray for the day when the land really does have lasting peace.
But if you’re following the metaphor of Gomer, you can imagine the severity of everything Gomer might have been through the last number of years, whatever violence she experienced, in a place of rest and safety is what she needs the most, which means God sees her deepest need and he says, I’m gonna meet it. And then on top of that, God says he’ll provide abundance, grain, wine, oil, rich harvest, chapter 2, verse 22. God says, I’m going to remove all the trouble and I’m gonna provide for you. Everyone else took from you, everyone else depleted you, Everyone else did violence to you, but I, I will only give. That’s what God does with this broken heart.
He pursues us anyway. Now, here’s the question: Is that how you see God responding to you on your worst days? Do you see Him running to you with love in His eyes, or do you see Him running to you with vengeance spite, disgust in his eyes. We’re not told what Gomer was thinking when Hosea showed up at the slave auction and bought her, but she had to be asking herself, why is Hosea here? Why is he, of all people, the one who’s trying to buy me?
And some part of her had to be worried that Hosea was only buying her so he could have power over her. Punish her for everything that she had ever done to him.
As Hosea leads her away from the auction, I mean, do you think her heart would have been rejoicing, saying something like, finally, safety, provision, I get to go home? That couldn’t have been what’s going on. She couldn’t have assumed Hosea would provide comfort, couldn’t have. She had to be worried. She might have been more terrified to go with Hosea than to be with an old manager.
Because Hosea had a legitimate reason to treat her harshly. She knows she deserves the worst from him, and he actually has the legal ability to do it. It was the law. Adultery is punishable by death. Hosea had every right to call the whole town together and execute her publicly.
Probably no one would have even blamed him for it. She had to fear that.
But Hosea didn’t have vengeance in his eyes. He had love. God says, go and love her again even as I love the children of Israel. So Hosea brings her home and he tells her, we’re just going to hang out for a while. You’re not going to be with any other man, of course.
You’re not going to be with me right away either. We’ve got to take some time here. You need to heal in every way, but then I want you to be my wife again. I don’t want to buy you so you could be my slave. I bought you so you could be mine and I could be yours and we could be together.
Do you see God doing that for you?
Regardless of where we are on maybe like the spectrum of sin, God pursues us to bring us home. Even if you’re rock bottom like Gomer, you know, we’ve run away from God for so long we’re just in unimaginable darkness, the weight of our consequences is totally crushing us, God pursues us then. But maybe you’re not there, maybe you’re not at the end of the road, maybe you’re like Gomer at the beginning of the book, you’re blazing your own trail, you’re throwing off at least what you think are shackles of what God says, sin feels fun and exciting, might even feel liberating to run away from God, and you haven’t realized yet it’s not the freedom that you thought it would be. But the day will come when something wears out. Your physical body, your emotional health, your relationships, some type of deterioration always happens the further we run away from God.
Regardless of where we are on that spectrum from beginning to the end of the road of destroying ourselves, God pursues us with love in his eyes. One message from Hosea is that wherever you are, there is nowhere God will not go to bring you back. There is nothing you could ever do that would be too much for him to want to bring you back home. I mean, one reason I think to paint the picture in such extreme, graphic, even lewd images is so that we know we’ve never gone too far for God to come get us. I mean, I’m sure there’s people in this room who you believe that you have gone too far.
You believe you’ve messed up too bad for God to ever want you again. If that’s you, just look at Gomer. She wasn’t too far gone to be redeemed, and Hosea brought her back to wholeness and safety and abundance. So do you see God doing that for you?
One way I always walk through this principle with students, back when I worked with students, is I would ask them, to think of whatever sin they considered to be their worst sin, which is probably bad theology, but it’s the way that we feel, right? Some things we’ve done generate more shame than other things. So whatever you would be most mortified for people to know, if it somehow leaked to the press or to your family or to your friends what you did, something you think would totally ruin your reputation, your relationships, you wouldn’t be able to face anyone ever again if people knew this. We all have at least one of those, we probably all have a few dozen of those, so just pick one. Now think of whoever you believe loves you the most, the person you are most sure loves you— spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, mom, dad, child, coach, friend, Whoever you think loves you the most, how do you think that person would respond if he or she saw you doing whatever it is that you are most ashamed of?
You’re caught red-handed. There’s not going to be any way for you to control the narrative so you can get out of it. You are seen doing the thing.
How do you think the person who loves you most would react? Turn away in disgust? Yell at you? Run toward you with compassion and love? All the above?
You may know where I’m going with this, but God did see it. He was there. The person who loves you most, your Father in heaven, saw it. And it broke his heart and he ran toward you in love. He didn’t blink, he didn’t flinch, he didn’t arrive with the condemnation you deserve.
Instead, he picks you up, he hugs you, he says, you are mine. I want you. I want to bring you home. I want to provide a future for you. I’m going to give you safety and warmth.
That’s what he does with his broken heart. That’s exactly what happened with Hosea and Gomer. Hosea saw Gomer on her worst day, her worst possible day, too worn out to be a prostitute, someone just needs to be sold so losses can be minimized. It’s her worst possible moment, it’s absolute rock bottom, the most shameful she will ever be, for sure. And in that moment, Hosea says, you are mine.
I want you. I’m gonna bring you home. I’m gonna provide a future for you. I’m gonna give you safety and warmth.
And if you see God doing that for you, it will absolutely change everything. You will be new.
That’s what God does with His broken heart.
Now lastly, what it cost Him, what it cost for God to bring us back. Hosea, of course, has to pay a price to get Gomer back. He gives 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a leftek of barley, chapter 3, verse 2. And if you’re not familiar with ancient monetary systems, commentators will tell you that the barley equated to about another 15 shekels of silver, so 30 pieces of silver.
But it actually cost Hosea more than that, because how do you think Hosea’s friends, family, church community responded to Gomer being back?
Do you think it cost Hosea any of his reputation to go after her? You think in a sense he had to carry her shame with her? Because now people aren’t only looking at her, they’re looking at them. What a fool.
He might have had to give up everything to redeem her, start over somewhere new. We’re not actually told the end of their story. We’re not even told if Gomer ever reciprocated love toward Hosea, so we don’t know the full cost of what Hosea paid. But we do know what God gave up to redeem us.
He gave up everything to bring us home. Jesus, of course, sold for 30 pieces of silver, but the price was actually much higher because he went to the cross where he carried the full weight of our sin and our shame. He stood in our place absorbing all of it. It’s not that dissimilar to what we do when we stand with or associate with someone who has become an outcast. If we stand with someone who is rejected, some of that rejection falls on our shoulders.
But Jesus didn’t just stand with us, He stood in place of us. So, He bore the full cost of our shame, the full cost of what we owe, taking what we deserve so that we can be with Him.
The only question is, how will we respond? Will we receive him and what he did for us, or will we run off again with someone else? I actually really appreciate that we don’t know the end of the story of Hosea and Gomer. I’m glad it’s written that way because the message is we get to decide. We are Gomer.
So, what are we going to do in response to the never-stopping, never-giving-up, always and forever love that pursues us? What are we going to do with it? Will we surrender to him and reciprocate back covenantal love toward him? Will we say, if your love is never-stopping for me, my love will never be stopping for you?
Or will we walk away? From the greatest love that could ever love us. It’s up to you, Gomer. It’s up to me.
Let’s pray.
Father, we are grieved that we have grieved You so when You have loved us so much.
But we are grateful that You love us so much that You are grieved.
Lord, we know also that You are grieving for current modern-day Israel and recent attacks.
As You grieve for our waywardness, You grieve over those people in that land. So, bring peace to their land, Lord. Comfort those who are hurting. Protect those in harm’s way. Execute Your perfect justice on the earth.
And bring all of us to you, Lord. Israelite, Palestinian, American, all of us. Bring us to you because only in you is there real peace. Forgive us, redeem us, never let us go, Lord. Never find an answer for how could you give us up.
Never give us up.
We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
