Today’s reading: Hosea 1-3
Last week B.J. and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. (Wow that is a long time!) We dated for several years before getting engaged, so I thought we knew each other pretty well when we finally tied the knot. Ha! We’ve learned more about each other than I could have imagined through 25 years of shared experiences. As a result, I’d say that no one in the world knows me better than B.J. Armstrong (something I’d have never dreamed when I first met him in 7th grade). Kind of scary. Our marriage has had its ups and downs like most, but fortunately it has stood the test of time. Why? Because it is built on a foundation of mutual trust and a common faith in Jesus Christ. Without these two things, there is no way we’d still be together today.
Our passage for today is the story of Hosea. The plot begins right away in verse 2 when the Lord spoke to Hosea and told him to marry a “promiscuous woman” who would be unfaithful to him. This defies logic. I know people who have entered into a marriage with someone the rest of us predicted would be unfaithful, but I don’t know anyone who entered into marriage with an expectation of infidelity. How could you / why would you marry someone you didn’t trust? It would be like asking for heartache. It makes no sense.
Hosea, however, married a woman he knew would be unfaithful to him simply because God told him to. God spoke the command and Hosea followed through and married Gomer. After a period of time, Gomer lost interest in Hosea and began to pursue other lovers. This was just what God said would happen.
Why would a fair and just God, who designed the sacred covenant of marriage to last a lifetime, send Hosea down this path of heartache? God was using Hosea’s experience to illustrate his love for his people. Just like Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea, the nation of Israel had been unfaithful to God. They were mixing worship of false gods (Baal) with their worship of God, and they were pursuing military power through forbidden relationships with Assyria and Egypt. In other words, just like Gomer, they had lost interest in their mate and had begun pursuing other “lovers”.
Chapter 3 starts much the same way as Chapter 1. God told Hosea to do something absurd and Hosea obeyed. Hosea went and found Gomer, bought her from the man she was with, and reconciled with her.
The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you” (Hosea 3:1-3).
Does this sounds like love to you? This is a beautiful picture of how God loved the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, but also how God shows his love for you and me. Like the nation of Israel, it is easy for us to lose our interest in relationship with God. By pursuing dreams and goals that do not include him, and by adopting the ways of the world, we are being unfaithful to him.
Our perfect God, however, sent his son Jesus to buy us back. Jesus’ death on the cross paid the price for our unfaithfulness so that we could be reconciled to God. In spite of our wicked ways, he has never stopped loving us or pursuing us. This is a love like no other.
You must be logged in to post a comment.