MPC, 7th July 2002.Hosea 2, 3 - "Loving the Unlovable"
Stuart Atkinson MPC, 7th July 2002.
In 1998 Perry Jewell from Toowoomba made headlines when he kidnapped his drug addicted daughter from the streets of Kings Cross. Perry Jewell was desperate to rescue his daughter Samantha from the streets. She was 19 years old. And addicted to heroin.
He took her from the street. And he locked her in a farmhouse, to put her through cold turkey. But 10 days later she drugged him with sleeping tablets. And escaped. Samantha then came back with the police. And had him arrested. And charged with kidnap.
But the story has a happy ending. In the end, Samantha had a change of heart. She dropped the charges, and told the police that in the end she realised her father was acting for her own good. And now she's being treated for her addiction.
And Perry Jewell has vowed to keep fighting his one-man war on drugs. He says "Parents aren't worth a damn if they're not going to look after their kids."
This is a guy whose gone to extraordinary lengths to protect his daughter from herself. She was on the road to destruction… and it was only a father's determined love that saved Samantha from certain death.
And in Hosea chapter 3 there's a very similar picture. Where God says to Hosea -'go and rescue your wife from her addiction'. He says: Go, show your love to your wife again though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.
And so Hosea forcibly removes Gomer from the situation she's in. Which is a picture of what God does for his people Israel. He takes her back… by getting tough.
Now a number of people have said to me since last week that the book of Hosea's a bit confronting. 'I just don't like Hosea – it's not nice, why would God ask someone to do something so horrible like that?'
And it's true. It is horrible. God tells Hosea to take Gomer the unfaithful woman to be his wife. He's going to be faithful to her, while she gives herself to whoever she likes. God tells Hosea to marry a woman who'll break his heart… so that Israel will see how they've treated him. This is a prophet who's living his message. Instead of just talking it. And it hurts.
We saw last week, God tells Israel through the names of Gomer's children, that if they continue in their unfaithfulness they'll end up without all of the good things God's given them. Israel will end up without God's goodness altogether. They'll be out on the street, headed for total destruction.
But as we look at chapter two and God rebukes Israel for her unfaithfulness, there's a pattern emerging. She can't stop being unfaithful.
Have a look with me at verse 2 in chapter 2. And you'll see it.
Rebuke you mother rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.
God's saying to Israel – stop this horrible thing you're doing. Stop seeing other men.
You're supposed to be my wife. But she can't stop. Or she won't. Have a look at the second half of verse 5.
she said I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my oil and my drink
These are the lovers she thinks will provide. The fertility gods. Who the tribes around them say make the crops grow. God's like Baal. Who you see in verse 13.
she burned incense to the Baals;
she decked herself with rings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers,
but me she forgot.
declares the Lord
There's more in the next few chapters as well. Page after page of Israel's unfaithfulness. Flip over to chapter five verse 4.
Their deeds do not permit them to return to the Lord their God. A spirit of prostitution is in their heart; they do not acknowledge the Lord.
They're addicted to adultery. A people determined to walk away from the Lord their God. If it was up to them, the relationship would be over. But just like Perry Jewell, God's determined not to let that happen. Even if he suffers loss himself. God's got a plan to radically restore his people Israel. Have a look with me at verse 6 – he's going to take her away from harm.
6 Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes;
I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.
7 She will chase after her lovers but not catch them;
she will look for them but not find them.
And verse 9…
9 "Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens,
and my new wine when it is ready.
I will take back my wool and my linen,
intended to cover her nakedness.
10 So now I will expose her lewdness
before the eyes of her lovers;
no one will take her out of my hands.
This is Perry Jewell in action. Determined love. He's going to forcibly remove Israel from the situation they're in. He's going to break their habit – cold turkey. God's going to strip her of the things he's given her, he's going to stop her finding her lovers.
He could have just let her go. He could have just chosen somebody else, but God's love for his bride is like it talks about in Song of Solomon –
love as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.
God says, like Mr Jewell…
no one will take her out of my hands.
And it's this Israel, radically removed from its environment of adultery… that God's planning to finally restore. To make his bride again. And from verse 14 of chapter one God speaks about the change he's going to bring about after he kidnaps his bride.
14 "Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the desert
and speak tenderly to her.
And he's going to give back the blessings. Vineyards. And hope. And singing again. It's going to be like the exodus from Egypt all over again. And "In that day," declares the Lord – verse 16 –
In that day you will call me 'my husband';
you will no longer call me 'my master.'
And he's going to betroth her to him forever. In righteousness. In justice. In love. In compassion. To be the bride she always should have been. To be the sort of bride God's people are called to be. That we're called to be.
And there at the end of the chapter, the great reversal. Verse 23.
I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.'
I will say to those called 'Not my people,'
'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'
And so God says to Hosea in chapter three – go and love your wife like that. Go and treat your adulterous wife… the way I'm going to treat Israel. Because Gomer's appetite for adultery has taken her right away from Hosea. She's left him altogether. She's dumped him for another man.
Now put yourself in his place for a minute. How would you like to be Hosea? Your wife's been unfaithful from the start of the marriage, and now she's left you for another guy. She's living at his house. And I reckon the last thing you'd feel like doing is knocking on the door. And doing what God asks him to do.
The Australian Institute of Criminology conducted some research into Australian homicides in the last ten years. Murder statistics. And the findings were very interesting. You might think most murders involve guns. And drugs. And criminal gangs.
But it's pretty much the opposite. If you're going to be murdered in Australia, it's most likely going to be in your own home; it's going to be on a Friday or Saturday Night. And the person's going to be someone you know. Holding a kitchen knife.
Because the people we hurt the most are the ones we're closest to. And the issue is most often going to be unfaithfulness. If Hosea's a normal guy he's hurt and he's angry. And after the way Gomer's treated him, I reckon he'd be leaning more towards homicide… than taking her back.
Why would he want her back? It's not as though she's seen the error of her ways. She's still with the other guy. In the middle of her adultery.
And Hosea - this is incredible – he has to go knocking on doors – "have you seen my wife?" And when he finds her, he has to confront the man she's with – the man she's sharing herself intimately with – instead of him.
How hard is that? But we have to remember that through Hosea God is saying to Israel, his bride – this is the way I love you. God says to Hosea, chapter 3 verse 1,
Go, show your love to your wife again… though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.
Follow on. Verse 2 in chapter 3. Hosea says
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 live with you."
Looks like Hosea couldn't even scrape together the price the man was asking. He had to throw in some produce as well. And so Hosea buys back his wife and takes her home with him. He says you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you.
Back to square one. Hosea and Gomer building their relationship all over again.
A picture of what God does to restore the relationship with his Bride
Verse 4 looks way ahead. At the way the years are going to unfold. The way Israel's going to live without king or prince. Without their proper sacrifices - or their pagan sacred stones; without their priestly ephod. Or their adulterous idols. It's all going to go. And yet afterwards, God says, after all that, the Israelites will return. And seek the Lord their God and David their King. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days.
One day it's going to change. With a new king David. And a new bride. The Israel that always should have been. And Israel's change of heart comes about because of the kind of love demonstrated in the way Hosea loves Gomer. The way a father loves his drug addicted daughter.
And all those things Hosea talks about… we've seen. And we've seen God's love demonstrated in its fullest sense. A humiliating love. A costly love. When at the cross God demonstrated his love for us. Paul spells it out in Romans 5. And it's not that we made ourselves beautiful in advance.
6You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
It's just like the picture of Hosea rescuing Gomer. Except God doesn't just pay the price of a broken heart, or humiliation, or money – he pays the horrendous price of the life of his son – the perfect sacrifice. To rescue sinners like you and me. As hard as it is to understand why God made Hosea do what he did, its almost impossible to understand why God did what he did in sending his son, for us. To die for us just as we were. Knocking on the door; catching us in the act; loving us not when we made ourselves good enough. But dying for us exactly because we weren't.
And so as we think of what God has done for us, as we see what it cost Hosea – our sympathy for Hosea should be replaced by – "wasn't God gracious to Gomer?" And hasn't he gone to the same extraordinary lengths… to rescue us?