MAKING THE MINORS MAJOR AGAIN

THE BOOK OF HOSEA – PART I

Message Notes

*Who in here loves a good romantic comedy? Hitch comes to my mind. You probably
have a short list of movies that just popped into your mind. The Old Testament has a
love story that is more like a drama than a romantic comedy, something that would
happen in Days of our Lives, rather than in Hitch.

*Hosea is the story where a marriage becomes an illustration. But not the kind of
illustration you want. Nobody gets married hoping that their spouse will find love outside
of their marriage.

*He is the talk of the town. Talk about a prophet who is without honor in his own
hometown! When people would pass by him on the streets they would mock his
marriage.

*“I can’t believe he married a pretty woman”. “Solid choice there Hosea”….“You
really know how to pick em’….

*The truth about this illustration is that Hosea’s tough marriage represented the
everyday lives of those who mocked Hosea. Hosea is in a one-sided relationship with
an unfaithful woman to illustrate to the same people who are mocking his marriage that
this is what their covenant with God looks like. Hosea is the one that experiences the
most hurt as Hosea feels the heartbreak of a spouse choosing someone else over him.
Hosea gets to feel what God feels when a covenant isn’t honored. So he is a prophet
without honor in his own hometown but the shame he experiences is an illustration of
theirs.

*This is what we call prophetic theater. It is when a prophet is told by God to do

something crazy and that thing they are told to do is God’s dramatic way of getting the
people’s attention so that they might repent. There is another time that God tells Isaiah
to preach naked for three years. Yeah, we get the illustration Isaiah, your nakedness is
God’s way of saying that the Assyrians will come and take everything from us, now put
on some clothes Isaiah.

*But this one stings. This is an illustration you don’t want any part of. I am all down for
wearing no clothes, but having a spouse that chooses others over me that cuts to the
core.

*So let’s dive into this story. The scene is set in verse one. All Hosea had to do was talk
about Israel and name a couple of their kings to send a message, because every king of
Israel was bad when there was a northern and southern kingdom. Read about those
kings listed here in your own time! You will also find out that the priests weren’t
blameless either.

*This is what God says about the priests,

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Since you have rejected
knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten
the Law of your God, I also will forget your children.” Hosea 4:6 NASB

*The priests weren’t doing their job so God tells them that they are rejected from the
priesthood, and that when they come back from being exiled their children will not take
over as priests. A restart will happen in the temple.

*And then the matchmaking begins as God says to Hosea in 1:2,

“When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take for
yourself a wife inclined to infidelity, and children of infidelity, for the land
commits flagrant infidelity, abandoning the LORD.” NASB

*So Hosea finds a woman named Gomer. This Gomer wasn’t as innocent as the
character on the Andy Griffith Show. We don’t know much about Hosea’s wife Gomer.
We know she was the mother of three, husband to one, but also loved the company of
others….

*Was she an Israelite woman? We aren’t sure. I believe she came from a foreign people
but she totally could have been an Israelite. Either way it doesn’t matter.

*They have three children together. All of the children’s names mean something as it
relates to what is happening. The first kids name is Jezreel. God tells Hosea to name
him this because in due time he would punish the house of Jehu for the blood of
Jezreel. Jehu had pretty much exterminated a house of wicked kings and many other
people. It seemed as though Jehu was so willing to obey because of what was in it for
him, not because his biggest goal was obedience to God. Through killing the kings his
family takes the throne. This name is prophetic to this family line ending. This is fulfilled
in 1 Kings 15:10-12

*The next child is Lo-Ruhamah and her name means No Mercy. She is to be called No
Mercy, as God tells Hosea,

“For I will no longer take pity (or have mercy) on the house of Israel, that I would
ever forgive them.” Hosea 1:6 NASB

*Then they have their third child, a boy, and they name him Lo-Ammi, which means Not
My People.
*The three names of these children, from firstborn to last tell a story. It is bad enough
when your marriage tells a story, and here this whole man’s family tells a story.
Punishment is coming for the people of Israel. They were going to become exiles.
Second, God is a God of mercy but this time He wasn’t going to show mercy to these
people. Why? Because the third child’s name tells us why. He wasn’t going to show
mercy to these people because right now these people are not his people. The last
clause in Hosea 1:9, I am not your God, is read in the Hebrew, “And I am not I AM to
you.”

*In Exodus, “tell the people I AM sent you” is what God tells Moses. Tell the people I AM
is not I am to you anymore is what God tells Hosea to name his kid, to communicate
that these people are no longer his people..

*But the effects of this judgment would one day be reversed. One day those called Not
My People would be called Children of the living God.

1. WHEN THE LOVE AT HOME ISN’T ENOUGH

*But let’s talk a little more about this “love story”.

*Hosea chapter 2 is kind of confusing. At first glance it seems like Hosea is talking to his
children about his mom. He isn’t though. If you read it that way then Hosea is not only
talking about their mom, but their mom is no longer his wife (vs 2). If you read it that way
then Hosea is also a mean dad because he says he won’t have mercy on these kids
because as Maury says, “You are not the Father!” (vs. 4)

*Then God says to Israel what Hosea has endured in his marriage is the same thing
they are doing to him. God was speaking all along in chapter two.

*The nation of Israel, like Gomer, went after many lovers. In going after them she was
given her bread and water. She was also given wool and flax, oil and drink.

*But here is this question, is what Gomer seeks from others something that Hosea
hadn’t provided? If Hosea isn’t providing for her then you could maybe understand why
she runs to others. She isn’t being provided for and so to get what she needs she does
what she has to do to survive.

*But that isn’t the case. It is not the real story. Gomer isn’t driven away because of
Hosea. Gomer is driven away because she doesn’t find contentment in what she
already has. She goes after her lovers that give her bread and water but there is bread
and water at home!

And then the Lord said something through Hosea to the people that resonated with
Hosea.
“Yet she does not know that it was I myself who gave her the grain, the new wine,
and the oil, And lavished on her silver and gold” 2:8

*Hosea feels what God feels in giving his heart to someone that isn’t satisfied with all
the love and riches that are given to them. All that Hosea gave to Gomer was never
enough for Gomer. She always sought more from someone else.

*Gomer’s story is our story. We aren’t Hosea. And I don’t know about you but I don’t like
that I am called a lady of the night but that is what I am. That sounds weird. But if we
treat our relationship with God like Gomer treated Hosea – then we are doing just that.
When God provides and we run from that provision to get provision somewhere else we
do exactly what Gomer and Israel did. We make idols.

*The question I ask myself on Gomer is why? For the line of work she is in, no child
says that is what they want to be when I grow up. It is a gradual process that brought
her there.

*We don’t know when it started for her. We don’t know how it started. We can make the
guess that her family didn’t come from money. Being a woman in a culture where it is a
man’s world, it isn’t hard to picture a woman not able to find a job so she made the
decision that would impact how others viewed her, how she viewed herself and
everything spiraled down from there.

*But all the excuses are out the window when you get a good man in Hosea. You don’t
have to continue what you did before you were married when you are provided for.
Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman stops her former life when she meets Edward Lewis. We
are to stop our former lives when Jesus changes our heart.

*When your life becomes an illustration like Hosea’s, you know the ins and outs of what
happens in that illustration. Especially when the illustration is your marriage and you are
affected by it. So Hosea speaks to the double-mindedness of men in the nation. Why?
Because for her to get paid means that there was another guy searching for lust.

*He is married to a woman who every time she decides she wants companionship in
another, it comes at the price of his heart.

*So in Hosea 4:14, the Lord says through Hosea,

“I will not punish your daughters when they act promiscuously or your
daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, for the men themselves go with
these women and make sacrifices with cult adulteresses. People without
discernment are doomed.” NASB 4:14

*To Hosea his wife is just as guilty as the man who pays. Men had a double-
mindedness to them where they didn’t want their daughters or wives to go down that
road that Gomer went down, yet every time a man was double-minded in this way it
always came at the expense of someone else’s daughter. You can’t have your cake and
eat it, too. You can’t condemn what you do.

Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter wrote,

“No man for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the
multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” Hypocrisy.

*This wasn’t a new thing, especially in this area of men’s double-mindedness. In a story
that may be too juicy for Sunday morning has a woman named Tamar without a son.
She loses two husbands. Judah, her father-in-law refuses to give his third son to Tamar
because he thinks she is bad luck or a black widow. I don’t blame him for that but I do
for what happens next.

Tamar ends up getting dressed up one evening and decides to do what Gomer did for
an evening. She ends up pregnant and the only one who knows who the Father is isn’t
Maury, it is Tamar. When it is found out that she is pregnant – Judah says that she must
be burned. That was the punishment for what she did. But that night she became
pregnant she was given things by that man. When Tamar is brought out to be burned
she holds up the things she was given that night by Judah.

*Judah shows us this double-mindedness wasn’t a new thing. Men like Judah insisted
on the purity of their daughters, wives and daughters-in-law, while secretly desiring
access to other women. He thought no one else knew.

*He wanted this woman dead for what she did and that is all fine and dandy if you want
the same thing done to you, but he didn’t.. This thought pattern had continued for
centuries. The good news in all this is that that from this lying man would come a lion,
the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Jesus.

*So when we get to Hosea, he doesn’t want to punish women like his wife. He just
wants the double-mindedness and adultery to stop. He wants his wife back for good.

2. A RETURNED WIFE AND A SON FOUND.

*Hosea 3 is the climax of the story. This is better than finding out you’ve got mail from
Tom Hanks! The LORD says to Hosea,

“Go again, love a woman who is loved by her husband, yet is committing
adultery, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel.” Hosea 3:1

*She is living in what she knew before Hosea. What does love look like for Hosea? It is
a love that costs him.

*And here is another question. What if Hosea had a Jonah moment when the Lord told
Hosea to go buy his wife back?
*What if instead of reading what he paid for Gomer we read excuses from Hosea as to
why he thinks he shouldn’t be obedient? We can all count the reasons to not forgive
someone who has hurt us. Hosea could have played that game, too.

Excuses like: But Lord we will just find ourselves on this same road again. This is what
she does. This is who she is. It is a waste of money. I don’t even have a lot of this stuff.
Do I just pay for her every time she does this? And Lord I don’t want to go down those
streets and search for her in those places. But he didn’t say that. He knew she brought
herself there – but he also knew that once she got herself there she couldn’t get herself
out.

*Paying the price for someone else that they can’t pay does nothing for you but it does
everything for the person you paid for. She sees that she is valued by Hosea. Others
paid for a woman to be with that night – but he is the man who pays to bring her out of
all that she doesn’t need.

*This is the gospel. You and I brought ourselves into a similar place that Gomer found
herself with no way to pay our way out. Gomer and Hosea’s names become prophetic
through what happened that day. Hosea’s name means salvation and Gomer’s means
complete. He completely paid the price that was required to save her from the
destruction she brought upon herself, just as Jesus paid the price to redeem us from the
destruction we brought on our self.

*The price that was paid was 15 shekels. And then you add grain, and the grain just
makes the math crazy when you put dollar amounts to it but an ephah of barley is one
shekel. A homer of barley is ten shekels so half a homer of barley is 5 shekels of silver.
Hosea pays 30 shekels of silver the same price that Judas agreed to betray Jesus. That
agreed on payment to Judas paves the way for Jesus to pay for the sins of the world.

*She had to be willing to be paid for. The words “I bought her” show us that she wanted
to be paid for. She could have refused but she didn’t. She came to her senses when all
she had was gone.

*Two other people did these two same things in a parable. One came to his senses. A
younger brother in the story of the prodigal son did this when he wasted all of his
inheritance on riotous living. Actually, according to the older brother, part of this riotous
living included having fun with women like Gomer (Luke 15:30). But when he lost
everything he realized that even as a hired hand for his father he would have better food
than the pig food that looked good to him.

*The second counts the cost of having his son back and pays it. Even though the son
could try to pull this again. So the son runs to his father, rehearsing his speech all the
way home. His dad runs to him and hugs him, which in that culture wouldn’t happen.
You would be welcomed by a dad with his bow and arrow on the front porch saying you
aren’t welcome inheritance waster! But that isn’t what he gets. He gets the hug. He gets
the robe, ring and sandals to show he is still a son. But he also gets a party and they kill
a fattened calf for him. So in the OT you see a husband paying for a wayward wife to
communicate God’s love towards us and in the gospels you see a Father paying for a
wayward son to also communicate God’s love to us.

*The crazy part to this story is Jesus is talking to a crowd of people. Luke 15 tells us that
the crowd consists of tax collectors and sinners drawing near to him. There could have
been women like Gomer in attendance that day. There were also Pharisees and scribes
in attendance, grumbling that Jesus received sinners and ate with them.

*This is why Jesus tells the story. In the lost sheep and lost coin parables everyone
rejoices when what was lost is found, but in the story of the lost son one person doesn’t
rejoice when something more valuable, a life, is found.

*This is what the Pharisees were known for. They were more like Jonah than Hosea.
They wanted tax collectors and sinners to stay lost. Jonah knew that God was a
gracious God, merciful, and slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. He just didn’t
want the Ninevites to experience that.

*So the Pharisees channel their inner Jonah. To them a tax collector and women like
Gomer don’t get redeemed. They are too far gone. They have made their bed and must
lie in it.

*When God responds a different way then they would respond then they do worse than
Jonah. Jonah at least recognized that God was compassionate. The Pharisees just fail
to realize that Jesus eats with sinners like Gomer and Matthew because He loves those
who recognize they are broken. What the Pharisees failed to realize is that the same
love offered to the younger son who was broken was also available to them as the older
brother, as the Father in the story says,

“Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. It was fitting to
celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost,
and is found.” Luke

*The older brother doesn’t celebrate because he doesn’t understand what is inside of
him. He looks at what the younger brother did outwardly but fails to see that what his
brother displayed outwardly is what is inside his own heart.. Jesus eats with sinners to
change what is inside them. So the younger son isn’t the prodigal because the story
ends up with him being found. The real prodigal son is the son who stays close enough
to the Father that he believes he has tricked his father into believing he is the better
son, but really shows how far he is from the family in the way that he sees/treats the
other children in the family of God.

*What the Pharisees didn’t admit was something they struggled with inwardly that Jesus
did see. They loved their money and being seen giving to the needy and fasting to be
seen, all as image management to seem holier than thou, and they loved that just as
much as the tax collector loved another customer. And that my friends is self-
righteousness.

*The sin someone shouts out the loudest over could be a veiled confession of their
struggle with that same sin. Judah did it. The Pharisees did it. And if we are not careful
we can, too.

*What all of this teaches us is that God redeems us when we come to him with empty
hands. We wont understand the invite system for Jesus’s table until we become one
who sees the depth of our poverty. We don’t come to His table because we earned his
love. We sit at the table because we didn’t have to. To sit at the table is free for us but it
was costly to Jesus.

*So to put this all together as we wrap up, Hosea represents Jesus and Gomer
represents the Pharisees, but Gomer repents. Jesus says to the Pharisees the same
words that are said in Hosea 6:6,

“I desire mercy and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”

*The people of God weren’t doing this. This is why Hosea is told to marry Gomer! God
gives what he asks for. He desires mercy and knowing us so He gives us the picture
through their marriage of what he does for us, a husband chasing a bride that is hard to
chase! A husband seeking to know a wife that doesn’t want to be fully known. Marriage
takes work. God fulfills his side. A marriage isn’t empty words and actions – but that is
what the Pharisees made their relationship with God.

*So what do we do with this? We take the advice of Hosea 10:12 “BREAK UP YOUR
FALLOW GROUND”