Hosea 1:2

Tonight I direct you to turn with me to the book of Hosea once again. Osea Chapter 1, and I’ll be reading the first nine verses. Our focus, though, tonight will be mostly on verse 2. The Word of the Lord that came unto Hosea, the son of Barry, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joach, king of Israel. The beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea, and the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto the Elisier. wife of Hortems and children of Hortems, for the land hath committed great hortem, departing from the Lord. So he went, and he took Gomer, the daughter of Dibliam, which conceived and bare him a son. And the Lord said unto him, call his name Jesreel, for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel. Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the house of Israel. And it shall come to pass at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. And she conceived again and bare a daughter, and God said unto him, call her name Lohruha. Alma. For I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. But I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and will save them by the Lord their God. It will not save them by bow, nor by spear, or sword, nor by battle, by horses, or by horsemen. Now when she had weaned Loh Ruhama, she conceived and bare a son. Then said God, call his name Lohami, for you are not my people, and I will not be your God. God blessed us the reading of His sacred and holy word this evening. Did you hear the story about the lawn chair, Astronauts. He was a 31-year-old trucker. He attached 40 large helium balloons to a lawn chair. And with a CB radio, an ultrameter, a parachute, and a life jacket, he began his ascent into the wild blue yonder. He also took along a pellet gun. So when it came time for him to descend, he could just start shooting balloons slowly and he would descend back to Earth. When he reached an altitude of three miles high, he decided it was time to return back to the ground. So he started popping the balloons with his gun, and he successfully completed his first flight and arrived back home safely. Quite a strange story, isn’t it? Isaiah was one of the greatest prophets of Israel. No one could match him for his length of service. He even started his time of prophecy before Isaiah did. And though we’re told little about him, we began to see the importance of his ministry. From the names of the kings of Israel and Judah that are listed, we know that he prophesied for a long time, as we said last week, for about 70 years or more. His book contains two dominant themes. One is the love of God that he has for the elect people of the nation, and the other is the judgment of God for the judgment of God for the national Israel as a whole. he was certainly a prophet of doom in that regard is that as we read the first part of this first chapter you see that very clearly but what Jose is no doubt remember the most for is his marriage a strange story just as a lawn chair astronaut is out of the ordinary so as a preacher marrying a prostitute but as we shall see, there’s good reason behind this strange incident in the life of the prophet. Now, we have Josea’s call here to the ministry. He was a young man, and he was called to a great task. It’s obvious from the list of the kings under which he prophesied that he had to be called to a great task. as a young man. Otherwise, there was no way to prophesy for 70 years as he did. So he had this long ministry. God sometimes calls young men to do very important work. But Osaya was put to an extreme test because he had to preach to people who were outwardly prospering and flourishing and tell them they were no longer the people of God. that they were a nation that had been cast off by the Lord God. Now we need to learn from this, my friends, that if God, through the preaching of his word speaks a message to you, even from a young man, a young minister, he expects you to it. When God would destroy, you remember the house of Eli, he said, message by the young boy Samuel. Eli didn’t say, what does this young fool know? He accepted the message from God. Good is the Lord, is the word of the Lord, he said. God sometimes speaks through young men who faithfully expound his word. Paul told Timothy, you’ll recall, let no man despise thy youth. In 1 Timothy 4. So here is a young man. He’s called to a great task. Josea had a harsh message to deliver. Josea must tell the Israelites that they were the children of Hortem. That they were not the people of God. That’s a pretty difficult and harsh way to begin your ministry. I suppose many would have liked to ease in. into it, maybe start with some gentle rebukes before lowering the boom, as we see here in this passage. But God had already, I think, tenderly rebuked his people, so he sends Josea with a thunderbolt to get their attention. And thus, you find a thunderbolt. God’s word coming three times to Hosea here in verses 1 and 2. Josea needed the express command of God to bring such a harsh message. It’s not a message that you normally would bring. And he needed to be assured that what he was saying was God’s truth when he said, hey, the Lord has cast you off. And so the Lord speaks to him several times. before he even goes and speaks to his nation. When the minister of God delivers a reprimand to people for their sins, threatens God’s judgment, he really does need to have, I think, a good, clear warrant for what he does. He needs to make sure that he’s deliver. nothing but the message of God. He’s not adding anything of his own to it. It’s a hard message. It will cause people to be stirred up against the prophet. Nevertheless, God gives a minister a harsh message sometimes, and needs to deliver it just as God sent it to him, not amended or tone it down. You remember that Paul wrote to Titus, who was working on the island of Crete. And in dealing with the Cretians there, one of their own prophets said that the Cretians are evil beasts and slow bellies. And Paul says, rebuke them for it, because it was true that that was the case. So Jose had a lot of them. harsh message to deliver. Now God spoke to Josea, we’re told here. The word of the Lord came to Josea, God spoke to Josea, the word of the Lord by Josea. The word of God came with power and effectiveness to this prophet. And thus he said and wrote things by divine inspiration. What he has to say, here is God given. Osea is quoted by our Lord, by Paul, and by Peter in the New Testament. So they certainly saw his message as authentic and from the Lord God. The more inwardly God speaks and conveys his message to a minister, we find the more powerfully he says, speaks for God’s cause, and it’s a searching message. The people will hear the message, not as the words of a mere man, but as it is in truth, the words of the true in the true in living God. And so we see the call to the ministry. He was a young man. He has a harsh message to deliver, but God first spoke to his heart before he delivered the message. The second thing we see here is that Jose is commanded to marry a prostitute. Now, let me suggest to you tonight, this is indeed a real marriage. Much has been written about Jose’s Strange Mary, and some marriage, some commentators maintain that the story is to be understood in a figurative thing. sense. They say that the marriage between Josea the prophet and Gomer, the prostitute, actually never took place. It is looked upon as an allegory, like the story that Nathan told David about the little you lamb and the neighbor that lost it to his rich neighbor. Or some say that it’s a vision. Jose was only married to Gomer in a dream, just like Peter saw the unclean animals coming down in the white sheets when he was in a trance in the book of Acts. I don’t intend to spend time trying to lay out all the pros and cons about whether this is a real marriage or not. I do believe it is. I think it’s a literal marriage with real children involved in it. There’s no indication that it’s an allegory. The specific names are used. Gomer, the daughter of dibliam, is mentioned in verse 3. Very specific background is given. So I believe he did enter into a marriage with a sinful woman because God commanded it. Now St. Augustine once faced this same objection against the Old Testament by a pagan religious philosopher named Faustus. He said this, that Old Testament of yours, Moses and the prophets, is that of God? Do you not find there a command to take a wife of hortem? And can this be of God, he said? Augustine replied, that though she had been a prostitute before, yet she might be reclaimed. And so she might be called a wife of hordoms from the hortem that she had hitherto been guilty. But then she could be reclaimed from that. And you’ll notice that Gomer is called a wife of Hortems in the plural, which indicates a pretty promiscuous woman on her part. No doubt Jose had in mind a claim her. In fact, we find this is of exactly what takes place in the book that we’re studying. In Chapter 2, we see the context of his ministry. to Israel is to reclaim Israel. And of course, his reclaiming of his wife, buyer and her back from the slave market, telling her, now you be faithful and stay with me, is to portray how God was going to deal with the nation of Israel. Now, you might say, well, but why marry a prostitute? Because God commanded it. It may not have been, exactly lawful, but because God commanded it, it was right. In the Bible, we have God commanding the Israelites to borrow gems and precious things from their masters, the Egyptians. When they left Egypt, it’s interesting that he uses the word borrow because they had no intention of coming back or giving it back to them. they borrowed it, but actually God was giving them pay for all their labors. We also have in the book of Genesis the story where Abraham is told to sacrifice his son on Mount Moriah. That would be certainly against the principles of God and the later the law of God, and yet God commanded him to do it. And so he proceeds to do it, believing, as the scripture tells us, that God would raise him from the debt. So we do have these kind of cases in scripture where you might say, well, why would someone do something like that? Because God commanded him to do it. And when God commands it, it’s all right to do. It was a real marriage, I believe. Now it was a sad marriage. marriage. The marriage between Homer and Josea wasn’t a natural marriage. I mean, you think about Jose, he probably would have picked a more refined woman and certainly a more godly woman than this. But his was not the reason why, but to do as he was commanded. And so he obeys the Lord and does what he’s told. we can’t help but be moved by a situation. You wonder, you know, how this was going to work out, and of course it doesn’t work out very well because she was unfaithful. She was unacquainted with being loving and being faithful. So she turned her life, life, a love life, into an empty, contemptible game. She threw herself in the arms of other men, and off she goes with them. It deserts. Poor Josea, who experiences great pain and agony. Yet I think he obey God, hoping that the best would come out of it. And at the outset, things seemed to go fairly well. In verse three, they had a son. Israel. That was a happy addition to the family, but serious trouble soon raised its head. Gomer gave birth to two more children, a daughter and another son. But these births do not appear to be occasions of celebration and joy. Why? Evidently, because Hosea could not testify that they were his children. The first child, yes. But the real father, perhaps of these other two, had to be looked for among Gomer’s lovers instead. And the discovery of Gomer’s unfaithfulness certainly had to be very painful. Notice the names that God gives them. Low Ruhama, unpidied, lo, amy, not my people. The conflict at home. escalated when Gomer ran away. Chapter 3 makes this apparent that she did. Now the problem in their relationship was out of the open for everybody to see it. It’d be embarrassing. Jose, whose love is consistent here, has to go after her. For God commanded him not only to marry Gomer, but to love her, is chapter 3. verse one indicates. And so he pursues his wife and brings her back. It’s a sad marriage. But it is a symbolic marriage. The time had come when the Word of God, even when when preached by faithful men, did not have the impact upon the people, and they were just listening. listening. And so the spoken word here is reinforced by a proclamation through his life, through his actions, in marrying this woman Gomer. Now, perhaps the Israelites would not have paid any attention if Josei kept preaching the same message to them, or even if he had related a story in Elisraeli would, or even if he had related a story in allegorical terms or in a dream. But a marriage between a prophet and a prostitute was bound to create excitement, create interest, draw attention. The country certainly had to be buzzing with gossip about this situation, and it would become the country certainly had to be buzzing with gossip about this situation, and it would become the favorite topic of everyone’s conversation, which was exactly, it seems, God’s purpose. He wanted them talking about this situation, because he wanted this marriage to attract attention and everyone talking about the scandal. No doubt they, people expressed their opinions about this wayward woman and whom the prophet had chosen to marriage. to marry. But this gives Josea the opportunity to drive home his message from God to Israel. He could say, you people are just like that wife of mine, unfaithful to the Lord, to your husband. Because just like a man and a woman get married, God said that he said that he had taken Israel as his bride. But Israel had departed from the Lord God. The land hath committed great hordom departing from the Lord, the Bible says. The emphasis on the land, and the idea here seems to be the whole land. It’s not just a few Israelites, but the vast majority of them had been unfaithful to the Lord God. They had turned to other lovers and by that we see that they had turned to the other idols like the bales and other gods. Thus, Jose have played the part of God, Gomer, the part of Israel, in order to teach an object lesson to the nation of Israel. So he had a real marriage, he had a sad marriage, and it was symbolic. marriage. Now what can we learn from all this? Let me begin by saying this. God would have you to be a a living, animated witness for him. By requiring the prophet to marry the prostitute Gomer, I said that he not only proclaimed the message of God with his words, but also with his actions. And so, through the events of his life, Josea was made to feel and understand the complaint of God’s wounded love, only in a weaker manner than the Lord God. His preaching and his life was therefore interwoven together. He was not just someone who parroted God’s word, but he was a living animated witness for God. When he spoke from his mouth, he spoke with a broken heart. So one of the great principles here is that God leads his children into situations which involve great sorrow and distress. And he does so at times in order that you may be a living witness that others may see how you handle this difficulty by your actions, not merely your words. God may call you to be like Josea, not that he’s going to ask you to marry a prostitute or something like this, but he may put you through very trying circumstances to demonstrate something to those who are around you. Sugar Ray Leonard, the famous boxer, once made this profound remark. He said, it’s the great fights that really make you. Can I put it this way tonight, it is the great fight of faith that you go through that really make you as a Christian because your faith is exercised. You’d never be the witness for God you ought to be if certain tragic and distressing events didn’t occur in your life. You know, Jesus, and look on his life, he was the ultimate witness for God. But what do we read about him? He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. To cause you to be the best witness for him in this society, God may place you in very trying situations. Just like Jose here. Secondly, the Lord demands the totality of your life. God does not just ask for Jose to serve him with his voice as a spokesman, but also with his life through his marriage. Josea must serve God in all that he does. he is a prophet for the Lord, but even in his home life, he is to serve the Lord God. God makes demands upon you and I. Even with regard to whom you marry, and even with regard to how you conduct your family in your home life and things of this nature. And we need to remember that. The Lord doesn’t just want his servants to do something for him. He wants us to live for him with the totality of our lives. This is why salvation involves a total commitment to Christ, his Lord as well as Savior. He demands that you seek his will in all things and your life be conformed to that will. One of the dangers we have in today’s religion is that people think that what they do outside of the church is their own business. Well, it is not, as we see from this passage tonight. So the Lord demands the totality of your life. A third thought is this. Your sharp eyes may detect the sin and others, but often miss it in your own life. You can imagine how quick the Israelites were to express dismay at Gomer’s unfaithfulness in this marriage. There was certainly a lot of hot gossip being spread about Josea’s wife. Look what she did. How could she do this? She was certainly playing the harlot. But was Israel doing? Weren’t they doing the same thing with regard of the Lord God? You can have an eagle eye. When it comes to the sin of others, you don’t miss a thing. When it comes to your own sin, you’re as blind as a bat, and you miss it. And this is what happened here. So before we harshly criticize another, we should take a good look at ourselves. Remember what Jesus said about getting the beam out of your own eye before you get the speck, sawdust, out of someone. else’s. Your sharp eyes may detect the sin and others, but often miss your own guilt. Fourthly, tonight, and lastly, you as a Christian can be guilty of spiritual adultery. I had Russell read from James, Chapter 4, where he calls them adulteresses and adulterers, because they love the world. And Christ was not given the first love, the supreme love that he deserves. So just as Israel chased after the bales with the assistance of foreign kings, God’s people often get caught up in the world and follow the things of the world. And that was a great sin in Israel’s life, and it’s a great sin. in our life, and we are counted them unfaithful to the Lord should that happen. You know, in a good marriage, the husband or wife are supposed to live with each other, not just sleep at night in the room together. There are thousands who live beside God, but they don’t live with God. They have some interest in God, but they’re not constant. in contact with the Lord God. We need to respond to God’s love toward us with gratitude and deeds of love ourselves. Often we’re given, we’re guilty of living for ourselves. And God complains, you’ve departed from me. You may not run too far from God. you know as far as Gomer did, but you can be unfaithful the Lord by being caught up with other gods. Let us not be half-hearted in our service to Christ, our Savior, because you may disgrace the name of Jesus Christ in small ways, if not in large ones, like Gomer. Let’s learn the horror of spiritual adultery as well. Well, let us close tonight with a word of prayer.