Hosea 3:1-5 Shocking

Hosea 3:1-5 (Evangelical Heritage Version)

1The LORD said to me, “Go again. Show love to a woman who is loved by another man, a woman who keeps committing adultery. Show love just as the LORD loves the people of Israel, even though they keep turning to other gods and loving the raisin cakes.”

2So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and nine bushels of barley. 3I said to her, “You will stay with me for many days. You must not be promiscuous. You must not be with any other man, and I will also be for you.”

4So the people of Israel will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred memorial stones, and without the special vest or family idols. 5Afterward the people of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.

Shocking

I.

Life and prosperity. That’s what they had. Their leader had been quite successful. The nation was prominent, which meant it was also prosperous. Trade negotiations had been successfully concluded so that trade benefitted the people. Not only were there successful relationships with other nations for trade, they were well-respected by other countries, too.

Remember last week’s First Reading? Moses said: “See now, today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and disaster” (Deuteronomy 30:15, EHV). No one wants death and disaster. The life and prosperity choice is the better choice.

The time of Hosea was after the golden age of the nation of Israel. It was so shocking that people couldn’t conceive that this would ever happen to God’s chosen people. The nation had split in two. The southern kingdom was known as Judah. The Northern Kingdom was usually still known by the name “Israel.” Sometimes it was also called “Ephraim,” the name of the most prominent tribe of the Northern Kingdom. Today’s First Reading deals with Ephraim, that Northern Kingdom of Israel.

They certainly seemed to have life and prosperity. They were convinced they had made the right choice in Moses’ either-or set of options.

Life and prosperity were just an illusion. Under the surface, the government was corrupt. Lady justice is supposed to be blind—not paying attention to the socio-economic status of any who come before the court—yet, those whose names were more well-known or well-respected got favorable treatment in the courts, while the poor or the not-so-well-known got the short end of the draw in the justice system. Businesses profited beyond what was fair, so one could say that the rich got richer, while the poor got poorer.

God once told Elijah: “I have preserved in Israel seven thousand whose knees have not bent to Baal and whose lips have not kissed him” (1 Kings 19:18, EHV). There were people, even in that northern kingdom of Israel, who believed in the true God. But there were no leaders who were godly. About king after king the Bible says he “did evil in the eyes of the Lord.” Worship of the true God was combined with various heathen religions, especially Baal and Ashera.

II.

So it was that God sent his prophet Hosea to the Northern Kingdom. Hosea was one of those who could be called “Performance artist prophets.”

Ezekiel was one example. (Ezekiel 4). God told him to draw a city on a clay tablet, then lay siege to it with models of siege engines. Ezekiel was to play the role of God as the city was under siege. He was to lie on one side for 490 days, then turn on his other side and lay there for 40 days. Isaiah was another (Isaiah 20). He was to conduct his daily life for three years in his undergarments and without sandals. It was considered disgraceful to appear in public this way—it indicated that one was a prisoner of war or a beggar.

As one of the “performance artist prophets,” Hosea had a truly shocking message. He was to marry an immoral wife. God told him what to name the children born to his wife. Even their names were a message for the people. The first child was named “Jezre’el,” which means “God sows.” God said that name was “because in a little while I will inflict punishment... I will destroy the ruling power of the house of Israel.” (Hosea 1:4, EHV). The next child was named “Lo Ruhamah,” which means “No Compassion.” God said: “I will no longer have compassion on the house of Israel” (Hosea 1:6, EHV). A third child born was to be named “Lo Ammi,” which means “Not My People,” “...because you are not my people, and I will not be the LORD for you” (Hosea 1:9, EHV). These three children had some really unflattering names.

God intended Hosea’s early ministry to be a shockingly graphic proclamation to the people. This unflattering picture was exactly what the people had been like to their God—the true God. They had been unfaithful to him. “You shall have no other gods,” he had commanded in that First Commandment given on Mt. Sinai. They had convinced themselves there was no harm in mixing a few other gods in, too; they still knew something about the true God, and even worshiped him alongside the others.

Shockingly, even with a full picture of all that God’s Old Testament people did—how they disobeyed him time after time and turned away from him—people of today are no different. Adding a few extra gods in addition to the true God happens without any thought. There are the gods of endless entertainment; the gods of the bank account and the retirement accounts; the gods of family and friends. You can figure out some of the other gods we tend to add in; they are all the things that take so much of your time and attention that you don’t have much time left over for the true God.

Last week we heard about the choice between “life and prosperity” and “death and disaster.” The Apostle Paul told us how impossible it is to make the right choice: “Now, the way the sinful flesh thinks results in death... 7For the mind-set of the sinful flesh is hostile to God, since it does not submit to God’s law, and in fact, it cannot” (Romans 8:6-7, EHV). We were reminded that the sinful human nature is incapable of making the right choice—of choosing life and prosperity—of choosing God. Shocking.

III.

Abruptly, God’s prophecy through Hosea shifts. Just after the third child is named God says: “Nevertheless, the number of the people of Israel will be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or counted. Then, in the place where they were told, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be told, ‘You are children of the living God’” (Hosea 1:10, EHV). That is really shocking. In spite of the fickle nature of his people of any age and generation, God still finds ways to call them “children of the living God.”

Today’s First Reading begins: “The LORD said to me, ‘Go again. Show love to a woman who is loved by another man, a woman who keeps committing adultery. Show love just as the LORD loves the people of Israel, even though they keep turning to other gods and loving the raisin cakes’” (Hosea 3:1, EHV).

God’s people have been shockingly unfaithful to the true God. Again and again they “keep turning to other gods and loving the raisin cakes.” Raisin cakes were little cakes and cookies the people made in the shapes of their false gods. Maybe jack-o-lanterns, or santa clauses or Easter bunnies?

Shocking performance artist prophecy is to continue. Hosea is to look yet again for the wife who has been unfaithful and find her.

In the Gospel for today the Pharisees and experts in the law complained that Jesus had no problem talking with sinners and sitting down to dinner with them. The parables of the Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin illustrated how God constantly seeks for sinners to bring them to himself. He keeps seeking, though we have been unfaithful and like straying sheep, over and over again.

Hosea is to show love to his unfaithful wife. Part of that love is shown just in the seeking, just like the parable of the Lost Sheep.

“So I bought her for myself for fifteen pieces of silver and nine bushels of barley. 3I said to her, ‘You will stay with me for many days. You must not be promiscuous. You must not be with any other man, and I will also be for you’” (Hosea 3:2-3, EHV). Hosea paid the price of a slave to buy his wife back from her adulterous relationship. God’s love for sinners is so great that he paid the highest price for us. He paid the price of his One and only Son to buy us back from slavery to sin.

IV.

“So the people of Israel will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred memorial stones, and without the special vest or family idols” (Hosea 3:4, EHV).

What happened to the Northern Tribes was shocking; eventually most of the people were disbursed into other nations, never to return to Israel again. No longer would they have all the symbols of their false gods they had mixed in with their worship of the true God.

Nor would they have the things that belonged to the worship of the true God that were still at the temple in Judah—the Southern Kingdom. They wouldn’t be able to make sacrifices at the temple; they wouldn’t have answers from God that the High Priest was able to give using God’s special garments. They wouldn’t have any of the things they had considered so important and so special in their worship. The people lost the ability to sacrifice to the Lord the way he had commanded for their worship.

“Afterward the people of Israel will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days” (Hosea 3:5, EHV).

People often thought that their sacrifices and offerings were like bargaining chips with the Lord. If they made the correct sacrifices, they could expect such and such a response. Prosperity preachers still teach that today; you give your offerings, and you can expect blessings of wealth and health from God in return.

“Afterward...” Hosea writes. Afterward; after the people were separated from their ability to make their offerings to the Lord, and to use the special high priestly vestments to ask their questions of God expecting answers. That was when God’s salvation would come.

God’s deliverance of his people—of all people—came when God sent the Savior of the world in the most humble of circumstances. God’s deliverance came to his people by the very Son of God hanging from the cross—an instrument of torture—as if he were nothing more than a common criminal. God’s deliverance came in a way that makes no logical sense; it is still something that can be believed only by faith.

God’s shocking deliverance comes only by his goodness. And we, his people, come to him in trembling, rejoicing at his goodness to us and to all. Most shocking of all, even as Jesus said in the two parables today, God never stopped seeking us. And there is rejoicing in heaven when one sinner, by God’s grace, is found by him.

Don’t hesitate to share the shocking news that God never stops seeking the people he redeemed with the blood of his only begotten Son. Amen.