Sermon Tone Analysis

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go!

Hosea 3:1-5

 

/The LORD said to me, “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.”

/

/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.” /

/For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol.

Afterward 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/.

Rebuke your mother, rebuke her.

The words of the prophet were almost a sob stammered out as though the oration was a bone caught in his throat.

“She is not My wife, and I am not her husband,” continued the brave prophet of God [see *Hosea 2:2*].

“Keep your personal life out of this," a member of his sinful, boisterous audience taunted, the listening crowd demonstrating their approval of his insults through raucous gales of laughter.

"By the way,” another scorner mercilessly laughed, “where exactly is that wife of yours?”

Another laughingly taunted, “It’s ten o’clock.

Do you know where you wife is?”

If the taunts were designed to emotionally maim the prophet, they achieved their purpose royally.

Always so unswerving and resolute when speaking to the people on God’s behalf, Hosea now found himself shaken by doubt, insecurity, and sadness.

It is doubtful that anyone could have stood without being shaken under the conditions in which he was called to serve.

“Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts,” he shouted, comparing Israel to an unfaithful wife.

“That’s it, all right,” came yet another painful jab.

“Sounds like Gomer to me.”

“You laugh at my expense while your very land perishes from the inside out,” rang the unspoken rejoinder inside the prophet’s head.

“At least we know where our wives are!” came another cruel jeer, its stinging pain like a needle thrust into the prophet’s skin.

Another volley was slung in the direction of the prophet, “Maybe your God can tell you why your wife never seems to stay at home these days.”

As they derided him mercilessly, Hosea could not help but feel betrayed.

He had come to this temple of Baal at God’s command, and now he was the helpless butt of this vicious ridicule, every taunt designed to cut another piece out of his already wounded heart.

His wife’s seemingly endless stream of adulterous encounters had become well know among the cities and towns of northern Israel.

Hosea knew that Gomer’s behaviour was nothing new in the land; in fact, it had become wretchedly common, as married women – as well as unwed teens – had more than willingly offered their bodies to the deplorable Canaanite fertility good, Baal.

Under any other circumstances, Gomer’s exploits would be of no consequence whatsoever to the Israelites had it not been for her husband – for Hosea was a man of God who preached against such transgressions.

Because of his wife, however, he was no better in the eyes of his countrymen than they.

They now felt equal to the prophet and had the courage to return his verbal attacks with the same ferocity with which he had always launched them.

“Who knows better than you, Hosea,” came a faceless voice, “of the iniquity of our people.

Why, you’re married to one of the best examples of it.”

Again the assembly’s derisive laughter cut through his very soul.

The vile laughter stung, almost causing him to cease speaking and to turn away in shame.

The words stung precisely because the venom with which they were dripping was supplied in abundance by the actions of his own beloved wife.

Were it not for the sense of divine call he had received, a call to confront the people with the truth of God, he would have ceased his address.

“I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born,” he shouted.

“We accept your offer, prophet,” came the scornful reply.

“I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst.

I will not show My love to her children, because they are the children of adultery,” continued Hosea doggedly.

“Who are you to talk to us about the ‘children of adultery’?”

an angry voice challenged.

“Who fathered your children, prophet?”

Though the prophet trusted he had fathered all three of his children, he could not be certain because of his wife’s unfaithfulness.

God knew who within the unfaithful nation were His, but most of the people had turned to Baal, trusting the pagan god to provide food and power.

With a burst of authority born of the confidence of his call the prophet quieted the crowd: “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.

I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; and no one will take her out of My hands.”

“Ha!  We’ll take our chances with Baal,” another faceless voice shouted defiantly.

“Has your God fed our children or brought crops in their season?

No!

Until we turned to Baal, our families starved.

What do you have to say to that, prophet?

Meanwhile, you go find your wife – wherever she is.”

And the crowd again laughed heartlessly.

Israel’s days were numbered.

Despite outward appearances the northern kingdom’s temporary prosperity under King Jeroboam II was no more than a facade for the rampant moral and religious laxity that consumed the land, especially the capital of Samaria.

Under Jeroboam II Israel’s borders were expanded to their farthest reaches since the glory days of kings David and Solomon – days when all Israel was one nation before the split soon following Solomon’s death.

Ever since the apostasy which was introduced into the Northern Kingdom by her first king the nation was never able to right itself.

Not wanting his subjects to travel to Jerusalem, the capital of the Southern Kingdom to worship, Jeroboam set up idols at Bethel and Dan.

Since that time, Israel had been plagued with a succession of godless monarchs, all more than willing to promote worship of Baal.

How seductive the Canaanite god was!

Because of hard times and near famine conditions in the land, the people were seduced by promises of fertility – both agriculturally and in human reproduction – and all too willingly gave themselves over to the vile veneration of the heathen deity.

With their pagan worship came the lewdest of behaviour – sexual encounters with priests and temple harlots – all to secure the favour of Baal.

None of this immoral activity escaped the notice of Hosea, who as a young man had been called into God’s service to turn the people away from their spiritually adulterous ways.

“There is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgment of God in the land,” the prophet preached.

“There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery.”

The words stung those who heard, for many of his hearers, both men and women, had just been returning from the shrine after an encounter with a “holy man” or shrine prostitute.

They had received a promise that Baal would grant their request for either a child or healthy crops.

Those who felt their guilt rushed past the bellowing prophet, his words a searing accusation.

Greater still than the immorality was the fact that the nation of Israel had deserted the God who had formed it from dust and who had made a people overflowing with promise and favour.

“When Israel was a child, I loved him,” the Lord said through Hosea, “and out of Egypt I called My son.

But the more I called Israel, the further they went from Me.

They sacrificed to the Baals, and they burned incense to images.

It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them in My arms; but they did not realise it was I who healed them.”

It was no surprise to Hosea that his people could go so far astray.

After all, their entire history had been one of grumbling, never satisfied with what God had done for them, but always asking for more and turning to lifeless idols when they did not get what they wanted.

Then, when the pagan gods to whom they had turned did not deliver, the people were willing to turn back, but always on their own terms, never on God’s terms.

“What can I do with you, Ephraim?” Hosea inquired one day of the swarming mass at Baal’s shrine.

“What can I do with you, Judah?” he rhetorically asked the people of the southern kingdom.

“Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears.

Therefore, I cut you in pieces with my prophets, I killed you with the words of my mouth; my judgements flashed like lightning upon you.

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.”

The Israelites, however, did not acknowledge God.

Their burnt offerings were for Baal and not for the Living God.

Whenever an answer to prayer came their way, it was always Baal who received the credit, the glory – and never the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Hosea had never felt further from his people.

The more they strayed in Baal’s direction, the closer he moved toward his God.

As the apostasy grew, Hosea desired to know his Lord better, to somehow know the very heart and soul of God.

One day, the Lord answered Hosea’s innermost desire in a most improbable way.

“Go,” said God, “take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord.”

Imagine the confusion the prophet experienced!

Can you imagine how he must have argued with God, reasoning that God had perhaps made a mistake?

Whatever your reaction to this command, we are confident that Hosea entered into the marriage contract knowing that he was wedding a wife infected with wanderlust which would threaten the marriage and which would lead her into the most degrading situations.

At what point Gomer first strayed from her vows, we cannot say, but there appears a strain on the marriage early on.

The first child born into that union, a son, was given the name Jezreel, “because,” said the Lord, “I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.

In that day I will break Israel’s bow in the Valley of Jezreel.”

The name is odd, but perhaps not so odd that it would indicate much else then the fact that the prophet was sensitive to the judgement which was surely coming on the land.