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NT Reading: 2John

Already in our studies together in this little Book of the Prophet Hosea we have taken note of the fact that the LORD exalted in Majesty, High and Holy, is nevertheless quite prepared to describe Himself as a husband that His wife has cheated on.

Were it not that this picture is found revealed in the pages of Holy Scripture the whole idea would appear ridiculous if not blasphemous. However once the image has been employed then we would expect some retribution to follow. We would naturally expect such behaviour to bring forth expressions of divine wrath and divine anger – after all isn't that the way so many men react when they discover unfaithfulness on the part of their wife?

But Hosea chapter three presents us with some more staggering truths. Let us take a look then at this chapter

For the last time in the book Hosea speaks of his own experience with his wife Gomer. For the last time his life experience is to serve as an illustration of the LORD's own relationship with His people Israel. He begins by recording the instructions that the LORD gave him and then moves on to explain just why it was that he was called upon to act in this way.

3:1a "And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress,"

Hosea must go and love again the wife who had formerly abandoned him. He must go to her and love her again even though she is still actively pursuing her life as an adulteress.

The command is twofold: firstly Hosea is to go again and secondly he is to love again.

This means that although Hosea is the innocent party, the one sinned against and not the sinner, yet he must take the initiative and reach out to his wife Gomer.

And this reaching out is not to be limited to some expressions of sympathy or pity as he discovers the depths to which she has sunk. No, Hosea is called upon to love her! And we should not take this to mean that he must somehow show her the love that he has had for her all along. The text suggests that all his love had been snuffed out by Gomer's infidelity – there is no love still burning for her in his heart but he must go and learn to love her all over again.

How difficult this must have been for him we can only imagine. After all his wife had treated him so shamefully and what a laughing stock he must have become!

Hosea is instructed this way so that he might feel something more of the LORD's own relationship with His people. As he goes after Gomer once more he will be imitating the LORD who refuses to give up on His people.

3:1b "even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins."

As we observe Hosea and catch a sense of what it meant to him to pursue his wayward wife we too are given a glimpse into the realities of divine love as the LORD God pursues His people who are so often bent on going their own way, bent of turning from Him, bent on turning to anything/anyone rather than remain faithful to the God who is the source of all their well-being and of all their blessings.

Hosea must go taking the initiative and love his wife just because that is exactly what the LORD does with His people. As Gomer has chased after her lovers Israel has turned to other gods and to the trappings of false religious worship and practice. The pain that Hosea feels has already been felt by God as His people have turned from Him to their own hurt!

In order to take his wife back Hosea has to make a payment. We're not told clearly just why this was. It could have been for a variety of reason:

1.       Perhaps she was in debt

2.       Perhaps she had sunk into slavery

3.       Perhaps she had got lost in prostitution

Whether one of these were the reason why a payment had to be made or whether it was for some other reason the fact that payment was necessary indicates that she had indeed fallen. The extent to which she had fallen is indicated by the price that Hosea had to pay.

What was that price?

3:2 "So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley."

Well it was 15 shekels of silver and one and a half measures of barley.

So what, you might be thinking.

Well it looks very much as though Gomer has been up for sale at what might be described as a bargain basement price! The price suggests something of a half-price sale! After all the regular price for a slave was more like thirty pieces of silver and here is Gomer set free for half of that along with a day's ration of food.

I wonder whether the fact that the shekels were supplemented by barley tells us that even this low price was difficult for Hosea to pay. It could be indicating that he was giving his all to take Gomer back again!

However we should probably focus our attention not so much on the cost but rather on what such a low cost suggests – Gomer had fallen into great depths.

At this point in the story we should take note that divine love is being expressed not so much in terms of a price paid but in terms of the shame and humiliation from which the worthless one is being redeemed!

And we should be assured that divine love will not prove to be ineffective – it will triumph because the LORD God simply will not let His people go. Although Hosea may well have been able to redeem his wife cheaply there was nevertheless a great deal of shame involved. When God in His Holiness redeems His people He does not do so "on the cheap", the price He pays is the death of His own dear Son, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

The price that is paid by our great and glorious God should not be taken as a demonstration and proof of our inherent worth but much more as a revelation of the greatness of divine love and a demonstration of just how awful sin is to our Holy God!

We are of value because He chose to pay a high price to secure our release – He did not pay a high price because we were already of great value!

The final words of a personal nature that Hosea speaks are found in v.3 and they relate to the disciplining and purifying process to which he obliges Gomer to submit herself.

3:3 "And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.”"

In returning to his home Gomer must cut off all ties with her former adulterous lovers. Gomer is to have no relations (and it is sexual relations that are in view here) with anyone for a certain length of time including her husband.

We are not to understand this as a harsh arbitrary punishment that Hosea imposes impersonally upon her. No, Hosea shares with her as a fellow-sufferer as he does not enjoy relations with her though she be his wife!

Hosea segregates Gomer for purification, for rededication and for renewal. His goal is for a proper and a complete restoration of the marriage relationship but the process reveals that such restoration is never to be thought of as cheap and easy.

And once again there is a parallel established : on the one hand there is the LORD and Israel and on the other there is Hosea and Gomer.

Having spoken about his own relationship with Gomer the prophet writes next about the similarity that exists with the way the LORD deals with His "wife" Israel.

3:4 "For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods."

In order to understand this we need to know a little history.

The nation of Israel had begun its national life shortly after the death of Solomon as the northern tribes seceded from the southern nation known as Judah.

Judah was the Davidic kingdom and its importance lay in the fact that the LORD had so ordained things that the nature of true worship was only found there. The only true spiritual blessing to be experienced was to be found there as the Messiah was to come from David's line. Israel in seceding was effectively breaking with the LORD God Himself. There was no source of truth and of salvation outside Judah.

Israel however had decided to go her own way and had set up kings of her own choosing without referring to the LORD at all:

8:4a "They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but I knew it not."

Turning away from Judah's divinely ordained religion Israel didn't give up on religion altogether but created her own religious practices of which the LORD thoroughly disapproved:

8:4b-6 "With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction. I have spurned your calf, O Samaria. My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of innocence? For it is from Israel; a craftsman made it; it is not God. The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces."

As Gomer had turned to her lovers so these were the "lovers" to which Israel had turned in her spiritual adultery.

As Gomer was to be denied access to her lovers so Israel was going to have her kings and princes and false religious practices removed from her!

How unlikely Hosea's message must have appeared to those who listened to him in Israel! The last 50 years had been years of great prosperity and progress – on the surface nothing looked as though that was likely to change in the near future.

And yet that change did come and come with catastrophic consequences for Israel.

It would not be long at all before the nation of Israel would be defeated by her neighbour Assyria and the children of Israel would be scattered throughout the Assyrian Empire. This dispersal would be so complete that this Israel would never exist as an independent nation again.

How foolish we would be in our day were we to discount and dismiss God's Word on the grounds that its accomplishment doesn't appear very likely to us! God's patience in our own day allows the time and the opportunity for us to repent – our God takes no delight in the death of the wicked and greatly prefers that none should perish. Yet how serious and how foolish to misinterpret His patience as indifference or the stuff merely of fables and myths! His patience is no excuse for ignoring His warnings and carrying on regardless.

Just as in ch.2 we read of a door of hope being opened in the very place of trouble so we read of hope here in ch.3. And that hope is all down to the fact that the LORD God reigns sovereignly over all. Had you noticed the declarations that He made in vv.4+5 – we have to do with certainties not with ifs perhaps and maybes:

3:4-5 "For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days."

The disciplining of the nation must be attributed to the LORD God Almighty but so must their subsequent restoration! And it began almost at once!

The nation of Israel was swallowed up by Assyria around the year 722BC and although the nation was never to be re-established nevertheless a steady trickle of converts did return from this corrupt old Israel to align themselves with the Davidic Kingdom of Judah!

Hezekiah began to reign in Judah in the last years of Israel's existence before being defeated by Assyria. We read in 2Chronicles of his organising a great Passover celebration:

2Chron.30:11, 18 "However, some men of Asher, of Manasseh, and of Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem… For a majority of the people, many of them from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet they ate the Passover otherwise than as prescribed."

The tribes mentioned here all formed part of the nation of Israel but thee men coming from these tribes had associated themselves with the true worship of Judah.

But Hosea was speaking of a much greater event than this small trickle of believers returning. He was speaking of the Messianic period that was inaugurated with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and in which we now are living.

All kinds of people be they Jew or Gentile are united together in Christ in the gospel époque. The church of Jesus Christ is even called in the NT the Israel of God!

Are you amongst this number? Have you come in reverential fear to the LORD? Have you come to His goodness offered to you by great David's Greater Son the Lord Jesus Christ?

May the LORD God reveal to us clearly just how He views us outside of Christ that we might flee to Christ for refuge and for the salvation our souls need!

Amen.