The Abandoned Lover

Sisters, that I'm reading from Hosea. Hosea is the first of the minor prophets, and Pastor Ben suggested that I might like this morning to kind of put the minor prophets into perspective for you, because Pastor Ben quoted from Hosea a fortnight ago. That's what led me to go to Hosea this morning. And then Pastor Ben is going to start a series on another of the minor prophets in the coming weeks, the book of Jonah. So let me just help you to put the minor prophets into perspective.

Many, I want to do that with a story. Many of you will be aware that Merle and I have spent the last ten years in regional New South Wales, and we lived for almost four years in Narrabri. And from Narrabri there is a road that goes out to Bingara. Some of you have probably gone along it to see the sawn rocks, amongst other things, a tourist attraction. It was interesting that while we were there, the RSPCA began to be concerned about the number of crows that were being killed on that road between Narrabri and Bingara, because a lot of roadkill, a lot of wildlife. And furthermore, their investigation showed that invariably the crows were being killed by motorbikes and not by cars. And so they wondered about that, and then they found out that when the crows feed on roadkill, they post a lookout crow. And the lookout crow can say "car, car," but can't say "bike, bike." Now I don't wanna be disrespectful, congregation, but I think it's helpful for us to think about the minor prophets as God's lookout crows.

They were saying to the people of Israel and Judah, saying, you're on the wrong road. You're in danger. You need to move. You need to do something about this. So as Ben goes to Jonah, just think about that image of the lookout crow.

Let's go to Hosea chapter three, which is our text for this morning. So while chapter one was important, we needed to read that to set the scene, and I will be referring back to that. But let me read with you Hosea 3. It's a short chapter. So this is the word of God to us this morning.

The Lord said to me, go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins. They were ritual sacred cakes used in idolatry. So I bought her for 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech, that's half a homer, of barley. And I said to her, you must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the harlot or belong to another man, so will I also be with you.

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. Brothers and sisters in Christ, Hosea being called one of the minor prophets, that could very easily become a bit of a problem for us. What I mean is that when something is minor, that often means to us that it's not all that important, right? Something is minor.

Why should we bother with the minor books of the Bible when there's also the major books of the Bible? Well, they're minor not because they're less important, but they're minor because they're generally much shorter than what we call the major prophets: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. One of them, Obadiah, has only one chapter. Hosea has 14 chapters. In comparison, Isaiah has 66, although the major prophet Daniel only has 12.

So amongst the prophets, Hosea is unique. He is the only writing prophet from the northern tribes, and you remember if you have a little bit of Bible history that after King Solomon, the nation of Israel split into two, and the 10 northern tribes, they were called Israel, and the two southern tribes, they're known as Judah. Well, Hosea is the only writing prophet from the northern tribes. There were two other well-known prophets from Israel, and that was Elijah and Elisha, but they didn't leave any written prophecies for us today. Hosea is the only one.

By way of introduction, I should also mention that Hosea had a lengthy ministry of more than thirty years, and you would have noticed in the opening verse of chapter one that he prophesied during four kings of Judah, that while he was prophesying during his ministry, four kings reigned in Judah. Well, in that same period, for forty-one years, Israel just had one king, and that was Jeroboam the Second. And Jeroboam the Second's long reign was a time of great affluence in Israel. It's kind of like the days of Solomon. Everything was going so well, but what has so often happened, congregation, is times of great affluence are not always the best times spiritually. And so Hosea is dealing with a nation that is materially extremely rich, but spiritually extremely poor.

And that spiritual poverty of Israel is pictured very, very graphically for us here in the book of Hosea. Hosea's story begins with the Lord speaking directly to Hosea. Hosea is just a young man at the time. His ministry is just beginning, and I can imagine that God speaking to him directly must have kind of blown Hosea out of the water. Wow.

God is actually speaking to me the way He once did to Abraham and to Moses. Must have been a wonderful affirmation for Hosea's call as a preacher and as a prophet. The surprising thing though, congregation, is the content of God's first communication to Hosea. And Sinclair Ferguson in his sermon on Hosea puts it this way: God tells Hosea, I want you to go and get married and have a family. And then Sinclair Ferguson imagines Hosea saying to himself, what a wonderful idea, Lord, to get married and have a family, great thing. But then the Lord floors him by telling him the kind of wife that he is to marry, not some nice godly girl from the neighbourhood. No.

He says, go take for yourself, and the ESV says, a wife of whoredom, a wife of prostitution, an adulterous wife, and the children of prostitution, whoredom. Can you imagine, congregation, the crisis that God's message caused in that young man Hosea? But Lord, I've always tried to live by Your commandments, also the seventh commandment about adultery, and now You're asking me to marry a woman with loose morals? I can see, congregation, why some commentators claim that the book of Hosea is just a parable, and even uncle John Calvin, the great reformer, called it a vision. How could a holy God ask a law-abiding Israelite to take as his wife a scarlet woman? Would God really ask a godly man to marry a prostitute?

A woman who sells her body for sex? I wanna say this morning, congregation, that I believe God would do that and that God did do that. There is no hint that I can find anywhere in Hosea that it's a parable or that it's a vision. God actually wants Hosea to do this, and for some very good reasons, because Hosea's relationship to this immoral woman is to be a picture of God's relationship with immoral Israel. It's almost as if God is saying to Hosea, Hosea, I want you to know how I feel.

I want you in your prophetic ministry to be shaped by My relationship with sinful Israel, and I want you to portray in your marriage My broken relationship with Israel. God meant business with this. He was serious. And so Hosea the prophet marries Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim. And like most married couples, brothers and sisters, they soon start a family.

But Gomer's faulty character is soon evident in the story of her children. We read it in chapter one. Notice how chapter one talks about each of the children that's born. If you just flick back in your Bible to chapter one, the first one, Jezreel, notice how it's recorded in verse three. She conceived and bore him a son.

It's clear, isn't it? She bore Hosea a son. Did you get that? Pick that up. This was Hosea's son, not just Gomer's. It was their son.

But now notice what happens with the birth of the second child, in Hebrew called Lo-Ruhamah, or Not Pitied. Verse six merely states that she conceived again and gave birth to a daughter, and those keywords are missing. It does not say she bore him a daughter. Then when we get to verse eight with the arrival of what's in Hebrew called Lo-Ammi, Not My People, the statement is just as stark. Simply says after she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Not Pitied, Gomer had another son.

And again, the text is loudly silent about this son being born to Hosea. You know, if Hosea was living today, he'd have a paternity test done, wouldn't he? Go and have some DNA done from his children and himself, because he was, it could be, he could not be certain that those two youngest children were his and that he was the dad of them. Only the first is specifically mentioned as being his. Kind of picture that I get from the text, and that many other commentators have sort of picked up on, that when Hosea married Gomer, things changed.

They sort of picture it in your mind's eye that Gomer stopped wearing the mesh stockings. It was part of the prostitution trade, and she stopped wearing the dresses with the plunging necklines and no longer with the caked-up makeup and the brightly painted lips. And she settled down with Hosea very quickly to marital bliss. They loved each other and they wanted a family. But then things changed again, see.

I mean, there were the interrupted nights, interrupted sleep, baby crying, baby teething, wearying routine of feeding burps and changing stinky nappies, and maybe there had even been a little bit of postnatal depression, who knows. So Gomer would say, Hosea, you look after Jezreel, I've got to get out of here for my own sanity. I'm going away for a little while and you just care for him. But the absences became longer and longer. One day the mesh stockings came out again.

And when baby number two came along, Hosea was pretty sure it wasn't his. But God had said to him, take an adulterous wife, a wife of prostitution, and children of prostitution, of unfaithfulness. So even though it tore him apart, Hosea didn't complain. He kept the family together. Telling thing for us this morning though, congregation, is that Gomer is a picture of Israel and Hosea is a picture of the Lord.

Their marriage portrays God's relationship with His people. Notice how that's spelled out twice in our readings this morning. It's there in both chapter one and chapter three. Chapter 1:2, go and take to yourself a wife of prostitution and children of prostitution, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the Lord. In chapter 3:1, the Lord said to me, go show your love to your wife again, though she's 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. You see how Hosea is beginning to feel how God feels? All the pain of an abandoned lover. Hosea is learning how to address this affluent but wayward nation that lived under Jeroboam the Second, appealing to those people to return to the lover of their souls. Hosea is living out with Gomer what's happening in the nation at large.

In this way, the book of Hosea leaves us with a pretty powerful definition, congregation, of what sin is. I mean, we can define sin in many different ways. The Bible does that. The Bible speaks of sin as missing the mark. It speaks of it as overstepping the boundaries, transgressing God's commandments.

But sin is especially turning away from the wonderful love of God for us. Flick over to chapter 11 a moment, and you get a powerful description of sin in verse seven. It says, my, in verse seven of chapter 11, my people are determined to turn from Me, or as the ESV has it, they're bent on turning away from Me. That's what the Bible calls spiritual adultery. And if you want to see where that spiritual adultery all ends, then look at the second verse of Hosea 13, the last sentence of the second verse of Hosea 13. Instead of these people, they offer human sacrifices and they kiss the calf idols.

They abandon their divine lover for the golden calves that the first Jeroboam had made, and that idolatry had horrendous outworkings in the area of morality, says Hosea 13. Even the bloodshed of human sacrifices. Now there's something very telling about Gomer's situation here in chapter three, in our text this morning. She's for sale, congregation. Her freedom is gone.

She's up for auction for the highest bidder. Her promiscuity has resulted in slavery and abandonment, and that's where sin takes us. Of course, it didn't take Hosea by surprise, just as God wasn't surprised by Israel's sin, but that doesn't make adultery any less painful for the lover. It's devastatingly painful. This morning, congregation, it's tempting for me to say, well, you know, here's a picture of our western society.

Our culture has abandoned God and look where it's leading us. It's reaping the rewards of immorality and loss of freedom and so many social problems all around us. Then I could spend the next twenty minutes lamenting where Australia's heading, except for one thing. Spiritual adultery is not something that the world around us can be guilty of. It's God's people that can be guilty of spiritual adultery.

It's not our culture. It's not our society that is the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ. The church is. And so I have to say to you this morning that what Gomer is by nature, that's what you and I are by nature. It's a graphic picture of our own sin when we turn away from the lover of our souls.

A frighteningly sobering picture of spiritual adultery. Congregation, over against all that ugliness of unfaithfulness, chapter three also has some beautiful pictures of God's love, God's grace. I'm not quite sure this morning how chapter three fits in with chapter one. Maybe chapter three happened sometime after the birth of the three children, although some believe that it happened after the first one was born and before the second two, so that it's a kind of a rewind and replay. But the point is that Gomer at some point abandoned Hosea to be loved by another, maybe even loved by a succession of different men. In any case, congregation, that's adultery, isn't it?

And adultery is grounds for divorce, isn't it? And over the years I've seen it, I'm sure you have too. Adultery takes place, trust goes out the window, and it's all over, folks. The marriage ends. It ends in the most painful way. Now this morning, Hosea 3 is showing us it doesn't need to be that way.

God actually charges Hosea to go back and love Gomer, to bring her back. And then there's a special touch that pulls at our heartstrings. God doesn't tell Hosea to take her back because he should feel sorry for her, or to take her back so that she can help him look after the kids in return for free bed and board. No. God actually tells Hosea to love her and to demonstrate that love. Go and show your love to your wife again, though she's loved by another, is an adulteress.

In fact, God puts it even more strongly. Go and love her as the Lord loves the Israelites. Hosea's love is to reflect God's love. And I wanna say this morning, congregation, that maybe that wasn't difficult for Hosea. Maybe the Lord had put in his heart a great love for this woman, but the point is it was undeserved.

Despite all the pain that she had caused Hosea, Hosea still loves her. That's the heart of chapter three. And the way in which Hosea shows that love is also very telling. Hosea's got to go and get her from the slave market where she has hit rock bottom. Maybe the latest man in her life tired of her, but whatever happened, she is now destitute and up for sale. It's her only hope for survival, to become a slave.

And so Hosea has to go and buy her back. It's a picture of what the Bible calls redemption, buying back what once belonged to you. And the cost, 15 shekels of silver and a homer and a half of barley. Footnote in my Bible says that a homer and a half is about 330 litres of grain. And we're not told in our text why there's this mix of silver and grain, but I think the reason is not difficult to guess, is it, when you think about it? Remember, Hosea is a prophet.

He's a preacher. He's not a wealthy man, but it seems that as a preacher and prophet, he's got a farm, a small farm on the side. In ancient Israel, the price of a slave was 30 shekels of silver. Hosea's only got 15, but they're willing to take some grain in addition to the silver, and so he sends someone to empty his grain silo. They're willing to accept that as part payment. And so Hosea gets his wife back, but look at what it cost him.

Not just the humiliation of having to pay for his own wife in a slave market, but there's also the sheer cost. 15 shekels of silver and 330 litres of barley. But friends, isn't that a wonderful picture of God's love? We don't find it only here in chapter three. Chapter 11 pictures it even more wonderfully.

The chapter that Pastor Ben quoted a fortnight ago. God uses the image of a child: when Israel was a child, I loved him and called him out of Egypt. Out of Egypt I called My son. And then we again get that terrible turning away from the Lord God. But the more I called Israel, the further they went from Me, God laments.

I led them with cords of human kindness and with ties of love. And then God foreshadows the mighty Assyrian nation totally overpowering them so that they will be disciplined because of their refusal to repent. And then what do we get a few verses later in chapter 11:8? The heart of what Pastor Ben quoted a fortnight ago, how gut-wrenchingly painful this discipline of Israel is for the Lord God who administers the discipline. He says, how can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel?

My heart is changed within Me. All My compassion is aroused. If God was saying that to us in contemporary language, He'd say, it is gut-wrenching for Me. God still loves that adulterous, idolatrous nation. Like Hosea, He's prepared to buy them back, to redeem them from slavery.

That brings us this morning to some wonderful parallels between what Hosea did and what God does. In both cases, the initiative does not lie with the adulterous spouse. There is not a single thing that Gomer could do to sort out the mess that she was in. Just like, brothers and sisters, we can't solve our sin problem. No matter how hard you try, not a thing you can do about it.

Hosea has to take the initiative to rescue Gomer, and God took the initiative with His people Israel, and He's taken the initiative with us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And just as it cost Hosea everything he had to buy back Gomer, so it cost Jesus everything He had, His very life, to redeem us. That's why the apostle Peter says in his letter, we were redeemed not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ. It makes us aware this morning how immense, how amazingly immense is the love of God for us lost sinners. We see then that in this Bible book, the prophet not only preaches the message, he is the message.

He actually lives it out, congregation. And that message, when you read the whole book of Hosea, and there's your homework for today, read Hosea right through and keep an eye open for the note of judgement that occurs again and again and again and again in the book of Hosea. Judgement from God, a very strong theme. It's something that Hosea as a prophet and preacher could never get away from. Why? Because he had seen it in the life of Gomer, the outworking of sin, of judgement.

It was always for him that memory of what had happened to her. Abandon your spouse for prostitution and you end up on the scrap heap. And that coloured Hosea's preaching to Israel in that affluent time of King Jeroboam the Second. Well off and secure materially, but a disaster spiritually, headed for the scrap heap. In chapter three, God spells it out.

Israel too will end up in slavery like Gomer. And Hosea talks about them living for a time. Did you notice it in our text? With no king and no prince and no priests and no sacrifices. In other words, all the things that marked their national identity would be gone. That's precisely what happened. They were taken into exile by the mighty nation of Assyria that was already looming on the horizon.

That helps us to understand this morning the names of Hosea's children. There's a judgement in those names, a self-fulfilling judgement that comes from forsaking God, the consequences of abandoning the lover of our souls. First one that's born, Hosea is told to call him Jezreel. You may wonder what's the significance of that. Well, Jezreel was the place where Jehu, the great-grandfather of Jeroboam the Second, had massacred 70 sons of Ahab.

It was a place of death and destruction and defeat. When the daughter's born, Hosea is told to call her, in Hebrew, Ruhamah. Maybe Hosea had wanted to call her Ruhamah, which means loved or pitied, but the Lord tells him to add in front of it "not." For Israel is not loved by God. Judgement.

And then most devastating of all, there is that third child who the Lord tells him to call in Hebrew Lo-Ammi, a name that in Hebrew means Not My People. God is actually disowning them. Put very bluntly in verse nine, for you are not my people and I am not your God. You see, friends, how the names of Hosea's children reflect the sad state of Gomer, their mother. She ends up on the scrap heap of the slave market, a hopeless situation, and so Israel is gonna end on the scrap heap of history, conquered by the Assyrians.

Again, the Hosea-Gomer story is a picture of the God-Israel story. But you know, the wonderful thing is that the names of Hosea's children, that's not God's last word to Hosea. In both Hosea 1 and in Hosea 3, there is mention of a return. Beautiful words. They're again called God's people. In fact.

Picture of God's grace. Chapter 1:10, yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore. Spoken to a nation who had just been condemned by God. Amazing. Chapter 3:5, afterwards the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. And from history we know that it happened.

Do you know, when Jesus was dedicated in the temple in Luke 2, there was a woman there called Anna, and she was a survivor of the tribe of Asher, one of the 10 northern tribes. But I want to say, brothers and sisters, I want to say this very strongly, that the survival of the nation is not Israel's doing. It's not fulfilled because there was some kind of great national revival. In fact, this is ultimately not even fulfilled in some national state of Israel as some people treat these texts in Hosea. Big mistake they make.

They see it as being all fulfilled in the Middle East today in the present nation of Israel. Geographical location. No. No. It's fulfilled in Jesus.

Think about it. Who is the David in Hosea 3:5 that they will again seek as their king? King David was dead and long gone, and the David that we're talking about in that text is Jesus, the great Son of David. Do you see how that other promise of Hosea 1:10 is fulfilled, about the Israelites being like the sand by the seashore, fulfilled in the New Testament church? God promised Abraham already that his descendants would be like sand on the seashore, and God repeats that promise to Hosea right at this time of Jeroboam, in the middle of the words of judgement implied in the names of his children.

And today, brothers and sisters, the new Israel is indeed like the sand on the seashore. You think we can count all the Christians in the world today? We're reminded that in Revelation 7, it's called a multitude that no one can number. So huge. All of that makes us aware this morning that Hosea is actually a type of Christ, a picture of Jesus.

Yeah. The privilege and the duty of modelling for Israel what Jesus would be like, and then especially in the way in which he bought his wife, Gomer, from that slave market. It's a marvellous picture, isn't it, of what God does in Christ, taking prostitutes as His glorious bride. How amazing and wonderful is that? I'm humbled, brothers and sisters, that God has taken me from the scrap heap.

Well, I think if you think about it, you'll think the same. He bought us so as to transform us into objects of His love. It's a lovely poem that I want to conclude with this morning. It's called "The Old Violin." It highlights this picture of the transformation that the master brings.

The poem is by Myra Brooks Welch. Let me read it to you. 'Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer thought it hardly worth his while to waste his time on the old violin, but he held it up with a smile. One of my bid, good people, he cried, who starts the bidding for me? $1?

$1? Do I hear $2? $2. Who makes it $3? $3 once.

$3 twice. Going for $3. But no. From the room far back, a grey-bearded man came forward and picked up the bow, then wiped the dust from the old violin, and tightening up the strings, he played a melody pure and sweet, as sweet as the angel sings. The music ceased, and the auctioneer, with a voice that was quiet and low, said, what now am I bid for this old violin, as he held it aloft with its bow?

$1,000? Do I hear $2,000? $2,000? Who makes it $3,000? $3,000?

Twice? Going and gone, said he. The audience cheered, but some of them cried, we just don't understand what changed its worth. Swift came the reply, the touch of the master's hand. And many a man with life out of tune, or battered and bruised with hardship, is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd, much like that old violin. A mess of pottage, a glass of wine, a game, and he travels on.

He's going once. He's going twice. He's going and almost gone. But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd can never quite understand the worth of a soul and the change that is wrought by the touch of the Master's hand. Let me lead us in prayer.

Thank You, Father, for these lovely words and images of salvation in the book of Hosea. And Father, we marvel this morning at the depths of Your love. How could You love us, lost sinners, people who were enemies by nature against You? We thank You for what Jesus did on the cross, and we pray that during this season of Lent, as we move on to Good Friday and Easter, we may think often of the price that was paid for our salvation. Redeemed not with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thank You for the grace that has transformed us from people who are by nature adulterous prostitutes, and that we're now the bride of Christ. Thank You for that wonderful grace. In Jesus' name. Amen.