Grace to the Max
I. The Picture
II. The Reality
III. For Us
I. The Picture
To start with, let’s orient ourselves. This is happening before the things we talked about last week. Last week we were with Hezekiah facing Assyria in the Southern Kingdom after Assyria obliterated the Northing Kingdom of Israel. Dial the dates back before 722 some time and go up into the Northern Kingdom. Here we meet the prophet Hosea.
Now let’s get the picture. Some commentators say that what Hosea did was the real thing. Luther says that it was not actual, but that Hosea’s wife and children were given names to portray a part. In the bulletin today you can read how the prophets were given parts to play, to symbolize the realities of our relationship with God.
Hosea is instructed first of all who marry a prostitute. Hosea 1:2–3 (ESV) When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the LORD.” So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.
Whether a prostitute or “just” named “Whore” Hosea was to marry her. And he did. So he is married to a woman who sleeps around for money. In chapter two she lists the luxuries that she gets by prostitution, and the way that her lovers wait on her. Hosea tries to keep her at home, resorting to thorn fences and walls. She looks for her lovers but can’t find them; they don’t care about her; they aren’t to be found anywhere.
So then she decides to go back to her husband. It turns out that he was the one who provided all that she enjoyed.
Then the focus shifts to the people of Israel and their unfaithfulness – but more about that later.
In chapter three, our text, she is now in bondage in prostitution. Whichever, And 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.”
This woman has a lover but is isn’t faithful to him; she is desolate and used by others. She is in bondage as a prostitute, so she must be redeemed. It is at half the price of a slave that Hosea redeems here, literally “buys her back.”
She has been rescued, but now she must wait for Hosea and He must wait for her.
So that’s the picture: Hosea marries a woman, has children with her, loves her, and she prostitutes herself for food, clothing, and water (although her husband actually provides these things) until she is in bondage. Hosea redeems her and brings her home. There they wait and live together platonically until properly reunited one day.
II. The Reality
The reality is conflated with the picture, as in verse 1, “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.” The children of Israel worshipped Baal as the god of fertility. The thought they received the harvest from this idol, and sweet raisins were representative of the grape harvest, and cakes of raisins were offered as thank offerings and then eaten and enjoyed.
And again in verses 4-5 the reality is that the time will come when they are rescued, but will still have to wait for their husband to be joined to them. 4 For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. 5 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 Jews in the Southern Kingdom of Judah and the Israelites in the Northern Kingdom of Israel will all be taken captive. 722 B.C. the Israelites were taken captive by Assyria, and in 606 B.C. the Jews were taken captive by Babylon. Especially for the Jews, this was an end of idolatry. It is like they had “taken the cure” and were no longer tempted. Even though the Northern Kingdom ceased to exist, and Assyria established cults of idols in the place of the Samaritan gods, the cults of Baal were not what they once were, and besides the Samaritans other Jews lived in the region without idolatry.
Like the woman redeemed, who found out that it was always her husband who cared for her, they found out that it was always the LORD who blessed them, and not the idols they had worshipped. But just as the woman and Hosea were not truly joined again, the LORD’s people must wait. 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 latter days” refers to the Messianic age. The time would come when, in Christ, all people would be reunited with their creator. The key to understand this is in this first verse: “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel…” Hosea was to love this woman, even though she had been a prostitute. He was to love her unconditionally, and even pay the redemption price necessary to buy her back. For the LORD loves the children of Israel.
III. For Us
Hosea’s audience was Israel, so what he said was geared for them, but we are no less the object of God’s love. Romans 5:6–8 (ESV) 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
We, too, live in an age of idolatry, in which people credit money or government or any of the modern idols with their luxuries and their necessities – when it is God who provides them all. People turn themselves over to whoever seems to provide for their wants, and so become spiritual prostitutes. Even the counterfeit Christianity of the modern celebrity preachers holds out promises of riches and wealth as
payment for loyalty to them, and making offerings to them that allow them to live in wealth. These are the modern “cakes of raisins.”
Just as the Israelites offered up their children to the flames, so millions are sacrificed on the altar of convenience and self-service. The powers of Planned Parenthood not only preside over their death, but get paid, indirectly, by you and me. Political candidates promise to remove any restrictions and spend our taxpayer dollars directly for the killing of the unborn.
As a nation we spend billions to harbor refugees from around the globe, but will raise barriers to the most persecuted – the Christians.
Laws grant protection to lewd worship of the cultural idols of the day, and penalize those who will not affirm them.
Are you ready for me to call down the fire and brimstone? It will fall. But let it fall. Let humanity lie in ruins and still rebel against the One True LORD of all. That is when the redeemer steps in to buy us all back. That is when Hosea takes his rebellious wife home. That is when at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
It is for you and me, even when still sinners, still ungodly, that Christ became our redeemer. As believers we do not live in rebellion, none of us were born believers. And it is because you and I become swept up from time to time in the covetousness of the age, or fall into the bitterness, rancor, and corruption of the age that Christ has redeemed us.
Hosea kept and preserved Gomer, his wife, and they waited, just as the people of Israel waited. But then the time came and Immanuel, God was with us. And by baptism we have been baptized into Christ. We are His bride, and he is our bridegroom, and has prepared heavenly mansions for us.
Rough time for Hosea, and a grim picture. But finally a picture of grace, and for us more than a picture, real grace in Christ.
AMEN.
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