“The Gospel According to Hosea”
Hosea 3:1-3
Steve Hanchett, pastor
Berry Road Baptist Church
February 11, 2001
Then the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the LORD for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”
So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley.
And I said to her, “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man - so too, will I be toward you.”
James Montgomery Boice, in his commentary on Hosea, called chapter three the “greatest chapter in the Bible.” After studying it I must say it certainly is one of the most powerful portrayals of the message of the gospel one could possibly read and study. It is a parable of Christ’s love and sacrifice lived out through the life of Hosea. It also holds out to us a mirror that helps us see our own sinful condition. It is a portrait of God’s heart of love toward us.
There are five parts to this message of love, hope and salvation:
I. The Condition of the Lost (vv. 1,2)
II. The Compassion of the Lord (v.1)
III. The Cost of His Love (v.2)
IV. A Commitment to His Lordship (v.3)
V. His Commitment of His Life (v.3)
If you go into a jewelry store and want to look at a diamond it is going to be displayed for you on a black cloth. The jeweler does this is because she understands that the beauty of the diamond is seen more clearly when it is looked at against the backdrop of the dark color of the cloth. In the same way the holiness and love of God are seen most clearly when they are seen against the black background of the sin of man. In order to see the depth of God’s grace we need to first look at the depravity of man’s sin.
As we had already seen the story of Hosea and his wife Gomer serves as a parable of God’s relationship with His people. In this parable Hosea represents the Lord and Gomer represents people in sin. Gomer’s life is a powerful picture of what it means to be lost. So as we consider this gospel according to Hosea we need to begin by examining The Condition of the Lost.
There are four things we see through Gomer about what it means to be lost. I want to give you four words that describe Gomer’s condition and our condition without Christ: (1) distance, (2) Slavery, (3) Wickedness, and (4) Peril.
Gomer’s first problem was her distance from Hosea. It is clear that somewhere along the way Gomer had left Hosea to pursue her immoral passions. Her life had sunk so low that when we find her again in chapter three she is being sold in the slave market. We don’t know how long it had been since she had seen Hosea, but for her to be in the position she was in it had to have been some time.
There are two things we can say with confidence about the distance between Hosea and Gomer. The distance between them was by choice on Gomer’s part and by necessity on Hosea’s part.
Gomer loved her sin more than she loved Hosea her husband. She chose to walk away from him and her relationship with him. She rejected his love and his plans for her life. She chose to give herself to others. Rather than remain with Hosea and allow fruit to come from her relationship with him, she decided to pursue other lovers and to produce fruit from those illicit relationships.
The lost person is in the same kind of state. Lostness is a result of choosing to live life apart from Christ. Lostness is rejecting the love of God and His plans for your life. Lostness is giving your soul to the idols of this world. Lostness means no fruit from a relationship with God only spoiled fruit from our love of this world.
Not only was there distance between Hosea and Gomer because of Gomer’s choice, but also because of necessity on Hosea’s part. Even if Gomer had desired to stay in the home, Hosea would have had to put her out because of her immorality. He could not allow her to remain comfortable in her wickedness. There was a moral necessity on Hosea’s part that would have required him to do something about Gomer’s sin.
In the same way, God cannot remain in fellowship and relationship with unrepentant sinners. The Bible says that God is holy and that his holiness means that God cannot look upon sin without doing something about it. God must respond to our sin. God must do something about it. And one thing is certain, we cannot expect to remain in fellowship with God while holding fast to our sin and pursuing out lusts.
The word distance describes the first thing we see about what it means to be lost. Without Christ we stand far away from God. Our sin has banished from His presence. If something isn’t done about our sin we will not only experience distance from God now, but we will be separated from God forever.
The second thing we learn about lostness from Gomer is described by the word slavery. In Hosea’s time there were three ways for a person to become a slave. First a person could become slave through military conquest. After an invading army conquered a city they would often take the inhabitants captive as slaves. Another way a person might become enslaved is through birth. If a person’s parents were slaves they would be slaves as well.
The third way a person could become a slave was through debt. We have an example of this in the story of the widow whose sons were going to be sold to satisfy the woman’s debt. This is most likely the way in which Gomer came to be place on the slave market.
Spiritually every one of us is a slave to sin for all three of these reasons. We have been conquered by sin and by Satan. Jesus said that the person who commits sin is going to become a slave to sin. Part of what it means to be free as a Christian is the Christian is free not to sin. The lost man is not free not to sin.
We are also slaves by birth. We are born with a nature that is drawn to sin. We are infected by sin from birth. We inherit a sin nature from our parents. As you know, we don’t have to be taught how to sin. We come by it naturally.
Not only are we slaves to sin by conquest and by birth, we are also slaves through debt. When Jesus was teaching the disciples how to pray He used a word for sin that was translated into English by the word debt. There is a very real sense in which sin can be described as a spiritual debt we are building up toward God. This is a debt we can never repay. It is a debt that casts us into a state of spiritual slavery.
In one of Charlie Chaplin’s silent movie shorts, Chaplin is depicted as a convict who has survived a shipwreck and is the lone survivor on a deserted island. His biggest obstacle is the fact that he still has a ball and chain shackled to his ankle. In the matter of a few moments he goes about trying to get free. He tries reasoning with the shackles, but they won’t listen to reason. He tries ignoring them, but they won’t go away. He tries covering them up, but as soon as he tries to leave them behind they jerk him back and refuse to allow him to go it alone. In the end he realizes that his only hope is for someone to come and release him from his bondage. The same is true for each one of us.
Not only do we see lostness pictured here by the words distance and slavery, we also see it pictured by the word wickedness. We could use a lot of words here. Sin would be an appropriate word. But it seems that the word sin has lost its impact on us today. We all have sinned and somehow we find some comfort in that. Sin is tame and even a little nice. We don’t see it for what it really is. Some would like to say that we have all made some mistakes and gone astray. While that is true, it also misses the horrible depth of lostness.
I hope wickedness catches you a little. I hope it shocks you a little. Because the truth is our sin really is that bad. It really is wicked. It really is that ugly and horrible and vile.
Gomer’s sin is a picture of our sin. Not that we have all committed adultery against our spouses. No, but we have all committed spiritual adultery against God. We have all terribly offended Him. What makes it so awful is the fact that it was a willful act. We chose to do it.
The wickedness we see here is characterized by self-centered living. That really is the heart of what sin is. We are all by nature self-centered. God calls us to love Him passionately and supremely and to love others like Christ loves us. Still, we find ways to live for ourselves.
Gomer’s only desire was to fulfill her every desire. She got what she wanted but not what she most needed. We all have this innate drive to pursue the lusts of our flesh. We want what we want and we will do what it takes to get it. This self-centered living is wicked.
Lostness is distance, slavery, and wickedness. Lostness is also peril. I think you could imagine what a dreadful position Gomer found herself in. She was helpless to do anything to remedy her situation. She couldn’t buy herself out, beg herself out, or runaway. It was a critical moment in time. She was going to be sold to someone, and while she had everything to do with why she was there, she had no control over the outcome. It is at that critical moment in time that God called Hosea to go and love Gomer and rescue her from slavery. Gomer was truly a brand plucked from the burning.
I wish every person without Christ could see right now how critical the situation really is. I spoke with a man this past week that told me he knew he needed to be saved, but he wanted to wait. If he could only see how real hell is and the critical moment he finds himself in. If he could only understand his slavery.
The moment is critical and dangerous. But thank God He spoke to a heavenly Hosea. He said to Him, “go and love, go and redeem, go a save.” With that Jesus stepped out of heaven, on to this earth with a mission to buy us with His own blood.
Truly, we are brands plucked from the burning!
