“It will come about in that day that I will respond,” declares the LORD. “I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth, 22 And the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine and to the oil, And they will respond to Jezreel. 23 “I will sow her for Myself in the land. I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, And I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they will say, ‘You are my God!’ ”
There is a story about a husband who loved his wife more than life itself. She was beautiful in his eyes. She was graceful and delightful and her presence filled his heart with happiness.
Then one day he discovered something about her that broke his heart in pieces. She had been with other men. Not just another man; other men.
It was not for love. He might have been able to stand it if she had fallen out of love with him and in love with someone else. It would have hurt him deeply, but he might have understood on some level. But this he could not understand. She was prostituting herself.
The husband had always provided everything she could ever need. She never had to ask. He was always there for her. He had always been attentive to her and often anticipated her needs and even her whims and met them almost before she was aware that she wanted or needed them.
So knowing that she was going out, leaving the children at home alone and spending herself on strangers was a mystery he could not fathom.
Then it got worse. She stopped coming home at all. She went and lived with other men and acted as though she had forgotten her husband altogether.
Because of his great love for her the husband continued to provide her needs. He took clothing and food and money and jewelry to the place she was staying and, difficult as it was, gave these things to the man she was with and asked him to give them to her.
Then he would watch from a distance and see that the man was pretending he had been the one to give her the gifts, and later the husband would see them out spending the money on evil and harmful things.
As much as it pained him to do so, the husband finally decided that he had to let her go her way and suffer the consequences so that she might realize her folly and return to him.
He stopped providing her with comforts and he stopped trying to make contact with her at all.
Again, from a distance, he watched her diminish. The strangers she had given herself to treated her harshly and had nothing to give her. They took what they wanted and left her to languish alone and uncared for.
He hoped that as her circumstances grew worse she would remember the love and kindness and gentleness with which he had once lavished her and return, but she did not.
Nevertheless, his own love did not diminish and though he knew that she would have to suffer greatly and that her suffering would to a great extent have to be as a result of his withdrawing all comforts from her and even hindering her in her pursuit of evil, he was wise and just and good in his love and those very attributes of his character would eventually be her source of salvation.
LOVE’S PERSISTENT PURSUIT
Now you might be thinking that all I’m doing is paraphrasing the story of Hosea and Gomer. Which I am. But that is not all I am doing. It is not all that is being said in the book of the prophet.
This is the story of God’s love for his people and their spiritual adultery and their abandonment of Him. It is the story of their harlotry with useless idols and their spiritual slide into debasement and poverty and ruin.
It is the story of Love’s persistent pursuit of the wandering, squandering, faithless, which we were, which we sometimes are even as God’s elect, and the pain and deprivation that persistence often requires.
The first thing we need to understand here, is that God does not anger the way that we anger; He does not grieve the way we grieve.
When we are angry it is usually at an offense that we do not feel we deserve, or for a wrong done to us or a loved one that we want to see avenged. Often our anger is selfish and often it is expressed in a burst of emotion that precedes any thought given to the situation.
When we grieve it is out of a sense of helplessness and loss that we could not defend against. Someone we love leaves us, as Gomer left Hosea, and we hurt inside very deeply. Someone we love dies after we’ve watched them slip away while we were unable to hold them back even for a short time. So in helplessness we grieve.
How can it be this way with God?
I cannot presume to adequately express what perfect anger is, or what defines grieving in the heart of the One who is in absolute control and who orchestrates all the circumstances of those He calls His own.
I can only say that perfect wrath, perfect righteous indignation is only God’s to claim and sinful men cannot know it. Perfect grief over sin and its toll on those He loves can only be known by God and men cannot feel it.
Therefore men have no right to call into question God’s motives or His actions; no right to cast doubt on His love because of the steps He takes to discipline and redeem.
Verses 6 through 8…
“Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. 7 “She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; and she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now!’ 8 “For she does not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil, and lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.”
Is this not love? Had not God’s chosen people given Him many reasons in the course of their history to utterly destroy them?
Yet He says she plays the harlot, she acts shamefully, she praises her false idols for giving her the things that only I have provided, so here is what I will do.
I will block her way. I will put thorns in her path so she cannot pass and I will put up walls so she cannot even find the path. She will pursue her idolatry and find only emptiness.
Christians let me assure you of something today that scripture bears out to be true as does the testimony of many old saints.
If you are one who names Christ as Lord yet you are ignoring His call to come close and be loved, and you are chasing after the material things of this world and the comforts of this world and the acclaim and recognition of men, you will fail in all that you endeavor to do.
You will never quite reach your goals, you will never quite find satisfaction, and in the end you will have neither the praises of men or the approval of God. He has purchased you with a price and He will not allow you to play the harlot with the world and prosper.
His love is persistent and He will pursue you if need be with futility and calamity.
It says in verse 7 that she will say, ‘I will go back to my first husband, for it was better for me there than now!’
But she apparently did not.
If this is you; if you have been running from God and ignoring His voice and neglecting Him like a forgotten lover, and your life is miserable and empty and unsatisfying, don’t just say you’ll return to Him and then not do it. Don’t make promises you have no intention of keeping as though you can make deals with God to help and prosper you in your worldly endeavors.
Run to Him forsaking all others and cling to Him as you did when you first believed. His love is persistent, but you must understand that He will let you sink to the very bottom if need be, in order to get your attention.
LOVE’S DESPERATE DEPRIVATION
In his book, The Prophets, Abraham Heschel asks and answers his own question:
“How does one reconcile the tenderness of divine love with the vehemence of divine punishment? Clearly it is not a love that is exclusive and that ignores the wickedness of the beloved, forgiving carelessly every fault. Here is a love grown bitter with the waywardness of man. The Lord is in love with Israel, but He also has a passionate love of right and a burning hatred of wrong.” The Prophets, Abraham J. Heschel, Prince Press 1962
Love is not real if it does not require faithfulness. All of the things God declared He would do to Israel came out of a desperate love. In verses 9 through 13 we read these phrases:
“I will take back” “I will take away” I will uncover” “I will put an end” “I will destroy” “I will punish”.
He had put obstacles in her way to stop her in her wayward path but she had not returned to Him, so now He would take away all the things that had come from His own hand but that she had taken for granted and misused.
Christians, I’ve said this before but I’ll say it once more. We have a pretty sorry view of God in our modern form of Christianity. We talk and think of a ‘Santa Clause’ god who is supposed to bring us things when we desire and put us on his lap with a jolly ‘HO HO HO’ and remind us to be good little boys and girls.
If we go for what we perceive to be a long period of not receiving the blessings we think we deserve we start to do a slow burn and wonder why God is not providing our need.
If we think that we have exercised faith patiently enough and for long enough we’re supposed to be rewarded for our endurance, and boy, it had better start pouring in or something is terribly wrong!
It’s all about how much God has to give and how much He desires to give it to us if we just open our hands to receive.
This is not the God of the Bible. An incomplete view is a wrong view.
God is as able to take away as He is to give and He and only He knows the proper time to do both.
Now deprivation and calamity do not necessarily come because of faithlessness and disobedience. Sometimes they come so that God might be glorified, as in the case of Job.
But when Christians seem to be going backward, not just staying the same but losing ground in various areas of their lives, in the sense of material wealth or physical health or spiritual vigor or whatever, they would be wise – we would be wise – to take stock of their attitude toward the One who provides all that we have.
Are we taking it for granted? Misusing it? Giving credit for what we have to someone or something other than the One who gives to all life and breath and all things?
When we persist in pursuing the little idols in our life and neglect the one true God who calls to us He, the jealous God, will take away everything that needs to be taken away in order to lure us back.
I want you to look at verse 13.
“And I will punish her for the days of the Baals when she used to offer sacrifices to them and adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry, and follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me, declares the Lord.”
God makes this claim that Israel has forgotten him two more times in this book. In chapter 8 verse 14 and chapter 13 verse 6.
Do you think Gomer forgot Hosea? Do you think Israel forgot God?
Of course not. What is being said here is that in her desire to continue in sin she put him out of her mind. She ignored Him. She neglected Him. She acted as though He was insignificant.
How much, I wonder, will God have to take away from the church in our American society before she awakens from the slumber of liberality and worldliness and apathy that has rendered her so pitifully useless to an unchurched culture?
In the gluttonous pursuit of larger structures and larger programs and television spots and the praise of men and friendship with the world God has been forgotten. Oh, not really forgotten, just neglected…out of mind…insignificant.
He will remove the idols. He will remove the freedom. He will tear down the religious structures and methods. He is a jealous God and He will have a pure and faithful bride. This applies to the church universal and it applies to the individual.
LOVE’S HARBINGER OF HOPE
I mentioned earlier that because of His great love for His people, even when God has to declare His displeasure and presage punishment, He keeps coming back to words of hope and promise, assuring them of His love even in His moment of indignation.
I came across a portion from Donald Barnhouse’s commentary on Romans that is rather lengthy to include in a sermon, but I want to read it to you because its value makes it worth the time.
Barnhouse writes, “The pursuing love of God is the greatest wonder of the spiritual universe. We leave God in the heat of our own self-desire and run from His will because we want so much to have our own way. We get to a crossroads and look back in pride, thinking that we have outdistanced Him. Just as we are about to congratulate ourselves on our achievement of self-enthronement, we feel a touch on our arm and turn in that direction to find Him there. ‘My child’, He says in great tenderness, ‘I love you; and when I saw you running away from all that is good, I pursued you through a shortcut that love knows well, and awaited you here at the crossroads.’ We have torn ourselves free from His grasp and rushed off again, through deepest woods and farthest swamp, and as we look back again, we are sure, this time, that we have succeeded in escaping from Him. But, once more, the touch of love is on our other sleeve and when we turn quickly we find that He is there, pleading with the eyes of love, and showing Himself once more to be the tender and faithful One, loving to the end. He will always say, ‘My child, my name and nature are Love, and I must act according to that which I am. So it is that I have pursued you, to tell you that when you are tired of your running and your wandering, I will be there to draw you to myself once more.’
“When we see this love at work through the heart of Hosea we may wonder if God is really like that. But everything in the Word and in experience shows us that He is. He will give man the trees of the forest and the iron in the ground. Then He will give to man the brains to make an axe from the iron to cut down a tree and fashion it into a cross. He will give man the ability to make a hammer and nails, and when man has the cross and the hammer and the nails, the Lord will allow man to take hold of Him and bring Him to that cross; He will stretch out His hands upon it and allow man to nail Him to that cross, and in so doing will take the sins of man upon Himself and make it possible for those who have despised and rejected Him to come unto Him and know the joy of sins removed and forgiven, to know the assurance of pardon and eternal life, and to enter into the prospect of the hope of glory with Him forever. This is even our God, and there is none like unto Him.” Donald Grey Barnhouse, Epistle to the Romans, (Philadelphia: The Bible Study Hour, 1952)
We saw phrases from verses 9 through 13 that communicated disappointment and deprivation. Listen to these, from verses 14 through 23.
“I will allure her” “I will speak kindly to her” “I will give her” “I will also make a covenant” “I will abolish…war” “I will make them lie down in safety”
Here I have to just give you all of verses 19 and 20
“I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, in lovingkindness and in compassion, and I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD.”
Church, when we refuse to believe in a God who would bring disaster and calamity on even His own people, we deny ourselves also of His goodness; because it is out of His love and His goodness that those things come, and it is through those things that he brings us to the place of being able to receive that same love and goodness.
He said in verse 14 that He would bring her into the wilderness and speak kindly to her. Then in verse 15 He said that the valley of Achor would be a door of hope.
The name Achor means ‘trouble’ or ‘disturbance’. It was the valley where Achan and his family were stoned after he secretly took spoils from Jericho and hid them under his tent. So in Joshua 7:26 we’re told that because of what happened there the place has been called the valley of Achor, meaning trouble, to this day.
So we get a picture of Hosea taking Gomer out to a place in the wilderness, far from her idols and out of the reach or influence of her lovers, and speaking to her there in romantic language; wooing her back, assuring her of his love.
And when we think in terms of God’s relationship to Israel we understand Him to be saying that it is through a time of troubling – of disturbance – that she will find hope.
“…the valley of Achor as a door of hope”. It will be a time of purging and cleansing and renewal. She will remember her joy of the former days before she went astray and she will once more call Him ‘Ishi’, meaning ‘husband’.
She will ‘know the Lord’, not in the sense of being aware of Him or knowing about Him, but knowing Him intimately and in a way that elicits a response from Him.
Are you in the valley of Achor? Maybe I should ask, do you need to be led out into a wilderness away from the distractions of your idols so your Lord can speak kind words that will woo your heart back to His?
Once there, whether you are there now or needing to go, remember that the trouble He brings to you is not an end but a door; a door of hope.
“No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” 1 Cor 10:13
I began with a story; I’ll end with one. Years ago I wrote an allegory – a rather heavy-handed allegory, but I wasn’t trying to be subtle – and I’d like to read it to you now in closing.
ONCE UPON A TIME there was a woman who lived in the forest. She was not far from a town, where she would occasionally go to buy staples for her kitchen and other items not available to her in the wild. For the most part though, she stayed to herself, choosing to live her own life, meet her own needs and enjoy her uninterrupted solitude.
In her younger years she had been hurt both physically and emotionally by other people, and as a result she had put up walls of stone and doors of solid oak that only opened from the inside, to protect herself. (Proverbs 13:12a)
The woman, like all of us, would occasionally grow lonely, and her solace during these times was found in the movie theater in town. She would go there and sit in the back row, watching the male actors on screen, then go home and for days after, dream of romantic interludes with these stars. Of course, they weren’t real; they were movie idols. But they were all she had. (Isaiah 40:18-20)
One day the woman was near her woodland cabin, attempting to repair the bucket that brought water from a well she had dug for herself. (Rom 2:5) It was a very deep and dark well. To fall into that well would mean certain death.
The bucket had been attached to the well rope by a chain which had only ten links, but since the rope was worn she could see that she would have to replace it, and that is what she was endeavoring to do when she slipped. As she fell forward, a cry of despair escaping her lips, she clung to the short chain and her fall stopped.
At first she tried to climb to safety by the short chain, but as she struggled she looked up and with horror, noticed that a frayed section of the rope holding the chain was unraveling under her weight. (Rom 8:3a) She knew it was only a matter of time, and she would be set free to tumble into the abyss below her.
Suddenly a shadow was cast over the mouth of the well above her. She heard a voice say, “Stop struggling, (Psalm 46:10) you will only make it worse. Trust me and I will lift you out.” (Proverbs 3:5)
A strong hand reached toward her, and she noticed that her savior had deliberately wrapped the chain around his wrist several times first. After the hand had firmly gripped her forearm the voice told her to let go of the chain and trust him only. (Romans 10:5) When she did so and her weight dropped, the chain wrapped so tightly around the man’s wrist that it cut deeply into his flesh. (Romans 8:3,4)
Nevertheless, he brought her up out of the pit (Psalm 40:2) with his own blood flowing down her arms and dripping into the well. Once she was standing on the solid rock that surrounded the well she could see that the man was not really tall, and not especially handsome. (Isaiah 53:2) but he smiled at her with kind eyes and with a love that came from deep within him, and as she smiled back she felt something she had not felt for a long time, and never this strongly. It was gratitude and affection and a desire for fellowship.
The man and woman were married shortly thereafter, in a small chapel in the town. The townspeople were there to witness her newly found happiness.
After they returned home however, the woman quickly forgot the fear of the dark well and she forgot the pain this man had suffered to rescue her. She spent her days going about planting her own garden and repairing her own fences and very much living life the way she had before he came along.
The man spent his days not far away, building a beautiful mansion for her, having promised that when he was done he would take her there where they would live happily ever after. (John 14:2,3)
In the evenings though, when work was done and there was ample time for sweet fellowship, she would read a book or mend a garment or sit in the twilight hours and stare proudly at her garden, paying little or no attention to the man.
Every once in a while she would hear him say something to her, but over time she ignored him so often, that much of what he said would go entirely unnoticed, as though he hadn’t spoken at all. (Jeremiah 33:2,3 Hebrews 2:1-3a)
Occasionally during the day he would come along and offer to help her with something she was doing, but although she did not outwardly reject his offer, she would turn away or continue doing it her own way, seemingly oblivious to his presence. When her precious garden failed to produce vegetables and when her flowers wilted from lack of nourishment in the soil, she was angry and discouraged. Only then did she turn to him, but not for help as much as to ask why these things happened. The man did not answer these questions, for he felt that since she did not listen when he offered help, she would most certainly not listen while he explained why she failed. (Proverbs 28:9, Isaiah 48:18)
The years passed by very much like this. The woman was often frustrated by her failures, and gave herself credit for her triumphs, never realizing that her successes were primarily due to his coming along behind her and fixing things simply out of love for her.
One day, now an old woman, she was going about her business in front of her cabin when a stranger approached on a clean, white stallion. (Revelation 19:11-13) At first she did not recognize him, but when the stranger took a firm hold on her hand and said, “It is time to come to your new home now”, she realized it was her husband.
She paused for a moment in wonder. She remembered him being of average height and a bit below average in general appearance, as the world around her counted attractiveness. But the man on the steed was indeed tall, and ruggedly handsome, yet with a peaceful gentleness shining out from his eyes that almost made her melt.
Although she did not struggle against his grip, he maintained a firm grasp on her hand and gently pulled her up onto the horse, and rode off toward their new home.
As they approached the front of the mansion she gasped in awe at the beauty of the thing he had built. It was only then that she realized how little, throughout the years, she had given any thought to what he was doing here while she busied herself with selfish pursuits. (2 Peter 3:8-18) She remembered that he had promised her a mansion and said that someday he would take her there, but she had thought of it more as a nice dream, than as a reality.
He stepped aside and scooped her into his arms, and carried her over the threshold, stepping onto a floor of solid gold! As he shut the door behind them she noticed that it was made of a substance that appeared to be pearl, and she wondered at his resourcefulness. The mansion was beautiful beyond her comprehension. (1 Corinthians 2:9)
He set her down and stood back as she turned around and around, taking in the glory of this wonderful abode. When finally she turned to face him, she saw the same love in his eyes that she had seen so long ago near the well.
Suddenly she was overcome with such shame that she fell to her knees, tears running down her cheeks, and clung to his feet, unable to utter a word.
She was so filled with mixed emotions it made her head swim. She was so very, very happy, and yet so remorseful that she had allowed so many years to go by without learning to know him better, return his love, enjoy sweet fellowship with him; she felt that she did not deserve to be here at all.
(Romans 5:8)
Then, strong hands slipped under her arms and lifted her to her feet. A gentle finger wiped the tears from her eyes, (Revelation 7:17) and through blurred vision she once again looked into his strong, kind, wonderful face, as he said, “Dear, before you knew me, I watched you from afar. I loved you even then. (Romans 5:6) After I saved you I loved you even more. (Romans 5:10) And through all of these years, even though you have ignored me and turned your back on me so often, and squandered so many opportunities for us to know each other intimately, in the way you dreamed of knowing your movie idol lovers in your youth, yet I continued to love you and I love you even now. (Romans 8:38,39) We will spend the rest of our days together, and beginning right now, you will learn to know me as you should. I only wish our relationship could have been so much farther along now than it is. Our first years could have been wonderful and fulfilling and precious. But the rest of our time together will be that way; I promise. Welcome to my home.”
The woman slowly dropped her eyes from his, down his chest, down his arms, to his wrists, and she saw the terrible scars that had been left there by the cruel chain, (Zechariah 12:10) and she clung to him and wept.
The beginning.
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready.” -Rev. 19:6b-7
