Hosea 6:1-6 (September 6, 2009)

Daddies don’t leave

I’ve always admired my younger brother David and his wife, Rayanne.  They have great big hearts, and six wonderful kids.  We pray for them, because if anything ever happens to David and Ray, according to the will Bob and Linda will have six more wonderful kids. Two of their children, Max and Jenna, are adopted from Russia.

It’s been about seven years since David and Ray came through Hickory to stay overnight.  We found places across the house for everyone to sleep, including Cara’s vacated bedroom attic.  While they were upstairs getting ready for bed, Max, who has turned out to be quite the gymnast since then, was jumping on the bed.  He took a tumble and created quite a gash in the middle of his forehead.

This was after regular doctors’ hours, of course, so I called Dr. Steve Siciliano and asked him what I should do.  Very graciously he said we should just bring Max down to his office and he would sew him right up.  Which he did, and that scar is practically invisible today.

What I remember most vividly about that night is that David very lovingly held 5-year-old Max all the way to Steve’s office in the car.  Max had only been with their family a short time, and he had come into the family from a Russian orphanage, hardly the place to foster a personal sense of security.  Further, he had hurt himself while misbehaving in a relative’s home.  But all the way to the office, my brother cradled his little boy and kept saying, “Max, it’s OK.  I won’t leave you.  Daddies don’t leave, Max.  I’m here.”

My favorite

For the next few weeks, I want to invite you on an adventure to a part of the Bible you are likely to find somewhat unfamiliar.  Think of it as going off-road in your four-wheeler.  OK, maybe that’s not an image most of you can relate to.

When Linda and I go on vacation we don’t like to go to the most popular destinations at peak travel times.  When we went to Europe about three years ago, we rode a bus down the Romantic Road at the very end of the season.  There were only a dozen or so people on our bus.  We hit a few popular attractions, but we also enjoyed several days of quiet at Muerren in the Swiss Alps when the place was so empty we were given a premium corner room at a great bargain price.  We saw a few places that were not common tourist attractions.

Reading and preaching on the last twelve books of the Old Testament is something like that.  This is an adventure not exactly into unknown territory, but on the road less traveled.  There’s a path we’re going to follow, but it’s overgrown with weeds.  Once in a while we might have to stop and get out the chain saw to clear a fallen tree so we can continue.  Not many Christians spend time in this part of the Bible.

We begin with my favorite book among the minor prophets, Hosea.  It’s my favorite because it’s first among these books.  It’s my favorite because it’s such a compelling love story.  It’s my favorite because it so movingly explores the love of God. It’s my favorite because more than three decades ago Linda and I chose a “life verse”’ together and it comes from Hosea.  In fact, it comes from the part of Hosea that we read a few moments ago.  We first memorized Hosea 6:3 in the New American Standard Bible: “So let us know, let us press on to know the LORD.  His going forth is as certain as the dawn.   And he will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.”

Love story

When I say that Hosea is a compelling love story, and then I tell you that Linda and I chose a life verse from this story, I should hasten to add that Hosea’s love story is not at all like Bob and Linda’s.

Hosea’s love story has a tragic sub plot, a very painful chapter.  Telling the story will mean that some of you are going to relive a painful chapter in your own story.  A few of you may even wonder if I chose this story to deliberately parallel your own.  I assure you, I did not.  The story of Hosea forces us to deal with adultery, and there are so many of you who have been on one side or the other of a love triangle.  Some of you are still there, or at least still reeling from the consequences.  I have looked into far too many hurting eyes to read or tell this story dispassionately.

The message of Hosea is about spiritual adultery.  God’s people have turned away from exclusive loyalty to him and pursued other lovers.  God is trying to get through to them.  How can he get them to understand that (a) he is heartbroken, and (b) he is unrelenting in his determination to get them back?

God asks his prophet (messenger) to do something unthinkably difficult as a kind of reality show.  He is asked to marry someone who already has a public reputation for promiscuity.  Gomer has a wandering heart and a philandering body.  What she deserves is the death penalty, under the law.  Even if she escapes that, having traveled down this path she is likely to find no way out.  She will be hated by women and pursued by men only for relief, never for relationship or family.  She will live in loneliness, isolation, and regret.  Nobody associates with prostitutes except other prostitutes.

Hosea will marry Gomer.  He will love her.  He will commit to her.  He will give her a chance to start over and have a family.  Unthinkable.  He will risk his reputation and treat her with grace.

Soon they have a son.  God says, name him “Scattered” (Jezreel), because God’s people will be scattered.  There is nothing like that first baby to deepen the love between a husband and wife.  “Look what our love created.”  Sometimes that feeling is short-lived, however, as a wife’s attention and energy are now divided between husband and child, and her husband throws himself into his career.

Whether or not it’s that, baby #2 is fathered by someone other than Hosea.  Jezreel is explicitly identified as Hosea’s (1:3); this one is not. In the next chapter, Gomer is called an adulteress (2:1), and her kids “the children of adultery” (2:4).

And then there is the baby’s name.  Lo-Ruhamah is the Hebrew, and it means (Are you ready for this?) “Not Loved.”  What a name for a little girl.  Apparently the symbolism is that this baby was not born to the union of love and commitment between Hosea and Gomer.  The name was a symbol of betrayal by a philandering mother.

there is a third child.  Same story as number two.  This baby’s name, Lo-Ammi – means “Not My People.”  This child is not Hosea’s.

You may think that’s a terrible thing to do a child, and maybe it is.  But before these kids are old enough to understand the meaning of their names, they are renamed (2:1).  “Not Loved” because “My Loved One.”  “Not My People” becomes “My People.”  Hosea embraces these kids as his own.  He loves them.

As for their mother, the infidelity continues as the story unfolds in chapter two.  The pain of the story is that she isn’t being seduced by charming men.  She is “stalking her lovers” (Hosea 2:13, The Message), advertising herself like she did before Hosea loved her, repeatedly sleeping with whoever will have her.

The love story goes on, and in chapter 3 Hosea takes her back.  God says him, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.”  And he does.  He literally has to buy her back (3:2) like a runaway slave.  He doesn’t sleep with her right away; he isolates her (3:3).  But his intent is to love her again in a way that no man in his time would ever have done.

I wish we had the rest of the story.  I’ve watched enough romantic movies with my wife to want some closure. 

How can I?

But this is where his story is a parable-in-life for a God who is heartbroken and relentless.  We are supposed to be gripped by this.  How can a woman do this to a man who gave her every chance for life and love when she deserved nothing?

This is about God and his people, Israel.  He chose Israel when they deserved nothing.  He gave them a chance, a hope, a future.  They repeatedly turned from him to other lovers.

Gomer’s actions should make you angry.  And sad.  And angry.  And depressed.  And angry.  And cold.  And angry.  Hosea at times is an angry prophet:  “I’m a grizzly charging Ephraim, a grizzly with dubs charging Judah.  I’ll rip them to pieces – yes, I will!  No one can stop me now.  I’ll drag them off.  No one can help them.  Then I’ll go back to where I came from until they come to their senses.  When they finally hit rock bottom, maybe they’ll come looking for me” (5:14-15, The Message).

(I find The Message to be compelling in reading the Minor Prophets.  One other note: “Ephraim” was one of the twelve original tribes, but it had grown in size and strength and therefore the name was often used as a synonym for the whole nation.)

Anyone who’s been burned by adultery also knows there are times when you can go from rage to pleading and back again.  Listen for the heart of God in 11:8-9.  See the tear-strained cheeks on Hosea’s face.  “But how can I give up on you, Ephraim?  How can I turn you loose, Israel?…I can’t bear to think such thoughts.  My insides churn in protest.  And so I’m not going to act on my anger.  I’m not going to destroy Ephraim.  And why?  Because I am God and not a human.  I’m the Holy One and I’m here – in your very midst” (The Message).

Daddies don’t leave.

Let’s go back

What we find in chapter six is the prophet’s own pleading with his people.  Here he steps outside his role as husband of an unfaithful wife and, by extension, as a spokesman for the God of an unfaithful people.  He speaks as prophet.  No, that’s not quite right either.  He identifies with the adulterous people.  He is one of them.

“Come, let us return to the LORD.  He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds” (6:1).  The Message says, “Come on, let’s go back to God.”

Here Hosea is putting himself mentally in Gomer’s shoes.  He is hoping that somewhere out there she’s feeling like the prodigal son, only with a twist.  She’s with another wayward wife, and they’ve finally reached bottom – together.  “I’m tired of this life.  It holds so much promise.  Come on, let’s go back to our husbands.  Maybe they’ll take us back”

Hosea continues in verse 3, “Let us press on to acknowledge the LORD.”  I don’t really like the NIV in this verse.  Maybe it’s just because I memorized it in the New American Standard Bible and that’s how Linda and I chose it.  But “acknowledge” seems anemic compared to “Let us press on to know the LORD.”

Hosea doesn’t just want Gomer to acknowledge that he is her husband.  He wants her to know him – to know his heart, to love his person, to trust that he can fulfill her deepest needs. 

“Let us press on to know the LORD.”  The rest of this I like in the NIV.  “As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the spring rains.”

Palestine is known for its dry, hot, parched summer.  Fall is a time for planting, and the winter rainy season is when the crops grow.  Spring generally dries out and crops stop producing.  But in some years, the spring rain (sometimes called “latter rain”) will extend the growing season.  It was considered evidence of God’s special blessing. 

He’s there.  He wants to bless us.  He’ll welcome us.  Come on, let’s go back.

But he wants our whole heart.  Hosea 6:4-6 shows that the people weren’t there.  Their response was temporary, like a wayward lover who seeks reconciliation but hasn’t given up contact with the third party.  There has to be radical severance of the adulterous relationship.

What does all this mean for us in terms of our response to God?  What specific sins might Hosea address in our time as evidence of our spiritual infidelity?  What does returning look like?

The next few weeks will give us additional opportunities to explore those questions.  Today I just want us to leave here with Hosea’s primary message deeply embedded in us. 

Daddies don’t leave.  God isn’t finished with us yet.  Whatever you’ve done, however far you’ve wandered, God’s heart may be broken, but he is unrelenting in his pursuit of you.

An ocean of ink

As I prepared this sermon last week, I found myself singing a song that was part of my own spiritual heritage.  I’ve sung it as a solo, and probably in groups as well.  I also heard it often in my youth.

It’s called “The Love of God,” and it doesn’t really fit the more traditional style or the more contemporary style of music we usually sing at Corinth.  But I love the words.  And I was delighted to learn when I googled the song that it has recently been recorded by a contemporary group, MercyMe.

The song was written by Frederick Lehman, who was born in Germany in 1868 but emigrated with his family to America at age 4.  At age 11he experienced a memorable conversion experience in an apple grove.  Later he went to seminary and spent his life as a pastor and song writer in the Midwest.  He wrote hundreds of songs, but this is the best known, and it was published in 1919 in a volume titled, “Songs That Are Different.”

Lehman based the words, surprisingly, on an eleventh century Jewish poem titled, “Hadamut.”  It is an acrostic poem of 90 couplets in two parts.  The first part praises God as Creator and the second part describes the conflict of the Jewish people with the nations of the world.  There’s a story told of a miraculous deliverance, and it may be the story of averting a German Holocaust in the Eleventh Century.

The original Jewish poem includes the following verse that inspired Lehman to write his song:

Were the sky of parchment made,
A quill each reed, each twig and blade,
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
Were every man a scribe of skill,
The marvelous story, Of God’s great glory
Would still remain untold; For He, most high
The earth and sky Created alone of old.

As you ponder the relentless love of God, listen to these amazing words:

The Love of God

The love of God is greater far
Than tongue or pen can ever tell;
It goes beyond the highest star,
And reaches to the lowest hell;
The guilty pair, bowed down with care,
God gave His Son to win;
His erring child He reconciled,
And pardoned from his sin.

Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure–
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

Oh, love of God, how rich and pure!
How measureless and strong!
It shall forevermore endure–
The saints’ and angels’ song.

Amen.