HOSEA #1
                              

     Tom Mooney was involved in a dynamiting, where evidently several people were killed, back in 1916.  The evidence pointed so directly toward him that after a time he was arrested, convicted, and sent to the state penitentiary.  His wife then began what proved to be a thirty-year long effort to free her husband from prison.  During those years she worked to support herself.  At times she could find no other employment than that of a scrub woman.  Constantly she was seeing everybody of importance, everybody that might have any influence, trying desperately somehow to achieve her husband's release from prison.  Finally, after thirty long years she stirred up enough feeling that he was allowed to go free.  Within one year, he had left her behind, found another woman and married her.

     A widowed mother sacrificed in many ways, such as taking in washing, so that she could send her boy to college.  Finally the day came for his graduation, and she went to see him receive his diploma.  As he looked at the audience he was unwilling to claim his mother because of the shabby dress that she wore.  She didn't fit in with the beautiful clothing worn by the parents of his friends.  When the graduation was over he didn't seek her out and proudly introduce her to his friends, but rather he slipped off quietly to celebrate with his classmates.

     These are stories of UNREQUITED LOVE.  Un-returned love.  Perhaps the HARSHEST of all pain is caused by love that is desired but never received.  Children often endure this horrible suffering.  We once had a foster child that was 12 yrs old.  The thing the boy wanted most in life was just to set on a man's lap and be loved.  He evidently had never received love from his father. Teenager girls often, gladly sell their virginity and yes even their souls for the love of a teen age companion, only to find that they were used, and denied the love that they so desperately craved.  In some ways I guess the unrequited love of a mate is the most horrible of all suffering, because the one who is starving for the love, is missing one of the greatest privileges that we have here on earth --being loved.

     The most beautiful love story in all the Bible, and yet the most tragic of all stories, is the story of unrequited love.  This entire story is contained Hosea chapter one.  Yet the 13 remaining chapters develop the story more clearly.

     The Book of Hosea was written about 800 BC.  The times were times of great wealth for some, and great poverty for others.  It was a time of great blessings from God but no love for God.  The wealthy in Israel lived in summer houses in the summer, and winter houses in the winter, and ivory houses all the time.  The poor of Israel lived in the streets.  In those days Israel was indeed a great land of plenty.  It reminds me of the USA today. 

     The story of Hosea is a true parable.  Hosea has one of the deepest loves for his wife that is recorded in history, but his wife does not love him.  God has the deepest love for Israel, but Israel does not love Him.

Hosea 1:1-2:1

“The word of the LORD that came to Hosea son of Beeri during the reigns of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and during the reign of Jeroboam son of Jehoash king of Israel:

When the LORD began to speak through Hosea, the LORD said to him, "Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife (KJV a wife of whoredom) and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD."  So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son.

Then the LORD said to Hosea, "Call him Jezreel, because I will soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of Israel.  In that day I will break Israel's bow in the Valley of Jezreel."

Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter. Then the LORD said to Hosea, "Call her Lo-Ruhamah, for I will no longer show love to the house of Israel, that I should at all forgive them. Yet I will show love to the house of Judah; and I will save them-not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but by the LORD their God."

After she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, Gomer had another son. Then the LORD said, "Call him Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.

"Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, 'You are not my people,' they will be called 'sons of the living God.' The people of Judah and the people of Israel will be reunited, and they will appoint one leader and will come up out of the land, for great will be the day of Jezreel.”

Before we get into this beautiful story, notice a couple more passages.

Hosea 4:12 (They consult a peace of wood...TALK SHOWS...their prostitution leads them astray.) Notice the parallels to the people today.  Friday, 7/6/90 TV woman said, "It is indecent to deny the picture of Jesus drowning in urine." Another man blamed our laws for promoting AIDS.  He said that if there were no laws against drugs, the price would go down and people wouldn't have to steal to get it, and they would have enough money to buy clean needles.

Hosea 11:1, 2: (The more I called the further they went from me.) There is a Church on nearly every 10th corner in America, but where are the people?

Now to our story:

In Hosea 1:2b God told Hosea, “Go get married.” Probably Hosea looked at the sin of his day, as you and I do today.  It surely grieved his righteous heart, but as a single fellow, as a non father, he really doesn't understand the sadness and pain that Israel brought on God.  Somebody needs to understand how God feels so that they can tell about it in a real -- in an understandable way.  This reminds me of Hebrews 4:15 "We have a high priest who can sympathize because he has been tempted in every way, just as we are."  God has done everything He could to show us that He understands how we feel.  Now he wants us to understand how He feels.  God's people in the world today have done exactly what Israel had done, and we have not understood how we have broken the heart of God with our unfaithfulness to him.

In order for Hosea to understand God's problem, and really touch the hearts of the people, he must learn how it feels to be rejected. And we cannot be the kind of people that we ought to be, until we see what our sin, our unfaithfulness and our spiritual adultery does to the heart of God.  God said, "The more I called them the more they ran away from me."

Hosea 11:2a: Perhaps Hosea had decided to serve God like the apostle Paul -- he was not going to marry.  But God tells Hosea that although this is noble, he will never be effective until he understands the pain that God endures.  Probably the same thing is true today.  We will never convey God's message until we have learned to suffer like God does. 

Hosea 1:2 KJV: “So I'm telling you, go take to you a wife of whoredom and children of whoredom."  Here the reader’s breaks go on.  Before we continue this study we must hurdle two obstacles.  What do we do with this word W-H-O-R-E, and did God command Hosea to marry a prostitute?

After Richard Rogers preached a sermon on Hosea in Lubbock Texas, a woman wrote him a letter saying that she was terribly offended that he used the word W-H-O-R-E in his sermon.  Today all three of her children are divorced.  Why?  Because their mother NEVER WOULD BE HONEST enough to tell them the REAL NATURE of sin.  There was a congregation that was going to study the Falkner Bukeen material and then found that they talked openly about sex.  They said, “My goodness we can't use that.”  Their children will, nine chances out of ten, grow up to be immoral because they haven't been taught the real tragedy of sin in a Christian environment.  Kids learn all about sex in the alleys, and from TV and from the internet, but they need to learn it from godly men and women.  I don't mean to be crude, but we MUST be plain.  God certainly was.  God used the term “whore “15 times in this tiny book and 90 times in the Old Testament. The words fornication and adultery do not convey the whole meaning. Its like talking about murder and using the words "hurting people." 

The second obstacle is, did God command Hosea to marry a prostitute?  I believe not.  The KJV and AMS say, "take a wife of 'whoredom.'"  The suffix "dom" means domain or territory.  A Kingdom = a king's domain.  God told Hosea to take a wife from the whore's territory.  If Hosea married a woman of that day, the chances were nine out of four that she will be, or become, an immoral woman.  Why?  Because they taught the religion of immorality.  Religion demonstrates the best that man is.  If the religion is immoral the people have little possibility of being anything else.  In the religion of that day, the highest act of worship was to commit fornication with a temple prostitute and kill her new born child as an offering to the gods.  They lived in the most immoral time that Israel had ever seen.  (See the book of Amos).  So in a way, both godly Hosea and his immoral wife Gomer, were of the kingdom of whoredom.  They lived there.   Hosea 2:2 says, "Take children of whoredom." This obviously means that the children were from the region of the whores or that they would BECOME prostitutes.  Now if children of whoredom means that they became immoral, what does "wife of whoredom," mean?  Another reason that I believe that Gomer was not a prostitute when Hosea married her, is because Gomer represents Israel.  God married Israel but he did not marry a prostitute.  Israel became a spiritual prostitute AFTER God married her, and Gomer became a prostitute after Hosea married her.

Now I'm sure that she loved Hosea and he lived her.  I believe this because Hosea brings to this courtship what very few people could bring; the un-squandered pleasure of a pure faithful life and love.  The Romans often married Jewish women.  Like the story of the roses. -- A speaker at a teen-boys convention produced a dozen beautiful roses.  He told the boys that they were going to help him with an experiment.  He gave six roses to the boys and asked them to feel the peddles, and then pass them around.  At the end of his speech, the six roses were brought to him and he placed them in a vase with the others.  Next, six boys were brought up and told that they could each pick one rose to take home to their mother.  Six roses were taken and six were left behind.  Do you know which were left?  The ones the boys had handled were left.  The reason the Romans married Jewish woman was that they could find no pure women among the Romans.  Hosea had much to offer Gomer. He had the heart of a poet, the voice of a prophet, the zeal of a patriot, and a pure love for Gomer that was as uncommon in that day as it is in ours.  Often Christians are intimidated by non-Christians, but we don't need to be.  A Christian has more to offer in a marriage than any non-Christian.  Gomer was without doubt swept off her feet by such a dynamic person.  But Hosea had a love superior to the one he had for her.  Two loves really.  His love for his Lord, and his love for his mission, preceded his love for his wife.  Now unless the wife is also committed to the Lord, what is that going to cause?  Trouble at home.  Miss-understanding, jealousy and resentment.  But still he MUST be faithful to God. 

There never was a man that stood as a better example of a man that truly loved his wife as Hosea.  But he did not put his family above his Lord.  We need to learn the lesson, and realize what Gomer did not realize, and that the only way to the greatest type of love is to put God first in our lives.  The more we love God, the more God gives us the ability to love our mate, and the deeper our love will grow.  He who loves God most, loves his mate most. There is heaven or hell in the mate you choose.  If you marry right you will have two heavens, heaven on earth, and heaven when life is over.  I am enjoying the first heaven now.  Are you?  And it is likely that if you marry wrong you will have hell twice. 

You may have heard the story about the young lady that came home crying.  Her mother asked, Why?  She sobbed, "I can't marry John, I just learned that he doesn't believe in heaven or hell."  Her mother thought for a moment, and said, "Oh go on and marry John.  Between the two of us we can prove to him that there is a hell."  An ungodly mate can make your life hell, maybe some of you know what I'm talking about, Hosea did!  This is why we tell young people to, "marry a Christian!"  Gomer didn't share Hosea's concerns for his God or his work.  As Hosea goes out to preach she withers at home.  She withers because her live is not in Hosea, nor in his work, nor in his Lord.  Her life is in the affairs of the community. 

God made us mates to entwine our lives in each other.  Some people say that each mate should keep their own individuality.  I challenge you to find a better marriage than that of my wife and I.  We are together nearly 24 hours a day.  We share in everything together.  Gomer, without doubt, threw up to Hosea, time and time again, "You love your God more than you love me!"  And this was true.  But again this did not need to be a detriment to the love he had for her, and as we read the story we can see that his love for God, made his love for Gomer much greater than you could ever expect. -- Greater than Romeo and Julet's love for each other.  Hosea gave Gomer, perhaps, the greatest love a woman has ever received. 

She probably said, "I want to go and have the fun like I use to have.  I want to go to the parties.  Your an old fuddy dud, an old stick in the mud.  A holy Joe.  Mr. goody goody two shoes.”  The very thing that at first attracted her to him is now disgusting.  This was caused by not entwining their lives together.  Now he goes about his work with a heavier heart than before for now he not only bears the burden of Israel's sins and their pending damnation, but he goes now to a house that is not a home.  To a wife that does not share his concerns for his beloved God and country.

Next go to Hosea #2.

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