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Hosea

Hosea’s Marriage Parallels God’s Covenant With Israel

by Christa July 10, 2021

written by Christa

God invited Israel to enter into a covenant with Him, becoming their God and they become His people. However, Israel’s unfaithfulness led to 40 years in the wilderness. Yet, God, in His compassion and love, rescued them over and over again. God illustrates His relationship with Israel through Hosea’s marriage with Gomer.

Hosea’s marriage

Hosea was a prophet that lived in Northern Israel, two hundred years after the division of the Kingdom of Israel. Hosea had a wife named Gomer, who slept with other men. Hosea had good reason to divorce Gomer, but his obedience to God and exceptional love for her did not permit him. He chose forgive and redeem Gomer.

God as a faithful husband

The prophet’s troublesome marriage is a prophetic comparison to God and Israel. As a marriage partner, God was deeply involved with Israel and was pained when they went their own way. He rescued them from slavery and entered into covenant with them. He asked them to be faithful and devoted to Him alone. But, as they entered into the promised land, they brought the abundance of the land and offered it to other gods. Just like Hosea, God had every reason to break the covenant with Israel. But He had a greater plan. He would pursue Israel again and renewed His covenant with them because of His love, compassion, and faithfulness.

The picture of Hosea buying Gomer’s freedom pareallels Jesus’ redeeming us. Hosea’s story points ahead to God’s perfect love expressed through Jesus, who purchased the freedom of His Bride, the Church, with His own life. Often, many of God’s people fail to demonstrate their faithfulness and wholehearted love for Him, but He is faithful!

Reference: Youtube | Bible Project

July 10, 2021 0 comments

Love Above All Else: Love God. Love Others. Live Loved.

by Emily Wheelock May 15, 2020

written by Emily Wheelock

We have reached the end of our Love Above All Else series. I want to talk about Hosea.

In Hosea, Gomer had a number of issues. One of them was accepting real love. Hosea, a prophet and Gomer’s husband, loved her so much. He loved her unconditionally. Even when she left him to go chase after her own demons. Speculation of Gomer was that she was a prostitute because the Bible, in Hosea chapter one, labels her as “a woman of promiscuity” but that didn’t stop God from telling Hosea to marry her and that didn’t stop Hosea from loving her. The book of Hosea is not just the first draft of The Notebook. It also tells of the love of God the Father.

What We Can Learn From Hosea

The Lord’s message through Hosea to the people of Israel was very simple. Stop with the promiscuity and the idolatry. Return to a God with humility and faithfulness. You see the love that Hosea had for his wife Gomer is very similar to the love God has for us. It’s an unconditional love.

“He forbears, endures, forgives, and shows mercy. It’s not because we are good; it is because He is God.” – Jennifer Rothschild

So, we are called to be like Christ, to be like God. That entails loving people unconditionally and living loved. We are ALL Gomer and we are ALL Israel. Isaiah 43 says to not dwell on the past. We all mess up. Loving another person means not holding their mess-ups to their face. You wouldn’t want someone doing that to you, now, would you?

You love others the best when you believe that God loves you

I implied at the beginning of this, that there was no fear in love. That is because there isn’t. John Piper once wrote that perfect love casts out fear. He said that God’s abiding in us and love being perfected in us. “In other words,” he says, “perfected love refers to God’s love in us coming to completion or coming into action as we love each other.” Without God’s love and God in us — without God — we cannot truly love each other.

As I said, you cannot love God and hate His people. It doesn’t work like that. To love God is to love His creation, all of His creation. That very love, as Piper puts it, “is perfected not when it is sinlessly flawless, but when it passes from talk to walk.”

Love God, love others. You will be right with Him. God calls us to share with everyone. Share with everyone the love God has given you. Let them see the light of Jesus through you. We all have failed and a lot of the time we want to say they did this and they did that. Often we are just afraid to show someone who hurt us, love. Love can take over fear. Listen to this; once you realize how dearly loved you actually are you can garner the strength to fight fear. Love is a living word we are to become. Once you realize how deeply loved you are, you can live loved. With love, you can discover the courage to move out of your comfort zone and pursue your dreams. The truth is that our mistakes don’t limit us. Only our fears do.

So, love, above all else. Keep trekking on.

May 15, 2020 0 comments

Faith

God Is Committed

by Emily Wheelock October 14, 2019

written by Emily Wheelock

My hope, after you read this, is that you will go through and read the book of Hosea. I hope that you will continue to turn to Hosea for direction, reassurance, and insight.

Setting it up

When you first read through Hosea, you may feel confused. I know I was. But when you really sit down to study it, you see the letter of love that was penned out in a poetic fashion. While the nation of Israel was crumbling after the death of Jeroboam II, Assyria had regained power and eventually destroyed the nation.

The book of Hosea was written with the intention of sending a message to the people of Israel through Hosea. The message was simple: stop your promiscuity and idolatry and turn back to God in humility and faithfulness. Hosea reminds the people that their struggles are the Lord’s discipline that would continue until they returned to God.

God is committed

Throughout the book of Hosea, you find a few common themes. One of them is love. God, a beautiful, faithful and patient being, helps us to see how truly we are “Gomers”. Hosea married, under the direction of God, a woman who was sinful, Gomer, and loved her unconditionally. Knowing all her faults, Hosea still committed himself to his wife and did not hold them against her.

Hosea and Gomer’s relationship and marriage are compared to that of God and Israel. God being Hosea and Israel being Gomer. If you look deeper than that, Israel and Gomer are all of us. Hosea is committed to his wife just as God is committed to Israel and us. Even when we walk away and sin over and over again, His commitment to us proves His love for us. His love is based on who He is not who we are. When it comes to God loving us, our sin is overlooked and He sees us for us, not what we’ve done against Him.

But He knows that our sinful nature is what will poison our joy and even our future. We must begin to realize that we are sinful and confront those sins, pouring them out to God humbly. We will find that the larger the view of our sin, the larger the view of the cross. We need to understand how deep the love of Christ goes. He covers all sin, guilt, and shame.

He’s not going anywhere

Even when we turn away from God, He is still there. He waits for us and might even “chase” us down with subtle signs. You know, those signs when you’re about to sin, or you might sin, and something comes across your phone, or someone says something that reminds you that God is there? That’s what I am talking about. God loves us too much to abandon us. He gives us love and forgiveness not because we are good, believe me, we are far from good. No, He loves us because He is God and God is love. God may hate sin, but He loves us. He committed Himself to us long ago when He created the world. He’s not going anywhere.

October 14, 2019 0 comments