“Silent witness: an auction block”
Hosea 1:2
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Standing silently on the corner of Charles and William streets in downtown Fredericksburg, Virginia, there’s a four-foot high, three-foot wide block of stone. And though over the years it’s been backed into by trucks and hacked at and spray painted by vandals, it’s one of the most fascinating urban artifacts in America.
So what exactly is it?
Those who live there say that, back in the late 1800s, men and women used it to mount their horses or to get in and out of their horse-drawn carriages. After all, it does sit right in front of the old Planter’s Hotel.
But if you were to go back a little further in history to the time of the Civil War, you’d find that that old block of stone has a deeper and darker story to tell. As local tradition would tell you, it even had a name. “Slave rock” they call it. Auction block. It’s where slaves once stood so potential buyers could get a better view.
As the 1908 History of Fredericksburg says, “The slave to be sold was required to stand on this block in the presence of the gathered traders when he or she was ‘cried out’ by the auctioneer to the highest bidder. Those slaves who were publicly hired out for the year also took their stand on this block and were hired out at the highest price bid.” And it says, “There is probably no relic in Fredericksburg that calls back more vividly the days of slavery than does this stone block.”
Tour guides say that whenever anyone visits there, they’re so still and so moved with emotion, you could hear a pin drop.
Slave rock. Auction block. So it was in the words of Hosea chapter 1. I’ll read the words of verse 1: “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam the son of Joash, king of Israel” (Hosea 1:1).
It was 760 years before Christ, and a king named Jeroboam II was reigning on his throne.
And life was good for the nation of Israel. Jeroboam had stretched the borders of his kingdom farther than ever before. Tribute money from subject nations was pouring into the treasury, and the people enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. They were happy and wealthy. What more could they possibly need?
But along with their nearly unlimited wealth and power came what always comes--moral and spiritual collapse--lying, killing, stealing, perversion, oppression, idolatry and deceit, just to name a few.
So first, God sent His prophet Amos, a herdsman from Tekoa, to warn of their imminent collapse. But the people refused to listen. So He sent one more, a prophet named Hosea.
But Hosea was different. Instead of simply preaching the Word of the Lord, he would “be” the Word of the Lord. To put it another way, his life and his marriage would become a living sermon. What Hosea would do for his wife, Gomer, God did for Israel. And what Gomer did to Hosea, Israel did to God.
Now listen to verse 2: “When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, ‘Go, take to yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.’ So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son” (Hosea 1:2-3).
Now wait just one second! Did I hear that right?
Imagine what Hosea must have thought! “Now Lord, I will go anywhere You want me to go, and I’ll do anything You want me to do. I’ll go to Jerusalem. I’ll go to Samaria. (Nobody wants to go to Samaria!) I will faithfully preach the Word of the Lord. But You want me to marry a what?! A harlot, a hooker, a streetwalker, a tramp, a whore??!”
Imagine the headlines! “The Prophet and the Prostitute”...”The Minister and the Madam”...”The Street Preacher and the Streetwalker”...”His Light - Red Light.”
Remember the movie, Pretty woman? Something like that.
Even Gomer was surprised. The first time he asked her to marry him, she thought he was kidding. The second time, she thought he was crazy. The third time, she believed, and said, “Yes.”
Now the early days of their marriage were beautiful as their love began to grow. God even blessed their union with a son. As it says in verse 4: “And the Lord said to him, ‘Call his name Jezreel, for in just a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel.”
Even better, within just a short time, Gomer was pregnant again, this time with a little girl, Lo-ruhamah. But why stop with two when you can have three? That’s when they welcomed a third child, a little boy, Lo-ammi, into their home.
But as the days passed, Hosea began to notice a change in Gomer. She was becoming uneasy, restless, like a bird trapped in a cage. He kept on preaching, just as God called him to do. But Gomer, on the other hand, was spending a little more time away from home.
Now the Bible doesn’t tell us exactly what happened next. We can only guess. But no matter how much Hosea loved her and cared for her, faster than you can, “Gomer, what were you thinking?!,” she ran off to her former “lovers.”
But this time, she wasn’t the same woman she had been before. She was, after all, the wife of a prophet and the mother of three children. So it didn’t take long for her to get kicked out, “damaged goods,” then dumped on the street, and left with nothing--as low as any woman could go.
Now let me ask, what would you do if your wife had done that to you? How easily Hosea could have said, “Goodbye and good riddance. You were a lousy wife and an even worse mother. What a terrible waste of my time!” No one would have blamed him at all.
But that’s not what he did. Instead, driven by an amazing, forgiving, boundless, unstoppable love, he searched for her and, wonder of wonders, he found her. But to his surprise, of all places, she was in the absolute worst part of town, chained to an auction block--ragged, torn, sick, scared, destitute and dirty, a mere shadow of her former self. Ropes gnawed at her wrists. Sunlight burned her bare shoulders and exposed her shame.
And as more than a hundred surly men gathered to watch the spectacle--the prophet’s wife sold as a slave of prostitution--the bidding began. “Five silver coins,” called out one voice. “Ten,” said another. “I’ll give you twelve,” said another. Hosea shouted, “Fifteen!”
“Fifteen and twelve bushels of barley,” said one more. “Make it fifteen silver coins and eighteen bushels of barley,” said Hosea. “It’s a high price,” he said. “But it’s all I’ve got.”
So she was sold to the highest bidder.
What does all this mean for us? As one author put it, “God doesn’t love you because of what you do. God loves you in spite of what you do. And God doesn’t love you because of what you are. He loves you in spite of what you are. And when we begin to understand just how much He loves us, how much He was willing to give up for us, then we can respond to Him in love, sacrifice and praise.”
A hundred years ago, a pastor and author named Clovis Chappell told the story of a young man who lived in Chicago, but met a woman down in the state of Kentucky, dated her, then brought her back to Chicago as his bride.
For three years, their marriage was good, till one day she suffered a stroke. On her worst days, she screamed, and the neighbors complained.
So he took her and moved her out to one of the western suburbs, where he built a house, hoping to nurse her back to health.
But when she still didn’t improve, her doctor suggested that he take her back to Kentucky to see if that would make her well again.
So together they returned to her old homestead. They walked through the house where memories were behind every corner, and they visited the garden where she had spent so many years as a little girl. They walked by the river where violets were in bloom.
After several days, nothing seemed to happen. So defeated and discouraged, he lifted her into the car, and headed back home to Chicago.
When they finally made it home, she was sound asleep. It was the first deep, restful sleep she had had in a long time. Then he silently carried her from the car, then laid her on the bed to let her sleep some more.
The next morning, when she woke up, she saw her husband sitting in a chair by her side. She said, “I feel as though I’ve been on a long journey. Where have you been?”
After days and weeks and months of patient waiting, he said, “I’ve been right here waiting all along.”
If you were to ask where God is, the answer would be exactly the same. He’s right here, speaking to you again. He’s waiting and watching. And He’s hoping you’ll come, with all your heart, body, soul, and mind, to discover His grace, the rich, unfathomable depths of His love.
Can you see yourself, just like Gomer, chained to that auction block--ragged, dirty, scared, ashamed? Who would want you? Who would buy you? Who would want anything to do with you?
Still the bidding began. Do I hear five silver coins? Anyone? Anyone? Do I hear ten? How about fifteen?
You, You in the back, what did You say? Thirty? Thirty silver coins for this wretch, this sorry excuse for a sinner?
“I will buy you,” Jesus says. “I will buy you with everything I’ve got. And I will make you Mine forever.”
Does God really love us like that?
He gave us metal in the mine. He gave us trees in the forest. Then He gave a miner the skill to dig up that metal, and the lumberjack to chop down a tree.
Then when the metal was mined, a blacksmith with his fire and hammer, formed a spike, and a carpenter made a cross.
Then when the cross was ready, God came in Jesus Christ. Then He stretched out His arms and died.
And He did it all for us, that we might have forgiveness, that we might have eternal life.
This is our God, and there is no one like Him.
We thank You, dear Father, for the prophet Hosea and for his wife, Gomer. Help even us to know the joy and the wonder of Your rich, deep, unfathomable love, for Jesus’ sake. Amen