“The Bible’s Children: Jezreel, Lo-Ruhamah, Lo-Ammi”
Hosea 1:4, 6, 9
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Do you believe in true love? Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you believe that love lasts forever? So asks an article entitled Top twenty most famous love stories in history and literature.
We love love stories, whether they’re real or just made up.
Take Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, for example. It’s one of the most beautiful, but also one of the most tragic of all. It tells the story of two teenagers, two “star-crossed” lovers, who fall in love at first sight. Only when both Romeo and Juliet die at the end do the Capulets and the Montagues finally get along. As Shakespeare penned at the end: “For never was a story of more woe/Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”
In her book Jane Eyre, author Charlotte Bronte tells the story of an orphaned girl who’s sent to work for a rich, but terribly rude man named Edward Rochester. Then as time passes and the two come to know one another, beneath his gruff exterior, she finds a warm and tender heart. At the end, when fire destroys his mansion, kills his wife, and leaves him blind, love triumphs, and the two live happily ever after. He asks, “Am I hideous, Jane?” She answers; “Very, sir: you always were, you know.”
And in Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy is rich, educated and refined, and Elizabeth is unschooled and poor. Still, at the end, they manage to fall in love.
And that’s nothing to say of Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn in Holiday, Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost, Richard Gere and Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman, and Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” he said.
The Bible is also full of love stories of all kinds. Think of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Ruth and Boaz, Mary and Joseph, and even the very first couple--Adam and Eve.
But of all the love stories that have ever been known, there’s one that’s more amazing and more profound than all the rest, what one writer called “one of the truly great love stories of all time.” It’s about a prophet named Hosea and his wife, Gomer.
It’s easy to say that the book of Hosea isn’t like any other book in the Bible. Instead, as one commentator wrote, “It’s a book that jolts the reader. It refuses to be domesticated and made conventional. It’s as startling in its presentation of sin as it is surprising in its stubborn certainty of grace. And while it does comfort the afflicted, it most surely afflicts the comfortable.” And he wrote, “It’s a book to be experienced, and that experience is with God.”
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 as the people enjoyed unprecedented prosperity. Wealth was abundant. Agriculture flourished. Building trades thrived. What more could they possibly need?
But along with all that power and wealth and influence came what always comes--moral and spiritual collapse--pride, arrogance, 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 ruin. But the people refused to listen. So He sent one more, this time a prophet named Hosea.
But Hosea was different. Instead of simply preaching the Word of the Lord, he would embody the Word of the Lord. In fact, his life and marriage would become one, big living sermon. What Gomer will do to Hosea, Israel had done to God. And what Hosea would do for his wife Gomer, God would do for Israel.
I’ll read the words of Hosea chapter 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 the son of Jehoash king of Israel. When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, ‘Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.’ So he married Gomer daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son” (Hosea 1:1-2 NIV).
Now you might have noticed that, because we’re a family-friendly church, I read that passage from the NIV, the New International Version. But most other Bible translations aren’t quite so gentle.
So if some of you wouldn’t mind covering your ears for just a moment, let me read that same passage from the English Standard Version, (the one we have in our pews): “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’” (Hosea 1:2).
Is it all a little bit clearer now?
We can’t say for sure, but it’s my guess that the conversation between the Lord and Hosea went something like this…
“Hosea!”
“Yes, my Lord?”
“I want you to get married!”
“Great, Lord, I’d like to get married too!”
“And you don’t have to worry one bit--I’ll take of everything. In fact, I already have a girl picked out for you!”
“Even better! What’s her name?”
“Her name is Gomer.”
“Gomer. That’s a nice name! With a name like that, she must be one of the most beautiful girls in all the land.”
“As a matter of fact, she is! And I think you’re really, really going to like her.”
“Great,” he said. “When can I meet her?”
“How about next week?”
“Next week would be fine! Can’t wait!”
“Oh, by the way, there is just one thing you should know.”
“Yes, Lord?”
“She’s a prostitute.”
Now you’d think that to ask a prophet to marry a prostitute was a bit of a stretch, even for God. But it wasn’t the first time God asked someone to do something that, on the surface, appeared to be completely unreasonable, nor would it be the last.
Jeremiah once strapped an ox’s yoke around his neck, Balaam rode a talking donkey, Ezekiel laid on his left side for 390 days and then on his right side for another 40, and Jonah spent three days and three nights in a fish’s stomach. And now He asked Hosea to marry an unfaithful woman.
Sometimes, God told his prophets to do some pretty crazy things!
But there’s more. We’re not done yet.
Now the early days of their marriage were beautiful as their love began to grow. God even blessed their union with a son. “Jezreel,” they called him. It’s a name that meant “God scatters.”
But that’s when Hosea began to notice a change in Gomer. It’s as if she was a bird trapped in a cage. He kept on preaching, begging his nation to turn back to God, but Gomer was spending a little more time away from home.
Now the Bible doesn’t say exactly what happened next. We can only guess. But whatever happened, suddenly Gomer was pregnant again. And though this time the child was a beautiful little girl, Hosea wasn’t completely sure she was really his. So he called her, “Lo-ruhamah,” a name that meant, “No mercy.”
And just as soon as she was weaned, Gomer conceived for a third and final time. And as Hosea looked at the little boy and held him in his arms, he called him, “Lo-ammi,” a name that meant, “No child of mine.”
Which is all very strange! Can you see him standing in the marketplace trying to decide which vegetables to buy, when one of the shopkeepers happens to say, “Your children are all so beautiful! What are their names?”
With a shrug, Hosea points to the girl and says, “We call her ‘unloved.’”
“Unloved?!”
“That’s what I said!”
“Um, how about your boy?”
“Not mine.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought…”
“No, that’s his name. His name is ‘not mine.’”
But that was exactly the point. Just as Gomer had turned her back on Hosea, Israel had turned its back on God. And the one way, the only way anything good could happen, is if God would save and redeem.
So what would Hosea do for his wife, his Gomer? Driven by an amazing, forgiving, unbreakable love, he searched for her and he found her--ragged, torn, sick, destitute and dirty, a mere shadow of the woman she once was.
And that’s when the bidding began. “Ten silver coins,” shouted one voice. “I’ll give you twelve,” said another. Hosea said, “Fifteen.”
Someone else said, “Fifteen and twelve bushels of barley.” “Make it fifteen silver coins and eighteen bushels of barley,” said Hosea. “It’s a high price, more than a year’s wages! But it’s all I’ve got.”
So she was sold to the highest bidder.
So what does all this mean for us? The answer’s found in this--if Hosea could love a dirty, hurting, and broken woman like Gomer, just imagine what God could do for you and me.
As one author wrote, “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 understand just how much He loves us, how much He was willing to give up for us, then we respond to Him in love, sacrifice, and praise.”
As another author wrote, “In the kingdom of God’s love, there is no sinner who cannot come home.”
A little over a hundred years ago, back in 1920, in the town of New Brunswick, New Jersey, a young woman named Josephine Dickson worked hard to be the best housewife she could possibly be, spending quite a lot of time on that one task of getting supper ready for her husband, Earle, before he got home.
But unfortunately, she was rather accident prone, and was constantly nicking her fingers with knives and getting small burns. So when he came home, Earle’s first job was always to help her dress her wounds.
That’s when he had an idea--why not come up with some way for her to dress her own wounds rather than wait until he came home? So he rolled out a long strip of adhesive tape, then placed little squares of cotton at certain intervals. That way she could simply tear off a piece, then wrap it around her finger, and keep going.
Which proved to be a really good idea! So he took his idea to his boss at Johnson & Johnson, and called it a “band-aid.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
When it came to our greatest need--our sin and our rebellion--God didn’t simply give us a “band-aid.” Instead, He sent His only Son.
He gave us metal in the mine and trees in the forest. Then He gave a miner the skill to dig up that metal and a lumberjack to chop down a tree.
Then with his fire and hammer, a blacksmith 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 the lesson You mean to teach us. Help us to know the joy and the wonder of Your rich, deep, unfathomable love, for Jesus’ sake. Amen