07 Apr Go and marry a whore

Hosea 1-3

Today I want to talk about the second greatest love story in the Bible. We know that the greatest love story is the story between Jesus and his church. But this is a close second. In fact, this love story is the shadow of the story of the gospel. Everything that happen in this story is the reflection of God’s love story with his people. It is the most bizarre but beautiful love story. All of us are drawn to the concept of love. There is something about the nature of love that intrigues every human’s heart. The human heart is wired to want intimacy.

Let me tell you a story about myself. When I was a kid, I loved to play imagination game with my action figures. I’m a big fan of super hero and I had lots of their action figures. So in many of my self-imagination game, I would have dragon ball fight against Marvel. As fun as it was, I couldn’t help but sense something was missing. So I would steal one of my sister’s Barbies and used her as the object of love in the story. Goku Vs Spiderman in order to win Barbie’s love.

All of us have that deep longing for love. As we grow up, the longing increases. I’m no longer satisfied with Barbie in my hand; I want Barbie that I can hug. So we began the pursue. And many of us can mark our lives with moments of deep regrets over the things we’ve done in the pursue of love. We fell in love, we get broken hearted and we vow never to fall in love anymore. As Tim often said in the past, “guys are stupid and girls are crazy.” But yet we keep pursuing love. We search and search but we are disappointed again and again. But that doesn’t stop us from trying. I believe it’s because we are hardwired by God from beginning of creation to pursue true love. But we lived in a fallen world corrupted by sins. That’s why we know many people who ship-wrecked their life and did crazy things in the name of love. We’ve been hurt a lot in our pursue of love. But it doesn’t stop the longing in our heart to love and to be loved. I love the way Timothy Keller puts it. “One of the greatest riddles of human existence and the riddles of our condition is why we absolutely must have a love from others that they cannot give us and others must have a love from us that we cannot give them.” And this story that we are about to read will answer that riddle for us. We are created for the infinite, eternal love of God and we will never be satisfied until we have it. And to understand this love, we turn to the book of Hosea.

 

Let me give you some information on the context of the book of Hosea. The book of Hosea is the first of the 12 Minor Prophets books in the Old Testament. They are called minor not because they are not important but because these books are relatively short in comparison to the major prophets like Jeremiah and Isaiah. Hosea was written during the best but worst time of Israel. It was the best time of Israel because at the time of Hosea, Israel was prosperous. God had blessed and prospered his people. They were doing great as a nation. However, it was the worst time at the same time because Israel began to live for pleasure. They forsake the Lord who blessed them and pursued after the blessings of God. Throughout the Old Testament, we can see that Israel tend to do really well in following the LORD in time of adversity, but they tend to do really bad in time of prosperity. Sounds familiar? Israel’s story is our story. We tend to do really well following Christ in difficult days but we tend to do really bad in happy days. And to these people, God delivers a very strong message through Hosea.

Hosea’s message is very unique. Usually when God wanted to communicate a message through a prophet, the prophet would speak on God’s behalf. “Thus said the Lord…” But the message of Hosea is very different. God not only delivers his message through the words of Hosea but God also wants to deliver his message through the life of Hosea. So the life of Hosea is the parable of the message that God wants to deliver to Israel and to us. There are 2 main characters in the story: Hosea and Gomer. And let’s be clear. You are not Hosea. Earlier this year, I used this passage when I preached in Albert Cathline’s wedding and I made sure they knew from beginning. “Albert, you are not Hosea. You are not marrying a whore.” Otherwise, it could be the worst wedding sermon ever. Hosea is the picture of God and Gomer is the picture of Israel. Do not get the order wrong. The same is true about us. Their story is also our story. And we are not Hosea. God is Hosea. We are Gomer. So this love story is about Hosea and Gomer, God and Israel, and finally God and us. So, let’s read the story together. We are going to read most of these three chapters with me stopping here and there to explain and we will make few observations at the end. Are you with me?

 

Hosea 1:1-2 – 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. 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.”

“What? You want me to marry what?” I am sure Hosea was extremely shocked at what he just heard. I imagine myself graduating from Morling College in 2020, and the first thing God say to me is, “Yosi, I want you to go to Kingscross and find your Barbie in one of the brothel.” “Say what? God is that you or the pizza I ate last night?” Think about the awkward conversation I will have with my parents. “Dad, Mom, God told me to marry a whore.” My parents will immediately fast for 40 days and 40 nights. Hosea was a prophet of God, a man who was called to represent God. A whore was the last person a prophet would want to marry. There is nothing unusual about a man loving a woman enough to marry her. But a marriage covenant between a prophet and a whore is unheard of. In fact, the literal translation of verse 2 is extremely strong. “Go, marry a whore, and bear children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning Yahweh.” That is a lot of whore in one verse. The point is clear. God wanted Hosea to marry a whore. Some commentators tried to argue that Gomer could not be a whore in the beginning of the story since it is unthinkable for God to command his prophet to marry a whore. But I think they are wrong. The literal understanding of this verse seems to suggest that it is the very intention of God for Hosea to marry a whore. It is by his marriage to a whore that God would communicate his infinite, eternal love to Israel and us. By marrying a whore, Hosea must put his future reputation as the prophet of God on the line. And he did.

It is also important to note that Hosea did not simply choose to marry Gomer because he had to but he also loved her. We are never told the reason behind Hosea’s love for Gomer but the fact that he loved her is a certainty as we continue to read. But at the same time, God already told Hosea, “Hosea, I want you to know that your wife is going to cheat on you. She will be unfaithful to you. She will break your heart. But I want you to marry her.” Why did God command Hosea to marry a whore? Don’t miss the point. God is saying to Hosea, “Hosea, you and I are both going to love and give our lives to a people who will totally betray us. We are going to spend lots of time, money and efforts to chase after them. I am a husband whose wife is unfaithful to him. And just like me, you will experience the same thing. My story will be your story. And what you would do will be what I would do. You are going to show my people how I love them.” This is God’s message for us as well. God wants to be our husband. He wants to be our joy, delight and trust. But just like Israel, we seek those things outside God and we broke God’s heart. What God desires from us is a deep intimate relationship as husband and wife. But we continue to commit spiritual adultery by seeking our joy in sex, money, kids and other things. Our betrayal break God’s heart.

 

Hosea 1:3-5 – So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son. 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. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel.”

Gomer conceived and bore Hosea a son, which God named Jezreel. Every child that Gomer bore has a prophetic meaning for Israel. The first was named Jezreel to remind the people of the fury of Jehu (a former king of Israel) when he killed Jezebel and 70 sons of Ahab in the city of Jezreel. Jezreel was a reminder that God will punish Israel for their treachery and violence. It is basically like God saying to Israel, “I know what you did last summer.”

 

Hosea 1:6-9 – She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, “Call her name No Mercy, for I will no more have mercy on the house of Israel, to forgive them at all. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them by the Lord their God. I will not save them by bow or by sword or by war or by horses or by horsemen.” When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, “Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.”

Gomer conceived again and bore a daughter. But interestingly, Hosea was not mention as the father of Gomer’s daughter. The Lord named her Lo-ruhama, which means “no mercy”. Every father shows mercy to his children. So the fact that Hosea did not have natural affection that a father has for his own children seems to indicate that Hosea was not the father. Similar thing happened to Gomer’s third child. God named him Lo-ammi, which means “not my people.” This makes it explicit. They were not Hosea’s children. Gomer had an affair and conceived two children out of it. The Lord’s prophecy came to pass. Now, the question is, what would Hosea do? What is going to happen to this family? Will it get better now after the Lord’s prophecy come to pass? Not at all. In fact, it gets much worse.

 

Hosea 2:2-5 – “Plead with your mother, plead—for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband – that she put away her whoring from her face, and her adultery from between her breasts; lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born, and make her like a wilderness, and make her like a parched land, and kill her with thirst. Upon her children also I will have no mercy, because they are children of whoredom. For their mother has played the whore; she who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’

What we find in chapter 2 is that the voice of Hosea and voice of God are becoming one. They are speaking together. Chapter 2 speaks of Hosea’s despair at Gomer’s unfaithfulness toward him. The words he used expressed his struggles and pains. Hosea loved Gomer but Gomer betrayed him. This chapter also speaks of God’s words to His faithless wife, Israel. Hosea confirmed to us that the last two children were conceived out of adultery. And what made thing worse, Hosea tells us that it was Gomer who pursued the lovers, rather than the other way around. Gomer pursued her lover who provided her with what she thought she needed. There are two tragedy. This is the first tragedy: Hosea was Gomer’s husband but Gomer left him and chased after other lovers. Question: What would you do if you were Hosea? Let me tell you what I would do: I would give up the very moment Gomer left the house. Not only Gomer had two children out of wedlock, she left the house. I would change all the key in the house to make sure she could never return. I would change my email and Instagram password that she knew. It’s enough. I have obeyed God enough by marrying a whore and loving a whore. I even take care of 2 kids that are not mine. Surely that’s enough. I have loved her enough and I have sacrificed enough for her. I am going to stop loving her and I am going to stop loving her children. BUT. The story continues…

 

Hosea 2:6-8 – Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say, ‘I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.’ And she did not know that it was I who gave her the grain, the wine, and the oil, and who lavished on her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.

What happen to Gomer was she fell down the social ladder so much to the point that she was living with a man who could not provide for her needs. She might have been in an abusive relationship or it could simply means that the man that she was with could not provide her with her necessities. And Hosea heard about it. Hosea heard at how poorly Gomer was treated. So what did he do? He went to the house where Gomer was. He knocked on the door and a man comes out. “Who are you? What do you want?” “Are you the man living with Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim?” “Yes.” “I am Hosea, Gomer’s husband.” Can you imagine how awkward that conversation was? At this time, the man expected Hosea to punch him in the face. Instead, what happened next was bewildering. Instead of punching him, Hosea took out his wallet. “I know you do not have what it takes to provide for my wife. Here take this money with you. Use it to get her everything she need. I don’t want her to suffer. Here, take the money.” The man took the money and used the money to provide for Gomer. But he never told Gomer that the money was from Hosea. She assumed it was from her lover and not Hosea. Gomer had totally forgotten about Hosea while Hosea continued to provide for her needs. This is the second tragedy: Gomer thought that she received everything from her lover but it was Hosea who provided everything for her. And for the rest of chapter 2, we see how God continues to pursue after Israel. But God’s love is a pursuing disciplining love. God let his people experience judgement for their sin but he never stop loving and pursuing them at the same time. And now we get to Hosea chapter 3, the most bizarre but wonderful chapter in the Old Testament.

 

Hosea 3:1 – And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”

Gosh, give the dude a break! Hosea did everything he could to keep the family together. He even provided for Gomer’s needs even though she never acknowledged him. He did everything he possibly could as a good man. But now what? Go again? Love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress? Are you serious? If you ever experience the pain of being cheated by your spouse, then you would know that there is no pain like it. It is a pain on a whole another level. I am not married but I know the pain of being cheated on. When I first came to America, I dated a Korean girl. I was 18 and she was 22. We were good friends and we hang out together till one day she told me that she liked me. What do you do when you are 18, living in another country on your own, car-less, and a Korean girl who had a car confessed to you? Why not, right? Only to find out four months later that the only reason she approached me and dated me was in order to make her ex-boyfriend jealous. Once she succeeded, they got back together and she dumped me. It was painful. It took me almost two years to be able to look at her without wanting to harm her. Now if you tell me to get back together with her after all that she did, I would crucify you upside down.

Yet Hosea was commanded to find Gomer and love her again. This is absurd and not normal! Gomer has cheated on Hosea countless of times. There must have been many nights where Hosea cried out to God for his wife unfaithfulness. Hosea had to explain to his children why mommy was not home. He had to take care of the children without their mother. And now when he just started to get use to life without Gomer, God told him to get Gomer back. “Hosea, I know you want to get this over and done with. I know you have 10,000 reasons for divorce. But I want you to get her anyway. And not only get her, I want you to love her again!” Absurd command! This is almost an emotional impossibility.

 

Hosea 3:2-3 – So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.”

Hosea obeyed the Lord. Apparently Gomer had sunk to lowest possible level. For some untold reasons, she had become a slave. Hosea knew about it and one day, Hosea went to the slave auction. How do we know? Because the price Hosea paid for Gomer was the price of a slave. And if you know anything about slave auction, slaves were usually stripped naked so that the people could see what they were getting. So here we found Gomer stripped naked in a slave auction, waiting to find out what would happen to her. She was at the lowest point in her life. People began to bid on her. “5 shekels.” Somebody else said, “9 shekels.” Then to her amazement, she heard a familiar voice. “10 shekels.” She looked up and she saw her husband. “12 shekels.” Hosea replied, “14 shekels.” Another said, “15 shekels.”  And Hosea said, “15 shekels and lethech of barley.” “SOLD!” In order for Hosea to get Gomer back, he had to pay the price of a female slave, which was 30 shekels. Hosea could not afford to pay in cash. But he was determined to get her back whatever the cost. Hosea paid the price for Gomer. He bought her.

Now the question is, what will Hosea do to Gomer? Hosea approaches Gomer, cover her nakedness with clothe, takes her by the hand and leads her away from the auction. Now, imagine what Gomer is thinking at this moment. The man who bought her is none other than the man whom she betrayed and trampled on. There is only one reason that Gomer could think of as to why Hosea bought her: he wants revenge. And at this time, Gomer is Hosea’s property. Hosea bought and paid the full price for Gomer. Gomer is his property. He can do anything he wants with her. In fact, the Law of Moses allows Hosea to divorce Gomer and stone her to death. But what happen next is absolutely stunning. The Hebrews for this sentence is very complicated. That is why you find many different translation for verse 3. But what Hosea is saying is something like this. “Gomer, I don’t want you as a slave. I want you as my wife. I want to have life together with you. You will not give yourself to any other man. You will not have sex with any man. And for a period of time, you will not have sex with me as well. But when that time pass, I will be yours and you will be mine.” This is absolutely beautiful. Hosea acknowledges the pain and the gap that exists in their relationship and the works required to close that gap. Yet at the same time Hosea tell Gomes that he wants her. And not as a slave, Hosea wants her as his wife. Full restoration. What a story. You think the love story in Korean drama is unreal? Try read the Bible

 

The life of Hosea and Gomer is God’s message for his people. Hosea and Gomer is a picture of God and Israel. It is also a picture of Christ and his church (us). Christ is Hosea and we are Gomer. Through the story of Hosea, we learn few things about God’s love. God’s love is scandalous, relentless and priceless.

 

 

God’s love is scandalous.

 

It is unreasonable and scandalous for anyone to marry someone whom they knew will be unfaithful to them. Gomer was a whore from the very beginning and God knew exactly that she would be unfaithful to Hosea. When God chose Israel, he knew exactly that Israel would be unfaithful but yet he chose to love them. The question of the book is not why would God asked Hosea to marry Gomer but why would God marry Israel? Why not choose a people who would be faithful to him and grateful for his love?

According to our understanding, God’s love is scandalous. We would not come into a covenant relationship with those we know would be unfaithful to us. Anyone ever dream of marrying a whore? But one thing we need to understand that in God’s eyes, everyone who are not in covenantal relationship with him is a whore. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Simply said, all of us were whores. None of us deserved God’s love. Therefore, for God to love us, his love must be scandalous. Another way of saying it is this: God’s love for us is not based on our goodness, but based on his goodness and sovereign election. Deuteronomy 10:14-15 – Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day. Try to get the feeling of this text. We do not contribute anything to his love for us. It is solely based on who he is and has nothing to do with us. It is all about the giver and has nothing to do with the recipients. It is reasonable to love lovely things. But God’s love is scandalous in the way that he makes the object of his love lovely rather loving the object because they are lovely. God’s love is scandalous because it did not bring attention to the object of love but to the magnificence of the lover.

 

 

God’s love is relentless.

 

The Bible clearly told us that God pursues those he loves. Hosea never minimizes the pain that Gomes afflicted him. The pain was real. Hosea was betrayed by Gomer. But because he loves her, he would not give up on her. Because Hosea loves Gomer, he pursues her no matter what the cost. We see in chapter 2 how God disciplines Israel precisely because he loves her. The reason behind God’s discipline in our life is not because he is cruel but because he is pursuing us in order for us to rest in his love and goodness. In other word, God’s discipline is an expression of his relentless love toward us. God’s discipline is a sign of God’s refusal to give up on us when we walked away from him.

Just like Gomer, many times we have to learn thing the hard way. God has to show us the empty promises of the world and the pain that comes with it before we realized what we have been missing all this time, and “to go and return to my first husband, for it was better for me then than now.” The reason God allows painful and tough time in our life is to show himself supreme to us. His discipline is a sign of his relentless commitment to us. But sometime we can’t understand God’s love like how a child often can’t understand a parent’s love. You know what’s a child favourite word? “Now! I want it now!” No child likes to wait. If a child wants to buy a $10 toy and they know you have the money to buy the toy but you did not buy them the toy but instead you buy a $1 million house, they will say, “You don’t love me.” Right? They don’t understand that the $1 million house will give them so much more than what a $10 toy could give them. A loving parent would often discipline their kids and not give them what they wanted because they love their kids. In fact, it would be extremely unloving to the child if the parents always give them what they asked immediately. The same can be said about God’s love for us. Our problem with understanding God’s love is that we often have a child-sized view of God’s love. If we as children cannot fathom the love of our parents, how much more the finite cannot fathom the relentless love of the infinite God?

 

 

God’s love is priceless.

 

We can easily give up on people, especially those who betrayed our love and trust. But God is different. In chapter 3, when Gomer’s sin had worn her out, when she arrived at the lowest level possible, when she was sold as a slave in an auction, when none of her beauty remains but scars of her sins, God told Hosea to go and get her back whatever the cost. Gomer’s name means perfect which possibly a reference to her appearance and beauty. But now she is an unwanted slave at an auction. Hosea went through emotional hell on earth because of Gomer. But now the Lord said to Hosea to love her as the Lord loves the Israelites.

It is one thing to forgive one foolish sinful mistake. But it is totally another thing to forgive intentional sin that has been repeated far too often. Gomer did not deserve Hosea’s forgiveness. Gomer did not deserve Hosea’s faithfulness. And Gomer certainly was not worth it for Hosea to make all those sacrifices. But that’s exactly what Hosea did and that is what God is doing with his people. He forgives the iniquity of his people. Even when we are faithless and betrayed him, “he remains faithful – for he cannot deny Himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). We keep running away from his presence but God pursues us to the end and he makes the greatest sacrifice in order to pursue us. Here is the message of Hosea in a nutshell. We can run from God but we can never hide from God. The love of God will find us wherever we are. We can run as far as we can but we can never outrun God’s love for us. And the reason behind the greatness of his love for us has nothing to do with us but has everything to do with his attributes and his love for us. God’s love is priceless.

Another word for priceless is that the love of God is extremely costly. God did not have to pay the price to buy you. God could have choose to let you go as a slave or he could have choose to condemn you and make you pay for all you did to him. But he did neither. Instead, he bought you with a price. Hosea gave all he had to buy Gomer. God gave himself to purchase you and me. He did not buy us with gold and silver; he bought us with the blood of his son. I’ll show you.

 

Hosea 3:4-5 – For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

Just as Hosea said to Gomer that there will be a time where they shall not become one, God is saying to Israel that there will be a time where God keeps his distance from Israel. But when that time is over, Israel shall experience complete restoration and seek the Lord, their God, and David their king. Wait? David? David was already long dead by this time. This is a prophecy about the son of David, who is none other than Jesus.

And this is exactly what happened. Jesus came and bought us with his blood. In Jesus, God came to the slave auction, saw us, loved us, purchased us, covered our nakedness with his righteousness, and made us his. We became his bride and he is our groom. And the price he paid to purchase us is priceless. At the night before crucifixion, Jesus is saying to God the Father, “Father, I know you can do all thing. Nothing is impossible for you. You are all powerful and all good. Is there any other way we can love these people? Is there any other way beside the cross? Is there any other way beside this unbelievable cost? Is there any other price beside my blood?” The Father said, “This is the price. There is no other way.” And Jesus paid. He bought us with his blood. That’s how he bought us. Jesus is our groom and we are his bride purchased by the blood. If we trust in Jesus, we can confidently declare, “I am his and he is mine.”

It is this priceless love that everyone craves for. Everyone is drawn to it and attracted to it. But yet they can find no such love in this world. Hosea failed to love Gomer by his own capacity to love. What enabled Hosea to love Gomer again is the revelation and the empowerment of God’s love in Hosea’s life. This is the beauty of the story. When human’s love fails, God’s love prevails. True love can only be experienced and given in Christ.

 

 

Now, let me end this way. Do you know what happen when you have Jesus as your spouse? If you are married, you understand this. Marriage couple, do you realize the massive power that your spouse has over you to reprogram your self-value and self-worth? I am not married so I am going to borrow my dad’s illustration. My dad once said that if people in the church comes up to him and say, “Ps. Sem, you are such a wonderful kind hearted pastor,” he is going to feel good. He is going to be very happy about it. But at the same time he is thinking, “That person does not really know me.” And being a pastor myself, let me tell you that what you see on Sunday can be very different from what you see at home on Monday. But, if my mom walks up to my dad and says, “You are the best pastor and the kindest man I know,” my dad will be over the moon. Why? Because he can fool you on Sunday. But he can’t fool my mom who sees him every day. Here is my point. If everyone in the world tells you that you are beautiful but your spouse tells you that you are ugly, you feel ugly. But if everyone in the world tells you that you are ugly but your spouse tells you that you are beautiful, you feel beautiful. Your spouse has that massive power over you.

Here is where I am going with this illustration. The relationship between Christ and us is ultimately defined as a relationship between husband and wife. But we are a very bad wife. We are Gomer. We betrayed Jesus, cheated on Jesus and trample over Jesus’ heart. But Jesus’ love is scandalous. He choose to love us despite of all our ugliness. He pursues us. Jesus’ love is relentless. He will not give up on us no matter what. He will use whatever means necessary to get us back, even if he has to hurt and discipline us. Jesus’ love is priceless. He will pay whatever price to get us back, even at the cost of his own life. He bought us with his blood. And now that we are his, he whispers to us, “I love you and I want you.” In fact, I love the way God says it. Hosea 11:8 – How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. God will not give us up! He can’t let us go. One song puts it this way. “You did not want heaven without us. Jesus you brought heaven down.” I know this is almost blasphemous to say. How can a perfect God say that he did not want heaven without us? Yes God is perfect and he does not need us. God is happy from eternity past into eternity future. But here is the good news of the gospel. God does not need us but he wants us. With another word, God has bound his joy to our joy so that his joy will not complete until we are fully his. This infinite eternal God loves us this much and bound his joy to ours and he is our husband.

 

Here is my question and I finish. If this is how the infinite, eternal God loves you, if this is how Jesus thinks of you, if this is what your ultimate spouse says of you, then why would you care what the world think of you? What a beautiful name, what a wonderful name, what a powerful name, the name of Jesus!

 

 

 

Discussions:

1. What makes the message of Hosea “unique” in comparison to other prophets?
2. What is so shocking about God’s commandment to Hosea in Hosea 1:2? What would you do if you were Hosea?
3. What are the two tragedies in chapter 2? Can you see yourself repeating these tragedies in your relationship with Christ? Share it with others.
4. What is so shocking about God’s commandment to Hosea in Hosea 3:1? What would you do if you were Hosea?
5. “Our problem with understanding God’s love is that we often have a child-sized view of God’s love.” Agree or disagree? Give daily life examples.
6. How did Jesus fulfil the role of Hosea?
7. How does having Jesus as your ultimate spouse enable you to overcome the lies of the world? Think of specific application on how you can apply this truth in your daily life and share it with others.