Exhortation November 5, 2006 Hosea's Bride

Dear brothers, sisters, and friends unmet, it is with great gratitude that i am able to present this exhort to you from our brother Bob Jennings. Originally published in Tidings Magazine October of 2002. May it bless you as you remember our Master at his table and our Father in His ever present love.

Hosea's Bride

There is a saying that to truly understand the feelings of another person we would need to walk in his or her shoes. In other words, we would have to go through the same experiences. This could be very uncomfortable, especially in the case of some of the prophets. Take Isaiah for example: he was told to walk naked and barefoot for three years as a sign to Egypt and Ethiopia (Isa.20: 2-3); or Ezekiel, who had to lie on his side for days on end, shave his head with a sword, and experience the trauma of his wife’s death without being able to outwardly mourn.

Walking in Hosea’s shoes Hosea lived in an age of extreme wickedness. Two notorious kings were on the throne, Ahaz reigning in Judah and Jeroboam in Israel. At this time: "The Lord said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord" (Hos. 1:2).

This faithful man was faced with the stress of taking a wife who, in today’s idiom, was a ‘streetwalker.’ Sensations of repulsion must have surfaced in the mind of Hosea; as they did to Ezekiel when he was instructed to bake food on human waste: "Ah Lord God! behold, my soul hath not been polluted: for from my youth up even till now have I not eaten of that which dieth of itself, or is torn in pieces; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth" (Ezek. 4:14). Peter reacted with similar distaste at the command to eat unclean animals (Acts 10:14).
Nevertheless, in spite of the obvious unpleasant repercussions, Hosea quietly obeyed the Lord. If we were in his shoes, would we walk so willingly, or would we recoil like Ezekiel and Peter? Perhaps we might openly rebel saying, "No Lord, that is too much to expect of me!"

Israel like a harlot In Hosea’s time, Israel was the "streetwalker." But it wasn’t long before a similar depiction was made of Jerusalem: "Again the word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations…and in all thine abominations and thy whoredoms thou hast not remembered the days of thy youth, when thou wast naked and bare, and wast polluted in thy blood" (Ezek. 16:1-2, 22). The nation had turned to false gods.
The subsequent punishment for idolatry was so severe that when the promised Messiah came, the problem of blatant idolatry no longer existed in Israel; ironically, the leaders had substituted worship of self. Such was the arrogance of the Pharisees that they considered themselves as elite and above temptation. Much to their consternation, Jesus interacted with the lower orders: "Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?" The Lord’s response was ironic: "They that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick" (Matt. 9:11-12). Sin is a sickness that spares no one, but the Pharisees had failed to recognize their infection.

The Master proceeded to teach the great lesson they had failed to discern from Hosea, that even the strictest adherence to the rituals of the law is negated in the absence of mercy and compassion: "But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Matt. 9:13). The verse Jesus was quoting from Hosea continues, "and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings" (Hos. 6:11). Had the leaders of the Jews really known their maker, they would have recognized the fulfillment of the law in the love, mercy and compassion now being enacted in their midst. No, the Lord had not come to save the righteous (or, by implication, the self-righteous Pharisees), he had come to seek and save those who were lost (Lk. 19:10).

The apostle Paul amplified the concept that the son of God gave his life in order that the lowliest of sinners might be saved from death: "For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:6-8). What a great comfort this knowledge has been to disciples throughout the ages.

All are sinners Paul makes it quite clear that the bias of sin in human nature is universal, no one can claim to be better than another in this respect: "What then, are we better than they? No, in no wise…they are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no not one…there is none that doeth good, no, not one…for we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:9-10, 23). Similarly, the passage frequently quoted at our breaking of bread service shows that we all follow the dictates of our nature: "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Is. 53:6).

In effect, left to ourselves we are like Hosea’s wife, Gomer, unclean and unwholesome; yet in obedience to his Father’s command, the Lord Jesus took us and loved us. He was willing to carry the terrible burden of sin, knowing that the purchase price of his bride would be his own precious blood.

The mission of Jesus The experience of Hosea is an enacted parable: the primary application is to God’s relationship with Israel; the secondary application is to the spiritual interaction with Christ and the ecclesia and the third application is to Christ and to us personally. Just as Hosea had taken to wife an impure woman, so God took recalcitrant Israel to himself and cherished her as a wife, hoping to wean her from her wickedness. Likewise, the mission of Jesus is to elevate his bride, namely us, to a state of purity.

The lovely passage in Ephesians not only instructs us in the high ideals of marriage based upon the love of Christ for the ecclesia, it also shows that the Lord is continuously working toward the holiness of his bride: "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish" (Eph. 5:25-27).

Gomer’s backsliding Gomer failed to appreciate the honor bestowed on her or that her continuing sustenance came from Hosea. True to character, she spurned her lifeline; turning her back on her husband, she sought satisfaction and affection from the world. At least two children were the product of Gomer’s harlotry; the marriage bond was broken and her ever increasing degenerate behavior led to the slave market and utter dejection. Sadly, Israel as a nation was following the same pathway to destruction.

Hosea was instructed to seek out his wife and rescue her from her self-imposed plight. He was to redeem her in precisely the same manner that God would seek to save Israel. Hosea obeyed willingly, even though the price was very costly: "Go love a woman beloved of her friend…yet an adulteress, according to the love of the Lord toward the children of Israel…so I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley and an half homer of barley."

Once the redemption money was paid, the woman was left in no doubt as to her master’s expectation: "And I said unto her, thou shalt abide with me many days; thou shalt not play the harlot, and thou shalt not be for another man: so will I also be for thee" (Hos. 3:1-3). It was to be a mutually exclusive bond, reflecting the nature of the covenant with the Lord God and His people.

The price of our redemption Unfortunately, the call of the world to leave our Master’s side becomes increasingly difficult to resist. Like Gomer, we, too, can find the abundance of pleasures the world has to offer irresistible.

Over two thousand years ago, Paul recognized similar dangers for his converts in the corrupt society of Corinth. He understood that the bride of Christ is vulnerable to temptation and longed that she remain faithful: "For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ" (II Cor. 11: 2-3).

Serpent sin is always seeking occasion to corrupt the mind of the believer, but strength to resist temptation comes from meeting together and remembering that the price of our redemption was the death of our Lord and Savior. Let us remain faithful and abide with him for many days.

Bob Jennings, Tidings Magazine October 2002/Wayne Wilkinson proofread and modified November 2006