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July 20th

Our Bible reading today is in Hosea chapters 1 thru 7.

“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 ‭ESV‬‬

God had an assignment for the prophet Hosea. He would use the preacher to deliver some hard and direct messages to spiritually immoral Israel and Judah.

God tells the truth. And for the unrepentant sinner, the truth hurts. The truth exposes sin and guilt. And that cuts deeply...and that hurts...on purpose.

God tells the truth. For the already broken and sorrowful sinner, the truth of God brings light for the new pathway. It brings comforting forgiveness. It brings healing of sin’s bitter consequences, and God’s truth, for the repentant sinner, brings peace, joy, and gladness for the future.

Therefore, Hosea’s message would cut many and enlighten others, hopefully, to bring the fear of God to their hearts again. And revive love for the Lord above all else.

I agree with CH Spurgeon...

“Hosea’s message could be summarized by the words: God loves His people in spite of apostasy.”

We notice that before God would use Hosea to preach a message to others, God would preach one to him.

And by the way, every Godly preacher that I have ever known in person or in historical print, has been just as committed to hearing and obeying God’s words as he was in speaking them.

God speaks to Hosea...“Go and take to yourself a wife...”

Ok. Other prophets had wives. That wouldn't be so strange. But God instructed Hosea to take Gomer for his wife. She was engaged in immoral behavior. She was a prostitute. “Now that would be strange”.

Another man in scripture took a prostitute for a wife. His name was Salmon and her name was Rahab. And Salmon and his wife Rahab had a son, Boaz. Each of these being recorded in the Matthew record of the lineage of David and ultimately the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Now more than likely Salmon married Rahab after she became a repentant believer in Yahweh. That doesn't seem to be the case in today’s reading. But again, I'm “supposing” since the text doesn't speak to it.

Was God interested in the soul of Gomer? Absolutely! Would He use the Godly prophet to lead her to repentance and faith? I hope that happened.

So what was God up to in this strange situation? I believe that there were two main reasons. First, God was going to prepare the prophet to reach from his broken heart to the hard-hearted Israelites. Throughout our Old Testament reading, we have seen the covenant picture of God being the faithful husband to Israel.

Now back to our text...Gomer would receive the benefits of being married, but she would break Hosea’s heart with her unfaithfulness, her multiple adulteries, her giving herself to others instead of only to her husband. Hosea would now be better able to relate to God’s broken heart over unfaithful Israel who had given themselves to idols, instead of their loving Savior.

So perhaps God was giving a measure of passion and a clearer vision to Hosea for appealing to the hearts of unfaithful Israel to come back to the One who truly loves them.

I believe that God was up to something else in our reading. Hosea took a sinner for a bride. Our Jesus did the same thing. He took me, Just As I Am. A sinner, immoral, an enemy of God, and a member of the crowd that yelled, “Crucify Him...Crucify Him...”

And perfect Jesus asked the likes of me to do life with Him now and forever.

Wow...now that’s a love story!

Have a great day