Overview

 

Lets examine Hosea and the times in which he lived and spoke God's Word. Hosea first heard the voice of God when he was a young, single man. God told him who to marry, Gomer, a pagan woman, a non-Israelite, and Hosea married her. God told Hosea that from the beginning, married life would not be easy. He was told that Gomer would be a harlot and reject him, and she did.

 

God told Hosea that his wife would keep rejecting him for many years, throughout the birth of their three children, and we saw this to be true. Through all this pain and rejection, God stayed with Hosea and told him how to react-with love and forgiveness, always looking toward reconciliation.

 

God's plan for Hosea was to save both Hosea and Gomer through Hosea's love for God. God did not abandon Hosea in his family trials. God stayed with him, telling him what to do and say at every turn of his spiritual journey.

 

God had a plan for Hosea, to give him a future and a hope, even though his present was not very joyful. God's plan for Hosea was majestic and yet simple, and Hosea's pain opened him to God's pain concerning Israel.

 

Gomer, rejecting her loving husband, was an exact parallel to Israel, Hosea's homeland, rejecting her loving God. The ways that Gomer rejected Hosea were the same ways that Israel rejected God:

 

1. While covenanted in marriage to Hosea, Gomer took false lovers. Israel, while covenanted to God in a marriage covenant, took false lovers, the pagan god Baal and his entire cohort of gods.

 

2. Gomer participated in pagan worship. She prostituted herself in Baal's shrines to men who worshipped Baal. Israel, the nation, was practicing pagan worship to Baal and all his cohort gods, instead of Yahweh, the real spouse of Israel.

 

3. Gomer's sins were affecting her marriage and her children. Israel's sins were affecting her relationship with God as well as with her own children.

 

4. If Gomer refused to change her ways the outcome was shame, ridicule, and ostracism. The outcome for Israel was the same: ridicule, ostracism, and exile.

 

5. Every verse that predicts disaster for Gomer and Israel is followed by promises of reconciliation and reunion provided the sinners return to their rightful spouses.

 

We do not know if Gomer returned to Hosea. We do know that Israel at the time of Hosea did not return to God. Instead, Israel was conquered by Assyria and was destroyed as a separate nation at this time. Its people were carried off into exile and the nation never again had the geographic boundaries or the same dynasty of kings as it had early in Hosea's lifetime.

 

The Scriptures are words of hope! Thousands of Jews have entered into faithful and lifelong covenant relationships with God since the time of Hosea. We know that God's covenant did not die and that God's words of hope and faithfulness speak to Jews and Christians around the world today, as they have from the beginning of time.

 

The delights promised to Gomer and to Israel are the same delights promised to us if we listen to God's words spoken through Hosea. God's promises are great-they give us life and hope