Hosea is a minor prophet who ministered to the northern kingdom of Israel from about 760 to 720 B.C. during a time of great prosperity outwardly but rottenness and decay inwardly. Judgment was on its way. Hosea obeyed God and preached His word but the people refused to hear and repent. Judgment came to the northern kingdom by way of Assyria.
The name Hosea means salvation. He described God jealous love for His people. The story is a tragic one where God asks Hosea to do some pretty difficult things. Hosea was told by God to marry a woman of harlotry, a prostitute named Gomer. After they had several children, she left her family and sold herself into prostitution once again. God then told Hosea that he was to buy her back from harlotry...to forgive her and love her. This provided the people of Israel with a very real picture of God's love for them. Israel was involved in false worship...spiritual adultery. They despised God's goodness, faithfulness and grace and instead turned to the worship of idols....They exchanged light for darkness and sweetness for bitter. The verse that comes to mind is from Romans, Chapter 2.
"Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? 5 But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, 6 who “will render to each one according to his deeds”:
God despite His people's unfaithfulness continued to reach out in love...offering them forgiveness and restoration if they would turn from their sin. He used Hosea to speak His heart to them.
How else could Hosea hope to understand and express His God's heart and convey His sorrow, than to experience betrayal for himself with all its grief, humiliation, dashed hope and disappointments. Hosea, by his own trial, was able to truly understand and express God's hearth as He watched His children forget Him and go after other gods. Trials in our own lives have so many purposes...sometimes the biggest blessing in a trial is the understanding and knowledge that come as we walk and experience some of what Jesus himself experienced...as we share in the fellowship of His sufferings. Truly, as we surrender to the trials that our God both brings us and allows, they draw us into His Presence like nothing else can.
The story is even more tragic because Israel rejected God's hand of mercy toward them and continued to go their own way. See yourself in this story....God who is rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved "you" even when "you" were dead in trespasses and sin made "you" alive together with His Son! Each one of us who are believers have been saved by grace...and that not of ourselves it is the gift of God. He redeemed us when we were His enemies...when we were slaves of sin. He purchased us out of slavery by His Son's death on the cross. Not because we deserved it or because there was anything special about us, but because He loves us. The Bible says that our Maker is our Husband. Unbeliever...God wants you for Himself...despite your sin...despite who you are. Surrender to Him...accept the gift that He offers.
