“The Price of Spiritual Promiscuity”

Hosea 1:2-10

As one commentator so aptly described Hosea’s life and ministry, “God’s word came through Hosea in the form of totally unmerited personal grief, disappointment, and sorrow.” It’s one thing to faithfully proclaim God’s word of judgment. It’s quite another to have it acted out by your very own family. God’s people were being unfaithful, whoring as it were after false gods. Hosea was directed by God to marry an unfaithful woman, identified in some translations as a prostitute and others simply as an adulterer – the Hebrew is unclear. Whatever, Hosea’s wife Gomer was overtly promiscuous. In her own life she acted out the behavior of Israel, even as Hosea acted out the role of God.

Although there is no direct reference leading us to believe that the three children Gomer had were not all Hosea’s, the possibility is implied. There is a very good chance that one or more of those three children were fathered by one of Gomer’s partners in promiscuity. They took Hosea’s name. The lived under Hosea’s roof. Their very survival was dependent on Hosea’s parental love and mercy.

Thus Hosea played a double role. Not only was he the husband of an unfaithful wife, he was also father to children that may or may not have been his own. Just as Gomer lived out Israel’s apostasy – their spiritual promiscuity – Hosea’s children were living symbols of Israel’s broken covenant with God.

Hosea’s children also bore names that revealed God’s coming judgment. Jezreel is translated as “God sows.” The self-proclaimed king of Israel became the king by way of a bloody massacre at Jezreel. There he had sown the bloody seeds of his own destruction. A day was coming, said the Lord, when Israel’s military capability would be sword. Those who had lived and reigned by the sword would die by the sword.

Lo-ruhamah is translated as “not pitied.” Her name symbolized God’s waning compassion for the people of Israel. He would still be compassionate toward their sister state Judah, protecting the Southern Kingdom from military destruction. But time was running out for Israel.

Lo-ammi is translated “not my people.” God was saying to Israel, “You are not my people and I am not your Lord.” The covenant had been broken. Israel could no longer consider itself to be God's chosen and special people. They were no longer his children.

Commenting on verse 9 in The Interpreter’s Bible, Harold Cooke Phillips wrote: “These words do not mean that God was [simply] ‘fed up’ with Israel. They are a statement of fact. Israel had so paganized her life as to create a condition in which the spiritual affinity between herself and God is broken.”

In his brief commentary N. T. Wright’s describes Israel as being on the brink of self-induced judgment. Bad days were on the way. God, according to his promises, was allowing Israel to reap the harvest of destruction that she had sown by way of her acts of infidelity. If Israel chose to trust her future to the fertility gods of Canaan, so be it. If her people chose to engage in acts of sexual perversion as a way of displaying their loyalty to Baal, so be it. If they believed more in the magical properties of Canaanite religion than they did the providence of God, so be it. The end result is summed up by these words from verse two as paraphrased in The Message: “This whole country has become a whorehouse, unfaithful to me, God.”

Judgment was coming, swift and sure. Like his contemporaries Amos, Isaiah, and Micah, Hosea answered God’s call to proclaim that coming judgment. In Hosea’s case God’s heartbreak over Israel’s apostasy was mirrored in his marital relationship. When Hosea proclaimed God’s outrage, grief, and pain he was doing so from the position of a man who had been betrayed. His words were the more powerful for it.

Hosea never gave up on Gomer. He even paid to ransom her from prostitution. He claimed the children she bore him as his very own even though their parentage was suspect. He loved his wife. He loved his children even as they were breaking his heart. He was able to forgive seventy times seven, and then some. His mercy toward his family mirrored God’s grace toward Israel.

God did let Israel suffer for her sins. He allowed them reap exactly what they had sown. It wouldn’t be farfetched to say that he practiced a divine form of tough love. But even in its toughness it was still love. He never totally gave up on Israel. He got angry. He grieved. He suffered heartbreak over their unfaithfulness. But he never stopped loving them – never!

And in verses ten and eleven of chapter one he promised grace, deliverance, and redemption. After judgment there would be mercy. Hear God’s words to Israel – and Judah – as paraphrased in The Message: “But down the road the population of Israel is going to explode past counting, like sand on the ocean beaches. In the very place where they were once named Nobody, they will be named God’s Somebody. Everybody in Judah and everybody in Israel will be assembled as one people. They’ll choose a single leader. There’ll be no stopping them – a great day in Jezreel!”

In 721 b.c. Israel was utterly destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. In 587 b.c. the Babylonians devastated Judah, carrying the best and brightest survivors on the invasion back to Babylon. In time God delivered them from their exile and brought them home. A nation of God’s people was again a reality. But no new king ever ruled over them. No son of David ever came as they expected to make Israel the great nation it had once been.

But in time God sent his only Son Jesus to redeem not only Israel, but the entire world. He was a different kind of Messiah, no ruthless leader building a kingdom by way of military might and political intrigue. He was a Servant-King, who taught and lived God’s grace, mercy, and peace. He was a Teacher-King, who showed people what true humanity was. He was a Healer and a Savior, who proclaimed peace and forgiveness. Ultimately he was the sacrificial Lamb of God, dying on a cross as an expiation of our sins. He was raised from the dead. He will come again as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. A day is coming when there truly will be a great day not only in Jezreel, but across the universe.

Thus are true the words the Apostle Peter wrote to the early Church, “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” In Jesus Christ we who were once nobody are now God’s somebody. In Jesus Christ we who fully deserved the righteous judgment of God have instead experienced his loving forgiveness. In Jesus Christ God’s covenant with his people, the new Israel – the Church - has been renewed and reformed.

But we former nobodies who are now God’s somebody’s must never forget the words of the Apostle Peter that preceded the ones I just read. “… you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light.” God’s covenant of grace is not one-sided. We weren’t just saved from something – eternal destruction, we were saved for something – for the purpose of being God’s salt to a corrupt and tasteless world and God’s light shining in the utter darkness that is a sinful world. We have been called, just as Israel was called, to live as a counterpoint to the world’s sinfulness.

Those old Canaanite deities are long gone. But there are other idols we are tempted to worship; other gods that would seduce us away from the One true God. There are powers and principalities galore eager to take Christ’s place as lord over our lives. We must prayerfully guard against the spiritual promiscuity that destroyed Israel. We must be careful not to go whoring after the false gods of this world.

We must take care not to put wealth, power, popularity, or social standing in the place that belongs only to God. We must be on guard against the subtle and not so subtle siren calls to engage in all sorts of sinfulness: vanity that worships its own physical attractiveness and sexual prowess; addictions to substances and behaviors that will enslave us; the myth of self-sufficiency; dependence on economic, political, and military systems to save us; an unquestioning patriotism that puts country ahead of God; theologies, traditions, and institutions that stop serving as conduits to God and become gods unto themselves.

Those are just some of the gods that would seduce us away from the one true God. Those are but a few of the lesser lords of earth that would usurp the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Those are but part of an abbreviated list of the powers and principalities that would claim our ultimate loyalty. Those are some of the things for which we must be very careful not to prostitute ourselves.

God’s grace is very real. So too is his judgment. Those of us who belong to Christ may not lose our ultimate salvation by chasing after the gods of this earth, but God will allow us to reap what we sow. We may not ever hear him tell us that we are no longer his people and he is no longer our God, but our unfaithful actions will always have a way of resulting in unpleasant consequences. Amen.