You Are Not Hosea

Ever hear the story of Hosea? It’s pretty cool.

It takes place at a point in time when Israel has mostly turned away from God and is worshiping false gods. God gets angry, and so he tells his prophet Hosea to go and marry an “adulterous wife.” It was a picture of how the Israelites were treating God: He was good to them, and they kept running around on him. So Hosea goes and marries a woman named Gomer.

Well, what should happen but Hosea’s adulterous wife goes and commits adultery! What a shock!

But then God tells Hosea: “Go. Show love to your wife again.”

And Hosea takes his wife back.

It’s a picture of God’s amazing love. And so often when I hear this story, I’m told it teaches us how to forgive.

But that moral misses the point. Yes, we are to forgive.

But in this story we’re not Hosea.

We’re Gomer.

Picture it:

Broken.

You know what you’ve done. You know how filthy you are. And you are broken.

You were married once. It was more than you should have ever expected, given your past. But a man took you in. A good man. A man who truly loved you. You’d felt the fists of so many men. You knew how cruel men could be. But now you’d finally found a good one. Or, rather, he’d found you. He treasured you.

He shouldn’t have.

You knew who you were. You felt ashamed to be near him. That by being so close, you were making him filthy. You were not good enough for him. Every time you saw his face and felt his love, all it did was make you feel guilty.

So you left him. You went back to what you knew.

But every time a man touched you, you felt dirty. You thought you felt dirty before, but now that you knew what it was to be loved, you hungered for that love. And you hated that love. You fled deeper and deeper into the darkness to try and forget the light. The men got violent with you. They hurt you in so many ways. And still you fled the memory of that burning love that took you in. You fled your guilt as best you could.

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In those days, women set their own prices. And you knew what you were worth: Nothing. So when someone wanted to use you, you charged them so little: The price of a slave, paid half in barley. Paid half in the lowest level of grain possible, basically paying half in pennies. Because that’s all you were worth.

And now, as you sit in the dust, a pair of feet appear before you. And a voice asks, “How much?”

You give your usual price.

“I’ll take you. But you’re never coming back here.”

You look up.

It’s Hosea. It’s your husband.

He’s come for you.

And he looks at you in your filth. “You don’t have have to come back here. Come. You’re going to live with me for a long time, and no man will ever touch you again.” He looks into your eyes. He sees everything you’ve done. He knows how much you’ve betrayed him. He knows your evil.

And he says, “And I will live with you.”

You are not Hosea.

You are Gomer.

You know what it is to flee God’s love. You know what it is to feel so filthy.

But he loves you. He sees your filth, and yet he says, “You are mine.” He pays for you – but not with money. Not with grain.

He pays for you with his blood.

You are his, and he does not regret it.

And he says to you, “And I will live with you.”