Hosea Chapter 3 -11/16/2025

Podcast

Welcome and Prayer: Jim Calhoun

Come, Lord, join us here today

Help us be the thing
Help us be the real deal
Yours, help us to be yours,
Known as yours as
The lover of neighbors
The vulnerable
The weak
The needy
The unwanted

And known as yours as
The patient
The kind
The gentle
The compassionate

Help us be in alignment
Our words matching our actions
Our bank accounts matching our intentions
Our reputations matching our hearts

Help us overcome the fears that
Pull us down
That inhibit our faith
That crush our good will

Envelope us in your great goodness
Surrounding us in your care and affection
Looking to you
Being with you
Abiding with you
Our one
Our hope
Our life
Amen

Morning Talk: chuck smith, jr.

And the LORD said to me, “Again, go love a woman beloved by a companion yet an adulteress, like the love of God for the Israelites when they turn to other gods.” And I loved a lusting woman Hosea 3:1

Intro: Years ago, I was engaged in a conversation with two friends

In making a point, one of them quoted a famous evangelist,
“People change–but not that much”
– okay–so I reacted immediately, but kept my mouth shut
• this same person stood in front of large crowds,
◦ promising them that Jesus would transform their lives
◦ that in Christ, they would become a new creation
• that is the essence of the evangelical message
◦ it’s what we’ve been singing for the past 250 years
“I once was lost, but now I’m found; was blind but now I see”
◦ could we regard the scope of these changes “not that much”?
– what good is my Christian faith if it it isn’t thorough? If it doesn’t make me a better person?
Peter Drucker one said, “The bottom line of a business is a dollar. The bottom line of a non-profit organization is a changed life”
• changed lives is what justifies the church’s existence
• if lives aren’t being changed in our churches, we have no grounds to exist

In this brief chapter, Hosea returns to his personal story; which was broken off at chapter 2
– the prophecy includes his story because it to a bigger story
• how God’s love for Israel would transform the life of a nation and its people

The next movement of Hosea’s story begins with a bizarre twist

God gets the action action moving in this phase of the story with the command, “Go”
– this is a typical way for prophets to receive instructions (for instance, Isa. 6:9; Jer. 2:2; etc.)
• an interval of time has passed since the first chapter
◦ we’re not given any information about how this new situation came about
◦ we only learn Hosea’s wife deserted him for someone else
• it’s one thing to marry someone who was sexually loose in the past
◦ it’s another thing if they relapse and leave you for their previous life of promiscuity
– the way the first sentence is constructed, turns on the word “again”
• “again” could be used in one of two ways:
◦ either “again” God is speaking to Hosea,
◦ or else God is telling Hosea to go and love his wife “again” as he had before she left him
• previously she was a prostitute before they married, now she has become an “adulteress”

I’m going off-road for a moment, hoping we can feel significant empathy for Hosea
because a new layer of suffering has been poured over Hosea; namely, betrayal
– Martin Buber was an influential philosopher and theologian in the 20th century
• when he examined this part of Hosea’s story, he asked, “is it possible to [command] love?”
• he qualifies the question, saying he doesn’t mean a general love like God commands in the law
◦ for example, “you shall love [the stranger] as yourself” (Lev. 19:33-34)
Buber, “but that a particular person should be bound to love another particular person in utter concreteness, is there such a thing as this?”
Buber’s conclusion is that this “word can only be spoken to one who already loves. He loves, he still loves the faithless one, he cannot suppress this love, but he does not want it, for he feels himself degraded by it. . . . Into this state of soul, God’s word descends, ‘Continue loving, [you are] allowed to love her, [you] must love her; even so do I love Israel.’”
– this may be projecting onto Hosea something that wasn’t there
• but this is similar to what God expresses towards Israel
• so what Hosea must deal with now is “like the love of God for the Israelites when they turn to other gods”

Hosea briefly tells how he brought his wife back home
And I hired her for myself with fifteen weights of silver and a homer of barley and a letekh of barley. And I said to her, “Many days you shall dwell with me. You shall not play the whore and you shall be no man’s, and I, too, shall not come to bed with you” Hosea 3:2-3

What amazes me about this entire story is its lack of pertinent details
– it seems that God’s concern in the text is to rush to the point
• after this chapter, Hosea’s personal life fades into the background of his prophecies
◦ but the fact of ceaseless love, betrayal, and reconciliation continues
◦ anyway, his wife’s relapse was so severe that she had become another man’s property
• in the version I’m reading, Hosea says, “I hired her”
◦ the Hebrew translated “hired” can refer to a purchase or the process of buying
◦ to me this sounds like “I haggled over the price for her”
(and it only cost him fifteen silver shekels and a wagon load of barley)
– once Hosea had his wife home again, he placed conditions on their reconciliation
• first, he established an unspecified block of time–“many days”–perhaps as a trial period
◦ I’m sure there were many things they had to work through
• second, she could not relapse again
◦ that is, return to prostitution or be with any other man
• third, neither was Hosea going to have sex with her during this time
◦ the goal was to work on reconciliation and readjustments

The live illustration now shifts to its application
For many days shall the Israelites dwell without king and without commander and without sacrifice and without sacred pillar and without ephod and without teraphim Hosea 3:4

The sentence begins with the word “For”
Hans Wolff, “In this verse ‘for’ introduces the interpretation of the symbolic action [in Hosea’s circumstances] for Israel . . . .”
– the repetition of the words “many days” makes an immediate connection between Hosea’s story and God’s story
• Hosea’s wife would no longer live in a distorted reality
◦ a world in which she substituted sex for love
• Israel would no longer live in their distorted reality;
◦ a world in which their king and his officials operated corruptly
◦ the rulers had permitted the introduction of other gods
▫ at times they even promoted pagan gods along with idolatry
– another loss for Israel during these many days would be religious
• there would be no sacrificial worship – which they could not do without the temple
◦ also rather than objects and places of their former pagan devotions, there would be empty spaces
• former methods of divination were also banned
◦ the ephod had been a legitimate means of consulting God
◦ the teraphim were superstitious fetishes–“household gods”
Hans Wolff, “Thus Israel will first lose its political existence, in which she believed herself capable of securing her life independent of God. Further, the offering of sacrifices becomes impossible.”

The plan was that the trial period would eventually end
Afterward, the Israelites shall turn back and seek the LORD their God and David their king, and they shall revere the LORD and His bounty Hosea 3:5

At that point, God would have what he wanted
– his people, on their own, would return and “seek the LORD”
• one of my favorite biblical words is “seek”
“And you shall look for Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13)
• I have made a short list of biblical words and phrases that relate to contemplative prayer
◦ “wait” (on the Lord), “here I am,” “watch,” “be still,” and “seek”
– at that same time, their nation and its government would be restored
• but with an important qualification: “David their king”
◦ not only a descendant of David, but one who ruled in justice and righteousness
• the most prominent characteristic of their restoration:
◦ they would know and feel and express reverence; for God, and also for his goodness
▫ something they would never again take for granted

Conclusion: As I get ready to close my Bible and try to live it,

Here is what will matter most to me:

That God comes after me, and never gives up
As long as we’re alive, we have hope
I trust it’s okay to say that sometimes God can be annoying
But I love him for that – I thank him
God is where I want to be

That people change, and God makes it a total transformation!
In Jesus, we cross a threshold,
From death into life
From the old person, to the new creation
From the false self, to our true self
Baptism is the threshold, the liminal space in which we celebrate our new life
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life” (Ro. 6:3-4)

That I surrender to God’s relentless love
Sometimes this means forcing myself to trust him enough to rest in him
Instead of being anxious about my circumstances – my world
I close the door of my mind to all distressing thoughts
And allow myself to be sustained in nothing other than his love

Join me in these endeavors–and have a wonderful week!