Sermon 18th May 2014

Today, our Honorary Minster, Gill Tayleur, preaches based on the reading from Hosea 1, chapters 1 and 2. 

“I’d rather see a sermon

than hear one any day;

I’d rather one should walk with me

than merely tell the way.

The eye is a better pupil,

more willing than the ear;

Fine counsel is confusing,

but example always clear.

And the best of all the preachers

are those who live their creeds,

For to see a good in action

is what everybody needs.”

That’s the first verse of Sermons we see, by Edgar Guest, an American poet from the last century. Edgar Guest thinks the best sermons are seen, lived out. And that’s exactly what happened with the words spoken by the prophet Hosea.

Hosea was a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel from about 750 BC up to and including the time of Assyria’s destruction of Israel in 722 BC. So Hosea was a contemporary of Amos, and they were addressing the same corrupt and idolatrous Northern Kingdom during the last decades of its existence.

Like most of the minor prophets we’re learning from this term, Hosea had a message from God for His people. Unlike the others though, God asked Hosea to not just declare God’s word to the people, but to live out a dramatic and shocking illustration of it. A Sermon we See, as Edgar Guest put it.

The introduction to the book of Hosea in the Kingsway Life Application Study Bible explains it well: God told Hosea to find a wife, and told him beforehand that she would be unfaithful to him, an adulteress and prostitute. Although she would bear many children, some of these offspring would be fathered by others. In obedience to God, Hosea married a woman called Gomer. His relationship with Gomer, her adultery, and their children, became living, prophetic examples to Israel.

Because this tragic love story tells the human tale of a man and a woman, but also tells of God’s love for his people and their response. A covenant, a binding agreement of love and commitment, like marriage, had been made between God and his people Israel and God had been faithful to them. His love was steadfast and his commitment unbroken. But his people Israel, like Gomer, were adulterous and unfaithful, spurning God’s love and turning instead to false gods.

In the book of Hosea, we read of God’s pain and anguish. We also read his warning of judgement, and then his reaffirmed love and the offer of reconciliation to his people.

Let’s quickly run through what’s in the 14 chapters of this book of Hosea. It begins with God’s instructions to Hosea about getting married. After his marriage to Gomer, children were born, and each was given a name signifying a divine message of judgement for Israel’s unfaithfulness to God.

The first was Jezreel,

the place where the kings of Israel and Judah, the Northern and Southern kingdoms, had been killed, and a place of desolation for God’s people. The second child was called Lo-Ruhamah, meaning ‘not loved’. And the third was called Lo-Ammi, meaning ‘I am not your God’. There is a dreadful progression in the sequence of these names.The first announced a future when Israel would have to live without a king, the second a future without God’s compassion, and the third a future without God himself. That’s all in chapter 1.

Then in chapter 2, as predicted, Gomer left Hosea to pursue other men,in adultery and prostitution. But Hosea (whose name means “salvation”) found her, and redeemed her,

which means bought her back when she was offered up for sale. He brought her home again, fully reconciled, in chapter 3. Images of God’s love, judgement, grace and mercy were woven into their relationship.

Next, God outlined his case against the people of Israel – their sins would ultimately cause their destruction and would rouse his anger, resulting in punishment, in chapters 4 to 13.

But even in the midst of Israel’s immorality and infidelity, God was merciful and offered hope, expressing his infinite love for his people and the fact that their repentance would bring about blessing in the end (in chapters 11 and 14).

And so the book of Hosea dramatically portrays God’s constant and persistent love. Hosea willingly submitted himself to what God asked of him, and bore the repeated pain and heartache of the betrayal of his wife and people. Hosea gives us this lived out picture

of the gravity of unfaithfulness to God, and of God’s extraordinarily faithful love regardless.

Hosea was a living picture, a shocking picture, designed to jolt the people out of their complacency. Imagine Hosea the prophet, the Godly man, walking round the town, with his wife, widely known and recognised as an adulteress and prostitute, and with children

that everyone knew weren’t his, they were from her ‘affairs’. Imagine them being seen in the town, him faithful, devoted, attentive, loving, and her blatantly and unashamedly betraying him again and again. It must have been shocking to see! That poor man, being married to that woman! And it was designed to be shocking, a shocking illustration of the people’s relationship with God – to make them think, that’s what we’re like, what I’m like, with God.

They – and we – want to think everything’s fine between us and God, that all’s well, but seeing Hosea and Gomer showed them that maybe it’s not. It’s really not. It showed them that their sin wasn’t trivial, but was in fact a gross act of betrayal.

Maybe we need to be shocked out of any complacency we’re in this morning too. The lesson of Hosea for us today is twofold:

Our turning away from God is so much worse than we like to think.

But God’s love and longing for us to come back to him is so much greater than we think.

God’s love and longing for us to come back to him is so much greater than we think.

Come back to God! That’s the message of Hosea: Come back to God!

First, our turning away from God is so much worse than we like to think. The people of Israel in Hosea’s time were unfaithful to God very literally. They worshipped false gods like Baal,

and worshipped idols. They said they’d come back to God but were insincere, only wanting his blessing when they were in trouble (ch6). Their leaders were corrupt and sought alliances with Assyria & Egypt in pursuit of military power, which compromised their dependence on God. The people of Israel turned away from God very literally.

We’re not like that! We haven’t forsaken God, we don’t worship idols! No, but what do we worship? What do we put first in our lives? What do we pursue, and love? Is it really God first and most?

Surely for most of us, what we love most is ourselves, me! Our greatest driving force is our own pleasure, our own fulfilment, our own comfort. We put most energy into being as successful and prosperous as we can. We want a nice home, with nice things in it, nice clothes, a smart car, or the latest gadgets, TV or phone. Those are the things we work hard for, and that’s how we spend our money, on ourselves and our loved ones. And it’s how we spend our time, on ourselves. On the pursuit of pleasure and leisure. What I enjoy, what makes me feel good, what makes me fulfilled.

Ultimately, for most of us, most of the time, it’s true to say that my life is about me, it’s self centred. Oh we like having God on the sidelines for when we need him, “help!” but often even those help prayers are about our wants and fulfilment, as we ask him to bless us. And we have the audacity to be angry with him when we don’t get what we want.

That’s how we may feel about God, that we want him to bless us, to give us what we want

and we’re annoyed or upset when we don’t get it, when life doesn’t go our way.

But how does God feel about me and us? The message of Hosea is that when we are unfaithful to God and turn away from him, or insincere when we come back to him,

God is hurt, wounded, deeply upset, feeling angry and betrayed, as Hosea did

about his unfaithful wife Gomer. Our sin is not only breaking God’s commands, It’s breaking his heart.

Because God loves us, every single one of us. It is an astonishing, unfathomable truth, that the God of all creation – think how enormous is the known universe, all billions and billions of light years big – that that all powerful creator God, knows and loves each one of us teeny human beings on planet earth. Loves not just in a general or distant way, but closely and intimately as a husband loves his wife.

He sent his son Jesus to die for us rather than give up on us. And he longs for us to come back to him when we go our own way away from him.

Let me read some verses in chapter 2, follow along if you have a Bible to hand. It’s about God’s love for his people, about how much he wants them – us – to come back to him.

It’s couched in the language of husband and wife. ch 2 v 14 - 20

So I am going to take her into the desert again; there I will win her back with words of love. 

 I will give back to her the vineyards she had and make Trouble Valley a door of hope. She will respond to me there as she did when she was young, when she came from Egypt. 

 Then once again she will call me her husband — she will no longer call me her Baal. I will never let her speak the name of Baal again. At that time I will make a covenant with all the wild animals and birds, so that they will not harm my people. I will also remove all weapons of war from the land, all swords and bows, and will let my people live in peace and safety.

¹⁹ Israel, I will make you my wife; I will be true and faithful; I will show you constant love & mercy and make you mine forever. I will keep my promise and make you mine,
    and you will acknowledge me as Lord.

There in verse 14 it says God is going to speak to his people tenderly, with words of love. We are all guilty of having loved other lovers more than God. We’ve chased our own happiness, success, leisure and pleasure rather than loving and serving God. We, like Gomer, have run away from his love and been unfaithful. But God hasn’t turned away from us. He wants to take us into the desert, to be alone with us, to speak tenderly to us. Literally, the Hebrew says,

so that he can speak “to her heart”. He speaks words of love to allure you, to woo you,

to entice you and win you back. Go and listen to him. Don’t think that you are too ugly

or too rotten. He knows that his wife is unfaithful. That’s mercy: God wooing a wife of unfaithfulness.

Then in verse 15 we read that God promises her hope and safety. “I will give back to her

the vineyards she had  & make Trouble Valley a door of hope.” Trouble Valley is where Israel was first unfaithful to God in the promised land. Just after Israel entered the land, a man called Achan kept forbidden booty and caused the defeat of Ai. It was disastrous. But now God promises that if his unfaithful wife, that is unfaithful people will come home to him, it will no longer be a valley of trouble, but a door of hope. She will come home to rich vineyards, to peace and safety.

And the third thing God does is renew their marriage in love and faithfulness. He says, we’ll have a fresh start! Things will be right between us. In verse 16 she calls him her husband and no longer speaks of her previous lovers.

                                                                       

This is the gospel story in the Old Testament. Come back to God! God comes to woo us tenderly to himself. He promises the fullest hope and safety. He offers a fresh start and an intimate relationship of love.

God offers this close loving relationship – not based on a naive estimation of what we’re like -  the whole point of Hosea is that God doesn’t give up on his wife of unfaithfulness and prostitution! God offers us this relationship, and in the context of that love relationship, we’re to put him first. To love, serve and worship him every single day. To pursue him, his kingdom values, how he wants us to live, first. To give the best of our time and energy and money to his purposes. To have him at the centre of our lives rather than ourselves. Not our pleasure and leisure, but his service.

Each of us will know the ways in which we’re unfaithful to God, and how we’re to change

and live changed lives when we come back to him. This morning, let us hear the pain and upset our unfaithfulness causes God, and his call to come back to him. Let us hear and let us respond.

I finish with a few more verses from Hosea, chapter 6, God speaking to his people – this is the Good News Version:

What am I going to do with you? Your love for me disappears as quickly as morning mist; it is like dew that vanishes early in the day. That is why I have sent my prophets to you with my message of judgement and destruction. What I want from you is plain and clear: I want your constant love, not your animal sacrifices. I would rather have my people know me that burn offerings to me.”

“I want your constant love.” Let’s pray...