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The most exciting event in baseball is watching a batter hit a homerun. Most batters aim to hit the ball as hard and as far as they can. These batters are often called “Power Hitters,” and while many may have significant stats, some have a small batting average because sometimes they strikeout, or other times hit their hardest but to the other team and get an out.

But there are other kinds of hitters too, like “Contact Hitters.” A contact hitter is known for consistently getting on base. They may not hit the ball very hard or far, but they help their team by hitting in open areas where the opposing team doesn’t catch it. Contact hitters get on base and are often known for higher batting averages and helping the team with runs batted in (RBI).

Even more, a contact hitter is sometimes called to offer a sacrifice bunt. Instead of swinging the bat, a bunt aims the tip of the bat at the pitched ball for a small contact to help the team advance runners on base. It’s called a sacrifice because this type of hit may not be in the best interest of the batter, but it serves the team’s goals and success.

Likewise, many people like the idea of power couples, where two strong leaders get together in a relationship. While these relationships, or even marriages start with a fantastic flame, they often end with a swift smolder. Relationships require each partner to serve and sacrifice for the other. If no one is willing to sacrifice, then there will be significant conflict.

Last week we started a study on the book of Hosea. Hosea and his wife Gomer had a rocky relationship because she expected never to sacrifice her own desires. She sought pleasure and purpose from multiple lovers, and she forsook true love and faithful marriage with her husband Hosea.

EXAMINE                     Hosea 3-5

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• Hosea is a minor prophet. Not like baseball’s minor leagues waiting to get called up to the big leagues. Simply, these book messages are shorter than the major prophets.
• God uses Hosea’s marriage for what should be a parable of permanence, instead as a parable of perversion with Israel’s spiritual adultery and unfaithfulness.
• Principles of God’s redeeming love…

God’s redeeming love is toward the unlovely.

Hosea 3:1-2 ¹ And the LORD said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” ² So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley.

When we consider the life of Gomer, at first, we are repelled by her behavior. She has broken promises to her husband Hosea. She has betrayed marriage vows. She has disappointed and deserted her children. And she has forsaken her God with her shameful and sinful behavior.

Israel turned to other gods and loved raisin cakes; a type of food associated with cultic worship and shaped in the image of a goddess; also used as a sexual stimulant (Song of Solomon 2:5).[1] Additionally the dessert delicacy shows luxurious choices apart from the Lord. So, God is not as concerned for the dessert choice as the proper object of delight and worship.

Yet, notice what God commands Hosea: “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the LORD loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.” God does not love us because we are loveable, but surprisingly because we are unlovely. What we see is that we are the sinner and God is the seeker. God’s love is demonstrated not because we pursue Him but because He proves His character is merciful and gracious. Thankfully, God’s ways are higher than our ways, and His nature is unlike our character (Isa 55:9). While we are quick to rage and resentment, God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. While we are swift to condemn, God is patient to discipline, warn, rebuke, and woo us toward reconciliation.   

We are the sinner and God is the seeker. God’s love is demonstrated not because we pursue Him but because He proves His character is merciful and gracious.

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² So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley.

Hosea redeems (buys back) his wife from slavery. Fifteen shekels was half the price for a slave worker (Ex 21:32), and also relates to what Judas received for betraying Jesus (Mt 26:15). A “homer” was about six bushels or about two hundred liters, and a “lethek” was likely half a homer.^[2] So, we have a homer for Gomer… ok… seriously, the mix of money and farm produce reflects bartering/haggling, and the lowly status of Gomer.

• In fact, some scholars say Gomer is out of the picture, and this is a new wife for Hosea. I disagree, believing continuity in the narrative. Gomer is likely either abused and trafficked sexually; or was abandoned by her lovers and she surrendered to enslavement to provide for herself.

Like Gomer was adulterous, Israel was idolatrous and described with coarse language. Whoredom is a strong word to describe not just relational unfaithfulness but moral shame. A person willing to sell and sacrifice their body sexually to a stranger or to someone who only wants to use them, not value them, is in a low place in life.

Yet, as Hosea redeems the unlovely, so does God redeem Israel. The Bible says,

• Rom 5:8 “God demonstrates his love for us in that while we were still weak/ungodly/sinners, Christ died for us.”
• Isa 1:18 “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”
• Mk 2:17 “Those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick. I [Jesus] came not to call the righteous but sinners.”
• Titus 3:3-5 “For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hating one another. But when the goodness and lovingkindness of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy.”

• If you’ve never heard, or you doubted, God is for you. When it comes to God’s love, it’s more like Reeses than religion.
  When we view God purely through the eyes of religion, we are stand-offish. It’s unfamiliar, confusing, cold, and detached. We think there are multiple levels we must climb and complete, but deep down we know we’ll be stuck on ground zero forever.  
  BUT Reeses PB Cups don’t have directions on the package. You just know, “This is goodness and I need this goodness inside of me.” So, you activate your hands and they instinctively know what to do to make your taste buds experience blissful flavor and your tummy calls you “Hero for the day.”
  Likewise, God just wants you come to Him.

George Mueller, evangelist in 1800’s
I [saw] that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished. . . . Now what is the food for the inner man… but the word of God; and here again, not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.  

Autobiography

• Grow in grace. Never graduate from the gospel. Realize there is nothing you can do to earn God’s approval or love. Instead of working for acceptance from God, worship in appreciation to Jesus. Take moments each day – this day! – to praise Jesus for salvation and express your gratitude for grace.
  • Ps 103:1-4, 10-12 “Bless the LORD, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy… The LORD does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us.”
• Some action steps is to pick your favorite Psalm or maybe a hymn/song and share it with family and friends, for why it’s your favorite.
• Another way to remember God’s redeeming love is sharing your testimony – what you’re saved from, and what you’re saved to in God’s calling for you. Write your testimony and signup to share in a format: small group, worship, online.

God’s redeeming love must be without rivals.

Hosea 3:3-5 ³ And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” ⁴ For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. ⁵ Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.

Hosea 4:1-3 ¹ Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel, for the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; ² there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. ³ Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

Hosea tells Gomer she shall reserve herself only for her husband; and he pledges purity to her. He also prophecies concerning Israel, that she will lose her national identity without a king or prince, and without a place of worship. Yet, after time and exile, Israel would again seek the LORD.

Ch.4, the LORD states He has a controversy, or more literally “court speech.”^[3] The legal charge is Israel is without “truthfulness/integrity,[emet]” “steadfast love, [hesed]” or “knowledge of God. [yada]” The language is strong with three-fold negation and charges.^[4] Additionally, there evidence: swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. In fact, v.3 says creation is crying with land and animals mourning the existence of humanity.  

• Some of you have a pet and when they hear/sense conflict in the room, they either leave the room or they start barking too.

God’s complaint is that Israel’s immorality is like a rival lover. The consequences are devastating.

• You’ve seen when sin enters a couple or family, everyone and everything suffers. Marital disharmony with unhealthy and hostile communication. The kids either shutdown or lash out. Home bills begin to not be paid and utilities need switched or are turned off. Eventually, the house upkeep gets chaotic and needs to be sold between parties. And it’s not just your home but then people who you thought were your friends no longer call. Other family members want to give you advice but they don’t know the whole story. So, all you do is fight with everyone, and everywhere you go is without respite with memories of what should have been. “The land languishes.”
• We must recognize that individual sin always has communal consequences. What you do in the privacy of your home can still have public consequences. In fact… one of the issues today is that people’s personal social experimentations is becoming mandated upon everyone else to accept and celebrate. The deficit and debts one creates will eventually require payment, and today that expense is being passed off to others and future generations. We seldom admit how one’s actions will influence another. And so, “the land languishes.”

Illus: There’s a story of husband Hank with wife Wilma. Hank & Wilma were married young and quickly had children. Unfortunately, Hank had an alcohol addiction. He would go out multiple evenings to get drunk, gamble money away, and sometimes get into fights. One night he came home after experiencing a beatdown due to gambling money he never had. He entered the house late at night trying to be quiet not to wake up Wilma or the kids. The next day Wilma wakes and enters the bathroom. She sees bandaids and cotton balls taped all over the mirror. After the confusion, it dawns on her what happened and she confronts Hank from the bathroom. Hank wonders how Wilma knows when she hadn’t seen him yet that morning. She opens the bathroom door and says, I can tell you have bruises here, there, here, and there because you didn’t treat your face but the mirror!  

Hosea 4:4 ⁴ Yet let no one contend, and let none accuse.

Hosea says, don’t try to accuse or blameshift. Look in the mirror and see your sin; confess your faults, repent of your heart rivals and turn to trust the Lord.

• Take your sin/rival and drop it at the cross [steps].
• Remember, there are no good people in heaven, only repentant sinners. Grace is not a contest you win, or status accomplished; it’s a unmerited gift. So, take even your pride and pour it out for Jesus to refill you with His forgiving mercy and revitalizing grace.

There are no good people in heaven, only repentant sinners.

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God’s redeeming love is balanced with righteous judgment.

Hosea 4:5-12 ⁵ You shall stumble by day; the prophet also shall stumble with you by night; and I will destroy your mother. ⁶ My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. ⁷ The more they increased, the more they sinned against me; I will change their glory into shame. ⁸ They feed on the sin of my people; they are greedy for their iniquity. ⁹ And it shall be like people, like priest; I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds. ¹⁰ They shall eat, but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore, but not multiply, because they have forsaken the LORD to cherish ¹¹ whoredom, wine, and new wine, which take away the understanding. ¹² My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles. For a spirit of whoredom has led them astray, and they have left their God to play the whore.

We notice Hosea prophecies against the nation as a whole, but also singles out the priesthood.

4:5 Stumbling leadership

4:6 Unqualified for not knowing God’s law.
             In NT, failure to teach people rightly is a
             grievous offense, held liable with a huge
             millstone hung on your neck, and liable to
             God’s unsympathetic and unending
             judgment (Mt 18:6; 23; Jas 3:1).

4:8 Greedy and manipulative leaders
        Using sacrifices as food vs worship.
       1Tim 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all
        kinds of evils. It is through this craving that
        some have wandered away from the faith and
       pierced themselves with many pangs.”

4:9 Improper examples, poor role models
       Mt 23 “Woe to you Pharisees.”

4:10-11 They will feel unfulfilled, confused, forsaken
             – Ever feel like you’re working harder and harder but never advancing?

4:12 Their disobedience will cause their doom.   

Hosea 5:1-2 ¹ Hear this, O priests! Pay attention, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For the judgment is for you; for you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor. ² And the rebels have gone deep into slaughter, but I will discipline all of them.

Hosea 5:6 ⁶ With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the LORD, but they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them.

Israel’s attempts to go through the religious motions would turn up empty. A contemporary prophet of Hosea was Amos, whom the LORD spoke, “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals, I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen.” (5:20-23)

Hosea 5:8-15 ⁸ Blow the horn in Gibeah, the trumpet in Ramah. Sound the alarm at Beth-aven; we follow you, O Benjamin! ⁹ Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of punishment; among the tribes of Israel I make known what is sure. ¹⁰ The princes of Judah have become like those who move the landmark; upon them I will pour out my wrath like water. ¹¹ Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after filth. ¹² But I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah. ¹³ When Ephraim saw his sickness, and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria, and sent to the great king. But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound. ¹⁴ For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear and go away; I will carry off, and no one shall rescue. ¹⁵ I will return again to my place, until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.

Hosea prophesied from Israel’s southernmost city  (Gibea) to the northernmost (Bethel) to blow the horns and trumpets – sound the alarm, for judgment armies will arrive. God promised to be like a moth or festering maggot to dry rot the nation; and they would run to other nations for cure and help but they will stay wounded; and God would be like a lion tearing into his prey.

Most people only promote God’s love to the exclusion of God’s loathing of sin. Yet, the Bible surprising speaks multiple times as much of punishing sin than it does of extending grace.

Most people only promote God’s love to the exclusion of God’s loathing of sin. Yet, the Bible surprising speaks multiple times as much of punishing sin than it does of extending grace.

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What we know about God is that He is the only being who is the perfect balance of redeeming love and righteous judgment. His righteous judgment is punishing sinners who disobey His wise, true, and good commands. God punishes sin because He wants to warn us from continually wandering down the wrong path. Ultimately, God’s fierce wrath is upon those forsake and reject Him.

And God’s redeeming love and forgiving grace is available to anyone – any sinner who acknowledges their sin and need for the Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ.

NT theology teaches God’s full wrath was poured upon His only Son, Jesus on the cross. Jesus cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus felt separated from God because He took upon the sin of the world (mine and yours). The fullness of God’s wrath and the severe aspect of punishment is knowing you’ve missed God’s love, and He hides His face from you. The Bible says, “For our sake, God made Jesus to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Christ, we might become the righteousness of God.” (2Cor 5:21).

APPLY/THINK

So, my friend, you are far worst as a sinner than you think. But, we can take heart, because God is a far greater Savior than we can imagine. Today, you can know the distance between you and God has been bridged with the cross. You can be confident that you have escaped God’s wrath and deserved judgment – not based on your works, but based simply upon grace. God’s gift of salvation will forever suspend condemnation and you get to live in freedom.

You are far worst as a sinner than you think. But, we can take heart, because God is a far greater Savior than we can imagine.

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Turn from sin.

Rom 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.”

Trust Jesus.

Rom 10:9-13 “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For everyone who believes in Christ will never be put to shame… and will be saved.”

Tell others.
Rom 10:15 “How beautiful are the feet of those who tell good news?”

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[1] IVP Bible Background Commentary; Jer 44:19; Hos 3:1.

^[2] Duane A. Garrett, Hosea, Joel, vol. 19A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 100.

^[3] Douglas Stuart, Hosea–Jonah, vol. 31, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1987), 73.

^[4] Duane A. Garrett, Hosea, Joel, vol. 19A, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1997), 109.