Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Misunderstood Bible Passages, part 8 of 47
TEXT: "When the Lord began to speak to Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, 'Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord.' So he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she conceived and bore him a son" (Hosea 1:2-3).
IDEA: God commands the prophet to marry a promiscuous woman. People in our culture are not upset by her sexual looseness, but that God commanded it.
PURPOSE: To help listeners grapple with the fact that God seems to commend what we think He should condemn.
I. Hosea, the prophet, appeared on the scene when the landscape in northern Israel was both bright and bleak.
The national landscape was bright:
The nation was enjoying a time of stable government and economic prosperity.
The national landscape was also bleak.
There was a great and growing gulf between the wealthy and the poor.
The people worshipped idols. The religion was shot through with the practices of the fertility gods of Baal.
The law courts were corrupt.
II. In that situation God called Hosea, his prophet, to marry a woman who was a harlot and to have children with that harlot. (What does that actually mean?)
She was sexually immoral before and within the marriage.
She may have been a cult prostitute who engaged in sexual relations with the priests and laity in the service of the heathen god Baal. (What does that mean?)
This would please the god who would then make a woman fertile and enable her to bear children.
In Hosea 1:2-3 God commands what decent people must have thought was unthinkable. Imagine the talk in Samaria when they saw what the prophet was doing.
Why would God have the prophet enter into a marriage with a woman known to be sexually loose?
III. Hosea is playing the part of God who was "married" to an adulterous people.
God's bride, Israel, is an adulterous wife. She has run after other lovers, the Baal fertility gods.
People who are shocked at this story question why God would allow this.
This question is less pressing today when TV and movies and best-selling books almost glorify sexual escapades, so what's the big deal?
We are uncomfortable that God commanded Hosea to marry Gomer. How could God who commanded the people, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," also command His prophet to take part in a scandal dealing with sexual looseness?
Several important observations:
Hosea did nothing wrong in taking Gomer to be his wife.
God wanted His people to know how He felt when those whom He "married" behaved as they did.
