Hosea 1:2 NAS
The Lord said to Hosea,      
"Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry
 and have children of harlotry,
for the land commits flagrant harlotry,
forsaking the Lord." 

The essence of sin, we seldom see.
The core of sin, we have no idea.

Sin to us is acts and deeds and
we can list them.
We know.

Sin is merely
wrong window-views of the heart.
We know what sin is . . . we think.

But sin must be defined by God,
by what sin does to HIM!
By how He feels when we sin.

The lowest sin, the most vile sin,
the essential nature of sin is
adultery . . . against God.

So Israel could understand,
 God defined sin as
spiritual adultery . . . to HIM.
What a blow to the rigid moralist.
What a shock to the blatant criminal.

Not moral adultery.
Not human betrayal.
Not sins against humanity.
Sin in its essence is this:
disloyalty to God by
adultery against the marriage to HIM!       

For a spirit of harlotry has
led them astray,
And they have played the harlot,
departing from their God.
Hosea 4:12 NAS

God called Hosea to live out and demonstrate
His own pain as a "husband betrayed."
For Israel chased things
they wanted more than God,
having therefore lovers other than God.

Sin was not the breaking of a law,
nor the failure to keep it.
Sin was leaving God the Husband,
for other lovers.

Israel could not see the Real Sin:
the breaking of God's heart.
Only in the context of harlotry
- the shamelessness of many lovers -
could Israel glimpse the hideousness of
their idolatrous sin
from God's wrenching estimate.
Through Hosea, God put their faithlessness
in a context they could understand:
their human marriages.

James, brother of Jesus, knew this analogy
for New Testament believers.

James 4:4 NAS
You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship
with the world is hostility toward God?
Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world
makes himself an enemy of God.       

It is harlotry to believe that your bread and water,
come from your "lovers."

For she does not know that it was I
who gave her the grain, the new wine and the oil,
And lavished on her silver and gold,
which they used for Baal.

It is harlotry to use God's generosity
for the worship of His enemy.

God is a Jealous Husband.
Ferocious and powerful enough to
destroy His rivals.
And He will!       

I will hedge up her way with thorns
and I will build a wall against her so that
she cannot find her paths. (2:6)

I will take back my grain . . . My new wine . . . (2:9)

I will uncover her lewdness . . . (2:10)
I will also put an end to all her gaiety . . . (2:11)
I will destroy her vines and fig trees . . . (2:12)
Then:
I will allure her,
bring her into the wilderness,
And speak kindly to her . . . . (2:14)

But the promise to Gomer/Israel/you/me
is restoration to God's love and His favor.       

The Lord has only Gomers for
the wife of the Lamb.
Only Gomers, there are no other kind.

Candidates for total redemption are only
those who need total redemption.
Only in total redemption is a Bride totally pure:
". . . a church in all her glory having
no spot or wrinkle . . . holy and blameless."       

God, the Great Husband,
in whose heart of bursting love
the very idea of Husband originated,
will Himself solve Gomer-infidelity.

I will be like a lion to Ephraim
And like a young lion to Judah.
I, even I, will tear to pieces and go away.
I will carry away and there will be none to deliver.
I will go away and return to My place
 Until they acknowledge
their guilt and seek My face;
In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.
Hosea 5:14, 15

God orchestrates the consequences that
wring out our desperation and lead us to repentance.
Repentance, the only thing God asks of a Gomer!       

Hosea 6:1-3 NAS
"Come let us return to the Lord.
For He has torn us, for He will heal us.
He has wounded us,
but He will bandage us.

He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day,
That we may live before Him.
So let us know let us press on to know the Lord.
His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
Like the spring rain watering the earth."       

Resurrection life and cleansing rain of His Voice.
God's absolute solving the wife of faithlessness.

I will heal their apostasy,
I will love them freely,
For My anger has turned away from them . . . .

And the last words of Hosea, living picture of
the faithful husband to the faithless wife:
        
Hosea 14:9
Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;
Whoever is discerning, let him know them.
For the ways of the Lord are right,
and the righteous will walk in them,
But transgressors will stumble in them.

Copyright © 2002 Martha Kilpatrick