Israel disobeyed. The national leaders had failed to teach God’s law to the people. Many of God’s chosen people sold their bodies in prostitution, which in turn led to national destruction.

People who have genuine faith and love for God will try to obey God.  No matter what is going on around us, our love for God must be our first thought as we rise and our last thought before we go to bed at night.  Love, trust, and obedience to God brings His gift of peace through all kinds of circumstances.  His love is our way of redemption.  Our relationship with God grows our love for others.  Be faithful to God.  He is forever faithful to us.

Hosea 4, The Message

No One Is Faithful

^1-3 Attention all Israelites! God’s Message!
    God indicts the whole population:
“No one is faithful. No one loves.
    No one knows the first thing about God.
All this cussing and lying and killing, theft and loose sex,
    sheer anarchy, one murder after another!
And because of all this, the very land itself weeps
    and everything in it is grief-stricken—
animals in the fields and birds on the wing,
    even the fish in the sea are listless, lifeless.

* * *

^4-10 “But don’t look for someone to blame.
    No finger pointing!
You, priest, are the one in the dock.
    You stumble around in broad daylight,
And then the prophets take over and stumble all night.
    Your mother is as bad as you.
My people are ruined
    because they don’t know what’s right or true.
Because you’ve turned your back on knowledge,
    I’ve turned my back on you priests.
Because you refuse to recognize the revelation of God,
    I’m no longer recognizing your children.
The more priests, the more sin.
    They traded in their glory for shame.
They pig out on my people’s sins.
    They can’t wait for the latest in evil.
The result: You can’t tell the people from the priests,
    the priests from the people.
I’m on my way to make them both pay
    and take the consequences of the bad lives they’ve lived.
They’ll eat and be as hungry as ever,
    have sex and get no satisfaction.
They walked out on me, their God,
    for a life of rutting with whores.

They Make a Picnic Out of Religion

^11-14 “Wine and whiskey
    leave my people in a stupor.
They ask questions of a dead tree,
    expect answers from a sturdy walking stick.
Drunk on sex, they can’t find their way home.
    They’ve replaced their God with their genitals.
They worship on the tops of mountains,
    make a picnic out of religion.
Under the oaks and elms on the hills
    they stretch out and take it easy.
Before you know it, your daughters are whores
    and the wives of your sons are sleeping around.
But I’m not going after your whoring daughters
    or the adulterous wives of your sons.
It’s the men who pick up the whores that I’m after,
    the men who worship at the holy whorehouses—
    a stupid people, ruined by whores!

* * *

^15-19 “You’ve ruined your own life, Israel—
    but don’t drag Judah down with you!
Don’t go to the sex shrine at Gilgal,
    don’t go to that sin city Bethel,
Don’t go around saying ‘God bless you’ and not mean it,
    taking God’s name in vain.
Israel is stubborn as a mule.
    How can God lead him like a lamb to open pasture?
Ephraim is addicted to idols.
    Let him go.
When the beer runs out,
    it’s sex, sex, and more sex.
Bold and sordid debauchery—
    how they love it!
The whirlwind has them in its clutches.
    Their sex-worship leaves them finally impotent.”

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Trust and obedience to God produces joy!  “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!” —Jesus  John 15:9-11, NLT

God will not let you go. He has handcuffed himself to you in love. And he owns the only key. You need not win his love. You already have it. And since you can’t win it, you can’t lose it.  “I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  Romans 8:38-39, NLT

Gomer was a female, an irascible woman married to a remarkable Hosea. She flirted and hopped from one lover to another. She ruined her life and shattered Hosea’s heart.  Destitute, she was placed for sale in a slave market. Guess who stepped forward to buy her? Hosea, who’d never removed his wedding band. The way he treated her you would have thought she’d never loved another man.

God uses this story, indeed orchestrated this drama, to illustrate his steadfast love for his fickle people.  You and me.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  John 3:16, NIV  This kind of love is translated as “agape” love—Less an affection, more a decision; less a feeling, more an action.

Stated more simply: Junkyard wrecks and showroom models share equal space in God’s garage.  So, it doesn’t matter who we are or what we have done, God so loves…

Lord,

We ask ourselves, what kind of love is this that you would send your Son to die for us?  It is a redeeming love that goes beyond our wildest thinking but we must stop and think with grateful hearts and loud praise for all you have done to “so love” us.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.  Love, trust, and obedience is our response to your love.

In Jesus Name, Amen