I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me (hey)

Gotta take a little time
Little time to look around me
I’ve got nowhere left to hide
Looks like love has finally found me

In my life, there’s been heartache and pain
I don’t know if I can face it again
Can’t stop now, I’ve traveled so far
To change this lonely life

I wanna know what love is
I want you to show me
I wanna feel what love is
I know you can show me

(Remix, by Foreigner)

Hosea may be categorized with the minor prophets.  But for me, Hosea has a major message of obedience, loyalty, and love to God.  Hosea’s is told to marry a prostitute and he not only does that but then demonstrates daily the love of God in him to his wife with a sinful past and present. She keeps going back to her sinful life but he pursues her and brings her back time after time until she realizes the real love Hosea has for her.  Yes, to say that Hosea has shown us what real love is to his prostitute wife is an understatement!  This “shock and awe” story shows us the love of God to us. 

God wanted to show His disobedient people through Hosea’s life what real love is with God’s relentless pursuit of them no matter what was happening in the world around them.  God loves.  God still loves.  God’s love never changes.  Because of God’s demonstrated love through Hosea, then later in Jesus, God’s Son, we no longer need to sing the mournful song, “I want to know what love is”, because God has clearly shown us through the life of this obedient man of God.  Hosea loved God back.  God longs for us to do the same.

“We love Him because He first loved us”, writes John, after Jesus came to earth and demonstrated the love of God to the world in ways the world had never seen.  Jesus was sent to seek and to save the lost.  He was Son of man and Son of God at the same time so he felt all that mankind experienced as he moved into the neighborhood of humanity.  (1 John 4) Jesus fulfilled all the commandments of God while explain to lost people and those who had forgotten God, God’s true intentions for mankind to come back to Him…to come back to His love and care.

Jesus taught us what love is by telling the world who God is.  John also tells us that Jesus, Son of God, demonstrated the “full extent of His love” at His last meal with his beloved disciples before going to the cross by taking on the role of a servant and washed feet—all of them—even Judas who he knew would betray him.  (John 13) Our Savior and Lord washed feet!  What kind of love is this?  It is overwhelming, relentless, unchanging, while holding nothing back, kind of love.

It was this love that held Jesus to the cross with all our sins on his shoulder so we could be declared free from the punishment we deserved.  The power of this love resurrected our Lord from the grave, defeated death forever!  Because God so loved the world…We are redeemed, set free, to love like Jesus loves us—with nothing held back.

Hosea 14, The Message

Come Back! Return to Your God!

^1-3 O Israel, come back! Return to your God!
    You’re down but you’re not out.
Prepare your confession
    and come back to God.
Pray to him, “Take away our sin,
    accept our confession.
Receive as restitution
    our repentant prayers.
Assyria won’t save us;
    horses won’t get us where we want to go.
We’ll never again say ‘our god’
    to something we’ve made or made up.
You’re our last hope. Is it not true
    that in you the orphan finds mercy?”

* * *

^4-8 “I will heal their waywardness.
    I will love them lavishly. My anger is played out.
I will make a fresh start with Israel.
    He’ll burst into bloom like a crocus in the spring.
He’ll put down deep oak tree roots,
    he’ll become a forest of oaks!
He’ll become splendid—like a giant sequoia,
    his fragrance like a grove of cedars!
Those who live near him will be blessed by him,
    be blessed and prosper like golden grain.
Everyone will be talking about them,
    spreading their fame as the vintage children of God.
Ephraim is finished with gods that are no-gods.
    From now on I’m the one who answers and satisfies him.
I am like a luxuriant fruit tree.
    Everything you need is to be found in me.”

* * *

⁹ If you want to live well,
    make sure you understand all of this.
If you know what’s good for you,
    you’ll learn this inside and out.
God’s paths get you where you want to go.
    Right-living people walk them easily;
    wrong-living people are always tripping and stumbling.

WHAT DID WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Love God back with all that is in us. 

Trust that God as our best interest at heart—His heart.

Obey what He says for what He says is best for us.

Ask for wisdom, wait for direction because our God knows all and is in all.

Believe, as relentlessly as God love us, and be saved forever.  Never stop believing!

Lord,

Thank you for the beautiful, but challenging love story of Hosea and his wife.  We ask why did he keep going back to rescue her from prostitution of herself time after time?  But then we realize that is exactly what you do for us.  Forgive our fickleness.  I am so grateful for your longsuffering, compassionate, patient love for me.

Thank you for showing us your relentless love through Hosea’s life of obedience to you.  Thank you for loving us the way you do.  We do not deserve your love yet you give it without hesitation, holding nothing back to those who seek you.  Help all of us to love each other like you love us—unconditionally.

In Jesus Name, Amen