When I was in high school we were in American history class and studying the history of slavery. The story was told of Nat Turner, a slave who had visions from God that told him to lead a revolt against his masters and lead his people to freedom. Unfortunately, Nat Turner’s revolt failed and he was hanged. Everybody in my class took this at face value. I rose my hand and asked the question that nobody else seemed to think of. “Did Nat Turner really receive visions from God telling him to revolt?” The teacher looked at me, confused. My classmates looked at me, confused. This was a Christian school, mind you, we would talk about faith and religion in our classes pretty regularly.
The teacher and the class seemed perfectly willing to accept that God told Nat Turner to revolt. But I had a harder time accepting this because the revolt failed. I could accept Nat Turner following his understanding of what God desires and fighting for freedom because there was no other way to live in accordance with God’s word. I buy that. I buy him being convicted by his faith and knowing that he must fight against oppression. Many other slave revolts were started by very devout Christians for precisely that reason. And those I bought. But if God gave a man a vision saying that he should revolt and win and then he lost, could that vision truly be from God?
In the discussion that we had, I seemed to be the only one seeing it from my perspective, yet the teacher did make a good point that justice did increase through this event as the plight of the slaves reached more and more people because of what Nat Turner did and though he didn’t get the freedom he longed for, he did pave the way for a future freedom for his people.
You see, God didn’t promise Nat Turner victory. What he promised him was a continued struggle for what is right. This is the same thing that God promises each of us. This is the same thing that God commands for each of us to do. But God offers us something as well, he offers us his love and he offers to be with us as we fight for what is right.
I. A Difficult Marriage
The book of Hosea is a difficult one to read, at first because it gives us this strange life acted out by the prophet. You see, Hosea is commanded to live out his life in a somewhat difficult way. He isn’t asked to fight as Nat Turner was, rather he is asked to love the unlovable. And in doing so, he is able to understand God’s desire for God’s people in a real way and we catch a glimpse of that understanding when we read Hosea 11. But before we get to Hosea 11 and God’s relationship, and love, for his people, I’d like to look a little bit at Hosea’s relationship with his wife… you, know, it being Valentine’s Day this Wednesday and all.
Unfortunately, Hosea’s life and his relationship is not the kind that you’d think of celebrating on Valentine’s Day. The first three chapters of Hosea tell us, in somewhat graphic detail, about his relationship with his wife, Gomer, and it’s not a pretty picture.
You see, Hosea’s wife cheated on him. She cheated on him and she left him and that was it. After they were married, Gomer had three children. The first, Jezreel, was Hosea’s son. But the following daughter and then son were not even his children. And worst of all, it seems that Hosea was told to marry this woman by God. Now I’ve got to be a bit honest with you, I’m somewhat skeptical of when God starts telling someone what to do with their romantic lives. I mean as a pastor, if someone came to me and told me that God had told them to marry someone else, I would have a hard time taking them seriously. It’s just that I feel that we can sometimes mistake our own emotions for God’s call on our lives. I’ve mentioned before that when it comes to hearing God speak, I am very cautious of my own emotions. I’ve distinctly heard God telling me something in the past only later to discover that it wasn’t God speaking, but my own desires. So I come into Hosea 1 somewhat skeptical. When Hosea states that God told him to marry a woman who was going to be unfaithful to him, I wonder if he might be imagining it. But then in Hosea 3 God comes to him again and tells him to go find his wife, who has left him and has become a slave, and buy her freedom for her and welcome her back… and here’s the clincher… and love her!
Now this is what truly convinces me that Hosea is following God’s command. I’ve seen too many relationships end badly and when somebody has been treated by their spouse as poorly as Hosea was, they aren’t going to find it in themself to love that spouse again. And so we see that God gives Hosea a command. He must take back his wife. He must love her again. But God never gives a command without giving the ability to fulfill that command. So not only did God give Hosea the command to love Gomer, he gave him the love for her he needed. And he did this by showing his own love to his own people, who had been and continued to be unfaithful to him.
God actually does the same for us, showing his love for us even though we are unfaithful to him. He loves us and calls us to join him in that love. Hosea understood this because of the relationship he had with Gomer and therefore he was able to catch a glimpse of God’s love for his people in a way that others haven’t been able to do. We see that love fully displayed in Hosea 11.
II. God’s Love
Hosea 11 begins by telling us about God’s love for his people, particularly Israel. It is truly looked upon as the love of a parent for his child. It even comes across as a motherly love in many ways. “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images. It was I who taught Ephraim (a name for Israel… one of Jacob’s sons, particularly, and the tribe that now ruled over Israel) to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek and I bent down to feed them.”
Do you get the energy in that? Do you get the pathos? Do you feel the emotions? God is really hurt when we take him for granted. It pains him. And, just like Israel in the past, we do take God for granted.
II. What God Wants
Hosea talked about two ways that Israel took God for granted, and I fear that we make these same mistakes, though in a slightly different way. First, the people of Israel, though they worshipped God, also worshipped other gods, idols, Baals. Now we don’t necessarily have idols in our homes and offer sacrifices to them, but when you look at what worship really is, you will see that we do allow ourselves to worship things other than God. When someone asks what it is that you worship, the best way to answer this question is by seeing what it is that you spend your time and energy on. We claim to worship God, but many of us only make time for him for an hour on Sunday morning. How is this truly worshipping him with our whole being? We are willing to spend how much time in front of the television, or at a movie theater, or watching sports, or working, or having fun… but we find it difficult to commit to the things of God. So what is it that we worship? Well, I have to work, I have to make a living, I have to support my family. Of course we do, but how many of the things we have are really needed? We live lives where we expect to have things that our parents or grandparents never dreamed of. And then we wear ourselves out so that we can afford these things. And we don’t have the energy for God or for our family because all our energy is going into these things. So, what do we worship?
But worshipping things, putting our time and our energy into things, other than God is not the only sin that Hosea spoke against. He also was angry at Israel for trying to find their deliverance from places other than God. Israel sought out other countries around them to protect them and keep them safe. They paid bribes so that they would not be overtaken by enemies. God didn’t want them to make political deals, rather he just desired that they would trust in him and his way. God wants us to rely on him; not on ourselves, not on our jobs, not on our pastors, not on our political leaders, not on politics in general, but on him.
But, unfortunately, this is something that we are not good at at all. We find ways to take care of ourselves. We feel that it is our responsibility to make sure that we, and our families, are going to be okay. But God has something else in mind. He wants us to turn our troubles and our worries over to him and allow him to be the master of our futures. He wants us to know, truly know, that we are in good hands when we are in his hands.
I was awakened at 2am one morning by a phone message machine. I think that perhaps they thought they were calling a church and not a parsonage. I picked up the phone and listened as a machine told me of what trouble the church today is in. We are beset at every side by the wicked ways of the world around us and if we don’t stand up and fight there will be no next generation of Christians. We need to fight the world around us. We need to battle against these evil people around us ready to do us in. We need to give money to politicians that will help our cause, we need to boycott television shows that encourage godlessness, if we don’t do our job, Christianity is going to fail. There is something of truth in what was being said, but it missed the point. God is not going to fail. He isn’t going to give us a mission where we will not succeed. And he doesn’t want us to rely on boycotts and politicians for his truth to reach the rest of the world. That’s right up there with buying off the Assyrians so they won’t attack us. Rather, God wants us to trust him because he loves us. He wants us to share his message of love with those around us. And once we realize that our lives and our future are in his hands, then we can seek his will to see what is next for us.
For Christmas, Lisa and I got a game from my parents: Dread Pirate. It’s a board game where you roll dice and move across a board and attempt to get jewels and gold from your opponents. It’s a fun game with really fancy parts. I looked up a couple reviews of the game online. People complained about it totally. They liked the production values, but they felt that it was just a dice shoot. They felt that everything was chance and you really had no control over it yourself. They complained because anybody could win it and you really couldn’t come in with a strategy that would help you. I disagree, you can choose to play the game aggressively and take a lot of risks or you can choose to play it conservatively, without as many risks. You can approach the game either way. But unfortunately you never know whether being aggressive or conservative is the right answer for you, because you don’t know what the dice are going to do. This is the truth of our lives as well, we have choices we can make, we can choose how we are going to live, but there are certain things that are completely outside our control. But we aren’t relying on dice and luck… we need to realize that we can rely on God in these circumstances. And more than that, we are relying on a God who loves us in a way that we cannot possibly comprehend. He tells us in Hosea 11:9 that he is God, not a human being. His ways are greater and more wonderful than ours. Are you willing to put yourself in his hands? Are you willing to rely on his love?
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