The cost and consequences of spiritual adultery...

This week we are looking at a letter that is recorded for us in the Old Testament of the Bible called the book of Hosea. Yesterday we looked on as the Lord called  to marry a woman who would later commit adultery against you by becoming a prostitute. Hosea responded to the calling of the Lord to be His spokesman to the Northern Kingdom of Israel by obeying the Lord. Hosea married a woman named Gomer and proceeded to have three children.

With the birth of each child, the Lord commanded Hosea to give each child a specific name that was designed to communicate a specific message to the Jewish people. The Lord used the marriage of Hosea and Gomer to proclaim to the Jewish people to that their selfishness and rebellion against Him would result in His rejection of the Jewish people. However, in the midst of this word picture of rebellion and rejection, we see the Lord provide words of hope.

After predicting judgment, The Lord, through Hosea, predicted and proclaimed that there would be a day in the future when the Jewish people would be restored both numerically and spiritually; The Lord promised the Jewish people that, as individuals and as a nation, there would be a return and restoration to the Lord.

Today we will see that after these words of hope, we see Hosea return to communicating the Lord’s message of judgment against the Jewish people for their spiritual adultery in Hosea 2:2-13:

Contend with your mother, contend, For she is not my wife, and I am not her husband; And let her put away her harlotry from her face And her adultery from between her breasts, ³ Or I will strip her naked And expose her as on the day when she was born. I will also make her like a wilderness, Make her like desert land And slay her with thirst. ⁴ "Also, I will have no compassion on her children, Because they are children of harlotry. ⁵ "For their mother has played the harlot; She who conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, 'I will go after my lovers, Who give me my bread and my water, My wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.' ⁶ "Therefore, behold, I will hedge up her way with thorns, And I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths. ⁷ "She will pursue her lovers, but she will not overtake them; And she will seek them, but will not find them. Then she will say, 'I will go back to my first husband, For it was better for me then than now!' ⁸ "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. ⁹ "Therefore, I will take back My grain at harvest time And My new wine in its season. I will also take away My wool and My flax Given to cover her nakedness. ¹⁰ "And then I will uncover her lewdness In the sight of her lovers, And no one will rescue her out of My hand. ¹¹ "I will also put an end to all her gaiety, Her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths And all her festal assemblies. ¹² "I will destroy her vines and fig trees, Of which she said, 'These are my wages Which my lovers have given me.' And I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field will devour them. ¹³ "I will punish her for the days of the Baals When she used to offer sacrifices to them And adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry, And follow her lovers, so that she forgot Me," declares the LORD.”?

Here we see the Lord use the powerful imagery of adultery to reveal the depths of the selfishness and rebellion of the Jewish people against the Lord. However, to fully understand what Hosea is communicating here, we first need to understand a few things. When Hosea uses the words to brothers and sisters, he is referring to individual Jewish people. By contrast, when Hosea uses the word mother, he is referring to the nation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel as a whole.

The Lord painted this powerful word picture of the adultery that Gomer committed against Hosea to reveal the reality that, just like Gomer, the Jewish people, in their unfaithfulness, had severed their relationship with the Lord. Just as Gomer pursued other lovers that would pay her for sex, the Jewish people chose to pursue her lovers, which were the false gods of physical nourishment and material possessions, comfort and protection, and pleasure to pay her.

And just like Gomer and her physical adultery, the spiritual adultery of the Northern Kingdom of Israel would have consequences. The Lord would respond to the spiritual adultery of the Jewish people by eliminating all access to her lovers of physical nourishment and material possessions, comfort and protection, and pleasure that the nation had been pursuing through the worship of false gods instead of the Lord.

Yet in the midst of this word picture of spiritual adultery and judgment, the Lord once again provided words of hope. So let’s look at those words of hope together, beginning in verse 14-23:

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, Bring her into the wilderness And speak kindly to her. ¹⁵ "Then I will give her her vineyards from there, And the valley of Achor as a door of hope. And she will sing there as in the days of her youth, As in the day when she came up from the land of Egypt. ¹⁶ "It will come about in that day," declares the LORD, "That you will call Me Ishi And will no longer call Me Baali. ¹⁷ "For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, So that they will be mentioned by their names no more. ¹⁸ "In that day I will also make a covenant for them With the beasts of the field, The birds of the sky And the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword and war from the land, And will make them lie down in safety. ¹⁹ "I will betroth you to Me forever; Yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and in justice, In lovingkindness and in compassion, ²⁰ And I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness. Then you will know the LORD. ²¹ "It will come about in that day that I will respond," declares the LORD. "I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth, ²² And the earth will respond to the grain, to the new wine and to the oil, And they will respond to Jezreel. ²³ "I will sow her for Myself in the land. I will also have compassion on her who had not obtained compassion, And I will say to those who were not My people, 'You are My people!' And they will say, 'You are my God!’

Once again, after predicting judgment for their spiritual adultery, The Lord, through Hosea, predicted and proclaimed that there would be a day in the future when the Jewish people would experience restoration to the Lord. The Lord would pursue the Jewish people and persuade them to return to the covenant relationship that they had entered into with the Lord. The Lord reminded the Jewish people of an event in history that is recorded for us in a letter in the Old Testament, called the book of Joshua.

In Joshua chapter 7, we read of an event from history where the Jewish people experienced trouble as they entered into the Promised Land as a result of the covetousness of a man named Achan. The Lord pointed the Jewish people to this event from history to remind them that only through the trouble of judgment for their spiritual adultery would they have the opportunity and hope of restoration of their covenant relationship with the Lord that they had broken.

On that future day of restoration, the Jewish people would be devoted to the Lord as a result of the Lord’s steadfast love and faithful devotion. We see the Lord then point the Jewish people back to the powerful word picture that He was painting through Hosea’s relationship with Gomer.

Friday, we will look at a timeless truth that the Lord communicated to the Jewish people through Hosea...