Sermon-A Message from Hosea

"FOUR PROPHETS SPEAK TO OUR DAY:
A Message From Hosea"

Dr. James L. Mayfield
Tarrytown United Methodist Church

November 14, 1999

Text: Hosea 4:1-3, 6:1-3

From Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament, it is obvious the Old Testament prophets were a major resource in his theological education. Today I am going to talk about the prophet Hosea and his message to the people of Israel who lived more than 700 years before Jesus, and about what Hosea would probably say to us.

When Hosea began his ministry, the peace and prosperity in the time of Amos (whom I talked about last week), was coming to an end. Old enemies of Israel were on the march again. The economy was in serious trouble. The leadership was not focused on what God would have them do for the good of the people. The leaders were focused on obtaining power and staying in power by playing their deadly political games. Their focus was not on God's will and the good of their neighbors. Their focus was on themselves and what they wanted.

In such a time, it is understandable that the anxieties of the people were high. However, in their anxiety, the people did not turn to God. Like their leaders, their focus was on themselves. Longing to control their own lives, wanting comfort, pleasure and financial security, many turned to the worship of Baal—a god of fertility and prosperity. Others began to treat the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as if the true God were also a kind of Baal—a false god who could be manipulated by religious ritual and special bribes to give them what they wanted. Rather than living their lives serving the one true God, the people tried magically to make the phony god of their selfishly sick imaginations serve them and give them what they wanted.

It was into this situation that Hosea came. In the first three chapters of Book of Hosea it is clear that the man Hosea experienced a lot of heartache, disappointment and probably anger because of his wife and children. But God used Hosea’s pain to help him better understand God and God’s relationship with Israel.

Scholars disagree about what actually happened in Hosea’s life. And while the poetry Hosea wrote reflects what he learned through his experiences, it does not say clearly exactly what happened. But here is my best guess.

My guess is that Hosea was probably a priest who, as a young man, fell in love with a young woman who was very beautiful. She was the delight in his life. However, for her, her sexual pleasures were more important than her marriage vows. Time and again she had affairs with other men. Time and again she broke Hosea’s heart. Yet, regardless of all the pain and heartache she had brought into his life, Hosea still loved her. Time and again he took her back.

In and through all this very sad, sick relationship, Hosea and his unfaithful wife had three children—two boys and a girl. Can you imagine what it was like to be children in that kind of a family? I suspect they were not the kind of children Hosea had dreamed of having when he was a newly wed young man. How could children, bred, born and raised in the midst of such stormy dysfunction be anything other than dysfunctional? As we are warned in the Ten Commandments, the sins of the parents are visited upon the children for at least three or four generations.

It is my guess that as this faithful man, Hosea, dealt with his family problems and heartache, God enabled him to see and understand that what he was dealing with as a husband and as a father was not unlike what God was dealing with in regard to the unfaithfulness of Israel.

God was married to the people of Israel, but the people of Israel were having adulterous affairs with false gods. In the passage that was read today, Hosea spoke of God handing down an indictment against the people of Israel. Because of their chasing after false gods, they were no longer trustworthy; they could not be relied on to live as God intended. It was not that they did not know about God. The problem was they no longer knew God. They had rejected God, turned away from God. To them God was a stranger. In their religious adultery of worshipping the false gods of their own imaginings, they lived their lives without God.

The result of living without God at the center is that behavior becomes merely behavior. When our spiritual center is gone, our moral center gradually disappears. Expediency becomes the center around which all behavior revolves. Will it get me what I want? Does it work? Will it give me power over others? Will it make me feel good? Is it expedient?

And so, in the passage we read, Hosea wrote: "Swearing, lying, murder, and stealing and adultery break out; bloodshed follows bloodshed." In this world Hosea describes, truth, trust, forgiveness, honesty, faithfulness, compassion, justice and mercy—all that holds society together and makes society healthy—are sacrificed in the expedient quest for control, comfort, pleasure and financial security.

And as Hosea stated in the passage we read, when this happens, the whole creation suffers. The people in their self-centered search for happiness did not find happiness but found themselves grieving about the terrible situation their nation was in and that they were in. Sounding like a 20th century ecologist, Hosea goes on to say that when selfishness rules and God is left out, even the animals, birds and fish suffer. The last few decades we have rediscovered the truth he was speaking. Within the last several generations the expedient attempts of us humans on this planet to get what we want have resulted in the suffering of the whole creation. The water of streams and oceans has been polluted. The air we breathe has been polluted. The greedy devouring of rain forests and even swamplands is having its impact on the planet.

And in all this, we have all too often sought for our religion to bless us and comfort us in our greed. When religion is used to serve our expedient quest to have what we desire, society loses its conscience, and when society loses its conscience it is only a matter of time until the society itself is lost.

All this is what Hosea was saying to the people in Israel 2,700 years ago, and I am convinced it is what he would say to us today. Only his style of speech and use of metaphors would change; the message would be the same. "When you no longer focus on trying to discover and do God's will, it is only a matter of time until you will pay the consequences."

But Hosea's message does not stop there. Because of all that Hosea had gone through as a husband and as a father, he was aware not only of the reality of consequences and God's judgment. Hosea was also aware that even God's actions of pain filled judgment are in truth actions of love. Just as a parent who truly loves his or her child disciplines the child for destructive behavior, so does God discipline us. God has constructed our lives together in societies so that injustice will go on in this society for just so long, selfishness will have its way just so long, greed will triumph just so long—then, all hell breaks loose. But history shows that God's patience with sin does have its limits. Sooner or later society has to pay a terrible price for too long a history of injustice, selfishness and greed. But as Hosea tried to show us, even the painful consequences of judgment are really expressions of God's tough love trying to get us humans back on the right path. Even the judgment of God is an expression of grace, an expression of the love of God we do not deserve and cannot earn.

And this brings us to another major theme in the writings of Hosea—the theme of mercy. It is the theme expressed in the passage from chapter 6 that was read today. "Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. Let us press on to know the Lord; his appearing is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us like the showers, like the spring rains that water the earth."

God enabled Hosea to see and understand that just as Hosea continued to love his wife, even though she was unfaithful, God continues to love us. Hosea had learned God's ultimate goal is redemption, not revenge. Justice, judgment, consequences for wrong behavior—however you want to say it—are not God's ultimate response to our sin. This is merely God trying to get our attention. This is merely God teaching us about the consequences of sin.

Just as Hosea's goal in regard to his wife was not revenge but her transformation and their reconciliation, so is God's goal in relation to us. God's ultimate goal is our redemption. Only God knows why, but God's ultimate goal is for us to live in harmony with God. God intends us to live having our words and deeds reflect faithfulness to God and our love for one another.

God, enable us to be transformed by both your tough and tender love so that we will live in harmony with you, so that all we are and all we say and do is so pleasing to you that we fulfill the potential you see in us. Amen.

Pastoral Prayer:

God, we need your help. We live too much like drivers in a speedway race, going in circles as fast as we can—racing here and there to do this and that. Chained to our calendars and cell phones we do not live our lives as much as we merely react to calls, expectations and demands. We have even begun to believe our frantic pace of living is what is normal. God, in our trying harder to do more and more we are losing touch with what it is to be as a person and what it is to be in relationship.

Slow us down, God, so that we no longer rush past people but actually see who they really are. Slow us down, God, so that we can hear, really hear, what is to be heard. Rescue us from our addiction to constant activity. Help us not be afraid to do less. God, when we are honest with ourselves, we know that in trying to do more, we start more than we can finish and what we finish is more often than not a slap dash, hurry up job. Show us how to make choices so that we do what you want done and in the process discover that in doing less we accomplish more.

God, slow us down and enable us to quiet all the noise within our souls so that we are able to hear what you are trying to tell us. Enable us to listen, even as we pray the prayer Jesus taught us: "Our Father…"

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