We can turn good gifts into functional gods. We can also make things that are not even good into our gods. Rachel and Leah turned their children into their gods. In their eyes it was their children that would produce their righteousness. It was a good gift that they and we often elevate or use to try and show or produce our all right ness or our righteousness.
The story of Hosea and Gomer is a little different. Gomer is a woman who you wouldn’t pick for your son to marry. The ESV calls her a woman of whoredom. Gomer and us we have a lot in common. We may have never been desperate enough to used prostitution as a means of supporting ourselves. We may have never slept with someone other than our spouse but we do have the same tendencies of Gomer. Gomer wanted to go back to what was familiar and comfortable. She wanted to leave the one that loved and cared for her.
It wasn’t a good thing she was going back to. She had the love of her husband yet she left and sold herself back into prostitution. She sold her own body to prove her worthiness even when she had all she needed. She had the love and provision of her husband yet she abandoned him for slavery.
The whole story of Gomer and Hosea is an illustration of Christ and us, the church.
“For she said ‘I will go after my loves who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink.’
Therefore I will hedge up her way with thrones, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them and she shall seek them but shall not find them. Then she shall say ‘I will go and return to my first husband for it was better for me than now.’
We leave our God and he builds walls and blocks our paths to those other things. There are times in life when the only reason we return to God is our of desperation.
Gomer leaves her husband to pursue other lovers. God tells Hosea to go after her.
“And the Lord said to me ‘Go again, love a women who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.’ So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and lethech of barley. And I said to her ‘You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.’ For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods. Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fewa to the Lord and ato his goodness in the latter days. Hosea 3:1-5
This is what God does for us over and over again when we put all of our heart and soul into other things around us. This is what God does for us when our hearts and minds confide in things other than Him. He has bought us. We no longer have to play the whore. We get to dwell with Him.
Loved In Spite of Self 