Hosea 2: When God Commits, It Is Irrevocable

Introduction

This Sunday, Église Évangélique de Réveil Fribourg comes to the end of its series "An Indescribable Love," on the book of Hosea. The title of the final message comes down to two words: an irrevocable commitment.

Hosea's story brings us into a family where "humiliation, betrayal and heartbreak are all mixed together." God asks his prophet to marry a prostitute, Gomer. She leaves for someone else, and God sends Hosea to win her heart back. "Today's reality TV shows have nothing on this," the preacher remarks. But this story shows how much God loves an unfaithful people and longs to draw them to his heart.

Starting from Hosea 2:14-23 (verses 16 to 25 in the numbering of the Bible the preacher reads from), the message makes two points: "God is calling you, can you hear him?" and then a "heart transplant," because we need a new heart.

Message Outline

1. The Context: An Unfaithful People, a God Who Loves

Hosea is sent to Israel to announce judgment because of the people's spiritual decline. Israel rebels, denies its God and turns its back on him.
What is true of Israel is true of every human being before they meet God: "for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:23-24).
"Sin produces death. Sin produces decay. Sin produces chaos." A sad observation for a Sunday morning, but God sent his Son so that whoever believes in him would not perish (John 3:16).
The previous message was about repentance, a word that can sound outdated and yet is "a gift." Confessing our sins to Jesus frees us from guilt and restores our relationships, like the cross: the vertical beam for our relationship with God, the horizontal beam for our relationship with others.
When he speaks of Israel, the preacher is "not talking about a government" or about politics, but about the sovereignty of God, who chose a people for himself (Deuteronomy 7:7). The Church has not replaced Israel: we are grafted onto the olive tree (Romans 11). The text speaks of a "day to come": there is an "already" and a "not yet," until Jesus returns.

2. God Calls You to the Wilderness: Can You Hear Him?

"Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably to her" (Hosea 2:14). The translation the preacher reads says "seduce." To seduce, here, means to speak to the heart of a beloved, to charm her, to give her words of encouragement, like a fiancé to his fiancée.
Israel went through a real wilderness when Assyria attacked and deported it. But the text brings about a "masterful reversal." In verse 3, the wilderness is a threat: a dry land where God will let his people die of thirst. That is what sin produces in the heart: nothing grows there except evil. In verse 14, the wilderness becomes the place where the people will return to the Lord with all their heart.
God sometimes allows wildernesses: loneliness, losing a job, depression, grief, betrayal. "I am not saying that God allows evil, but God allows certain trials to come so that we can draw closer to his heart."
The prosperity gospel promises wealth, health and a problem-free life to whoever believes. David's psalms say something else: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me" (Psalm 23:4). "If he wrote it, it's because he went through it."
The preacher shares that his darkest seasons are the times when God revealed himself to his heart in a particular way. "I'm not especially fond of wildernesses," but they bring us back to what is essential.

3. The Wildernesses We Sow, and the Others

Some wildernesses are caused by ourselves, by our sins and our bad choices. We reap what we sow: an unfaithful spouse cannot expect to receive love in return, and alcohol abuse damages health.
The preacher tells about his youth: he grew up in Alsace and found a job in Orléans. His father told him, "I don't think that job is right for you." But "when you're young, you know everything." A few months later, he had to admit that his father was right. "If I sow a zucchini seed, I'm not going to harvest wheat."
Other situations come without any fault of ours. In that case, it is dangerous to look for a spiritual reason and to "start fighting demons where there are none." Our role is to wait, to rest in God, to seek his face.
"The wilderness is not an end in itself, but a passage." And what is special about the wilderness, the preacher says with a smile, is that in the wilderness there is nothing but God, a God who wants to win our hearts so that we love him again as on the first day.

4. God Removes the Names of the Idols

"It will be in that day," says Yahweh, "that you will call me 'My husband,' and no longer call me 'My Baal'" (Hosea 2:16). The word Baal originally meant lord, master, husband. Israel could use it to speak of the Lord. But Baal was also the Canaanite god of fertility, harvest and rain, and everything got mixed up, even to idolatrous practices in worship.
It is God himself who will remove the names of the idols from his people's mouths. That is what Jesus does: the old things have passed away, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). The preacher reads Ezekiel 36:25-27: "I will also give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you."
Someone recently told him, in essence: "I haven't done that much wrong. I haven't lied, I haven't cheated, I haven't killed anyone. I deserve heaven." The preacher's answer: "No, we need Jesus, because salvation comes from Jesus alone."
Hosea is not speaking to Assyria, Egypt or the Philistines, but to God's own people, who knew his commandments. So the text speaks to the Church as well. You can know the Word, come to church and still be far from him.
We don't know Baal, but other names take his place: our own righteousness, our efforts to earn salvation, self-sufficiency, pride, jealousy, money. "If it were so easy to win God's love by doing good works, what is the point of Jesus' sacrifice?"

5. Heart Transplant: An Engagement Forever

"I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving kindness, and in compassion. I will even betroth you to me in faithfulness; and you shall know Yahweh" (Hosea 2:19-20). Three times, God affirms that he will betroth his people to himself.
God is not trying to "patch up a relationship." He starts it over on the right foundation, on him alone.
Today, an engagement looks like a time of dating: you try it out, and if it doesn't work, you look elsewhere. Back then, it was far more binding. The future husband brought the bride's father a fixed sum. Once the bride price was paid, the marriage was sealed (Exodus 22:16-17, 2 Samuel 3:14).
The preacher opens a parenthesis: in Switzerland, a marriage is valid only before the civil registry. He and his wife went through it, even though for them the blessing before God matters more, because Romans 13:1 calls us to submit to the authorities. Only afterward did they go to church to ask the Lord to bless their union.
Righteousness, justice, loving kindness, compassion and faithfulness are "like the bride price God brings for his people." The metaphor remains imperfect: there is no father to receive the gift, the recipient is the bride herself, and it is we who accept Jesus.
"When God commits himself, he commits himself irrevocably." God brings these qualities in his grace and "grafts" them into us so that we make them bear fruit. The world sees them as weaknesses, but God chose the weak things of the world to put to shame the strong (1 Corinthians 1:27).

6. Righteousness and Justice

Many think the Christian life is nothing but rules: "you go to church on Sunday and are bored the rest of the time." Righteousness seems like cold correctness. In the Bible, it has "something much warmer about it." God's righteousness is creative: it straightens out the most twisted parts of the human heart.
It is a gift, it is our salvation: "For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). Without God, man deserves death. But through the blood of Jesus, God "sees us as righteous, he sees us as pure."
Justice too comes from God, and its fruits show up in us "if we cultivate it." It is not the first quality of our society: just open the newspapers. Yet Isaiah 33:15-16 promises bread, water and refuge to the one who walks in righteousness, refuses a bribe and shuts his eyes against evil.
A testimony: at the self-checkout, the preacher forgets to scan an item worth a franc or two. He realizes it after leaving and goes back to the store's service desk with the item to explain the situation. He feels like he looks "like an alien." The cashier doesn't know what to say, then thanks him with tears in her eyes: "Nobody does that." The same thing happens to his wife over some bread: she leaves with a bouquet of flowers for her honesty.
"Justice is cultivated." God puts in us a thirst for righteousness and justice, and it is then up to us to cultivate it.

7. Loving Kindness, Compassion, Faithfulness, and Our Response

Loving kindness is loyalty: a whole and irrevocable love that God has for forgiven sinners. In a marriage as in a friendship, nobody wants a relationship made only of betrayals.
The preacher introduces dodder, the "plant vampire": a plant with no chlorophyll that wraps itself around another, feeds on it and ends up strangling it. "Loving kindness, loyalty, is not that."
Compassion, or mercy: at the beginning of the book, God says he will no longer have compassion on his people. But true to his nature, he remains merciful. Those who live by the law of the strongest see this as weakness. "Someone said that mercy is the rope God throws us in our misery."
Faithfulness is probably the quality Israel lacked most, and perhaps the one we often lack. "If we are faithless, he remains faithful" (2 Timothy 2:13). God wants to graft it into us so that we remain faithful to him.
Verse 23 concludes: "I will tell those who were not my people, 'You are my people;' and they will say, 'My God!'" This morning again, God says: "You are my child, you are my people." "It is up to us to decide what answer we want to give. My God, or not?"
This is the answer the Church gives at the Lord's Supper: the bread for Jesus' broken body, the fruit of the vine for his blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. The meal is for all who know they are sinners and confess Jesus as Savior and Lord. The preacher encourages anyone who deliberately serves other gods to abstain. But to the one who says, "Jesus, you are the Lord of my life, I ask your forgiveness," God will be faithful to forgive and to lead.

Key Takeaways

God can use a wilderness to speak to your heart: it is not an end in itself, but a passage that brings you back to what is essential.
Not every trial is a fault: some are reaped, others are walked through by resting in God, without looking for demons everywhere.
Our own righteousness can become an idol. Salvation comes from Jesus alone, not from the wrong we haven't done.
God betroths his people through righteousness, justice, loving kindness, compassion and faithfulness. He gives them and grafts them into us, and it is up to us to cultivate them.
When God commits himself, it is irrevocable. He says "You are my people" and waits for your answer: "My God!"

Personal Application

Are you going through a wilderness right now? What might God want to say to your heart in that place?
Is there a wilderness you sowed yourself through a bad choice, one that invites you to turn back, like the preacher after leaving for Orléans?
What "name" has taken God's place in your mouth: your own righteousness, pride, money, jealousy?
In what concrete situation this week can you cultivate honesty, even over an item worth a franc or two?
To the call "You are my people," what answer do you give today?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does God lead his people into the wilderness in Hosea 2?

In verse 3, the wilderness is a threat: a dry land, the image of what sin produces. In verse 14, it becomes a place of encounter where God speaks to the heart of his people. In the wilderness, there is nothing but God. The preacher clarifies that he is not saying God allows evil, but that God allows certain trials to draw us closer to his heart.

What does "you will call me my husband and no longer call me my master" mean?

The word Baal originally meant lord, master or husband. Israel used it for the Lord, but Baal was also the Canaanite god of fertility and rain, and confusion crept into worship. In verses 16 and 17, God announces that he himself will remove the names of the idols from his people's mouths.

What qualities does God use to betroth his people in Hosea 2?

In verses 19 and 20, God betroths his people through righteousness, justice, loving kindness, compassion and faithfulness. The preacher compares them to the bride price the groom used to bring. God brings them in his grace and grafts them into our hearts so that we make them bear fruit.