Hosea (Letter 28, Larry Crabb’s 66 Love Letters)

Love is Deeper Than Hate

You will be irresistibly drawn to My love and able to give it to theirs when you discover in your own experience that the love I have planted in your heart can never be destroyed by rejection, betrayal criticism, or any other form of unlove you receive . True love reveals itself as the strongest of all passions when your impulse to hate those who hurt you is fully felt.

To enjoy my love and to pour it into others, you must repent. Many will say that you must first be healed of the wounds suffered at the hands of others. But requiring relief from your pain is wailing on your bed. I want you to repent, to cry from your heart, identifying how you’ve hurt Me and incited My anger, and to give up all hope of finding satisfaction for your soul from anyone other than anything but Me. Read again what I wrote and Hosea 7:13-14. Then read the first three verses of chapter 6, where My people thought they were repenting but in fact were only wailing.

Then turn to chapter 14. It is there, in verses 1 through 3 that I provide a model of true repentance, for crying from your heart as you lay in the ditch of your sin. True repentance of real sin lets you experience the real joy of true love.

Whatever else you hear me say or see me do in the next 11 letters, remember this: in the exact center of my infinite being, beneath all the hurt you caused me and all the anger I feel towards you lies an ocean of infinite love. I invite you to come for a swim. Every word I say is part of that invitation.

HOSEA: The Prophet and the Prostitute 

Click here for entire Bible Summary from Ray Stedman

Hosea said that God was a God of love and that his doing this was the very activity of love; that God wanted them to see what they were doing to themselves and that the only way he could get them to listen was to make things rough for them. But they didn’t pay any more attention than people do today.

God does strange things at times, things we don’t always understand, things we can’t categorize, things that don’t fit into what we think we know of Him. And this is one of those strange things. He told Hosea, “I want you to marry this girl and she is going to be a harlot, a common street prostitute. But you are going to have three children, two boys and a girl. And when they are born I want to name them for you.”

God picked the name Jezreel for the first child. Now Jezreel means “cast-away” and was a name of shame in Israel.

God was thus warning his people:
they too would be cast away if they didn’t recognize the folly of their actions, if they didn’t turn from going after idols and giving way to abominable practices and trying to be like everybody else around them. God was warning them with this baby’s name.

In the course of time, another child, a daughter was born to Hosea. This one was named Loruhamah, which means “not pitied.” It meant that God would no longer have pity on his people if they continued their stubborn rebellion.

When this little girl was weaned, Gomer conceived again and bore a third child, another little boy. And this one God named Loammi, “not my people,” for God was saying, “you are not my people and I will not be your God.” God had said that he would name these children as a sign to his people, but there would come a day of restoration.

But poor Gomer passed from man to man, until at last she fell into the hands of a man who was unable to pay for her food and her clothing.

But at last word came that the woman Hosea loved was to be sold in the slave market.

Then Hosea offered the highest bid. The auctioneer’s gavel fell and Hosea had his wife back.

She became an honest, industrious, faithful wife, and the rest of the book of Hosea simply goes on to tell the effect of this story on the nation of Israel.

And the prophet adds this lesson from his own heartache and yet in the joy of restored love:
Whoever is wise, let him understand these things;
whoever is discerning, let him know them;
for the ways of the LORD are right,
and the upright walk in them,
but transgressors stumble in them.
{Hos 14:9 RSV}

This is your story, and my story, isn’t it? So many times we try to satisfy ourselves with the lying idols of self-importance, or wealth, or a good time.

We try to run from God and drown our miseries but, as surely as we think we have escaped, as surely as we think we have run far enough, God touches our sleeve with his love saying, “My child, my name and my nature are love and I must act according to what I am. When you tire of all your running, and your wandering, and your heartbreak, I’ll be there to draw you to myself again.”

HOSEA – David Jeremiah (Understanding the 66 Books of the Bible)

Key thought: Spiritual adultery occurs when we drift from our allegiance to God and allow other preoccupations to replace him as the focus of our affection.

Key Verse: I will betrothe you to Me forever; yes, I will betroth you to Me in righteousness and justice, in loving-kindness and mercy; I will betrothe you to Me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. Hosea 2:19-20

Key Action: It’s time to seek the Lord until he comes and showers His righteousness on us (see Hosea 10:12)