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Hosea was a prophet who preached to the northern tribes of Israel for somewhere between 52 and 70 years. His name means deliverance, but his message was primarily one of gloom and doom because he lived in a time when Israel was not serving God and had turned to idols. In fact, Hosea preached at probably the darkest and lowest point of Israel's history -- right before they were swept away in judgment by the Assyrians. We'll talk more about what was going on in Israel at this time in later lessons, but for this introduction, it is important to note that the book of Hosea is not all of his sermons. When you read this book, you are reading the highlights of almost 70 years of preaching written by an old Hosea at the end of his life, looking back. Hosea, then, is different from most of the other prophets in the scripture as he did not record his sermons at the moment they were given to him but recorded them later after he could see what happened and how everything had culminated. This is why the book is so hard to go verse by verse through because after the first chapter, Hosea sort of "skips around" and jumps from one prophecy to another without any warning.

Hosea is also different from most of the other prophets because it has a story linked to the sermons. Of the twelve books we call the "minor prophets," there are only two that tell a definite story: Jonah, which is almost all narrative involving a stubborn man and a big fish and an even bigger city; and then the other is our focus, the book of Hosea.

The story of Hosea is very powerful. The basic story is that Hosea married a woman named Gomer. Gomer means "complete." They had three children: Jezreel, meaning "God scatters and sows;" Lo-ruhamah, meaning "no mercy;" and Lo-ammi meaning "no people." It was God who named the children for Hosea and they were to represent God's feelings toward His children, the people of Israel. After the three children were born, Gomer cheated on Hosea and after her adultery, he kicked her out of the house. Gomer, once the wife of a prophet of the upper class became a prostitute, selling her body on the streets and then eventually became a slave. It was after years had passed that Hosea was walking by the slave block where the slaves were auctioned off that he saw the broken and wasted wife of his youth standing there in shackles for sale. It was then that God spoke to him and told him to buy her back and to not only redeem her as a slave but to take her back and restore her as his wife and forgiver her and truly love her. Hosea obeyed God resolutely.

The first part of the story is tragic but common. There are many instances today of a wife being unfaithful and of a home splitting. Children are often involved and feel as if they are a "Lo-ruhamah" and a "Lo-ammi" or having no mercy and not really belonging anywhere as a person. But the last part of the story is what is amazing and extremely uncommon. The fact that Hosea redeemed his wife after sin had taken her to the bottom of the pit of life and not only purchased her but restored her as his wife and truly loved her blows our mind! It showed to Israel and to us the true and powerful love of Almighty God!

Hopefully by now you are starting to realize the power found in the story of Hosea. God allowed Hosea's life to mirror His relationship with Israel. God had told Israel "I am bethrothed to thee forever." God considered Israel as His wife. They were precious to Him. But they were unfaithful to Him by loving other things and worshipping idols more than Him. And to God, their idolatry was like "adultery." And to illustrate His hurt and pain to Israel, God chose a man named Hosea (deliverance) to marry a woman Gomer (complete) who would be unfaithful and God let that man's life carry His message to Israel. Hosea, of course, represented the deliverance of the Lord. Without Gomer, his love would not be "complete." God was telling Israel, that "I wanted to deliver you. I wanted to be your deliverance, but my deliverance and love is not complete without you!" For God to truly love, He must have something to love, and when you understand that, you realize why an all-powerful God created this universe and this world and man and woman. His love was so great and so unselfish that the All-powerful ONE could not lavish His love on Himself, so He created a creature that would be able to experience and understand His love.

But like Gomer, humanity went astray. Adam sinned and thus opened his bloodline to the degeneration of sin and hurt and pain and everyone of us were born into such a world. You don't have to look too far to see people's lives hurt and injured and marred by sin and yet they still willingly sell their souls and their day to day lives on the slave block of sin. They are slaves bound by habits that they can't break and by desires that they can't control even though they know it will destroy them. Like Gomer, sin has taken humanity into a dark, dark, abyss of suffering and pain.

Ah, but like Hosea, God did not just sit idly by and let us die in our predicament! But despite our unfaithfulness and despite our inconsistencies and horrible state, God bought us back! And He redeemed us in a way that Hosea never would have dreamed: God didn't just plunk 30 pieces of silver -- the price for a slave in the Old Testament -- down on the table and purchase us like that. He redeemed us by becoming flesh and placing Himself in our place on the slave block! It was He who allowed Himself to be sold for 30 pieces of silver. It was He who allowed Himself to be whipped and placed upon a cross for our sins. He redeemed us by paying the awful price of sin which was death! God suffered so that we could live! God became flesh and that flesh died so that you and I could live forever! And interestingly, it was Hosea that Peter was referring to the story of Hosea when he wrote:

If you were to translate Peter's words back to Hebrew, he would have said in verse 10, you were once "Lo-ammi" or "no people" but now you are "ammi" "a people!" You were once "Lo-ruhamah" or "no mercy" but now you have obtained mercy "ruhamah!" Praise God that when a soul comes back to a place of salvation, they are Hosea and Gomer getting back together! Deliverance is complete! He has already paid the price, but until you come back to Him through repentance, water baptism in Jesus' name, and receiving the infilling of the Holy Ghost, His deliverance is not complete because it has no object! His love is not complete until you allow yourself to be loved! His salvation is not complete in your life until you become the one who is saved! You may view yourself as a loser and a failure but God calls you "Gomer" or "complete" because despite your sinful condition, He wants to buy you back and indeed the thirty pieces of silver has already been thrown down in the floor of the temple. The price has been paid, and God has done what He could do, but now it's up to you to complete the deliverance!

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Let's go back to the story of Hosea. Many Bible teachers have great difficulty with the second verse of our text. In fact, there are some preachers that will not even preach from this chapter because they do not understand this verse clearly. Now that you know the story of Hosea, let's look at verse 2 closely:

Hos 1:2 The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms: for the land hath committed great whoredom, departing from the LORD.

The difficulty comes from the fact that the King James Version English seems to say that God told Hosea to marry a woman who was a known prostitute or "whore" before he married her. That God would command a man of God to marry a prostitute is unthinkable because it contradicts scripture. If God had commanded such a thing, then God would be a liar because Solomon had already written Proverbs warning about the dangers of marrying unfaithful, impure women. James wrote "the Lord tempts no man," so understand that if this verse means that God commanded Hosea, a righteous man, to go down to the "red light" district and pick him out an evil and immoral woman to marry, then the Bible contradicts itself and we all need to go home and forget about serving God because He is a liar.

But God is NOT a liar! And if it ever seems that the Bible contradicts itself to you, then you are not taking a verse in context with all of the other verses on the subject. The Bible may contradict your opinion, if you opinion is wrong, but it doesn't contradict itself! "Let God be true and every man a liar!" Look back at the phrase that says "the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea." Unfortunately, the translators didn't convey the complete meaning of the Hebrew phrases here. This is one of the few small mistakes in the King James Version. The word "by" can also be translated as "with." The Amplified Bible puts it like this: "When the Lord first spoke with and through Hosea..." What's the point? The point is that this is not a message that Hosea preached. Chapter 1 is not the words of a sermon of Hosea, those come in the next chapter. These words are not the Lord speaking "through" Hosea, but rather God speaking "to" or "with" Hosea. And notice that phrase "the beginning."

Maybe it seems that I'm nit-picking the details, but I want you to realize the full truth of what is being said here. You are reading the beginning of the story of Hosea that is being written over six decades after it happened! This is an old man looking back and writing. God DID command Hosea to marry Gomer, but at the time Gomer could not have been a prostitute or else God would have contradicted His Word. When we visit Johnson City, we say "President Lyndon B. Johnson was born here." But he was not president the day that he was born. We are looking back through time and realized that the baby that was born back then would become a great leader of the American people. The God who knew all things knew and knew all things done in secret commanded Hosea to marry a woman who had the seeds of unfaithfulness deep in her heart that only God could see, but she was not a promiscuous woman at this time. When Hosea is writing, "God told me to go marry a prostitute, a harlot," he is simply looking back and realizing that "when I married her she already had the seeds of unfaithfulness within her." He was naming her for what she later became. But when Hosea married Gomer, at the time, and probably for at least 3 to 5 years while the children were being born, she was faithful and they probably had a happy marriage to an extent. It was only later that she proved unfaithful.

There are other things that we could bring up to prove that this is the correct view of this verse, but some of you are thinking "okay, I understand preacher, what's the point?"

The point is this: you are reading the words of an older man who has lived his life and is looking back on it. He truly love Gomer. Those first years were probably some of the happiest of his life. But then came the very real pain of seeing her be unfaithful to him. Then came the hurt of seeing her become a prostitute. The few years of joy and peace were swallowed up by the long years of sorrow at what it felt to be rejected and left alone. And the power of Hosea's writing is not in what he said but in what he could have said but didn't. He could have written "those were the worst times of my life." He could have said "marrying Gomer was the worst mistake that I ever made." He could have written with a bitterness of spirit: "I don't know why God let me marry such a woman that would bring such pain and suffering."

But Hosea didn't write such things. In fact, looking back he very firmly wrote "the Lord commanded me to go marry a prostitute." Looking back Hosea is not viewing his past hurts through natural eyes, but rather through the eyes of heaven. He is saying "God guided me." "God had a purpose for my life." "God knew all things and yet He allowed sorrow to come into my life because He had a plan to fulfill." Hosea was saying "I was in the perfect will of God by experiencing sorrow."

How was sorrow the will of God for Hosea's life? Because instead of being mad at the sin of Israel and preaching with anger, Hosea's messages about God's hurt and pain were tinged with his own hurt and pain. He has been described as the "prophet with a broken heart" because despite bringing a message of coming judgment, he does not come across hard or judgmental but rather of a broken man who knew what God felt like. Through his suffering, Hosea came to know what God felt like. In losing Gomer, Hosea learned what God felt like losing Israel to idolatry. Hosea realized that God's judgment stemmed not from his anger, but from His heartache. And He learned that from seeing the world through the sorrow of his own situation. Nowhere else in scripture is a man's life so intertwined with His message from God as Hosea's. And looking back, Hosea can boldly write "that sorrow brought about the perfect will of God because it helped me to see things how God sees things." God allowed the hurt and the suffering so that I could "know Him better."

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When you break the scriptures down, living for God is really about "knowing God." It's about a personal relationship with Him! Throughout your entire life, God has had a plan in place for you -- if you desired to -- come to know Him better and closer. God chose the situation in which you would be born -- you had no control over that. And God placed everyone of us in a situation that was imperfect and some of you in horrible situations of life, knowing the seeds of sin that were hidden in the people's hearts that were around you. It was still their choice to sin or not to sin. To hurt or not to hurt. God does not predestinate people's actions. Judas could have betrayed Jesus but he didn't have to. God does not use his foreknowledge to predestinate people's actions. You are a free-will, moral agent. You can choose to live right or to live wrong. But yet God does know the inclinations and possibilities of evil in people's lives and God placed you within a unique circumstances just as He placed Hosea.

And the natural response is to blame God. "How could He let this happen to me?" "How could a good God allow suffering in my life?" How come bad things happen to good people? And we could do well to learn the lesson of Hosea: God allowed suffering in your life as part of a large plan "to know Him." God cares about your everyday problems, but He cares MORE about your eternal destination! Chances are that if you had had an easy life with no suffering and no bad situation and no pain and heartache, then you would have never turned to God. Why would you have needed Him? What would have identified your need of Him? And if you would have lived your 80 years on earth with no bad experiences and no bad situations and no hurts and no pains and yet never developed a relationship with God and died lost, then what would those few years have gained you!? But if your life is horrible and every thing goes wrong, and you never reach any type of success by this world's standards and yet through having to depend solely on God, you learn more about Him and live your life trusting in Him to deliver you and die right with Him to live with Him for eternity in the place of no more hardship and no more pain, then haven't you really gained everything!?

"What are you preaching, preacher?!" I'm preaching that sometimes, most times, the perfect will of God in our lives includes suffering. It's not a popular message, but it's the truth. And so Christians will either get bitter and blame God like Hosea DID NOT do, or they will get the revelation of why God allows suffering in their lives. It is simply part of a grand plan of God in my life for me to learn about Him and to know Him and love Him and to care about Him and to have Him reveal His power to me! ________________________________________________________________________

When you read all of Philippians chapter 3, you will find that the Apostle Paul is writing about this same attitude in his own life. He is writing from a Roman jail only 5 years before his death and Paul is looking back at his accomplishments and sorrows much as Hosea was doing in the first chapter of his book. Paul wrote:

In other words, Paul is saying "when I think back to all the accomplishments and achievements that I attained in this life, I realize that it is all worthless and that the only thing worth anything is that I have knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord." Paul was saying "the only thing that really is important in all my sorrow is that through it all I found a close relationship with God!" And then comes our text in verse 10 where Paul says "really the only thing that matters in life to me and the only thing really important to me is:

In the Greek, the phrases “power of his resurrection” and “the fellowship of his sufferings” are linked together in idea indicating that they go together. Paul understood something about suffering: that it sets up resurrection! We love the feeling of resurrection, but remember that it is a death that makes the resurrection needed and possible. If you never die, you will never learn what a resurrection feels like. The sorrow that brings hurt sets up the deliverance that brings joy! Paul said: "that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings!" Paul was saying "through my sufferings I become more dependent and therefore get to know God better and learn to love God more! Therefore I will call it "the fellowship of His sufferings." Because I have not experienced pain and hurt that is beyond what Jesus Christ suffered on earth. And my pain and heartache brought on by a few men and women are nothing compared to the hurt that God feels when "billions" of people reject His love day in and day out.

Before I close, let me chase a "pastoral rabbit." We love the feeling of the Holy Ghost because that is a spiritual resurrection of the inner man and there is nothing that compares to receiving and yielding to the Holy Spirit, but never forget that it was set up by a death of Repentance. People want the joy of God and they want the feeling of power and love that receiving the Holy Ghost brings, but they do not love Repentance. Most people hate it when the preacher preaches on sin and so they "pass the buck" by labeling a preacher as "judgmental" or "hard" or "hammering people" if the preacher preaches the Bible's view against anything. I've even known people to get mad at the preacher and view him as "harsh" and "mean" simply because the preacher told the truth about their life and the sin in their life.

A person who views the man of God that way is a fool and is ignorant of even the basic scriptures of how God works. Paul wrote to the church that he had severely corrected:

When a preacher identifies sin in your life, and you feel "bad about it" that is God giving your permission to repent. When a preacher is preaching hard about things that we need to change, it is not meanness or hardness but actually a desire to see people experience the Holy Ghost and resurrection and joy, because the preacher knows that you will never experience the joy and the liberty that you want with sin still in your heart and life. Therefore he (or she) doesn't mind making you uncomfortable for a time if that conviction and uncomfortable ness leads to true repentance and new life and joy and freedom in Jesus Christ! The preacher preaches hard against sin because the repentance leads to the Holy Spirit operating in your life! The sorrow brings salvation that you will not regret receiving!

And it is the same with God. He doesn't allow sorrow in your life because He is harsh or judgmental. He allows sorrow to come in your life so that you will be able to experience the joy and the power of knowing Him and trusting Him and loving Him more! Chances are that living for God will not solve all of your personal hurts and situations, but I can tell you that after it's all over, you will look back that "through it all" you learned to trust in Jesus and you learned to stand upon His Word and your "unresolved" situations actually brought your salvation!

I close with this:

When we read our first text in Hosea, I purposefully read the last part of the chapter and the first verse of the second because I wanted you to see how it ended up. God told Hosea that He would turn back to Israel one day just as he redeemed Gomer. And then God said this:

In other words, God is saying "after my judgment and the sorrow that you will feel after the Assyrians come and destroy you, there will come a day that when you turn back to me I will turn back to you and you will need to take the 'lo' off of your children's names. No longer will you not be a people but you will be a people. No longer will you be without mercy, but you will once again experience mercy!" Remember that Jezreel meant "God scatters and sows." God was saying "I have scattered you in judgment, but now I will sow good things among you!" The sorrow sets up the joy. The sorrow in your life was in the perfect will of God because He turned it into an avenue for you to be more blessed and more importantly to know Him better!

To know God in the fellowship of His suffering is the importance and purpose of hardships. Ask Job. Ask Jesus. Ask Paul. Ask Hosea. Don't get bitter and blame God. Don't get mad and shake your fist at God for the sorrow in your life. View your life through heavenly lenses. Stay faithful to God and remember that the sorrow is just setting up a resurrection. It serves a useful purpose in keeping you close to and trusting in God. And remember that when it is all said and done, you will one day be able to look back and say "it was the will of God for me to have that hurt." "God was at work in my life after all!" "That sorrow that I thought was going to kill me and that brought so many years of pain actually was in my best interest after all!" Now I know God better! Now I can live with Him for eternity! God knew what He was doing after all! And one day you will be able to thank Him for the "fellowship of His suffering!"