Hosea-3-I will answer

The Word of God

It is from Hosea, chapter 2, verses 14 through 23.

 

"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. 'In that day,' declares the LORD, 'you will call me 'my husband'; you will no longer call me 'my Baal.' I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; they will never again be invoked by their names. In that day I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds in the sky and the creatures that crawl along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety. I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD. 'In that day I will respond,' declares the LORD. 'I will respond to the heavens, and they will respond to the earth; and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called 'Not my loved one.' I will say to those called 'Not my people,' 'You are my people'; and they will say, 'You are my God.'' Amen."

 

The Path of Salvation Seen Through Hosea and Gomer

These scenes, which show the relationship between God and Israel through the lives of two people, Hosea and Gomer, actually show Christ, who came at the end of time, took on a body like ours, experienced all that we go through in life, and completed everything. Although Hosea and Gomer failed, and Israel did not repent and eventually went down the path of destruction, we realize while reading the Book of Hosea that God completed all this not on the path of destruction, but on the path that saves us.

 

The entire second chapter of the Book of Hosea, including the latter part that we read today, structurally features the phrase “Therefore” three times. And that “Therefore” contains God’s response to Israel. In other words, it shows in three stages how Gomer acted and how God responded to her.

 

The Journey to Understanding God’s Grace

In fact, this entire text explains what God’s grace is. After hearing this message, I hope a desire rises in your hearts to read the Book of John again, or the Book of Romans, or the Book of Galatians. This is because this message shows how God treats you, what He has done, and who He is.

 

The word “Therefore” first appears in verse 6. Let’s read it together: “Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.” This message is about Gomer and, at the same time, about Israel. What did Gomer do to deserve this? The Bible gives the reason, saying, “You say you will follow your lovers.” Why would she want to follow those who love her?

 

God Forgotten in the Midst of Abundance

Gomer says she wants to follow them because she gets food, drink, clothing, oil, and wine from them. This story is deeply related to the background of the Bible we are reading. As mentioned before, in the time of Jeroboam, God blessed Israel, and they experienced the most prosperous period in their history. It is as if Gomer, as Israel, is enjoying all this abundance. But Gomer, that is, Israel, says to God, “This was not given to me by God, but by someone who loves me.” And she simply says, “I will follow him.” When we read these words, we can immediately see how absurd this is.

 

A Life Where the Heart is Stolen by What is Visible

We may wonder how someone could be so blind, how they could miss this truth. This is because it contains a truth that we know so well. We confess that all good things come from God. But here, Israel, Gomer, seems to be intentionally ignoring and disregarding that. Furthermore, we know who is the owner of all these things, who is the one who gives and allows all this, and that the true owner of all this is God. But now Gomer, that is, Israel, is not acknowledging that.

 

Why did this happen? It seems illogical to us. “How could they not know that God gave them these things?” Did Gomer and Israel really not know that God was behind all this? No. Of course, they knew. They were a nation established by God, a chosen people of God, a nation that had been led by kings appointed by God. Do you think they knew nothing? Of course, they knew.

 

But what was most important to this woman right now? What she had, what she was pursuing. It was all the things of this world that fed her, clothed her, and gave her to drink. She did not initially deny that these things came from God, but she started to pour all her attention into them. As a result, those things began to look bigger, and as she started to look at them closely, the God who gives all things began to disappear from view. She stopped seeking God.

 

At this point, I want you to reflect on your own faith life. What about you?

 

God's Presence Forgotten in Faith

Where is God in all the things you worry about, contemplate, and invest your time in every day? We can all say, "God gave me this," and express gratitude. But what is truly stealing your heart? If in your life you can’t even remember God, and you don't deny that everything comes from Him, but other things still look bigger, it will be hard to be grateful. It will be difficult to remember.

 

If this is happening in my faith life, you and I can easily have our hearts stolen by something else that gives us something. In many cases, we acknowledge that God gave us air and sunlight. But what about the money you earn through hard work?

 

Obsession with Possessions

Isn’t your job feeding you right now? Don't customers buy your products, leaving you with profit so you can live? Where did the clothes you wear come from? We so easily say, “I worked hard to earn the money to buy the clothes I like.” Is there anything wrong with that in itself? But while saying that, if the possessions we have and the things we think about start to get bigger, what begins to disappear? God begins to disappear from view.

 

We become people who live on the money we earn through hard work. We become people who live on the money in our bank accounts that we saved and worked for. These are valuable things, and they are certainly possessions you earned through hard work and God’s grace. How to manage these things well and live before God is important, but it is also very easy for the priorities to be reversed. This is because they start to look bigger. Because it seems as though they are feeding us. At that point, we end up actually denying God.

 

If we apply this to Israel and all of us, God gave us good things, and we received them, saying, “Ah, this is a gift from God.” What do we do then? Generally, if someone gives you a gift, do you just put it behind you and go home? What do you do? As human beings, wouldn’t we lift our heads to look and say, “Who is giving this?” But we do not do that. What do we look at? The gift we received is the most important thing. That is all we see. We say, “Ah, God has blessed me.” It ends there, with the fact that “God has blessed me,” not with the God who blessed me. Once we receive the gift, we only think about what we will do with it now.

 

How is that so different from the behavior of Israel? We only see the object in our hand, and we easily forget the God who is the owner of that hand. That is why we start to have our hearts stolen by our own comfort, happiness, and possessions. I used money, jobs, or things you own as examples to make it easy for you to understand, but there are far more subtle and terrifying things than these. There are so many things that can take up our hearts. This is because the things that my greed creates are so diverse and subtle. At times, even my own faith, even my holy heart toward God, greed tries to take away.

 

Fallen Faith

So, instead of getting closer to God, we begin to have our hearts stolen by what we are receiving, what we know, and what we have. It is not much different from Israel. The fact that “we are God’s chosen people” did not make them look to God, thank God, or wonder, “How can I, who have received this great grace, become a nation of priests and preach to and save other nations and all Gentiles?” They focused all their eyes on “I am a chosen person, we are the chosen ones.” All our hearts were drawn there. At that moment, we realize that we are doing the same thing that Israel did. This is what Gomer and Israel did.

 

How did God react? What would you do?

 

The Betrayal of Love and God's Response

What would you do if you gave everything to your most precious child or friend, and they didn’t even send you a phone call or a text message? If you prepared a gift for them at home with all your heart, but your child acts like they didn’t even receive it and just goes into their room to play alone, it is natural to feel hurt. That is why we teach our children to say, “Thank you.” We would feel even more hurt by a friend. What would you do then? You would say, “I’m never giving anything to them again” or think, “This is not the kind of person I want to be friends with.”

 

But this problem is much more serious than that. It is a situation where your wife meets another lover, takes things from your house to give to him, and says, “I’m going to follow that man.” How would you react? The natural reaction would be, “What on earth are you doing?” But the Bible says “Therefore” and introduces an amazing husband. That is the message of verse 6 that we read earlier: “I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way.”

 

The Husband's 'Love' and 'Punishment'

In today's terms, instead of saying to this unfaithful wife, “Okay, if you like him, go live with him,” he is saying, “Hey, give me the car keys. You’re not going to drive that car anymore,” and takes her car keys. He is nailing the door shut so she cannot leave the house. Do you think this is a reasonable thing to do? Does it make sense?

 

Going a little further, it gets even more strange. In fact, Hosea chapter 2 is a courtroom drama. The husband goes before the judge and asks for a ruling, saying, “My wife is this kind of woman.” The ruling he asks for is, “Please let me have the car keys so she can’t drive. Please allow me to nail the door shut.”

 

God's Reclamation of All Things

But that is not all. The word “Therefore” appears one more time. Let’s read verse 9 together: “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her naked body.” “Linen” here refers to the cloth. Taking away this cloth means this:

 

The husband gave his wife many gifts, such as earrings, jewelry, clothes, and an allowance. Then, a package arrives. The sender is clearly him, but his wife looks at it and says, “Oh, this must be from some guy named Kim.” If she is sitting there feeling happy, saying, “That person really loves me,” what would you do? You would feel like a knife or a gun is going back and forth in your mind. The person who received something that you intentionally ordered instead goes to someone else and says, “That person loves me. I’m going to go to that person,” and takes gold and silver to give to him. The Bible describes this as the worship of Baal.

 

Therefore, God says, “Give it all back to me. Give back everything I bought for you; put it back where it belongs. I cannot give this to you because you are not worthy to receive it,” and takes everything away. This is like a common scene in Korean dramas, where a father shaves his daughter’s head, locks his wife in the house, and takes all her clothes so she cannot go outside out of shame. He keeps her locked up until she comes to her senses.

 

This story seems exciting, but in fact, behind it is “punishment.” This is because He takes everything away and blocks her from leaving the house. But this is a story about saving her. It is not a story about casting her away.

 

Heartbreaking Love, and Obsession

This story is strange. He should cast her away, but God does not do that. It is so amazing that this becomes a love story. This is an incredible husband. We are bound to feel angry and hurt first because of the sense of loss, but God is willing to endure that and keep her by His side even if it means taking her keys so she cannot leave. He does everything in His power to hold on to her.

 

Loving Israel is truly a heartbreaking task. They constantly try to run away, misunderstand His love, and fail to see His heart. But He keeps loving them anyway, making it a truly heartbreaking love.

 

From the Path of Destruction to the Path of Life

But God says He will do it anyway. “Even if my heart breaks, I will not let you go. I will shed tears for my people. I desperately hope for them to return. I will do whatever it takes to save them.” The people of Israel, who are God’s people, try to abandon God, but God says, “No, I cannot abandon you.” This is a tragic story, but God is continuing to do this now to end it with love.

 

The world would not understand this love. It would be an even stranger story today. People would say it is pathetic. If a woman is trying to abandon her husband by giving gold and silver to another man and trying to leave, and a husband is trying to devote himself to her, what advice would you give him? Wouldn’t you say, “Just let her go. If you truly love her, let her go”? Isn't that our common sense? “Hey, she misunderstands you and doesn’t know your love to that extent. Just let her go and live with the person she loves,” wouldn't you say that? If you were to give advice, which side would be the more reasonable one in the world?

 

If you hold on to her until the end, what do we say? “This is not love; this is an obsession, isn’t it?” Don't we say, "She is so happy, so just let her be happy. That is what true love is"? Have we watched too many dramas? But a third “Therefore” comes. Let's think about this after reading this “Therefore.” Does it make sense? The third “Therefore” says this:

 

The Place of First Love, the Wilderness

Let’s read the text we read today, verse 14, together: “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.” Do you think this husband is in his right mind? Locking her in the house might be an act of punishment. But instead of locking her up, tormenting her, and cursing her, saying, “Are you out of your mind? How can you not understand my heart like this?” he is approaching her in this way.

 

He sits her down in front of him, and he sits down next to her and speaks to her “tenderly.” This translation of the word “tenderly” is an excellent one. It contains the meaning of persuasion. If we 풀어 it in the original language, it means this: The speaker “opens their heart” to the other person. God is now opening His heart and beginning to persuade this woman who not only betrayed Him but also took everything He gave her and gave it to her enemies. He is telling her, “How I love you, what I have done for you, and what my heart is like.”

 

But where does He go to talk to her? He leads her to the wilderness, a rugged land where there is nothing. When you read the Book of Hosea, you must always remember this: the love story that Hosea is telling is deeply related to the Book of Exodus. Where did the people of Israel go after they came out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea? They went to the wilderness. Where did the nation of Israel and God first meet face to face, first begin their love story, and first share their first love? The place of their first love, the place of their first kiss, that is the wilderness.

 

God is now taking Israel to that very place. “Here, I became a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire and protected you. When it was hot during the day, I became an air conditioner for you, and when it was dark and cold at night, I became a fire that blazed for you. When it seemed you would lose your way and wander, I was with you, and when your enemies tried to kill you, I fought for you. I loved you here.”

 

How much did He love them? Deuteronomy records it this way: “Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during the forty years.” (Deuteronomy 8) After forty years, their clothes had not worn out, and their shoes and feet had not swollen. In a place where there was no food and no flowing water every day, He fed them and gave them to drink. Jeremiah describes this by saying, “Do you remember when we were newlyweds? Do you remember that love? At that time, in that land where you could not even sow a seed, in the wilderness, you followed me.”

 

When God became a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire, they followed God, saying, “This is the only way I can live.” When He gave them manna, they praised Him, gave thanks, and followed Him. It goes without saying what happened when they crossed the Red Sea. He asks them if they do not remember that love from when they were newlyweds during those forty years in the wilderness.

 

Have you ever seen a love this romantic? A wife has done something completely absurd and has returned home, and the husband goes to the judge and says about her, “Please give me a ruling of a stay-away order, not for her to stay away from me, but for her to not be able to be separated from me. Please allow me to take her car keys, and please allow me to nail the door shut. And I will lock her in the house.” And then he sits her down and says, “Let's go together,” and goes to the place of their first love. “Do you remember the day we first met? Do you remember the day I gave you your first gift? Do you remember the day we shared such great grace together?”

 

This was God’s heart, and this was God’s action. God comforted Israel. He was expected to get angry, scold them, be filled with wrath, and judge them, but instead, He sits them down and opens His heart. “How I love you, how I think of you, what you mean to me.” This universe is not visible to God’s eyes. Nothing in this world can steal the Lord’s eyes.

 

The Door of Hope, the Valley of Achor

God loves you so much that His gaze cannot turn to any other place. With all His heart, He is looking toward you. The Lord’s amazing plan does not end there; He promises, “I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.” You probably know the Valley of Achor mainly through the hymn, “Even to the Valley of Achor and the empty fields, I will go with the gospel.” So you might think of the Valley of Achor as a dark, gloomy, and difficult place. But in fact, that is not what it means. The word “Achor” means “trouble” or “affliction.”

 

This word appears when Joshua first entered Canaan. Do you remember the name of the first city they captured when they entered Canaan? The city's name? The first city they destroyed when they entered Canaan was Jericho. It was not because Joshua made a good strategy that it was destroyed. God destroyed the city. The people of Israel saw it and went wild with excitement. Joshua probably also became quite arrogant. So, when he went to attack the much smaller city of Ai, he led his army with great confidence. They were utterly defeated. They were utterly defeated. But when he asked God for the reason for their defeat, God said, “It is because you have stolen what belongs to me.”

 

That is when the famous person appears: Achan. Achan secretly stole the things from Jericho that God had told them to give to Him. This was a serious incident in which he disobeyed God's word, pursued his own greed, and stole what belonged to God. Because of this incident, Achan was stoned to death, and the place was named the Valley of Achor. But because this incident happened, what happened when Israel attacked Ai afterward? They were victorious.

 

Still Gomer Goes, Still God Loves

By punishing Achan, God made the nation of Israel holy, and because of that, they were able to be victorious again. The Valley of Achor was a place of trouble on the one hand, but it could become a place of hope on the other. Now Hosea is saying, “I will make this Valley of Achor not a place of trouble, death, and destruction, but a place of hope and victory.” God’s holiness and victory would appear there. “Then you will sing a song of joy, just as my people did when they came out of Egypt.” This was God’s plan and will.

 

When we read the Book of Hosea, we discover some shocking facts. When God did this much, and opened His heart and said, “I love you this much,” don't you think Gomer, if she had a conscience, should have at least tried to make an effort? But Gomer, in the end, never turns back. She continues to go down the path of sin.

 

A long time ago, I don't know what year, Pastor Young-sun Park gave a lecture on the Book of Hosea. I remember him saying something like this: After reading the Book of Hosea, he could only remember one phrase: “A terrifying God!” He said he thought, “How could He pursue her to the very end?” and “If a God like this pursues me, how can I live?” That is also a valid point, but I already have a very different phrase that always comes to my mind before we even get to the end: “A terrifying Gomer!” How can someone receive a confession of love like this, go to the place of their first love, and have God persuade and comfort them by saying, “Do you remember our first love?” and yet, in the end, Gomer continues to run toward sin, leaving God?

 

As you already know, this story is not about Gomer and Israel; it is about you and me. Gomer met Hosea, had three children, and for about five to seven years, she was doing other things and sinning. God called her back, forgave her, and persuaded her, but she did not listen. What about you? Haven’t you been making your own way for 30 or 40 years? Haven't you said, "I will go my own way"? Can you really say you know God’s love? Do you surrender to that love? Or do you surrender to religion? Are we living by surrendering to a kind of faith that has become so familiar through our church life, which always seems the same?

 

True Faith and the World's Temptations

Or do you see the church as a place that can satisfy your heart, a place where someone recognizes you, a place where you can still speak your mind? So do you think, “Here in this church, I feel alive, my voice seems to be heard, and people can praise me, even though I get criticized sometimes. It is better for me to be here”? Are you really listening to this story of God’s first love? Every week, or perhaps several times a week, God is probably speaking to you, but where are we at that time?

 

Look at Gomer. To put it kindly, you could say that she misunderstands her husband’s love. She might think, “Stop it, it’s annoying. I’m tired. Why are you restraining me like this? Why are you taking away my freedom?” We can try to understand her that way. This is because God’s love can seem intense, and it is certainly not a normal love. So we can understand her wanting more freedom, but honestly, the story in the Book of Hosea is not like that at all.

 

Gomer’s actions are just an excuse. In fact, she desired the possessions in her hand—everything that fed her, clothed her, and made her happy—and the worldly things that made her comfortable, like money in our terms, more than she desired God. She must have thought, “I can’t trust God; I don’t know when He might change His mind. But money will not betray me.” That is why people easily trust money and consider it their faith. So what are you holding on to? The path this woman is on is very clear. Where is she going? She can only go down the path of destruction.

 

God Who Came With Us on the Path of Destruction

As I said before, if you truly love someone, and they say they want to go to another place to live happily, would you be able to say, “Go, I cannot do anything for you”? Would you consider that to be a more generous and broad-minded kind of love? But God does not do that. He says He will hold on to His loved one until the end and even nail the door shut to prevent her from going outside. This kind of love is called “obsession” in modern times. We might say, “This is not love. This is an obsession, and you just want to keep him in your hands and do what you want with him. How is this love?”

 

But this kind of love can be acknowledged under one condition. That is, when I go to my death for the person I love. When God looks at Israel, or when Hosea looks at Gomer, He sees that there is only death on the path she is going down. It is the path of destruction. There is no hope, and there is only death on that path. He knows too well that she will die. It is not just death; it is the path to destruction. In that case, saying, “No, you can't! I will absolutely not allow that” is no longer an obsession but a matter of the intensity of love. How great is that love?

 

Even if people say, “That’s not love. How can you be like that?” He says, “I will save her even if I have to endure all that criticism.” Even if He is despised and people say, “Isn’t he a lunatic?” He goes down that path. And in fact, He was called those things. God was called a madman, a heretic, and a man out of His mind. And not only that, they said, “Hey, if you’re the Messiah, take care of yourself. Save yourself. I will believe you if you come down from there.” He was ridiculed and mocked in this way.

 

But what did God do to Gomer, who ran down the path of destruction? Did He say, “Oh well, I’ve done enough. I’ve done all I could,” when she finally broke the door down and went out stubbornly insisting on going her own way?

 

The Husband's Death, the Wife's Life

Toward Israel, who ran away with the car keys, He did not despair and say, “There is no longer any way to make you love me, and now I don’t even have a car to follow you with.” Instead, He cried out, “If I don’t have a car, I will take my bicycle and I will surely pursue you,” and went out. On what path? Yes, He went on the path of destruction. If He goes now, He will be killed in a car accident. But He goes, saying He will go down that path first.

 

Do you know what is happening now? He is going down to destruction, but instead of stopping there, He says, “Then I will go with you on the path of destruction.” And He really did face destruction. He met His death. So this sad and painful story ends with the death of the husband, so that the wife may live, and so that we may all be amazed. The husband followed her on the path of destruction and eventually faced destruction himself, giving up everything he had, even his life.

 

How moving yet tragic and terrifying is this story? If God were to describe this day, He might call it the great “Day of Jesus Christ’s Sacrifice” or the “Day of God’s Darkness.” But do you know what Hosea calls it? In today’s text, he puts it this way: “On that day when the curse was poured out, on that day when all were doomed to die, on that day when darkness covered the world,” do you know what he calls that day? “I will marry you and live with you forever.”

 

“You will be my eternal wife, and I will take your death and destruction upon myself, and in return, you will be my eternal wife and enjoy eternal life with me.” “On that day, I will take you as my wife in righteousness.” “That's right, it is right for you to die from punishment. You are an unfaithful woman who betrayed your husband, and it is right for you to die that way. But even such a person, I will take as my wife.”

 

God's Love Revealed on the Cross

We are people who do not budge even when God ceaselessly tells us to come back, and God ceaselessly tells us that He loves us. That's right. It is right for us to go our own stubborn way and fall off that cliff and die. God says that: “By righteousness, by justice, it is right for you to die.” So what did He do? “For you, I will die.”

 

That is what the two words that follow mean: “in loving kindness and compassion,” I will be betrothed to you; “in faithfulness,” I will betroth you. Then on that day, you will know. You will know who you are married to and who your husband is. The Bible expresses another of the most important themes of the Book of Hosea so wonderfully: “You will acknowledge the Lord.” You will know what I said when I opened my heart to you and sat in front of you.

 

Under the cross of Christ, you will see and know that day how God’s heart did what it did to give life to us and to all of us. On that day, you will see and know who loves you, what His intense love was like, and how far He chased after you. You will see on that day who is the one who died at the cliff in front of you, whose body is there, bleeding. And you will say, “How I lived, what my life means, and what God and His love are like, I will know the Lord.” On that place stained with pain and misery, the Lord says, “On this day, on this day when everything is dark, I will take you as my eternal bride. You will finally know my heart and my love.” And the long confession of God that first appears in the Book of Hosea— “I will show my love to her whom I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people.’ I will chase you down even to the path of destruction. I will give you everything”—throughout all of this, Israel, who did not say a word, who could not say a word, and who did not give any response, will say, “I will acknowledge the Lord.” God says that finally someone will respond, and at that time, you will finally make your confession. You will finally know me, my heart, and my love, and you will say to me, “You will finally answer me.” And at that time, Gomer, these people, and we will have the confession bursting from our mouths: “You are my eternal love, You are my God, my Savior, and the one who loved me more than death itself.” On that day, we will stand before this gospel.

 

My dear friends, God is saying this: “I will surely hear these words from you. No matter how long it takes, even if a moment comes when you betray me, reject me, and even seem to leave me, and actually do seem to leave me, I will hear these words from your mouth, from your life, and from your heart: ‘You are my God, You are my Lord, You are my Savior, You are my love. My Lord who loved me, I confess to You.’” That confession is your confession, and it will save you.

 

Prayer

Hired hands will flee without protecting us, but the Good Shepherd will lay down his life for us. False husbands and false lovers only thought about what they could take and exploit, and they didn’t know how to treat us well, but the true Husband, our Lord, went to the place of death to lay down His life for us. The true Groom, God, has followed us to the path of destruction for our sake.

 

We are to follow the Lord; we are to follow the good Lord, to follow the light, but none of us followed the light; we loved the darkness. But the Lord pursued us as we ran into the darkness, into self-pity, and into our sins, falling deeper and deeper. He came after us. He followed us. And He carried the cross for us.

 

Therefore, Lord, just as you said to us, “Therefore,” we also want to use the word “Therefore” to say, “Therefore, you are my joy, my life, my love, my salvation, and my God. You alone are my God.” We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.