Word of Salvation – August 2024

 

Song Of The Jealous Lover

 

Sermon by Harry Burggraaf B.D.  on Hosea 2:19 + 23

Scripture Reading: Hosea 1; Hosea 2:14-23; Hosea 3

Songs:        Blessed is the man (BoW.1a)
                        Safe in the shadow of the Lord (BoW.91)

 

In the 1960s J.B.Phillips, the well-known Bible translator wrote a provocative little book called, 'Your God is too small'.

He suggested that most of us have an understanding or conception of God which is far too small, far too cramped, far too narrow.

It may be due to the way we saw our parents' faith operating;
it might be due to concentrating on certain biblical passages to the exclusion of others;
it might be due to poor preaching and wrong emphasis in the church;
it might be due to the popular images and pictures in society;
it might be due to a distorted theology;
whatever the influences or factors, says Phillips, our understanding of God is too small.

You might have heard the anecdote of the little boy in a strict Calvinist family in the Scottish highlands.  There was an unwritten rule in the family that you had to eat whatever was dished up and you couldn't leave any left overs.  Not a bad idea really in our age of waste, when I see what food is thrown away.  Anyway, one evening the family had prunes and custard for sweets.  The poor little chap could hardly stomach the custard, but as for the prunes!  There they were on his plate – two horrible, black, wrinkled prunes.  "Eat your prunes David".  He just couldn't.  "In this family we finish our plate clean, eat your prunes."  He refused.  "Eat you prunes David or God will be angry with you".  Still he refused, and he was sent to his bedroom until he decided to finish his plate.

That evening a huge storm came up – rain, hail, thunder, lightning.  The little chap in his bedroom was terrified.  With trepidation he went to the window and looked out into the dark sky.  Just then there was a huge clap of thunder and the little boy burst out, "My, my, such a fuss to make over two prunes.”

God, the punisher; God, the resident policeman!

But it is not just little kids that have the wrong picture of God.  I was reading a very sophisticated theology book the other day which spoke of 'the aseity' of God – the fact that he is self-existent, the uncreated, underived nature of God, that he doesn't depend on any cause, he is not acted upon, he is unmoved and unchanging.  Now that may be a healthy corrective in an age which often portrays God as the captive of his creation, caught in the processes of change and evolution.  However it is a dangerously unbalanced conception.

We should never be too ready to capture God in any doctrinal system, or think that even our best formulations really exhaust our understanding of God.  As the famous poet Tennyson wrote:

            "Our little systems have their day
             they have their day and cease to be
             they are but broken lights of thee
             and thou, oh Lord, art more than they."

Is your God too small?

The Bible introduces God to us by way of a huge range of rich imagery and wonderful metaphors.

* God is the Creative artist – splashing the stars and planets onto the canvas of the universe, like a John Pollock painting.

* God is the loving, caring, Father – protecting and providing for his children, nurturing them into maturity.

* God is the Mighty Warrior King, the Lord of Hosts – who controls the world and rules by his word of power and expects undivided allegiance.

* God is the Mother Hen – who protectively gathers her chickens under her wings at the least sign of danger.

* God is the impartial Judge – who determines right and wrong, sometimes gently, sometimes brutally, but always fairly.

* God is the empathic, understanding, healing Counsellor – who walks with us in our pain and addresses our fears and concerns.

Is your God too small?

This morning the Old Testament prophet Hosea introduces us to a quite unexpected, some might even think, outrageous metaphor of God – God the jealous lover.

Hosea is a fascinating book.  It's a theological drama, an extended metaphor, an acted out parable – but one which actually happened around 750BC.

As in a parable there is one main theme – COVENANT LOVE – the committed love and faithfulness of God for his people.

'I am your God, you are my people' and nothing will ever change that.

You can make the most awful mess of your life, you can try to give God the flick, your world can collapse, you can lose your way, you can be tormented by the most debilitating doubts and anxiety – and still God says, 'I am your God and you are mine.'  That's the message of Hosea.

So if you're going through a tough time, if your spiritual life is dried out, if you're fed up with your failures, or enticed by all sorts of substitutes for God – then read this book.

In Hosea we see God's absolutely tenacious stickability and enduring concern when it comes to his people's welfare and salvation.  A love (the Hebrew is ‘Cheseth’) that will not let you go!

Israel in the 8^th century BC was a mass of contradictions.  Outwardly the country was going well.  There was prosperity – full employment, surplus budgets, a flourishing agricultural sector, good balance of trade figures, booming building industry, the leaders and executives were making big bucks.  Our State Premier would have been proud to run such a state.

And there was lots of religious activity.  Lots of festivals and feasts.  Shrines on every second hill.  Religious ritual flourished.

But society was morally bankrupt.  It was the gods of the surrounding nations that were the focus of people's worship.  The rich and powerful had a stranglehold on the economy and exploited the those with less advantage.  The little person was exploited.  Unfair trading practices, depressed wages, fixed scales, corrupt business dealings were the order of the day.

The welfare system was a joke.  God's provisions for the disadvantaged and marginalised were ignored – the law of harvest, where enough grain around the perimeter of a field was left for the poor, the provisions of the jubilee where debts would be forgiven and slaves could go free every fifty years were neglected.

Morally the privileged led a penthouse, playboy existence.  Marriage and the family were under attack.  Jehovah, the Lord God was ignored.  ‘Sounds a little familiar...!

This was Israel and Judah.  God's chosen people.  This was supposed to be the special nation, the model theocratic kingdom.  God's show case to the world of what a community and society living by his principles would look like.  A light to the nations...!

Through Hosea, and using Hosea's marriage as a parable or metaphor, God presents himself as a thwarted husband and a jilted partner.  His relationship, his marriage to Israel has been torn apart by her unfaithfulness.  Israel is like a wife who has sold herself into prostitution.

But God is a jealous lover and as her legal husband, as her covenanted partner he is going to win her back.

I am always amazed how the Bible uses such powerful, gut wrenching, relevant imagery, life related imagery to get across the lessons we need to learn.

It's the good old eternal triangle.  A man and a woman more or less happily married.  Kids, house and mortgage bring their stresses and strains.  A third party enters the scene.  Affections grow, the marriage deteriorates, unfaithfulness, the inevitable break.  How common is that story.  Not much has changed in 27 centuries.  It's the theme of every second novel and film.

I'm an avid fan of David Lean, who I think is one of the great movie makers of this century.  Now dead I think.  His genre was the tragic epic – Lawrence of Arabia, Dr Zhivago, Ryan's Daughter.  Films with stunning photography and heroic human stories.

I remember seeing Ryan's Daughter as an impressionable young adult who hadn't fallen in love yet.  It is so much the message of Hosea.

- A beautiful Irish girl marries a staid middle aged school teacher, not because she is madly in love, but he's the best thing going in the small village and will provide stability and happiness.  He loves her deeply and cares for her with a tenderness that any woman would want.

- Along comes a glamorous British soldier; young, handsome, mysterious, exciting; the forbidden fruit – British soldiers in Ireland have never been all that welcome.

- They have an affair and are found out.  This is small town, conservative, Catholic, Ireland.  Society is outraged by the scandal.  How could she do it to such a decent, well-loved citizen as the school teacher?  She becomes a despised outcast.

- The staid old, unglamorous, caring, committed, loving school teacher, against all the pressures of the small minded, vindictive community, forgives her, accepts her back and romances her as best he can.

About as close a picture of Hosea's day as you can get.

"Hosea go and take for yourself an adulterous wife, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery", says God.

Actually the NIV is far too nice and proper here.  The Hebrew really says, "Go and marry a whore, and get children with a prostitute, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning God."

Imagine God saying that to one of our ministers.  'Go to St Kilda, get yourself a prostitute in Fitzroy Street and marry her; because that's what it’s been like for me to be the God of these people'.  Heavy stuff...!

Hosea marries Gomer and has a son, then a daughter, then another son.  But a third party enters the scene, there is just a hint of doubt for Hosea that the last two children are even his.  Then Gomer is back on the beat in the red light district.

And again God tells Hosea to get her back and love her.

This, says God, is what my love is like.

As I read the book of Hosea I am driven to reflect on my own relationship with God.  How much is he the focus of my first love, my most committed love?  How much does he take second or third place – or no place at all?

And as a church, denomination, or local community, how passionate are we in our love for God and his Kingdom?

You know theologians may speak about the aseity of God; self existent, unchanging, in no way needing our love and interest.  But that is not the picture we get here in Hosea.

In Hosea we see a husband in pain, a rightfully angry husband, a husband yearning, longing for, desiring his wife's singular and undivided love, a husband torn by righteous jealousy at the fickleness of a wayward partner.  God is not untouched or unmoved when he is no longer the central focus of our longings, our love and our commitments.  He is deeply pained when our relationship with him is fickle and shallow.

Young people, chapter 2 of Hosea is like a man or woman who has just learned about the betrayal of their partner, pacing the room, torn between white hot anger and longing, gentle, passionate love...

Vs.2 - 'rebuke your mother; she's not my wife'

Vs.3 - 'I'll make her into a desert, slay her with thirst'

Vs.13 - 'I'll punish her for the days she went after her lovers'

But I still love her, forgiveness and grace is going to win out

Vs.14 - 'therefore I am now going to allure her... and speak tenderly to her.'

You know Hosea 2 and 3 is one of the most moving, poignant pictures of the Gospel that we have anywhere in the scriptures.

We see Hosea, God, scouring the dark and seedy streets and alleys of the city for his faithless partner and at last he finds her, enslaved by the terrible prostitution racket, owned by the local pimp.  And he buys her back; he pays money for his own wife -- fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley.  And he romances her, he teaches her to fall in love with him all over again.

The second half of Hosea 2 is really a love poem, a love song, the song of the jealous lover.

The song starts with COURTSHIP.  We see God courting his faithless partner...

Vs.14 'therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her, there'll be romance and singing as when we first met'.

God, the sinned-against covenant partner, evoking again a heart of love and affection and commitment from his people.

Some time ago at a conference I met someone who ended up telling me something of his life story.  He shared how his mother and father had divorced and gone their separate ways for ten years.  But recently his father had been taking his mother out again; buying the gifts she loved; going to favourite restaurants and, he said rather hopefully, 'I think they're falling in love again.'

God actually woos our love; he turns our heart towards him, even when we've rejected him, so that we can start loving him again, as he does us.

The song goes on to BETROTHAL and ENGAGEMENT.  We see God betrothing his old covenant partner, Israel, he comes with the engagement ring of his grace and forgiveness and re-cements the relationship.

Vs.19/20 'I will betroth you to me forever... I will betroth you in faithfulness.'  He restored the marriage relationship.

It cost Hosea to win Gomer back – fifteen shekels of silver and a homer of barley - the price of a slave.

It cost God to betroth us to him.  As the apostle Peter reminds us:

"For you know that it was not with perishable things like silver and gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of your life... but with the precious blood of Christ."

Not the price of a slave, as with Hosea, but the inestimable gift of a son, sacrificed on a Roman cross.

In God's betrothal song in Hosea 2, a song of acceptance and embrace, we hear the faint echo of a cry of desolation – 'my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'

The song concludes with the MARRIAGE.

Vs.23 'Not my loved one', becomes 'my loved one' and 'not my people' becomes 'You are my people', and the bride responds, 'You are my God'.  The marriage covenant is renewed.

One of the most beautiful things about this picture is the presence of the marriage gifts.

'I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion... I will betroth you in faithfulness'.

The bridegroom bestows the very gifts that the bride has failed to bring to the relationship before.

In many agricultural societies there is the custom of a bride price.  The husband gives a range of goods or money to the bride’s family.  These actually function as a sort of an investment for the bride, a dowry to provide for her security.  Some commentators feel that there is an allusion to that here.  God gives his covenant partner the gifts of righteousness and justice, love and compassion, faithfulness, because they are so sadly lacking in our lives without him.

There is a poignant story from one of the Polynesian islands, a society where ‘bride price’ operates.  The story goes that there was a rich trader Johnny Lingo who could have married the most eligible, beautiful, well-connected girl on the island.  But he loved Sarita, plain, shy, shoulders hunched, head ducked.  He provides a bride price of eight cows for her.  Eight cows, that is an outrageous amount.  A girl from a common family would attract one or two COWS, the best connected girl perhaps five or six.  But eight?  He's been cheated, conned – for such a plain, ordinary wife.  All the young men on the island laugh at the way he's been taken for a ride.

A visitor comes to the island and hears the scorn and jokes about Johnny's eight cow wife.  He goes to visit Johnny and his wife expecting to meet a very plain, ordinary woman.  Instead he sees a sparkling, poised, confident, articulate woman, sure of herself and full of pride.

Johnny sees the visitor's questioning look, he knows the islanders think he's a fool for giving eight cows for someone considered plain.  He explains 'My Sarita had to know that I love her, that she was worth eight cows to me.  I wanted an eight cow wife and that is what she is.'

God wants Christlike covenant partners – holy, pure, righteous, just, compassionate, faithful – so that is the bride price he pays; these are the gifts he brings to the relationship.

And what is the RESPONSE of the bride.  What is the response of those who experience God's grace, forgiveness and restoration?

Vs.23 'and you will acknowledge the Lord... and they will say, "you are my God".

To know the embrace of the jealous lover, to receive his forgiveness, to experience his endless committed grace and faithfulness can only can only evoke the response, 'I love you Lord, I want to serve you with everything I am and have.'  In the words of the ancient song-writer:
            'Oh love that will not let me go
             I rest my weary soul in thee
             I give you back the life I owe
             That in your ocean depths,
             its flow May richer, fuller be.'