tearing God's heart

Tearing God's Heart

why would he love such a woman?

Hosea 2:13 "she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went her lovers, but me she forgot",

Hosea begin with a love story - a painful, personal love story, the prophet's very own.

Hosea had a married a woman who acted like a prostitude.

 Yet the more she went out on him, the more Hosea loved her.

 He gave her everything a good wife deserved: his love, his home, his name, his reputation.

She responded by living with other men.

He warned her, he pleaded with her, he punished

She humiliated him until he wanted to cry,yet still he clung to her.

Why did Hosea begin with his personal life?

Because God had expressly told him to relate it to another, more tragic love story: the painful love of God for his people.

God could have simply declared, "Israel is like a wife to me - an adulterous wife".

Instead, he used Hosea to act out the treachery in real life - and to show in living color God's fury, his jealously, and above all else,his love for his people.

Winding Down to a Bitter End

virtually every chapter of Hosea talks the "prostitution" or "adultery" of God's people (Hosea 1:2;2:2,4;3:1;  4:2, 10-15 18; 5:3,4 6:10; 7:4; 8:9; 9:1). 

Underlying some hand words is a remarkably tender revelation: God doesn't want to be only "maser" to his people.

He wants to be a husband, giving all of himself in intimate love.

God Is a Lover

when most people must have been preoccupied with politics and military matters, Hosea kept his message aimed at idol worship,which he referred to as adultery.He saw that the root of Israel problems.

Israel tended to mix religions freely - to think that everybody's religion had a little truth in it, and the more religion you got the better off you would be.

many prophets attacked Israel's idol worship. Hosea shows that God's concern about idolatry is no fussy, religious matter. It is terribly personal;

God's the lover, will not share his bride with anyone else.

God's anger and jealously, will expressed soften thought the Old Testament, reflect his powerful love. Sin does not merely break God's law, it breaks his heart.

He punishes to get his lovers attention. Yet even when she turns her back on him, he sticks with her.He is willing to suffer, in hope that someday she will change.

Hosea shows that God longs not to punish, but to love.