[Listen to an audio version here]
The prophets were sometimes seers because they could see. They could see beyond the ordinary things of life and see the God who was above them. When other people could not see Him, the prophets saw Him. Once they had that clear vision, they could not help but speak about Him. Once they heard the voice of God, they could not hold it in. As the prophet Amos put it, “The lion has roared—who will not fear? The Sovereign Lord has spoken—who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8).
In our day, we get so focused on the sights in front of us. We get busy working and doing and playing and enjoying the many blessings God has given us. In the midst of it, we forget God. It’s not that we are necessarily actively opposing Him. We just forget Him. We don’t see Him. The result is that we live lives that miss a huge portion of reality. This leads us to experience lives that often seem devoid of meaning and purpose. We get focused on ourselves and miss the wider world. We get fearful of the problems of the world as if there was not a God ruling over the world. We look for love in humans that they can never give. In our busy-ness, we bypass the bigger and most important issues of life.
So, we need the vision of the prophets. We need to see God. That’s what we are going to try and do this summer. We are going to try and see the vision of the prophets. We want to see the God that they saw so that we can live more in the light of His presence.
This is not always easy. Some of the things they say can seem strange to us. They seemed strange to the people of their time. So, we are going to take a look at what are called the twelve Minor Prophets in order to understand the message of each book. They are called minor because their books are smaller than those of the major prophets, not because they are less important. In some ways, it is an arbitrary division. Nevertheless, we are going to use this ancient division over the summer and look, by the grace of God, at these twelve prophets and their messages.
Today, we turn to the book of the prophet Hosea. You will remember that the kingdom of Israel had split in two after the reign of King Solomon son of David around 931 B.C. The southern kings, the descendants of David, sometimes did what was right. The northern kings have no king that is commended for doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord throughout his lifetime. The northern kingdom is called Israel and the southern kingdom is called Judah. Hosea prophesied from about 170 years after the split until about 210 years after the split, from 760 B.C. until about 720 B.C. His book is most likely a summary of the many messages he preached during this time.
The message of Hosea is very interesting and somewhat shocking. God tells Hosea to take as his wife a prostitute named Gomer. In this message, I want us to consider this marriage and then summarize what lessons we can learn from it. As we consider the marriage, we will see what God tells Hosea to do, what Gomer did, and how Hosea responded. After that, I will draw out some lessons that can help us see more clearly who God is.