Sometimes I read things and they literally “blow my mind!” I reread and reread them, and each time, I am just baffled by what I am reading. I know that you are probably thinking, “Okay Jocelyn, that is not too hard to do with a mind like yours.” Ha. That is very true, but I wish to share a story that shows us just a little bit of God’s amazing love for us. It is the story of Hosea, and it seriously “blows my mind.”
Hosea 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.”
Hosea 3:1,2
“1 Then said the LORD unto me, Go yet, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, according to the love of the LORD toward the children of Israel, who look to other gods, and love flagons of wine.
2 So I bought her to me for fifteen pieces of silver, and for an homer of barley, and an half homer of barley:”
The first thing that “pops” out at me in this book of Scripture is the sin. Adultery is the picture that God often uses for our sins against Him. In this passage, The Lord commands Hosea to marry someone who he knew would sin against him, because God wanted to show the children of Israel a picture of their sin against God. Today our sin has no different affect. Our desire for worldly things has made us as the children of Israel. Our worldliness has made us adulterers against our God.
James 4:4 “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.”
1 John 2:15 “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
1 Corinthians 10:21 “Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.”
2 Corinthians 6:16-18
“16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,
18 And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”
The next thing i see in this passage is the sinner, Gomer. This is almost always us. We daily sin against God. In some time of our life, we have sinned and hurt God with our sin.
Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”
Ecclesiastes 7:20 “For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.”
Job15:14 “What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?”
Psalm 14:3 “They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”
1 John 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
The last thing I see in this passage of Scripture is an amazing forgiveness and an even greater love. Have you ever had someone hurt you? Has someone ever talked badly about you or do something hurtful to you? How do you react when someone hurts you? Sometimes we are put in Hosea’s place where we encounter one who hurts us. G. Cambell Morgan wrote of this story,
Out of his own heart agony Hosea learned the nature of the sin of his people. They were playing the harlot, spending God’s gifts in lewd traffic with other lovers. Out of agony he has learned how God suffers over the sin of His people, because of His undying love. Out of God’s love Hosea’s new care for Gomer was born, and in the method God ordained for him with her, he discovered God’s method with Israel. Out of all this process of pain, there came full confidence in the ultimate victory of love.”
Every time someone hurts us, we get a little taste of what God feels every time we sin. Sometimes God brings Gomers into our lives so that we may show His amazing undying love and forgiveness to them. I like what Amy Carmichael wrote in her book, IF, “Or it is the dear human love about us that bathes us as in summer seas and rest us through and through. Can we ever cease to wonder at the love of our companions? And then suddenly we recognize our Lord I them. It is His love that they lavish upon us.” What an amazing privilege we have to share God’s love with others.
Proverbs 10:12 “Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins.”
Proverbs 17:9 “He that covereth a transgression seeketh love; but he that repeateth a matter spearateth very friends.”
1 Peter 4:8 “ And above all things have fervent charity among yourselves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.”
1 Corinthians 13: 7 “[Charity] Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.”
If the Lord Jesus Christ loved us so much that He willingly died for us to pay for our sins knowing that we would continually hurt Him, why do we not forgive others?
What if He brings people into our lives that will hurt us so that through the hurt we can show God’s love and forgiveness to them?
What if He brings these people into our lives so that He will be glorified through how we love and forgive them?
If I say, “Yes, I forgive, but I cannot forget,”
as though the God,
who twice a day washes all the sands
on all the shores of all the world,
could not wash such memories from my mind,
then I know nothing of Calvary love.
-Amy Carmichael