07/27/2025
Blessings! Here is the sermon for today, Sunday, July 27. ❤️ What Wondrous Love Is This! (Hosea 1:2-10; Colossians 2:6-15; Luke 11:1-13)
Our Older Testament lesson for today is taken from the Book of Hosea. It’s a small book, only 14 chapters. Hosea is thus considered one of the 12 minor prophets. The classification of minor and major prophets goes back to the fifth century, when Augustine of Hippo, later known as St. Augustine, distinguished the 12 shorter prophetic books as minor prophets from the four longer books of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel.
So, this minor prophet Hosea lived in the eighth century before Jesus. He lived in the northern Kingdom of Israel, beginning his ministry around 750 BC. This was a time of great political conflict. Between 750 and 721 BC, seven rulers came and went. And the flourishing foreign trade brought the Israelites into constant contact with not only foreigners but also their gods.
Now, Hosea and his fellow Israelites were the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Thus they were part of a long lineage of people who worshipped Yahweh. They were the people whom Yahweh had commanded during the days of Moses, on Mount Sinai, to have no other gods besides him. Hosea and his fellow Israelites thus knew that Yahweh, their God, was a jealous God. They knew that they were to have—to worship—no other gods but Yahweh.
But…by Hosea’s day, the Israelites were choosing to ignore this. They weren’t being true—faithful—to the god with whom they were in a covenant relationship. They were flirting with other gods, flirting with the gods of the local people among whom they lived, gods known as the baals. They were flirting with the gods of the foreigners who came to Israel from distant lands.
Hosea saw his fellow Israelites picking and choosing who and what they wanted to worship--a little bit of Yahweh, a little bit of this local god, a little bit of that foreign god, and so on and so forth. Hosea saw his fellow Israelites becoming more and more unfaithful to Yahweh. And finally Hosea, as Yahweh’s prophet, knew that he needed to speak to his fellow Israelites about their faithfulness to Yahweh. Hosea knew that he needed to speak to his fellow Israelites about their….well…what could be considered their adultery to Yahweh.
The people of Israel had become "wedded" to God when they entered into the covenant relationship with him on Mount Sinai. For his part of the marriage covenant, God had been faithful. God had delivered the Israelites from bo***ge in Egypt. God had taken care of all their needs in the wilderness. Furthermore, God had led them into the promised land. Nonetheless, the Israelites, for their part of the marriage covenant, had not been so faithful. They had shamefully ended up running around on God. They were unfaithful openly. They were unfaithful shamefully. They were unfaithful repeatedly. Through one prophet after another, God had pleaded with them. The disintegration of God's "marriage" to Israel was only too apparent. It was time for God through Hosea to speak to them about their wh***ng around after other gods.
So God led Hosea to understand that he was to make his own life a parable for teaching the Israelites. Because, remember, God knows that when he wants to teach us humans, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” God gave Jesus lots of parables to use in his teaching, and even in the Older Testament days, God had many of the prophets teach in parables. Thus God instructed Hosea, “Go, take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking (me) the Lord.”
So Hosea married a pr******te named Gomer. Now one would think that this pr******te Gomer would have been grateful for this new chance at life. And perhaps she was faithful to Hosea for a while. But as time went on, it became obvious that she had returned to her old ways. Hosea’s wife Gomer ended up running around on him. Like the Israelites were with God, Gomer was unfaithful openly. She was unfaithful shamefully. She was unfaithful repeatedly. Hosea tried everything to convince her that he wanted only the best for her—that he was faithful to her and she should be faithful to him. Hosea tried pleading with her. Later, he tried exposing and shaming her. He even gave the three children she bore symbolic names to publicly declare his disgust with his unfaithful wife and to publicly declare the disintegration of their marriage.
Hosea gave the first child the name Jezreel, a name associated with the unfaithful woman Jezebel. Hosea named the second child Lo-ruhamah, which can be literally translated “there is no feeling,” in other words, he had lost all feeling for his unfaithful wife. He named the third child Lo-ammi, meaning “a final break,” declaring that Gomer’s giving birth to a third child who wasn’t his was for him the final straw. Eventually, Hosea had enough of his unfaithful wife. He sang “Your Cheat’n Heart” to her one last time, and then he kicked Gomer out of the house. Hosea and Gomer went their separate ways.
All the Israelites had to do was look at their prophet Hosea to know that God too had had enough of their unfaithfulness—their wh***ng around. Hosea’s leaving his wife was a symbolic message to them that God was leaving them—that God was breaking his covenant with them—that God would no longer be their God, just as Hosea would no longer be Gomer’s husband. So….the Israelites knew that God had kicked them, his unfaithful people, to the curb.
But…the story doesn’t end here. For God found that he could not forget his unfaithful people. Or forsake them. God realized that he still loved them. So he decided to win them back. He decided to woo them. And, again to symbolically show his forgiveness and his love, as well as his desire to renew covenant vows and renew his marriage with the Israelites, God told Hosea, “Go, love a woman who has a lover and is an adulteress, just as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods.…”
When Hosea went in search of Gomer, he found her living as a slave, presumably the property of a pimp. In one of the most grace-filled moments of the Older Testament, Hosea, casting aside all pride, bought back his wife from the pimp. Hosea, as the scripture expresses it, “bought her for 15 shekels of silver and an omer of barley and a measure of wine.” And by this, his action, Hosea declared that this was the length to which God was also willing to go for his unfaithful wife, Israel!
The Book of Hosea declares something radical about God. It declares that God’s love for us is "in-spite-of" love. It declares that God loves us even when we are unlovable. It declares that the pure, holy God loves us, his people, so much that he is willing to stoop and humble himself to get us back! Even though he would be justified in punishing us when we are unfaithful to him, his compassion and love for us override justice, what we deserve.
And 800 years later, God put an exclamation mark upon all that he said about his love for us in the Book of Hosea. For 800 years after Hosea, God sent his son Jesus that we might have forgiveness of our sins and reconciliation with God. As the Apostle Paul said in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians (5:19), “in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them….” God came to us in Jesus Christ, to keep us in relationship with him.
When the original Madison Square Garden was built in 1890, one of its highlights was a statue of the Greek goddess Diana. The lovely girl who posed as the model for the sculptor became famous. Apparently her beauty was stunning, and everywhere she went, she was recognized as the model for Diana. But as the years went on, the model had a series of personal tragedies. She became a broken woman. She became homeless. One day, she ended up in a rough part of New York City, begging for food at a Salvation Army soup kitchen. The Salvation Army officer on duty noticed the dirty woman quietly gulping down her food. Since something about her seemed familiar to him, he went up to her and asked her name. When she answered, he exclaimed, "You’re Diana!" Her crooked smile revealed missing teeth. She was pleased that someone remembered and recognized her, but she was ashamed of what she had become. So she humbly answered, "I was Diana."
But the Salvation Army officer had been able to see beyond what the woman had become. He didn’t see only a dirty, toothless, homeless woman. No, he also saw the stunning beauty who had posed as the Greek goddess. His eyes were eyes of grace. He saw not only her present condition but also who she had the potential to be.
While Hosea is a little book, it’s a marvelous book. For it’s a book that reminds us of our marriage covenant with God and asks us to look at ourselves, at how faithful we’re being to God. Furthermore, it’s a book about our God, who loves us in spite of our unfaithfulness, our God who sees such beauty and possibility in us that he was willing to come in human form and suffer on the cross to, in some way we can’t completely understand, keep us in covenant with him. Such grace--such undeserved love! Indeed, what wondrous love is this! Amen.
-- Rev. Terry Chamberlain Diehl, Hickman Mills Community Christian Church, July 27, 2025 (Hope Sunday)
Communion Meditation
A pastor named John W. Wurster was asked by a friend, another minister, to preach at his wedding. And the passage the friend wanted him to preach on at his wedding was today’s passage from Hosea: "Go take for yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits great whoredom by forsaking the Lord" (1:2). According to Wurster, “I protested loudly, not wanting to stand up and in any way imply that my friend was marrying a woman of dubious character…. But he was insistent. The wedding sermon had to be from Hosea. "All that talk about whoredom is just symbolic," he said. "What matters in this text is the faithfulness of God. God is faithful, even when we are not. God is faithful, even when we cannot be. God is faithful, even when we will not be." "Yes," I replied, “but….wouldn’t it be better for me to just say something sweet about love?" "This is about love," he replied. "Not sweet, sappy sentimentality. But real, heart-breaking, heart-mending love. God will not give up on those people, although it seems they have given up on God. God just refuses to let those people go.” This, friends, is the love God has for us. So, with deep gratitude, let us draw near to our loving God at his Table.
