Hosea 3: Hosea's Wife is Redeemed

Chapter 3 -- the last chapter of our study this week --  is really short, so let’s go ahead and read all of it (Hosea 3:1-5).

Hosea was going to get his girl back.  To do so, he had to buy her back. 

É       How much did Hosea buy her back for (verse 2)? What do we learn in Matthew 26:15?  What price did Jesus pay?

She had gotten herself into a slave situation.  Her body was her way of making a living.  It was her way of earning love and acceptance of others – or so she thought¹⁷. 

É       Look at verse 3.  Why do you think she would live with him for many days and not be intimate with her husband during this time?

Remember that this is a story of love and relationship.  Any marriage that went through what Hosea and Gomer went through will have brokenness and need a time of healing to resume togetherness of man and wife.  I also think it was to show her that it isn’t the things she thinks that earns her love and provides for her.  It isn’t her body.  It is her. 

É       Are there things about you or your life that you think you need to get love and acceptance from God or from others?  Do you fear losing them?

Maybe Gomer just felt like she didn’t fit in with Hosea and his life.  It was so different than hers and what she knew.  Her life revolved around things of “the world” and his around God.  Maybe she even wanted to fit in with his life…knew it was the better way, but it was so hard, so uncomfortable, so unnatural, so different from that of her friends.  Do you ever feel like you just don’t fit in? 

É       In what ways, or in what circumstances, do you feel like you don’t fit in?  How do you usually react?  Do you try even harder to fit in?

On a spiritual level, during the seasons in my life where I feel very strong in my faith and I am trying very hard to walk daily with God, I often feel like I don’t quite fit it in.  And it is not just among non-Christians.  Sometimes I feel it even more among Christians.  Perhaps the more we feel like we don’t fit in, the closer we are to God, since He is in constant battle with the things of this world.  God loves us the way we are…the way He created us.  We know from the Bible that we are “aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11) and our “citizenship is in heaven” (Philippians 3:20).  We don’t need to impress Him with anything other than our love and obedience in return.  He doesn’t care about our house, our car, our school, our kid’s achievements, our job, our intelligence, our social status…just us.  Anyone who is a real friend also doesn’t care about those things.  We don’t need to impress God or other people with things.  Our character and integrity and trustworthiness and love – God in us – should be what draws people to us.

But beyond just fitting in, we often feel like we are under attack from all sides.  And sometimes, actually often, this happens in seasons where we feel like we are spiritually moving in the right direction.  When we feel a strong calling from God about something or we are working earnestly to grow closer to God.  But things around us feel like they are falling apart.  We are fighting more with our spouse or kids.  There are conflicts with friends or coworkers.  Things don’t seem to be falling in place at all.  The devil is always at work, and at work even harder when he sees the threat of our closer relationship with God and our doing work for God’s kingdom. The Bible talks often about spiritual warfare.   Jennie Allen in the book Anything writes:

When you are truly about the things of God, there is always attack…. The devil is real, and nothing ticks him off more than people waking up from the numb stupor he has crafted to keep us harmless. ¹⁸

É       Can you think of times in your life when you were certain you were in God’s will and you were being attacked?  What forms did the attacks take?  How did you deal with it?

Knowing this helps us face it head on.  We can pray specifically about it, rebuking the devil and his attacks as Jesus did in Matthew 16:23, “Get behind me, Satan!”  We can’t let the devil’s attacks deter us.  Our faith must remain greater than our pain or fears.

Verse 4 shows us the representation of the lack of intimate relationship for a period of time is Israel’s days to come of having no king or prince, no sacrifice or sacred stones, no ephod or household gods.  God is stripping them of all the things they think make them acceptable and like other nations.  A period of time to learn to stop depending on their own resources.  To finally come to a place where they will rely on God alone.

In our culture where we have so much and are so wealthy compared to the rest of the world, it is so easy to depend on our own resources.  Even so, sometimes things come into our life and flat out knock us down.  We are stripped of our so called control.  Sometimes it is a catastrophic event, an illness, a separation, a betrayal, a financial crisis.  We have nowhere to turn but God. 

É       Has something happened in your life recently or in the past that brought you straight to God out of desperation?

I’ve had several in my life.  A recent one for me was when my 9 year-old was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.  She now needs insulin to live, and it is a difficult thing to manage it successfully.  So many variables are in play…her activity level, what she eats, situations she is in, etc.  Oh that we wouldn’t have to get to this point to turn to Him.  That we would learn to rely on Him for everything…in good times and bad.  It is so frustrating to me how easy it is to quickly revert back to relying on myself.  As I write this we are just passed the 2 week anniversary of her diagnosis.  I pray constantly for her and worry about her, but I am noticing that is even diminishing as we are getting the hang of things and I am becoming more comfortable with her schedule and how her body reacts.   I can go from non-stop speaking to God to realizing it has been a while since I have done so.  I fall back into my routine of attempting to take care of everything on my own…and even feeling proud about how well I am doing it.  I don’t want to need the blows in life to bring me to Him.

É       Read Matthew 19:23-24.  Why do you think this is the case?

In the bookKisses from Katie20 by Katie Davis, a young missionary in Uganda, Katie writes about the change in her spirit when she goes back to the United States after her time in Uganda.

I hadn’t realized what a transformation had taken place while I had been in Uganda, the spiritual richness I had experienced in material poverty and the spiritual poverty I felt now in a land of material wealth.

“Rich” doesn’t have to only be financial.  It can be anything we have that makes us rely on ourselves instead of God.  These things keep us thinking we are in control and keep us from being on our knees.  God, please to don’t let our worldly wealth result in spiritual poverty.  Please help us to acknowledge and rely on you and you alone…through the good times and the bad.

É       Spend some time in prayer that we can rely on God in all things.  Pray that we don’t let areas where we are “rich” keep us from reliance on God and ultimately entering the kingdom of heaven.

As I mentioned several times, the point of all of this difficult reflection isn’t to feel condemned or defeated, but to wake us up to life the full, joyful, purposeful life God wants us to have.  To live God’s kingdom here where his will is done here as it is in heaven.  We have to believe this is a better, more fulfilling life for us. 

Jennie Allen writes:

We have one foot on the earth and one foot in heaven. We’re present here, not taken out of this world but living for another.  We’re fighting for God’s glory and clinging to him for protection and guidance ²¹



End of week one.  Click here to begin week 2 of the study.