The Most Amazing Love Story - Part II

Last time we took a quick look at the fact that Hosea chapter 3 was probably one of the greatest stories in the Bible. This chapter begins with those amazing words, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress…” We read next that Hosea did as he was commanded, “So I bought her…” We know that what is being portrayed here is the everlasting love that God has for his people, the people of Israel. There is a second thing however that is portrayed in this chapter, and that is the awfulness of sin. I know that for the most part we understand sin to be a bad thing. We would be like the little girl who went home and told her mom that the preacher had preached about sin. When asked what he had said about it, the little girl said, “Well, he is agin it!” We are “agin” or against sin for the most part. However, sometimes we really don’t see the awfulness of sin without the help of the Holy Spirit. How do we see the awfulness of sin portrayed in this chapter? We see it portrayed by the position that Gomer fell into. Gomer had, through her adulteress relationships, eventually found herself in some form of debt that she could not pay. The only means available to her had forced her to become a slave. She had lost her freedom. She had lost her ability to make choices for herself. Hosea found her standing on a block of wood or a platform stark naked, in chains about to be sold as property. She was no longer a person but a commodity being sold for the use of another. That is the awfulness of sin. The bible makes it clear that each one of us have been born into the bondage of sin. Both Romans and Galatians make it clear that sin has taken our freedom and we, apart from Christ, are subject to the master of sin and our sin nature. Any freedom that we have, any choices that we make prior to the redemption of Christ is governed by the master of sin. Sin is awful, sin is cruel, sin is degrading, and sin is deadly.

This was Gomer. She was standing naked, humiliated beyond measure, having lost all dignity and being sold as property. The greatest story doesn’t end here though. We need to learn from this story the awfulness of sin, but next time, we will see the happy ending