"I Am Gomer" May 16 Readings: Hosea 1-7

Today's Reading - Hosea 1-7

Background

Many prophets were asked to do strange things to illustrate the message of God. Hosea' entire life became a message of grace. He married then reclaimed a sinful woman to illustrate the infidelity of God's people.

Devotional

The prophets did some weird things to demonstrate the anger of God against sin and the love of God for his people. One wore ill-fitting undergarments to show how irritating Israel's sin was. But Hosea's story is perhaps the most graphic of all.

God commanded him to marry a woman who would illustrate Israel's sin (Hosea 1:2). When she strayed back into her life of sin, God sent Hosea to reclaim her and bring her home. This story is a verbal painting of the love of God - nothing sweet, syrupy or sentimental, but a gritty love, the kind that sticks around through the good times and the bad and changes lives.

Israel was a rebellious and spiritually adulterous nation, one that had left fidelity to the One True God and was chasing after the gods of the Canaanites. But God's grace was greater even than their infidelity. He told Hosea to illustrate that faithful love. The Old Testament is a record of two things - the constant infidelity of Israel and the even greater faithfulness of God whose love never fails.

Sin is never a minor thing, but God's love overcomes that. As he did with Israel, which sinned and failed repeatedly, God renews and restores us when we sin. He seeks and he saves. We are Gomer, wayward people who tend to drift into sin and away from God. We mimic the wayward wife, but the faithful God of Israel continues to overcome our sins today. By the powerful blood of Christ, he cleanses every stain and brings us back to the place of renewal, of purity, and full fellowship with God.

Father, I thank you that your blood washes away every stain, and that when I fail, you are there to restore me and renew me. You are a good God - better than this Gomer deserves. 

Think and Pray