THE BRIDE PRICE
Hosea received a terrible assignment. At least that’s how most of us would view it. For this holy man’s first response to God in his role as a prophet to Israel, God told him to go marry a town harlot!
When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, "Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry and have children of harlotry; for the land commits flagrant harlotry, forsaking the LORD.
Hosea 1: 2.
The prophets we read about in the Bible gave their whole lives to listening and responding to God. They could hear His heart’s desire, and they wanted nothing more, would give life and limb, and risk the wrath of family, friends and rulers to obey. We know harlotry or prostitution is not gender specific – men and women engage in this behavior. However, the particular example we are given in the Scripture is of a man Hosea, who was pledged to the God he loved. Hosea was called to holiness, to follow God wherever He might lead. Yet he received from this same God what I consider to be a hellish job. He was called to marry a woman no mother would love. It must have seemed the future was certain to be full of heartbreak, emotional abuse and misery!
It may be hard for us to imagine completely what Hosea felt about this call. In my observation of both genders, it’s clear that infidelity is a painful experience for couples. Although it is hard on both spouses, it seems to me that the man generally has a much more difficult time dealing with and forgiving the infidelity of a wife, more so than a woman may be able to do after a similar failure by her husband. How would you feel if you believed that God was calling you to love and commit yourself to an adulterer? If you’re uncomfortable with that thought, I understand. But I believe He is doing just that.
I’ve heard it said that the call to Hosea was unique, and that God would not repeat such a call to any of His children today. I agree that it seems unlikely that God would command a son or a daughter to literally marry someone who had no fellowship with the Lord of Love, but I believe that God can indeed request that of us in the spiritual sense. There is a Hosea call today to those in God’s family who want to see the Church, the Bride of Christ, restored.
What does this mean? In simple allegory, God spoke of His relationship to Israel in terms of a relationship between a man and a woman. He said the land was committing harlotry, forsaking the Lord, and for that He threatened to divorce her. Hosea 1: 2; 2:2. According to the Apostle Paul, Hosea’s marriage to Gomer also represented Christ’s marriage to His people of the New Covenant, His Bride – the Church. Romans 9:25.
The Hebrew word for harlotry is zanun, which literally means adultery of a spouse, not just simple fornication or involuntary ravishment. It is a deliberate act of unfaithfulness to the marriage partnership. Figuratively, the word is used to illustrate the acts of idolatry of the people of God, who stray away from Him. The best understanding I have for idolatry is that anything which we regard as more important than God or His purpose is an idol. Therefore, while it’s obvious that ego, people, money, power, sex, drugs and other pleasures can become idols in our lives, it’s wise to remember that anything can become an idol, if it’s shifted from its rightful place in our hearts to be more important than God. Racial, political and social values and sentiments can be idols. Even our well-meaning goals for ministry can become idols if we value them more highly than our relationship with God. These focal points for idolatry haven’t really changed much since biblical times.
This story is about a man sent to marry a disgraced woman, but the analogy the Scripture lesson provides is not gender specific at all. We can each envision ourselves in the role of the one called to minister to a straying spouse who offers his or her indiscretions for sale. In fact, this story is a clear representation of Christ, as the husband, given in marriage to an unfaithful Bride -- the Church.
Yes, the Bride of Christ has been faithless, down through the ages. Although she is pledged in troth to Jesus, the kinsman Redeemer, she has perpetually sold herself over and over again, even though we are admonished against the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. I John 2: 14-15. Just like Gomer, Hosea’s wife, it’s almost as if the Church is addicted to that life, drawn there because She does not understand who She is. Instead, She is cowed and distracted by materialism, pride, false doctrine, daily failure, lack of deep relationship and low self-esteem.
In many cultures, before a man could marry a woman he had to pay her parents a bride price. This sum of money was given to show he was sincere about marrying the woman. Hosea was called to pay a high price, in spiritual currency, for his marriage. Here’s the rub for me: God didn’t send his man out to minister to a stranger in the street and then go home to a more respectable wife and an upstanding existence. He wanted Hosea to marry this woman who was a walking scandal. The man of God had to become committed and actually love her as a wife! There is no greater hell on earth than being married to someone you don’t love. First picture that in your mind, then add scandal as an added burden, and you will no doubt agree this was a high price that he paid. Yet, the word God spoke to Hosea is laqach, which means to take up, accept, carry away, fetch, to win her. We are called to do the same. It’s not just a matter of visiting in an impersonal way, or dropping by to preach a sermon. It’s about going down into the ditch, like the Samaritan did, and taking up the wretched thing that is today’s Church, and loving it into restoration.
The Samaritan found an injured man who had been going from Jerusalem, the city where God placed His Name and established His temple, to Jericho, which was named for some moon god. (Jericho had been rebuilt after its destruction, even though Joshua had proclaimed a curse against rebuilding it.) This man had been set upon and beaten by his enemies, and thrown into a ditch. The high priest and the Levite passed by, keeping their distance, but it was the Samaritan, one who wasn’t even from Jerusalem, who was moved with compassion enough to give him emergency medical care, and then see to it that he was nursed back to health. Luke 10: 30-35. In the same way, I believe God is going to use some who don’t tie themselves to religion or tradition to minister life to the Church.
Of course, we can love the harlot without becoming the harlot or condoning the behavior we see today that displeases the heart of God. Hosea didn’t join in or condone what his wife did. He loved her and ministered to her until she wanted to clean up her ways. That, I believe is what God wants us to do, wherever He’s placed us. Hosea had to learn how to love the unlovely, and so will we.
Five years ago, God moved me, much to my dismay, from Maryland to the greater Philadelphia region. Never would I have imagined being here, as it was definitely not one of my top 100 picks for places to live. However, it is since I’ve been here that He’s turned me to see what He sees when He looks at His people, and His grieving over the Church. And unmistakably, I have heard the call of Hosea. Would that it were not so, for I have been deeply distressed by the things I’ve seen myself and heard from others that are done in the name of God. But, in the same way that my brother Hosea received an assignment he would not refuse, so God is calling out to those who would hear Him today. We have to marry the harlot, if she is to change. We’ve got to be engaged in the battle for the life of the Church in order to win it.
Today’s “church experience” is heartbreakingly distant from God and desperately in need of His fresh anointing. But God told Hosea, and I believe He’s telling us, that He wants to clean up the Bride, wash away profanity from her mouth, rid her of all the false god names, and prepare her to marry Him for good – forever! Hosea 2: 16-20.
God said that His covenant people would do without His protection and would live without religion or comfort, godless and prayerless, until they returned to Him. Hosea 3: 4-5. As one intercessor said to me, it may be that God will hedge the Church in on all sides until it begins to seek righteousness. I believe the scandals being revealed among prominent ministry leaders are the first steps in that direction. Everything that is not of God will be cut away and pulled down, both for the restoration of those who have fallen as well as for the redemption of the flock. God is calling now for those who are willing to marry the fallen Bride and to pick her up, clean her off and ready her for her Groom.
For years I’ve said that if the Lord ever called me to marriage, I would take the vows in a dress of scarlet red, wrapped in a talith and standing barefooted before the altar. I couldn’t always give a reason for this desire, and my mother was mortified! However, I am even more confident about it now, because I can see it is very much a God-driven desire. Jesus shed blood as the price to marry His Bride, and He wants us to pay the bride price as well, and pledge ourselves to making ready a Church that is well-prepared for Him.
Undoubtedly there was a great deal of personal pain for Hosea, because God caused him to love Gomer. Because his love for His Father drove his life, Hosea chose love and obedience to God over whatever he would have preferred for himself. Perhaps to some, this brother’s life had crashed and burned. Maybe he felt that way himself. But I believe his was a firstfruits experience of what Paul would describe many years later:
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.
Philippians 3:8.
Hosea’s real assignment was to stay in the center of God’s affection, to be true to God’s heart, to be a living, breathing message to the Bride of its Eternal Lover’s far-reaching, mind-blowing love and desire. And so he paid the price with the scourging of his own life for Gomer, his bride. He had to relate to the experience so that he could speak authoritatively to others about the greater price that Jesus Christ paid for them to be lifted out of idolatry, sin, despair, damaging addiction, mental anguish, guilt, condemnation and self-hatred.
Deanna
October 7, 2007