John 3:16  God SO Love

  • God is love.  It isn’t just a characteristic, an idea or a feeling, but He personifies this

Hosea was prophesying to Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  They had three philosophies on love at this time:

  1. Love could be purchased
  2. Love is a pursuit of self gratification
  3. Love can be found in things

Hosea and Gomer story:

God gives Hosea instructions to marry an unfaithful woman and he obeys.

  • Homer leaves Hosea
  • Hosea is faithful
  • Hosea looks for Gomer & finds her
  • Hosea redeems Gomer
  • Hosea says to Gomer ” You shall stay with me for many days.  You shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man; so I will also be toward you.”

Hosea is a prophet

  • He was Holy, a good man
  • His peers were Holy people
  • What God asked him to do was scandalous

Hosea finds himself at an auction having to buy his wife back with 15 pieces of sliver and 5 bushels of barley

  • The number 15 = diving energy of God
  • The number 5 = Grace
  • Silver = divinity
  • Barley = humanity

Eleazar

  • I Chornicles 11:12, battle for a field of barley
  • Gomer means perfect or complete
  • Jesus is the true Hosea
  • 2 Corinthians 5:21 God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Not Qualified – Spoken Word Link