The Lord has given us marriage as a way to show how our relationship should be with Him and what happens when that relationship goes sour.
Marriage visibly and physically demonstrates our relationship with the Lord because He views Israel and all those grafted into Israel in the context as a wife to Him.
Do you know where in Scripture you can find one of the most compelling descriptions of this marriage model?
In the very first chapter of the Book of Hosea.
It’s a short chapter but very important because it helps us understand God’s attitude towards those who attempt to walk away from Him.
I’ve copied and pasted it below.
Let’s read it and as usual pay close attention to the parts I’ve bolded, italicized and underlined.
“This is the word of Adonai that came to Hoshea the son of Be’eri during the reigns of ‘Uziyah, Yotam, Achaz and Y’chizkiyah, kings of Y’hudah, and during the reign of Yarov‘am the son of Yo’ash, king of Isra’el. Adonai’s opening words in speaking to Hoshea were to instruct Hoshea,
“Go, marry a whore,
and have children with this whore;
for the land is engaged in flagrant whoring,
whoring away from Adonai.”
So he went and married Gomer the daughter of Divlayim, and she conceived and bore him a son. Adonai said to him, “Call him Yizre‘el, because in only a short time I will punish the house of Yehu for having shed blood at Yizre‘el; I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Isra’el. When that day comes, I will break the bow of Isra’el in the Yizre‘el Valley.”
She conceived again and bore a daughter. Adonai said to him, “Name her Lo-Ruchamah [unpitied], for I will no longer have pity on the house of Isra’el. By no means will I forgive them. But I will pity the house of Y’hudah; I will save them not by bow, sword, battle, horses or cavalry, but by Adonai their God.”
After weaning Lo-Ruchamah, she conceived and bore a son. Adonai said, “Name him Lo-‘Ammi [not-my-people], because you are not my people, and I will not be your [God].
We can see from these verses that “whoring” is the term applied to the act of breaking the marriage covenant.
In fact, biblically speaking, “whoring” is synonymous with “idolatry”.
In the context of the book of Hosea, Israel’s whoring after other gods had reached the point where God demanded that Israel’s faithlessness be expressed through the names of Hosea’s 3 children as follows:
YIZRE’EL: God sows disaster
LO-RUCHAMAH: God no longer shows mercy
LO-AMMI: Not my people
(also implying I am no longer their God)
That last one is particularly frightening because it implies God will actually break His eternal covenant with His people.
Well, for those who take a perverse pleasure in harboring ideas of replacement theology that says God replaced Israel with lawless Christianity, I’ve got some bad news for you homies.
Take a look at the very first verse of the very next chapter.
“Nevertheless, the people of Israel will number as many as the grains of sand by the sea, which cannot be measured or counted; so that the time will come when, instead of being told, ‘You are not my people,’ it will be said to them, ‘You are the children of the living God.’”-Hosea 2:1
So yes, while it’s true that because of Israel’s rebellion the Lord walked away from His people for a time, He’s gonna reopen the doors to let those who wanna come back to Him return.
And it’s all about free will folks.
In the beginning, Israel left Egypt to join the Lord of their own free will.
And they abandoned Him of their own free will.
Finally, in Messiah the Lord will give them another chance to return to Him of their own free will.
And it is the same for all of us.
So moving forward, keep the idea of the marriage covenant in mind because it tells us what the Bible really means when it uses the word “abandon”.
For example, when verse 12 says “They abandoned Adonai, the God of their fathers…”, it doesn’t mean Israel completely renounced God.
Let’s say you were a Canaanite bowing down to your god and noticed a Hebrew sitting next to you also bowing down to the same pagan god.
Your first inclination might be to ask him “Hey, have you abandoned your God who rescued you from Egypt and replaced it with allegiance to our gods”?
The Hebrew’s quick response would be “Absolutely not”.
Because in his mind, he hadn’t abandoned the Lord even though he was engaging in idolatrous behavior.
In his mind, it was perfectly okay to do the politically correct thing and be friendly towards his pagan neighbor’s gods while at the same time being devoted to Adonai.
It is this idolatrous behavior the Scripture speaks of when it says “the people of Israel did what was evil in God’s eyes…”.
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