My all-time favorite movie is the Jim Carrey flick, ‘Bruce Almighty.’ I’m sure most of you are aware of how the story goes. Basically, God gives all his powers to this guy called Bruce to do with whatever he wants.

Not surprisingly, he ends up making a real mess of pretty much everything — his relationships, his life, and the part of the world over which he was made God. It all comes crashing down, and Bruce realizes that being God is a pretty tough gig.

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to be God? Well, believe it or not, there is a man in the Bible to whom God says, “I want you to know what it is like to be me!”

While God doesn’t endow this character with all his powers, God does give him a window into his world. And just like Bruce Almighty, this Biblical hero finds out that being God is a lot tougher than he ever could have imagined. And he wrestles with the question, how do you make someone love you?

The unlucky prophet

There is a story in the Old Testament about a guy named Hosea, who drew the short straw and ended up becoming the prophet that God would use to communicate to humanity some quite incredible truths about what it is actually like to be God.

However, for poor Hosea, the personal cost of carrying this message must have proved almost too much to bear. Emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically, Hosea suffered greatly to demonstrate what God is really like — to give us a window into God’s world — and to show us the full extent of God’s love. The story in question begins in Hosea 1:2–3:

Let’s pause right there! Did God just tell Hosea to go and marry a prostitute? Yes, that’s what the Bible says!

How would you feel if, instead of the beautiful partner you had always dreamed of marrying, God told you to marry a prostitute? Would you think that instruction even came from God? Yet, there it is. And even though it seems at odds with everything you might consider acceptable in a partner, Hosea, in obedience to God, marries a prostitute named Gomer.

And they had three kids — two sons and a daughter. The third of these children, Hosea named “Lo-Ammi,” which means “Not Mine.”

That’s because no sooner are they married than Gomer starts being unfaithful to Hosea. Gomer begins to sleep around again. And then after that, Gomer ends up leaving Hosea and moving in with another lover and then, another, and then another. Eventually, she ends up walking the streets again; She falls back into prostitution.

Photo by Jairo Alzate on Unsplash

A second chance

You might expect that Hosea, at this point, would cut his losses with Gomer, but God had other ideas. So the story continues in Hosea 3:1–2:

God tells Hosea to take Gomer back, even after she has had multiple affairs. So Gomer — a hopeless sex addict, an adulteress — gets another chance. Hosea pays the price to purchase her back from her pimp. And Hosea takes her as his wife again, with no guarantees that Gomer won’t just go off and do it all again.

What a messed-up story!

And if you’re like me, you must be wondering why on earth would God do that to poor Hosea. Why would God tell Hosea to marry a prostitute — but not only that — then take her back after she has left him and the kids and run off with other men?

What is God thinking?

Perhaps here is what God is thinking: “Ok, Hosea! You’re a prophet! It’s your job to understand me and to reveal what I’m like to people. It’s your job to reveal to people my heart, so let me show you. I want you to see what it is like to try to get someone with a free will of her own to love you and be faithful to you, Hosea. And what you’re going to find out is just how hard that is.”

Maybe God says to Hosea, “You won’t understand what I’m going through to love human beings until you’ve had the one that you love rip out your heart out and trample it in the dust. You will never understand what it’s like to be me until you’ve had someone absolutely betray you. You’re going to have to go through what I go through. You won’t know what it’s like to be me until you’ve lived it for yourself. You’re a prophet, Hosea! Show the people what I’m like! Show the people, Hosea!”

Who would want to be a prophet?

The tough lessons of Hosea

There are three lessons that I want to draw out of this story — profound truths that demonstrate just how gracious and kind and loving God is towards us, how he longs to relate to us, and how, so often, we miss it.

Number 1: Our relationship with God is like a marriage.

One of the main points of the book of Hosea is this: Just as Hosea is married to Gomer, so God is faithfully committed to the human race — as a good husband to his wife. Now, I’ll admit that I find this image — of being married to God, of having God as a husband — is one I connect with less than say thinking about God as my King, my Father, or maybe a shepherd.

But here’s the thing: It’s impossible to understand our relationship with God entirely as a King relating to his subjects or as a shepherd relating to his sheep, or even as a father relating to his children, as important as those images and metaphors are. The problem is that these images don’t go deep enough to tell us everything that God wants in a relationship with us.

God wants a relationship so intensely, personally intimate, and, at the same time, so binding and enduring that he wants us to understand the God-human relationship as being like a marriage. In fact, this is an ongoing theme throughout the Bible. Another prophet, Isaiah, says:

Why does God want to relate to us as a marriage partner? I can think of three really good reasons. Firstly, in a marriage, your spouse is number one — at least in good marriages.

Secondly, marriage is a relationship of intimacy. In fact, marriage is the most intimate human relationship in a couple of ways: There’s the obvious, of course — sexual intimacy — but clearly, that’s not what God is after. However, he is after what it represents: The idea of being completely known.

True intimacy is found when you are completely known and completely loved. Take it from me, you can hide stuff from most people, but your spouse sees everything. You can hide stuff from your friends, from your kids, you can even hide stuff from yourself, but trust me, your spouse knows you best. So, what God is saying is this: “ You can’t know me from a distance. You can’t just know about me. It has to be an experiential connection. I want you to know me as I know you.”

The third reason that God wants to relate to us as a marriage partner is that marriage has the power to change you. In fact, marriage is a relationship of life-changing potency. Your spouse has incredible power to change you.

If someone comes up to me and says, “Dan, I think you’re a really kind person!” I might think, “Well, that’s a nice thing to say,” But I’d just as likely think, “Aha! Fooled you! I’m actually a jerk a lot of the time!”

But if your spouse says to you, “You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met,” then you know it’s true. Why? Because you can’t fool her. She knows you for who you really are, and she will call you on what you’re not, and that changes you.

Being married is like having a mirror held up to yourself. It shows you as if, for the first time, the good, beautiful, and wonderful things about you that are to be celebrated, and equally the selfish things about you that need to change. God wants to say, “Let me show you who you are, and let me show you what you’re not. That will change you”

And so, because God wants a relationship with us so intensely, personally intimate, and, at the same time, so binding and enduring, he wants to relate to human beings as a marriage partner relate. That’s the first lesson from Hosea.

Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

Number 2: Our relationship with God is like a bad marriage

When God tells Hosea to go and marry Gomer, do you think God doesn’t know what’s going to happen? God knows that Gomer will be unfaithful to Hosea; That she is going to break Hosea’s heart. And why?

Because God wants to show us an image of what God’s relationship with the human race is like. How? Well, just like the unfaithful partner who places themself in the arms of other lovers, human beings have the propensity to be terribly unfaithful towards God. We forget his love!

You see, when a King sees a subject doing the wrong thing, that makes him angry. When a shepherd sees his sheep doing the wrong thing, that makes him angry. When a son disobeys his father, that makes him angry (Trust me I know this). But, when a husband sees his wife, the person he most loves the most out of anyone in the whole world, put herself in the arms of another lover, that’s different. That breaks his heart.

When you look at Gomer, she’s out of control. She’s unfaithful. She rejects the love of her husband. She can’t seem to stop herself. But so often, we are no different. We give our hearts to other lovers. Listen to God’s heart for us, through yet another prophet, in Jeremiah 2–4:

Heart-rending stuff!

Number 3: God paid a price to save the marriage

This brings us to the third lesson from the book of Hosea. Not only does the book of Hosea explain how our relationship with God like a marriage — and a bad marriage at that — it also reveals to us how God saves the marriage and what it cost him.

There was Gomer.

Gomer has walked out on Hosea and moved in with another lover and then after that, with other lovers, eventually, she ends up walking the streets — back to prostitution. Then finally, she finds herself for sale as a slave at auction. There are a few reasons why this might have happened. Firstly, she may have ended up as a slave because she had unpaid debts, or she may have outlived her usefulness as a prostitute, and so she was being sold on by her pimp.

Most likely, Gomer would have been for sale at a public auction. She probably would have been stripped naked so the bidders could see what they were getting. This was about the lowest of low. It can’t get much worse for Gomer, but, at the same time, it’s kind of hard to feel too sorry for her because, after all, she got herself into this mess.

But then God steps in and says, “Hosea, Let’s show the world what I’m like!” And so the auction begins. I could imagine that Gomer, in her nakedness and shame, might have closed her eyes and just listened to the voices. Calling out — Bidding for her body. And then suddenly amongst them, she hears the voice of her husband!

“5 shekels, 6 shekels, 7 shekels…”

What is he doing?

“14 shekels, 15 shekels… going once, going twice, sold!”

I can imagine Gomer thinking to herself, “I get it… I get why Hosea is doing this! Revenge! Hosea is going to make me pay for doing this to him.”

But does he? No, he comes up and covers her nakedness and shame. He pays the price for her. More than that, he wears the price. It would have cost more than just 15 shekels. There was a social price to pay. What would everyone in the community think of Hosea retaking this woman as his wife? And there was an emotional price. He was going to have to help restore her and help her change her life. Yet, Hosea welcomes her back into his arms of love, renews his vows to her, and takes her again as his wife.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Find yourself in the story

Whether this was a literal, historical event or not is secondary to the purpose behind the parable. The whole point of Hosea is that you and I are not so different from Gomer — and Hosea plays the part of God.

At one time or another, we have rejected God’s love, sold ourselves out to other ‘lovers,’ slept around with the things that this world has to offer, making love to the pursuit of pleasure, wealth, fame, and acceptance — and in the process, become enslaved to that pursuit.

And God comes to us and pays the price to buy us back again. You see, Just as Hosea is in love with Gomer, God is in love with us. Just as Gomer broke Hosea’s heart, so we broke God’s heart. Just as Hosea pursued his unfaithful lover, so God relentlessly pursues us. Just as Hosea paid an enormous price for Gomer, so God paid an even more enormous price for us.

God, the lover of your soul, comes to you, again and again, offering his nail-pierced hand in marriage. Will you take that hand?

—

This post was previously published on Backyard Church.

***

You Might Also Like These From The Good Men Project

Compliments Men Want to Hear More Often

Relationships Aren’t Easy, But They’re Worth It

The One Thing Men Want More Than Sex

..A Man’s Kiss Tells You Everything