From the outside it can often seem so easy.
Like they say in that instant hit show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire", it’s a lot easier from out there than it is from in here.

It’s easier to sit back and throw barbs at politicians than it is to be in government and make the hard decisions.

It’s easier to look into a classroom and critique the teacher than it is to have the responsibility of educating 30 children each day.

It’s easy to be an armchair quarterback with advise for other parents in dealing with their children, than it to carefully, gently and wisely raise your own.

Easy and very tempting. "Why don’t they...." "If only they’d have...."
        Ever find yourself saying that?

Sometimes even about God. We play the armchair quarterback.
If God is all powerful, and if He really is all-loving, then why does He allow......
        How come there is still evil?
        Why not a wave of the divine hand and.......?

People who struggle with pain in their lives.
Victims of evil actions.
Believers who pray desperately for the salvation of friends and family.
        And quietly we think, "If I could be God for one day, just one day...."

The prophet Hosea brings us behind the scenes. He lets us know that everything is not as quick, not as neat, not as easy as perhaps it first appears. Like everything that involves people and situations in our broken, distorted world there is no magic wand, no quick fix.

The basic issue at hand is the relationship between God and His chosen people. His passionate love for them, the level of their commitment to Him. Is it enough? Can it last?

Hosea allows us to see it all unfold through a family which is a miniature of our world. Like our world, it is a problem family, a problem family to which God is related.
        What we discover is that He is NOT related to that family like some autocrat whose orders nobody dares question.
And He is not a father who lives in some Leave It To Beaver kind of 1950's world, with an adoring wife and children who can’t wait for him to be present.
        Hosea’s image, graphically and very concretely lived out in the prophet’s own life, is that of a husband whose wife has left him; a father whose children are like strangers in his own house and are fast destroying themselves.

We look at that and wonder where omnipotence, where instant solutions fit into the picture? Tame acceptance obviously is no way to deal with the situation. But, it would seem, neither are strong-arm tactics - unless Father is content to have a slave instead of a wife, and children that simply cower in conformity.

How to deal with those you love, when they wander off in hard-heartedness?
It could all be discussed on a rather abstract level or via sermon. But God orders Hosea to act out the Holy lesson through his own life. Hosea is told to do the very last thing that any responsible prophet would be expected to do.
        Go and marry a prostitute (1.2) because this is exactly what I, the Lord, have on my hands in pledging myself to all of you.

It wasn’t to be a simple show for a week. No temporary symbolism here.
Hosea married a shallow, mercenary woman, the kind who might walk out on him the moment it suited her; and they started a family.
        She bore him a son. After that, she had two more children, who were apparently not his.
        Then she left him.

She made a fool of him.
She also made a fool of herself, for her new lover turned out to be as useless and heartless as herself, and she was soon his virtual prisoner. An old testament sort of Prodigal Son..... except that he was free to live his miserable situation, while she was trapped.

And so Hosea, the waiting and faithful husband, goes out to find her; and when he does, he not only has to win her back, but to buy her back, scraping together the price partly in cash and partly in kind.
        And more: it is not just an act of re-possession, for God had said to him, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Lover her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods.." (3.1)

The story is told in chapters 1,2 and 3. Remaining chapters flesh out the attitude of God, which is the engine for the activity.

There is precious little exercise of power in such a story, for power alone would solve nothing. Instead there is hurt, humiliation, waiting, personal approach and appeal, and - at last - mutual commitment.
        Cost, too – but mostly the cost of risking rebuff, reopening wounds, working at a difficult relationship and being determined that it would last and grow.

As God says to the prophet -

"Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her." (2.14)
"I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice." (2.19)

Through the prophet’s words to his wandering wife, God speaks to His people saying - "You are to live with me many days.... and I will live with you." (3.3)

It is a painful story to read, and gives us a glimpse into the pain that God’s heart experiences as He watches His people – the ones He has chosen, called, and loved –
        – as He watches them wander, without even a second glance over their shoulder.
And it’s not that God only has to deal with the proverbial love triangle.

It is, as one person puts it, "a veritable polygon." [D.Kidner "Love to The Loveless" p.13]. In every direction God’s people have played cheap and false:
        - in religion, with idols and cults;
        - in politics, with shabby intrigue and dubious leadership
        - in morals, with unbridled violence and sex.

When you read the story of Hosea, it almost turns your stomach. If he was your brother, you’d be the first one on the phone to say, "Dump the tramp. She’s not worth the aggravation."
        And no sooner are the words out of our mouth than we realize that this is precisely the sort of advise we’d essentially be giving God about ourselves.
        Thankfully, He is not so easily dismissed!

God’s love is deep.
It is enormously stubborn.
Incredibly resilient.

However,
        It would be a mistake to read Hosea, or to simply listen to an overview of the message such as is presented her tonight and conclude that God is simply one who waits quietly in the wings, wringing His holy hands.

The poetic wording of chapter 2 makes that abundantly clear, as do subsequent chapters of Hosea.
        It’s not all pleading. There is anger here, and judgement.
        God, in Holy wisdom, manages to balance now coolness, then some tough justice, and then some calling tenderness in perfect harmony.

How hard that is we can easily see if we think, for a moment, to our own society. How to deal with social ills?
        Some say, "Play it cool." Let the facts of life bring people to their senses.
        Others argue, "Play it tough." Stiff laws and harsh penalties are needed as deterents to keep people in line.
        And a third group will challenge all that - "Play it tenderly." They’d say. Appeal to peoples’ better feelings; trust that moderation and care will win out.

Reality shows that none of these views, by themselves, works.
If we approach any of these, something is missing. What we end up with is either anarchy or civil war or a bully’s paradise.
        There needs to be a proper mix.
        Challenge, of course, is finding that mix.

In Hosea, God is in turn "cool" and "tough" and "tender."

At one point along the way, Israel finally responds.
Even then, she gets it wrong, in the usual human way. They start to bring more sacrifice. And the Lord has to push that to the side – for what He wants is not activity, and not religion.
        He wants hearts.
        He wants relationship.
        He wants people.
                Converted people, repentant people, wholly devoted people.
                        HIS people.

All the ups and downs of the book, the scathing portraits, the dire predictions, the ardent appeals,
        everything -
                they finally add up to this.

It is a tense book.
Like life, so often.
        Thankfully, it ends with hope.

Which is chapter 14.
Let’s read that together.

The vision is that of a marriage day without tension and betrayal.
        Instead secure and blissful.
                The long winter over and spring in full flower.
                The bridegroom and the bride in eternal, secure togetherness.

It is a vision that looks long into the future.
Over the horizon.
A horizon that hid from Hosea’s view the life of a man walking the same roads of Israel that Hosea walked.
        A man pleading and calling,
        "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened down and I will give you rest."
        A man crying,
        "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing..." (Lk 13.34)

Jesus -
        God’s determined, stubborn love so great that He sent His one and only son to enter the home of his wandering people, to live among them, to seek them.
        Gomer was eventually bought out for 15 shekels of silver and some groceries. She was set free.

Jesus was sold out for 30 pieces of silver and murdered.
        His blood was shed.
        Sin was paid for.
        And we wandering, worthless people were set free.
        Not just for a day.
        But for eternity.

God did not simply wring his hands.
He paid the powerful price.
He faced sin and evil head on through Jesus.
He entered the very realm of death.
        And won!!

Death was defeated.
And preparations were made for the great wedding banquet to be held.
What the Bible in Revelation 19 calls, "The wedding supper of the Lamb."
        The day when all evil will be expelled from creation.
        There will be recreation.
                New heaven and new earth.
                New bodies, new hearts given to believers.

No more sin.
No more distraction.
No more wandering.
No more sorrow.

Hosea could only taste the first hints of that.
We today are blessed with having the first coming of Jesus, His life and words, the empty cross and tomb. We have the blessing of the Holy Spirit to continually counsel us and call us back. Reality is more fully ours.
        But not completely.
        For that, yet we wait.
                And while waiting, calling each other to faithfulness.

And praying - "Come, dear bridegroom. Come. And make your bride pure."