doing what you don't understand

The Lord gave this message to Hosea son of Beeri during the years when Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah were kings of Judah, and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel. When the Lord first began speaking to Israel through Hosea, he said to him, “Go and marry a prostitute, so that some of her children will be conceived in prostitution. This will illustrate how Israel has acted like a prostitute by turning against the Lord and worshiping other gods.” So Hosea married Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, and she became pregnant and gave Hosea a son. (Hosea 1-3:5)

Some of the stuff God told his people was plain strange. And not only that, some of it bordered on the cruel.

Noah had to ignore the pleas of his neighbors while the floodwaters rose. Abraham had to willingly take his son off to be slaughtered as a human sacrifice for a God that had always detested that. Joshua led his people on slaughtering rampages through Canaan as they conquered the land that left men, women and children dead behind them. Elijah had to kill a lot of false prophets, people he might have known.

These were not things that were necessarily optional. They were mandated by God. He didn’t ask them if they wanted to do it, he just said do it.

The same with Hosea. Go find this tired prostitute and marry her and have children, some of which will be illegitimate. It didn’t matter that Hosea might have had a girl friend he had been dating. It didn’t matter what this match would do to his social standing. It didn’t matter how he felt. God never asked.

Then, after she had left him and gone back to business, he had to go buy her back and marry her again. She was old and worn out, no one even wanted her anymore. But too bad. he had to take her back and let her back into his life and his bed.

And the only reason was to show Israel, who for the most part didn’t care anyway, an illustration of their relationship to God. He took a used nation, finally had to let it go and then took back the worn out nation again as his own.

Hosea’s life became a little observed illustration.

But he did it anyway. His parents probably objected. If he had a girl friend, she was not happy. He was probably not happy himself. But he did it anyway. He was faithful to what God wanted him to do. He obeyed even when it was inconvenient.

We all do that to one extent or another. I had a friend who cried all night when he found out God wanted him to become a pastor and leave his life as a professional musician. But he got up the next morning and did it anyway. I have known people who have left their homes and relatives to go to foreign mission fields only to find themselves or their families sick or injured in conflicts they never intended to be close to. I have known people to give up good jobs to go into ministry only to find themselves impoverished as older people.

They did what they heard God tell them to do regardless of whether or not they wanted to.

Moses did this. He got God mad at him trying to get out of the ministry God told him to do, but he ended up doing it anyway. Jeremiah was the same way. He didn’t want to. Jonah went into his ministry half-heartedly, found himself a raging success and got mad at the success. King Saul tried to hide from his job, Peter tried to deny it, others were other ways. Jesus gave up a life of normalcy with a wife and children for a ministry of only three years that ended up with him being killed.

But in the end, they did what God wanted, even though they may have never really understood it. God never required that they understand, just that they obey.

Pretty unfair, I will have to admit. But that was one faithful guy, Hosea. And I admire him.