love story

Mercy is one of the great characteristics of God. Mercy and grace are like twin sisters. Mercy has to do with delivering one from their misery, grace has to do with delivering one from their sin. Sometimes they are independent. Sometimes one is the result of the other. But if grace and mercy are twin sisters, then their mother is Love. Love is supreme over all the spiritual gifts and love is the motive behind mercy and grace. God is a God of love, mercy and grace and no passage in the Bible illustrates it more than the first few chapters of Hosea.
In Hosea chapter one God commands a young preacher named Hosea to get a wife of harlotry, and have children, as an example to the Israelites which had committed flagrant harlotry, forsaking the Lord. So Hosea went and took a wife by the name of Gomer. He loved her very much. Maybe he didn’t understand the harlotry part at the time. I believe the indication in scripture is that she wasn’t a harlot when he married her. We can assume that it was a mutual love, and soon she had a male child. God said name him Jezreel which means “cast away”, and referred to the atrocities of Jezebel and King Ahab. God was prophesying through the name of this child that He is going to put an end to the kingdom of Israel.
After a while, another child. a daughter, was born to Hosea’s wife. This one was named Loruhamah which means “not pitied”. God would no longer have pity or compassion on Israel. And after she had been weaned, she had another child, and it is likely that it was apparent by this time that Gomer had begun to fool around. God said to name this boy Lo Ammi, which means “you are not my people”. She was already being unfaithful to Hosea, and you can only imagine the anguish of knowing his wife was a harlot and knowing that this child wasn’t his.
God had said that he would name these children as a sign to his people, but also foretold a day of restoration: "And I will have pity on Not-Pitied, and I will say to Not-My-People, 'You are my people;' and he shall say, 'Thou art my God.'" So that even in this time when God was announcing judgment his mercy also was being shown.
Soon Gomer’s running around went from adultery to actually leaving Hosea and then moving in with another man. Over time, it seems Gomer was passed around from man to man, moving ever lower on the social ladder until at last she fell into the hands of a man who was unable to even pay for her food and her clothing. As she became more and more degraded in her adultery, she had become less desirable, eventually ending up with the worst sort of man who was unable to even take care of her. But Hosea had never stopped loving Gomer and was always watching to make sure that she was ok. And so Hosea sought out the man one day and gave him money to make sure that his former wife was fed and clothed. Even though he couldn’t be with her, he still loved her and wanted her to be cared for and provided for. But it’s doubtful that the man she was living with gave Hosea any credit for the provisions, because the passage says that she praised the man she was living with for providing her with food and clothing. And that is another picture of God’s mercy towards us, in that even while we were living in adultery away from Him, He continued to provide and watch out for us, even though we praised our idols and the works of our hands for our provision.
Finally though the day came when the man’s lifestyle had indebted him so much - or maybe he felt Gomer wasn’t desirable to him anymore - and so he put her up for auction, to be sold as a slave, which was often done in that day to satisfy a debt. And somehow Hosea found out about it and made his way to the auction. We can imagine Gomer standing there on the auction block, stripped of all her beauty, just a shell of the beautiful woman she had once been. But somehow, Hosea still loved her. The going price for a slave in those days was 30 pieces of silver and Hosea paid 15, plus a homer and a half of barley. She was no longer desirable for anything other than the lowest sort of slave, and yet Hosea still loved her and desired her. He gladly paid the price required and reclaimed her as his own.
Though over 2000 years old, the story of Gomer is my story and your story. We too have played the harlot and gone after our old lovers of the world. We give our love and attention to those things that once enslaved us, spurning the love of God, and end up used and bruised and just about worthless. Yet God never stops loving us, and while we were yet sinners running from Him, sent Jesus to purchase us. He was faithful, even when we were not.