September 6 2026
Hosea 2
Can we all agree that the rapid rise of the use of artificial intelligence has really begun to impact our every day life? I mean, just the other day, an ad popped up on my social media feed, and I watched it but didn’t pay much attention to it. Well, when it got to the end, a little disclaimer popped up and said that the people in the ad were all generated by Artificial Intelligence. Now I was a little shocked because I could not see anything about the people in the ad that would give me any clue that they were not indeed real live people. I thought that if we can be deceived so easily in the early days of this rather new technology, how in the world will we be able in the future to figure out just what is the truth and what is merely an illusion? Already on social media it is a challenge to tell what statements are the truth and which statements are falsehoods. We can only imagine how very difficult it will become to figure out just what is true when artificial intelligence begins to create a world of made of images to add to the confusion.
Well it goes without saying that one of the basic concerns we have as people is to know just what is the truth. Everyone knows how dangerous it can be for someone to tell a lie and to have that lie be spread around until it becomes so well known that no one remembers that it is in fact not the truth. For us who follow Jesus, the truth is the very sacred ground of who we are. The gospel of John is filled with so many different well known sayings of Jesus concerning the importance of the truth. How can we forget what Jesus teaches us in the eighth chapter of John, where he states that if we know the truth, the truth will set us free? Or what Jesus says at the beginning of the fourteenth chapter of John, where Jesus states clearly that he is the way, the truth and the life. And when Jesus stood before the judgment seat of Pontius Pilate, Jesus tells Pilate that the very reason why he came into the world was to bear witness to the truth. Pilate replies to this by asking Jesus, “What is truth?”
So when we understand that knowing the truth is a very basic part of being in a relationship with God, we should not be surprised that here in the second chapter of Hosea, we are confronted by the truth. Now as important as it is for us to know the truth, whenever someone tells us that they know the truth about us, such a statement can cause us to be rather uneasy. I mean, do we really want the whole world to know the whole, unvarnished truth about who we are? Yet, the scripture that we read from Hosea today, we do hear a statement about the truth of who we are, at least in relationship to God. In the nineteenth verse of the second chapter of Hosea, we hear God tell his people that he will betroth himself to us forever. The word, “troth”, as in the word we hear spoken here, “betroth”, comes from the same roots as the word we know as, “truth”. So when God says to us that he will betroth himself to us, this means that God has pledged himself to be true to us, for all time.
Now, what is also interesting about this statement of God is that, as we heard last week, God through Hosea, tells his people that he has entered into a covenant with his people which is to be understood as being much like a marriage. Yet, as most of us know, when a person in olden days became betrothed to another, this was equivalent to our modern understanding of a man and woman becoming engaged. So when a man and a woman love each other and decide to marry, they first enter into a time, when, just like what God speaks to us, they pledge to be true to each other. It just makes sense that a relationship marked by commitment such as marriage is supposed to be, must have its beginnings in the truth. Without a pledge to be true to one another there can be little hope of that either person will trust each other, and without trust there simply cannot be a relationship at all.
What God is doing here in the second chapter of Hosea, is reminding his people that the beginning of their relationship together was God pledging himself to be true to them. Now one more aspect about this time when a couple becomes betrothed to one another is that in Biblical times, the man was to offer the father of his betrothed, an agreed upon financial gift. It may seem to be a little odd to us to do such a thing but at least the bride-to-be knew that she was valued by the one who loved her. Well, we need to understand that a gift was expected to be given whenever a man betrothed himself to a woman, so that we understand what God declares when he betroths himself to us. God does not give a financial sum in order to enter into a relationship with us but instead he offers something far more valuable. God tells us that he pledges himself in the truth of his righteousness and in justice, in his stand-fast love, and his mercy. Now if we remember what we have previously learned, what God speaks to us here builds upon the basic building block of our relationship to him which is that God loves us. What God is doing in pledging himself in truth to us is that he is saying that here is the truth about his love. The truth is that the love of God is righteous and just. The justice and righteousness of God is based on the equal treatment for all people. In other words, God does not play favorites. The way God loves one is the very same way that God loves all. And the way of this love by which God loves is first that God stands fast with us. This means that we might walk out on God but God will never walk out on us for his love is an enduring love. Then to these qualities, God goes on to say to us that his love is merciful. So we must define just what do we mean by mercy? Well, perhaps mercy is best described as being when ones hearts is distressed at the distress of another. When one’s heart suffers an account of another persons suffering then they are to be moved to make another person’s suffering their own suffering. The best description, of course, is the story Jesus told of the Good Samaritan. The story begins with a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. As he was going, this man came upon some robbers who stripped him, and beat him and left him half dead. By chance a priest and a Levite came to him, but they passed by on the other side of the road. But a Samaritan came to where this half dead man was, and when he saw this man, the Samaritan was moved, and had mercy for the man. The Samaritan went to this man, and he bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine. Then the Samaritan set him on his animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he gave the innkeeper two days wages and told him to take care of the man, and if there were any more expenses, he promised to pay them when he returned.
This is the very same manner is which God has mercy upon us all. God does not stand at a distance when we suffer but instead he enters into our suffering so that our suffering becomes the very suffering of God on our behalf. Such a love from a God who has no good reason to do so, proves difficult for his people to fully comprehend. As we learned last week, another basic understanding of God is that we must know that God speaks to us.Yet, it might be better to say that God communicates to us, because communication, by its own definition, means to bring about a common unity of understanding between two or more people. So, in order for God to communicate to us that the truth of his love is that his love is a love marked by justice and righteousness, as well as being a love that stands with us, and a love defined by mercy, God became one of us, and lived among us, and then died upon the cross. This is the truth, that God took on flesh, and walked this earth as the one we know as Jesus. And there upon the cross, Jesus as the innocent Son of God, demonstrated his mercy by uniting himself forever with all those who suffer at the hands of others. Jesus there communicated that he forever stands with those who have been broken and crushed under the cruelty of this world. It was the body of Jesus which was broken for us. Yet this was not all, because Jesus also continued to stand with those who inflicted their cruelty upon him, standing with all those who cried, “Crucify him, crucify him”. This is why Jesus also asked his Father to forgive them, to set aside his righteous demand for justice. It was the blood of Jesus shed for us. Jesus offered his life to these who desired his death, because mercy demanded that even those who opposed him receive life instead of death. You see, when God spoke of how he pledged himself to his people, to all people, with righteousness and justice, with a love that stands with us, and with mercy, these mere words could never communicate the depth of the cost that such a pledge was to God. These words could never be known in all of the truth that they convey until we stood before the cross and witnessed for ourselves the richness of God’s love for us. When God tells us that he pledges himself to us in faithfulness, it is the faithfulness that we witness at the cross, this is the image of faithfulness which communicates to us the fullness of the love that God has for us.
So the truth of who we are is discovered when we know the truth about God and his love for us. We are to now know ourselves as being the beloved of God, as those whom God has pledged himself to in the truth of his righteousness, his justice, in his love which stands with us, and in his mercy for us. Thus we know that God knows the truth about us, the truth of the depths of our suffering as well as when we are the cause of the suffering of others. God knows all about us and even so, God’s love for us never waivers, it never changes, for the cross remains the final word about the love of God.
Now as we also learned last week, when God initiates, or begins his relationship with us through his pledge of love for us, then all we are called to do is to respond to what God has first done for us. In the first chapter of the book of Romans, Paul writes that when we come to know God, then the right response to his love will be that we do two actions. The first action is that we will adore God. This means that we will love God with a sense of wonder and respect and devotion, the very definition of worship. Yet this is not all, for we will also respond with an attitude of thankfulness and gratitude. The word that Paul uses to describe the gratefulness we should show to God is a Greek word that has two parts, the first is the word, “good”, and the second means, “a favor granted to us”. So what we acknowledge is that God has granted to us his good favor, the fullness of his love and mercy. This gratefulness is not just for what God has done for us at the cross but for all that God has given to us. As Paul states at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, “If God did not spare his own Son but delivered him over for us all, how will he not, along with his Son, give us all things?” So, the cross creates in us a heart of gratitude for everything God has given to us.
You see, when we know what God expects when his love has been communicated to us, then we can grasp the depths of the wrongness of the people of Israel. In this second chapter of Hosea, the people of Israel, God’s own people, boast “I will go after my lovers who give me my bread, and my water, mywool and my flax, my oil and my drink.” It isn’t hard to hear the sheer ungratefulness of such a smug statement. The emphasis is all on what she believes is her’s not on what has been given to her. What this tells us is that she no longer knows the truth about the God who loves her, the truth of the that very costly love God desires to communicate to her. As Paul also says in the first chapter of Romans, the truth is suppressed by unrighteousness. The unrighteousness of the people of Israel was that they chased after other lovers, which meant that they worshipped false gods. Paul tells us again from the first chapter of Romans, that the worship of false gods happens when we exchange the truth about God for a lie, when we adore and serve the creature, ourselves, rather than the one who created us. As we hear in the eighth verse of this second chapter of Hosea, God’s people no longer remembered that it was God who had given her the grain, the wine, and the oil. They forgot that it was God who had lavished all of this abundance upon them. They did not even recognize that it was God who had given his people their silver and their gold, the very same silver and gold which they then used in their worship of their false gods.
In light of his people’s blindness to all that he had done for them, God is justified in acting harshly with his people. Just as God had given to his people all of their abundance, he could just as well, take away those very same gifts. This is what we learn that God intended. In verse nine God tells his that he was going to take back their grain in its time and their wine in its season. God was going to take away their wool and their flax. God had to bring hardship upon his people so that they might learn that their false gods would never be able to rescue them. So in their hardships, the people would find themselves terribly exposed and vulnerable having no one to cry out to save them in their time of need. God also tells his people that he was going to take away all of the feasts and holy days that he had commanded them to observe. The reason why God did so was that these sacred times were given to them so that they could express their thankfulness and gratitude to God for all that he had given to them. Since they now no longer gave God any credit for what they had, what good would such sacred days be to his people? Yet in taking away these sacred days in which the people could praise their God for his providing all that they needed, the people also tragically lost something profoundly important to life, which is the gift of joy. Joy springs from the thankful hearts of those who know the gifts of God as evidence of his never failing love for them. So in their rejection of the love God had for them, God’s people not only began to realize their vulnerability but they had also had lost their source of joy in their life. They were left as worried, anxious people who had to pursue a happiness of their own making, a wearisome life all because they rejected the beautiful love of God.
What was ultimately lost by the people of God was their identity as those who were to know themselves as being the beloved of God. They had followed the ways of the world when they rejected God as king, and desired to be like all of the rest of the nations and have a human figure to rule over them. So they looked to their king for their identity, desiring to be like him, better and greater than all the rest, always having abundance, able to rule over others. In doing so they forgot the truth about themselves which is that their true identity is that they had been created in love by the God who will never cease to love them even if they reject him. This is the truth that Jesus came to witness to, that all people are to know themselves as being the beloved of God. At his baptism, Jesus heard the voice of the Father say to him, “This is my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” And when Jesus calls us to remember him as we meet around his table, we are to remember him as being the beloved of God because as he was the beloved of God, so are we. So as we rise from the table we go forth knowing whose we are and who we are, for we truly are one who is beloved of God. This is the truth which will keep us from all unrighteousness. Amen!
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