Gomer
T.D. Jakes
Hosea 1:2, 3, 2:4, 5
She had been around. And around. And around. And finally she had arrived. No one would believe how far she had traveled to become a respectable woman. Respectable, indeed. Who would have ever suspected that this woman who was now a wife and mother had once been a mistress of the night!
Only the Lord knew how far she had come. The Bible doesn’t tell us what led to her indiscretion. For she was already in the sewers of sexual promiscuity when she stepped onto the pages of the text. Even God called her a harlot. This was no wild rumor bandied about by bored housewives who had nothing better to do. The Almighty Himself had labeled her.
Amazing, isn’t it, that God can know you’re a loose woman and still offer a candle to light your way from the darkness of the night into the brightness of the light.
And so this woman had begun her long, tempestuous journey – her movement from midnight to daylight. She moved with the slow and hesitant pace of a bride approaching her groom. Destiny was waiting for her. Since none of us are where we are without leaving where we were, she started the steps that were necessary for real transformation.
And what a long flight of steps. She left her ankle bracelets, her tingling bells, and her artifacts of prostitution along the way. She was snatched out of the arms of men who bought her like a piece of meat, into the arms of a Redeemer who procured her like a diamond in the rough.
How difficult it must have been for a woman who had been passed around to believe that someone could find her valuable and attractive.
People have a way of defining who we are by what we do. When God called her a harlot, He was speaking of her profession. But when He addresses her personality, He calls her Gomer, “Beloved.” What a contradiction! Still, it lets us know that God calls those things that are not as though they are because He has the power to bring them into being.
Just about the time Gomer got to the top step and Hosea made her his wife, she reverted to her previous lifestyle. She slips out of the marital bed and slides into the night. She finds herself right back in the old rut, wondering if she’ll ever be free of the mess he’s in.
Now the Scriptures are quite candid about Gomer’s sins. She mad mistakes, ruined opportunities, embarrassed herself, disgraced her children, and disappointed her husband. But he still wanted her. He even searched the streets, looking for the wife who kept running away. She was his wife even when she didn’t act like it. She was the mother of his children and perhaps someone else’s children, but he wanted her. She had been molested and mauled by other men, but he still wanted her. So Hosea, whose name means “Salvation, “kept calling her, “Gomer….my Beloved.”
Other men might have seen her on the slave table, abused and battered, tattered and torn, her belly stretched from bearing children. She was no longer the glamour queen she had once been. They may have laughed and turned away.
But to Hosea, she was as lovely as a breeze singing from a mountain stream. And, standing afar off with tears in his eyes, he looked past the disheveled hair, the bruised skin, the lacerated flesh, the portly body, and he loved her. He could have said, “That woman has hurt me, humiliated me, failed me, even backslidden. “He could have left her there on the auction block. Instead, he said, “I will pay the price to buy her back.”
Now perhaps you’ve been around the blocks a few times and made some mistakes and blown some chances, and the enemy has said to you that you are beyond repair. But God keeps calling you by your name and not your shame. Listen to Him. You must hear God call you by name until you are so filled with who you are then that you forge what you have done. He is saying, “Beloved, I want you. I’ve already paid the price to buy you back. Come home.”
1:2
When he Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea:
“Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry, For the land has committed great harlotry By departing from the Lord.”
3 Then the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover” and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans.”
2 So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver, and one and one-half homers of barley. 3 And I said to her. “You shall stay with me many days; you shall not play the harlot, nor shall you have a man-so too, will I be toward you.”
4 For the children of Israel shall abide many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, without ephod or teraphim.
5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They hall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.
2:4
“I will not have mercy on her children, For they are the children of harlotry.
5“Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ea’ O house of the king! For yours I the judgment, Because you have been a snare to Mizpah. And a net spread on Tabor,
2 The revolters are deeply involved in slaughter, Though I rebuke them all, 3 I know Ephraim, And Israel is not hidden from Me;
For now, O Ephraim, you Israel is defiled.
4“They do not direct their deeds Toward turning to their God, For the spirit of harlotry is in their midst. And they do not know the Lord.
6 The pride of Israel testifies to his face;
Therefore Israel and Ephraim stumble in their iniquity; Judah also stumbles with them.
7 They have dealt treacherously with the Lord, For they have begotten pagan children. Now a New Moon shall devour them and their heritage.
8 “Blow the ram’s horn in Gibeah, The trumpet in Ramah! Cry aloud at Beth Aven, Look behind you, O Benjamin!”
9 Ephraim shall be desolate in the day of rebuke; Among the tribes of Israel I make known what is sure.
10 “The princes of Judah are like those who remove a landmark; I will pour out my wrath on them like water.
11 Ephraim is oppressed and broken in judgment. Because he willingly walked by human precept.
12 Therefore I will be to Ephraim like a moth. And to the house of Judah like rottenness.
13 “When Ephraim saw his sickness, And Judah saw his wound, Then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to King Jareb: Yet he cannot cure you, Nor heal you of your wound.
14 For I will be like a lion to Ephraim. And like a young lion to the house of Judah.
I, even I, will tear them and go away;
I will take them away, and no one shall rescue.
15 I will return again to My place Till they acknowledge their offense.
Then they will seek My face;
In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”