The Redeeming love of the True Bridegroom

Date: 22 February 2026, 9.30 am

Speaker: Ps Daniel Tan Sermon Text: Hosea 3:1-5

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TRANSCRIPT

Introduction

Last Sunday, during the Scripture Reading, remember it was in 2 parts. Anant read from Hosea 2:2-13. He read the accusation of God upon unfaithful Israel and the punishment God had intended for them.

Rev Peter Warren then read for us v14-23 and we see a 180 degree change in the direction. And so Rev Warren encouraged us to consider that God in His gracious love for His people, has a different ending in mind for them.

And so we were asked to ponder, is our epitaph going to be different?

Though we have been unfaithful, yet because of who God is, as believers, Scripture will ring true for us – in that day declares the Lord, you will call me ‘My Husband’ and no long will you call me ‘My Baal’.

If you have not been with us through the previous 3 weeks, may I quickly recap.

As a church we are going through the book of Hosea. Today we are in chapter 3.

Now in chapter 1, Hosea the prophet of God was commanded by God to marry a woman Gomer who will become a prostitute. And Hosea’s marriage will represent how Israel had broken faith with the Lord due to idolatry.

In chapter 2, Hosea continues to provide for his wife, even as she remains in her adultery and in a counter intuitive manner, instead of severing ties, Hosea woos her back with his love.

Today in Hosea 3, we see the completion of this gospel drama, Hosea goes so far as to buy his wife from the auction block, where her sins have dragged her to in disgrace.

To Hosea’s original readers, they are to realize that unfaithful Gomer is Israel committing spiritual adultery against God.  

And thus, they and us too in 21^st century Singapore are to appreciate the redeeming love of God who is the True Bridegroom.

Unfaithful yet graciously sought (v1)

Last week, Rev Warren shared that he is thankful that God had not called him to be an Old Testament Prophet and I echo that sentiments too. Imagine having such a tough assignment as Hosea, to use your marriage as the message.

Yet, in God’s wisdom, we know that God has so willed that all our marriages are to be a picture of Christ’s relationship with the church.

Eph 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.

I’m sure we can all thank God that our marriages are not as challenging as Hosea’s.

But Hosea begs us all to consider our own actions towards others, in the light of how his models after God’s love for Israel.

In parallel, the New Testament teaches the implication of understanding God’s love for us:

1 Jn 4:19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

Now we know that words in marriage are important. It does take emotional effort to say ‘I Love You’. Yet, words are empty if there is no follow through with actions right?

Hos 3:1 And the Lord said to me, “Go again, love a woman who is loved by another man and is an adulteress, even as the Lord loves the children of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins.”

Is it not true that the sincerity of our words is measured in the concrete actions of our lives?

So how do we know if a person truly loves us? It’s when we see action in motion.

God tells Hosea, show Israel my love for them by how you will again love Gomer.

Now Gomer is not the prodigal son who has come to his senses and is returning home. No, Gomer is still in the arms of her lover who is not Hosea, her rightful husband.

And so, Hosea is instructed to go again and love Gomer who is loved by another.

Under God’s command, Hosea is to take the initiative to pursue Gomer even when she is blatantly unfaithful.

Hosea is to keep at loving Gomer even as she has rejected Hosea in the past and keeps rejecting him through her present actions.

Hosea is not just to take the initiative but to persist in taking the initiative.

We don’t know the effort it took for Hosea to locate Gomer or the number of times he tried to entreat her to return.

But the phased ‘go again’ gives the impression that it is a repeated, persistent action.

And God says, this is how I love wayward Israel as well.

Israel has been habitually unfaithful, she even loves the cake of raisins that are used in Baal worship, yet I will graciously seek her. I will take the initiative and I will be persistent.

Israel may have rejected me for idols, but I will still love her. I will seek her out with persevering love.

Significantly, I’m sure we will all agree that Gomer was totally unworthy of Hosea’s love towards her.

Israel too was embracing the worship of idols, they did not care at all about God.

Yet, God sought Israel.

The thing is Israel was never worthy of God’s love. Deuteronomy reminds us about that.

Deut 7:7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

God loved Israel just because He loved them. And because He has established a covenant with them, God will be steadfast in His love for His people.

Lunar New Year is the start of Spring, and we rejoice because life springs afresh. There is hope and optimism in the air. But in this world, we know that death and decay are never far behind.

If you are not a believer today, may I point you instead to eternal hope. May I point you to the spring that will blossom forever. You may feel that you are totally far away from God. You don’t stand worthy of His love.

You are right, none of us is worthy but God is graciously perusing you today. He has taken the initiative in His son, our Lord Jesus Christ -

Jn 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Would you accept his gracious offer of love today?

For the rest of us who are believers, some of us may be experiencing our spiritual winter – we are cold and distant from God and our relationship seems dormant.

May I offer that Hosea reminds us, the encouragement is that no matter how far away we are from God, He continues to graciously pursue us.

May Scripture today be like the warmth of Spring, touching our cold souls.

I submit the cure for our spiritual winter is to be reminded of God’s gracious love.

Remember God’s gracious love that pursued us while we were yet sinners. Today, know that this same love, continues to pursue us even in our unfaithfulness.

Unfaithful yet sacrificially redeemed (v2-4)

From v1, we see that the redeeming love of the True Bridegroom is gracious. Giving us what we do not deserve.

In v2-4, we will see that the redeeming love of the True Bridegroom is sacrificial even when we continue to be unfaithful.

Hos 3:2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and a homer and a lethech of barley. 3 And I said to her, “You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the whore, or belong to another man; so will I also be to you.” 4 For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or household gods.

As Hosea looked for Gomer, he found her not in the embrace of one of her lovers, but on the auction block as a slave.

We don’t know how she got there, but it does not speak well of her lovers. She ended up destitute and disgraced as to be sold presumably to pay off her debts.

This is actually a very accurate picture of sin is it not? It entices us with promises of something better but sin enslaves instead.

Dn Pak Choon in last week’s editorial mentioned the book “Counterfeit Gods” by Tim Keller.

Our editorial quotes from the book “an idol is anything so essential to your life that, if you lost it, you would feel you had no reason to live…. It is a counterfeit god when a good thing becomes an ultimate thing.”

The book deals with wealth, sex and power. Three very significant idols that have wrecked many lives. And if we are honest with ourselves, when these become counterfeit gods, they enslave, they are terrible taskmasters.

Now, how might society today look at a man who still seeks after a wife who is constantly unfaithful?

We will at best see him as foolhardy and at worst, weak and deficient.

When God told Hosea to go again and love Gomer, God had in mind, for Hosea to do what it takes to win her back.

Some commentators feel that what Hosea paid for, the 15 shekels of silver, a homer and a lethech of barley, is a bride-price. The bride-price is 15 shekels of silver and then the homer and barley are the marriage gifts for the bride herself.

They see this because of the link to the marriage language promise found in Hosea 2:19.

But because Hosea said he has ‘bought’ her, which is used normally in the context of trade and we know that Gomer has not only committing adultery, she is actively prostituting herself - it makes me more persuaded to the view that Gomer has somehow found herself in the position of a slave.

In the ancient world, it was not unusual for slaves to be paraded naked. This is to ensure transparency for the potential owner. You know what you are getting.

So not only is Hosea seen as weak, but he is also to be totally humiliated as he stands there, the legal husband bidding for his wife, who is being shamed publicly.

So, it seems, as the bidding war begins, it rises to a price that Hosea did not have sufficient money for. All he had was 15 shekels and so he had to throw in a homer and a lethech of barley.

Derek Kidner a bible commentator calculated that the total would be about 30 shekels of silver.

30 shekels was estimated to be half a year’s wages. 30 shekels was also the ransom price of a slave according to Exodus 21:32.

By marriage Gomer already was Hosea’s. Now through public humiliation and the costs of all that he had, Hosea has ransomed back Gomer.

Church, the Apostle Peter tells us, God has treated His people the same way that Hosea did with Gomer.

1 Peter 1:18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Jesus the Son of God did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Jesus then humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

God has through Jesus, purchased us like Hosea did. By the blood of Jesus, the debt of sin has been paid for. The curse of slavery has been broken. In Christ, we have been set free, fully free from the tyranny of sin.

So church, it is the lie of the devil, that living as our heart’s desire is freedom. It is the devil who points us to the counterfeit gods of wealth, sex and power.

Such counterfeit gods are counterfeit for they enslave us instead.

Hosea 3:3-4 then describes for us the process of sanctification. What is the follow through upon redemption.

Now that we have been purchased, how does God wean us off the counterfeit gods and realign us back to having a genuine relationship with Him.

Hosea says to Gomer, ‘you shall not play the whore, or belong to another man, so will I also be to you.’

There is a sense that Hosea will not be intimate with Gomer for a period.

Like an addict, there is a need to wean her off her dependences on her lovers whom she has mistakenly sought as the provider for her physical satisfactions of sex, bread, water, wool, flax, oil and drink.

In the same vein, God will strip Israel of all her supporting foundations. Israel will go into exile and there she will have no king or prince, she will be rid of the sacrificial and religious systems and no access to knowing the will of the divine.

Israel through the exile will be stripped of her dependence upon all her idolatry – politically, religiously and socially, so that she can learn afresh to depend on God her true bridegroom.

I submit that because of God’s redeeming love for us, there is an escalation of intensity in God’s loving discipline.

In chapter 2, God said :

Hos 2:6 Therefore I will hedge up her way with thorns, and I will build a wall against her, so that she cannot find her paths. 7 She shall pursue her lovers but not overtake them, and she shall seek them but shall not find them.

Here we see that God frustrates us when we seek after counterfeit gods.

If that is not sufficient to turn us back to Him, I submit Hosea 3:4 will be God’s way of rebuilding us.

He will remove us from the midst of our counterfeit gods. There will be a time of journeying in the wilderness.

A place where we will be utterly dependent upon God and will not be distracted.

There in the bareness of the wilderness, we will be able to hear the tender voice of Jesus our Shepherd.

If you sense that you are in a refining process currently, don’t be despondent but instead be encouraged that you are experiencing God’s redeeming love. A refining process for you to be purer.

May the perspective of Apostle Peter be our encouragement:

1 Peter 1:6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

God refines us through the fire so that our impurities surface and can be removed. And with the impurities removed, God can thus see His reflection clearer in our lives.

The redeeming love of the True Bridegroom is sacrificial. It costs the life of His Son Jesus Christ. And this redeeming love will continue to pursue us through the process of sanctification.

Unfaithful yet fully restored (v5)

Notice with me that throughout chapters 1 & 2, the parallel analogy of the marriage of Hosea and Gomer and that of God and Israel is explicitly mentioned.

In Hosea 3, for the first 4 verses, this parallel continues. Hosea, pursue Gomer again even as I pursue Israel.

Hosea redeem Gomer and purify her, even as I do the same with Israel.

Then in v5, we see the marriage of Hosea and Gomer take a backseat. God is still using the covenant of marriage as the model, but it is more implicit now.

Hos 3:5 Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days.

For the rest of the book of Hosea, Hosea’s marriage to Gomer will no longer be mentioned but we should still keep that in mind.

Unfaithful Israel is given the comforting assurance and hope that her restorative discipline process of the exile will have an end.

Afterwards the children of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.

How are they to seek David their king? King David died even before the time of Hosea’s first audience. So, it can only be King David’s descendant that they are referring to.

Luke the Gospel writer, highlights this irony that God gives spiritual sight to the blind through faith. The Son of David that Hosea speaks about it is none other than Jesus of Nazareth and you can only acknowledge Him by faith.

Here is the account of this irony:

Lk 18:35 As he drew near to Jericho, a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging. 36 And hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what this meant. 37 They told him, “Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.” 38 And he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” 39 And those who were in front rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” 40 And Jesus stopped and commanded him to be brought to him. And when he came near, he asked him, 41  “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Lord, let me recover my sight.” 42 And Jesus said to him, “Recover your sight; your faith has made you well.” 43 And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise to God.

Thus, with the arrival of Jesus Christ, we know that the pivotal point in salvation history has arrived.

In Christ, full restoration is guaranteed. In Christ, sin’s curse and dominion has been fully broken.

In Christ there is now full reconciliation with God, there is fellowship with Him, there is acceptable worship of Him and there is the blessing of His presence in the lives of believers.

What a wonderful picture, so when will it happen you may wonder?

There are different opinions as to when exactly is the ‘latter days’, but Hosea 3:5 doesn’t answer when, but describe what will happen - they will seek God and come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness.

The writer of Hebrews tells us of the significance of Jesus:

Heb 1:1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the ages. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

Jesus is the highest point of God’s salvation plan for full restoration. According to Hebrews, the last days began with the first coming of Jesus.

Now for us, we await eagerly the second and final coming of King Jesus.

So, the call on Israel is also the call for every believer. We are to forsake our idols, along with every other worldly source of reliance that is keeping us from God.

We are to return to him, seek the Lord our God, coming in reverence to the goodness of His grace that is offered in the Gospel.

Though we are unfaithful, but because of King Jesus, we can look forward to full restoration when He comes again because

Christ, the true and better David

Lowly shepherd, mighty king

He the champion in the battle

Where, o death, is now thy sting?

In our place He bled and conquered

Crown Him Lord of majesty

His shall be the throne forever

We shall e'er His people be

Conclusion

Hosea 3, I’m sure we all are realizing now, is not about Hosea, it is about Jesus Christ.

We are Gomer – unfaithful, wandering and underserving. Christ however is our True Bridegroom, faithful, pursuing and redeeming.

At the cross, Jesus the Son of David paid the price we could never pay. He did not abandon us His bride, instead he laid down His life for her.

Because of King Jesus, the glorious future of full restoration that Hosea speaks of is a certain reality.

Today, would you receive the love of Jesus Christ the True Bridegroom?

For some it might be receiving it for the first time, for others, it would be receiving it anew.

May Hosea 3 grant us the firm knowledge of God’s word and deed that shows His redeeming love for us.

May even His restorative discipline help guide us home to His loving embrace.

Church, in experiencing His redeeming love through the living word of God, let us then like a radiant bride, live lives of worship and witness testifying to His grace and mercies.

Reflection Questions

• To Hosea, obedience to God must not have been easy. What truths from the passage can we hold fast to, that will encourage us to persevere in obedience to God?

• Seeing how Hosea reflects the heart of God, how can we learn to be more like Him in showing love and forgiveness towards others who have hurt us?

• Because of King Jesus (v5), we have now been reconciled to God. How does it make us feel to know that Christ has won for us the covenant blessings of God, even though we have been unfaithful?