Love is not all you need

Jacob loved Rachel, but he didn’t love Leah. On closer inspection, Jacob’s “love” for Rachel was more lust than love. His behavior was that of an addict. He invested so much false hope and expectation in Rachel’s beauty that the idea of this woman became his idol. If you get married as Jacob did, putting the weight of all your deepest hopes and longings on the person you are marrying, you are going to crush them with your expectations. It will distort your life and your spouse’s life in a hundred ways.

“No person, not even the best one, can give your soul all it needs. You are going to think you have gone to bed with Rachel, and you will get up and it will always be Leah.” Timothy Keller

We have idolized romantic love in our culture. We have taken a good thing, and made it an ultimate thing, which is the definition of idolatry. When we idolize something, we love it, trust it, and obey it. Ernest Becker says we have elevated romantic love to the point where we expect it to rid us of our faults and our feeling of nothingness. We expect romantic love to justify us, to redeem us. “Needless to say, human partners cannot give this.”

As C.S. Lewis noted, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

There is a prophet in the Old Testament named Hosea and his story is like no other story in the Bible, and maybe anywhere else. God tells Hosea to marry a prostitute. Why does God say this?

“because the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord.” Hosea 1.2

Hosea is a prophet in a dying kingdom. He sees the last gasp of success in Israel followed by a period of weak kings and disastrous decisions. In a period of twenty years six different kings reigned in Israel until Israel was no more. Hosea lists the last good king of Israel, Jeroboam, and he also lists the kings of Judah at that time. He leaves out these six kings in Israel. He’s too embarrassed for Israel to mention them.

What is also happening, not coincidentally, is Israel has become a spiritually unfaithful people. They have mixed the true worship of Yahweh with the pagan worship of the Baals, the localized fertility gods. The worship of Baal centered around each region having its own god for success with the crop harvest. You gained favor with your Baal by cultic prostitution and orgies. This was thought to manipulate the god in a magical way to reward your land with a good harvest.

When God tells Hosea the land commits great harlotry he means it almost literally – the people are debasing themselves for the god of the land.

God tells Hosea to marry a harlot and so Hosea marries a woman named Gomer. It is implied that Gomer was perhaps a prostitute in one of the Baal cults. The prophet of God marries a prostitute and they have children. And their marriage and family becomes the story within the story of God’s love for his people Israel. This image of God’s relationship with his people played out in this strange marriage is one uniquely Hosea’s own. One commentator notes that Hosea’s marriage is a “tragic mismatch.” In other words, you won’t get this match on Eharmony. Nonetheless, Hosea and Gomer’s marriage seems to convey a tenderness and a fidelity that weathers the storms.

Their first child is a boy whom the Lord names for them. (He’ll name all their children) When God gives people names, this is always a sign that this person will serve a divine purpose. The boy’s name is Jezreel, which is Hebrew for “punishment.” In other words, punishment is coming to Israel for her unfaithfulness.

The second child Gomer and Hosea have is a girl. She is named Lo-ruhama, which means “she is not pitied.” God has no pity for a wicked people.

The third child is another boy called Lo-ammi, which means “not my people.” And at this point, Israel is perhaps hoping that Gomer and Hosea are done having children.

What is God up to here? That’s always a good question to ask, especially when reading the Old Testament. I think we answer that by using the very modern acronym of DTR – define the relationship. Young adults and teens that are dating today often come to the moment when they have to “define the relationship.” They want to know who they are, what they are, and what they can expect. That’s what God is up to here in Hosea. God what’s to have a define the relationship conversation with his people. Let’s call this what it is. You show more interest in the gods and lusts of your imaginations than you do in the God who brought you out of Egypt into the promised land. So let me be honest with you. You will be punished and I don’t pity you. You stopped being my people some time ago.

The commandments Moses delivered tell us that our God is a jealous God. He won’t be cuckholded, or cheated on forever. Anytime we put something in place of God, whether that thing is a person or a passion, we are cheating on God.

I was watching the NFL Network the other day with the boys and they were showing a recap of the Steelers glorious run to the Super Bowl last year. At one point they interviewed Troy Polamalu. They’ve just shown Troy making some spectacular hits and interceptions, and at every moment playing with passion and reckless abandon. Then they cut to this quiet, humble man who says,

“I don’t love football. I love life. Football is a part of life and so I appreciate football and play it with passion.” He went to talk about the more important loves of his life, his wife and kids, and his ultimate love for the Lord.

The point is not that we have to hate sports, or shopping or whatever our interests are. The point is not that we should love our spouse less, but rather that we should know and love God more. Nothing can come close to what our love for God should be. Because no one or nothing else is as beautiful as the Lord is. Hosea is not the only place in the Bible where God describes his love for us as a marriage.

“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is a profound one, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 5.31-32

Here’s Paul again:

“If then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” Colossians 3.1-4

Timothy Keller tells the story of a woman named Sally. Sally, Keller writes, “had the misfortune of being born beautiful.” Even as a child she could see the power that her physical beauty had on people. At first she used her beauty to manipulate others. But then others began to use it to manipulate her. She came to feel powerless unless she some man was in love with her. She could not bear to be alone. This made for a lot of unhappiness and disappointment in her life. More than that, she felt her life slipping away as she worshipped the god of romance.

One day, though, Sally got her life back. She came across this passage in Colossians that we just read. She came to realize that neither men nor career nor anything else should be “her life” or identity. What mattered was not what men thought of her, but what Christ had done for her and how he loved her. So when she saw a man was interested in her, she would silently say in her heart toward him, “You may turn out to be a great guy, and maybe even my husband, but you cannot ever be my life. Only Christ is my life.” When she began to do this, Sally got her life back.

That is the promise of God. That if we allow our lives “to be hid” in Christ, when Christ begins to appear, the real you appears with him in glory. The good news is that, though the Lord may become jealous and angry, he is also forgiving and gracious and above all, full of love for us. When it comes to his people, God’s love won’t be denied.

“Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her.” Hosea 2.14

“And in that day says the Lord. . .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.”