Satan's a Rotten Pimp

I went to see the production my church does each year for Easter last night.  It's a mime but don't let the name fool you, it's much better than I can explain.  The theme for this year's mime (that my wife wrote #proudhusband) is "Beloved".  Most years the mime has a scene depicting the prodigal son, but this year the story of Hosea was used because it fits the theme perfectly.

Hosea is one of my favorite Old Testament stories.  The story of Hosea is mostly found in chapter one and three.  What happens is God tells the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute in order to live out a parable of God and Israel and ultimately Christ and us.

"Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD." Hosea 1:2b

Hosea then marries this woman Gomer who is selling her body to other men.  Hosea and Gomer have children and they're given really strange names with meanings like "not loved" and "not my people".  These names are not in the top ten for my wife and I nor any person ever.

At some point in the marriage, or perhaps the entire time, Gomer is with other men.

"Then the LORD said to me, 'Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress.  Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes." Hosea 3:1

Hosea then went and found his cheating wife.  Can you imagine that?  Hosea had to go and beg his wife to come home and to stop sleeping with other men.  He had to go to his wife and ask her to come home to him and the kids.

But there's more.  Look at what Hosea did.

"So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley.  Then I told her, 'You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you." Hosea 3:2-3

Hosea had to go and buy back his own wife from some pimp!  He was obedient to God and he loved his wife, who wasn't the pick of the litter from the beginning and definitely not at this point of the story, so much that he paid for what was already his.

Throughout the Old Testament the prophets referring to chasing after other gods as whoring.  The people whored themselves after all sorts of gods and so do we.  We sell our bodies to the pursuit of many things that have nothing to do with being faithful to God.  We are unfaithful to God from the start, we were never the pick of the litter.

Satan tries to pimp us out.  He tries to have us be a slave to sin.

"Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness..." Romans 6:19b

But praise be to Jesus who is the greater Hosea!  He loving pursued us so much that He not only gave us a chance to choose Him, but better than that, He purchased us.  He purchased us from the bondage of sin.

"... you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased men for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth." Revelation 5:9b-10

This Holy Week don't forget that you were a slave to sin, that you were like Gomer who prostituted herself out, we all whored ourselves to sin whose wages bring only death (Romans 6:23).  We were being pimped out to be perpetually unloved and we had no hope of getting out, but then Christ came to us out of great love and obedience to the Father, just like Hosea, and purchased what was already supposed to be His.  The creator died to win back the creation.  He paid a hefty fee to make the Church His bride.

"Then I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.  I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them.  They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God.  He will wipe every tear from their eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." Revelation 21:1-4

If you believe in Him, Christ has freed you from Satan's bondage.  He came down and kicked sin and death and Satan's butt like Liam Neeson in "Taken" and like Hosea He has purchased us to be His own.  Remember this costly grace.  Think this week about the blood that bought you and live faithfully and fully to Christ today.