Naked

“I will strip her naked and expose her as on the day when she was born.  I will also make her like a wilderness”  Hosea 2:3

Naked – Hosea, the prostitute’s prophet. One of the strangest stories in the Bible.  If ever a man was asked by God to live out the role of humility, Hosea was the man.  God instructed him to marry a prostitute, to have children with this woman and remain faithful to her in spite of the fact that she continued to have sex with other men.  Hosea became a living example of God’s promise and long-suffering. 

But God had a purpose in this object lesson played out in the life of Hosea.  His purpose was to bring about the repentance of an entire nation that was having sex with other gods.  Israel’s unfaithfulness did not force God to ask for a divorce.  He was entitled, but His promise of faithfulness remained unbroken.  That does not mean that God did nothing about this infidelity.

In this verse, God tells Hosea that He is going to strip Israel of all the trappings of its prostitution.  He is going to lay the body bare.  There will be nothing to hide.  Israel’s nakedness will be on public display.  Why?  Because until Israel is stripped of everything related to its old way of living, repentance is not possible.

The word here is arom.  It is used for both physical nakedness and spiritual stripping.  There is an important connection here that we might miss.  God is returning to the symbol of crossing the wilderness after the Exodus from Egypt.  God birthed the people of Israel in the wilderness.  They died and were born again in those sufferings.  They learned dependence on Him in their need.  Now he will take them back to the days of the wilderness, to those days when they had no hope but the Lord, in order to bring them once again to a place of dependence. 

Hosea is a powerful lesson in patience.  It is also a clarion call to fidelity.  God will strip His children bare before the world before He gives up on any one of them.  If we choose to chase another lover, God promises to undress our lives in order to bring repentance.

Ever feel like you are standing naked before the world, stripped of everything you thought you needed to make life wonderful?  Take a good look around.  God may be walking with you in the wilderness.