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Hosea |
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Prayers
Father God, Your Son is far above all other husbands. You have had such mercy upon us. We sinned against You with our horrible immorality and idolatry. What hope would we have if You determined to have no more mercy upon us? Thank You for taking us as Your people. We were once far off, but now we are called the children of the living God in our association with Christ our King.
Lord God, there is hope now for all of our brothers and sisters in Christ. We should put away our foolish sinning, for we have been redeemed by Your Son. When we look back upon our lives of sin, we hate our rebellion against You. You continued to provide for us day by day, and yet we used Your good gifts for more and more sinning. Our false lovers were no good for us at all. How could we have ever thought that idols would be the answer for us? Turn us back home again moment by moment. Keep us far away from the love of sinning. Open up our hearts to the great hope that is ours in Christ the Lord. Make us lie down in safety again. We receive Your steadfast love for us with amazement. Our glorious God, Your grace is great, and Your mercy is very powerful.
Our Father, You have given us new hope in Christ. Your faithfulness is great. You found us on the rubbish heap of the rebellious and You redeemed us with an extravagant love. We must never turn away from You. We will seek the glory of Your Son forever.
Lord Almighty, what will You do with Your church when we go the way of the murderous and faithless? Surely You will not allow us to stand in Your presence when we give ourselves to continual foolishness and sin. We were to be a glorious and royal priesthood. How can we be loved by You when we treat a piece of wood as an object of worship? How can we live if we are full of immorality? Oh the burden of our sin! Surely there is a better end for us. We will not be stubborn forever. Surely there is a remnant that will be ashamed of their sin, and will be kept according to Your abundant mercy.
Glorious God, there is a day of wrath coming, and a day of division in the church. There will be a separation of the sheep and the goats. Our pride will do us no good. In that day we may seem to seek You, but many will not be acknowledged by You as Your children. Are we all lost? How can we stand Your wrath? We have been determined in our pursuit of filth. Our real hope is not in the power of men and governments. Our hope is in You, and our deliverance comes through Christ alone.
Father, teach us the difference between mere words and true repentance. We want to return to You and know You. Meet us now with the Bread from heaven. He is our sure and holy Redeemer. Our love to You has been temporary and conditional, and so we have transgressed Your Law. Teach us the way of steadfast love and patient endurance. Show us how to turn away from all sin, and restore the fortunes of Your people.
Great Savior, what will we do if You remember our evil forever? Surely You have accomplished our redemption through the work of Your Son Jesus. Everything about Him is holy and good. He never wandered from You. He never looked to the world for His hope. He never rebelled against You, or spoke lies to You. He has received Your Word with the fullness of joy and with happy obedience. Your Son’s perfect righteousness has been credited to our account. What a gift to the ungodly!
God of Glory, we have a sure hope in Christ. Though we have often spurned Your good gifts, He has not rejected us. Though we have foolishly turned our hearts to the making of idols, He has taught us the difference between a true Savior and objects that are not gods. We should live in Him always. We should listen to Him fully. The way of the world will not solve our problems. If we follow that path we will only multiply our troubles. You are the only answer for Your people. Please forgive us.
Lord God, we rejoice in You, and we hate our sin. Why should we return to the way of evil? There was nothing good there for us. That way is a place for those who seek to be defiled. That way is the way of slavery. There is only one road for us. We have one great Prophet, and He leads us in the path of righteousness. We were found by You when we were dead in our trespasses and sins. We do not want to return to our days of sin and disaster again. Please protect us from dangerous choices and unhealthy inclinations. Our wickedness would only lead us into fruitless patterns of death. Please do not reject us. Bring us near to You day by day, and never let us go.
God of Grace, You have brought us through many challenging times. We have faced trials from enemies, and great troubles from our own false words and filthy actions. We repent, O Lord God. We do not want to go back to the place of our ugly sin. We want to move forward toward the land of Your great promises. You have spared us from the punishment that we deserved. We have plowed iniquity, and would have reaped only sorrow. Yet Your Son has taken upon Himself the trouble that we deserved. He was cut off from the land of the living for us and by His life and death we are fully restored. We thank You for Your abundant mercy. We receive this Word of reconciliation with joy because of our risen Messiah.
Hosea 11
Father God, You rescued Your children out of Egypt. You have been patient with us, though we have often rebelled against You. Thank You for Your gift of Your only-begotten Son. He too was called out of Egypt as a very young child, but He never disobeyed Your commandments. He walked with You in perfect faithfulness. In Him, we have been granted the benefits of covenant love.
Lord of Hosts, how could Your people have ever have thought that it was wise to treat powerful nations as trusted fathers? How could it have ever seemed wise to forsake You, the only true God and Father of Your people? Yet we have loved sin. The nations care little about our iniquity, but You are holy. You have spoken through the prophets. You have made it clear to Your loved ones that we must live according to Your Word. Rescue us not only from our enemies, but also from our rebellious sin nature and from our disgraceful deeds.
Great God, we have a new hope in Your Son Jesus Christ. Idols cannot help us, and we will not trust in them. You are the Savior who brought us through the wilderness. Your Son is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He will save us. He will not devour Your elect. We confess that we have been unwise sons and daughters. Yet through the resurrection of our great Atoning Sacrifice, the sting of death has been removed far from us. We have a Redeemer in Jesus Christ, and He will never forsake us.
Father God, we return to You with sincere sadness for our sin, but abundant joy because of Your greatness. We think of Your mercy to the orphan, and we love You. You will make Your children beautiful. We will flourish under Your protective love. Your love and greatness are eternal. Your ways are right, and we will walk in them forever. Please pick us up when we stumble, and rescue us when the battle of this age is more than we can bear.
Devotionals
God has spoken clearly to people for many centuries. He “speaks” through all that He has made, but because of our sinful hearts, we need something more, because we suppress the truth of His majesty in ungodliness, and we will not acknowledge our sins, nor will we worship Him. Because of this He has spoken to people in former days through visions and visitations. He has also caused His Word to be preserved in writing since the days of Moses, so that there could be no doubt concerning His message to us in this confusing sin-filled age. Even in the most bleak times, we can read this Word and be comforted with the truth of the Lord’s great love for us, and His intention to give to us the desires of our hearts. Yet as any great father disciplines His children because he loves them, God disciplines us, and moves us toward the fullness of His blessing for us in the age of resurrection. He has used men like Hosea to record for us the character of His love for His people, so that we would not think of ourselves as unwanted.
In the days of the Old Covenant, God spoke through the prophets, little by little and in various ways. One of the most amazing ways that He has ever spoken was through the life of this man Hosea. He told him to take a wife of whoredom, and to have children with her. Understand that when Hosea obeyed the Lord by taking Gomer, the prophet was playing the part of the covenant-keeping, faithful, and loving God, and Gomer was displaying the false dealings of Israel against her faithful Lord. How can a nation be counted as unfaithful to God? They do this when they have been promised to Him and then turn away from Him and consort with other deities. We are supposed to feel the pain of this situation, and to know something of the character of our God, who loves us despite the despicable way that we have treated Him.
All of this took place during the closing years of the northern kingdom of Israel, when she was about to be taken over by the Assyrian empire. Judah would follow later in her own days of trouble, but our focus here is on the other tribes to the north. Though Judah was in some ways the more faithful of the two lands, this book tells us that God still loved Israel despite her whoredom, a lesson that we will do well to reflect upon when we consider the character of the God who sent His Son to die for sinners.
God’s plans are sure from all eternity, yet they are presented to us through His prophets over time in the language of being more or less settled depending upon the response of His people to His entreaties. In this way, the Lord is honestly pleading with His people, so that we will see that for His part, He has done all He could for them. Yet there comes a time when their fate is presented as certain. That time has come for Israel during the ministry of Hosea. The Lord’s settled determination to punish the dynasty of Jehu, to have no more mercy on the governing authorities of Israel, and to end their existence as a nation is reflected in the very names of Hosea’s children.
Despite this pronouncement, the electing love of the Lord toward His chosen ones is very powerful, so that even at this desperate time He not only renews His covenant promises to His people somehow, but expands them! He indicates that there will be those who were formally called “Not My people” who will now be brought into the household of God. These loved ones from the nations will somehow be considered to be a part of the Jewish people that will soon be no more, not only in the north, but even in the south. Though He will discipline Israel, He will somehow expand Israel, for these new children will be there with the children of Judah and the children of Israel. They will all somehow be a reconstituted nation, under one Head. What a mysterious and wonderful prophesy! What an amazing God we serve who announces His wrath against His people, and in the midst of what will soon be their worst days, speaks with such certainty of the blessings of grace that will come upon them and upon many others in the day of their best blessings.
All of this is much easier for us to understand today because of the great revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that One who has become the Head of this amazing kingdom. We have somehow become the fulfillment of this prophesy of mercy as we have been brought into relationship with this powerfully loving, covenant-keeping God through the sacrifice of His great Son.
There has never been a better Man than Jesus Christ. He has suffered greatly for the glory that was set before Him. It was His Father’s good will to set aside some vessels for mercy even from the nations of the world, and to join these children together into one body with descendants of the tribes of Israel. Christ is the Head of that body and the King of a most mysterious kingdom which will soon be born in resurrection glory. We wait for that day as those who have become convinced of the surpassing greatness of the King of the kingdom, who is even to be our faithful Husband. In that day, the sins and weaknesses of His bride will be put away forever in a great burst of resurrection glory, just as surely as the penalty for our sins has been entirely paid for by His death on the cross for His bride.
Restoration is a most beautiful gift. Those who have been called “not my people” long to hear the words from the Lord, “You are my people.” Those who think that they may have been cut off from all divine mercy long to hear, “You have received mercy.” We speak these good words to one another as brothers and sisters in the family of God, and look for the day when restoration is so obvious that it will be seen in the renewal of even the land all around us. For now, we must hear God’s word of mercy and believe, and take our places together as those who worship the Lord with renewed hearts, knowing the Lord to be merciful and forgiving.
If we want the forgiveness that comes from the God of the Scriptures, we must also hear what He has said concerning the sin of His people. Israel was an unfaithful bride, and the children she gave birth to, did not show the marks of the Lord, her husband. They resembled the foreign lovers of this false woman. The warning comes here from God. Israel will be publicly exposed, and she will suffer greatly. She will yet hope in her lovers, the gods of the nations that she turned to for prosperity. She believed that the blessings that she had in the past came to her as a result of her appeals to these local deities. The true God will make it harder for her to go chasing after these others, and He will take away her ease and plenty in the hope that she will return again to Him who is her first husband. Will she remember that there were better days for her when she followed the Lord more faithfully? Will she come back home again?
The story of the unfaithfulness of Israel is a sad one. She does not seem to know how many blessings have come to her from God’s hands, things she thought came from Baal, things she used in her worship of this false god. The Lord will not put up with this anymore. There will be no one who can stop Him when He comes to discipline this disgraceful nation. There will be great desolation upon her lands. Her festivals will be no more. She made herself beautiful for the Baals, and she forgot the Lord Her husband. The Lord would not allow this to continue.
Will the Lord’s purposes then utterly fail because of the disgrace of His people? No, amazingly He speaks here of a future time of great blessing, and of a process of wooing back His bride. He will allure her back to the place of their courtship. He will speak tenderly to her. He will give her great gifts and somehow overturn a place of destruction, making it into a new door of hope. There is a confidence expressed here that Israel will return to the Lord, calling Him her Husband again, and never mentioning the Baals. This great day of blessing is something that could never spring from her faithlessness and rebellion. It is God who will do this, somehow changing His bride through His kind affections.
This future day of covenant blessing is ultimately beyond the normal range of experience that we have in this current age. It will involve a change, not only in the heart of the Lord’s bride, but even in the entire natural world all around us. This will be something new for the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, even the insects that crawl along the ground. The life of grasping for the property of others, and the warfare that springs from that covetous root will be utterly gone, so that weapons will be abolished from the land, for they will no longer be necessary. There will be no more falling away from the love of the Lord, for His people will have an eternal betrothal to Him. There will be no more sin, oppression, hatred, and betrayal. God will bring us a new day of righteousness and love that will never end.
The Lord will speak to the new heavens and the heavens will speak to the new earth, and there will be goodness and plenty for all His people. The days of “no mercy” and “not my people” will be over forever. There will be restoration and the most complete renewal in the new creation.
We might reasonably ask this question: “At what cost paradise?” Who will pay the bill for all of this? How can Israel go from the disgrace of adultery to the blessing of the fullness of marital purity and fruitfulness? There was a price to pay. The demands of the Lord’s holiness had to be met. There would need to be One who would do what was required in order to secure the unparalleled delights of the coming age.
This is what God has done for us in the provision of His Son. This is what the cross has accomplished. There is no magic in a piece of wood. It is the Man who suffered on the tree that paid the price. No other man could have done what He did for us. He took His wife’s unfaithfulness upon Himself on that great and horrifying day. He showed us what it means to be a Husband. He died for us, yet He did this with the power of an indestructible life. Not only the perfect Man, but also perfect God, He both died and rose again. In Him we have a world of blessing. In Him we have an eternity of newness. The price was massive, but it has been paid.
It is one thing for a prophet to give a speech to others about the redeeming love of God. It is quite another for him to model that love with actions. Hosea was told here to take the message of restoration between God as husband and Israel as His wayward wife, and to live that out in his own marital relationship. His wife was an adulteress woman. She was loved by another man, just as Israel was in the spiritual embrace of idolatry and worldliness. As the Lord continued to love Israel despite her waywardness, Hosea was to truly love his wife Gomer.
Hosea did this. In order to get his wife back, he actually had to face the humiliation of paying for her. Why would he have to buy her? Apparently she had somehow been sold into slavery. When the people of God leave their true love and give themselves over to false gods, they become slaves of things that are not divine. Because of this condition, if we are to be free, we must first be purchased by our Redeemer. The price would be much more than silver and barley. The cost would be measured in righteous blood.
Hosea’s redeemed wife needed to pursue a different life now that he had bought her back. The prophet spoke to her. The way of life was simple. She would need to live with her husband for many days. When Jesus spoke to His disciples, He instructed them to “abide” in him. It is only when we live with God that we will be able to be fruitful, for apart from him we can do nothing.
Gomer was told that abiding with Hosea would mean that she could not be intimate with other men. Sometimes we are so stuck in our pathways of slavery that the Lord’s instruction to us must be very plain and explicit. It apparently is not enough for us to know that we should live with God. We also need to be told that loving the Lord means that we cannot worship other gods. The Lord is not open-minded on this point. He is delightfully committed to us as His bride, and He will not tolerate our wandering ways.
The encouragement that Hosea gives to his bride is the same one that Jesus gives to His disciples before He ascends into heaven. He tells them, “I will be with you.” This is what Moses insisted upon when the children of Israel were to go into the Promised Land. We are also on a journey, and our destination is better than the land of Canaan. Yet our pathway may take us through some rough terrain. We need the Lord’s presence now, and we need the assurance that where we are going, there He also will be. If He is not there with us, how can it be heaven?
As Hosea had been without his wife for some period of time, there would be a long time when Israel would be without their normal life with the Lord. They would have no king or active dynasty. They would have no system of divine sacrifice or the old places of religious worship. They would have no assistance from their accustomed tools of spiritual guidance or religious ceremonies. This is not to suggest that the kings, the shrines, or the sacraments that Israel had become used to over the centuries of her wayward life were authorized by God. It is just to say that her civil and religious props would be gone. She would not be a sovereign nation, or even an organized spiritual entity. This would be part of the Lord’s discipline of His bride.
Yet as Hosea had purchased Gomer back from that condition, we learn here of a later time called “afterward.” In those days there will be a change in Israel. She will return. She will seek God. She will seek a Davidic king, and would know both the fear of the Lord and His abundant goodness.
This restoration would not come quickly. The nation of Israel would never really be the same. Something better is being referred to here. The purchase of the defiled and unclean people of the Lord would not take place until the coming of the final Son of David, the Lord Jesus Christ. He would pay the awful cost of restoration, buying this sorry Gomer with His blood.
Despite the fact that we still wander away from Him and have a continual need to confess our sins and repent, He does not speak of us as some unclean prostitute. He says that we will be a glorious bride. Despite your own sense of shame and guilt, despite the fact that you cannot imagine that there would be any good news left for you, Jesus really does love you. He gave the fruit of all His righteous labor for you and then He paid for your redemption with something more precious than silver or gold. He knows that you are His rich inheritance. Do not fight against Him. Do not go running off after some other gods. Stay with Him, and be fruitful. He will never leave you. The fact is that He really does love you.
The Lord has something to say to His people Israel through the prophet Hosea. Though they may have forgotten long ago about His Word, He has not forgotten, and He brings a charge against them for their violation of His covenant. The problem is certainly a problem of behavior, which is spoken of here as a lack of love, but that lack of love proceeds from a lack of the knowledge of God. Though everyone knows God in some sense, what is meant here is a lack of reverence and awe for God that shows an ignorance of the One who is Lord of all and who especially is Lord of His people. From that root of spiritual ignorance springs all kinds of horrific sin. Because of this ignorance and wickedness, the people of God, and even the land and all the creatures that live within the borders of Israel, are damaged somehow by the unrighteousness of the people.
This devastating spiritual ignorance is presented as the fault not only of the people at large, but especially of the priests that have a responsibility to teach the Law of God and the prophets that should be bringing the Word of the Lord to Israel. Even if prophet and priest were to do their divine tasks with true faithfulness, it could be that the people would refuse to hear the teaching and the preaching that they would present to them. Yet if the priests will not teach the Law, and the prophets will not speak the truth of the Lord’s warnings and the encouragements of His promises, then these men are especially responsible for the destruction of Israel.
In this case the priests seem to have the same problem as the people. They have rejected a true knowledge of the Lord. Therefore the people are destroyed in their ignorance of the covenant and of the Lord of the covenant. Those who forget God’s Law may find that God will forget them. Could it be that the priestly class rejoiced in sin? They seemed to have led the people in unfaithfulness. Their rejection of God and their own immorality and idolatry would be their downfall.
It is not that the religious leaders and the people of Israel were not spiritual. They inquired of wooden idols, and were led astray by the worship of false gods. They had set up high places for their rituals and they offered sacrifices in many locations that they had decided were holy. The people of Israel are spoken of here as brides and daughters that commit adultery, but the priestly leaders are as husbands who go after cult prostitutes. Because of these wandering husbands the people have become as those without understanding, and they shall come to ruin.
The time of Israel as a nation is almost over. At the end of this chapter her sister to the south, Judah, is indirectly warned. She must not follow in the same idolatrous way as Israel, also called “Ephraim” here. There comes a point when it is necessary to recognize that the nation to the north is utterly joined to idols. She is spoken of as hopelessly committed to one excess after another. They are led by rulers who are said to dearly love shame. Therefore, it is not safe for the godly to have contact with them.
What will become of them? A wind or spirit of evil has overtaken them, but a wind of judgment from the Almighty will sweep them away in their shame. Their sacrifices to false gods will not mean any relief for them. Such abominations are the very cause of their troubles.
The shameful sacrifices of the Lord’s people were not in accord with the wonderful provisions of His Law. God did not call His people to create new gods or to define new ways of sinning in their efforts to win favor from false deities. There is a system of sacrifice that He did appoint. In full accord with God’s Law, Christ became the perfect Sin Offering for us.
He could not do this by ignoring the other provisions of the Law. If He was to become a sacrifice that could work true blessing for the wayward, it would have to be through the pathway of complete obedience to God’s wonderful commandments. This He did for us, and then He displayed the Lord’s covenant faithfulness to His true Israel by taking the righteous curse of the covenant upon Himself. The destruction of the nation of Israel by foreign powers was nothing compared to the curse that Christ took for the elect. He faced our hell and was victorious over it, atoning for our sins, and eliminating our frightful debt.
Now when we hear the warnings of the prophets concerning our unfaithfulness, by the power of a new wind of the spirit of God, we can be cut to the heart, and repent. Every unfaithfulness and weakness that we have in this life will not magically be removed. Sanctification is a tough battle and our victory now is partial at best. Yet the perfection of the Lord’s atonement requires that the perfect day will in fact come. This is our hope. It is far better than any nation that the world could offer us in the present age of disappointment.
The Lord continues His covenant lawsuit against Israel and even Judah as He points again to the guilt of leaders. Here not only are priests mentioned, who should be teaching the Law to the people, but also kings, who should administer justice. They should lead the people in great works of obedience to God, but they are called revolters who go out to slaughter as those who have forgotten to humble themselves before the Lord. Here God tells them that He will discipline them.
As the Lord has been saying through the words and the life of His prophet Hosea, some spirit of whoredom has taken over His people. They do not live as people who have a working knowledge of God and the fundamental truths that are necessary to consider in order to have communion with Him. His people must have an understanding of His glory and holiness. They must see something of their own desperate depravity, and yearn for some Mediator who could bridge this chasm between Him and them. They should then pursue the ways that He has revealed in order to give testimony to these fundamental facts of faith, and draw near somehow with hearts full of repentance. This is nothing like a description of their behavior. They are captivated by other nations, by their power, and by their religions. This is what the Lord means when He points to a spiritual reality of the worst kind of adultery that has captivated His people.
Though Hosea is directing His words especially toward the northern kingdom, Judah is mentioned throughout this chapter as well. They are both stumbling together. The consequence is that the Lord will no longer be found by them. They have rejected the things that God appointed to testify to the truth. Now they are prisoners of a lie. This lie cannot deliver them. The time for their discipline swiftly approaches.
The trouble that is coming is very near. In fact, Assyria would be a tremendous trouble to both north and south, though Jerusalem would survive the assault against her in the days of Hezekiah. Yet God came in judgment against both of them and upon their corrupt leaders. They were determined to go after things that are swiftly gone with the rot of this world, and so they would be overtaken by their decay. Desolation is decreed.
It is very ironic that Israel would think that the answer for them in their regional troubles would come from Assyrian power. They did not understand the nature of their real trouble. They went looking for help from the wrong great king. They could not help but see their sickness and their wound, at least feeling the consequences of their unfaithfulness, but they exhibited no sign of taking to heart the real cause of their disaster. They went to the Assyrians to cure them and to heal them. The Assyrian empire would be the Lord’s agent against them in His discipline.
The One who they need to turn to is the One who says that He will not allow Himself to be found by them any more. The Lord is a lion against them. They would do well to plead His eternal promises, remember their guilt and seek Him even at this late date. In their distress they should not earnestly seek the Assyrians. They are like a condemned murderer who calls for the hired executioner, wondering if he will turn aside from his task of killing long enough to have pity on a man he does not like anyway. Assyria will not save Israel. Assyria will not have mercy.
No power on earth can save them. It is God who is the true lion at the door of both Israel and Judah. He is sovereign in all His discipline. He can tear the prey and carry off the victim in such a way that no one in all creation could rescue them.
It is important for each of us to lay hold of the basic facts of following Yahweh. He is not to be manipulated or ignored. He is a God of justice and of mercy. We must acknowledge His great glory and bow before Him with hearts that are broken for our evil ways. He is not impressed by our great allies among the powerful and beautiful people on the face of the earth. If we challenge Him to a fight, or simply remove Him from the equation of how things work in this world, we will surely regret it.
There is a better way for us. The Lord has a provision for mercy in His covenant of grace. There is a King descended from the house of David who has been appointed as the highest authority in the land. There is a Priest who can yet make intercession for us. This Messiah is our only hope in our desperate need for peace with God. He is God’s appointed answer for our deepest need. We turn to Him and the Lion of the Lord’s righteous wrath is tamed by the abundant mercy of the cross. He has faced our punishment, and we have now received His amazing blessing.
There are passages in the Scriptures where views that are contrary to the truth or against the way of the Lord are simply presented like a quotation that is then to be refuted. Sometimes there is an attribution of some kind, as when the fool says in his heart, “There is no God” (Psalm 14). In other cases, as in Hosea 6, the passage is more subtle, and we are left to consider whether the position expressed is right or wrong.
We know that God is deeply committed to the goodness of real repentance. He speaks of this movingly in the final chapter of this book. But not all repentance is real. There is such a thing as a superficial call to change, that does not take into account the depth of the problem, and is not really consistent with a deep faith.
It is surely right for Israel to return to the Lord. That is always the way of healing. It is also true that the Lord disciplines His children with the intention of blessing them and binding up their wounds. Yet what is the meaning of this call to repentance? Is Yahweh still to be one god among many who happens to need a little attention now, lest His people be slaughtered?
The fact is that the Lord’s discipline of the northern and southern kingdoms will be for more than two or three days. If we were to atone for our own sins, an eternity would not be long enough for us to adequately pay our debt that we owe to our most holy God. Amazingly, God’s Son Himself rested in the grave for three days, and He was raised up. This is what was necessary for our salvation. His perfection and His death have secured a true life of hope for His people. Those who see the cross rightly should move toward a deep repentance.
We should press on to know the Lord. His blessing of the elect is as sure of the dawn. He will pour out His Spirit upon His children like spring rains upon the earth. But have we adequately considered the seriousness of our rebellion and the cost of our redemption? Does the repentance that we propose include a real turning from sin?
The Lord’s response to this call for repentance begins in verse 4. Both Israel and Judah are addressed. The Lord requires the kind of steadfast love that His Son will deliver. Our professions of love are like a mist. They come and they go as more interesting lovers appear on the horizon. God has spoken in some detail through His prophets. Will His people willingly consider all of what He has said and turn from their rebellious ways? There will be a great day of healing that will come for the Lord’s people, but first His judgment, rather than His mercy, will go forth as light.
Ultimately we do not have within us what it will take to win the favor of the Lord. Though we have momentary affections and intentions that seem to move in the right direction, He demands something more. That something more caused Him to speak from heaven with the words, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus had more than a ceremonial burnt offering or a morning and evening sacrifice. He had true knowledge of that which was pleasing to His Father, and He continually lived a life of steadfast love.
Our problems with sin are very serious and very old. From the creation of mankind we have been transgressors of the Lord’s covenant. In the garden, when Adam disregarded the Word of the Lord and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, something world-changing took place. As Paul makes so clear in Romans 5, Adam sinned for us. It is also clear even from natural revelation that the world all around us is deeply broken. This representative transgression of our first father has brought great trouble upon the earth. We are born with this blemish of Adam’s sin already upon us.
Israel and Judah displayed the accuracy of Adam’s representation in their lives of rebellion. They have dealt faithlessly with God, and so have we. Their cities are full of evildoers, and so are our churches. They were not faithful in their marriages or with their devotion to their Lord.
What hope can there be for people like us who are accurately represented by the man who sinned for us, and won death and hell in our name? The only answer for us is a new representative. We cannot be saved by even the best of our efforts at repentance. Certainly a surface recommitment to religious rituals will not satisfy a holy God. We need a second Adam, and the Lord has provided Him for us in His Son Jesus. Adam sinned for us. Jesus performed all righteousness for us. Adam won death. Jesus won life.
By the plan and purpose of God for the dawning of a new day, the righteousness of Christ and His atoning death have been credited to our accounts. In Him we have a full acceptance by our holy Lord, and we are spurred on by the power of the Holy Spirit toward a more full and real repentance.
The Lord loves His people. As Jesus loved a wicked Jerusalem, and desired to gather His people to Himself as a hen gathers her young, God loves even the very wayward northern kingdom. He would like to bless them. Yet the covenantal arrangement that would grant them peace and prosperity in their land is conditional upon their obedience to His Law. Those terms require that they now receive curse rather than blessing and that the land be taken away from them. Their evil deeds are obvious. Rather than being a righteous display to the nations of the God who formed them, they are an advertisement to others of the one who is called the father of lies, who comes to steal, kill, and destroy.
Though there is trouble coming upon them, they do not seem to be adequately aware of their situation. Their understanding of the Lord is weak, thinking that He is oblivious concerning their evil. It is a great blessing to have the Lord remember our sins no more, but this can only happen according to God’s plan. The Lord, speaking through Hosea, says that the evil deeds of Israel surround them and that their transgressions are in front of His face.
Kings like Hezekiah and Josiah in the south were a great help to the people, leading them in true repentance and demonstrating the way of faithfulness. The kings in the north, particularly in the time of Hosea, were not good examples in this way. Both the kings and the people were unfaithful to God.
Hosea uses the image of a red-hot oven in discussing the hearts of the people. They retain the heat of their drunkenness and the fire of their murderous plots. Particularly at the very end of the days of the northern kingdom, there was great instability, with kings lasting for very short reigns and then falling by the hands of murderers. In all of this it would seem like no one was sincerely calling upon the Lord.
Two things could be said of the northern tribes at this time. First, they do not seem to understand the seriousness of the Lord’s case against them. Second, when they do turn for help they have no sense of where to go. They certainly do not return to their God. They seem to flit among various peoples and nations, expecting that any help that they would require would come from foreign lands.
In particular they seem to turn to the two most powerful empires in the region, Egypt and Assyria. This is very ironic, since God long ago had delivered them from the bondage of their slavery in Egypt, and it would be the Assyrians who would be the agents of their final demise. Yet it is neither Egypt nor Assyria who is said to capture them in their final hour. This foolish bird of Israel will be caught in a heavenly net. The Lord would have been their only hope in an earlier day. It will be the Lord who will now send an enemy nation against them.
Israel is in the worst trouble. They will receive the sentence of “woe” and “destruction” upon them from the Lord God Almighty. They have rebelled against him in a fatal way. The Lord God has always been the only ultimate source of help for His people. He alone is capable of buying them back from their most fatal wanderings. What will He do when they all seem to have either forgotten Him or have concluded that He is the problem? They want blessing and they give themselves over to pagan practices of self-destruction. They not only ignore the duty of true repentance, they plot evil against Him.
God would have been completely justified in simply waving His hands in disgust against them. Yet we return again to the fundamental realization that the Lord has had a loving purpose concerning Israel that He will not abandon. He is utterly committed to the redemption of many who can only be described as the ungodly.
Sometimes we are amazed at the Lord’s judgment against sin, but there is something much more amazing than the righteous anger of God against His people. What is utterly shocking is the Lord’s unquenchable love and faithfulness for us when we have so grievously sinned against Him. What can account for His willingness to give His Son for us as an atoning sacrifice? It can not be our attractiveness or our goodness. The only answer that we are given for the willingness of God to save the ungodly elect through the blood of His Son is this: It was because of the great love with which He loved us.
We will not always be an ungodly people. This is what Israel was, and too often this is the way that we still are today. One day all sin will be finally removed from us, and we will serve the Lord gladly forever. This perfect sanctification that will come to all the people of God in the age to come is a further indication of the power of the cross of Christ. Behind all of His righteousness and holiness is a foundational and eternal decision to love His elect for the glory of His own Name. That love burns for us like a hot oven. It is a fire that will never be quenched. We have been captured in the net of Christ’s glorious love, and have been granted the privilege of willingly worshiping the Lord. One day we will do so in the perfect beauty of the most wonderful holiness, for the salvation that Christ has for His beloved will be perfectly complete.
The sound of the trumpet always indicated some news of importance to the community as a whole. In many instances it was a warning concerning an adversary who was drawing near for battle. Here the coming of enemy forces that the Lord will use to bring His judgment upon Israel is announced. The Assyrian empire will be a vulture going after her prey. Israel is called here the house of the Lord because the Lord is to dwell with His people. But what will God do when His people continue to transgress His commandments? They have violated His covenant, and they must face the curse that the Lord had announced against the nation should they rebel against His Law.
Though in their distress they might sound that they were very religious and faithful to the Lord, God knows the thoughts and intentions of every human heart. They may call out to Him using the words, “My God.” They may assert that they know Him in some way that is beyond the normal way that all men know God. They claim to know Him as those who have a special connection with Him. Yet this connection does not extend to recognizing Him as Master in anything other than a ceremonial way. The Lord will not be mocked. The enemies of Israel will pursue them, and they will face much trouble.
The northern kingdom, especially in her final years, moved quickly from king to king. The split between north and south, though ordained by the Lord for His purposes, originally left the south in the hands of Reheboam, the son of Solomon, and the north under the rule of Jereboam. This Jereboam set up unauthorized objects for worship in the north in the form of calves, as an effort to keep the people from worshiping before the Lord in Jerusalem. The real king over God’s people was to be descended from Judah. Yet at the end of the northern kingdom the Israelites moved from king to king through assassination and intrigue. These rulers did not have the blessing of God, and they did not follow the Lord. Throughout the history from Jereboam through the destruction of the nation by Assyria, the kings of the north seemed to lead the people in the direction of idolatry and disaster, even though there were periods of merciful blessing from God over all those years.
This Jereboam made two calves of gold for his people to worship, claiming that these calves represented or were the gods who brought them up out of the land of Egypt. In God’s indictment against the northern tribes through Hosea, He takes aim at this idol worship. He indicates that he is angry at the calf, for it stands for this nation of idolaters. The calf is nothing more than an object made by men, but by the choice of king and people alike it stands for their rebellion against the true Redeemer. This kind of idolatry is a provocation against the Lord, who is slow to anger. Eventually those who keep on planting vanity will yield a crop of spiritual nothingness that will take over their land. Nothingness is a nasty weed that can ruin any good crop and lead to desolation.
Of course the real problem for Israel will not be weeds or crop failure but people. If Israel would not be fruitful in her love and service of the Lord, what purpose would she have in the days of Hosea and beyond? She was a vessel for the Lord’s pleasure, but she rejected her Maker and had lost all sense of her true purpose. She wandered from one nation to another trying to find out who she was. Soon her allies would exact tribute from her that would bring suffering, but her real challenge would come from the Lord. As time continued over the centuries, the ways and laws of the Lord seemed more and more like a strange thing to the nation. She had returned to the Egypt of spiritual bondage, and the Lord would soon devour her with fire from Assyria, a fire that would destroy her strongest defenses.
There is a day of judgment that is coming, not only for one nation, but for the whole world. The Assyrian victory over the northern kingdom was not something that people could have missed. Once it happened everyone was fully aware of it. It will be that way again when the Lord returns, only much more so, since the sign of His return will fill the heavens. Just as Hosea announced beforehand what would soon happen in His day, there is no excuse for our surprise at the idea that the current age that we are enjoying and enduring will one day come to an end. The same Jesus who went to the cross for our sins has told us that this will happen. Yet we doubt. He called out to God in His distress with the words, “My God.” Yet He was the utterly faithful “Israel” before God, and His pleas were heard, a fact that was confirmed in His resurrection for us. He is the Substitute of all His guilty “Israel” who turn to Him as our only hope.
The next age is an age of resurrection, either to blessedness or to destruction. The coming again of the Messiah that will be heralded through that cosmic sounding of the final trumpet will hail not only great salvation for the elect, but a final judgment upon all mankind. There is only one way to stand in that day. We need to be found in Christ. We need to be chosen by Him. We need to call upon His Name. There is one God who has you in the palm of His hands. He planned your existence and then accomplished your conception and birth. He knows the number of your days, and when you close your eyes on your last day here, He is able to awaken you in His presence in a place where there is no doubt at all about Him and His good plan. He is able to wrap you in His arms, and to take you with all your bruises and weakness. On that day when you lay down your burdens from this life, you will know that you are at peace, safe and whole. You do not have to wait for that day to have this kind of assurance. You can grow in that faith now. This is what your life is all about. To know that now by faith is one way that He carries us through the challenge of living in a world where we feel his displeasure with our obvious willful disobedience.
There is much said in many of the prophetic writings about the spiritual adultery of the people of God. This is often quite blunt and difficult to take, the kind of material that we find hard to read in front of children because of the topics and images that are addressed. This is all the more challenging in Hosea because of the very obvious parallel between the indictment of the nation and the sad story of Hosea’s own wife. When God spoke these words through His special servant, the prophet understood exactly what he was talking about. He had lived through it himself.
Somehow we think it unseemly when God calls Israel a “whore,” but we don’t think that spiritual adultery itself is all that rude. Isn’t that strange? We think it too strong to talk about sin, and not quite so serious to commit it. God’s nation had a special role in His plan. Of all the places in the world, this was to be the land where the people were joyfully worshipping the Lord according to the plan provided in His Law. Instead people set up special spots where they combined actual sexual immorality with the fertility cults directed toward the false god Baal. This was a horrible and foolish attack against the Lord God Almighty, the God of Israel.
The people went to Baal not only for help in having children, but also for increased fruitfulness in the land. It is the God of creation who gives life among all His creatures. Baal can give fruit to no one. They wanted wine and bread from him, but only the Lord could have really helped them. Not only did they seek idols, they also ran off to nations like Egypt and Assyria for help. They would soon be taken to a foreign land where it would be impossible to maintain ritual cleanliness as required by God. The entire system of the Lord’s blessing through the temple and the sacrificial would be stopped in its tracks.
We love what we love. We have our lusts for what keeps us wide awake. Our various duties and the things that we should do to obey the Lord may seem uninteresting compared to the things that we love as a part of our earnest worship of what is not a god. All that we run after that promises life, energy, and happiness may quickly lead us in a pathway that will bring us anything but life. Our most eager lusts may soon be buried with us in the grave.
If everything was working according to the way of life, God would speak accurately and powerfully through His prophet and the people of the Lord would eagerly hear and obey. But this is not the way for Israel. The prophet has been treated as an enemy of the people, or has himself become captivated by lies. There is no love in the house of God, only hatred and despair. There is a great breech between the Lord and His people.
The Lord brings two of the low points of their heritage to the attention of His people. The book of Judges records some horrible events associated with Gibeah. The iniquity of the people there included rape and murder. Israel is like this, and she is also like the people that fell for an enemy’s entrapment many centuries before. They were willing to follow the way of Baalam in a plot of sexual immorality that would lead to bondage and death. We can so easily lose all sense of who we are as servants of the Lord, and give ourselves over to detestable impulses.
What we want so much from this passing world eludes us. If we would stop chasing after desert mirages of glory, we could give ourselves over to the glory in Christ that actually lasts forever. We could find a way to worship, to love, and to help. Oddly enough, if we would set our hearts on pleasing God in this way, we may surprise ourselves and find that we will even do fairly well in this passing place of vanity. Instead we insist on kisses that are soon nothing but bitter memories, and find ourselves ill-equipped for the coming age, and disappointed in the age we live in now. We are fruitless and alone, and have no active acquaintance with the gift of hope.
The Lord Jesus Christ did not love evil or hate good. The One who did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many, was not too busy to worship, to love, and to help. He seemed to lose everything, but He won the battle for our salvation in the greatest display of divine love every seen among men.
When He died on the cross, He seemed like a young man who was already past His prime. The crowds who loved Him had given up because of His hard words about their need to eat His flesh and drink His blood. One of His disciples betrayed Him. Another denied Him. The rest fled and left Him to die alone with only a few watching, maybe the youngest disciple nearby enough to hear His voice, and then perhaps he ran away as well.
When He cried out to God and acknowledged that His Lord had somehow forsaken Him, it would have appeared that nothing of any lasting good could come from either His death or His life. Yet when He rose from the dead, true joy and hope were born. We rejoice now in Him always. He lives. We have a hope that is real. As the resurrected Man is, so shall we be. Though we may never achieve greatness in the eyes of men, we are kept by the Lord for eternity, and there is much help that we can give to others in this place where lusts must soon be buried in the grave.
There is always the danger for us that prosperity will bring complacency. In the case of Old Testament Israel, God says that the more they had, the more they gave to their idolatrous enterprises. This came from a heart problem among the people. God says, “Their heart is false.” This is also the truth about us, at least in our sinful nature. Just as Israel needed to have her places of idolatrous worship destroyed, we need to have the idols of our hearts taken away if we are to see God as the first and best reality of our lives both now and forever.
Israel rejected the Lord as their King. They also rejected men who were their kings, believing that their own rulers could do nothing for them. We might think that they would be at least equally cynical about the potential benefits that could come to them from lifeless idols or enemy empires, but that was not the case. They put their hopes firmly in these false answers.
They had made promises to God, covenants that had been in place for many generations, but these were long forgotten or ignored. Men forget their promises to God as generation replaces generation, but the Lord does not forget. What this meant was that they had troubles with God that they were largely ignoring, like a farmer who continues to expect good crops in the harvest, barely aware that there are poisonous weeds that have overtaken his fields.
What they did remember were their calf idols. Imagine that. They shed tears for something that they had made, and that they may have thought was an adequate representation of their god or gods. There could never have been any glory from these objects, and yet they loved them, but they spurned the love of the glorious Lord of lords. Their precious religious statues would be taken to Assyria, and they would be put to shame, for their idols could not deliver them from the hands of their captors.
For many generations the northern kingdom and her kings had rejected the way of the Lord. They followed the way of gross immorality in the days of Gibeah recorded in the book of Judges. Now their spiritual shrines would be begging for the mountains to fall on them. Their destruction was decreed because of the iniquity of the nation.
God’s judgment for both Ephraim in the north and Judah in the south was for these nations to be subservient people for many centuries. They would not be independent nations. The Lord prepared them for the grand experiment of the Law for centuries, but now they would have centuries without national sovereignty. First disaster would come upon the north, and then upon the south.
What are the faithful to do in this day of such horrifying trouble? These descendants of Jacob have planted iniquity and have reaped a wretched curse upon their nations. Beginning with the destruction of the King of Israel, many families will face overwhelming grief. The way for them is to sow righteousness and to reap the steadfast love of the Lord, to break up the weed-infested ground of their hearts and to seek the Lord. But is there any reasonable hope that such a thing could ever happen if the Lord were patient for many more centuries?
The evidence shows us conclusively that there needed to be some other way of peace and lasting joy than through the obedience of the people to the Law of the Lord, for we will not obey. Nor is it the answer for God to decide that righteousness is no longer important. That would be a denial of His character. The true solution is for the Lord to take the burden of the covenant upon Himself. God has done that by meeting His own righteous demands in the person of His Son. This is the only way of true blessing for us.
Christ has achieved what Israel could never have accomplished, no matter how many more years of testing they might have been granted. Through the cross He has taken away centuries of sin, even the stain of Adam as our representative. Jesus brings us a new life, and now Jew and Gentile have been granted a hope and a future. This is the only way out of the desperation of a land that knows things are so bad that she would only want the mountains to crush her in judgment.
Now that Christ has accomplished our redemption, He is working hard by His Spirit in the lives of His people. What is He doing? He is ridding us of our filthy idols. One day His new “Israel” will be completely idol-free, in a land of sinless perfection and glorious joy. We hate our record of sin, but we love the perfections of our great substitute. He has won for us a victory that we never could have accomplished with even our best efforts and intentions.
God’s love always comes first. We love because He first loves us. God made the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be His Israel. He loved them even before they were in bondage in Egypt. He told Abraham back in Genesis 15 not only that His descendants would be servants in a land that was not theirs. He even told them how long they would be there. Then at just the right time He called Israel out of Egypt through Moses. Many centuries later, Jesus would so identify with God’s people when He came to atone for our sins, that He would bring a new fulfillment of Hosea 11:1. Mary’s husband Joseph was directed by an angel to bring his family to Egypt for their safety until the death of Herod. Then out of Egypt God would call His Son. This text in Hosea would be quoted by Matthew in his gospel, showing Christ as the fulfillment of this hidden prophecy.
This connection between Israel and Christ would have to also be a contrast if the Lord was to serve as Messiah. Where Israel grew in disobedience, Christ grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. His life was the perfection of righteousness that Israel could never provide. What Hosea said about Israel was that the nation was increasingly idolatrous, but Christ never turned to any false god for help.
Throughout the history of Israel the Lord had been a tender and faithful provider, yet they did not seem to notice. He treated them as a beloved child. When they wandered He lovingly showed them the right way to go.
Now, after centuries of patience, the Lord must put them under the yoke of Assyria. This will not be easy for them. There will be much death and destruction. The Lord will not prevent trouble from coming upon them. They have become so foolish in counsel that they are utterly committed to turning away from God. The time has come for this to actually happen, this sad outcome which is in accord with the Lord’s many previous warnings.
Has the Lord given up on His electing love of His people? Has His love, which is always first, finally ended? That will never happen. The Lord has not utterly rejected His people whom He has chosen. Therefore there remains a plan of salvation for the descendants of Jacob. A Son must be born who will rescue God’s chosen nation. There is something here that reveals the character of God. He will never give up on his eternal love. In order to satisfy the demands of His justice, His only-begotten Son will have to bear the Father’s righteous burning anger so that the Lord will not come in wrath against us.
Before the final solution of Messiah comes, there is much that must first take place. In the days of Hosea the fullness of the time of Christ has not yet arrived. First the Lord will soon call back many of His people from their places of exile. Many will be brought back to the land that the Lord gave to their forefathers. He will roar like a lion, and they will come home. This will not be the final solution, but it will be a part of the way that God will hold together His people until the coming of Jesus Christ.
This plan of calling people home will even include many from the northern tribes. Yet they will no longer have their own autonomy. Those days will soon be over forever. When the descendants of the northern tribes return, they will have to find their place with the descendants of Judah. Eventually even Judah will be gone as a nation, and all the tribes will be under the authority of other powers, first from the east, and later from the west.
Soon the roar of the divine lion will be heard far beyond the borders of Assyria and Egypt. A ransomed people will come from all over the earth. The Lion of the tribe of Judah will be the central figure in the eternal drama of the great love of God for His people. All Israel will have to be found in Him.
This provision for us of the Son of God comes to us because of who God is. Baal could never have done anything to save anyone. Nor could the Israelites have provided their own redemption. God planned and accomplished what only He could do. The river of grace runs through the exile of Israel, and then Judah. It continues through an amazing restoration of Judah, and then through centuries of Messianic expectation. Finally that river flows through Bethlehem, out again to Egypt, and then out of Egypt to Galilee. It seems to end on a Roman cross outside of Jerusalem, but from there it moves to an empty grave and then up onto clouds of glory into heavenly realms, then down again through the gift of the spirit and the preaching of the gospel to the ends of the earth. This is the river of God’s glorious grace, and it is powered by the eternal love of God for us through Jesus Christ our Savior.
Much of our life under than sun can rightly be called a grasping after the wind. The wind blows where it will, and we cannot hold it in our hands. The idea behind this imagery is the temporary and passing nature of everything around us. The northern kingdom was chasing after all the passing things of this world. They wanted them so much that they were willing to lie and to use violent force in order to have their way. They looked for assistance from both the Assyrian and Egyptian empires. Yet both of these great powers were themselves part of this fleeting world. Israel had forgotten about the power of the One who is from eternity past and will be forever and ever. He is. Yet He seemed less real to them than powerful armies they could see. In Hosea 12, the Lord continues to press His case against His people. He will punish them according to their deeds.
The chosen grandson of Abraham who is also the chosen son of Isaac is known in the Bible by two names. These two names, Jacob and Israel, are used not only to talk about one man, but also to refer to the nation of the 12 tribes descended from him. Here God makes His indictment against that nation by drawing our attention to certain facts from the life of the man who was their ancestor. The Lord, the God of hosts, made Jacob to be who He was. His original name has in it the notion of grasping. His later name given by God conveys the idea of struggling. As a baby being born, he grabbed the heel of his brother, when he became a man he wrestled with God. God gave Him many blessings, but not without great struggle. Behind every good gift given to the man Jacob and to the nation Israel, is the God who is a commander over men and angels, and who has given much to His people.
The way of life for Israel has always been clear. By God’s help they need to truly seek Him, His love, and His justice. When Jacob wrestled with God or His angel in Genesis, all in all it seemed to be a good thing. Now this image when applied to the nation is a part of the indictment against them. In the days of the man Jacob, the wrestling was an earnest seeking of the Lord’s blessing. Now God sees the contest between Him and them as an example of the determination of the nation to do evil. They are dedicated to the vanity of wealth, and it will soon slip out of their hands. Still, they imagine themselves as lacking iniquity or sin.
The Lord is the one who brought them through the sea and delivered them from the hand of Egypt. He brought them into the wilderness and carried them there for forty years. They had no permanent structures for homes. And they needed their food to come from heaven every night in order that they might live. He eventually brought them into the land, and gave them His Word from heaven through the ministry of the prophets. Now they would again be thrust out of the Promised Land. The Lord who gave them the land, the Lord they had forgotten, would do this thing.
They have filled the land with the iniquity of idolatry and greed. They have added altars for Baal, and have loved their spiritual inventions. All of these things would be cleared away. God would sweep away the remains of their evil ways when He cleared them from the land.
Where could they go now, and who would lead them on their way? Centuries earlier the God of Abraham had led Jacob to Paddan-Aram in order to serve for one bride and then another. They would go to the east again, but now as those who were having everything taken away from them. God led His people out of Egypt by the hand of Moses and by the Word of God they were protected. But they rejected His Word and provoked Him to His face. They were guilty of great bloodshed, and their punishment would soon fall on their heads.
The story of our sin and the punishment we deserve is one that we need to hear. If we will not understand what we deserve through our rebellion against the Lord and His commandments, we will never be able to appreciate either the obedience of Christ or the cross on which He died for our sins. We receive this message of our guilt from the words of the prophets. We should not distance ourselves from Israel when we read these words, as if our sin were not a serious and deadly matter. It is the sick who need a doctor, and we must acknowledge the seriousness of our sin sickness if we are to receive the touch of His healing hand.
Nonetheless, if the failure of Israel was the end of God’s story in His dealings with His people, what possible point would there have been to His great calling of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Why would He have bothered to rescue His children from Egypt if we are supposed to consider ourselves and our children as hell-bound? There surely is a good answer for us in the obedience of Christ. He was forced to grasp on to the ugliness of our guilt, and to face the struggle of the ages in His death on the cross. He would face the defeat of death, and yet this would be at the same time the death of our death. This cross became a victory that was seen by His disciples in His resurrection. Why should your eyes not see the greatness of His victory when He returns with a resurrection kingdom? This is the story of eternity. It does not end with the disgrace of Jacob or our grasping after the wind. It ends with the wonder of solid joys and lasting treasures that come to us through the decree of the great “I Am” and through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
There is something about the normal cycle of a person’s life that is very humbling. No matter how important or respected someone may be, eventually they get old. This often means that they run into some physical or mental limitations that can impede their abilities in doing the things that gave them a measure of achievement. This is just a normal part of life. The torch is passed on to those who will take the place of the ones who must become less as others become more.
Occasionally the decline that a leader faces can be unnecessarily precipitous. Because of some moral failure or lapse of judgment, a person may need to be removed from a position of responsibility very quickly. Nations also have their own life cycles, and they too can face a surprisingly swift demise because of some decline in character. Israel was exalted by the Lord. Her leaders once caused other nations to tremble. Though they were chosen by God, their time of national sovereignty eventually came to an end. Why did that happen? They loved worshiping Baal. They had lovely metal idols. They even offered human sacrifice to false gods, and kissed calves made by the hands of craftsmen to show their unswerving loyalty to things that were not gods at all. Therefore they brought about their own death, a kind of early destruction that seems to have happened before their time in some way. They will fade away quickly like chaff on a breeze, or like smoke that presses out through an open window.
This is happening despite the fact that the true God is in some sense Israel’s God. By all rights this nation should be associated with Yahweh far more than any other people on the face of the earth, at least at the time of Hosea. Particularly since the days of their deliverance from Egypt the only real God that they could ever have known is the Lord. In fact, at least in some way, they have known Him. They have heard the message of his saving power. They know that He brought their forefathers through the dry wilderness, granting them food and water.
Despite the Lord’s special care for the nation, when they became prosperous they forgot the God they knew. They lifted up their hearts, not in submission to their Redeemer, but in pride against Him and they forgot the Lord. There is a general principle here that should be considered. Times of prosperity can be times of the greatest spiritual danger. Though we may know the Lord, it is so very easy for us to live a life where we simply forget Him, even though we are wading in a sea of gifts that He has granted to us.
This cannot continue forever. The Lord does have a plan. He is working toward the conclusion of the Old Testament era. These judgments fit into a larger picture of divine glory. The time has come near where the Lord will fall upon His people as a lion falls upon his prey and tears it open with horrifying destruction. God will not stand by forever while his people give themselves over to sin. This is what must happen now to make way for another day. The New Testament day must come. Then beyond that time of gathering, the Resurrection Day will come when the dead shall rise and we will be together with the Lord forever. For this to happen something devastating must take place, for Israel has turned against the Lord, her only real helper.
No king can save her. God gave them a king and now those northern kings will be gone, all of whom were evil. What remains for Israel is death because of her storehouse of sin, a death she deserves. Should not Israel have birth and life? Yet it is as if the child of God that she should be simply will not arrive, not for this rebellious people. They deserve death and the grave. Will God ransom them from this fate? Without any real explanation, there comes a sudden expression of grace. “Death, where is your sting?” Does the Lord’s plan actually call for the ransom of His people? Is there some answer from God that will take away the sting of death?
The answer is yes, despite the fact that an Assyrian wind from the east will overrun Israel, despite the fact that the land that is ruled from Samaria will be no more, despite the fact that many people, even many little ones, will die. This must take place, but that will be a step in a process that will lead to the overturning of the powers of hell.
Many centuries later a man from the tribe of Benjamin will quote this chapter and unlock the mysteries that it contains. He will write long after the Assyrian power has come and gone. This man will be a Roman citizen, but also a Hebrew of Hebrews. The key to his understanding will come as a gift from the One who is at the very center of God’s defeat of death. The Apostle Paul will write after the coming of the Word of God incarnate. By the time Paul writes to the Corinthian church, the great King of kings will have been born. He will have died and risen. This Paul will have been stopped in the midst of his campaign of persecution against the Christ and His church. He will come to believe in the cross and the resurrection of one Man who took the place of many sinners. He will come to proclaim the truth that through the resurrection of this one Man, death and hell have been defeated, for they have truly lost their sting.
Just as this veiled announcement in Hosea 12 did not mean the removal of God’s plan for the destruction of Old Testament Israel, the victory of Christ for us does not mean that all our pain has immediately gone away. Our own mortality is a reminder to us of our failure under any covenant of works. Nonetheless, when we believe in Christ, in His atoning sacrifice, in His resurrection, and in His promise of a resurrection Kingdom, the trials that we do face become birth pains, and the process of growing old and even dying has lost its sting in the shining light of a coming resurrection glory.
Moment by moment we can drift away from communion with God. God likes us, especially since He sees us in ways that we don’t know ourselves. He sees us without our sin on. One day that is the way we will be. He sent His Son to rescue us so that we could be with Him forever. It’s not that He is lonely. It’s not that He needs us. He just likes us. This is the way He wanted things to be, that we would be with Him, without sin, forever. Right now, even though we are credited with Christ’s righteousness, and He paid our debt to divine justice, we still have sin on us in our behavior. Like a confused woman wandering the city streets in the heat of summer with layers and layers of vile clothing, we keep putting more sin on every day. God knows this. He still likes us, and He calls us home again all the time.
How can you come home to a faultless God when you are bloody from your own wicked stumbling? How does Gomer come home to Hosea again? If we can accept the fact that God likes us, and that He is intensely serious about wanting us to live in His house, the way home is not hard to figure out. Gomer should come to the door with an apology, and a willingness to sincerely believe that her disagreement with her husband is not some contest she needs to win. Hosea’s way is the right way for her, and her soul already knows that it is God’s way. That’s the way for Gomer to come home to Hosea. That’s the way for Israel to go back to Yahweh. That’s the way for us to come to Jesus every day when we have wandered from Him. We take words with us – not fake words or we will just get ourselves into a bigger mess. We recognize God as the answer for us and we tell Him so. We ask Him to take away our iniquity. We bring ourselves to Him sincerely. We renounce all other spiritual lovers. Empires, possessions, idols from our own hands – none of these can save us. We come for mercy to the God of all mercy. We come to a Lord who loves the orphan and the widow, and who sets the lonely in families.
It is not that God is unaware of Israel’s sin, of Gomer’s sin, of our sin. God knows what apostasy is. His people have fallen from a better spot. They once had more clarity in their lives. Now they (and we) have wandered badly. There is no one among the most faithful of the Lord’s people who does not wander from God on a daily basis. We can deceive ourselves into thinking that we don’t have this problem, but we cannot deceive God. He knows our apostasy, but He has freely chosen to love us, and He has turned His anger away from us through the propitiatory sacrifice of His beloved Son.
This commitment to bless us will not be stopped. Today it appears to us that our prayers are not being answered. Today we still struggle with both sin and weakness. Today we are still attracted to lies that harm us. One day this will all be over. On that new day, the Lord will be like the morning dew on His people. We will be so blessed by His Spirit, and we shall blossom like the lily. The lily has a big beautiful flower. The Lord is going to do great things with us. He will make us into a very fruitful branch of righteousness, with His Son as the source of all goodness. There will be a new age where this good seed of His love will cause a wonderful vine to grow that will spread across the land, and then return again to the presence of the Lord. There we will truly flourish and blossom, and the glory of God with His people will be known by everyone everywhere.
In that great day the fog of our present confusion will be utterly lifted. The blessed presence of God will be known in such a way that we will see that He is our all in all. Everything that the Lord has ever said about Himself is completely true. In that day we shall see and understand that the Lord has been the one who has taken care of us through the former days. Our idols brought us no profit at all. The Lord was the one who was looking after us all along. He gave us shelter and food. We will see a great abundance and know that all is truly well, and that all shall be well forever.
For today, as we struggle with impatience and resentment, rebelliousness and every unclean thought and action, we are helped by the Lord to see, and to have some measure of discernment about the things that are right in front of our face. Hosea is a good husband. Gomer should go home and listen to him. These other men she has been with are creepy. They don’t mind messing up other peoples lives. They are just stumbling transgressors who would drag down everyone with them in their fall if they could.
But if you can handle the truth of this, the enemies of God won’t be able to accomplish the disaster that they contemplate. Those who are in Christ will be brought through everything. We can’t see it all now, but our prayers have been answered and will be answered. We shall walk forever and ever in the land of the living. The wounds of Jesus Christ really were for us – even for us. The fact is that God likes us, and He is not changing His thoughts on that matter any time soon. It is time for Israel to truly repent. It is time for Gomer to come home. It is time for us to walk with God.