Hosea XVI

I think that when we press so hard for something that is contrary to God's ways and is deleterious to our life in Christ, God gently but sadly says, "If you really want this, go ahead.  I will be waiting until you return. I will not support your sin, but I will be here to cleanse and forgive you when you realize just how far you have moved away from Me."

Not only did the Israelites engage in the practices of the Canaanites, they sought alliances with both Assyria and Egypt.  So, in other words, their national and personal life was dictated by people who were as far removed from Yahweh as they could possibly be. 

God tells the people: 

You may no longer stay here in the Lord’s land.
Instead, you will return to Egypt,
and in Assyria you will eat food
that is ceremonially unclean.
There you will make no offerings of wine to the Lord.
None of your sacrifices there will please him.
They will be unclean, like food touched by a person in mourning.
All who present such sacrifices will be defiled.
They may eat this food themselves,
but they may not offer it to the Lord. (Hosea 9:3-4)

Do you sense that God is saying that if the Israelites want so badly to be like these nations, He will allow them one day to be exiled to one of them?  Every aspect of their life will change.  And not for the better. 

Here is an excellent commentary on this:

In the ancient Near East, forming treaties or alliances was a common survival strategy. Neighboring states frequently sought treaties to protect each other’s trade routes, maintain peace, and defend against powerful empires such as Assyria and Egypt. Archaeological texts and reliefs from Assyria (e.g., the annals of Sennacherib) attest that smaller nations often paid tribute or entered alliances to avoid conquest. By human logic, Israel’s desire to join these alliances might appear prudent.

However, Hosea points out that Israel’s fundamental error was not the mere act of survival negotiation, but rather abandoning trust in the God who had already delivered them historically. This breach of covenant loyalty becomes a central theme in Hosea’s prophecy. [1]

Prudent, yes. Depending on God? No. 

But what's the big deal?  God has proven Himself utterly reliable in taking care of His people.  Exodus is a story of His unwavering care and protection. The Israelites faced the superpower of the ancient world. The children of Israel encountered an impediment every step of the way once Moses arrived and started telling Pharoah to let the people go.  Each and every hindrance was overcome by Yahweh because of His covenantal relationship with His people: 

From the earliest days, Israel was set apart as a people who would rely on God’s protection and guidance. Passages such as Exodus 19:5-6 portray Israel’s calling to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” pointing to the central role of obedience in their relationship. Deuteronomy 17:14-20 also provides guidance for Israel’s future kings, urging them not to place ultimate trust in chariots, horses, or foreign alliances, but to depend on the Lord.

Israel’s covenant with Yahweh was thus unique. Rather than forging diplomatic ties that often brought pagan influences (for instance, the worship of foreign deities or reliance on idolatrous practices), Israel was to display unwavering fidelity. In Hosea, when God condemns the people for “hiring among the nations,” it illustrates their misplaced faith-seeking security in foreign powers instead of in the One who sustained them. [2]

God even relented when the people asked for a king later in their history.  Despite the request, God found a king after His own heart to lead His people.  But David remembered the covenant; he did not ignore it or think he was more powerful than Yahweh.  He knew it was Yahweh alone for his nation. 

Even with all of that history of God's faithfulness, the people in Hosea's day still sought alliances with godless nations to protect them and secure them a safe future.

The big deal is sadly simple:  Ally yourself with the world and it will eventually take over. Why?  Because, for the world, it is not about alliance but dominance. 

Weird analogy, but bear with me.  Think about Christmas.  The core of Christmas is Christ.  But that has slowly been eroded, leaving it a time of galloping capitalism. It's all about gifts and decor, steeped in bling, pride and What did I get? 

It can be a delightful time, but where is Jesus in all of this?  

It's hard to find Him in this holiday season. Why do people care so much about removing Christ-centered symbols or nativities from public spaces?

We ally with the culture by saying, Hey!  Let's celebrate the season in a diversity of ways!  You got trees, I've got a nativity scene!  You sing "Holly Jolly Christmas" and I sing, "The First Noel."  

No.  The culture wants to dominate the season, and has shaped Christmas in its own image: Gimme, gimme, gimme. 

Yes, I know. There are sincere Christians who take the time for what it is: To celebrate the Light of the World who came and who still comes to illuminate the darkness all around us. 

But.  

Over the years, it has gotten harder and harder to find Christ in all the noise.

Only one holiday has been even more subsumed under the culture:  Easter. The most earth-shattering moment in history--where death lost its sting--and what do we get?  Bunnies.  Eggs. Candy. 

Wow. 

Not everyone in Israel rushed off to a high place to enact a pagan ritual; but those in charge sought out  pagan nations to guarantee their safely and to avoid conflict.   

They did not get either. 

Those today who speak God's truth to power get the same reaction Israel's prophets got: 

The time of Israel’s punishment has come;
the day of payment is here.
Soon Israel will know this all too well.
Because of your great sin and hostility,
you say, “The prophets are crazy
and the inspired men are fools!”
The prophet is a watchman over Israel for my God,
yet traps are laid for him wherever he goes.
He faces hostility even in the house of God.
The things my people do are as depraved
as what they did in Gibeah long ago.
God will not forget.
He will surely punish them for their sins. (Hosea 9:7-9) 

We see God's heart in these next verses: 

The Lord says, “O Israel, when I first found you,
it was like finding fresh grapes in the desert.
When I saw your ancestors,
it was like seeing the first ripe figs of the season.
But then they deserted me for Baal-peor,
giving themselves to that shameful idol.
Soon they became vile,
as vile as the god they worshiped." (9:10)

A broken heart. A grieving heart.  A heart that cannot and will not tolerate sin, but Who also wants His children to ally with Him and Him alone. 

Sadly, Hosea ends the chapter with chilling and yet grief-filled words:

My God will reject the people of Israel
because they will not listen or obey.
They will be wanderers,
homeless among the nations. (9:17)

Are we, as our country slides ever deeper in a pagan mindset that results in a way of life that doesn't  reflect God's values, expecting a different outcome? 

God is always willing to receive us into His forgiveness, but we must want it more than what the world has to offer. 

[1] "Why is Israel Condemned for Alliances?" https://biblehub.com/q/why_is_israel_condemned_for_alliances.htm

[2] Ibid. 

   

Hosea XV

Let's move through chapter 8 with some key passages that are equally relevant for us. 

8 Sound the alarm!
The enemy descends like an eagle on the people of the Lord,
for they have broken my covenant
and revolted against my law.
Now Israel pleads with me,
‘Help us, for you are our God!’
But it is too late.
The people of Israel have rejected what is good,
and now their enemies will chase after them.
The people have appointed kings without my consent,
and princes without my approval.
By making idols for themselves from their silver and gold,
they have brought about their own destruction. (1-4)

When we no longer include God in our lives, by acting in harmony with His covenant and His kingdom, and we trade our liberty in Christ for the security of the world's approval, can we expect anything different from what the northern kingdom experienced in Hosea's day? 

Yes, he prophesied for 30 years, and yes, their apostasy didn't incur judgment right away, and yes, God is infinitely patient, but at some point God will say, "Game over."

It's hard to identify your enemies if you are acting like them.  If you are compromising your kingdom of God values to have the world approve of you, then when your enemies show up, they will look, sound and act like you do.  How could they be enemies, right? 

One of the reasons the Nazis were so successful in seducing the people was they spoke aloud what a lot of people felt: that Germany should not have lost the Great War of 1914-1918.  The only "logical" explanation was: Those who were hiding in the shadows had undermined the war effort.  Hitler pointed to the Jews and identified them as the cause; because of the long history of antisemitism in Germany, that explanation did not seem farfetched. It made sense to a people who, while they may not have thought in such extremes as Hitler, felt he was onto something. Others, because they already thought the Jews were evil schemers, didn't question what he said. They didn't see the inherent evil in what he said because they felt the same way.  

We don' t question those people who think like we do.  Why would we?  We pride ourselves on being right and so those who agree with us?  They must be right, too. So, if your enemies want to ingratiate themselves into your world, they tap into what you already partially or fully believe. Maybe not the things you say everyday, but they tap into your deep assumptions about how the world works. 

Enemies also tone down the rhetoric, until that rhetoric has marinated in the society for a while, and then the ideas don't sound so, well, extreme. 

Maybe a lot of Germans didn't quite buy everything that Hitler was selling, but they bought enough to allow more and more of his "information" to take over their thinking.

The enemies of Israel (the northern kingdom) said what the Israelites wanted to hear: many gods were acceptable; Yahweh couldn't be the only god; He wasn't reliable or powerful enough to protect them; they needed local allies who were powerful and strong to stand by them and the Israelites had pleased the gods with their devotion to all those rituals. 

These were their enemies.  But the Israelites didn't recognize that until it was too late. The Israelites had shown themselves to be fervent followers of pagan religions. So their enemies looked like them. 

If you can relate and even see yourself in them, how can they be enemies?  

The kings and princes that they sought security from, and the idols they fashioned with their own hands, blunted their ability to see evil for what it was. How so? Think of how Hitler used lying to achieve his ends:

The big lie is the name of a propaganda technique, originally coined by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, who says “The great masses of the people... will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one,” and denotes where a known falsehood is stated and repeated and treated as if it is self-evidently true, in hopes of swaying the course of an argument in a direction that takes the big lie for granted rather than critically questioning it or ignoring it...Various sources, both popular and scholarly, attribute the following passage to Joseph Goebbels on the big lie: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield  the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” [1] 

The Israelites believed the lie that their security was to be found in alliances with foreign powers, and not in the covenantal promises of Yahweh. They only seemed to remember Him when times grew dark, and they called out to Him in desperation (verse 2), but it was too late.

Their consciences were seared.  Evil, over time, had blunted their moral radar and their enemies, who  said what the Israelites wanted to hear, now were facing destruction by the very people they thought were in their national corner. The conscience of a large number of Israelites was seared. 

What is a seared conscience? How is what the Israelites degraded into possessing relevant to us? 

The Bible is very clear on what a seared conscience is. GotQuestions.org has an excellent definition:

The Bible speaks of a seared conscience in 1 Timothy 4:2. The conscience is the God-given moral consciousness within each of us (Romans 2:15). If the conscience is “seared”—literally “cauterized”—then it has been rendered insensitive. Such a conscience does not work properly; it’s as if “spiritual scar tissue” has dulled the sense of right and wrong. Just as the hide of an animal scarred with a branding iron becomes numb to further pain, so the heart of an individual with a seared conscience is desensitized to moral pangs. [2] 

Let's look at those verses and apply them to the Israelites:

Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons. These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead. (1 Timothy 4:1-3)

Kings. Princes.  False prophets.  Lay leaders.  All had worked to lead the people astray into idolatry and into dismissing Yahweh as sufficient for their national and spiritual lives. Their consciences were seared and they led the people to the same place.  

Our consciences are our moral compass.  Without it, we lose our way and become seduced by all sorts of lies.  Those lies, believed and then lived out, will blunt our conscience  The more blunted we are, the more we are deceived.  It's a vicious cycle and the Israelites were in it, much to their peril.  That is why Hosea was speaking to them: They needed a shake up to wake up. A seared conscience can be made tender and sensitive once again to the things of God, but we have to humble ourselves, and ask God for His touch.  

God saw the Israelites' hearts and their refusal to turn from their wicked ways. He was saying, "Game over."   

Israel has built many altars to take away sin,
but these very altars became places for sinning!
Even though I gave them all my laws,
they act as if those laws don’t apply to them.
The people love to offer sacrifices to me,
feasting on the meat,
but I do not accept their sacrifices.
I will hold my people accountable for their sins,
and I will punish them.
They will return to Egypt.
Israel has forgotten its Maker and built great palaces,
and Judah has fortified its cities.
Therefore, I will send down fire on their cities
and will burn up their fortresses. (11-14) 

We are no different today. I fear our consciences have been seared by deception.  We allow the culture to dominate God's divine discourse. We have traded our liberty for security born of the world's approval, and we think we can live a life predicated on what we think it is right.

We do so at our peril. 

[1] https://www.populismstudies.org/Vocabulary/big-lie/

[2] https://www.gotquestions.org/seared-conscience.html

Hosea, Part XIV

I don't know about you, but by the end of the sixth chapter, I would have been done with both Israel and Judah. 

Enough warning, I'd say.  You deserve what is coming to you. I gave you mercy, but you returned rebuke.  I gave you forgiveness, but you gave me forgetfulness. I gave you life, but you chose lies. Enough.

But I am not God. 

I can only ponder eternity.

But God dwells in eternity.  

I can only ponder the grief and anguish God feels towards His people who have prostituted themselves away from His love and care.

But God dwells in His grief.

I can only ponder His anger, relating to how I would feel if those I love cast away my love and debauched themselves in a whirlwind of lies and deception.

But God dwells in His righteous indignation. 

God says, "I want to heal Israel, but its sins are too great." (7:1) 

God could leave it at that, and His people would either (1) ignore Him (2) minimize His concerns, thinking He's overreacting (3) attack His prophet, wanting him to just shut up (4) feel a tiny bit guilty but would carry on nonetheless (5) spout practical reasons why sin is OK and God just doesn't get it (6) all of the above.

It would appear that #6 is the correct answer. 

But God dwells in righteousness and will not brook sin in any shape or form.

Then God lists, through Hosea, all of the sins that are "too great." God is very clear about what He is doing; He will not ignore what is happening with His people: 

Its people don’t realize 

   that I am watching them.
Their sinful deeds are all around them,
   and I see them all. (7:2) 

Here we go:

• The king and his princes all think that what the people are doing is entertaining
• The people are always on fire with lust
• The princes drink and then hang out with those who "mock them" 
• These people are always plotting and planning intrigue and will one day go after their leaders and kill them

("And no one cries to Me for help," v.7)

• The people weaken their strength by cavorting with foreign gods, 

("Their arrogance testifies against them, yet they don't return to the LORD their God or even try to find Him," v. 10)

• The people look to pagan leaders for security

("I will punish them for all they do," v.12) 

God is lamenting the sorrow that awaits those who have deserted Him; He wants to redeem them, but they lie about Him. They "do not cry out to Me with sincere hearts," (v. 14)  In their woe, they instead do pagan rituals to enlist the help of pagan gods for their survival and forget it is God who made them strong and provided for them: "They look everywhere except to the Most High," (v. 16)

What is the result of this repudiation of God and His covenant relationship with His people?  They will die by their enemies and Egypt --the strong pagan power that it is--"will laugh at them."

Thus closes chapter 7.  God is very specific in His list of what the people are doing to betray Him: whoring after pagan gods; enlisting foreign kings for protection and living lives that are utterly contrary to everything that God's covenant and law stands for.  The people are in spiritual disarray, having bought the lie that pagan gods and foreign power are what they need.

But God dwells in truth.

Always has.  

Then, one day, God comes and dwells in flesh:

 
In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He existed in the beginning with God.
God created everything through him,
and nothing was created except through him.
The Word gave life to everything that was created,
and his life brought light to everyone.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness can never extinguish it... 

So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. (John 1:1-5 & 14)

Then God embodies (literally and figuratively) the truth:

“You are a king then?” Pilate asked.
“You say that I’m a king,” Jesus replied.
“I was born for this, and I have come into the world for this: to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to My voice.” (John 18:37)

I find it fascinating that Jesus speaks this to a pagan power. A life, a faith and a society not predicated on God's truth will lust after pleasure, power and prestige.

 

Hosea speaks the word.

Jesus becomes the Word.

Hosea points to God and His righteousness.

Jesus becomes God's righteousness.

Hosea comes to point his people back to life in God.

Jesus comes to be life in God.

God comes closer and closer to His sinful children, and then one day, dwells among them, in righteousness and truth.  

How can we ever say that God is harsh, wrath-filled and angry, full of judgment and a willingness to punish His children?

Christ comes to prove that God is kind, forgiving and loving, full of redemption and a willingness to bring back His children to His side.

Oh, and one more thing: the side that He draws us back to?  

Look: It has a scar.