August 11, Hosea 2
"And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the LORD." - Hosea 2:13
God's great love is deep and long-suffering. He loves his people with a holy passion. His love gives generously and forgives freely. But his love will tolerate no rivals.
That helps us understand the dual nature of God's words through Hosea to his disobedient nation in Chapter 2. After he instructed Hosea to name his children with threatening names like "No More Mercy" and "Not My People," he renewed the promises about Israel's future when they could once again be among the people of God to whom he shows abundant mercy. But Israel was teetering on the brink of ruin. He exhorted individual Israelites (children of the mother nation) to plead with their mother (the nation) to turn back to him. He would still receive them back if they would repent of their idolatry. But as things stood, he did not recognize them as his spouse any longer, because they had responded neither to pleas nor threats to return to him.
That statement (“she is not my wife, and I am not her husband”) is the equivalent of a formal decree of divorce, proclaiming the severance of the marriage relationship. But before the chapter ended, he envisioned a time in the future when he would be espoused to a new bride under a new covenant, to whom he would fulfill all the promises and grant all the blessings to his faithful ones. The new promises of reward and relationship would be realized. The people in that new group would be the objects of his favor under a new covenant that would last forever. It would be characterized by righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, faithfulness and fruitfulness.
But for the old unrepentant nation, the decree of severance and the threat of doom were clear and strong. He threatened to return them to their helpless, hopeless state before he delivered and blessed them. The images of slavery and the wilderness were keywords in their history that should have reminded them of what life had been like without him, and how much they had been blessed by him. If they did not remember, repent and return to him, he would punish them severely for forgetting him and embracing their idols.
Job was righteous when he described God, saying, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away." The God who gave his people their prosperity and peace could also strip those blessings away. God was angry with them for taking the blessings he lavished upon them, and giving them to the false gods they loved to worship. That tragic misuse of blessings was an insult to the generous Lord who gave them all the good things they had.
The Lord described how his covenant people to whom he had given so much could do such a despicable thing. They had forgotten him when they became infatuated with the idols. As Jesus would say centuries later, "Where your heart is, there will your treasure be also." They had broken the primary directive to love the Lord their God with all their heart, soul and mind. They had betrayed his love and forgotten their vows to be faithful to him. And he would not tolerate it.
So this chapter has both a formal divorce decree and a proclamation of a new and coming covenant relationship with his people. That new relationship would not be with the apostate nation, but it would include people who loved and trusted God from both sides of the divided nation, and Gentiles as well. That new bride in the new covenant will turn out to be the church, the company of those who turn from sin and follow Christ. National Israel would again prove their disqualification as the true Israel of God when Jesus came and they rejected him.
It seems to me that we need to think about our own first love. Do we really love the Lord first and most, with all our being? Do our actions show that we do? Could we be guilty of doing the same things Israel did if we misuse the time, talent and treasure God has given us to pursue the idols of pleasure and other worldly pursuits that do not honor God? If we can see how displeased God was with Israel for their illicit relationships with idols, do we understand that we could forget, and we could misappropriate our blessings, as they did? God grant us grace to love him and serve him only, and never forget that he is our God, and we and all that we have are his.
Copyright © 2024 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Today in God's Word—August 2024
East Tallassee Church of Christ
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