The Minor Prophets: Hosea

The Minor Prophets: Hosea
Insights I take from reading through the minor prophets

When it comes to God there's no easy feel-good answer to who He is. It's common to hear that God is love, for He is (1 John 4:16). Despite God's people being unfaithful to God over and over again, we do hear God calling out through the prophet Hosea, "The Lord still loves Israel!" (Hosea 3:1), that He will win her back once again (Hosea 2:14) and show love to His people again (Hosea 2:23).

But to leave it at that, to leave the statement, "God is love" and say, "and that's that" would be either misleading or naiive. For God love but God is also a God of wrath. As Hosea 4:6 says, "My people are being destroyed because they don't know me" and they didn't seek to know God. They instead lived the way they wanted to instead of the way God wanted. And that's not okay with God. God is a God of love. But He's also a God of wrath.

 And that's when people get confused. But its just like any parent. My mom & dad love me very much but when I did something wrong, when I lied or broke something or said hurtful things I got punished for it. I received the wrath of my parents, particularly my father. It doesn't mean that my father was a terrible man for punishing me, of course not. As scripture says, "a father disciplines those he loves." It's the same with God.

Now i'm not one to say that just because something crappy's happening in your life you must be sinning, but according to Scripture you shouldn't put it past you. I remember I was hanging out with my wife once and I was doing something stupid and mean and I wasn't listening to her at all. Finally, I hear her yell at me and storm away. With a sigh and rolling eyes, I trek up the stairs and go up to her and ask her smugly, "Oh, so I'm the bad guy yet you're the one screaming at the top of your lungs and storming off without trying to talk me reasonably?" I tell you she gave me a gaze full of sorrow more than anger, and she looked back at me with these longing eyes that made me want to crawl out of my skin and into a hole of shame. And what's more, she said simply and quietly, "It was the only way I could get you to listen."

C.S. Lewis once said that pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. When we disobey God, sometimes "yelling" in our lives through suffering and hardship is the only way to wake us up.God is not blind to what I am doing. And He responds, yet at the same time, loves me even in the pain, just like my wife Deb both loved and was frustrated with me. I think of the powerful passage in Hosea 6 where God is clearly and painfully using suffering and wrath (that He is giving to His people) to help them turn to God for repentance ...

"Come let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces.
Now He will heal us. He has injured us.
Now He will bandage our wounds. In just a short time He will restore us so that we may live in His presence. Oh, that we might know the Lord! Let us press on to know Him. He will respond to us surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming rains in early spring."
--Hosea 6:1-3

I want to press on to know the Lord. A Lord that is so much bigger than pink care-bear. a Lord that is bigger than the God of "therapeutic moralistic deism." I want to press on to follow a God that punishes wickedness and rewards righteousness. A God that eats with sinners and comes for the sick and opposes the prideful and assuming religious crowd. I want to know the God that tears me to pieces and helps me pick them up at the same time.

When I was reading through Hosea, I was honestly astounded with God's attitude towards His people. It's simply heartbreaking. Because what I forget is how heinous my sin is to God. I forget how much it hurts Jesus when I sin, when I sin as a representative of Jesus Christ in the world it is just devastating to God. But He still loves us and wants us to come home to Him. I wrote a song based on Hosea 11:6-11. Read that first, and then check out the song which is written in God's perspective. Here are the lyrics:

You are crushed
By your own plans
You are determined to desert me.

Yet you call out
"Praise the great I Am!"
But you don't truly honor me.

And I will roar
And you will soar like a flock of birds
Trembling like doves, to fly home again

THE STITCHES OF MY HEART ARE TORN
I'LL SPILL OUT MY LOVE
AND I'LL LIVE AND BREATHE AND BE WITH YOU
AND BRING YOU HOME AGAIN

I will not
hurt you more than you've already
hurt yourself

I'll call you out
Not for who you are, because of who I am
so you can truly know me

And I will roar
And you will soar like a flock of birds
Trembling like doves. I'll bring you home again!


THE STITCHES OF MY HEART ARE TORN
I'LL SPILL OUT MY LOVE
AND I'LL LIVE AND BREATHE AND BE WITH YOU
AND BRING YOU HOME AGAIN

I'll try to post a link to the audio of the song soon