Unbelief to Redeption

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Opening Prayer

Mighty and strong Lord, lead me to Your strength that never fails, and to Your Word that ever speaks.

Read Hosea 2:2-23

^[2] “Rebuke your mother, rebuke her, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband. Let her remove the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts. ^[3] Otherwise I will strip her naked and make her as bare as on the day she was born; I will make her like a desert, turn her into a parched land, and slay her with thirst. ^[4] I will not show my love to her children, because they are the children of adultery. ^[5] Their mother has been unfaithful and has conceived them in disgrace. She said, ‘I will go after my lovers, who give me my food and my water, my wool and my linen, my olive oil and my drink.’ ^[6] Therefore I will block her path with thornbushes; I will wall her in so that she cannot find her way. ^[7] She will chase after her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will say, ‘I will go back to my husband as at first, for then I was better off than now.’ ^[8] She has not acknowledged that I was the one who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil, who lavished on her the silver and gold- which they used for Baal. ^[9] “Therefore I will take away my grain when it ripens, and my new wine when it is ready. I will take back my wool and my linen, intended to cover her naked body. ^[10] So now I will expose her lewdness before the eyes of her lovers; no one will take her out of my hands. ^[11] I will stop all her celebrations: her yearly festivals, her New Moons, her Sabbath days-all her appointed festivals. ^[12] I will ruin her vines and her fig trees, which she said were her pay from her lovers; I will make them a thicket, and wild animals will devour them. ^[13] I will punish her for the days she burned incense to the Baals; she decked herself with rings and jewelry, and went after her lovers, but me she forgot,” declares the LORD. ^[14] “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. ^[15] There I will give her back her vineyards, and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. There she will respond as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. ^[16] “In that day,” declares the LORD, “you will call me ‘my husband’; you will no longer call me ‘my master.’ ^[17] I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked. ^[18] In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, the birds in the sky and the creatures that move along the ground. Bow and sword and battle I will abolish from the land, so that all may lie down in safety. ^[19] I will betroth you to me forever; I will betroth you in righteousness and justice, in love and compassion. ^[20] I will betroth you in faithfulness, and you will acknowledge the LORD. ^[21] “In that day I will respond,” declares the LORD- “I will respond to the skies, and they will respond to the earth; ^[22] and the earth will respond to the grain, the new wine and the olive oil, and they will respond to Jezreel. ^[23] I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one.’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, ‘You are my God.'”

Meditate

“Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, communion without confession, baptism without church discipline. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1906-1945).

Think Further

The last words of the German poet Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) were (reportedly), “God will forgive me. It’s his job.” Did he mean it as flippantly as it sounds? Probably not–he returned to a belief in a personal God in later life–but the quotation represents an easy trust in God’s grace. Grace is free, outrageously so, and it’s a mistake to think we can earn it, but it’s equally misleading to think we can treat it lightly and avoid living the way God wants us to. Our attitudes to sex, money, and time: they all need to be transformed, and disciplined, by the love of God. In a highly sexualized culture, it’s all too easy to become just a bit self-indulgent, and then…

The early part of this chapter is shocking. The angry exposure of Gomer/Israel’s whoredom veers towards the pornographic. Nowadays we might, rightly, see most prostitutes as victims, trafficked, pimped and addicted to drugs. Jesus himself, in his utter purity and compassion, saw through the misogynist stereotypes to the need for real love and forgiveness. But this is different; this is us, glorying in our success, or our possessions, with little sense that it is God’s providence that is the true source of it all (8).

By verse 7 Gomer/Israel is having a prodigal-son moment (Luke 15:17,18), but the journey back is not so straightforward. She needs a period of learning, which involves more shame (10), sorrow (11) and punishment. She needs, most of all, to learn the true source of her blessings (9,12). This seems very harsh, but there follows a great, extended passage of redemption, tender, loving and long-lasting (14-23). It moves from the language of eternal love to the language of an eternity of peace (18), chiming with the language of Isaiah (see Isa. 62:3-5) and the promise of the coming Messiah.

Apply

Using the marriage metaphor, how would you describe your present relationship with God? What corrections do you need to make?

Closing prayer

Lord Jesus, Your sacrifice on the Cross has changed my life. Forgive me for allowing sin to settle down in my life. Cleanse my heart and mind as I come to You today.

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