Category: Rejoicing in My Savior

Judgement is such a misunderstood term in today’s culture. We see it as dark and overbearing. Perhaps it is because we tend to humanize judgement instead of seeing it as designed with a wonderful purpose. There are actually three reasons I considered that affect our perception of God’s judgement.

1. We wrongly see God.
2. We take seriousness of sin lightly and not as the horrific beast it truly is.
3. We do no conceive how deeply we need God.

As my knowledge of God has grown, so has my respect for who He is grown expedientially. Knowing more God cannot be valued enough. Knowledge of God will naturally put a reverence of God in the heart of a man. I could write endlessly on the attributes nature and the nuances of what I know about God from Scripture. There are those who could write even more than that. God is simply beyond our human comprehension.

I see God’s astonishing holiness, righteousness, grace, and mercy through Hosea’s eyes, as God gently draws the children of Israel back to Himself by the mercy of His judgement. It is a beautiful picture. God begins His case in what parallels to that of a courtroom.

“Listen to the word of the Lord, you sons of Israel, Because the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, For there is no faithfulness, nor loyalty, Nor knowledge of God in the land.” Hosea 4:1

The courtroom scene I see in Hosea helps sweeten my understanding of God’s judgement. God does not have to explain Himself or the wrong done Him by His created and chosen. But God takes time to explain in verse after verse, the iniquity of His people.

“And the rebels have gone deep in depravity, But I will discipline all of them. I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from Me; Because now, Ephraim, you have been unfaithful, Israel has defiled itself. Their deeds will not allow them To return to their God. For a spirit of infidelity is within them, And they do not know the Lord.” Hosea 5:3-4

On their own, the wicked have no ability to turn to God. Depravity is met with more depravity. Divine assistance is needed for the depraved man to even notice that he or she is depraved. One must be placed in the wilderness, alone, with none of the comforts of life, with no souls to comfort. One must see the utter desolation of his or her life before one can even see their Hope and call out to Him for deliverance.

“I will also make her like a wilderness, Make her like desert land, And put her to death with thirst.” Hosea 2:3b

Judgement precedes restoration. This is what makes the cross so beautiful to us. Because the judgement we deserve for all our sins is an eternal judgement without hope of restoration. Instead of entering into that judgment

 “Come, let’s return to the Lord.
For He has torn us, but He will heal us;
He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.
He will revive us after two days;
He will raise us up on the third day,
That we may live before Him.
So let’s learn, let’s press on to know the Lord.
His appearance is as sure as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain,
As the spring rain waters the earth.” Hosea 6:1

ADULTEROUS: THE CHOSEN BRIDE

“When the LORD first spoke through Hosea, the LORD said to Hosea, “Go, take yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom” Hosea 1:2.

So, while Gomer was a pagan, self-seeking, harlot, Hosea chose her, knowing completely the pain and trouble she would repetitively bring to him. Hosea did not chose to marry Gomer because she was seeking God, or even because she showed potential of being a faithful wife someday. Hosea chose Gomer because she was hopelessly depraved, and unknowingly desperate of redemption.

As I continually see God’s choice as the only factor in the redemption of mankind. I see it in the moment God choose a people, starting with Abram.

“And Joshua said to all the people, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Long ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave him Isaac'” Joshua 24:2-3.

God did not choose Abram because Abram was a worshiper of God. Abram and his family were idol worshippers. It wasn’t until God called out Abram that Abram put his faith in God and left his family for a distant promise. It was God who drew Abram’s heart toward Himself, even giving Abram the necessary faith in order to make a covenant with a sinful man and giving Abram a new name…Abraham. And through Abraham, God chose Israel, a people he knew would utterly reject Him over and over, causing Him great grief.

“For you are a holy people to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for His own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt” Deuteronomy 7:6-8.

And now it is I, I am the one who has been chosen. As the gospel was spread to all the parts of the world to fulfill God’s plan, here I am today, several thousand years after Christ’s atoning blood was shed, rejoicing in the truth that I too am “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” I Peter 2:9-10.

COVENANT, SACRED, HOLY, MARRIAGE

Marriage is a covenant that merely gives us, in our limited human nature, a snapshot of the deep, eternal covenant God has made with us as His eternal bride. Marriage on earth, although sacred, is temporal, and a covenant capable of being broken.

In contrast: the covenant Christ has made with us, His bride, is an impeccably sacred and pure covenant. It is an eternal covenant. And unlike earthly covenants, no amount of unfaithfulness on my part will ever break it. The covenant between Christ and the church is holy, sacred, eternal, and unbreakable. God’s covenant with me is unlike anything my earthly mind can comprehend.

In Hosea 2:19-20 we read a beautiful promise that has yet to be fulfilled for Israel, but in the promise is the words of God’s vows to His Bride. The promise God gives Israel is one that cannot be made here on earth. His commitment to His covenant is one we can only we relate to through our finite marriage vows. “And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the LORD.”

The sweetness I see is the covenant is made by an absolutely perfect, holy, and all powerful Being to very wicked, unholy, and powerless beings.

IDENTITY: ADULTEROUS

I would like to take a moment to embrace and identify with the word “adulteress.” I want to absorb the feeling of a deep and very personal form of unfaithfulness. I want to get a sense of the pain and destruction that adultery has on a sacred covenant, as it destroys trust and taints intimacy. And oh, the heartbreak, shock, insult, and damage adultery wreaks on lives people as it leaves brokenness in its trail. Adultery has dissolved many a marriage covenant. It has forever changed the course the lives of many within each family it touches. Adultery causes immense pain on multiple fronts. 

It is simple for a woman who is faithful in covenant keeping, to dissociate herself with her adulterous nature. She can pridefully think herself above such a description as adultery, as though she is not a covenant breaker. This is the place I was at as I began to read passage after passage in Hosea. 

I felt for poor Hosea as his life was spent picking up pieces from his ongoing marriage to an unfaithful woman. And then one day, my perception of the characters turned.

It is God who is pictured as in the imagery of Hosea. And it is Gomer who is the analogy of God’s people, Israel. Identifying with Hosea was the course my pride had taken me, when it is most certainly Hosea’s wife, Gomer with whom I should see myself.