my sin as God sees sin

But they do not consider that I remember all their evil. Now their deeds surround them; they are before my face.
Hosea 7:2

We tend to forget that sin is an affront to a holy God. We are bound to have too casual an approach to sin. God, however, never takes a casual approach to what comes between us. Judgment shows us this. The cross convinces us of this. His warning to Israel's leaders was meant to wake up a morally sleeping nation. He reminded them that what they casually dismissed was heaped around them and ever before His face. It would have to be dealt with.

One of the stupidest of human mistakes is the denial of sinfulness. It is graphically apparent. We might as well deny our humanity! We deny sin as real and we dismiss all concepts of God's holiness. It is horribly unaware of the offense that sin truly is. It is a form of whistling in the dark at the true results of our depraved human natures. Modern thinking derides the concept of personal sinfulness and instead ignorantly ascribes the blatant evil to a lack of education, inequities in wealth or social standing, lack of scientific progress, or a psychological instability. Meanwhile sin piles up and decays around us. The stench of it permeates the air until we grow accustomed to it... like urban commuters during a hot summer sanitation workers strike. We just live with the garbage so much that we look beyond it.

If we want to think serious and true thoughts of God, we must take our own sin seriously. That is the first way of responding to who we are and why we need His forgiveness in Christ. It is not that we have to offer some kind of extreme penance. But we must own up to our own sinfulness and see it as damaging to our ability to know God in His perfection. The prayer God hears first, as Jesus Himself taught, is "God, be merciful to me a sinner."

the effort to know God

Let us know; let us press on to know the LORD; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.
Hosea 6:3

Hosea makes an impassioned appeal to the nations of Israel and Judah to return to the Lord. We can see that one vital goal of the covenant relationship was knowledge of God. The relationship of obedience in the worship of Yahweh was intended to draw the nation close to God. Hosea's appeal is for the people to know the Lord. In that knowledge is renewal, refreshment, and relationship.

There is a way in which the prophet talks about the process of knowing God that is instructive. He urges God's people to "press on" in their knowledge of the Lord. This denotes both determination and effort in the process. Determination is the mental preparation in knowing God. We must want to know Him. Our hearts must seek God. Effort is the work of knowing God. There has to be some energy expended in order to reap the reward.

For me, the energy expended looks like this: I have to be in the Word of God daily. I have to discipline myself to hear from God. Life's troubles and the dissonant voices of the world around me will make demands of my time. But the very best time I have each day is spent in the Bible, in prayer, and in expending the effort to know my God. Why? Because I do what I was most created to do... walk with God. For me, the next step is to journal something that I saw in scripture. That gives me a few thoughts to hold on to for the rest of the day. It gives me something I can share with others. And years of this discipline have given me over 80 books filled with these thoughts. This translates into my hard evidence of God at work on me. At this stage in my life I find it personally irrefutable.

The rewards of "pressing on" in the knowledge of God are worth the work. They do not grant a life of ease. They do give us an adventure worth having and joys that last even in our hardships. And for that reason, I want to remind myself to continue to heed Hosea's call to "press on" to know the Lord.

wrath like water

The princes of Judah have become like those who move the landmark; upon them I will pour out my wrath like water.
Hosea 5:10

It is not very devotionally motivating to consider God's wrath. It is a tough way to start any day! Why do Christians struggle with the concept of God's wrath, particularly when the bible is so straight forward in its description of it? I think it has to do with the way we normally express anger. We are bound to mix it with sin, just like we do any strong feeling. And we then translate our messed up experience into understanding God's wrath. We miss the reality of exactly what God experiences in wrath.

God is as holy in His wrath as He is in His love. And we must not forget that in the big picture. When God pours out His wrath, He does so balanced with holiness, truth, and justice. He does not "lose it". His wrath is the perfect response against willful sin. It is tempered with patience and kindness. He is longsuffering, but still moves in ways that His holiness demands that He act.

Hell exists as the ultimate expression of punishment against rebellion against God. Hell exists because God's holy wrath exists. And God does not want any person it perish but all to come to repentance. That is why even as Hell exists, so also do the cross and the empty grave. These give us the full picture. On the cross God poured out His wrath against all sin upon His holy Son. And at the resurrection He gave us new life in His Son so that we could escape being the objects of a holy wrath. With Jesus we can stand as sons and daughters of the Father's love.

God never speaks of His wrath without also giving us an understanding of His holiness. He also always follows with an understanding of His mercy. Even in this strong passage, God ends His revelation of wrath with a clear statement that He would be ready and waiting for His people to return and in repentance come back to Him (Hosea 5:15). God is merciful, even in anger and judgment. He pours out His wrath like water, but He also showers His mercy on the repentant sinner.

moral stupidity leads to ruin

I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery; for the men themselves go aside with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and a people without understanding shall come to ruin.
Hosea 4:14

A complete abandonment of all moral standards marked family life in Israel at the time of Hosea's prophecies. God had seen enough. The Israeli society was in complete sexual and moral breakdown. And the entire nation seemed bent on what would become its own destruction. The language God uses to describe His response to this immorality is strong. The results of this sexual free-for-all were catastrophic.

First, it is apparent that all people, men and women, young people and old people, were engaging in this behavior. It had become a social phenomenon. There was a cycle. Women were giving themselves over to prostitution (no doubt much of it forced) and to adultery. The first motive was material gain. The second was personal pleasure and an attempt at significance and satisfaction. But it was the men who were ultimately creating the demand for the sexual marketplace. And that is the group God sights in on with His strongest displeasure. Men were encouraging both sensuality and religious prostitution by their sinful preoccupations. They were pursuing all out sexual addiction literally with a religious fervor. God says two things about this moral breakdown: 1) it displayed an unfathomable degree of moral stupidity and 2) it was ruinous to everyone.

My world is equally stupid these days. We are immoral morons. Last weekend saw the largest interstate trafficking in prostitution of any weekend in America this year. Why? What sparked this grand tradition? The Superbowl attracts sexual prostitution. Indianapolis police and the FBI knew this in advance. Every city that hosts the Big Game is briefed on the issue months beforehand. This societal blight is driven by the worship of personal pleasure at the expense of people created for God's glory. How many of America's daughters were brought to degrading lows this last week? How many marriages were dishonored and destroyed? God only knows. But it is moral stupidity and it is ruinous to generations.

At any moment millions of people worldwide are driving the demand for internet pornography... electronic prostitution of the worst kind. Women and young children are being degraded constantly to feed the demand of this demonic stinking dragon. And it seems unstoppable because of the ruin it brings. I know because I have at least one conversation each week with married couples or single guys whose souls and relationships are festering in this foul garbage. People without God's sexual understanding come to ruin.

welcomed with open arms

Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the LORD their God, and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the LORD and to his goodness in the latter days.
Hosea 3:5

God holds out hope for His rebellious and unfaithful people. Hosea's own life again is the object lesson God uses to illustrate this reality. Once more Hosea retrieves his wife Gomer from the arms of another lover. And in this action he anticipates the covenant love of God for Israel. God would go after his people again as well.

The prophetic voice in Hosea sounds out on the implications of this kind of love. And it would receive a broken and repentant nation. God says that in "the latter days" the entire nation of Israel (both the Northern and Southern kingdoms) would return to seek Him. They would reunite with Him and with one another under the rule of the Davidic dynasty again. They will come to fear the LORD and receive His goodness as a nation. All of this would be as described because God would honor His covenant with His people.

Lord,
I thank You that You always have ears that hear the prayer from the lips of a repentant sinner. Your great love redeems and restores. Your heart longs to see lives rejoicing in You in Your kingdom. I know that now I trust this by faith. Yet one day my soul shall see it and know it much deeper. In the story of Israel I see your faithful love. And for that I am confident to trust all future events to your loving leading.
Amen

God loves me better than I love Him

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.
Hosea 2:19-20

God is full of mercy and compassion. That is the character seen in this chapter. God is not happy with Israel and Judah. His people have strayed from loving Him. They have gone after an idolatrous lifestyle. Love for their idols fills their hearts. He rightfully compares them to prostitutes and unfaithful spouses. They have forgotten that they have been blessed through the covenant, and not their outside "lovers". They have assumed that their idolatry had given them everything they had.

God has a harsh and simple remedy meant to recapture the attention and affection of His people. He would strip away all that was familiar to them. They would lose it all. They would be reduced to having nothing. They would be removed from the sources of their unfaithfulness and forced into a position where they could evaluate their hearts before God. And in that lowest of pains they would again see what they had forgotten. They would be ready to be restored. They would repent and return to their first love.

When God's people were back to that point again, then God would restore his bountiful love and blessing. He would hold them close and dear. He would reinstate intimate covenant blessings. He would shower them in righteousness and justice as they again committed in a covenantal relationship with God. He would graciously deal with Israel in a faithful love and a tender mercy. God's faithfulness would be their joy even as they had returned from being unfaithful. And they would be blessed with the knowledge of God... the greatest joy and gift of relationship with the LORD.

God is faithful even when we are not. He will bring His justice and refining work to bear so that we will return to Him. He will always welcome repentance and respond to it with love and faithfulness. I am thankful that God will always love me better than I love Him!

judgment & mercy

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," it shall be said to them, "Children of the living God."
Hosea 1:10

When God enacts the curses of the covenant against the unfaithfulness of His people, He does so with a balance of judgment and mercy. The language here invokes the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant against the dark prospects of judgment impending from the failure to keep the Mosaic Covenant. Even as God warns Israel and Judah through the ministry of His prophet Hosea, He also confirms that a deep covenantal commitment underlies even His acts of judgment. God would not forget His covenant with Abraham.

What is interesting here is that really two covenants are in discussion. The immediate judgment would come as a result of Israel's disobedience to the covenant the nation made with God at Sinai. They had failed at every level to obey and keep the statutes of the Law. The foundational call to worship on the LORD their God was the key command broken. God's people were wantonly unfaithful to Him, following after idolatry with a passion. This was why judgment was coming.

But that judgment would be tempered with mercy. God had not forgotten an earlier covenant with Abraham. And because God would be true to His Word, the children of Abraham would endure past judgment to again fill the Promised Land. That is why God would work to restore a people that He had judged. He would not abandon His Word given to Abraham.

I see here a vivid reminder of the faithfulness of God. Yes, He is faithful to His people. But human beings are not the basis of His faithfulness. Because God is holy and true, He is faithful and consistent to Himself. He has to be. There is nothing else holy and true. Ultimately, the covenant with Abraham required a self-consistency for the glory of God. It led Him to brink back the Jews from captivity and to reinstate blessing so that Abraham's offspring could again enjoy covenant blessings as "children of the Living God". I am thankful that God is always true and faithful, even when I fail Him. In His mercy and love, He will always be true to Himself. And that is where His grace extends to me. It isn't about me. It is all about God. I need to keep that in front of me!