Rev. Don Campbell
HOSEA 1-7
THOUGHT FOR TODAY, July 20, 2019
“GOD, A GRIEVING HUSBAND”
Hosea was a contemporary of Isaiah and prophesied to the northern kingdom, occasionally referring to Judah, the southern kingdom. Hosea’s marriage to Gomer and the heartache it brought to him is a living symbol of God’s love for his people. Gomer’s unfaithfulness pictures the spiritual adultery of Israel and Judah, and Hosea’s redemptive love, which neither casts Gomer away nor ignores her unfaithfulness pictures God’s redemptive judgment of his people, eventually culminating in the New Covenant and the bringing in of the Gentiles.
God instructed Hosea to name his second son “Lo-ammi” in Hebrew and translated “Not My People” (Hosea 1:8-9). God did not acknowledge them as his own, but a time would come when once again he would receive them: “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.” And the children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head. And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel” (Hosea 1:10-11). Paul explains this for us in Romans 9:19-26:
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? As indeed he says in Hosea,
“Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’
and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’”
“And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’
there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’”
Peter also spoke of God’s mercy: “But you are 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” (1 Peter 2:9-10).
CONNECTIONS
1. John sees two contrasting women: a harlot (Revelations 17 -18) and a pure bride (Revelations 19 & 21). Viewed against the backdrop of Hosea, would it be logical to interpret these two women as apostate Christianity and true Christianity?
2. Cultural assimilation is the process in which a minority group or culture comes to resemble a dominant group or assume the values, behaviors, and beliefs of another group. What warning does James give? (James 4:4)h.
