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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
HOSEA 11:1-11
(Readings: Revelation 5:1-14; Luke 15:11-24)
The God Who Is Love
Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ...
Weren’t you rubbing your eyes as this chapter was read?
Did you wonder too if this is part of the same book of Hosea we have been considering for some ten sermons already?
The whole character of the prophet’s writing has changed!
From the last seven chapters which couldn’t have spelt out more clearly the judgment upon Israel – and rightly so – we have the complete opposite!
We have to agree with the commentator who says this is a completely new segment – not connected with chapter 10 in any way.
For here the depth and the paradox of God’s love are stated in the most poignant way.
There are few other passages which reveal to us God’s mind and heart in quite such human terms.
The parable in Luke 15 about the lost son, or the prodigal son as we more commonly know it, is one of the few scriptures that come close to this.
Both passages show us the great loving Father-heart of God.
And, yet, though this is such a surprise here, can we say that it wasn’t in Hosea before?
If this is a huge spotlight, beaming God’s love, haven’t we seen flashlights appearing here and there before this chapter?
Indeed we have.
Going back to chapter 3, we see a very close parallel in the prophet’s own personal life.
A life you’ll remember was living out in practice the words he was preaching.
When Hosea is told there to love his adulterous wife “as the LORD loves the Israelites” we see this same thing.
Congregation, this can seem so foreign here because there is so much of the New Testament here.
But what this really tells us is that we have to see how much of the Old Testament is actually in the New Testament.
In fact, without the Old Testament there would be no New Testament.
For this is the gospel in a nutshell!
Now don’t you want to hear the message of this chapter?
This is THE GOD WHO IS LOVE.
And let’s consider this, in the first place, by seeing that GOD’S LOVE SHOWS IN HIS RAISING ISRAEL.
The parents among us will know the sacrifice involved in bringing up children.
Anyone who takes this seriously doesn’t take any relationship lightly.
It is a full-on commitment.
Anything less can have the most damaging consequences.
So the opening words of chapter 11 ring a bell with many of us.
You love your children, and so God loves Israel.
And though Israel may not have been a natural child, don’t you love your adopted child just as much?
Indeed, doesn’t adoption remind us so much of God’s love for us?
The human analogy continues as we read that it’s out of Egypt that the Lord has called Israel.
It was out of slavery that God took His people.
He personally rescued her.
Even before those people knew what was happening the Lord was loving them as those He had chosen.
When this imagery is used again in Matthew 2:15, it is for this same meaning of miraculously delivering His people.
For was not the baby Jesus, who summed up in His person all that Israel was called to be, also threatened and delivered?
Although there are differences in the details between then and now, wasn’t it the same fundamental pattern?
God’s Son was restored to God’s land to fulfil the ministry laid out for Him.
Verse 2 brings out the reason why there had to be that other Son.
For this son goes the totally opposite way.
After the great anticipation in verse 1 there is this utter dissipation in verse 2.
The personal touch continues from the Lord.
He speaks of calling Israel.
But for all that love there’s no positive response.
Quite the opposite, for Israel can’t wait to live it up with the pagan neighbours!
Like the prodigal son, they squander their wealth.
There’s some wild living going on there!
For verse 2 to say, “They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images,” shows how bad it is.
They’ve completely sold out!
You really can’t believe it!
You certainly couldn’t explain it anyway!
In spite of the constantly kind and loving attention of the father, the son was disobedient and stubborn.
In a word, he was naughty!
And that’s the word to describe children doing the wrong thing, isn’t it?
The Lord had clearly laid down the rules.
And this child just totally ignored them.
In fact, this child even deliberately goes out to break them!
Well, we could expect that from a child in a broken home.
That would be anticipated from the child brought up in an abusive relationship for as long as he’d lived.
But from this son?
And so that we realise just how loving God the Father is, the verses 3 and 4 give us two very touching pictures.
The first in verse 3 is that of a father with a young child.
“I taught Ephraim how to walk” says the Lord.
And who doesn’t remember that with their own children?
The waiting for that first step.
The encouragement in all sorts of different ways!
Like the first word your child speaks, you eagerly look for it!
And isn’t the first word always, ‘Dada’?
Well, it’s not actually – that’s most likely the type of sound they usually make then.
But it does show us how keenly we’re listening and watching!
It’s this loving interaction that just keeps coming.
I took them by the arms, the Lord continues in verse 3.
And it was I who healed them, we read further.
So we have the coaxing and supporting of the child’s first steps.
We have that child picked up when he tires or tumbles.
And we have that child fixed up when he’s hurt himself.
“There, there, Daddy kiss it better!”
And from the very loving father in verse 3 there’s the tender farmer in verse 4.
Next to the family scene in ancient Israel, this agrarian picture would have to be the most well known to those people then.
They made their living from the land.
So the livestock was most valuable.
The farmer does whatever he can to help his beast work at his best.
Because don’t you always do your best when you know you’re being looked after?
Tell me, who normally speaks this way about their livestock?
Who leads them with cords of human kindness?
And who then wraps that up even more kindly “with ties of love”?
Then to talk about relieving their burden by lifting the yoke from their neck and bending down to feed them, is much more than our usual farm scene.
On any Australian farm it’s, “Get in behind!”
And it’s a good kick up the behind if any of the animals aren’t moving along!
But in Israel then they knew their animals personally.
That relationship almost came as close as the one we would have with our household pets.
We get the picture, don’t we congregation?
GOD’S LOVE SHOWS IN HIS RAISING ISRAEL.
In fact, God is so consistent in this that we see, secondly, GOD’S LOVE REACTS OVER THIS DEPARTING ISRAEL.
Congregation, good parents cry over their children.
Those Mums and Dads that truly love their offspring and want the very best for them are honestly upset when they go the wrong way.
In that reaction to what their kids do, earthly parents can lose it.
They who so much grieve over the path their boy or girl takes, can get really upset.
So upset that they do something they regret later.
But here is one father who reacts in the perfectly right way.
While there is no doubt the Lord is deeply distressed over this, He does what is the right thing to do.
For He lets Israel go.
As the father in Luke 15 gave his son’s share of the estate to him and let him go, so the Lord does here in the verses 5 till 7.
It’s no use trying to cover up for this child any longer.
Because this child is no longer a child.
And in making what he thinks is an adult decision he wants nothing any more to do with the way of his father.
Whether it’s taking over the family farm in Luke 15, or following the way of the Law for Israel, it’s no use thinking you might win him back.
In his heart he’s gone, and it can only be through a change in his heart that he will come back.
Going back to Egypt simply expresses the direction they’re going.
And Assyria ruling over them is the inevitable result – just like the prodigal son ends up feeding the pigs in their troughs.
Because then all the riches have well and truly run out!
Congregation, without the Lord God these people have no place.
So they will definitely lose their place.
The promised land will be taken away from them and they away from it.
Whether as refugees in Egypt or under the severe bondage of Assyria, they won’t exist as a free people any more.
You see, as soon as they thought they could do without the Lord, the moment they made their plans without Him, that was the beginning of the end to everything.
Verse 7 confirms that.
“My people are determined to turn from me,” says it very clearly.
That means that even if it seems they call out to the Lord in those last desperate days, it’s too late.
They’re full of regret then – not repentance.
For they had been living without the Lord for so long He didn’t know them any more!
It’s like the man floating on the ocean after his ship has sunk.
There he is holding on to a piece of debris.
Believe me, he’ll call out to God!
But it doesn’t mean he knows God at all – he’s just covering all his bases!
Yet just when we thought the Lord could have reached the end of his tether, there’s another surprise!
Indeed, the verses 8 and 9 really jolt us with how loving He is.
Because there we see, GOD’S LOVE WILL REACH OUT FOR ISRAEL.
Our third aspect this afternoon.
Congregation, this is a passionate intervention.
“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
“How can I hand you over, Israel?
“How can I treat you like Admah?
“How can I make you like Zeboiim?
“My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused.”
This seems so unlike the God we meet elsewhere in Scripture.
And yet in this almost human-like character we come closest to knowing God as He truly is.
There is a very interesting word to express this.
This word is ‘anthropomorphic’.
This means the describing of God in human terms.
For so much does God feel for His people here He’s really at odds with Himself.
As one theologian said, here we have some of ‘the pain of God rooted in his love’.
Because this is about God’s affection for Israel.
Now, you may be wondering about Admah and Zeboiim here.
Well, they’re actually two cities of the plain which were destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah.
Deuteronomy 29 verse 23 tells us of this.
And knowing that doesn’t it make it clear what is going on here?
For the Lord can’t go to that extent with His people.
Though He has to punish them as the good parent He is, He’s yet waiting for them.
Isn’t this also the picture from Luke 15?
So how much wasn’t our Lord Jesus basing that parable on such a passage as this?
A passage He himself uttered through the mouth of Hosea.
Because this is His Word, the Word of the Living Word.
As 2nd Peter 1 verse 21 says, “For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”
So we have seen God’s heart under a human description.
But let’s also realise here God’s unchanging and unchangeable character.
Congregation, let’s draw in at this point the latter words of verse 9.
What does it mean that the Lord says, “For I am God, and not man – the Holy One among you”?
Well, we know that the Holy One did come among them.
As Matthew 15:24 records Jesus, He came to seek the lost sheep of Israel.
And as He says in Matthew 20:28, He came to ‘give his life as a ransom for many.”
Then when verse 9 concludes by the Lord declaring, “I will not come in wrath,” doesn’t it all come together?
For it’s not about what Israel is doing or has done!
In fact it is despite what Israel has done!
You see, because God is God, He can save.
While the human perspective is that Israel doesn’t have a case to answer, the Lord can yet love them in spite of it all!
This is what we see so overwhelmingly in the last two verses of this text.
For in the verses 10 and 11 we see, fourthly, GOD TRIUMPHS IN HIS RESTORING ISRAEL.
Dear friend, can you see it?
This is going to be so clearly from and through and of God!
You won’t ever be able to think otherwise!
You see, so powerful is the love of God that it will be a miracle of conversion experienced in Israel.
The Lord will “roar like a lion”.
And that’s a sound you don’t ignore!
It’s the sound scattering the enemies.
And it’s the sound bringing Israel trembling before her God.
Yes, the God it has so shamefully rejected.
This is the complete opposite to what we read of in verses 1 and 2.
Now God’s voice will draw His children in, not send them away.
Mind you, it is only because they are “trembling” that they’re coming back.
It’s only because they’re truly sorry and have completely changed that this becomes the great homecoming.
And what a homecoming it is!
They will return from east and west and south, so from foreign lands they will come back.
Egypt and Assyria won’t be their homes anymore – whether physically or spiritually.
The use of birds to describe the Israelites here is a fitting one.
For Israel had been the silly dove of chapter 7 verse 11, always flitting between Egypt and Assyria.
But now they know they have to be in their own nest.
We further note it’s the Lord these people will go after, not the lovers she once pursued.
This is quite the opposite to what chapter 2 verse 5 tells of.
There is a difficulty in these last two verses, however.
For which time could it possibly be about?
What age is being prophesied about here?
We know that for the northern ten tribes there was no return to the promised land.
They became swallowed up within the Assyrian empire.
And though there are some fanciful theories around as to where they ended up, this simply cannot be about them.
So, then, could it be about the return of the Judeans after the Babylonian exile?
That would have had some of the ten tribes who had fled down to Judah at some point.
Or is even future still?
Could this be about the spiritual homecoming of God’s ‘sons’ in the new covenant age?
And then again, might this not be the great turning of physical Israel to the Lord predicted in Romans 11.
Is this about what the apostle Paul writes there in verse 12, 25 and following?
Congregation, how about most of the above?
For haven’t we already realised in this chapter that the Lord our God is so far beyond our understanding?
Our limitations hold us back from seeing Him for who He really is.
So why hold Him back?
This coming Day will be the most overwhelming and stupendous time.
This is what Revelation 5 so wondrously declared!
Verse 5 there said it all, ‘See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed.
‘He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’
Dear friend, Hosea chapter 11 is about THE GOD WHO IS LOVE.
But don’t ever think this is a sentimental love.
This is tough love, the love shown in the cruel death of Christ on the cross.
It is in His sacrifice that divine love and divine wrath meet for the salvation of people everywhere.
They are those He’s bringing home.
Let’s not be left behind!
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s pray…
O Mighty King & Marvellous God, we bow in humbleness before You now.
For we are those who come trembling towards You.
And yet we don’t come scared of you.
Because You are our loving Heavenly Father.
You are the One who sent Your One and only Son to pay for all our sins on Calvary.
O Lord God, may we ever praise and thank You for this.
And may many more come to join us in that great choir.
For Jesus’ Name’s sake, we pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright 2008, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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