Focal Passage: Hosea 6:1-7:2
Recently, I was watching a movie that dealt with themes of father wounds. The father in the movie made many promises to his sons and failed on all of them. He promised his boys he would throw baseball with them and come to their games. He promised he would take them to get a dog. He promised he would teach them to fish. He promised he would quit drinking. Every single promise was a failure. These patterns drove a wedge so deep in his relationship that his sons struggled emotionally into adulthood in their own relationships.
I would be surprised if there’s a single human on earth that has not broken a promise. Maybe they never intended to, but through the course of life, for some reason or another, it happened. I evaluate my life and I would be a bit embarrassed to share just how many promises to God I’ve broken, negotiations I’ve made, only to see them falter.
Thankfully, this is not the heart of our Father. He has not broken His promise to His people. His covenant with us — He’s kept.
Every earthly father will fail in some way, but our heavenly Father never will.
Allman
Sin deserves God’s judgment. Hosea’s main goal is to persuade his audience of this by highlighting the priests and leaders of Israel and their sins. In both cases, these leaders have rejected God’s standards of morality. Both groups are taking control and enforcing their will through violence.
The list of their sins is depressingly long and in a sense, Hosea itemizes it. Unfaithfulness, shedding blood, murder, thievery, banditry, deception, prostitution, adulterers, plotting evil, and many more. In a sense, their acts scream of a belief that God does not exist! Such behavior seeks to put themselves as the creator of reality and demotes God into an inferior.
Restoration is impossible without repentance. The work of persuasion that they are sinners is the first step to getting right with God. That seems like it shouldn’t be a hard thing to do. We’d be surprised.
This passage supports the broad principle that human sinfulness brings God’s judgment. Here’s why this matters: if people reject the concept that they have sinned against God, they will never turn to Him for forgiveness. And without forgiveness, they won’t seek redemption.
M. McCloskey once remarked, “If evangelism is the cure to a terminally ill patient, we must help the patient realize the true nature of his disease.” A person of faith who loves God, loves God’s Word, and loves God’s people cannot condone or keep quiet about sin.
By way of thinking of the setting of Hosea Chapters 6-7 and pulling it down to our level, remember that love and sin are twin themes of Hosea. We have given Christ countless reasons not to love us, yet none of them changed His mind. When we approach God with this kind of humility and awareness, He will not turn us away.
Over all the failure, heartbreak, and desolation in Hosea, the melodic line playing over the book is one of love. We can have assurance that He is not exhausted pursuing us in love. “I will redeem; I will bring back.” At the coming of Christ, love will triumph through judgment! B&R
