Hosea 11:1–11 – The Lord’s Fatherly Love
Hosea 11:12–13:16 – Israel’s Punishment For Unfaithfulness
Hosea 14 – Israel’s Restoration After Repentance
Thoughts about serving others
This link includes a list of posts about Serving the Least, the Lost, and the Lonely.
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Let the Word evoke words. May your life encourage lives.
These are the last words in Hosea, but I think they lost some of their impact in translation (just my guess). I don’t know Hebrew, but unless I could think and dream in the original language, I probably wouldn’t quite get the significance of the last statement, yet it is understood. Fools craft idols with their hands and worship them as if they were something special. There are those gifted with great charisma who lead others to their death–blessed by God with great minds, but trapped in a world that seeks human recognition.
In the last chapters of Hosea, we read words that seem to go back and forth. God loves his people, but his people refuse his love. He cared for them, taught them to walk, “but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love” (Hosea 11:3-4). They knew who God was, they told countless stories of how he saved them. Yet somehow the story got twisted and the people fell into a trap, turned to idol worship like those around them, sought immediate comfort rather than focus on the long win. How appropriate these words are for this society in this generation where so many people have no patience at all. The sense of entitlement is a disease that runs rampant and is fueled by the same issues in Hosea’s day, well at least metaphorically.
It is more than encouraging to read, “My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused” (11:8). The Lord Almighty loves you and me. He will discipline those he loves, but make no mistake, he loves us and he cares for us.
Does that not sound familiar? Like an epistle for today’s culture? What’s a father to do when his children become proud and forget their ways? Love them anyway. At least that’s what this father chooses to do. I will let God be God and not make the mistake of thinking I should take his place. Lord, keep me far from idols of this age, whatever they look like, and help me to be a patient parent of the children you have given us to raise in your ways. Do not forget them Lord, though they wander. Draw them back to you.