This post by christinecoltman was originally published at GRACE PLACE
A Jealous Love
Hosea chapters 8-10
We are continuing in our series studying the book of Hosea, and if you were here last month or have been able to meet up with your study buddy, you’ll know we are currently in the prophetic section, which can feel a bit like wading through treacle! We have looked at the narrative; the story, where the prophet Hosea was instructed by God to marry a prostitute in order to provide a vivid, living picture of God’s relationship with his people Israel. Just as Gomer was unfaithful to Hosea, Israel were unfaithful to their God. Just as Gomer broke the covenant of their marriage, Israel broke the covenant between God and his people; the covenant that was established way back when they had been delivered from slavery in Egypt and given the Promised Land.
In the past months, through listening to Jill and Vicky’s talks, we have moved into the prophetic part of the book of Hosea, where Hosea is now revealing God’s heart further; His devastation and pain at the depth of their sin in their disobedience, impure motives and blatant disregard for His holiness and covenant. But Hosea is also revealing the depth of God’s love for his people, despite their waywardness. Being a prophetic book of the Bible, Hosea is foretelling things that have not yet happened. He is warning the people, over and over again, of the consequences of living with their fingers in their ears and turning from Him to worship false gods, even whilst giving Him lip-service. He is exhorting them to turn back to Him.
Jill and Vicky both mentioned how this section of Hosea is presented a bit like a court scene. In chapters 4 and 5, the court was convened; the people were addressed and charges were brought. Jill talked about the things Israel had not done; no faithfulness, no steadfast love, no true knowledge of God, and the things they had done; adultery and unfaithfulness (even the priests leading the people astray!), murder and bloodshed, lying and stealing. They were breaking the commands the LORD had given them.
In chapters 6 and 7 we saw the Israelites lodge an appeal which was rejected. We saw their false repentance; it sounded great… “Come, let us return to the LORD” (6:1) but it was a sham. God revealed the duplicity and insincerity of their empty words. There was no real repentance, and no true devotion. John MacArthur put it like this “they wanted happiness not holiness, healing but not cleansing, a change of their circumstances but not their character”. That really makes it hit home doesn’t it? How often is that my heart? I think we can see ourselves on trial here too.
Now we have reached chapters 8-10, a huge passage. It is impossible to go through it all, so we won’t be covering all the details, however I want to share with you what the LORD has laid on my heart and what He has been teaching me through studying it. We are back in the courtroom again, and judgement is being given and a sentence is being pronounced for God’s wayward people. And yet, even in the midst of the wrath, there is still overwhelming love, and I can’t wait to share that with you.
Two themes have come up again and again; these are of God’s judgement and God’s jealousy. If you have been able to do the study questions, they were mainly around judgement. We’ll recap what that judgement looked like for the Israelites before we move on to God’s fierce and jealous love for His people, and what that means for us today.
Let’s look at this judgement and courtroom scene in more depth.
Read 8:1-3 (Reader 1)
Hear the warning cry from Hosea for what is coming. The trumpet blasts! An instrument used to announce danger or war. The eagle/vulture picture symbolises trouble looming on the horizon/danger hovering nearby. The imagery couldn’t be clearer; watch out Israel! Your relationship with the living God is in danger! But what had they done and why were they in the courtroom dock?
Broken the Law
At a most basic level, they had broken the law; v1 makes that clear. They had broken the covenant that had been established between Moses and God’s people and their holy God. Remember Mt Sinai and the ten commandments? Further than that, rules were given to help the Israelites stand out and be different from the pagan cultures in the countries surrounding them in their new land. God said to Moses to tell His people, “if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all the nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19: 5-6). What a promise! A ‘treasured possession’! A ‘holy nation’! Cherished and loved by an almighty God.
In the padding out of the law in Leviticus 26, it talks about the rewards for obedience and keeping the covenant; there would be blessings of fruitfulness, peace and prosperity. But it also warns of the punishment for disobedience. These specific punishments even included warnings of exile and the dispersion/breaking up of God’s people, as well as ruin; Lev 26:33 “I will scatter you among the nations and will draw out my sword and pursue you. Your land will be laid to waste and your cities will lie in ruins.” The people would have known these laws from childhood. So the Israelites were receiving the punishment that had been long promised for breaking the covenant. God was being JUST and FAIR. Also, this is the kindness of God! He is setting up boundaries for his people, just as we set loving boundaries for our children. The people had no excuse. Judgement had come because they were warned from the very beginning; there had to be a consequence for disobedience.
So, that was why the Israelites were in the dock. But what was Hosea predicting in terms of their sentencing? What was going to come their way?
Read 8:7 (reader 2), 9:1-4a (reader 3)
Reap what they’d sown
There are many pictures of sowing and reaping in the Bible; it is where we get our well known phrase ‘you reap what you sow’. Usually, this phrase is intended to show cause and effect; if you do a certain action, you get the natural consequence. However, here in verse 7, the ‘reaping’ appears to be far far worse than what was sown. I’m sure we can all think of examples of this; sowing a small lie to cover up embarrassment but then having to lie again and again to cover the original lie until it becomes too big to hide any more. We reap widespread exposure and embarrassment. Or maybe like King David who sowed a ‘second glance’ at Bathsheba, and reaped lies, murder and death.
In this instance, Hosea talks about ‘sowing the wind’. The words ‘wind’ and ‘spirit’ are interchangeable here. Look back at chapter 4:12 “for a spirit of whoredom has led them astray”; this is ‘the wind’ they are said to be sowing to here. In other words, they are being unfaithful in their sowing. We will look at this in more depth in a minute, but their unfaithfulness looks like turning to idol worship, and turning to alliances with the nations surrounding them, in the vain hope that these things would save them and make them prosperous. What Israel hadn’t realised was the consequences of doing these things would be truly awful; they would reap a whirlwind!
To make it worse, they pretended that they were interested in maintaining their relationship with God (we saw this in the previous chapter as well); they used empty words (8:2), built extra altars (8:11) and even offered sacrifices (8:13). But it was all empty. As one speaker summarised it, chapter 8 speaks of planting or sowing an empty religion, and chapter 9 speaks of reaping an alienated relationship as a consequence. The road of religion without God leads to death, alienated from God’s presence and his love. This is the sentence. A literal alienation when they are exiled; they are removed to a foreign land (9;3), where they will not be able to worship God or offer him sacrifices (9:4), and he would remove their prosperity (9:2). Heavy stuff!
Now, there’s an ‘elephant in the room’. Where is the loving, forgiving God we know? Why does this sentence have to be (what we think of) as so harsh?
I think our sometimes westernised and sanitised version of Christianity focusses heavily (and maybe with blinkers on) on a loving God who loves to give good gifts to his children. This is true, but only part of the picture! This is the version of God that my children are presented with at their school; no mention of His holiness, no mention of sin and the need for wrong to be punished. Without that though, we are left with a false view of ourselves and a false understanding of the nature of God and the beauty of our salvation.
What is our God like? He is holy. His holiness demands perfection! God cannot have sin in his presence. But alongside that, our God is relational. He’s not a robot. He, the three in one triune God, at His very core a relational God, wants a relationship with the people He created! At the start of chapter 8, Hosea says the same three things in different ways; you do not really know me because you have broken my covenant, rebelled against the law and rejected what is good. You want religion, but not a relationship with me. You don’t know me and you don’t want me. Can you hear his relational-heart break here?
So then why didn’t he just forgive them? If He is so loving, why not forget their sin and pour out His love on them more? We’ve already alluded to God being just and fair; we cannot have a sovereign God ignoring wilful sin as that would go against His justice. We repeatedly see the Israelites have their back to God and their fingers in their ears. The consequence is that the LORD withdraws His presence. You get the feeling they have made their choice so clearly and wilfully that He has now said; you have chosen this path, so I will let you continue on it. It is the same ‘giving over’ to sin we have seen in other passages in the Bible.
But our God is also kind. Despite the rejection of His people, in His mercy, He exposes their hearts through His prophet and tries to draw them back to Himself. He is longing for them to repent. What does it mean to repent though? More than just saying sorry, it means to change direction, or turn. Tim Chester said the word ‘repentance’ or ‘turn’ or ‘return’ is used 22 times in the book of Hosea in varied ways. There aren’t many in today’s chapters, but I feel there is an overwhelming sense of God’s people facing the wrong way; with their backs to their loving God. 10:12 says “it is time to seek the LORD”; you can’t seek the LORD if you are facing the wrong way!
He is holy yet relational and just yet kind. But He is also jealous, so let’s look at that now.
The title I was given for this talk was ‘A Jealous Love’. After all we have talked about; the courtroom scene with the sentence being pronounced and judgment being proclaimed, it is hard for us to initially see where the love is at all. But it is there!
When we hear the word ‘jealous’, we probably first think of the negative; a strong feeling of envious resentment against someone, maybe because of something they have or their success (“I’m so jealous of their beautiful house”). It can make a lot of people very uncomfortable to think of God as a jealous God. In fact, if you look up Oprah Winfrey and this subject, you’ll find it was the very thing that caused her to walk away from God and the mainstream church. She sadly misunderstood God’s jealousy, and saw it through a human lens instead. I don’t want that for us today; I want us to leave here with an appreciation of how beautiful the jealous love of God is.
Jealousy, a bit like anger, is not inherently bad. Whether these emotions are sinful or not actually depends on two things; their motivation, and their fruit. So often our own motives are sinful, which means the ‘fruit’ or the outworking is not pretty. For example, if I am feeling discontented with what God has given me, and am finding my identity in what I own/my stuff, then jealousy of someone else’s beautiful home is an outworking of that and might lead me to strive to have more. What led to the jealous feeling was what was impure, so therefore the action that came from it was too.
God’s motives are unquestionably pure, therefore his jealousy for his people is pure. Throughout Hosea we have seen God’s longing for an intimate and exclusive relationship with his people. John McArthur said “the LORD’s true love for His people is unending and will tolerate no rival”. If you think about that marriage relationship, which we have seen depicted in our studies in Hosea so far, it is only right that a husband and wife should jealously guard the intimacy of their relationship. If Reinier wasn’t bothered if I flirted with other men, it would show me that his heart wasn’t fully for me, right? I want him to defend our relationship jealously. In the same way, God longs for our full and undivided attention. His jealousy for us is rooted in love.
Let’s read about that exuberant first love. (Reader 4) “When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert: when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree” (Hosea 9:10). (slide) This is one of three pictures of God’s delight and his sheer love for His children. He took joy in their belonging to Him. Grapes in the desert is a picture of a rare and refreshing find! Tim Chester says that Hosea is alluding to how God first met with Israel in the desert at Mount Sinai; it was there that they became His people and received His law. And look at how God sees it!
Another picture is of Israel as once a luxuriant spreading vine (10:1), and another image as a trained calf (, a beautiful heifer, in fact so beautiful He could barely put a yoke on her neck, so she just threshed grain (which was a nice easy job compared to being yoked and working the land; the heifer would not have been muzzled and would have had access to the chaff on the threshing floor to eat). These are images that show the abundance of God’s love for His people and His joy in their belonging to Him.
But then it goes badly wrong. Israel spurned his love (spurned meaning to reject, or literally ‘throw out’); they broke the covenant they had made and broke His heart over and over again. We see them time and time again turning to other things. Remember we said God’s love would tolerate no rival? Well, there were plenty of rivals here and we are going to look at four of them from chapters 8-10. God is showing them their complete dependence on human things, not on Him.
Kings
Kingship is a big issue in these chapters; kings get a lot of mentions. Historically you’ll know that Israel were desperate for a king; someone they could rely on, something to make them feel safe and look like the other countries that surrounded them once they were in Promised Land. The instinct of the Israelites to crown a king wasn’t entirely a bad thing; they knew they needed someone to lead and defend them. But they looked in the wrong place! They cried out to God for a king, instead of simply crying out to God. They wanted a king, they didn’t want Him. They wanted a human to fight their battles, instead of taking their battles to the sovereign God. Ouch – the rejection! In 8:4 God says “they set up kings without my consent”. God wanted to choose for Himself the kings who would rule over His people; those who would be obedient to His covenant, like how He chose King David.
It is no coincidence then, that Hosea mentions the ‘wickedness in Gilgal’ in 9:15 because this was the place where Israel crowned their first king, Saul. Saul, who turned to traditions and superstition, who ignored God’s voice. This choice led to disaster for God’s people and Saul was rejected. Saul is in the background of this passage; notice in 9:9 and 10:9 a place called Gibeah is mentioned “Since the days of Gibeah, you have sinned Israel”; again commentators don’t think this was a coincidence as this was where Saul was born and where he chose to rule from. It was like his HQ! Saul stands in these passages for all the subsequent kings the Israelites would turn to in place of turning to their rightful king, the King of heaven.
Calves
Not only did the Israelites turn away from God as their rightful King, they turned their hearts away from Him to worship idols.
Read 8:4b-6 (Reader 5)
A part of the original covenant, in fact, one of the ten commandments, was to ‘have no other gods but me’ and ‘don’t bow to man-made things’ (Exodus 20). But here we see them constructing idols for themselves out of gold and silver. Remind you of anything? Remember when Moses was up on Mt Sinai receiving the covenant, and the people were down below, waiting and doubting and getting ever more restless? In Exodus 32:1, they persuaded Aaron, the brother of Moses, to “make us gods who will go before us”, and he obliges by collecting all their jewellery and fashioning a golden calf out of it. Then he has the audacity to present it to them as the god who brought them out of Egypt! Tim Chester says it was like Israel’s original sin and it set the pattern for the rest of their history; it is constantly revisited throughout the Bible as a description of their idolatry.
You might wonder what Hosea means when he says ‘the calf of Samaria’ (8:6) as this is obviously not the one Aaron made. No, this calf, and the one mentioned in 10:5, refer to the two golden calves created by King Jereboam after the kingdom was divided into two following the death of King Solomon. The division was formed as Jereboam led a rebellion against slavery; he could have been seen as a sort of ‘Moses’. However ironically, after making himself king, he did not want the people going down to Judah to worship in Jerusalem. So he presented the people with golden calves he’d made at Bethel and in Dan, saying “Here are your gods O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (1 Kings 12:28). Crazy, it was happening again! They hadn’t learned!
Canaanites
As we’ve seen already, Israel had been warned multiple times not to worship the Canaanite gods of their neighbours and to be set apart for Him alone. However, Israel had been worshipping the fertility god Baal since they had come across him at a place called Baal-Peor; have a look at 9:10b. Baal-Peor was the site of an idolatrous orgy between the Israelite men and the women of neighbouring Moab. They didn’t just get into bed with these women, they also got into bed for the first time with their god; Baal. Read the account for yourselves in Numbers 25 where God said they ‘yoked themselves’ to Baal, or ‘consecrated themselves’ to him. The consequence was truly awful; 24,000 Israelites died of the plague and God said “they became as vile as the thing they loved” (Hosea 9:10b).
When we look at the consequences of the adultery of the Israelite’s hearts in Hosea 9, we read the language of infertility as the result; v11 “no birth, no pregnancy, no conception”. This should have been unsurprising for the Israelites because infertility was one of the predicted punishments for failure to keep the covenant (Deut 28:18 “the fruit of your womb will be cursed”). It was also ironic, as they were worshipping Baal the fertility-god; exposed as a false god with no power over fertility at all.
Cavalry
If those things weren’t bad enough, now we’ll see how they turned to political alliances in the hopes of avoiding war and having foreign cavalry on their side. Listen to how Hosea words it in 8:9 “For they have gone up to Assyria like a wild donkey wandering alone. Ephraim has sold herself to lovers.” (Reader 6)
Assyria was the neighbouring enemy in Hosea’s time. I thought a donkey was an odd choice of picture language, but there’s a reason; in Hebrew the words donkey and Ephraim have the same consonants, so it is probably a play on words, and an insult. These similar names indicate a similarity; a wild donkey would have restlessly searched for a partner, and so Israel restlessly searched for alliances with foreign nations instead of trusting the LORD for the security of their nation. One commentator put it more strongly and said it was like they were prostituting themselves by negotiating with the surrounding gentile nations for protection, instead of going to God. So, although the dodgy kings of the north managed to ‘buy’ peace with their enemy with silver (2 Kings 15:19), this was only a temporary solution and Israel got ‘swallowed up’ by Assyria (Hosea 8:8); their reliance on foreigners who cared nothing for them ended up being fatal for Israel. They were relying on their own wisdom and failing to put their trust in the living God. Once again, their loving God had a rival.
It makes for pretty depressing reading, doesn’t it? Knowing what we know, we want to shout at the Israelites, “COME ON! What are you doing?!”. It feels frustrating; their waywardness, sin and terrible choices seem to make no sense when we know how much God treasured them and loved them. His heart was for them; He wanted so badly for them to remain faithful to Him and know the blessings He was longing to pour out on them. In fact, hear that longing in Deuteronomy 5:28-29 when Moses says to the people when he has come down from Mt Sinai “the LORD said to me… ‘Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!’”. You can actually hear His heart there, can’t you? Why would anyone fly in the face of that beautiful, jealous love?
Before we put ourselves on a pedestal in judgement of the Israelites, I think we need to stop and examine our own hearts. Remember that phrase I said earlier, that the LORD’s love for us is unending and will tolerate no rival? That has been hitting me pretty hard as I’ve studied for this talk. I know there are plenty of rivals in my heart that regularly upend my ability to give God the undivided love and attention He deserves. I am no better than the Israelites in lots of ways. OK so that doesn’t look like bowing to a carved idol or worshipping the god of another religion, but in my heart – who is really on the throne?
I thought we could have maybe mind-map what we rely on instead of God and have a little audience participation. What kind of things do you think we might have as rivals in our hearts? What do we trust in instead of God?
(People call things out: Ourselves, reputation. Own strength and health. Job, status, reputation. ‘Stuff’ – what we own. Family and friends. Doing good. Rituals and traditions.)
If we are honest with ourselves, we often have divided hearts. We can say we rely on God. We affirm we know He is the source of every blessing we have. But the reality is our actions do speak louder than our words! As we saw with the Israelites, it is often self-reliance that can cause us big problems.
But while we may not be outwardly battling the same sins as the Israelites, we are all caught in that tension of the ‘now’ and ‘not yet’ of living in a sinful world, born with a propensity to sin and yet knowing we are saved by the blood of Jesus. It’s what we call that journey of sanctification as we become more and more like HIM. We can get so frustrated with ourselves on this journey; this has recently been my experience.
I have been struggling with a particular sin for years; every New Year I’ve vowed to do better. For as long as I can remember I’ve struggle with laziness, distraction with social media particularly, and procrastination. My poor time management directly impacts my relationship with my Father, as I so often ‘don’t have time’ for Him. You may think, oh Hannah that is nothing, and I’ve had well- meaning friends try to make me feel better and explain it away “oh but you’re in such a busy time of your life”. (On a side note, if a sister in Christ wants to unburden and share their battle with sin with you, rationalising is not a helpful/godly thing to do. Best response – “how can I pray? How can I help?” because there is nothing more important than our relationship with our Father!). In my battle with this, I have tried SO hard in my own strength! Well intentioned new daily devotionals that fall by the wayside after a few weeks. A prayer diary that has two pages written in it. Plans to do this or that. Excuses, excuses. And time after time I feel guilty that I haven’t managed to ‘get on top of it’.
On my 40th birthday, I had a good time with Jesus, pouring out my heart. I’ll read from my journal. “In reflecting on my struggles, the lyrics of the hymn came to me “prone to wander, LORD I feel it, prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart LORD, take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above”. I realise I have wandered. I have chosen to be far from Him. I haven’t prioritised my relationship with Him. I have not been listening to HIS voice, but rather, to my own negativity. I feel very humbled, but feel incapable of turning back to Him and so very weak. Then, amazing grace! I have just turned to my Bible reading notes for my birthday-day, and the verse is 2 Cor 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” What a direct word to my heart!”
Praise God our divided and wayward hearts no longer lead us to exile away from God. Our salvation is amazingly not affected by our continuing to battle with sin, because we trust in the saving work of Jesus on the cross. However, the consequence of having a divided heart, like I’ve been experiencing, is that we reap that alienated relationship. We feel the distance from Him and we find ourselves wondering what happened to that ‘life to the full’ Jesus spoke of. That is why God is jealous for us! And why He exhorts us to have undivided hearts. He knows what we are missing out on! And how He longs for us!
You know it is hard work breaking up the unploughed ground of our hearts (10:12) in order to sow seeds of righteousness. But this side of the cross, we do not do this in our own strength! What a joy and release it has been to have that affirmation once again, that HE has done it ALL and He has given us His precious Holy Spirit within us. His grace is sufficient. Please encourage me to keep walking in this!
So, we’ve seen our God is still a jealous God for the affections of His people, and that is all of us! Whilst preparing for this, I’ve so often had the first line of the song ‘How He Loves Us’ by David Crowder Band stuck in my head. The lyric says “he is jealous for me, loves like a hurricane, I am a tree bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy”. Loves like a hurricane; this seems to sum it up so well. Fierce, unyielding, mighty and powerful. And the chorus says “oh how he loves us, oh how he loves us” again and again. God has demonstrated the great depth of His fierce love for us by sending His only Son Jesus to die in our place, to do what the law never could completely do for the Israelites – making us righteous in His eyes. We are so blessed to live this side of the cross!
I will end with the same verse Vicky ended with last month, as it is so good. Hebrews 8:12 talks of the new covenant made between us and Jesus. “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” What a wonderful freedom we have! Our sin is remembered by the Almighty God no more, all because of Jesus.
We are going to take some time to pray now in small groups of two or three. Let’s be open and honest about our hearts; do we have divided hearts? Let’s thank God for his beautiful jealous love, and for the freedom we have in Christ.