Hosea 9
‘You love the wages of a prostitute’, declares the Lord in
verse 1. Clearly, Israel is happy to settle for less than second best, and it
seems to me that this is an issue rooted in identity. In chapter 2, we saw that
the unfaithful wife was content in receiving gifts from her lover that were
incomparable to the rich gifts of her husband. That Israel loves the ‘wages of
a prostitute’ suggests that Israel, the unfaithful wife, sees this as a great
thing. Israel, the unfaithful wife, doesn’t seem to realise just how much she
is loved. In verse 10, God reminds Israel of His love-struck moment when He ‘found’
Israel, like ‘grapes in the desert’ – rare, beautiful, and desired. Israel
ignored its lover, and gave itself to others, soon becoming as ‘vile as the
thing they loved’ (v.10).
In this chapter, two of the key things God appears to be
expressing is that He loved first, but that we become taken-in by others and
become more like them. These others (sins, other people, the devil, even
ourselves) seem irresistible, but are nothing compared to God’s love. In verse
15, however, God says He will ‘drive them out of my house’; like 1 Corinthians
5, it is important to remember that there are ‘house rules’, and when we cease
to care about these, we hurt God, we hurt others, and we hurt ourselves. God’s
forgiveness is perfect and eternal, but we need to repent from our heads and
hearts, and learn to love living in His house. In Psalm 119:97, the Psalmist
says ‘Oh how I love your law! I meditate on it all day long!’. God longs to
draw us into a place where we sing ‘better is one day in your courts than
thousands elsewhere’ (Psalm 84:10). When we truly learn that living in the
Father’s house is a place of liberty, not confinement, we learn to love our
home. In Hosea 9, Israel is expelled from their home with God, and become
‘wanderers among the nations’ (v.17), and like Adam and Eve’s expulsion from
the Garden, and when the prodigal son left his home, life becomes immeasurably
harder. But there is a way home; the Way, the Truth and the Life and His name
is Jesus (John 14:6).
Do we see our walk with God as restrictive? Are we truly
grasping that God set us free? Do we
love less that what God provides, and do we fully understand that God only
provides the best? Do we long to ‘dwell in the house of the Lord all the days
of my life’? (Psalm 23:6, 27:4).
(member of the congregation)