Hosea 14
Behold a noontime of light!
As we reach the conclusion of Hosea,
we read here that the Prophet exhorts the Israelites to repentance, and still
suggests some hope of mercy. To fully appreciate God's mercy, we must consider
the preceding chapters, where Hosea had already testified that there would be
no remedy any more, because they had extremely provoked God.
Is this a contradiction? No. The
people could return to God by asking Him to forgive their sins.
Destruction was not God’s last word to
his covenant people. Although judgment must come, God’s healing, restoring
grace is always more powerful than human sin.
Although we cannot demand forgiveness,
we can be confident that we have received it because God is gracious and loving
and wants to restore us to himself, just as he wanted to restore Israel
I will leave the last word on Hosea 14
to Charles Spurgeon:
“This is a wonderful chapter
to be at the end of such a book. I had never expected from such a prickly shrub
to gather so fair a flower, so sweet a fruit; but so it is: where sin abounded,
grace doth much more abound. No chapter in the Bible can be more rich in mercy
than this last of Hosea; and yet no chapter in the Bible might, in the natural
order of things, have been more terrible in judgment. Where we looked for the
blackness of darkness, behold a noontime of light!” (Charles Spurgeon)
(member of a homegroup)