A FAITHFUL GOD

[This is part two of a three part series from Hosea that I will complete tomorrow]

What am I going to do with you, Ephraim?  What am I going to do with you, Judah?
Your loyalty is like the morning mist and like the early dew that vanishes. (Hosea 6:4)

You can hear the broken heart of God as He speaks of His dismay.  He has bestowed His love on a people who quickly turned from Him and unto idols.  He likens them to the morning mist, that seems to hang so thick on a muggy summer morning, and quickly vanishes under the heat of the sun.  Israel vowed faithfulness to God, but they had been a faithless nation.

Hosea came to understand something of God’s heartache, because he not only expressed this message, he experienced it. His wife had committed adultery and he had found her destitute, a slave being auctioned off.  But, God commanded his prophet to purchase her—to redeem her and bring her back home.  Gomer was faithless, but Hosea would be faithful to his vows.

All of this served to illustrate God’s faithfulness to faithless Israel.  There are vital truths for America today—this God blessed land that has spurned God’s love.  Surely, we break His heart as he sees our wicked ways.

THE SINNING OF AN UNFAITHFUL NATION (4:1-19)

Imagine a private detective hired to follow a wife suspected of adultery.  He gathers evidence, and now the case is taken before a judge in a divorce court.  The evidence is clear and compelling.  That is the language used in these verses.  The unfaithfulness of Israel to her God was indisputable.  They treated God like Gomer did her husband, Hosea.

When we read the list of sins, it sounds like we are reading from today’s newspaper.  Although written thousands of years ago, it is a story we see unfolding on television in this century.  The sins that proliferated in ancient Israel are likewise an epidemic in our times.

The sinning of an unfaithful nation leads to THE SUFFERING OF AN UNFAITHFUL NATION (5:1-13:16)

God was going to break them.  If Israel wanted to go their own way, they would be permitted to do so, but would find that to be the road to ruin.  Just as Gomer’s debauchery brought her to destitution, so Israel’s unfaithfulness to God resulted in the nation’s conquest and captivity. 

Yet, even in this, God was demonstrating His faithfulness.  He was using the problems and pain to draw them back to Himself.  God was going to break them, once and for all of their idolatry.

America has sown the wind and is reaping the whirlwind.  We have not humbled ourselves, so maybe God is humbling us.  Even so, that is a mark of God’s faithfulness.  He is working to bring us to our knees and that is a good place to be in, for it is there that we can meet God.