A reflection on God’s call through Hosea for his people to repent during the years of their strength. Preached at a Saturday night service of St. Martin’s, Fort St John.

Who is wise? Let them realize these things. Who is discerning? Let them understand. The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them. – Hosea 14:9

We heard this evening a passage of the prophecy of Hosea (ch. 10). He is proclaiming in this message that Israel, the Northern division of God’s people, will be judged and destroyed if they do not return to the Lord, worshiping him only and in the ways that he commanded. 

The major division between the Northern kingdom- Israel and the Southern kingdom- Judah had started as a labour dispute. During Solomon’s reign, hundreds of years before Hosea, men from the north had worked hard on building Solomon’s temple and palace and the city of Jerusalem. When Solomon died his heir, Rehoboam, was told by the older generation that he would win the loyalty of the north if he gave them a break from all their hard work and slackened the pace. Rehoboam did the opposite and started treated the workers from the north harshly. Jeroboam who was a foreman of construction tried to negotiate with Rehoboam but in the end said “what do we have to do with the sons of David” and he led the workers back north where they constructed their own holy sights on the tops of the mountains and made him king. So we got two kingdoms, Israel and Judah.

The problem is of course that God commanded sacrifice be offered on his holy mountain, he commanded feast to remember their time in the wilderness and their deliverance from slavery, there he had humbled Jacob, there he had promised Solomon that prayers would be heard and the nations’ taught.

Jesus is asked about this in the gospels, is it right to worship at the high places of Jeroboam or do we have to worship at the temple in Jerusalem. A woman at a well, a descendant of the northern Kingdom, asks him this to avoid Jesus’s question about why she is alone there in the middle of the day. Jesus answers that Judah was correct that God had commanded them to worship him at his temple, but the time is coming, and now is, when the faithful will worship God not here or there but in spirit and in truth.

When Hosea proclaims this prophecy everything seems to be going better for the Northern Kingdom of Israel than for Judah. Judah is worshiping where they are supposed to…sometimes how they are supposed to. Israel is not, what’s more those high places have become places where not only God but other gods are worshiped, and prostitution and child sacrifice are incorporated into their devotion. Yet Judah remains a small tiny nation. Israel has conquered Syria and Lebanon, has taken slaves to build them great ivory palaces. Their king Jeroboam II has a long forty year reign. They grow wealthy and comfortable. Isn’t that proof God is blessing them?

No it is not. God called Abraham and his sons to be his people, a people set apart, to bless the nations of the world, to show them who God is, his holiness, his justice, his love. God planted you, Hosea cries, like a vine in this land. He has fulfilled his promise to Abraham and made you increase greatly in number. The vine has grown great and strong. What do you do with the life, with the strength God has given you? You build more altars to more other gods. You adorn your idols and make them richer and more prestigious. There will be a time when God’s patience will run out and he will have no more of this. He will destroy your idols and your altars, he will take away your might and prestigious king, he will take away your hope in your own strength. He will send Assyria to deal with you. This is what Hosea is proclaiming.

Your beautiful temples that you fill to worship your other gods alongside me, as if they could come alongside me I will destroy. I am not a God to boil children in milk to, I am not a God who wants prostitution in my name, that does not show the world who I am. I will end it, says the Lord through Hosea. Do you want to please me? Do you want to just begin to start to make a sacrifice that honours me? God asks Israel through Hosea. Sow righteousness. Try to live justly. Try to do the things I have commanded you to do. Lift up the weak and the vulnerable. Teach those who do not know what I am like. Love your neighbour as yourself. Praise me for my deliverance with feasting with your brothers in Jerusalem. Remember what the Lord your God has done and show forth his mercy. Know that you have no strength, depend on mine, and you will be showered with the righteousness you are to weak to sow yourself. This is what God said.

Israel did not heed the Word of the Lord that came through Hosea. In the year 722 Assyria  swept through the land like locusts, and destroyed and looted Israel, and ended their kingdom. Judah to the south saw what happened and a boy king, eight years old led a religious revival, a return to obedience of God, a return to paying attention to his word and seeking to follow it. They remembered they were God’s people. But generations come, and go, and they forgot who they were. They remembered that they were God’s in a sense. They beat their chests and sang great hymns in the temple with charms for other gods tied to their ankles before going to the high places to worship other gods there also. They said we are the Lord’s he spared us when he did not spare the north because we are so great. And so they abused the mercy of the Lord.

Judah too would be swept from the land of promise. God’s mercy is greater than our faithfulness. For they were returned to their land, and they were empowered to rebuild their temple. He even came and he dwelled among them, their Anointed Christ, and he sent a remnant of Israel to proclaim his death and resurrection until his coming again. In this way Israel and Judah became what they were always meant to be, a light to the nations. They turned many from wickedness to a holy God. And so Abraham’s children became a blessing to all nations.

Hear the words of this prophet, trust not in your own strength or that your comfort is the blessing of God, yearn to sow righteousness and to worship God on his own terms. His strength will bring us to him and to his ways. 

Who is wise? Let them realize these things. Who is discerning? Let them understand. The ways of the Lord are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them. – Hosea 14:9