Opening illustration: For thousands of families in Kenya, seven cows are more valuable than a girl’s future. Those cows, a typical bridal dowry in Maasai culture, prove so tempting that most fathers in rural areas decide their daughter’s education will end and marriage begin by age 13. Traditionally this event is preceded by female genital circumcision, a mutilation that remains a mystery to the girls until the moment it is performed. For generations, this ceremony was a rite of passage for every Maasai girl, some as young as 10; soon afterward, they would marry and drop out of school.
But when Kakenya Ntaiya endured the painful ritual in 1993, she had a plan. She negotiated a deal with her father, threatening to run away unless he promised she could finish high school after the ceremony. "I really liked going to school," she said. "I knew that once I went through the circumcision, I was going to be married off. And my dream of becoming a teacher was going to end." Engaged at age 5, Ntaiya spent her childhood learning the skills she would need to be a good Maasai wife. But her mother encouraged her children to strive for a better life, and Ntaiya heeded her advice, postponing the coming-of-age ritual as long as she could. When her father finally insisted, she took her stand.
Ntaiya's bold move paid off. She excelled in high school and earned a college scholarship in the United States. Her community held a fundraiser to raise money for her airfare, and in exchange, she promised to return and help the village. Over the next decade, Ntaiya would earn her degree, a job at the United Nations and eventually a doctorate in education. But she never forgot the vow she made to village elders. In 2009, she opened the first primary school for girls in her village, the Kakenya Center for Excellence. Today, Ntaiya is helping more than 150 girls receive the education and opportunities that she had to sacrifice so much to attain. [National Geographic and CNN Heroes 2013]
If Kakenya Ntaiya could sacrifice so much to save and care for the Masai girls, how much more our loving God cares for His children. Let us turn to Hosea 11 and learn just that …
Introduction: The Old Testament book of Hosea is the story of God’s faithful love for His unfaithful people. In what seems strange to us, the Lord commanded Hosea to marry a woman who would break her marriage vows and bring grief to him (Hosea 1:2-3). After she deserted Hosea for other men, the Lord told him to take her back — a picture of “the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods” (3:1).
This passage contains the most poignant yet touching words in all of Hosea. It features a sharp contrast between God’s tender reminiscences of His early relationship with Israel and yet His sorrow at their rejection of Him for Baal despite all that He had done for them (vv. 1-4). When we touch upon the love of GOD, we plunge ourselves into an ocean whose depths have never been fathomed. It is all-embracing, all-inviting, all-supporting, and all-supplying. And it is this matchless love which underlies every divine warning, the spurning of which, as was true with Hosea's people, makes more terrible the fearful storms of judgment when they break.
How does God care for us?
1. Removes from BONDAGE (v. 1)
Hosea speaks the words of a broken-hearted God who experiences the feelings of a parent, "When Israel was a child I loved him." I remember reading this passage from Hosea in my younger years and finding it comforting. It is against this black background that these choice jewels of JEHOVAH's expressed affection shine. The people are reminded that the love of GOD made possible the deliverance of their fathers from Egyptian bondage.
- It was love that broke Pharaoh's grip.
- It was love that rolled back the waters of the Red Sea.
- It was love that fed them manna each day.
- It was love that kept their garments from becoming threadbare.
- It was love that cleared the passage through the Jordan River.
- It was love that prepared the land flowing with milk and honey and set the table for them in the wilderness.
God loved Israel NOT because they were better or more in numbers than the other nations but He exercised His free will by showing His favor to them even when they were not deserving. They were small in number and not impressive from any angle. Even when they were captives in Egypt He freed them through Moses who became their savior. The Israelites had lived as slaves in bondage in Egypt for a couple of hundred years and because God loved them so much that now He was calling them out. Through Matthew we also learn that it was a prophetic note for Christ being called out from Egypt after his parents fled there after His birth due to a threat to His life. As long as the Israelites lived in Egypt, they lived in bondage. God desires to take us out from captivity and bring us to total freedom in Christ. That is why He is calling us out as His children to take that step in faith out of captivity into freedom.
Where are we living today? What is your Egypt? Are there people here who have never yet come out of Egypt? – the worldliness, the materialism, the love of mammon, booze, drugs, meth, sex, the vices and the list is unending. God desires to take you out of Egypt because He has called His child and you are His very own.
** Even in SIN (v. 2): Unlike Christ, Israel did not walk without willful sin after departing from Egypt. They turned to idolatry. Just as God had called them out of Egypt, He used the prophets to call them out from their sin. But the more the prophets called them to the Lord, the further away they went. They forgot that it was God who nurtured the nation of Israel. It was the Lord who cared for them in their infancy, preserving them against all odds. He compares it to being forsaken by the child whom you taught to walk, whom you healed when he was sick. Or an animal which you cared for, fed, and relieved of its burden turning on you. Like a rebellious child or an ungrateful animal, Israel refused to know that God had cared for her. They instead turned to their idols, giving the false gods credit for their blessings.
Because God loves and cares about us, He is calling us out from sin into holiness for which we will have to walk the desert to be refined for that purpose. Will you take that step out of bondage into freedom in faith?
2. DEPENDENCE on Him (v. 3)
This is very touching. It is one of the sweetest, most tender words in the Bible - a metaphor borrowed fresh from the nursery. What an epoch it is in the child’s life when it first gets upon its feet! The mother sets it there, or it manages to get up by itself. But it dare not walk; it must be taught to go. Sometimes the mother holds the clothes from behind, or reaches out her hands in front, or hovers around the little hesitating figure with outstretched arms to guard against the fast sign of tumbling. The lesson is not learned all at once. Sometimes many a sad fall tutors the venturesome pupil; but the mother is not discouraged. With a kiss and a “never mind” she puts the little one on its feet again, and teaches it to go.
God is teaching us to go. He holds our hands in his; walks beside us with outstretched arms to see that we do not fall to our entire undoing; catches us when we are about to stumble, and picks us up when we have fallen to our hurt. God is never discouraged, any more than the mother is; and the more weak our ankle-bones and nervous our gait the more care does He expend. There are stages beyond this. There is the walk that pleases God; the running, when He has enlarged our heart; the mounting up with the wings of eagles. But at the end of life we come back to the going: I will go unto the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy; and upon the harp I will praise Thee, O God, my God.
The allusion seems to be to a mother or nurse accommodating herself to her child, beginning to go; she stoops down, sets it on its feet, and one foot before another, forms its steps, teaches it how to go, and walks its pace with it. And in like manner the Lord deals with his spiritual Israel, his regenerated ones, who become like little children, and are used as such; as in regeneration they are quickened, and have some degree of spiritual strength given them, they are taught to go; they are taught what a Savior Christ is, and their need of him; they are instructed to go to him by faith for everything they want, and to walk by faith on him, as they have received him; and having heard and learned of the Father, they go to Christ, John 6:45; and are taught also to go to the throne of grace for all supplies of grace; and to the house of God, to attend the word and ordinances, for the benefit of their souls; and to walk in the ways of the Lord, for his glory, and their good.
God does so much for His people that they are unaware of. Often we attribute some blessing directly from the hand of God to some other source. God pardoned their infirmities and healed their diseases not like a physician but like the physician of physicians “I am the Lord that healeth Thee.” He is our transformer on whom we can have complete dependence.
Illustration: I remember those days long ago when Sunny and his other cousins were learning to walk. First they showed their readiness by pulling themselves up and taking a tentative step or two. The family members and I would reach out our hands and encourage them to walk toward us. We held them up by their hands or by the suspenders on their overalls. We praised every effort and encouraged every attempt. We never grew discouraged, nor did we give up until they learned to walk. So it is with our heavenly Father: He taught Israel how to walk and be dependent upon Him. He took His children by the hand and led them along with ropes of kindness and love.
3. He is our LIFELINE (v. 4)
When we were in our mother’s womb, we were attached by an umbilical cord and the reminder we carry through our lives – the round depression in our stomach bears testimony to it. This was our lifeline (without which we would perish) and symbolized as the cord of love and bonding with our moms. A similar bonding takes place with God and us. These are not cords of man or laws but AGAPE love. Hosea in the latter part of the passage compares Israel to a heifer which was always led by a cord so that they did not go astray. Even when God draws His people, it is with gentle cords of love, not with harsh manipulation or coercion. God wants to win us over, but not with brute force.
As men do to their cattle when they have been ploughing, and they come to the end of the day’s work, then the bit is removed, or the yoke is lifted off the shoulder, and fit fodder is provided for the cattle that they may be refreshed. This is what God did to his people Israel; he brought them out of Egypt, where they had to perform hard tasks, caused them to rest from their labors, and gave them both material and spiritual meat to eat; yet nevertheless they were ungrateful to him. We say that ingratitude is the worst of sins; but, alas, it is one of the commonest of evils, and we ourselves are ingrates to our God. This may refer to Israel's deliverance from their bondage in Egypt; and be spiritually applied to Christ, the essential Word of God, breaking and taking the yoke of sin, Satan, and the law from off his people, and bringing them into the liberty of the children of God. Schmidt reads and interprets the words quite otherwise, "and I was to them as they that lift up the yoke upon their jaws"; not remove it from them but put it on them; expressing their ignorance and ingratitude, who, when the Lord drew them in the kind and loving manner he did, reckoned it as if he put a yoke upon them, and treated them rather as beasts than men; but this seems not to agree with what follows.
He meets our needs by providing us food not earthly in nature but the manna from heaven which quenches our every spiritual need.
Illustration: There was a health center up in an undisclosed (classified) location in the Middle-East where Maureena and I used to go and minister while combating the most treacherous terrain we had encountered in our ministerial journeys. The residents always reminded us that we were their lifeline for receiving their manna (spiritual food). Therefore we made it a point to go and minister to these folks at least once a month no matter what our situation was. How much more we must realize that God is our lifeline …
Application: No force is greater than the power of God’s love.
