God must be crazy!
Part 2 of a series of 3)
Hosea 11:1-9
I am sure that that you all have something in your life with which you have a love-hate relationship. I am told that Ainsley Harriott has a love hate relationship with his oven. For many of us it is computers. (PAUSE) We are amazed at what they can do, but frustrated when they do not work. Some of my friends have teenage children, and there is a strong sense of a love-hate relationship between parents and children at that time in their lives. We try to react calmly, logically and reasonably. As parents we love our children intensely, but there are times when we could cheerfully throttle them. There are times when they drive us to distraction. There are times when they drive us to tears.
Last week we looked at the desperate situation that God was facing in his relationship with his children, the nation of Israel. And we looked at the corruption of the nation, its worship, and its life. We thought about the frustration of God as he tried to get through to his people, which ultimately resulted in him sending his prophet Hosea to live out a shocking visual aid.
This week I want to think about the emotions that were going on in God’s heart in this situation. And perhaps the most appropriate way of getting the ball rolling as we think about it is to use this analogy of a love-hate relationship. I think it’s a good description of the kind of desperation that God must have felt. I think it’s a good description of the kind of turmoil that must have been going on in God’s heart.
One of the outstanding features of this book is its sudden changes of tone from the sternest of threats to the warmest of resolves. It’s just how you feel in a love-hate relationship, and I think this shows just how much turmoil was going on in God’s heart in the face of the unfaithfulness of his people.
The choices of God
God is sovereign – he can do what he wishes. He is not constrained. We have a tendency today to think of God solely in terms of his love, with the imagery of a kindly grandfather who dotes on his grandchildren, regardless of how dreadfully they behave.
But God had choices as to how he acted in relation to the unfaithfulness of his people. Just as parents have a choice of how they act in relation to their teenagers behaviour, so God had and has the ability and choice of acting and reacting in a variety of ways.
God hadchoices.
The choice of separation
One of the ways we can react in a situation of a strained relationship is by shutting our selves off from the person with whom we are having difficulty. We ‘send them to Coventry’. We take steps to avoid them. We move away. We become separated. In a sense, it may be a way of avoiding the issues, but we separate ourselves from them and try to forget them.
And there is an element of this in Gods response to his peoples corruption. We see that God had a choice of separation from his people.
God had the choice of withdrawing from his people. Ch 5:6 ‘they will not find (God); he has withdrawn from them’. God has the choice of separating himself from his people. The idea is repeated in similar ways elsewhere in the book. In Ch 9:12, God talks about departing from his people. God has a choice of separation from his people.
God had the choice of not caring for his people. In the reading we had last week, you will remember that in Ch1:6,8, God names Hoseas children ‘Not pitied’, and ‘Not my people’. To be not Gods people is the ultimate statement of separation. To be not pitied is to be without the compassion of God. To be without compassion is to say that the relationship is empty. Compassion is not a state of mind, but about action. So this talks about the abandonment of the relationship.
God had the choice of forgetting his people. 4.6 ‘since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children’. In this situation, forgetting is an active thing. It isn’t the absent mindedness that I suffer from. But it is a deliberate separating out from your mind of things you don’t want to remember.
God had a choice of separation from his people.
The choice of vengeance
Another of the ways in which we react to strained relationships is in anger and seeking vengeance. You will have all heard of the classic situation in a marriage break up, where the woman gives away all the precious contents of his wine cellar. And worse!
In a separation the situation may be strained, but amicable. But this is far worse, because here we are talking about God’s anger and hatred. God has a choice of vengeance.
Just listen to the words of God in ch 9.15 ‘Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal; there I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more…. I will slay their beloved children.’ This is no destruction of a wine cellar! These are serious emotions, this is a serious situation. God has the choice of vengeance.
We see these sentiments repeated through the book. In Ch 2.3, God threatens to treat the nation as if it were a woman who is stripped naked, sent into the desert and slain with thirst.
In chapter 5. vv8-14, we get a whole series of images of Gods anger and vengeance.
In v8 – ‘Ephraim shall become a desolation’
v10 , God says ‘I will pour out my wrath like water’.
V 11 – ‘Ephraim shall be oppressed and crushed
V12 therefore I shall be like a moth and dry rot to the house of Judah
v14 – I will attack the people like a lion,…. I will tear them to pieces and then leave them. When I drag them off, no-one will be able to save them. (GNB)
We could go on. But the message is clear, God had a choice of vengeance.
The choice of punishment
I have referred before to the love-hate relationship between parents and children – and probably especially when related to teenagers. And sometimes, the choice one faces as a parent is for your child to be punished in some way. One way to choose some kind of punishment for a your child is to let your child continue in their mistaken way and suffer the consequences. Those consequences will vary. Sometimes there are personal consequences. If you play with fire, it is likely you will get burnt. If you throw petrol on a fire, despite your parents best advice, it is highly likely you will get burnt. So there a consequences. If you mix with the wrong crowd, despite your parents best advice, then you may find that you end up in trouble of one kind or another. A sort of rough justice.
But there is also the consequence of more formal punishment and justice. If you misbehave at school, you may well find yourself in detention. Most of the older generation, (and I count myself among them in this) will have experienced the painful application of a cane to the hands or the posterior. If you are caught playing with fire, aka arson, it is very likely that you will find yourself in court.
And God had the choice of punishment and justice in his response to his people. In chapter 2:13, God says that he will punish them for their idolatry. In chapter 4, God says that he will punish them for their ways, and make them pay the evil that they have done.
There is the rough punishment and justice Israel experienced when they got mixed up with the Egyptians and the Assyrians. King Manahem joined up with Assyria, but the nation ended up being invaded by his onetime friends. This is famously summed up in that phrase from ch8:7 ‘ For they shall sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind’. There are natural consequences to the nation’s actions and our actions. There is a rough justice.
There is also the punishment of separation from God. The natural consequence of sinful mess, of evil, of wickedness fears that they will be separated from God. Ch9:7, the days of punishment have come at, the days of recompense have come and Israel shall know it. God had the choice of punishment and justice for his people.
The choice of the Father’s love
When I started talking this evening, about love hate relationships, I referred to the difficulties that some of us have with teenaged or nearly teenage children. Because one of the difficulties is that despite the fact that your teenager drives you to distraction, how can you forget that you held this child in your arms as a little baby. How can you forget is that you helped this gawkey awkward bloody-minded teenager on their first steps as a toddler. How can you forget is taking them to their first day at school. How can you forget that many experiences of bringing them up.
So despite the turmoil of emotions -- the anger, the desperation, the desire to switch off and abandon your child, ultimately a parent cannot forget that love. The parent cannot simply give up on all give up that child.
And this is another choice that God had. It is the choice of the Father’s heart. And so, crazy as it may seem in the light of all that has gone on, the choice of the Father’s heart is not to give up on his children. In our reading this evening, from chapter 11, there is this tremendous sense of the gut wrenching love of God to his wayward children. In V3, he remembers teaching them to walk. He remembers picking them up when they’d fallen down and grazed their knees. In v4, he remembers feeding them. And so, despite the iniquities, the wickedness, the corruption of his people, he says in v8, ‘ how can I give you up, Israel, how can I abandon you?’. So crazy as it may seem, the choice of the Father’s heart was not to give up on or abandon his people.
So although there may be natural consequences of his children’s wayward behaviour, the thought of vengeance, or abandoning that child die away. And the more he thinks about it, we see that the father heart of God comes to the fore. in V8, his heart recoils within him against the idea of letting go of his wayward child. And in V9, he says that he will not put into action his anger, his revenge, or destruction.
But this is not a negative thing, in the sense that he will simply not put into action his choices of separation or vengeance or anger. It will be a positive thing.
First of all, there will be a heavy cost to God. You will remember at the beginning of the book and as we thought about last week, the nation was compared to a prostitute. Hosea was told to marry a prostitute to bring the shocking message right into peoples faces. And there were problems in this relationship, and it appears that she went off. In chapter 3, we read how Hosea was commanded to go and buy her back. The very fact that he had to go on by her back suggests that she had fallen deeply. Perhaps she was now a slave. Perhaps she had to be bought back from her pimp. Perhaps she was in great debt.
But we also see that this cost was a cost that God was prepared to bear because of his father heart of love. At the beginning book of Hosea, we saw how the nation was compared to a promiscuous woman, to a prostitute. And despite the shame of unfaithfulness, in chapter 2 there is a wonderful description of the love of the father heart of God to this prostitute, this promiscuous woman.
In Ch 2:14, God says that he ‘ will allure her, and take her back into the desert again, and win her back with words of love. He will speak tenderly to her. The relationship will be restored. The past will be forgotten. Indeed there is will be a new infatuation between them.
Last week, we looked at the mess of corruption that the nation had got into. But, in Ch 2.18– 20, we are to see how that mess of corruption is made good, in the love of the Father heart of God.
There is a new relationship. V16. A new betrothal. A new marriage. A new husband and wife relationship. A new covenant. Vv19-20.
There are new blessings. There will be harmony between man and nature v18. There will be peace and disarmament. There will be righteousness, justice, steadfast love, compassion and faithfulness. Vv19-20. And indeed, although the people of God will suffer the natural consequences of their actions in many ways, God blessed them and worked miraculously to deliver them from the Assyrians.
Last week we thought about how desperately heart broken God must have been with the corruption of his people. And we tried to imagine just how that might have felt. And then we multiplied it up more times than we could imagine to try to get some idea of how God must have felt at the unfaithfulness of his people. And today we thought about some of the choices that God had in his reaction to that desperate situation. He could have chosen to separate himself from his people. He could have chosen to exercise his vengeance upon them. He could have chosen to punish them. But God must be crazy. Despite their gross corruption and unfaithfulness God chose the father heart of love. Despite everything that his people have done, God still loved them.
And where do we stand in all this? How relevant is this to us to day?
Last week, we thought about the corruption, not only in Hosea’s society, but in our own. We thought last week not only about the corruption in the lives of God’s people at Hosea’s time, but also the corruption in the lives of God’s people today. We thought about corrupted covenants, corrupted relationships, corrupted worship, corrupted clergy, and corrupted living. And we thought about how desperately heart broken God must have been then, and how desperately heart broken he must be now.
So we need to be reminded, just as much as Hosea’s society did, of the choices that God has. God has choices now.
God has the choice of separating himself from us. God has the choice of walking away from us and leaving us to it. God has the choice of having nothing more to do with us if he wishes.
God has the choice of vengeance. God has the choice of anger and retribution.
God also has the choice of punishment. God can let us reap the consequences of our waywardness. And God can direct punishment upon us.
And frankly, I wouldn’t blame God if he chose any of those courses of action. All of them would be entirely justified. We looked last week at some of the ways in which our nation and our church is just as unfaithful as the society at the time of Hosea. All of these reactions and choices that God could take would be entirely justified.
But God also has the choice of the Fathers love. The Fathers heart. And he must be crazy, because that is the choice that he makes. In the mess of corruption that our world, our nation and ourselves have got into, God chooses to offer the making good of that mess. God chooses to offer us a new relationship.
God chooses to offer us new blessings.
And God chooses to bear the heavy cost that goes with it.
Gods love is often translated in the OT as steadfast love. This is a foundational word. The Hebrew word is khesed. It contains ideas of loyalty, of being devoted to, of faithfulness, of commitment. This is the underlying love of God which never lets go, which sticks with his people through thick and thin. This is the committed love of God. This is the faithful love of God. This is the choice of the Fathers love.
And extent of the Fathers love, the extent of his steadfast love is demonstrated in that he loves us even when we are unfaithful. Just make the comparison. We know from our human experience that some people are more lovable. St Paul reminds that us that we might be prepared to love somebody who was ‘righteous’ and even more likely to love someone who was ‘good’. And we might even be prepared to die for someone who was good. But how many of us would be prepared to love a complete no-good, let alone die for him. Or in this case, how many of us would be prepared to love a drug-addicted promiscuous prostitute. No takers? And yet the extent of the Fathers love, the extent of his steadfast love is demonstrated in that he is prepared to do just that. He loves us even in our sinfulness. His love has no conditions.
But not only that, He demonstrates the extent of his love in that he sent Jesus to die for us. In Romans 5, St Paul sees the death of Christ as the ultimate demonstration of the choice of the Fathers love for us, the ultimate proof of God’s love.
In order to really understand this, we need to remember that part of the essence of love is in giving. John 3:16 ‘God so loved ….that he gave his Son….’. And the degree of love is measured partly by the costliness of the gift to the giver, and partly by the worthiness or unworthiness of the receiver. The more the gift costs the giver, and the less it is deserved, the greater the love is seen to be. Measured by these terms, God’s love in Christ is absolutely unique. For in sending his Son to die for sinners, he was giving everything, his very self, to those who deserved nothing from him except judgement. And the costliness of this love is evident because we see in v8 that Christ died ‘for us’. That is, though the sins were ours, he took them upon himself in his death, bearing in our place the penalty our sins deserved. For it was only by this that we could be reconciled to God v 10. God’s love in giving Christ was the choice of the Fathers heart, the choice of the Fathers love.
Despite all that we do to break God’s heart, his love for us is unbroken.
Despite all that we do to break God’s heart, his offer of forgiveness for us is unbroken.
Despite all that we do to break God’s heart, he opens his arms wide to us and welcomes us back home.
Despite all that we do to break God’s heart, he has already paid the ultimate cost of redeeming us through the death of his own Son, Jesus Christ.
Despite all that we do to break God’s heart, God chooses to love us.
What love. What crazy love.
Part 2 of a series
The preacher and the prostitute Hosea 1:1-11
God must be crazy Hosea 11:1-9
The hard way home Hosea 14:1-9
