Today we’re looking at Hosea 14. Will be looking at the world of the text, what is happening on the page.

Yesterday we mentioned that Hosea tells the story of Hosea and his love for gomer. This is an allegory for God’s great love for us despite our sin and rebellion. Today when we look at this passage, we see several interesting things happening in this passage. Remember that the great sin of Israel was that of idolatry, and idolatry at its core is about trusting in something or someone other than God. We see in verse 3 that God has called the people to repentance and one of the things that they should do when they repent is confessed to God that Assyria will not be what saves them.  Likewise, the work of their hands will not be what saves them.  It will God alone who saves the people. 

We say that God will bring healing to their disloyalty and to their sin. In verse four we see a common refrain from Hosea that his anger will turn. The sin of the people has rightly caused God to be angry, but we see that as great as his wrath and anger are, his love and mercy are greater. This to me is the great theme of Hosea, yes our sin Hertz, anger, and disappoint God. As great as those emotions are, those are human emotions. God is God, he is not like us. God’s love for us is greater than even our sin, macaws remember it is not just that God loves us, it is that God is love. 

We see that we shall live under the shadow of God’s mercy, and this has to it almost an illusion of Eden. The effect of seeing is undone and the wayward children that were kicked out of Eden now returned freely to the shade tree within the garden. God will redeem and restore us from the effect and the consequences of sin not because we are perfect but because God is perfect and because God loves us.

And in this Thanksgiving week, I can think of nothing that we should be more thankful for than that amazing love of God.  

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