“Israel: God’s Prodigal Son”

Hosea 11:1-11

From the Prayer for the Day: Loving Father, whenever we wander in mercy, you find us.

From today’s Prayer of Confession: Forgive us for seeking elsewhere what you have already given us so richly in Jesus, Our Lord.

Billy K. Smith: … in chapter 11 Hosea turned to Israel’s history to explain current conditions in the nation. Love was God’s motive when he elected Israel by delivering them from Egyptian bondage. From the beginning Israel flaunted that love. Stubborn apostasy dominated their response then and that spirit characterized the nation in Hosea’s day. But God’s strong love formed the basis of Israel’s hope for new life in the future.

[prayer]

There is an old rock song called “Love Hurts.” For all the schmaltzy whininess of its words, the title of the song speaks the truth. Love does hurt – even divine love. Hosea’s recitation of the Lord’s words to Israel contained in today’s Old Testament text make clear the Lord’s agony over his chosen people. They have betrayed and rejected him time and time again. The nation has been his chronically apostate and prodigal son.

One commentator spoke of the Lord’s inner conflict being made all that more painful by the conflicting demands of love. Grace is counter-balanced by judgment. As one commentary put it holiness that doesn’t demand punishment has no ethical content. Israel deserved God’s righteous anger, a wrath akin to that which led him to destroy Admah and Zeboiim, cities that neighbored and were similar to Sodom and Gomorrah.

There will be judgment. Prodigal Israel will pay for his sins. As I said last week, sin does have consequences. But the Lord will not utterly destroy his people. In time the chastened, repentant, and fearfully trembling prodigal will be welcomed home. That’s God’s promise. Listen again to verses 8 and 9: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no [human being], the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”

One of you sent me a note last week describing Hosea as a gloomy book. That pretty much hits the nail on the head. Hosea and the other classical prophets of his generation were dealing with some gloomy realities. The political, financial, legal, and even religious the leaders of Israel and Judah were blatantly disobeying God’s good Law. They were breaking their covenant promises with neither remorse nor regret. Cheating, lying, whoring, apostasy, and all other kinds of corruption were spreading through the cultures of both nations like a virulent form of cancer. The situation was gloomy indeed.

But for Hosea and his contemporaries, north and south, gloom and doom do not have the final word. The final word is grace. Even God’s calling of Hosea and the others was an act of grace. The Lord did not have to give his people another opportunity to repent. He was well within his divine prerogative to let them continue merrily down the fast lane to hell they were on. But he loved them so much - with literally a love that would not let them go – that he kept giving them chances to get it right. In the seventh chapter of Amos the Lord is even moved by the pleas of Amos to forestall his judgment.

The Lord not only called for his people’s repentance; he even gave them the blueprint for it. Spoke Isaiah these words from next week’s sermon text: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” In other words keep the terms of your covenant with the Lord who delivered you from your bondage in Egypt.

Amos had some similar words to say, as did Micah: “… let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” “… what does God require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Cease with the evil: the apostasy, injustice, and unrighteousness. Learn to do good: seek and do justice, love kindness, and practice humility in your relationships with God and neighbor. Stop with the hypocritical rituals and worship the Lord your God in the only valid way there is: by letting justice and righteousness flow from your lives in an unending stream of kindness, fairness, and compassion.

Still the people rebelled against their God. They refused to listen and respond to the Lord. They turned their backs on his pleas to repent. They continued breaking his Law with impunity. And judgment fell upon them. God allowed them to reap exactly what they had sown. God kept his promises – all of them, not just the ones his people chose to believe. They experienced defeat, destruction, exile, and slavery. By selling out to foreign powers and foreign gods they ended up recreating the very bondage from which God had delivered them.

And yet there were still words of grace, mercy, and love from the God they had rejected. There were promises of a better future. Deliverance remained a possibility. There could and would be a new Exodus. The prodigal would, in time, be able to return home. Beyond judgment – well deserved judgment – there was grace. “They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord,” proclaimed Hosea.

There’s more, lots more. “I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel…” That’s from Amos. “In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations will stream to it.” God spoke those words through the prophet traditionally known as I Isaiah.

Many years later God spoke the following words to his captive people in Babylon through the prophet known as II Isaiah: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for her sins.” Judgment fell, just as God promised it would. But beyond the judgment there was grace upon grace upon grace. The steadfast love of God does indeed last forever.

Somewhere around two thousand years ago that love came to us as the flesh and blood incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” “For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” “… he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.” “… though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.” The Word of God as found in John’s Gospel, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, II Isaiah, and Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

In those words – harsh, gloomy words - we find judgment: deadly wounds, excruciating punishment, and deep, painful bruises. The wounds, punishment, and judgment that were ours by right. Forsakeness and death that we deserved for our sinfulness and rebellion against God. The wages of sin were truly death.

But the overwhelming message contained in those words is one of compassion, grace, mercy, and love – God’s love that will not let us go. We couldn’t accomplish righteousness for ourselves. So the Lord God came in the person of Jesus to live a righteous life. The Good Shepherd came to rescue the sheep that stubbornly persisted in going astray.

The Suffering Servant came to suffer and die in our place. The very Son of God experienced the utter forsakeness of abandonment by his Father in order that we would not have to - grace upon grace upon grace to the nth degree. There was resurrection and validation. There will ultimately be established the realized Kingdom of God. The words quoted earlier from the second chapter of Isaiah will be fulfilled.

As will these edited words from Revelation: “See, the home of God is among [us]. He will dwell with [us] as [our] God; [we] will be his [people], and God himself will be with [us]; he will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more…” Grace, grace, and more grace – grace beyond all imagining.

God’s promise as spoken in verse nine of today’s Old Testament text will be kept in ways that Hosea couldn’t have imagined. Reading from The Message: “And so I’m not going to act on my anger. I’m not going to destroy Ephraim. And why? Because I am God and not human. I’m the Holy One and I’m here – in your very midst.” Amen.