Hello everyone.
About a month ago I wrote about God's heart. I am finally finishing up that thought for you. In the first part, we looked at how God's heart was deeply hurt by the sin of the world in Gen. 6, and how God carries his sheep close to his own heart in Isa. 40, but mostly we looked at his love and compassion for Moab, a people that were not his own chosen people, yet his heart still cried out for them.
To finish this look at God's heart we will look at the prophet Hosea. In the beginning of the story of Hosea, God appears to him and tells him to marry a promiscuous woman. (Hos 1:2) God is going to make Hosea an object lesson for the nation, because Israel, in God's words, is like an adulterous wife. So, in verse 3, Hosea marries Gomer and they have a child that they name Jezreel. As time goes by, Gomer has another child. The text implies here that Hosea is not the father. A daughter is born and she is named Lo-Ruhamah, which means "not loved." Gomer later gives birth to another son, and again Hosea is apparently not the father. The third child is named "Lo-Ammi," which means "not my people." God tells Hosea to name the child Lo-Ammi because "you are not my people, and I am not your God."
Imagine how Hosea must have felt knowing that his wife had been unfaithful to him repeatedly. God is expressing the same feeling here toward Israel and its repeated unfaithfulness. If you read Hosea chapter 2, you see the anger that God feels toward Israel for their unfaithfulness. Perhaps the saddest part comes in Hosea 2:5-8, where Israel does not acknowledge that God had given many blessings to Israel, instead Israel credits God's blessings to other "lovers," and uses those blessings in worship of Baal. Gomer and Israel deserve nothing but punishment here. In return for kindness and blessing, they have given only unfaithfulness.
By chapter 3, Gomer is prostituting herself. No one would fault Hosea for severing all ties to her. Her unfaithfulness would undoubtedly be the cause of tremendous pain for him. We have to remember that the relationship of Hosea and Gomer parallels the relationship between God and Israel. Israel has committed that kind of unfaithfulness against God. Who could fault Him if He completely destroyed Israel? No one. So what does God do? He has Hosea go to Gomer and buy her out of her prostitution. (Hos. 3:1-2) The parallel is there. But God not only buys Israel out of it's prostitution, He buys our way out of our sins with Jesus on the cross.
The picture of God's heart comes in on chapter 11:1-9. For several chapters, God spells out his anger but in chapter 11, he says, "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." God then expresses the kind of concern for Israel that a parent would. He talks about taking Israel by the arms and teaching it to walk (v. 3). God says that He had led Israel with cords of human kindness, lifted it up to his cheek and bent down to feed them. Still, Israel was determined to turn away from him and deserves to be punished. Never-the-less, in verse 8, God says that He cannot give Israel up, and that his heart is changed within Him. Within God's heart, all of His compassion is aroused. There is the picture of God's heart. In spite of all of the unfaithfulness, God still loves Israel and has compassion for the nation.
Place yourself in Hosea's shoes for a moment. How much compassion could you find in your heart for Gomer? I think most people would answer "none." God's relationship with Israel parallels the Hosea/Gomer relationship, so I think we would understand if God had reached the end of his compassion for Israel, and it appears that He has. Yet God still finds compassion for Israel, because that's God's heart. How can He still care about Israel? The answer is in verse 9. Because He is "God and not a man."
We established in Gen. 6, that God feels deep pain because of our sin, but now we see that he feels deep compassion for us in spite of it.
Tom
