Children of the Living God

Hosea. 

The story of a man who took for a wife a prostitute, in symbolism of the whoredom of Israel against her God. 

I'll admit, the first reading (and perhaps second and third...) of the first chapter of this particular book in the Bible seems rather harsh. Yet, what we miss when we come to our God with the impression of a harsh God. What we miss when we read the Old Testament with the idea that the OT God is different than the NT God. 

I'll give you a hint, He's not different.

When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the LORD said, "Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God."

Hosea 1:8-9

Can we take a moment to stop and grieve? There is such a rawness to these verses. Can you just imagine the turmoil that Hosea went through when God called him to name his son Not My People. He had beheld the sin of the nation, how they forsook their God and went after false idols. Much like our world now, Israel had found more pleasure in the lusts of the flesh than in the almighty power of the One True God. 

Sin is real. Is not the thing that stands between us and our God the coldest, harshest, most brutal of things ever? Like a wolf that stands snarling between a mother and her child, yet we ourselves created the wolf. This is the harshness. This is where the line must be drawn. So God says, "Call his name Not My People, for you are not my people, and I am not your God."

Yet, with God, there is more. We see the Problem (sin) but we cannot stop there because there is the Solution. 

Hosea, imbued with the breath of the Living God to write the scriptures, did not stop with verse nine. He did not stop with the raw proclamation of the sin that carves the gap between God and man. 

Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, "You are not my people," it shall be said to them, "Children of the living God."

Hosea 1:10

Not due to any works on the part of Israel, for they, like Gomer, had given themselves over to the passions of the flesh and into union with false gods, but through the grace of a God who said, "It's not over yet," the promise stood that where the engraving on our hearts that had once stated 'You are not my people,' would crack with our hearts of stone and would instead pulse with the words, "Children of the living God." Hosea took Gomer to be his lawful wedded wife. 

Eve believed the deception of a serpent and approached the forbidden fruit, biting into it in sin, and then she gave the fruit to Adam, who took and ate. 

God's answer?

"Take, eat; this is my body."

Matthew 26:26b

I do not know if I can cope with the fathomless power of this grace. Yet there it is, in simple truth and profound mystery. 

Hallelujah.