Daily Devotion

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.


What Am I Going to Do with You?
People of Israel and Judah, what can I do with you?
Your love for me disappears more quickly than mist or dew at sunrise.
That's why I slaughtered you with the words of my prophets.
That's why my judgments blazed like the dawning sun.
I'd rather for you to be faithful and to know me than to offer sacrifices.
At a place named Adam, you betrayed me by breaking our agreement.
Everyone in Gilead is evil; your hands are stained with the blood of victims.
You priests are like a gang of robbers in ambush.
On the road to Shechem you murder and commit other horrible crimes.
I have seen a terrible thing in Israel—you are unfaithful and unfit to worship me.
People of Judah, your time is coming too. - Hosea 6:4—11 CEV

Human love can be fickle, vanishing over the least offense. Hosea married a prostitute because God told him to, so his wife spent most of her time elsewhere with other men. She didn't love Hosea. Likewise for God, Israel gave him lip service, but Israel's real passion was for the other gods, the ones she really cared about, since she spent all her time with them.

God listed three places where people had been unfaithful to him: Adam, which was near the Jordan River; Gilead, which was a region near Adam; and Shechem, which was in central Palestine. The people were guilty of unfaithfulness to God and unfaithfulness to one another. Even the priests, who were supposed to represent God, acted like a criminal gang. This was nothing new. Even in the days of Samuel, before Saul became king, the priests had taken advantage of those few people who had come to worship Yahweh.

But by the time of Hosea, God's patience was near an end. Hosea's wife wound up sold as a slave. Hosea bought her back from the slave market. The sad events of Hosea's life were pictures of what God intended for Israel. Israel would become captive in Babylon. Eventually God would redeem Israel from Babylon. Neither Hosea's wife nor Israel had done anything to merit being bought back. Hosea rescued his wife because he loved her, even if she didn't love him. God rescued Israel for the same reason. They were both redeemed because God's love is not fickle.