“Hear the word of the LORD, O children of Israel,
For the LORD has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or steadfast love,
And no knowledge of God in the land;
There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery;
They break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” Hosea 4:1-3
Faithless, traitor, disloyal. Few terms conjure such negative imagery as those describing faithlessness. These actions are universally disavowed and spurned in cultures and nations throughout human history. The ideas of faithfulness and loyalty are engrained in our cultural psyche so much that we vilify parties who transgress in the slightest ways. Those who violate the standards politically are traitors in marriage, adulterers in business and commerce, thieves, and more. Some acts of unfaithfulness are so profound, timely, and grievous that their infamy continues long after the lives of such people are ended. One of the most notable villains of American political history is Benedict Arnold, an early hero of the American Revolution, who defected to Britain during the Revolutionary War. Over and above anything that has been done politically, the betrayal of Christ by Judas strikes chords in the deepest places of our hearts and collective sense of loyalty.
The reason that betrayals such as Judas and Arnold stand out among others is due to the proximity of the traitor to the cause that they later betrayed. In the case of Judas, we see a man intimately connected to the One he betrayed. Benedict Arnold was a general who led successful campaigns, faced battles with bravery, and was a leader of the Sons of Liberty before the revolution. The disloyalty is thereby heightened, deepened, and worsened by the degree of the shift from one to the next. It strikes us as unconscionable that Judas could recline at a private dinner in the company of Jesus while harboring disloyal and traitorous intent in his heart.
When we hear stories of grand betrayal, there is a common reaction. One that, even if we do not verbalize, sits within our souls. It is the thought that we are incapable of such defection. We are, like Peter, incredulous at the very idea that we could ever betray, deny, or prove faithless in our actions. One reason for this reaction is that we overestimate our ability to withstand the circumstances that lead us to engage in betrayal. During our lives, we encounter countless situations that require us to make choices. The choices that we make daily set our path toward subsequent situations and choices. No decisions are made in isolation, and the human tendency is for a softening of resolve, a weakening grip on convictions that were once held so tightly – we compromise more with each passing day. What seems impossible one day is enabled by compromise and rationalization the next day. We sow these seeds gradually until an entire harvest drives our hearts against the thing we once boldly professed and defended. Benedict Arnold did not turn from a patriot warrior to a British spy overnight; Judas did not fall from a passionate follower of Christ to a traitor during the Last Supper. Yet, in the wake of such momentous events, we cannot help but wonder how things progressed so that they led to these results. Good and evil, the grandest actions result from small actions and concessions across days, weeks, and years.
In the days of Hosea, the people of Israel were enveloped in centuries of compromise, which had resulted in such betrayal against God that the LORD called the prophet to love, pursue, and marry a prostitute so that He could communicate to the people the depth of their faithlessness (Hos. 1:2-3). There is a saying that a slow mule and a hot sun have called more preachers than God ever did. While harsh work conditions have led people to believe ministry might be a path for them, Hosea’s calling is historically unique and incredibly costly. The lives of God’s prophets were uncomfortable and often tragic and brutal. God frequently called these men to humiliating and painful acts to physically illustrate how the people were behaving spiritually. Hosea’s message was simple: Jehovah loved His people and upheld His covenant promises to them with great faithfulness, yet the people faithlessly trampled this great promise in exchange for idols and material comfort (Hos. 3:1; 4:1).
God’s command to Hosea is graphic and offensive to the reader. We prefer to think better of Gomer, to avoid strong labels when discussing other people – we do not want to judge. Yet this sentiment is unbiblical! God tells us to be wise and discerning (Mt. 10:16), to judge the actions of others but to do so based on His righteousness, not our own (1 Cor. 5:9-13), and to do so to shoulder the burden for the sake of our souls and those around us (Gal. 6:1-2). The danger in issuing judgment is our lurking self-righteousness. It is easy to look at the lifestyle of Gomer and be appalled that God would command Hosea to marry her. Yet God could have commanded Hosea to marry any daughter of Israel to illustrate the same point. God chose Gomer to represent His relationship with a faithless people because her sin was as apparent to the people as our hidden sins are to God.
God had promised in His covenant that the people would be blessed among all nations for serving Him and that through this blessing, they should, in turn, bless the Gentiles and be a light to all people of the warmth of Jehovah’s salvation (Is. 42:6, 49:6, 52:10). Yet the tragedy was that they had forgotten their covenant God because of their blessing and luxury which He had granted them. “When they had grazed, they became full, they were filled, and their heart was lifted up; therefore they forgot me.” (Hos. 13:6). The people had been blessed by God, and through their sin, they turned wealth and luxury into an opportunity for more and more sin. The more that God gave them, the more they fueled their idolatrous desires (Hos. 10:1). The result of their continued sin was a hardening of their hearts; they had rebelled to the point that they were unable to return to God (Hos. 5:4). They were cursed to seek fulfillment in their sin and not find it (Hos. 4:10-11).
Because of this hardness of heart, they could not recognize their need for God. His true nature, as revealed in the law, had become strange to them (Hos. 8:12), and even though they continued with the ritual, God was not pleased (Hos. 6:6, 8:13). The picture was desperate for Israel. They had fallen from God’s covenant blessing due to their continued rebellion and unrepentant hearts. Because of this, God announced a message of judgment until the people would turn and repent (Hos. 5:15, 10:10, 12). Yet even amid such sure judgment, God’s mercies burst forth in the poetry of chapter eleven as He describes the fatherly love with which He raised Israel (Hos. 11:1-4).
“How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. They shall go after the LORD; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the LORD.” Hos. 11:8-11
God’s continued resolve is to redeem His people, yet their sin incurs punishment from His hand. Yet even in punishment, God promises, “They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king” (Hos. 11:5). God assures the people that the covenant promises will not be rewound or undone, depicted as a return to Egypt, but that they will still come under the rule of another king because they rejected their true King through sin and their refusal to return to Him. In the same way that Gomer prostituted herself to fulfill the sinful desires she held in her heart over and against the love and care that her husband Hosea had shown her by his continued redemption of her, God’s wayward people were persistent in their turning from Him (Hos. 11:7).
The contrast between God’s mercy and the faithlessness of the human heart is not difficult to understand. We are, after all, of the same flesh and blood as those men and women to whom Hosea prophesied. Our hearts are restless in their sin, and we seek all manner of fulfillment to regain what was lost when sin entered the world. In this sin, we trample God’s grace. As he calls us from our sins, cleans us, and provides for us – we return over and over to the sin from which we were saved, playing the whore against our God’s goodness to us. Our infected hearts continually use the very blessings of God to engage our lusts and sins against the One who rescued us from certain death (Ezek. 16:30-31). All the while, we belittle our sins and rationalize our behaviors as acceptable. We cloak our vices with grace and seize the opportunity to sin, proving our friendship with the world over God (Ja. 4:4-5).
Our sin is deceptive; it desires us (Gen. 4:7) and requires vigilance of our spirits daily. Even in writing this blog, I find myself distracted. In the time that I have expressly set aside to devote to God to write this post, I am drawn away by text messages and work emails with such ease that I am left faithless in such a simple vow. How much more so in greater things! God’s mercies find me in this weakness, and as I humble myself again under His hand, there is forgiveness and healing. It is a guaranteed thing in this life that we will sin (1 Jn. 1:8), and we will play the whore against God’s grace and mercy towards us. We will revel in our filth and find deep desires that call us further downward. At times, we will even persist in our sin and incur the punishment of God in our lives, a punishment that is meant to draw us back to repentance (Heb. 12:1-11), which grants forgiveness that is not conditioned on either past or future actions but on the justice and goodness of God shown through Christ (1 Jn. 1:9).
Despite such grand forgiveness, however, we must be aware of the danger of sin in our lives. We must develop a habit of reflection and repentance. God told His people through the prophet Haggai to examine their ways (Hag. 1:5, 7). That is, to think about thoughts and actions, consider them against God’s law, and respond appropriately. When we find sin, hidden or blatant, in our lives – we must rush to repentance. When we find evidence of God’s work in our lives, the fruit of the Spirit – we must humble ourselves by praising and thanking God for that which he is uniquely capable of affecting in our hearts. Our greatest danger lies in unrepentant sin, and we must be wary when we cease to find evidence of sin in our lives or if our sin becomes less grievous to our souls. Saint Augustine declared, “It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.” Sin is that which gradually closes our eyes to God’s light in our lives. It will draw us further away from Him and cause our conscience to become unresponsive to the drawing of His Spirit.
Sin can have the effect of a downward spiral, even in the life of a Christian. God will chastise, sometimes even to physical death (1 Cor. 11:30-32). Therefore, we must remain sensitive to the Spirit’s work in our lives, leading us in truth but also convicting us of sin so that we may repent. Brothers and sisters, we must guard against both the arrogance that declares us to be stronger than our sinful desire (1 Cor. 10:12) on the one hand or the temptation to treat grace as something that is deserved and which enables us to live in any way we desire, desensitizing us to sin and its effects on our lives (1 Pet. 2:16). We must mourn our sin (Ja. 4:8-10), but not in a hopeless manner. We must recognize the depth of our betrayal of God’s perfect holiness and then rest our hope in Christ, who bore the wrath of God for us (2 Cor. 5:21). We serve a God that is faithful to the people He has called by name even when we are faithless (2 Tim. 2:13).
There will be a day when the law will no longer be needed, where we will not endure sickness or hunger. Where greed and sin will be eradicated, when God will fully redeem our souls and remove all sinful desires from us, our sinful flesh will be forever quieted. God will be our light, and we will no longer require hope because we will see the salvation of our souls. Yet today, God calls us to return to Him and be faithful. To put away our sins and faithlessness and to remember His goodness towards us. To repent and return to the God who is the source and location of ultimate joy both in this life and the one to come (Ps. 16:11). To grieve our sin but endure for a time so that on the day that we finally see His glory that we will joyously sing forever,
Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come! (Rev. 4:8)
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