Dr. Rodney Plunket

God’s Passionate Love - Hosea 11:1-11

What arouses your emotions?  What fires you up?  What makes you angry?  What makes you sad?  What makes you both sad and angry at the same time?  Your answers to these questions provide real insights into the kind of per­son you are, because they indicate what you care about the most.

What excites the emotional energy of God?  What stirs His heart?  What makes Him sad?  What makes Him angry?  What makes Him both sad and angry at the same time?  To know some answers to these questions is to have a better understanding of God, and the Bible certainly provides answers to these questions.  One of my favorite biblical passages richly reveals the heart, the emo­tions, the passions of our God; and it does so with poignancy and power.  That passage is Hos 11:1-11––the passage that Mark Thompson read as our Scripture reading this morning, the passage contained inside your worship bulletin.

Hosea prophesied at a time after the kingdom of Israel had divided into two kingdoms.  The Southern Kingdom had come to be referred to as Judah, because the tribe of Judah was the largest tribe in that kingdom; and the Northern Kingdom was referred to as Israel or Samaria or Ephraim, Ephraim because the largest tribe of the Northern Kingdom was the tribe of Ephraim.

The Northern Kingdom started practicing idolatry almost immedi­ately after the united kingdom divided.  The prophet Hosea reacted to his people’s idolatry by working hard to call the people of the Northern King­dom back to the Lord but to no avail.  And the message of Hos 11 made clear that the Lord was going to punish His people, but the reader can hear the pain which God suffered as He contemplated what He knew He must do.  In that suffering we see God’s Passionate Love.

In vv 1-4 the Lord reveals a love for Ephraim that extends back to the time when He brought His people out of slavery in the land of Egypt.  The Lord revealed great power as He delivered a nation of slaves from the oppression of the powerful Pharaohs.  With plague after plague He revealed His greatness, and the people were set free.  But the Egyptians had a change of heart after their slaves left, and they came chasing after God’s people to regain their slaves.  The Lord created a path through the Sea to provide a way of escape; and, when the Egyptians tried to follow, the Lord caused the path to disappear under the returning waters; and the great army of the Pharaoh was drowned.  But Israel,  this son, was not mindful of what the Lord had done.  Ephraim worshipped other gods in spite of the Lord’s mighty deliverance.

And it is this disloyalty which is breaking the heart of God here in Hos 11.  God further describes His relationship with His people.  He remembers those early days after the exodus.  He views it as though a human parent.  He refers to those early days as the time when He taught Ephraim how to walk.

No parent will ever forget it?  No parent will ever forget seeing that little girl or little boy taking those first few steps?  A parent with closed eyes can with ease see that grinning child walking for the first time.  God with that same kind of nostalgic joy could see those first few steps which Ephraim took.  Those first tentative steps of nationhood out in the desert, out in the desert with God.

God also remembered the love that He had for His people as He led them through that desert.  He remembered healing them of all their diseases.  He remembered feeding them with the manna and the quail.  God was Israel’s parent, and in Hos 11 it is clear that He still loved them as a parent loves a child.  But the last clause of v 3 makes clear the problem.  Ephraim did not acknowledge all that God had done.  Ephraim did not acknowledge that the Lord had loved them and cared for them like a parent––like a mother, a father.

Look again at the last few lines of the first paragraph of the Scripture reading in your worship bulletin.  I will change one word in your reading to another word that I think better reflects the prophet’s intended meaning.  I will change the word “understand” to the word “acknowledge”.

v 3c  they did not acknowledge that I had healed them

v 4    I led them with cords of human kindness, with ropes of love I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down and fed them.

God had demonstrated love to Ephraim as a parent, as a mother or a father, but Ephraim had never acknowledged that love.  And the pain within the heart of God as a result of that refusal, that pain the reader is allowed to feel and into the heart of God, that passionate loving heart, we are allowed to see.  The words of God allow us to see and to hurt with our God as He hurts because of His people.

So in vv 5-7 the Lord describes the punishment that is coming.  There is a reference to Egypt which indicates that the people of Ephraim will be like a slave people again as they were in Egypt.  The reference to Assyria indicates that it will be the Assyrian empire which will serve this time as their master.

But look again into the heart of God as He contemplates the coming disaster.  In the first few lines of the third paragraph of our reading God says,

Israel, how can I give you up?

How can I give you away, Israel?

I don’t want to treat you like Admah

or treat you like Zeboiim.

My heart beats for you,

and my love for you stirs up my pity.

In the opening questions of these lines we see into a pained heart, because of the punishment that God knows must come to wake up His people.  “How can I give you up?” he asks; “how can I give you away?”  In the next two lines we have a reference to two cities, the cities of Admah and Zeboiim.  These two cities were some of the Cities of the Plain destroyed with Sodom and Gomorrah because of their great wickedness.  As a result, Admah and Zeboiim––like Sodom and Gomorrah, were by-words for evil and the destruction that it brings.  The evil of His people is such that God should treat them as He treated Admah and Zeboiim, but His love will not allow it.  He punishes, yes; but He does not destroy as He did the Cities of the Plain.  Then God says, “My heart beats for you, and my love for you stirs up my pity”.  A slightly better rendering of the Hebrew original is “My heart recoils within me.  My emotions are agitated all together”.

Do you see God’s Passionate Love?  Do you see how much He cares for His people, how much He hurts even as He punishes them?  And even before the punishment comes, He is already looking forward to calling them back.  In v 10, He says that He will roar like a lion and they will return to their God.  The Lord can hardly wait.

God’s Passionate Love––a love that hurts with us, a love that dreams great dreams for us, a love that cares enough to discipline rather than see us fall into the sinful pit of sub-humanness––God’s Passionate Love is seen so clearly in these verses.  Hosea’s powerful presentation of God’s love pre­pares us for the kind of love which God displays when He sacrifices His Son, when He allows Him to die so that we might live forever with our God.

I read recently of an elderly Chinese woman who heard the gospel of Jesus for the very first time.  In response she said, “I knew there must be a God like that somewhere”.  There is.  That God is the father of Jesus the Christ, the God who hurts with us and never gives up on bringing us back, the God of passionate love.

Do you know the passionate love of God?  Do you know this God who loves like a caring mother, a caring father?  We want you to leave the assembly this morning nearer to God.  If there is anyway that we can assist you in doing that, then we would ask you to come forward during the sing­ing of our next song.  You will not be badgered.  You will be treated with love and respect.  Please let us help you draw nearer to your loving father.  Please come as we stand and sing.