Red Flags God Watches For

Scripture Focus: Hosea 8.11-13
11 “Though Ephraim built many altars for sin offerings, 
these have become altars for sinning. 
12 I wrote for them the many things of my law, 
but they regarded them as something foreign. 
13 Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to me, 
and though they eat the meat, 
the Lord is not pleased with them. 
Now he will remember their wickedness 
and punish their sins: 
They will return to Egypt. 

Reflection: Red Flags God Watches For
By John Tillman

Israel and Judah thought they were God’s nation. Religious activity was constant and ubiquitous. Their national identity was wrapped up in worship of Yahweh and their countryside was dotted with many, many places of worship. 

Rituals, sacrifices, laws, regulations, and worship activities were completely integrated into daily life. “Separation of church and state” did not exist but that didn’t mean the nation wasn’t as far from God as they could possibly get.

A nation’s identity can be wrapped up in the worship of God without that worship being of any spiritual value. Eating the meat of their sacrifices (Hosea 8.13) symbolized eating with God, enjoying his presence. However, despite its frequency and fervency, God despised their worship and rejected them. 

Hosea refers to these “many altars for sin offerings” as great sources of sin. The reasons their worship was sinful are many. How does God decide that a nation’s worship is corrupted? 

One red flag is idolatry. Some locations, often called “high places,” were on hills or mountains where cultic idolatry had previously been practiced. These locations sometimes mixed worship of Yahweh with worship of false gods. Eventually, this led to shrines and altars to these other gods being added to the central Temple in Jerusalem.

However, there is one consistent red flag indicating a nation’s insincere worship. Every time in scripture where God rejected prayers, condemned worship, or called down judgment on his people, he mentioned the suffering of the poor, the foreigners, the widows, and the orphans.

God holds nations responsible for the welfare of these vulnerable people. When idolatry rises in the culture, these populations suffer.

If we wonder what God thinks about the righteousness of our nation or the worship in our sanctuaries, one red flag to watch for is suffering people in the streets. If there is great suffering among the poor and the outcasts, it is a good indicator that there is idolatry mixed in our worship.

Christians often judge nations by the freedoms we, as Christians, enjoy. But…freedom to do what? To do justice? To love mercy? To walk humbly? To see the poor, the foreigners, the widows, and orphans cared for?

The frequency and fervency of our worship mean nothing to God when we ignore the vulnerable. “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” (Matthew 25.45)

Additional Reading:  Eleven-Year-Old Boy Discovers Ancient Fertility Amulet in Israeli Desert — Smithsonian Magazine (Thanks to Erin for providing this link with a concise summary of the use of fertility idols in 1st Temple Israel.)

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Truly, his salvation is very near to those who fear him, that his glory may dwell in our land. — Psalm 85.9

Today’s Readings
Hosea 8  Listen – 1:58)
Psalm 139  (Listen -2:26)

Read more from The Language of a Good Neighbor
The words we speak plant seeds that come from our hearts. When those seeds are violent winds, we reap the whirlwind of violent actions.

Read more about After the Whirlwind
To paraphrase Hosea, we have sown the wind with our violent rhetoric and we may reap the whirlwind of violent outcomes.

Dead Man Walking

Scripture Focus: Hosea 7.13b-14a
…I long to redeem them
    but they speak about me falsely.
14 They do not cry out to me from their hearts
    but wail on their beds…

Reflection: Dead Man Walking
By Erin Newton

Neither red nor blue can save you. Neither can apathy. Elizabeth Achtemeier says, “Anyone who thinks that the concerns of faith should never be mixed with the concerns of politics will have a difficult time with Hosea, chapter 7, for it is with Israel’s political life that this section deals.” 

Israel has reached a level of corruption that reveals she has reached rock-bottom. Like a cancer that has spread to every vital organ in a body, there remains no sign of health. Prophets were the faithful minority of the nation and even in this case, Hosea is married to a woman with a tainted reputation. 

The people are deceitful, thieving, and unfaithful. They sin with the flippant attitude that God doesn’t see. Israel is hedged by sin like a wildfire. Either they don’t know or simply don’t care. 

During the 8th century BCE, the political powers began to shift with the rise of the Assyrian Empire. Israel rushed to appease the Assyrians by paying an enormous tribute (2 Kgs 15) and later the nation appeased the Assyrian king with more money after a failed attempt to get help from Egypt (2 Kgs 17). Within Israel, four of the kings were assassinated during the two decades leading up to Israel’s demise in 722 BCE. 

Israel was desperate for help; she got in bed with any political alliance that promised security. The people were covenanted with the Creator of the universe, yet Israel preferred to reach out for any other tangible companionship. Playing the harlot, she gave herself to powers that seemed advantageous. Israel forgot her unique identity.

Israel was supposed to be different. God had called them from bondage and into freedom through a relationship with Him. The nation is described as a man with gray hair. As a sign of aging, these metaphoric gray hairs go unnoticed. She is terminal; Israel is a dead man walking. 

Cancer starts with microscopic cells that begin to divide uncontrollably. These errant cells spread to the surrounding tissue. Unchecked, cancer corrupts every healthy part. Like cancer, sin begins in small ways. Israel was no exception to this rule. We are no exception to this rule. The small sins which we believe God cannot see can take root and infect our entire being.

Without repentance, we are dead men walking. He longs to redeem us if we call on him and not our tempters.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Bow down your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and in misery.
Keep watch over my life, for I am faithful; save your servant who puts his trust in you. — Psalm 86.1-2

Read more about Come Out of Babylon 
For some Christians, political parties have become our true religion.

Read more about Pain and Healing
Hosea shows how far God is willing to go to heal and restore…God is committed to our healing and restoration. Call on him.
https://theparkforum.org/843-acres/pain-and-healing

Pain and Healing

Scripture Focus: Hosea 6.1-3
1 “Come, let us return to the Lord. 
He has torn us to pieces 
but he will heal us; 
he has injured us 
but he will bind up our wounds. 
2 After two days he will revive us; 
on the third day he will restore us, 
that we may live in his presence. 
3 Let us acknowledge the Lord; 
let us press on to acknowledge him. 
As surely as the sun rises, 
he will appear; 
he will come to us like the winter rains, 
like the spring rains that water the earth.” 

Reflection: Pain and Healing
By John Tillman

Hosea is famous (infamous?) because of the titillating detail that he married Gomer, a promiscuous woman. There are other sexual details in the text as well.

God is angered by idol worship that involves shrine prostitutes and sexual acts. He expresses concern for the illegitimate children born due to this activity. Hosea gives his own children names that highlight that they are adulterously conceived. 

Hosea’s reconciliation forbids Gomer from prostitution, implying that she was a prostitute at one time. Hosea’s poetic analogies, comparing Gomer to Israel, reinforce this. At least one of Gomer’s sexual partners “loved” her. Was she a prostitute or just an adulteress? When did these things occur? Was she always unfaithful or did it develop? Was she sleeping with many men or just “loved by another man”? (Hosea 3.1)

Reading the Bible well includes becoming comfortable with some ambiguity. Obsessing over missing details isn’t the main point of studying the Bible. We can trust that the truths God has for us in his Word won’t be omitted details.

Salacious depictions of Gomer aren’t the point of Hosea. Gomer’s sexual sins only take center stage as a parable comparing idolatry to adultery. It isn’t that God isn’t concerned about sexual infidelity and sin, it is that those actions are symptoms of a deeper disease. Idolatry is the disease. Sexual infidelity was only one manifestation. 

Today, rumors of drug-fueled sex parties might catch headlines and distract us, but God sees little distinction between these alleged events and other expressions of idolatry. Israel worshiped idols promising financial wealth. Alliances formed through idol worship brought political power. When financial benefits, power, or political victories are on the line, do we kneel and kiss whatever ring we must kiss? How then are we different from Gomer?

God describes through Hosea the pain of cutting out the cancer of idolatry from the people he loved. Hosea shows how far God is willing to go to heal and restore. C.S. Lewis describes God’s love as “quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.” God is committed to our healing and restoration. Call on him.

Lord, we have been unfaithful.
In pursuit of liberation, we are imprisoned.
In pursuit of power, we are oppressed.
In pursuit of thrills, we endure tedium.

May your Son set us free, indeed.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Come, let us bow down, and bend the knee, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. Oh, that today you would harken to his voice! — Psalm 95.6-7

Today’s Readings
Hosea 5-6Listen – 3:44)
Psalm 135-136(Listen -4:23)

Read more about Love Stronger Than Death
The holy jealousy of God leads not to destruction but to redemption and salvation.

Read more about The Undeserved Banquet of the Gospel
Christ invites all to the banquet. We will surprise someone by being there, and be surprised in return.

From Individuality to Mutuality

Scripture Focus: Hosea 3.1-3
1 The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” 
2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. 3 Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” 

Hosea 4.14
14 “I will not punish your daughters 
when they turn to prostitution, 
nor your daughters-in-law 
when they commit adultery, 
because the men themselves consort with harlots 
and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes— 
a people without understanding will come to ruin! 

Reflection: From Individuality to Mutuality
By John Tillman

It is sometimes difficult for us to understand the metaphor of faithfulness God is employing in Hosea’s story. How could we? Adultery is barely problematic in our culture.

We care about adultery when it happens to us or someone we love. We make a legal fuss about it. We sing vengeful songs about it. Collectively, however, we’ve basically come to expect and accept adultery. When both partners have remained faithful, we find it remarkable, unusual, worthy of celebration. 

It makes some Christians feel better to blame promiscuity and infidelity on “our culture” and the “sexual revolution,” but it’s not true. Rampant infidelity might feel new but people are only doing more openly today what they did in secret before. Sexual exploitation began with Cain’s descendant, Lamech, and never slowed down.

Like Lamech, today’s sexual priorities are individual satisfaction. “What I want, what I feel, what I desire, trumps all. If that means that you or I must betray and leave wife or husband, so be it. It is my right to sate my appetites, no matter what they are, no matter the cost.”

Gomer chased sexual appetites. Like many who have done so, she came to ruin (Hosea 4.14), finding only loneliness, abuse, and bondage. What Hosea offered Gomer, and what God offers us, is a loving relationship of mutuality to replace transactional relationships of selfish benefit.

Sexual exploitation pushes down the weak. God puts genders on equal ground again. He refuses to treat the women resorting to prostitution differently than the men abusing them. Hosea promises to behave towards his wife in the same way he expects her to behave towards him. It’s not a one-way street. 

Like the crowd in John 8.1-11, many voices accuse women of sexual wrongs while giving a pass to men. Righteousness is used to keep at a distance those we call “sinners.” 

Hosea uses righteousness differently. Instead of separating himself from Gomer, he goes to her. Instead of treating her as beneath him, damaged, or as a slave, he lifts her up, restores her, and sets her free. It is no accident that this is exactly how Jesus treats us in our sins. In Hebrew, Jesus and Hosea have names with the same shade of meaning. Both names tell us that God saves. Jesus is our Hosea, our “savior.” Jesus breaks the curse of Eden, restoring the possibility of mutuality, respect, and love.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed. — Psalm 51.8
– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Hosea 3-4Listen – 2:53)
Psalm 132-134(Listen -1:42)

Read more about A Chiaroscuro Parable
The names of Hosea’s children seem harsh yet God makes it clear that his purpose is to lovingly reverse the meanings of these names.

Read more about The Sins Behind Sexual Sins
Many times sexual sins are a symptom of other sins such as greed, selfishness, inequality, and oppression.

Love Stronger Than Death

Scripture Focus: Song of Songs 8.6-7
6 Place me like a seal over your heart, 
like a seal on your arm; 
for love is as strong as death, 
its jealousy unyielding as the grave. 
It burns like blazing fire, 
like a mighty flame. 
7 Many waters cannot quench love; 
rivers cannot sweep it away. 
If one were to give 
all the wealth of one’s house for love, 
it would be utterly scorned. 

Hosea 1.2
2 When the Lord began to speak through Hosea, the Lord said to him, “Go, marry a promiscuous woman and have children with her, for like an adulterous wife this land is guilty of unfaithfulness to the Lord.”

Reflection: Love Stronger Than Death
By John Tillman

Today, we conclude Song of Songs and move, over the weekend, into Hosea. What a contrast!

From the idyllic, passionate love poetry in Song of Songs, we turn to the tear-stained legal documents and pleadings of a marriage in crisis. It’s like turning from a Hallmark love story to a gritty, true-crime documentary. 

The beloved’s poem about the strength of love is one of the most well-known passages of the Bible. It is often quoted as a positive. “Many waters cannot quench love” is on the mausoleum dedicated to Ida And Isidor Straus, who chose to die together on the Titanic as it sank, rather than be separated. Ida is reported to have quoted Ruth, “Where you go, I will go,” as she refused to get on a lifeboat without her husband. (Ruth 1.16)

However, there is also a warning within this passage. Love strong as death, like a blazing fire, unable to be quenched, unable to be bought off, or denied…this is a confession. Human love can be twisted, becoming sinful jealousy that destroys what it can no longer possess or takes with force what will not yield to it. This leads to rape, domestic violence, abuse, and often murder. This unyielding love can lead to wickedness in humans, but in God it is the motivation for the gospel. The holy jealousy of God leads not to destruction but to redemption and salvation.

Hosea is God’s stand-in depicting this. His anger and hurt are real and justifiable. His love burns. His jealousy rises. Hosea’s human love is as strong as death and by Jewish law, he could have demanded death for Gomer.

God chose, rather than let us sink in the titanic disaster of our sin, to sink himself. His love is so great, that he did not die with us, sinking into oblivion. Rather, he died instead of us and when he sank into the grave, it was only to lift us up after him.

God’s love is stronger than death. His love breaks the unyielding hold of the grave. His love burns through any barrier that would come between us. His love quenches the fires of sin that would burn us. His love gave all the wealth of his house, becoming poor that we can become rich. (2 Corinthians 8.9

Who could scorn this kind of love?

Music: “Love As Strong As Death” – Canticle of Plains by Kevin Max / Rich Mullins

Video: Overview of Hosea by The Bible Project

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Be pleased, O God, to deliver me; O Lord, make haste to help me. — Psalm 70.1

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 8Listen – 2:23)
Psalm 123-125(Listen -1:52)

This Weekend’s Readings
Hosea 1Listen – 2:08)Psalm 126-128(Listen -1:158)
Hosea 2Listen – 3:48)Psalm 129-131(Listen -2:03)

Read more about The Naked Emotion of God
Hosea. This shows us a God unashamed of shame, nakedly confessing his love for the unlovable.

Read more about He Stoops to Raise
He strips himself.
He lays aside
His Heaven
His throne
His clothes
His life