Division and Decline – God as Father

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the idols and they burned incense to images… they did not realize it was I who healed them. Hosea 11:1-3

Once upon a time there was a young man, a teenager, who was struggling on the inside. He spent a lot of time alone in his room, and his parents began to worry. They tried to reach out to him, but the more they tried to get him to talk the more he shut down. They started to fight a lot. One evening, his mother was gathering up the piles of dirty laundry in his room and found a stash of pills she didn’t recognize. Not knowing what to do, they decided to call the pastor. “I don’t know what to do anymore,” said the father, his heart torn within him. “The more we reach out the more he shuts down. I feel like the enemy.”

Many prophets in the Bible received their own book, and Hosea is one of them. He worked as a Prophet during the reign of the Kings of Israel. In fact, his book is the only writing we have from someone who lived in the northern Kingdom. Every other book in the Bible was written by someone who lived in the South.

Hosea offers us a unique perspective on what prophecy was like in the declining northern Kingdom. Perhaps his most wonderful contribution as a prophet comes from the 11th chapter.

Hosea records God pining after the people of Israel and he characterizes God’s love as that of a father. The entire passage is filled with rich images of a nurturing, healings, and loving God. One theologian says that when we read Hosea 11, “we penetrate deeper into the heart and mind of God than anywhere in the Old Testament.”

Hosea presents the exact description of God that Jesus has in mind when he taught his disciples to pray saying, “Our Father, who is in heaven.” Hosea and Jesus try to help us understand what God is like. Our God loves with passion and tenderness, and our God can be hurt by our actions.