God's Love Demonstrated by His Faithfulness to His Promises (Hosea 11:8-9)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/14/2015 7:18 PM

My Worship Time             Focus:  Gods Love Demonstrated by His Faithfulness to His Promises

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Hosea 11:8-9

            Message of the verses:  “8 How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me, All My compassions are kindled. 9 I will not execute My fierce anger; I will not destroy Ephraim again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath.””

            God shows through the prophet Hosea that He indeed has a passionate heart according to verse eight.  We know from this passage and other passages that God is indeed compassionate.  What we are talking about in this passage is that God would not completely destroy Israel, but would be compassionate with Israel.  Let us look at Genesis 14:8 to see where the two countries that are mentioned in Hosea 11:8 came from “And the king of Sodom and the king of Gomorrah and the king of Admah and the king of Zeboiim and the king of Bela (that is, Zoar) came out; and they arrayed for battle against them in the valley of Siddim.”  In Genesis18:16-19:29 we see that God destroyed these nations, but in Hosea 11:8 He is saying that He would not totally destroy Israel.  Now these nations did not have the light that Israel had and so Israel sinned against a flood of light and yet God, because of His promises to Israel would not totally destroy them.  The key is that of Israel’s light, for they had much more than Admah and Zeboiim.

            We can see from verse nine of Hosea chapter eleven one of the reasons that caused God not to destroy Israel and that is when we read “For I am God and not man.”  Let’s look also at Numbers 23:19 “"God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” 

            We have mentioned many times in early SD’s about the unconditional covenant that God made with Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 which reads “1 Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; 2  And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; 3  And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."”  This covenant is still valid to the children of Israel even today, and we can look t different nations throughout history who have gone against Israel just because of who they are and we don’t see them around now, or in the future we will not see them around, for God has promised to destroy all of them.

            Dr. Wiersbe writes “But His covenant with Israel at Sinai had conditions attached, and if the people failed to meet these conditions, God was obligated to withdraw His blessings.  Israel’s possession of the land and its blessings is based on the Abrahamic Covenant, but their enjoyment of the land and its blessings is based on the Mosaic Covenant.  God was faithful to both covenants:  He preserved the nation, but He disciplined them for their sins.”

7/14/2015 7:38 PM