When He Roars
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1 When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
2 The more I called them, the further they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and they burned incense to idols.
3 Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them.
4 I led them with bands of human kindness, with cords of love. I treated them like those who lift infants to their cheeks; I bent down to them and fed them.
5 They will return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria will be their king, because they have refused to return to me.
6 The sword will strike wildly in their cities; it will consume the bars of their gates and will take everything because of their schemes.
7 My people are bent on turning away from me; and though they cry out to the Most High, he will not raise them up.
8 How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart winces within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.
9 I won’t act on the heat of my anger; I won’t return to destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a human being, the holy one in your midst; I won’t come in harsh judgment.
10 They will walk after the Lord, who roars like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west.
11 They will come trembling like a bird, and like a dove from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the Lord.
When He Roars
When He Roars
It is not easy raising children. When they are toddlers we face the terrible twos and the awful threes and the horrible fours. When we were fostering we had a toddler for a while and his slightly older brother. We only had them for two weeks, the first week was good, we only had the four year old. He was a sweet loving boy. He followed me around like a puppy dog. Then his brother came for the second week. That sweet four year old turned into a demon from the bad place.
After they left and went back to their regular foster home I said that after having them I knew what some animals eat their young.
Hosea in his prophecy writes God’s word. God has change his description of his people. In the first two chapters of Hosea’s prophecy, Israel is pictured as being in a marriage relationship. God is the husband and Israel is the wife.
When we think about the Old Testament we have this picture of God as the law giver and the people as the law keepers. We know from reading the Old Testament that the people were not very good at keeping the law.
In my younger years in ministry I was the Youth Pastor at a church in Mississippi. The senior pastor never preached from the Old Testament. I talked to him once about that and he said that the Old Testament did not apply to us so why preach from it.
Every change that I had to preach, I would preach from an Old Testament passage. It was interesting to see what happened. He began to talk about how the Old Testament had lots to say to us today.
What I think we miss out when we think about the Old Testament is that there is way more than just the law there. Throughout the Old Testament the love of God is seen.
One author describes this chapter of Hosea as the “John 3:16” of the Old Testament. I want to think that after Hosea’s marriage to Gomer that what God was saying was all the more real to him.
God switches from the imagery of a marriage to that of a Father and a child.
James Mclemore told the following story
In this family, there are four children, two boys and two girls. The oldest girl taught school, volunteered at the women's mission, and went to church every Sunday. The youngest girl kept a good house, raised five good children, never met a person she didn't like, and never met a person who didn't like her. The oldest boy followed his dad into missionary work, spent his youth in India feeding the hungry, and spent his manhood in South America building homes for the homeless. But the youngest son didn't like the teachings of his father and mother. He decided to get his teachings in the street, and find his spirits in a bottle.
For years the youngest son spent his nights in the streets, and his days in a drunken stupor. There was no place to go, nothing to do, nothing to live for. He moved from one lonely town to another lonely town in a lonely life. He looked down the dusty streets and watched the emptiness of people passing each other, and he felt like a stranger in a strange land.
One night he found himself in a strangely familiar town. He could see the outline of a distant steeple in the moonlight, and the voices of old memories spoke to him from the streets. In the distance he could hear the sound of a bell ringing in the city. Three times the bell rang out its familiar song, six times it rang, twelve times, and then he remembered the name of the melody. He made his way around the corner to the building where the ringing was coming from, and made his way to the door. And when he looked up, he saw the choir singing the words to the song, "Amazing Grace, How Sweet The Sound." He made his way to the altar, and he recognized that he was in the same church, in the same town where his father and his mother raised him. It was New Year's Eve watch night service, and there was a sign above the altar: "God's Going To Bring His Children Home." [1]
That is the picture of Hosea chapter 11, God is still wanting to brink his Children home.
Hosea 11:1 (CEB)
1 When Israel was a child, I loved him,
It’s easy to love a little child even if they drive you nuts sometimes. God says that when Israel was a child that He loved him.
God created us in His image so that He could have a relationship with us. It was a relationship based on love. It wasn’t a relationship based on laws of doing this and not doing that. Something that I hadn’t considered before is this:
When God created us to receive His love and to love Him, He became vulnerable to our rejection
We were created with a free will, that ability to choose to follow God or to walk away. That placed God in a vulnerable position of facing rejection.
God had promised Abraham that there was a land of promise. That promise carried down to Isaac and then to Jacob and Jacob’s children, the 12 tribes of Israel.
Those tribes were in Egypt as slaves but God did not forget about them.
Hosea 11:1 (CEB)
1 out of Egypt I called my son.
They weren’t just some random group of people that God decided one day to make His special people. God says that he called “my son.” God had not forgotten his promise. The people of Israel were His Children, He was their Father and they were His children.
That one verse shows God’s love for them. This is amazing because out of all the nations around Israel, they were the only ones who worshipped a God who was portrayed as their Father. Jehovah was unique in that there was this loving relationship between Him and His children. No other deity that was worshipped was viewed as having that type of relationship.
Look at the prominent god that was worshipped, Baal. Baal was not pictured as a loving father. You had to to stuff to appease him and the other countless gods. If you did not do what that god wanted then you had better watch out, you were going to be punished.
Jehovah is unique, He loved his people and He wanted them to love him back. The more it seemed that he loved them the more they pushed back.
They were like teenagers. Teenagers are designed to push away from parents. They are trying to figure out who they are. They are no longer children, but they aren’t adults. It is a hard time in life for some teens. I have several teen young men that I see weekly. One is really struggling with this. His parents are also struggling with him pushing back.
God said there in verse 2
2 The more I called them, the further they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and they burned incense to idols.
Have you been there with a teenager? The more you loved them, the more they pushed back?
I remember a man in one of the churches we attended years ago who’s father was a preacher. When he was a teenager he was that rebellious teen. He pushed back against his father. He told of one time as a teen that he was angry with his father. He said he went around the church building and broke all the basement windows.
God says that the more that he called them. What was he calling them to? He was calling them to love him and live in that covenant relationship with him.
The more he called them he says that the further they went from him.
The first two commandments confirm this
1 Then God spoke all these words:
2 I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
3 You must have no other gods before me.
4 Do not make an idol for yourself—no form whatsoever—of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth.
5 Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the Lord your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me.
6 But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
When we think of the Ten Commandments we just read the bullet points and skip over God’s reason for the commandment.
Look there at verse 6
Exodus 20:6 “6 But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
That thousandth generation indicates that there is unlimited grace from God to those who love Him.
Israel continued to push away from God, the kept sacrificing to those other gods, they burned incense to idols. They were doing all the things that God had told them not to do.
Like a loving father, God states what He had done for them. There are six “I” statements.
I taught Ephraim to walk
I took them up in my arms
I healed them
I led them
I treated them
I bent down and fed them
Everyone of those things were things that we can picture a loving father doing for his child.
In spite of all that God had done for them, they rejected Him and went further from Him.
Remember the one child of Hosea was named “Not My People,” but God says in verse 7:
Hosea 11:7 “7 My people are bent on turning away from me; and though they cry out to the Most High, he will not raise them up.”
He calls them My People. That is an incredible picture of the love of God. In spite of all that the people had done, God still calls them His people. In fact God talks about His love there in verse 4:
Hosea 11:4 (CEB)
4 I led them with bands of human kindness, with cords of love. I treated them like those who lift infants to their cheeks; I bent down to them and fed them.
What a picture of love. He didn’t treat them like slaves. It wasn’t forced relationship. Those bands and cords there signify a loving relationship.
God is still wanting Israel to repent and return to Him. He says in verse 9 that He is not going to destroy them.
God is wanting them to repent. Dr Ogilvie wrote:
The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 22: Hosea / Joel / Amos / Obadiah / Jonah (The Loneliness of Vulnerable Love)
Repentance is not a once done art but the continuing daily, hourly response to the grace of God. As Spurgeon put it, “Repentance is not a thing of days and weeks … to be got over as fast as possible. No, it is the grace of a lifetime, like faith itself … “Our initial act of repentance must be followed by constantly returning to the Lord. A change of mind, is required from pride to praise, from self-sufficiency to self-surrender, from willfulness to willingness.
He went on and wrote:
Recently, after I had completed a message on repentance at a conference, a man said, “Dr. Ogilvie, I did that as a teenager when I became a Christian. Now, do you have anything to say to—how shall I put it—‘advanced Christians?’
”I responded, “Yes, I do have a word for advanced Christians, ‘You must repent!’ We never outgrow that need. In every situation, relationship, challenge there is a constant need to return to the Lord for guidance and power.”
The man’s question brought to mind a woman who disliked printed prayers of repentance in the worship bulletin. “Repentance is for evangelistic services, not for believers. It’s for sinners. The prayer you had us pray today is like stirring up the dust on the sawdust trail. What do you have to say to that?”
“You need to repent!” I replied.
“Of what?” the woman asked.
“Self-righteousness and pride,” I said, going on to tell the woman that repentance, returning to the Lord, is not only the key to beginning the Christian life but the secret of receiving daily strength and courage. We drift from the Lord, so easily add false gods to our worship of Him, and repeatedly require a change of mind about our self-reliance and a fresh renewal of our relationship.
Take a look at verse 7
7 My people are bent on turning away from me; and though they cry out to the Most High, he will not raise them up.
We can be that way. A word that could replace that “turning away” is an old word that we don’t use in church much any more. That word is backsliding. That word describes the Christian who has stopped following God and is going backwards. They are sliding back from their relationship with God. This is what Israel had done. That is what we are in danger of doing every day.
If we live life like “I’ve got this” and ignore God and his counsel we are backsliding. We are headed in the opposite direction from where God is wanting to lead us.
Verse 10 captured my imagination when I read it.
10 They will walk after the Lord, who roars like a lion. When he roars, his children will come trembling from the west.
When he roars. Can you picture a lion roaring. From the webite Wild Explained they wrote:
Roars are used to signal territoriality and to locate distant pride members. Both male and female lions demonstrate ownership of territories via roaring and are able to gauge the strength of opposition based on the number of roars heard from other groups. [2]
They say that the roar of a lion can be heard up to 5 miles away.
Who is pictured as a lion in the Bible?
Yes, Satan is pictured as a roaring lion one time. The one who is pictured as a lion is Jesus, the Lion of Judah. To understand this we have to go to the end.
5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Don’t weep. Look! The Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has emerged victorious so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
In the context of Hosea, God is going to call Israel back from exile. God will call His people and they will return to Him.
Isn’t that what God wants from us today?
God calls us to repentance. That word means to turn around and go the other direction. Rather than walking away from God we head towards Him. Like I said earlier repentance is ongoing.
God calls us to be filled with Holy Spirit. That filling is not to just benefit us. It is a filling that empowers us to serve Him.
When was the last time you spoke to someone about Jesus? Never? Why not? If you claim Jesus as your Savior don’t you want to share what Jesus has done for you with someone else?
Someday soon Jesus is going to return. He will come on clouds with great glory. The trumpet sound of God is going to sound. It will be to late then. We won’t be able to say, hold up God, I got to tell someone.
Lot’s of people groan and complain that the church is so small and we are not reach people. We really need to look in the mirror. When was the last time I spoke to someone about Jesus?
God has given us everything we need by the power of the Holy Spirit. We really lack for nothing. You and I have access to that power through the Holy Spirit.
Are we afraid of that power? Are we afraid that God might call us out of our comfort zone?
The lion of Judah is going to roar, to call people to Himself.
13 The Lord will go out like a soldier; like a warrior God will stir up rage. God will shout, will roar; over enemies he will prevail.
[1] Hosea 11:1-11 | God's Going To Bring His Children Home | Sermon and Worship Resources (sermons.com)
[2] Why Do Lions Roar? Everything You Need to Know! (wildexplained.com)