Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Obedience
- Obedience: Genuine and satisfying obedience comes out of our identity. Our true identity comes only from our Father.
This is a
very disconcerting chapter. God comes to
Hosea and tells him to take a wife.
Normally, that would be cause for celebration. However, God tells Hosea to take a prostitute
for a wife. I don’t know too many God-fearing
prophets of God who would look to that message and obey without question. After all, it doesn’t sound like a thing that
Go would tell someone to do. But, Hosea
obeys. He believes and trusts.
Then,
Hosea begins to have kids. God comes to
Hosea and tells him to name his children, “Jezreel,” “No Mercy,” and “You are
not My People.” Talk about your bummer
names! There is no joy in these
names. Imagine being looked at by God
and realize that He is telling you to name your child “No Mercy” or any of the
others. But again, Hosea obeys.
What we
can learn from this passage is that there are going to be times that God tells
us to do things that might not make sense in the moment. There are going to be times that God gives us
a message that might seem confusing and maybe even contrary to what we believe
His nature to be. Those times will come
because we cannot fully know God.
In those
moments, we have to remember the importance of obedience. We cannot fathom the depths of God. We cannot know Him fully and truly. We cannot ever fully hold onto the whole
character of God. In those moments where
we are unsure, it is our obedience that will hold us true.
Very few
people would have seen Hosea as making righteous decisions in his day. Yet he was making decisions of
obedience. From God’s perspective, he
was doing exactly what he should have been doing.
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