Year 3, Day 208: Hosea 8

Poised Like a Eagle

Hosea 8 begins on a great note.  First, a trumpet is blown.  Trumpets are blown so that a declaration can be made.  The declaration might be something royal and glorious.  The declaration might be a warning of war.  Or, in this case, both.  After all, God had a royal announcement to make.  That announcement was that the Assyrians were coming for them in order to conquest them into slavery.

Then we hear that the Assyrians are poised over Israel like eagles.  Perhaps you are reading a translation that doesn’t say eagle in verse 1; it says vulture instead.  The Hebrew word here is almost always translated as eagle.  I prefer the image of the eagle because it demonstrates the regal nature and the authority that the Assyrians will show in their conquest over Israel.  There really will be no contest when the Assyrians come for the nation of Israel.  On the other hand, the image of a vulture is also correct in that there will be nothing left of Israel when Assyria is done.  The people will be deposed from the land.  The wealth will be carried off.  The land will be laid waste and bare.  The nation of Israel will be left like a dead carcass on the side of a road when the Assyrians are done with it.

Without Consulting the Lord

Again in Hosea we find that the consultation of the Lord is a big deal and a significant part of the reason that God is offended with the Hebrew people.  “They made kings, but not through me.”  “They set up princes, but I knew it not.”  I think these verses are clear in how God is offended by what the Hebrew people simply did.  They did as they thought was correct.

I guess I’ve never really thought about it deeply this way until the last few days.  But what arrogance it displays to make decisions without consulting God.  I know, people say that if you are trained correctly you should know what to do.  I hear people talk all the time that good leadership teaches people how to act so that the leader doesn’t have to be consulted over every decision.  I understand that point and I think there is validity in it.  But at the same time, I think God’s point is that we always want to pause and make sure that what we are doing is “according to the party line.”  When I assume that the party line has become who I am and everything I do “is the party line,” then I am being arrogant.

Even as I grow closer to God I will not be perfect in my responses.  My humanity mandates that occasionally I will do wrongly and I will not do things according to God’s ways.  In fact, any time I do something on my own and not through the power of God I can be assured that it won’t be according to God’s ways!  Right there we see the difference between human management and divine reality.  The truth is that even when properly trained as a Christian, without God’s presence I have no hope of doing anything right.  With that reality it becomes imperative that I stop and pause and make sure that God’s grace has gone before me.

The Nature of Sacrifices

I think I am going to close this blog on a fairly obvious point.  Yet it is a point that while obvious I don’t actually think I ponder as much as I should.  Here it is: not all sacrifices are pleasing to God.

Now, here’s where I think it is obvious.  In Hosea, God is complaining that all the altars that the people built have become altars of sinning.  Even though things are dying upon them and blood is being spilled, God is not pleased.  That’s the obvious part.  That’s the part we inherently get.

But let’s pursue that a bit more deeply.  Why doesn’t God find them acceptable?  God is offended because the sacrifices are not given according to the right spirit.  The sacrifice might be the same, but it is being offered to a different god.  A goat or a bull might be losing its life, but it isn’t losing its life in a manner that is pleasing to God.  What can we learn?  A sacrifice is more than just action.  A sacrifice is action mixed with attitude.

Woah.  Let that sink in for a second.

Suppose I give money to a church so that I can fit into a smaller tax bracket.  Is that a sacrifice combined with the right attitude?  If not, what do you think God thinks of my sacrifice?  Suppose I give some time so that I can fill out a report showing how much time I spent in Christian service and justify my expenditure of time to my governing board.  Is that the right attitude?  What do you think God thinks of my sacrifice?  Suppose I sing a prelude in church so I can hear people tell me how good I did.  Is that the right attitude?  What do you think God thinks of my sacrifice?

I think this is a deeper issue within humanity than it seems at first.  Here we can clearly see that it is not the action that automatically determines God’s pleasure.  One person can sing a prelude in church and another person could sing a prelude the next week.  One of them might be pleasing to God; the other might not.  It isn’t the action that is different; it is the attitude.  One person might give money but give it out of their surplus.  Another might give out of trust in God.  One gift is pleasing to God; the other is not.

I think it is powerful to desire to become a people who judge not on external standards – what we can see people do.  I need to be a person who refrains from judging on the external and looks deeply into the heart.  I need to begin by doing that to my own heart.

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