Year 6, Day 210: Hosea 10

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Identity

• Identity: Our true identity comes from the Father.  Only when our identity comes from God can we be obedient in ways that satisfy our person to our core.

“Israel is a luxurious vine that yields its fruit.”  Yet, the more fruit it yielded the more alters they built.  Israel is showing its identity.  The Lord allowed them to be successful and prosper.  However, as they became more successful they also grew a taste for success.  They fell into superstition and false beliefs about why they were successful.  They stopped remembering that it was God that made them successful and latched onto other things.  From God’s perspective, the chief offense of those other things is other gods.  They built alters to other gods to continue to try and increase their success.

However, as they grow in power and wealth and overall success, they lose sight of any leadership, not just God.  They also claim to not have a king because they have no fear of the Lord.  They aren’t really being led by their leaders.  They are led by their identity: the pursuit of their success and overall wealth and status.  As prosperity increases, not only does the need for humbling oneself before God decrease, so does the desire to humble oneself before the appointed leadership.  As we become more successful and more prosperous, our identity is wrapped up in getting what we want and no longer looks to what is truly good for the community around us.  When our identity is off, we lose spiritual and communal perspective.

Hosea gives us some specific characteristics that we can see as Israel loses spiritual perspective.  Israel plowed iniquity and reaped injustice.  Israel trusted in its own strength, rather than honestly humbling themselves and knowing God’s strength in comparison to their own weaknesses.  When we lose our identity from God, we become focused on ourselves.  Our methods become unscrupulous.  We no longer care about things like justice and right.  Life becomes about me.  That’s what life looks like when we forget our identity in the Lord.

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