Today's Reading:O.T. - Hosea 1 - 3
N.T. - 1 Corinthians 6:9-20
Focus Verses: Hosea 3:1-2
1 The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes." 2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley."
Insight:
God instructed the prophet Hosea to illustrate God's great love and faithfulness to his people by taking a wife who would be unfaithful to him. Hosea's actions and responses to his wife's unfaithfulness would be a real-life picture of God's actions and responses to the nation of Israel.
Hosea's wife was unfaithful to him, she prostituted herself and had children by other men. Eventually left Hosea for another man, but he finds her abandoned, destitute, and being sold as a slave. God tells him, "Show your love to her again," and so Hosea pays the price to buy her back. But he doesn't bring her home as a slave; he brings her home to be his wife! He says, "You are to live with me in faithfulness, and I will live with you."
Response and Action:
God loves, redeems, and restores his people. God wants to save me from unfaithfulness and restore me to a right relationship with him. I need to turn away from sin and turn to God. I need to identify the ways I am unfaithful to God and, with God's love and restoring help, put those ways aside. I want to be responsive to God, to honor him with my life, and to learn how to be faithful to him.
O God, thank you for your love. Look upon me in mercy and redeem me from my unfaithfulness. Thank you for Jesus, who has purchased me in by laying down his life, and for your Spirit who is renewing and restoring me. By the power and grace of your Holy Spirit, lead, teach, transform, shape, and strengthen me that I might delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name. Amen.
Proverbs: 11:21
"Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free."
Resources:
Redemption
by Alister McGrath
