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Sanctified

Hosea 2:17

I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips;
    no longer will their names be invoked.

Thought for the day – Sanctification

Hosea is not an easy read. God uses some very heavy imagery in the book. Hosea is told to marry Gomer, a promiscuous woman. It an image of how unfaithful the Kingdom of Israel was. Their children are called Jezreel, Not Loved, and Not my people. Jezreel because God would soon punish the house of Jehu for the massacre at Jezreel. Not Loved and Not my people, I think are self explanatory and describe the punishment God was to bring on the people of Israel.  Lovely.

But then in Chapter 2 we see something different. We see God calling the people something else: ‘My people’ and ‘My loved one’. It’s as if God has changed his mind and has wooed the people of Israel back to him. They have been sanctified. They have been redeemed. And for me this is a really hopeful message that no matter how far we have strayed from God we can always come back.

I’ll be honest. It’s been a while since I read Hosea so I’m not sure what’s coming. We have another 12 chapters to go. But I’ll hold onto what God has told his people about how they will be restored. Thanks be to God for his mercy.

 

This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

 

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


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