I am taking a break from my study of Revelation. Maybe one day I will get back to it. But the Lord is speaking to me in other areas of my life, and I would like to share them here. This week in my daily study of Scripture (which, I confess, is not always daily, nor is it always a "study"--more often than not it is a cursory reading, a skim-through so that I can check off in my mind that I have done it and I can move on) I read a verse in Hosea that stuck in my mind.
But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always. (Hosea 12:6)This verse touches on three major themes that I think are essential to a successful Christian life: Repentance; Justice and Mercy; and Waiting on God. I would like to discuss each of these in a little more detail.
Repentance
Hosea said "you must return to your God." In the broad sense, God made us. He desires fellowship with us. But sin separates us from him. So we must return our hearts to him. Many Evangelical Protestants I know can point to a specific time in their lives where they realized they were a sinner, and asked for forgiveness for the first time. They point to that date, the date of their conversion, as the time they "repented". I believe that we need to repent much more often than once in a lifetime.
God knows us. He made us who we are. We are weak. To show His strength, He provides a way out of every circumstance we find ourselves in. Isaiah 19:22 says "The Lord will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the Lord and he will respond to their pleas and heal them." This verse implies that God has punished Egypt for sin, but that He has a purpose. He is not some tinkerer, who takes things apart and puts them back together again for no purpose other than to amuse himself, or to learn how the thing works. He knows how it works--he made the earth and everything in it. When He strikes us with calamity, it is to show Himself to us. He can and will repair what is broken, but with the hope in His heart that we will take the opportunity to see His hand at work in us.
Even Israel, God's chosen people, needed to repent from time to time. Jeremiah 4:1 says "If you will return, O Israel, return to me, declares the Lord. If you will put your detestable idols out of my sight and no longer go astray." The next verse says that the nation will be blessed. So if they turn to Him, He will bless them. That is also His promise to us.
Justice and Mercy
Our text here, Hosea 12:6, says we must "maintain love and justice". The word translated "love" in this text is the Hebrew word hesed, which is translated "mercy" in other texts. Hosea 6:6 says, "For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings." The word "mercy" here is the Hebrew word hesed. This is a word that can refer to right conduct toward one's neighbor, or loyalty to the Lord, or both--the sum of what God requires of his servants. Here it perhaps refers to both. The same Hebrew word is translated "Love" in verse 4: "What can I do with you, Ephraim? What can I do with you, Judah? Your love is like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears." Their "love" (translated "mercy") is like my attempting to be righteous all day--it lasts only until somebody cuts me off in traffic, or says something mean-spirited about me. Then my love/mercy goes out the window, and I am ready to wreak havoc, becoming Judge and Jury and Executioner--in short, making myself like God. I think of the passage in John chapter 8, where the Pharisees brought an adulterous woman to Jesus. Their law demanded justice: she was to be put to death. Jesus' reply brought mercy into the equation: "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone." His love for the woman in question did not overlook her sin, but she benefited from His mercy. His judgment of the Pharisees did not excuse the sin that they had brought to light, but it did convict them of sin in their own lives, thus showing them a requirement for mercy.
I believe that Justice and Mercy/Love are two sides of the same coin. We who are created in God's image sometimes place more emphasis on one over the other--there are those "pharisees" among us who only point to sin, or demand justice for every perceived wrong; then there are others among us who desire mercy and believe "God is Love" to the exclusion of His divine wrath over sin. The former are called judgmental, and hypocrites, for they "do not see the beam in their own eye" for looking for "the splinter in their neighbor's eye." The latter are no less hypocritical, for they ignore the instances of God's anger, and often use their philosophy as an excuse to sin. Paul spoke of them when he said in Romans 6:1,2: "What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?"
The verse in Hosea mirrors what the prophet Micah was saying in Micah 6:8: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." If I act justly in my own life, I have greater moral authority to judge you; but I also have a closer relationship with God, who grants mercy. Jesus told a parable of a man who owed his master tens of thousands of dollars--more than could be repaid in many lifetimes. The master forgave the debt. But the man went out and found a fellow-servant, one who owed a few dollars. The man had this fellow-servant cast into debtor's prison. When the master heard of this, he found the man and upbraided him, casting him into the same debtor's prison as the fellow servant. This is where humility would have paid dividends. It is the same with our relationship with God, to whom we owe more than life itself. James 1:27 says, "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."
Waiting on God
Isaiah 40:31 says, "But those who wait upon the Lord (or whose hope is in the Lord) will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." This is our ultimate hope. Hosea 6:1-3 says, "Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After 2 days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth." Think of Mary and the disciples after Jesus had been crucified--their hopes were crushed, their lives essentially over. But after three days, Jesus rose from the grave and gave them new hope, new lives. They had no choice but to wait on God.
Hosea 10:12 says, "Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers righteousness on you." When hope is all but gone, the only thing we can do is keep the faith. Micah 7:7 says, "But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me."
Lamentations 3:22, 23 says, "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is Thy faithfulness." Our faithlessness leads to repentance. Our repentance makes us more like God, exhibiting both love and justice. And where our circumstances look bleak, we are to humbly wait on God.
I was reading a picture that one of my FaceBook friends posted last week about a successful marriage. It said, "A successful marriage requires falling in love many times....always with the same person." I believe a great relationship with God requires repenting many times--not necessarily for the same sin, but always to the same God, who never changes, never fails, and never forsakes us.
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