David Bahn – Reflections

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These devotions are part of the Follow the Word Bible reading program at St. John Lutheran Church in Cypress, Texas. This year we are reading through the Scriptures together, listening for how God speaks through his Word day by day. I hope you will join me on this journey.

Today’s readings are 2 Chronicles 31, Hosea 1-2, Psalm 34.

Hosea 2:11-15, 21, 23

I will put an end to all her mirth,
    her feasts, her new moons, her Sabbaths,
    and all her appointed feasts.
¹² And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees,
    of which she said,
‘These are my wages,
    which my lovers have given me.’
I will make them a forest,
    and the beasts of the field shall devour them.
¹³ And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals
    when she burned offerings to them
and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry,
    and went after her lovers
    and forgot me, declares the LORD.

¹⁴ “Therefore, behold, I will allure her,
    and bring her into the wilderness,
    and speak tenderly to her.
¹⁵ And there I will give her her vineyards
    and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth,
    as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.

²¹ “And in that day I will answer, declares the LORD,
²³ …I will have mercy on No Mercy,
    and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’;
    and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’”

Have you ever had to make a sudden U-turn? I did—just today, in fact. And it almost didn’t end well. After completing the U-turn, I started back onto the road I was supposed to be on and nearly got hit by an oncoming car! I’d like to blame the tall grass that blocked my view, but that wouldn’t have been a problem had I not needed to make the U-turn in the first place. I had taken a wrong turn that required not only a U-turn, but another turn to get back on course. My bad. My very bad.

I was reminded of that incident when I read the seemingly sudden change of heart recorded by Hosea:

“And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals…

Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.”
(Hosea 2:13–14)

One verse God is promising to punish his wayward and unfaithful bride. The next he is speaking tenderly to her. Why this sudden reversal? What made God change his mind? Where did those tender words of kindness and grace come from?

They came from the heart of God. They were always there.

Jeremiah puts it this way:

“Though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.” (Lamentations 3:32–33)

God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He delights in mercy and rejoices with all the angels of heaven when one sinner repents.

In Hosea, God is promising to bring Israel to that place of repentance. He’s describing the great reversal that many lifelong Christians know little of. It’s the stuff of death-row conversions, the thief on the cross, and the centurion standing at the cross of Jesus. There are moments when we come face to face with the depth of our own sin and realize how poor and miserable we truly are. We see our desperate need for God’s mercy and forgiving grace, and we turn to him by the power of the Holy Spirit.

God is always waiting there when we make that moral U-turn. It’s called repentance. It begins with sorrow over our sin and is completed by faith in Jesus. Then comes the fruit of repentance (Matthew 3:8). The reversal that is needed is not God’s, but ours.

Martin Luther opened his Ninety-five Theses with these words: “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent,’ he willed that the entire life of believers should be one of repentance.” And God is even more ready to receive us with joy than we are to return to him. He delights to call us his children, to forgive our sins, to lavish his grace upon us, and to hold us close in his steadfast love.