Bible in 90, Day 64: Did she ever say, “Shazam!”?

Daniel 9-Hosea 14

image courtesy of xymonau at stock.xchng

I married the most amazing woman I’ve ever known on June 7, 2003.  Since that time, we have prayed that God would glorify Himself through our marriage and through our family.  We want to have a home that displays God’s glory.  Keelie and I want our marriage to accurately reflect the relationship to Christ and the church as much as is possible within our limitations as fallen people.  In this way, we hope that our marriage and family are a picture of the gospel to everyone we meet.

God had a different plan for Hosea’s family.  He commanded Hosea to take an adulterous woman, Gomer, as his wife.  He then had him give his three children names that reflected the coming judgment of God.  When Gomer chased after other men, God had Hosea go and redeem her and bring her back into his home.  Hosea continued to show love to a woman who blatantly abused his love.

Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

Much like Ezekiel, God used Hosea’s life and actions to paint a vivid picture for Israel.  Hosea’s marriage to Gomer represented God’s relationship to Israel.  Just as Gomer chased after other men and committed adultery with them, so Israel had chased after other gods to commit spiritual adultery with them.  Just as Hosea remained faithful to Gomer and even wooed her back, so God continued to love Israel, calling her back to repentance.

God’s love for His people is greater than we can imagine.  Many of us would not fault Hosea if he had forsaken his adulterous wife and started over again with a woman who really loved him.  But God deliberately put Hosea into this position to demonstrate the depths of His love and the lengths to which He will go to bring a wayward sinner back into His love.  I believe that marriages can be saved more often than we give them a chance to be saved, but God’s love is greater than even the love of a man and wife.  His love is faithful and endures forever (1 Chronicles 16:34, etc.).

Let’s never forget the depths of God’s love.  Let’s remember that no matter how unfaithful we’ve been, if we turn back to Him, He will show His love and forgiveness for us again.  Let’s also remember that God expects us to show that same love to others.  If we’ve experienced the grace and forgiveness of God for all of our sin, how can we withhold forgiveness from someone who has wronged us (Matthew 18:21-35)?

couldn’t resist the Gomer Pyle references! 😉

originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 52: Israeli Idol

Isaiah 41-52

*image courtesy of shiyali at stock.xchng

Imagine you are a woodworker… just go with me on this.  You dig through a pile of logs and find one you like.  You start working one end of the log and create a nice little statue.  You saw it off at the bottom and separate it from the rest of the log.  You take that bottom piece, the unshaped part, and you throw it into your fireplace and get a nice fire going.  You make some supper over the flames, you snuggle up nice and warm by the hearth.

Now, here’s where it gets weird.

You take that piece you carved and place it on the mantle above the fireplace and you pray to it.  You worship it.  You ask it to keep you safe.  It is your god.

That’s exactly the situation Isaiah describes in today’s passage, specifically in chapter 44.  You can almost hear the sarcasm in Isaiah’s words.  It’s like he’s saying, “Boy!  I wish I was as smart as you!  You obviously know which end of that stick is divine.  I might have burned the wrong end!”  Through His prophet Isaiah, God is telling His people that the idols they are crafting (whether wood or metal, see vv. 12-13) are worthless.  They are senseless.  They cannot hear their prayers, they cannot speak in response, they cannot understand or feel.  They are blocks of wood!

God reminds His people in 45:5-6 that there is no other God besides Him.  Worshiping a block of wood is absurd, but it’s no better to think that there is any other God besides the God of Israel.  He says in 48:11 that He will not share His glory with another.  He also creates a bit of irony in the following verses.  He remind Israel that He is the Creator of not only them, but of the entire universe.  People were worshiping what their own hands had made, and God is commanding them to worship the One who made them with His own hands.

The irony goes further with the imagery of the clay and the potter in v. 9.  In this, God points out the arrogance of Israel in questioning their Maker.  The clay cannot say to the potter, “What are you making?” or, “He has no hands!”  The contrast is interesting because not only are they the clay, but in the above passage they were the potter!  God is saying that anything made cannot be greater than its maker, yet this is exactly what the idolaters were doing.  They were taking something they had made and elevating it above themselves.  In effect, they as the potters were allowing the clay to tell them what to do as their god!  How backwards this is!

And yet, are we much better?  You see, the people Isaiah was prophesying against were guilty not only of idolatry, but of worshiping false gods.  (There is a distinction between the two that requires more space than we have available.)  We may not bow down before little statues (though this is not absent from the world), but we worship all kinds of things.

Mostly, in our modern Western culture of enlightenment, we worship ourselves.  We have put man at the center of the universe.  We call this secular humanism.  It is essentially the great sin of the universe – pride.

We also worship things.  We call this materialism or consumerism.  An old saying goes, “Get all you can, can all you get, and then sit on the can!”

Some of us worship our kids.  We put them at the center of our little universe, and do everything to make them happy.

Some of us worship entertainment.  Above all else in this world, we want amusement and relaxation.  Nothing else matters.

Let’s not let anything take God’s rightful place at the center of all things.  We are called in the New Testament to worship Him with our whole lives, and our entire being.  Let’s not give anything else that place.  Let us worship God in spirit and in truth, and never put any idol or false god in His place.

*originally at Words of Reason