The Book Of Hosea. Day 36, Remembering Where We Came From

Yesterday's text concluded with the Lord reminding the people that He is the only deity who ever spoke to them. He is the only one who called them out of Egypt, performed many signs and wonders and miracles for them, brought them into the promised land and made them into a great nation, and gave them His laws and commandments. Yet they forsook Him for the false gods of the heathen nations. Their cities are now filled with idols and with a multitude of sins.

"Is Gilead wicked? Its people are worthless! Do they sacrifice bulls in Gilgal? Their altars will be like piles of stones in a plowed field." (Hosea 12:11) By Hosea's day the region of Gilead had already been subjugated by Assyria. Gilgal will soon share the same fate because its people are just as sinful as the people of Gilead. The altars where they've spent so much time making useless sacrifices to non-existent gods will become as useless as the stones a farmer removes from land he intends to cultivate. The stones will end up in a heap, out of the way like a pile of garbage.

The people have forgotten how far the Lord has brought them. Their forefather Jacob (later renamed "Israel" by the Lord) was a man of little means when he fled his home in fear that his brother Esau would kill him. He had to submit to his future father-in-law for seven years, tending the man's sheep and obeying his every instruction, in order to obtain the hand of Rachel in marriage. Even then he was tricked, because Rachel's father substituted Leah instead and forced Jacob to work seven more years, during which time he was dishonest with him in various ways. Yet the Lord blessed Jacob and made a great nation out of Jacob's descendants---the Lord, not some other god!---and in the text below He reminds them that He alone is responsible for bringing them out of slavery in Egypt and for settling them in a bountiful land. 

"Jacob fled to the country of Aram; Israel served to get a wife, and to pay for her he tended sheep. The Lord used a prophet to bring Israel up from Egypt, by a prophet He cared for him. But Ephraim has aroused His bitter anger; his Lord will leave on him the guilt of his bloodshed and will repay him for his contempt." (Hosea 12:12-14)

It behooves us to take time on a regular basis to reflect on everything the Lord has done for us and to be thankful. The people of Hosea's day had become ungrateful. They had stopped giving the Lord the glory for their nation and for its prosperity and had begun to serve idols that had never lifted a finger to help them. The gods of the nations couldn't lift a finger to help them because they weren't real. Only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had ever done anything for them because He is the one and only God. The apostasy of the people of Hosea's day could be compared to you and I becoming ungrateful for the Lord saving us from our sins, for providing our needs in this world, and for coming through for us time and time again when we have a problem. Their apostasy as bad as if you and I decided to renounce the Lord to serve something or someone else. The idols of our day may not be graven images but instead usually take the form of putting someone or something else ahead of God.

I'm not saying that the Lord doesn't intend for us to enjoy wholesome pursuits in this life. The Lord, like any good father, enjoys seeing His children enjoying their blessings. Many things aren't sinful in themselves but human beings have a tendency to find some way to make an idol out of almost anything. We can idolize our careers, our romantic partner, our children, our hobbies, our financial dealings, our bad habits, or something else to the point that those things are given the place of preeminence in our hearts that is intended only for God. I truly believe that thinking on the Lord every day, and maintaining a grateful spirit and giving thanks to Him, will go a long way toward helping us not to give anything or anyone precedence over our God.

The Book Of Hosea. Day 35, Don't Trust In Wealth

In today's portion of the book of Hosea we find the Lord accusing many of the people of having become wealthy through dishonest means. Even if they had gained their wealth through honest means, wealth would be no barrier against judgment for their sins of idolatry. The Bible doesn't condemn being wealthy if a person made their money with honest hard work, but the Bible does say, "Though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them." (Psalm 62:10b) Our trust is to be in the Lord; wealth may come and wealth may go. The only thing we possess in this life that we cannot lose is our relationship with the Lord. That is to be our main priority.

In addition to warning us not to set our hearts on wealth, the same verse of the Bible says, "Do not trust in extortion or put vain hope in stolen goods." (Psalm 62:10a) Yet committing extortion and fraud and theft is exactly what the people have done, according to our text from Hosea. "The merchant uses dishonest scales and loves to defraud. Ephraim boasts, 'I am very rich; I have become wealthy. With all my wealth they will not find in me any iniquity or sin.'" (Hosea 12:7-8)

The Lord cannot be bribed like a human judge. We've already learned in our study of the prophets that wealthy people were buying the verdicts they wanted in court. The poor were being disenfranchised because their oppressors were able to pay dishonest judges to rule in their favor. But the Lord doesn't judge according to a person's wealth or status; He judges according to righteousness. The people may think their wealth protects them but the Lord cannot be bought off. 

He says, "I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt; I will make you live in tents again, as in the days of your appointed festivals. I spoke to the prophets, gave them many visions and told parables through them." (Hosea 12:9-10) Displacement is coming. There are many fine homes in Israel in Hosea's day. The economy is booming during the reign of Jeroboam II, who was king around the time Hosea first began prophesying to the nation. The military is strong. Some of the land previously taken from Israel by enemy nations was regained by Jeroboam, so the nation is comprised of more territory than it has been for decades. But all this will be lost because the people have placed their trust in all the wrong things: in false gods, in wealth, in the army, in the economy, in the king. They have forsaken the Lord who brought them out of Egypt and made them into a nation in the first place. 

The Lord has given them many opportunities to turn this situation around. He sent the prophets to confront them with their sins, to warn them to turn away from their sins, and to tell them what will happen if they do not repent. But all these warnings have been ignored. If the warnings continue to be ignored, the enemy is going to pour into the nation like a flood and sweep them away.

The Book Of Hosea. Day 34, Be Like Jacob

As we conclude Chapter 11 and begin Chapter 12 the Lord speaks of the futile pursuits of the people. They have pursued the wrong things and have nothing---nothing spiritual and lasting---to show for it. He urges them to follow the example of their forefather Jacob who gave up the deceitfulness of his early life (gave up depending upon worldly means) and sought a relationship with the Lord. 

"Ephraim has surrounded Me with lies, Israel with deceit. And Judah is unruly against God, even against the faithful Holy One." (Hosea 11:12) Hosea was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel but there were those in the southern kingdom of Judah whose hearts weren't right with the Lord either. It took the southern kingdom longer to fall deeply into idolatry, for the people there had the temple and the priests in their midst, plus they had several godly kings whose upright behavior encouraged spiritual revivals. But there is a restlessness under the surface in Judah; indeed, the word translated here as "unruly" means "to wander restlessly, to roam, to tramp about". Some scholars also interpret this word to mean "to wrestle, to contend with". Since Chapter 12 contains a reference to how Jacob wrestled with the Lord at Bethel, this is a valid interpretation because it depicts a struggle between the flesh and the spirit. The people of Judah still have a heart for the Lord but at the same time they long for carnal things and have a wandering eye, so to speak, where idolatry is concerned.

We now begin Chapter 12 with the Lord comparing the futility of idols (and the futility of trusting heathen nations) with the futility of swallowing air instead of food. "Ephraim feeds on the wind; he pursues the east wind all day and multiplies lies and violence. He makes a treaty with Assyria and sends olive oil to Egypt." (Hosea 12:1) Swallowing wind will not satisfy a hungry tummy. If anything, it will make a person more uncomfortable. Likewise, worshiping idols will bring no satisfaction. Allying themselves with heathen, untrustworthy nations will bring them no help. Assyria oppressed and eventually conquered the nation and Israel's alliance with Egypt against Assyria failed, for Pharaoh's army was not powerful enough to defeat the Assyrian forces and he ended up paying tribute to Assyria himself.

Judah will fall into the same trap of idolatry and unwise alliances as Israel, in time. "The Lord has a charge to bring against Judah; He will punish Jacob according to his ways and repay him according to his deeds." (Hosea 12:2) Jacob was a deceiver, a double-crosser. A large number of the people of the southern kingdom will honor the Lord with their lips while their hearts are far from Him, as He will say later on through the prophet Isaiah. They will be smooth talkers, like Jacob who tricked his brother into giving up the birthright and who tricked his father into giving him the blessing of the firstborn.

The Lord compares Jacob's character (in his early life) to the character of the people of Judah. "In the womb he grasped his brother's heel; as a man he struggled with God. He struggled with the angel and overcame him; he wept and begged for his favor. He found Him at Bethel and talked with Him there---the Lord Almighty, the Lord is His name! But you must return to your God; maintain love and justice, and wait for your God always." (Hosea 12:3-6) 

In the book of Genesis, when Jacob wrestled with the angel of the Lord, he did not defeat the angel. Hosea says Jacob "overcame him" and the word translated as "overcame" means "to endure, to attain, to gain strength, to achieve victory", but the victory Jacob attained in his struggle with the angel was his surrender to the Lord. He clung to the angel, weeping, saying, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." (Genesis 32:26b) Jacob recognized that the things he obtained by human craftiness would never satisfy him at his soul. He knew he needed a relationship with the one true God and the blessings of the one true God in order to have real victory. The Lord is urging the people of the nation to win by surrendering. He's telling them to stop being doubleminded, to stop depending on their own smarts and their own strength, to stop calling upon heathen nations to help, to stop bowing to false gods for help, and to follow Jacob's example by clinging to Him---to Him alone!---and by crying out with tears, "I will not let You go unless You bless me!" 

The Book Of Hosea. Day 33, Resettling

The Lord has been talking about how He called Israel out of Egypt, referring to Israel as His child. He talked about how He had taken care of and raised Israel as a father raises a child, yet the people turned away from Him when they were grown, so to speak. He has vowed to bring judgment for the people's idolatry and, although the judgment could very justly be as harsh as that which He poured out on exceedingly sinful cities such as Sodom and Gomorrah, we learned in our last study session that His heart is too moved with compassion to destroy the nation. 

He is going to allow the Assyrian Empire to conquer Israel and take the majority of the citizens captive to other lands but in time the Neo-Babylonian Empire will conquer Assyria and then the Medo-Persian Empire will conquer the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Cyrus the Great of Persia will issue an edict allowing all the captives to return home if they wish. That is what is being spoken of in today's passage.

The Lord says, "'They will follow the Lord; He will roar like a lion. When He roars, His children will come trembling from the west. They will come from Egypt, trembling like sparrows, from Assyria, fluttering like doves. I will settle them in their homes,' declares the Lord." (Hosea 11:10-11) 

Many scholars believe that quite a few people from the northern kingdom of Israel fled to Egypt for refuge when it began looking like invasion from Assyria was unavoidable. When Cyrus issues the decree to allow the captive people in Babylon to go free, many will go home from there and many will also go home from Egypt.

I love the way the Lord depicts Israel following after Him like a little child toddling after its father. He has been using the analogy of Himself as a parent to Israel. He said earlier in Chapter 11 that He "taught Israel to walk" and that He took them by the arms as a father holds the arms of a child that is learning to stand and to take its first steps. He said He drew them with cords of love, which is a reference to the way a parent or nursemaid would hold or tie one end of a cord to themselves and place the other end in the child's hands, thus giving the child something to hold onto while it follows them around the room. That would be the next step after the child learned to stand and walk a little without its arms being held. But by the time Israel should have been able to stand firmly in faith, the people backslid. They stumbled due to the introduction of the calf-idols at Bethel and at Dan. This led to them falling deeply into the sin of idolatry, which led to them committing many other sins as they failed to maintain fellowship with the Lord and as they eschewed the reading of His word and the meditation upon His word. 

A stumble doesn't have to lead to a terrible fall but it can if we don't reach up for the Lord's hand---the hand He is extending to us---to be helped back onto our feet. If we don't correct the problem right away, we tend to stumble more and more until we've fallen headlong into a sin we could never have imagined ourselves committing. I speak from experience because it's happened to me. I didn't go from zero to one hundred in a split second; most of us don't. It was a gradual decline. It was a failure to correct small stumblings before they turned into a shocking fall. I found myself in a situation in which I never could have pictured myself. If somebody had ever told me I'd commit that particular sin, I'd have though they were crazy. I'd be willing to state that the Israelites never foresaw themselves falling into idolatry, and it didn't happen overnight, but it was a more gradual decline. The Lord gave them opportunities for several hundred years to correct their stumblings, sending them prophet after prophet to confront them with their sins, but most of them ignored His warnings. Now, like any good father, He must take corrective action. But also, like any good father, His corrective action is not intended to destroy the child. He will restore the nation of Israel and He will make it possible for the people to return there.

The Book Of Hosea. Day 32, God's Compassion On The Nation

The Lord continues to state His intention to discipline the northern kingdom for their idolatry (and the lawlessness which ensued from their idolatry) but He also states that He feels compassion for the people. He will not make an end of the tribes of the northern kingdom, though He could do so in righteousness as judgment for sin, but will spare a remnant who will return to the land. 

One thing I think it's important to keep in mind is that the penalty for sin---any sin---is death. (Romans 6:23) We have all sinned against God and, as a result, we must all face death with the exception of those believers who are still alive when Christ calls the church out of the world. Death is the penalty for sin. But because the Lord has compassion on us, He extends forgiveness and mercy toward us because He does not want to destroy us. He has been extending forgiveness and mercy toward the northern kingdom for many decades by the time Hosea is called to be a prophet to Israel, yet the majority of the people have not accepted His invitation to repent. We must repent in order to receive forgiveness but the people have clung to their wicked ways instead. 

Because of this, the Lord says, "A sword will flash in their cities; it will devour their false prophets and put an end to their plans. My people are determined to turn away from Me. Even though they call Me 'God Most High' I will by no means exalt them." (Hosea 11:6-7) They kept making a conscious decision to disobey Him. A number of them are still giving lip-service to Him, referring to Him as "God Most High", but they don't exalt Him in their hearts and He will not exalt (honor or reward) them for merely going through the motions of worshiping Him.

This next statement is a cry from the Lord's heart. It pains Him deeply to discipline Israel. We can almost hear the anguish in His voice when He says, "How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboyim?" (Hosea 11:8a) 

These two cities were mentioned in Deuteronomy 29 when the Lord warned the people that if they turned away from their covenant with Him, Israel would end up like the heathen cities He had destroyed. "It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the Lord overthrew in fierce anger. All the nations will ask: 'Why has the Lord done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?' And the answer will be: 'It is because this people abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their ancestors, the covenant He made with them when He brought them out of Egypt.'" (Deuteronomy 29:23b-25) 

The cities of Admah and Zeboyim must have been very wicked indeed, considering they are mentioned in the same verse as Sodom and Gomorrah, and this tells us that the Lord considers Israel's breaking of the covenant to be every bit as wicked (if not more so, because the Israelites knew the Lord in a personal way in which the heathens did not know Him) as the deeds of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim. 

The Lord vowed to utterly destroy the land if the people turned to the idols of the pagan nations, and yet His compassion is stronger than His anger. He will allow the nation to be conquered by the Assyrian Empire, as we already learned in our study of the kings. He will allow the majority of the people to be taken captive and deported to other lands, which we also learned in our study of the kings. But He will not rain down fire and brimstone on the land. He will not allow every person from every tribe of the northern kingdom to perish. He will preserve a remnant from each of the ten northern tribes. Although He has the right to carry out the same judgment He carried out on Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboyim, He will not. The people have not kept their side of the covenant but the Lord cannot bring Himself to completely reject them. He refuses to be ruled by anger, unlike humans who often give themselves completely over to that emotion and end up going too far, doing things they regret later but cannot take back. So He says, "My heart is changed within Me; all My compassion is aroused. I will not carry out My fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man---the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities." (Hosea 11:8b-9) 

Have you ever said or done something in anger that you wished you could take back after your temper had cooled off? I know I have. There are times when we experience what could be called "righteous indignation", when we truly have been terribly wronged and have a right to be upset about it. But even when we have a right to feel upset we often handle it poorly. And then there are times when our anger is out of proportion to what has actually happened; we react too strongly because the thing that finally sets us off is something that's happened on top of several other frustrating things that already happened during the day. As human beings, we sometimes allow our emotions to get the better of us and we end up doing or saying things we wouldn't have done or said if we'd taken more time to think before reacting to our circumstances. The Lord, thankfully, doesn't operate that way. He's never going to become enraged and go too far. He's never going to take an action He'll regret later. The Lord, unlike us, is incapable of losing control in anger and doing the wrong thing. He is going to allow hardship to come to the northern kingdom but it's going to be a controlled form of hardship because He is God, not a weak and sinful human being.

The Book Of Hosea. Day 31, God As A Father To Israel

Today we will be concluding Chapter 10 and beginning Chapter 11.

As we closed our last study session we found the Lord imploring the people to seek Him but this is what they have done instead: "But you have planted wickedness, you have reaped evil, you have eaten the fruit of deception. Because you have depended on your own strength and on your many warriors, the roar of battle will rise against your people, so that all your fortresses will be devastated---as Shalman devastated Beth Arbel on the day of battle, when mothers were dashed to the ground with their children. So it will happen with you, Bethel, because your wickedness is great. When that day dawns, the king of Israel will be completely destroyed." (Hosea 10:13-15) 

The reference to the destruction of a city called Beth Arbel is unclear in a historical context. Some scholars and historians propose that Beth Arbel was the Armenian city of Arbela which was conquered by Shalmaneser when he was the top general over Assyria's army, before he became king of Assyria. Wherever Beth Arbel was, and whatever happened there, it's clear that this was a well known example of atrocity. The soldiers who conquered the city not only struck down its fighting men but its women and children too, having no mercy on anyone. The Lord is predicting that an enemy (which we know is Assyria) will sweep in and destroy Bethel and show no mercy to the city's inhabitants. Bethel was the primary center of worship in the northern kingdom, where the king himself made offerings and sacrifices to the golden calf.

Chapter 11 opens with the Lord speaking of Himself as a father who brought up His child in the right way but whose child has gone terribly astray. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son." (Hosea 11:1) The exodus took place about 500 years before the time of Hosea. The Lord is speaking of the early days of Israel, when the people were still faithful to Him, and He talks about the nation as if it were an infant.

The Lord called Israel out of Egypt but the call of the Baals (the idols of the heathen nations) was a siren song they answered. Instead of remaining faithful to the Lord, they went astray and began bowing to false gods. "But the more they were called, the more they went away from Me. They sacrificed to the Baals and they burned incense to images." (Hosea 11:2)

They did this in spite of the Lord being the one---the only one---who had ever spoken to them or who had ever helped them. He now speaks of what we might call their toddler years. "It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by the arms; but they did not realize it was I who healed them. I led them with cords of human kindness, with ties of love. To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them." (Hosea 11:3-4)

The Lord is depicted as a patient and loving father. He taught Israel to stand just as a father holds his young child by the arms. He taught Israel to walk; He speaks of the ancient method of using a cord for the child to hold. A parent or nursemaid would hold one end of a cord (or tie one end to themselves) and the child would hold the other end while learning to toddle around. The Lord speaks of His affection for Israel by comparing Himself to a father who lifts a child up in a hug, snuggling the child against His cheek. He speaks of His willingness to stoop down low to help mankind. Although the Lord is so high above us that we cannot truly fathom His power and majesty and righteousness, He never considers it beneath Him to bend down to help weak and fragile human beings. 

Though He brought the nation out of Egypt, gave them His laws and commandments, provided for them in the wilderness, uprooted heathen nations from the promised land and planted them in their place, and prospered them in the promised land, they forsook Him. They forsook Him for things that were of no benefit. They forsook Him for useless idols that were incapable of speaking to them, providing for them, or saving them. The Lord took them out of bondage in Egypt and then they willingly gave themselves in bondage to the sin of idolatry. Since they preferred bondage to freedom, the Lord is going to allow them to become captives again. "Will they not return to Egypt and will not Assyria rule over them because they refuse to repent?'' (Hosea 11:5)

The Apostle Paul said that we are slaves to that which we give ourselves. If we give ourselves to the Lord and strive to live godly lives, we are slaves (servants) of the Lord. But if we give ourselves to sin, we are slaves to sin, and sin leads to death. (See Romans 6:16-18.) The people gave themselves to idolatry and became slaves of sin. Nothing good comes from sin. Sin comes in between a person and the Lord. Sin comes in between a person and their loved ones. Sin has consequences. The consequences of the people's sin---their constant and unrepentant sin---will be invasion by Assyria. Some will flee to Egypt while they still can, while others will be taken captive by the enemy army. Either way, they will end up dispersed among the heathen nations. There they will see idols everywhere and it will become clear to many of them that idols are nothing and that the Lord is their only helper.

In today's world idolatry usually doesn't look like it looked in Hosea's day. There are some areas of the world where people still bow to images, but idolatry in most nations has taken other forms. Idolatry occurs when we place more importance on anyone or anything than we place on the Lord. We typically think of idolatry as something we find pleasurable but the Lord has recently revealed to me that this isn't always the case. Idolatry can be a negative habit or an unhealthy obsession. The Lord revealed something to me that is an idol in my own life and before we conclude our study of the book of Hosea I will discuss my own struggles in more detail as a personal testimony. I am thankful the Lord has revealed this to me because this particular thing has enslaved me in ways I was never aware of before. So when we think of idolatry in modern times, it isn't necessarily some sort of pleasurable sin. It can be an unpleasant or even debilitating habit or obsession to which we are clinging. 

The Book Of Hosea. Day 30, Time To Seek The Lord

As we move on through Chapter 10 we again find the Lord foretelling disaster for those who have forsaken Him. But at the same time He invites them to turn back to Him. What the Lord desires most for all of us is that we would stay on the right path and reap the spiritual blessings of obedience. He doesn't want to discipline us but He will if He must, like any responsible father. Our ultimate good is His goal and He sends whatever is necessary to bring us to the place of spiritual blessing. In the case of the people of Hosea's day, who had forsaken the Lord for so long, the thing that would bring about their ultimate good was discipline for their sin. 

"Ephraim will be disgraced; Israel will be ashamed of its foreign alliances. Samaria's king will be destroyed, swept away like a twig on the surface of the waters. The high places of wickedness will be destroyed---it is the sin of Israel. Thorns and thistles will grow up and cover their altars. Then they will say to the mountains, 'Cover us!' and to the hills, 'Fall on us!'" (Hosea 10:6b-8) As we've noted before, the Lord often uses the name of the tribe of Ephraim (the largest tribe) synonymously with the name of Israel; likewise, He uses the name of the capital city, Samaria, synonymously with the name of Israel.

"Since the days of Gibeah, you have sinned, Israel, and there you have remained. Will not war again overtake the evildoers in Gibeah? When I please, I will punish them; nations will be gathered against them to put them in bonds for their double sin." (Hosea 10:9-10) The Lord uses the town of Gibeah to symbolize the lawlessness and depravity into which the people have sunk. In Judges 19 a number of the men of Gibeah surrounded the house of a man who had offered hospitality to a traveling Levite and his wife. The men demanded that the woman be sent out to them so they could all have their way with her. I assume they were threatening to kill the Levite and his host, and likely the host's entire family, if the woman was not sent out. It's possible they intended to burn the house down with them in it, but the Bible doesn't specifically say what threats the men made. The reason I assume they threatened harm on all the occupants of the house is because the Levite did hand the woman over to them (we discussed his character, or the lack thereof, when we studied the book of Judges) and the men abused and sexually assaulted her all night, resulting in her death. Many men throughout the nation came together to decide what to do about the depravity at Gibeah and they ended up demanding that the tribe of Benjamin, in which Gibeah lay, deliver up the violent offenders so justice could be carried out. 

The Benjamites refused to hand the men over and even assembled an army to fight anyone who tried to take the men into custody. This resulted in war between the soldiers of Benjamin and the soldiers of the other tribes. Thousands of men, on both sides of the war, fell on the battlefield during several days of fighting in Judges 20, but the Lord gave the victory to the men who were fighting on the side of justice. This was a sad time in the history of Israel. The sin of the wicked men of Gibeah led to civil war in the nation, and although they were punished for their sin, quite a few good men lost their lives fighting for what was right. There were women who lost their husbands or sons in this war. There were children who lost their fathers in this war. Everyone loses when there is great sin in the nation. Sin doesn't just affect the person who is sinning; it affects people close to them too.

"Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh; so I will put a yoke on her fair neck. I will drive Ephraim, Judah must plow, and Jacob must break up the ground. Sow righteousness for yourselves, 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 His righteousness on you." (Hosea 10:11-12) It's more difficult for seeds to take root in unplowed (hard) ground than in softened ground that has been turned by a plow. The people's hearts have grown hard against the Lord and He implores them to break up the unplowed ground of their hearts so seeds of righteousness can take root and spring up and become fruitful. They need to seek the Lord and, when they do, He will rain down spiritual blessings like rain falling on seeds planted in a field. He will make the fruitful vines of their hearts even more fruitful.

The Lord rewards our efforts to form a relationship with Him. Our human efforts are so puny but His power is so mighty! As the saying goes, "Little is much when God is in it," and if we will just soften our hearts toward Him and seek His presence He will pour out abundant spiritual blessings upon us. The Lord always outgives us! He remembers that He made us from the dust and He knows our strength is small but He honors our willingness to submit ourselves to Him by showering us with the type of spiritual blessings that help us produce more and more good fruit.