Hosea 11 sermon: “When he calls, his children come.”
Jun 21st, 2009 by Bryan
Here is the text of the sermon I preached this morning, focusing on Hosea 11:1-11. Believe it or not, I did not set out to write a “Father’s Day Sermon.” I don’t think the church needs to buy into every cultural holiday that comes down the pipe, and I don’t like the idea of having a message button-holed into a specific genre.
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Click below to read the sermon itself. I’d love to hear any comments or feedback you may have.
“When He Calls, His Children Come”
Bryan Bibb
John Knox Presbyterian Church, Greenville, SC
June 21, 2009
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We have two children, boys. Joseph is 4.5 and Nolan is 1.5. If you’ve worked in the Sunday School wing chances are you know Joseph. He wants to talk to everyone and he can be rather rambunctious. When he was a younger boy, and an only child, we spent a lot of time (we thought) chasing him around. Nolan’s energy level, however, puts Joseph in the dust. It is very common to hear someone in our house (me, my wife Jen, or even Joseph) yelling out “Someone catch that baby!” You’ll see Nolan tearing around a corner holding Joseph’s “baba” blanket or (my personal favorite) streaking buck naked with a diaper-wielding parent close on his heels. Nolan is a little guy who lives for the thrill of the chase.
So, I have some sympathy for God in this morning’s passage, in which he is figured as a parent calling to his children, saying “the more I called them, the more they went from me.” The situation with God’s children, Israel, is of course much more serious than a toddler running from his parents. But this passage uses what we know about children to say something about God’s patient and wise discipline.
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In looking at this passage this morning, let’s start with just a bit of history. Israel, the kingdom of David and Solomon, had split into two kingdoms, north and south. The northern kingdom called Israel survived about 2 centuries until it was conquered and destroyed by the Assyrians in the last half of the 8th century BC.
The prophet Hosea lived during the last decades of Israel’s life, and he gives us a glimpse of a nation in turmoil, with frequent political revolutions and with rampant religious idolatry and false worship. At the time of his prophecy, the situation in Israel had begun to deteriorate politically, socially, and militarily. It was only a matter of time before the nation itself was under threat of being destroyed by the invading Assyrian armies. Hosea attempts to explain to the people why things have gotten so bad, what God was attempting to do in and through the Assyrian crisis, and where their hope for the future might lie.
The chapter before us this morning compares God to the parent of wayward children. Let’s look more carefully at the oracle in chapter 11 to see what Hosea says about God’s patient disciplining of headstrong children. God nurtures and disciplines, and is finally a rock of stability for his children when they are ready to return, trembling and exhausted, to him.
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The passage begins by setting up the context in which we are to understand Israel’s current situation. The initial foundation of Israel’s relationship with God was the Exodus from Egypt. That miraculous and unilateral act of deliverance should have forever impressed upon Israel how much they owed God their worship and loyalty. The first point is that God’s relationship with Israel is one of nurturing care and provision.
However, like willful children, Israel has turned away from God. “The more I called to them, the more they went from me.” The prophet draws a vibrant image of contrast: the more God reaches out the more his children withdraw. Passion and care is met with apathy and rejection.
Hosea pictures God as a tender and capable parent. He says, “Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk.” He was the one who picked them up and healed their wounds in the days of their youth. As they grew up, they used the power of their strength, health and independence to go away, out into the world. Like many children as they grow into adolescents and young adults, they are not conscious of their debt to their parent with regard to their abilities and opportunities. In human families, that awareness is something that only comes with age and often through difficult experience.
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So the first point is that God nurtures and provides for Israel. Second, God trains and disciplines his children. God responds to the growing independence and willfulness of his children in two ways. First, God’s discipline is firm but based in loving kindness, and second, he ultimately gives his children the freedom to follow their own paths and to face the consequences of their decisions.
God’s model of discipline is one of firmness, consistency, and gentleness. He says in verse 4, “I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love.” I’m going to be honest with you here; this verse is hard to translate. The Hebrew text says God uses “cords of ‘adam” which most translations take to mean “cords of humanity” or in the NRSV, “cords of human kindness.” However, the words translated here “human kindness” and “love” can also mean leather. I know, aren’t biblical languages wonderful? The alternative reading is that God leads them like animals in leather traces. The second half of the verse says in the NRSV that God is like one who lifts infants to his cheek, but this phrase can also mean that God is like one who lifts up a yoke from an animal’s neck. Are the Israelites cuddly babies or harnessed farm animals?
Truth be told, I like both of these interpretations, and Hosea might be developing an elaborate pun by using words with double meanings. In the alternative reading, God uses leather traces to keep his flock in the paths they should go – clear boundaries and directions for them to follow, for their own good. The yoke exists for the purpose of necessary discipline, but God is ready and eager to take off the yoke when the time is right, granting his children independence and self-determination even as he provides for their physical needs.
In the NRSV’s reading, God is a parent who imposes discipline on his children, symbolized here with “cords” and “bands,” but his discipline is loving, kind, and humane. He balances the use of these cords and bands with physical closeness, nuzzling his little children to his face and feeding them. Either way (or both ways), Hosea provides an image of a parent and guardian who disciplines firmly but fairly, and who balances discipline with love, affection, and care.
So, the first aspect of God’s discipline is that it is firm yet rooted in love. That is the goal of all parents in dealing with their children. We want our children to recognize the love and care that lies underneath our disciplining of them. They almost certainly won’t see it at the time, but we hope that they realize in days to come that we tried to be firm, fair, and loving in setting up boundaries for them. They may be frustrated at the time, but that is part of growing up.
The second aspect of God’s discipline is much more difficult, especially for parents. At the height of his children’s rebellion, God lifts the yoke, cuts the cords, and watches as his children run off to dangerous, foreign lands. They go back to Egypt, thus reversing the amazing act of salvation that God performed in the Exodus. They throw God’s blessing and deliverance of them from slavery right back into his face. He laments in verse 7 that his children “are bent on turning away from me.”
What is the result of this rebellious behavior? The sword flashes in their cities. Their leaders are killed, and their cities are destroyed. The Hebrew here is a bit difficult as well, but the point is clear. Israel suffers heavy consequences for the decisions that they make. Like parents of adolescents and young adults, God is faced with a painful situation. No doubt he could predict that only bad things could come from Israel’s actions. But he does not, and cannot, force Israel to make better choices. His anguish rivals theirs own as he suffers at a distance.
Here is the painful irony of parenting. Parents provide protection, food, education, every good thing for their children. They keep them safe in the pool, they make them wear helmets while biking, they teach them to drive safely, they offer advice about school, career, marriage. In the end, however, the children make their own decisions; they succeed and fail on their own merits, as they learn hard and valuable life lessons on their own.
And yet, in today’s society there is a tremendous psychological pressure to insulate adolescents and young adults from the consequences of their actions. The hardest thing for God to do in this chapter, metaphorically speaking, is to allow his children to suffer the consequences of their own actions. The problem with insulating children from painful lessons learned is that the lesson learned must be their own. If the children are confident that the parent will always step in to rescue them from their own poor judgment, there is never incentive to learn and to act more responsibly.
So, God’s discipline shares two characteristics with good parenting. His discipline is firm, fair, and loving; and the final goal is for the children to become free and independent, wise and responsible in their adult maturity. Children cannot be children forever, which means that they, like all of us, must eventually suffer. Their best hope for weathering these storms is being raised in a home with discipline, love, compassion, and wisdom; resources from which they can draw when they stand on their own.
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Which brings me to my third point. In this metaphor, 1) God raises his children in nurturing love, and 2) provides discipline that is consistent, compassionate, and that aims for the goal of free, strong, and mature adults. Third, God the parent is a rock of stability for his wayward children.
Verse 8 contains one of the most personal glimpses into God’s emotions in the Bible. Watching Israel suffer in foreign lands, he asks, “How can I give you up?” Similar to passages in Jeremiah where God expresses dismay and sorrow at what has befallen Judah, here we find a beautiful description of God’s roiling emotions. His compassion grows warm and tender. His heart recoils, literally is transformed by his grief. This is a picture of God’s pathos; his empathy for his suffering children.
God through the prophet Hosea makes an astonishing promise to Israel: Ephraim shall not be utterly destroyed. Their pain and suffering will give way to restoration. Other passages in Hosea spell out the scope of God’s work of redemption and restoration of his fallen people.
What we find here is an image of God standing at home and (as in the first verses of the chapter) calling out to his children. Whereas they ran from his voice in their youth and petulance, now the older, wiser, and chastened children hear his voice and emerge trembling from the wilderness. God the parent calls his children home, to the home they forsook and rejected, but from which they were never forbidden.
Hosea compares the sound of God’s fatherly voice to the roaring of a lion. Most would hear the sound of a lion roaring and respond only with fear. Israel hears this roaring, however, as the lion cubs would hear it. They tremble in awe and trepidation, but that strong, overwhelming roar is the sound of their deliverance, the promise of safety, the chance for forgiveness, and the hope of salvation.
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In conclusion, there is a lesson here for parents as they think about raising up their own children with love and wisdom, in finding that balance between control and freedom, discipline and comfort. But there is also the gospel here. God’s providential care of us goes back way before we knew it, and works in ways too deep for us to fathom. No matter how far we stray or what troubles we face in this life, he is our rock, always present and waiting to save and to embrace. Like a lion he calls with strength and compassion, calling us to return trembling to our home.
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Thanks for your article and the comments about the Hebrew. Reading Hosea, we see how much mental turmoil the prophet had to go through with his adulterous wife, and his children. To any parent and husband, his love, understanding and compassion shines through. Yet all this is used as a symbol for how understanding God has been to Israel at that time, an adulterous wife who was playing th harlot with the nations around her, and not nurturing the fruits of the marriage.