Hosea 7:14: “And they have not cried unto me with their hearts when they howled upon their beds, they assemble themselves for corn and wine and they rebel against me.”

 

How many times have we found ourselves in a real jam and we start to cry to out to God.  Often our cry goes something like this: “O Lord, I know I don’t go to church as much as I should, you know that, and I only pray to you when I am in trouble, and boy am I in trouble now.”  That little prayer is a perfect illustration of Hosea 7:14.  That is an example of crying unto God, but not with our hearts.

 

In the Book of Hosea, the prophet Hosea is prophesying to the Northern Kingdom during the reign of Jeroboam II in the 8th century BC.   This is the time just before they were taken into captivity by the Assyrians.   Jeroboam encouraged the worship of Baal, the god of the Assyrians in the hopes of appeasing the Assyrians.   He also tried to play off both ends of the stick by calf worship, the god of Egypt in the hope of winning an alliance with Egypt to fight off the Assyrians.  But when famine hit the land, guess who they turned to?

 

This is where Hosea comes in. He married an unfaithful woman and was really in love with this woman, but she would run off with other men.  Hosea would take her back when she became destitute and no sooner does she find herself in a good condition that she gets restless and runs off with another man.  This is so like the Northern Kingdom of Israel.  Hosea 7:14 does not say that God did not answer the prayer of the people when they cry out to Him.  What is being expressed is that no sooner does he come to their rescue than they rebel against Him again. The word rebel is sur which means to withdraw.  It is also in an imperfect form and should be translated as a future tense.  Hence we would render this as: “they assemble themselves for corn and wine, but they will withdraw from me.”  Once they get what they need, then they forget all about God again.

 

The key problem with this whole matter is not that you should not call out to God in time of trouble.  In fact David says in Psalms 119 that if it were not for his affliction, he would not have sought the Lord.  It is not that the call is insincere.  The verse says that they howled from their bed.  It seems that the worst moments of your struggles or problems come in the middle of the night when you are trying to sleep.  The word howl  in Hebrew is yalal which means to wail. It is spelled Yod, Lamed and  Lamed.  The two Lameds picture someone in bed with their arms raised up to God crying out in tears to God.  The Yod indicates that their attention is directed to God.  So such people are crying out to God with their attention focused on God, but still the Bible says that they do not call upon Him with their hearts.

 

The word in Hebrew for heart, levav, which expresses the idea of your entire being, your emotions, desires, hopes and dreams and the Lamed in the word heart suggest that all these emotions, hopes, desires and dreams are connected to God. The double Beth suggest two hearts joined together.  But surely someone sitting up in bed, in tears with his arms raised to heaven, crying out to God, giving Him their full attention must be crying from their hearts.  According to Hosea 7:14, apparently not.   You know, two people  in a  relationship whether friendship or marriage, will have times when one will say or do something that hurts the other person.  The one that gets hurt can yalal that is they  will wail, cry or moan and call out to the other person declaring their hurt. The other person may realize their wrong and try to offer comfort or even apologize. That person doing the offense will often feel really bad about and they will end up  hurting as well. The problem is that because of their own hurt they may not be able to communicate words of comfort very well. The person who gets hurt is so focused on their own hurt that they won’t even consider that the one who offended them is also hurting and thus there is communication breakdown.

 

If God loves us as much as we are told in Scripture and he is perfect in His love, then it stands to reason when we hurt, He will also hurt.  If we are truly crying out to God with our hearts, we will have a connection with God then we will feel His hurt as well.  Too often we just lash out at God, “How could you do this to me.”  or “Why don’t you do something, you love me not.” One of the cruelest and most painful things you can do to someone who truly loves you is to question their love.  We are so focused on our own pain that we don’t stop to consider that God may be hurting as well and what He really wants to do is to take us in His arms, speak soothingly to us and comfort us, but like a spoiled child we push Him away and tell Him to do something or we will go to some other God, like Israel did in the Book of Hosea.  Such a reaction is not calling to Him with our hearts, it is calling to Him with our minds and our wounded souls.

 

If we do not realize that God hurts when we hurt and go to Him to allow Him to do what His love longs to do, hold us, comfort us and sooth us, then we will not make that connection with Him, we will not be making a connection with His heart and we will not be yalal (howl) with our hearts, we will just yala (howl) with our pain and selfish desires giving little regard to God’s  wounded heart.

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