Hosea 5:15; “I will go and return to my place until they acknowledge their offence and seek my face, in their affliction they will seek me early.”
I counted up the number of times that God said in the Old Testament, in one form or another, that He would not leave us or forsake us. I counted twenty two times. That seems to be enough to declare a contradiction in Scripture where it says in Hosea that God will go and return to His place. Sounds like from this rendering that God is saying that he has had enough and will take his marbles and return home, even if He said he would never leave us nor forsake us. Aside from giving the impression that God will leave us to our sins and walk away, how can we explain that in light of His omnipresence where He is everywhere at one time.
Being the good conservative that I am I refuse to admit there is a contradiction in the Bible. I believe most our seeming contradictions just stems from how we translate a passage. This passage, I believe, could be translated in a way which makes it more clear as to just what God is talking about here.
First we need to see what he means by saying, I will go and return. The word for to go is halakah. There are any number of words in the Hebrew the writer could have chosen to express to go if that were indeed the intended idea. Using the word halakah would imply that he is going to go His righteous way. That makes sense because what fellowship does darkness have with light? (II Corinthians 6:14). Ever stop to think that God also walks the Halakah, He too walks in righteousness. That is pretty obvious, but if you think about it it does then make sense that He cannot walk with someone who is not walking in righteousness and so he must continue in this righteous walk and it is up to you to follow or not.
The word for return is shuv. Run down the list of usages of the word shuv in Hebrew and other Semitic languages and you will get the idea of returning for the purpose of power and strength. The word is used in its Canaanite form for an army which retreats for the purpose of regaining its strength and advantage. So this is not a picture of God forsaking us but retreating from us so that he can regroup and reposition. I discovered one usage of shuv that really fits and I would apply it to this verse. It is the usage as to shine brighter. This is interesting, God would have to return or retreat so He can shine brighter. What would dull that shine on God?
I don’t think the question is what but who. God’s people were being held out to the world as worshippers of Jehovah and yet they were involved in living lawless lives. They were an embarrassment to God. Do we ever stop to consider that our actions at times may be embarrassing to God? The very thing we do that we think will win God’s favor ends up being an embarrassment to Him such that He must retreat in order to save His good name rather than pour out His blessing as many hope from their actions.
I am not taking sides on what is happening in Kentucky with this elected official who is refusing to sign marriage certificates for homosexuals in violation of the law, I am only sharing my thoughts on what I am reading from the other side of the evangelical coin. There is a serious issue here of someone disobeying the law and this has sparked a debate on the world stage between Evangelical Christians. There are some heated and angry debates going on between believers being played out on the world stage. This is not the only thing the world is watching. There is a debate with the John McArthur Strange Fire Controversy, the debate over a new Arabic translation of the Bible which does not mention the words Son of God. The world is watching Christians taking pot shots at each other, suing each other, and feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys, not only in Christian media but secular media as well.
Perhaps it is time for Christians on both sides of these issues to start reading the liberal press. I personally don’t like what I am reading. I am hearing words like the uppity Christians, the pushy Christians, the Christians trying to force their agenda, the Christians who think they are so righteous etc. Sounds familiar? These are the same terms thrown out by other minority groups demanding their rights. Evangelical Christians are coming across like just another minority bully demanding their rights.
If I read my Bible right Jesus said in Matthew 10:22: “And ye shall be hated of all [men] for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.” It is for the name of Jesus they hate us, not because we are pushy, self-righteous, arrogant or martyrs, or outright rude. Like Mahatma Gandhi said; “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Show me how that dislike fits Matthew 10:22. I, as you, have met very few people who do not like Jesus. Most of what I hear is: “I don’t like the church or I don’t like religion.” Rarely do we hear, “I don’t like Jesus.”
I watched a Used Car salesman today using his free time to wash and polish his cars. He is proud of his inventory and he wants to make his inventory shine. He is not going to pour buckets of mud on the cars, take a sludge hammer and pound a few dents in the car or take a key and scratch them up. He is going to protect the image of his cars.
Like I said, I am not taking sides on these issues, I am only asking that as we air our dirty laundry before the world we, as believers, should take a good look at what it is the unbelieving world is seeing and just ask ourselves, “Have we chosen the right fight? Is Jesus going to shuv (shine) in this or are we pouring buckets of mud on His name.”
God might have to do what he did with Israel when they embarrassed Him and that was to halakah, continue in the righteous path and withdraw from anyone who is not displaying that righteousness.
My own thought on all this is that I think Christians in America are afraid, they fear God’s judgment is going to fall on America and they will be thrown under the bus with everyone else when the economy collapses, natural disasters fall, marital law takes over or any other of the scary conspiracy theories that are out there. Christians think that the only way to prevent this from happening is to force the government to see things our way out law homosexuality, get prayer back in the schools and outlaw abortion and then He might spare us.
I think Hosea is teaching us that that is not what God wants, He only wants to shine. The only way to prevent these disasters is not through committees, demonstrations, radical outcries, but just letting the light of God shine through us. If He can’t shine through us, if the world does not see Him shining through us but just sees us as just another radical minority group demanding their rights, God may very well halakah and shuv go and retreat from us so He can find some other place to shine.
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