Hosea 11:8: “How shall I give thee up Ephraim?  How shall I deliver thee, Israel?  How shall I make thee as Admah?  How shall I set thee as Zeboim.  My heart is turned within me, my repenting’s are kindled together.”

 

If you never experience a broken heart you are either not a member of the human race or you never had a relationship with a friend, family or a marriage.  A broken heart seems to be one thing we as humans have in common and we are always ready to offer our condolences  to who is going through the stages of a broken heart.

 

So how do we define a broken heat.  I recently read an article of a celebrity whose husband was caught cheating on her.  She described how she felt totally destroyed, she thought her life was completely ruined and all her dreams were thrown into a trash can.  Her grief or sorrow was a like a burning hot iron piercing her heart.   Here was a woman who was desired by millions of men around the world but the one man she wanted most to desire her wanted someone else. She said that she felt like a prisoner, held captive by her love for her unfaithful husband. Physically she said her stomach was churning and tumbling so much she could not eat and as a result was losing weight.

 

In my opinion this poor woman who could have practically any man she wanted was suffering from a broken heart over one man who was unfaithful to her. So let me summarize the words this woman used to describe her broken heart.  She used the words destroyed and ruined. She also said her dreams were thrown into the trash. She described her grief and sorrow as a burning hot iron piercing her heart. She also described physical expressions of her pain as her stomach was churning and tumbling.

 

Now let us look at Hosea 11:8 where God is describing the condition of His heart as a result of the rejection of His people.  God is saying that his “heart is turned within him and his repenting is kindled together.”

 

My heart turns within me. The word turn is hafak and is a very ugly word in Hebrew. It has the idea of ruin, overthrown, and destroyed. It is also a word for an imprisonment or putting in stocks. It also is used to express a tumbling or churning. God is saying that His heart his ruined and destroyed and His repenting is kindled. Repenting is nakam which is a word expressing sorrow, or grief and the word kindled is kindling like making a fire or smoldering.  His heart is destroyed and his grief is burning. Does that sound familiar?   It sounds like the description of a broken heart.

 

What could break the heart of the God of the universe? The first part of Hosea 11:8 tells us what has broken God’s heart. How shall I deliver you O Israel? This is a cry from the very heart of God.  Israel means prince of God.  It is the name God uses when He wants to express his affection, as a husband would call his wife, My dear.  The word deliver is sum which has the idea of setting up to examine and regard.  This is a picture of a woman who has placed her husband on this high pedestal and then learns he has been unfaithful, how will she now regard him. Her whole image of him is shattered.  God is expressing the same feeling over the unfaithfulness of His people.

 

How shall I make (sum) thee as Adman and Zebiom. Contrary to popular opinion it was just not Sodom and Gomorrah that was destroy, about five other cities went down with them. Adman and Zebiom were like the wealthy, privileged, upper crust suburb of Sodom and Gomorrah. God realizes that Israel has set themselves up for destruction. The prosperity and wealth that He gave them became the very thing that lead to their downfall.

 

Here is a phrase that truly reveals the heart of God.  “How shall I give thee up Ephraim?  The word give is nathan which means to give and in this context it would reference a sacrificial giving. The Talmud teaches that God calls His people Ephraim when His people has rejected him and he uses this word to express a broken heart. The picture we have here is one of a rejected spouse, tearfully forced to sign divorce papers.

 

In Genesis 1:27 we learn that man was made in the image of God.  Part of that image is that God created a heart in us much like His, a heart that can easily be broken. One of the first steps to understanding God’s heart is to realize that He has a heart that is not that much different than ours.  To love someone means that you have made yourself vulnerable to that person. You have given to that person the ability to deeply hurt you.  When God chose to love us, he gave us a similar responsibility. He gave us the ability to wound and break His heart.

 

When I was a pastor, a young mother of three small children came to my office with papers from her husband’s attorney. She laid the divorce papers out on my desk and in tears asked: “How could anyone who had once so professed love, do this to the person he said he loved.”  I don’t know if it was my imagination or not but I could actually see Jesus with his arm around this young woman also weeping and saying: “I know how you feel, my people have done the same to me.”

 

I wonder how many of us have been that cruel and mean to the Savior that we profess to love.  I hear a lot of people talk about serving God, but I hear very few talk about protecting His heart. Perhaps our greatest service would be to learn and understand His heart, so we can protect it.

 

The God of the universe has millions of people who love Him, but He is still broken hearted over that one person who will not love Him – you. If we truly love Him, would we not want to protect his heart? We wish to reach our neighbor with the Gospel message because we don’t want him to go to hell.  But do we want to reach our neighbor because we know it will break the heart of the God we love who would be heartbroken if that person were to die without loving Him?

 

 

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