There is a wonderful old hymn by George Matheson

O LOVE THAT WILT NOT LET ME GO,
I rest my weary soul in thee:
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
The story of God’s chosen people of Israel is the story of God’s love which will not let them go. Generation after generation of the Israelites rebelled against God. So much that in Hosea’s time God would bring judgment on the Northern Kingdom of Israel and they would be invaded by the Assyrians. But all the time, God never stopped loving them. So this evening we will look at God’s unfailing love towards his people from Hosea chapter 11, but jumping around other bits of Hosea as well.

God’s Saving Love

Hosea 11:1 ‘When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

It was God’s love which had rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt in the first place. God called the Israelites “my first born son” when he met with Moses in Midian, long before he brought them out of Egypt with the miracle of passing through the Red Sea on dry land. Just as God knows us and loves us and calls us and saves us long before we first come to love him. That is the miracle of grace.

It was the calling and the destiny of the Israelites to be God’s firstborn son, his children. But it wasn’t because of anything in the Israelites themselves which caused God to save them. Rather it was because of God’s love.

Deuteronomy 7 7 The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.

God did not save the Israelites because of their own merits, but because of his steadfast love and mercy, the undeserved grace of God. But that rescue was only the beginning of the blessings God would pour down on Israel.

Hosea 11 3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
taking them by the arms;
but they did not realise
it was I who healed them.
4 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.

What a beautiful picture of the way God brought Israel through forty years in the wilderness and gave them the victory to take possession of the Promised Land. Cords of human kindness – ties of love – like a mother feeding her child. Like all children, Israel’s life started off with so much promise. But then as the years went by they fell short, as we saw two weeks ago,

Hosea 6 4 ‘What can I do with you, Ephraim?
What can I do with you, Judah?
Your love is like the morning mist,
like the early dew that disappears.

The problem of evaporating love.
Hosea 9 10 ‘When I found Israel,
it was like finding grapes in the desert;
when I saw your ancestors,
it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig-tree.
But when they came to Baal Peor,
they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol
and became as vile as the thing they loved.
The problem was spiritual adultery, worshipping idols and false gods.

God has done even so much more for us as Christians than he did for Israel. He forgives all our sins, he makes us his children, he gives us new birth and new life and he even dwells in us by His Holy Spirit. May God preserve and protect us from ever repaying his saving love in the terrible ways Israel did. The Old Testament is the story not only of God’s steadfast love but also of Israel’s waywardness.

Hosea 11 2 But the more they were called,
the more they went away from me.
They sacrificed to the Baals
and they burned incense to images.
3 It was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
taking them by the arms;
but they did not realise
it was I who healed them.

Despite all the blessings God poured out on his chosen people, they wandered further and further away from him. We saw this earlier in God’s judgments on the priests who failed to ensure that Israel kept the law of Moses.

Hosea 4 6 my people are destroyed from lack of knowledge.
‘Because you have rejected knowledge,
I also reject you as my priests;
because you have ignored the law of your God,
I also will ignore your children.
7 The more priests there were,
the more they sinned against me;
they exchanged their glorious God for something disgraceful.

Destroyed from lack of knowledge. Rejecting knowledge and ignoring the law of God. Familiarity breeds contempt, success breeds pride. Exchanging their glorious God for disgraceful idols and false gods. Time and again the sins of Israel are attributed to their rejection of God and his Law. Failing to acknowledge that the blessings they received had come from God.

Hosea 2 8 She has not acknowledged that I was the one
who gave her the grain, the new wine and oil,
who lavished on her the silver and gold—
which they used for Baal.

Hosea 4 Hear the word of the LORD, you Israelites,
because the LORD has a charge to bring
against you who live in the land:
‘There is no faithfulness, no love,
no acknowledgment of God in the land.

No acknowledgement of God! The people don’t know their God so they don’t give their worship to Him. The priests and prophets had failed in their calling. Like the Pharisees in Jesus’s time, they were blind guides, making their followers twice as fit for hell as they were themselves. All the people of Israel had followed them into sin. There’s a reminder here for us to pray for Christian leaders, ministers and Christians who are in the public eye. The devil loves to tempt Christian leaders into sin, to discredit them or to use them to lead Christians astray through false teaching. And there’s a challenge for every one of us to be growing closer to God, reading and studying the Bible for ourselves, so that we are not led astray by false teaching.

Having said all that, the sins of Israel were not only due to ignorance but often due to wilful disobedience.

Hosea 11 5 ‘Will they not return to Egypt
and will not Assyria rule over them
because they refuse to repent?
6 A sword will flash in their cities;
it will devour their false prophets
and put an end to their plans.
7 My people are determined to turn from me.
Even though they call me God Most High,
I will by no means exalt them.

They refuse to repent – “my people are determined to turn away from me”. Deliberate sin.
Every Christian faces this daily battle to say no to sin and yes to God.

Romans 7 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

But now the Israelites are going to reap the consequences of their continued rebellion.

Hosea 8 7 ‘They sow the wind
and reap the whirlwind.
The stalk has no head;
it will produce no flour.
Were it to yield grain,
foreigners would swallow it up.
8 Israel is swallowed up;
now she is among the nations
like something no one wants.
9 For they have gone up to Assyria
like a wild donkey wandering alone.
Ephraim has sold herself to lovers.

Hosea 9 3 They will not remain in the LORD’s land;
Ephraim will return to Egypt
and eat unclean food in Assyria.

Israel will get their just desserts – they will find themselves metaphorically back in Egypt again! In poverty and slavery.

Hosea 8 12 I wrote for them the many things of my law,
but they regarded them as something foreign.
13 Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to me,
and though they eat the meat,
the LORD is not pleased with them.
Now he will remember their wickedness
and punish their sins:
they will return to Egypt.
14 Israel has forgotten his Maker
and built palaces;
Judah has fortified many towns.
But I will send fire on their cities
that will consume their fortresses.’

Israel’s sins were grievous. Idol worship. Spiritual and physical adultery and immorality. Putting their trust in foreign gods and foreign armies instead of putting their trust in the God who had saved and created them. We must make sure that we do not fall into the sins of our generation. Materialism. Pride. Indifference. Worshipping the false gods of Money, Sex and Power, Entertainment and Celebrity. Or we would richly deserve the same punishment as the Israelites. But by the grace of God, we are held, like they were, by God’s steadfast loving-kindness. Because the whole Bible is the story of

God’s love which will not let us go

Hosea 11 8 ‘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?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.
9 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.

Here we see the tension which every parent knows and experiences between justice and love, punishment and mercy. The only thing the Israelites deserve is judgment, but instead God is going to show them mercy.

You may not remember Admah and Zeboyim. They were two cities on the plains which were destroyed alongside Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis chapter 14. Moses had warned Israel beforehand that they would be destroyed in that way if they rebelled against God and worshipped foreign gods when they were established in the Promised Land.

Deuteronomy 29 23 The whole land will be a burning waste of salt and sulphur—nothing planted, nothing sprouting, no vegetation growing on it. It will be like the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboyim, which the LORD overthrew in fierce anger. 24 All the nations will ask: ‘Why has the LORD done this to this land? Why this fierce, burning anger?’
25 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. 26 They went off and worshipped other gods and bowed down to them, gods they did not know, gods he had not given them. 27 Therefore the LORD’s anger burned against this land, so that he brought on it all the curses written in this book.

So God had warned the Israelites centuries before that a terrible judgment would fall if they worshipped idols and false gods, but the nation had sinned anyway. They deserved the complete destruction which God had threatened, but instead God decided to reduce the sentence. The righteous and holy God always has the right to punish sin. But God’s love for his chosen people outweighed his anger.

Hosea 11 8 ‘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?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.
9 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.

Instead of judgment God will bring mercy. He would spare a remnant of his chosen people. Centuries later Ezra would look back on the events of invasion of Israel by the Assyrians and then the invasion of Judah and the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple by the Babylonians.

Ezra 9 13 ‘What has happened to us is a result of our evil deeds and our great guilt, and yet, our God, you have punished us less than our sins have deserved and have given us a remnant like this.

Because of God’s divine character, his steadfast loving kindness and his covenant loyalty, he will not bring total destruction. In his mercy, God will preserve the faithful remnant of his chosen people.

For I am God, and not a man— the Holy One among you. I will not come against their cities.

Some people nowadays misunderstand this to mean that “God is too loving ever to punish sin.” That is not what the Bible teaches. There is no hint of universalism or the idea that “everybody will be alright in the end” in Hosea or anywhere else. What this does show that those on whom God has already set his grace will always be safe in his love. Grace is getting another opportunity when you haven’t earned it or deserved it, and even if at the time you don’t actually want it. However much we may wander from God, his love will never let us go, however much it may cost him. The way Hosea accepted his unfaithful wife Gomer back is a visual aid for the way God will win his people back

Hosea 3:1 The LORD said to me, ‘Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.’
So God was embarking on a second rescue mission, to win his chosen people back to himself. This was the heart of the message of Hosea, summed up as we saw back in chapter 2.

Hosea 2 14 ‘Therefore I am now going to allure her;
I will lead her into the wilderness
and speak tenderly to her.
15 There I will give her back her vineyards,
and will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she will respond as in the days of her youth,
as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
16 ‘In that day,’ declares the LORD,
‘you will call me “my husband”;
you will no longer call me “my master”. ….
19 I will betroth you to me for ever;
I will betroth you in righteousness and justice,
in love and compassion.
20 I will betroth you in faithfulness,
and you will acknowledge the LORD. …
23 I will plant her for myself in the land;
I will show my love to the one I called “Not my loved one”.
I will say to those called “Not my people”, “You are my people”;
and they will say, “You are my God.” ’

This is the love of God which will not let Israel go. This is the love of God which will never let us go if we belong to him. However far they have wandered away from him, God will bring his chosen people back to himself, the body of Christ, the new temple built out of living stones, the church. Because his love is unchanging. God’s love never fails. God’s love will never let us go. Praise God for loving us so much!

O LOVE THAT WILT NOT LET ME GO,
I rest my weary soul in thee:
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.