Daily Lesson for Tuesday 15th of April 2025

God’s request of the prophet Hosea may be one of the strangest assignments ever given to one of His servants: marry a harlot—on purpose! But God was using Hosea to help us understand, from His own perspective, the pain of human sin and rebellion. God had lovingly chosen a wife, Israel, who repeatedly cheated on Him, and yet, astonishingly enough, He took her back and restored her.

Image © Jim Howard at Goodsalt.com

The Bible reveals that the errors of Israel in the Old Testament would be largely repeated by Christ’s New Testament church. God’s covenant people went wildly astray prior to their exile, bringing the idolatrous practices of neighboring nations into God’s covenant nation. “Concerned over the growing rift within the church over Arius’s ideas, Constantine both convened and intervened in the Council of Nicaea.” — Christopher A. Hall, “How Arianism Almost Won,” Christianity Today, (2008). In each case, God’s people wandered outside of their relationship with Him in order to find “solutions” for perceived problems.

God’s choice of words makes it seem obvious that He is not only trying to show us what we’ve done wrong but also sharing how it makes Him feel. Those who have been betrayed by a spouse can begin to grasp the feelings of devastation that our infidelity to Christ might stir in the courts of heaven. Perhaps the most amazing part of Hosea’s story is the lengths to which the prophet went to redeem his wayward wife.

When we see the final cry to humanity, calling God’s people to come out of Babylon, it is noteworthy that He is calling His own people, and not strangers. He knows them intimately. He loves them. And as the world pitches toward its worst hour, He is still offering the redemption price that He had paid in order to purchase us back with His own blood. The cross of Christ, more than anything else, should show us just how earnestly the Lord wants to save His wayward people.

<–Monday Wednesday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25b-03-hoseas-harlot-wife/

Daily Lesson for Monday 14th of April 2025

Ezekiel 16:1-63 shows us an astonishing picture of God’s regard for His people. He describes the nation of Israel as an abandoned baby, left in a field to die. He takes her home, cleans her up, and when she is fully grown, he marries her. It is a powerful picture of an unlikely marriage.

Image © The Classic Bible Art Collection – Formerly Standard Publishing at Goodsalt.com

God told Israel that, under His care, she grew “ ‘exceedingly beautiful’ ” (Ezekiel 16:13, NKJV). When God first found her, nobody found her beautiful; she was a reject among other children, cast aside in the hopes that she would die. But as God showered His attention on her, she became more and more beautiful, until she was the talk of the world. In the earliest days of the Hebrew kings, under David and Solomon, this was particularly true. The queen of Sheba even made a special trip in order to see the splendor of Israel for herself!

Israel’s beauty, however, was entirely the gift of God. She was ­beautiful—the talk of the nations—precisely because she was His bride. God says that her beauty “ ‘was perfect through My splendor which I had bestowed on you’ ” (Ezekiel 16:14, NKJV).

This is a recurrent theme in the Bible: God’s bride is beautiful, not because of anything she has done but because God has showered His favor on her and made her that way. In a similar way, believers appear beautiful in the estimate of heaven, not because of anything we have done to earn it but because of the favor of God, the salvation that He has showered on us. We are beautiful because we are covered in His righteousness, the “righteousness of God” Himself (2 Corinthians 5:21).

All was good, however, until the next verse in Ezekiel: “ ‘But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it’ ” (Ezekiel 16:15).

We were created to reflect the goodness and glory of God. When God’s creations assume that their beauty is their own, that beauty is cheapened, and trouble awaits.

<–Sunday Tuesday–>

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Source: https://ssnet.org/blog/25b-03-the-beautiful-bride/