Hosea 8

Week 6, Tuesday: The fruit of bad choices
Israel’s coming calamity would be nothing more than the consequence of her own bad choices. The wages of sin were about to be paid.

Read Hosea 8

Meditate on Hosea 8.7-14
1.  Meditate on the first part of verse 7. What does this mean? The Apostle Paul picks up this language in Galatians 6.7, 8. How does he employ this image?

2.  What does it mean to consider the Law of God a “strange thing” (v. 12)? What would this look like in our day?

3.  Foreign nations were preparing to “swallow up” Israel and everything she had. This would happen through warfare, subjugation, and captivity, and it would be the fruit of Israel’s having compromised with those nations and their gods and morality. Is the Church in our day in danger of being “swallowed up” by the surrounding culture? In what ways? Why?

4.  God’s people are forgetful of Him (v. 14). How does this happen? How does it affect the people of God? How can believers help one another to remember the Lord and His covenant (Heb. 10.24)?

5.  Hosea explained that the judgment coming upon Israel would be God remembering their sins and punishing them accordingly (v. 13). How does the punishment of Israel point forward to the coming of Christ?

Summary
Israel was about to receive from God only what they had invited upon themselves. They might forget Him and seek the good life by means of pagan no-gods and compromises in their morality, but God does not forget His Word (cf. Deut. 28). What He has promised, He will remember, keep, and fulfill, and this remains as true today as it was for Israel in Hosea’s day.

Closing Prayer
Do not withhold Your tender mercies from me, O LORD;
Let Your lovingkindness and Your truth continually preserve me.
For innumerable evils have surrounded me;
My iniquities have overtaken me, so that I am not able to look up;
They are more than the hairs of my head;
Therefore my heart fails me.
Be pleased, O LORD, to deliver me;
O LORD, make haste to help me!
Let them be ashamed and brought to mutual confusion
Who seek to destroy my life;
Let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor
Who wish me evil.
Let them be confounded because of their shame,
Who say to me, “Aha, aha!”
Let all those who seek You rejoice and be glad in You;
Let such as love Your salvation say continually,
“The LORD be magnified!”

Psalm 40.11-16

T. M. Moore

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Each week’s studies in our Scriptorium column are available in a free PDF form, suitable for personal or group use. For all available studies in Hosea, click here.

A primary theme of the book of Hosea is Israel’s failure to keep covenant with the Lord. God’s covenant is a central theme and provides the organizing motif for all of Scripture. Learn more about God’s covenant by ordering a copy of T. M.’s book, I Will Be Your God, from our online store (click here).

Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.