Christ in Hosea

Week 9, Wednesday: The holy God of life
God’s covenant with Israel included obeying His Law. Through the Law was the knowledge of God and His will. The Law marked the pathway of life for everything from worship to family and community life to relations with foreign nations (Lev. 18.1-5). Reject the Law and you reject God and life as He intends it.

Read Hosea 7 and 8

Meditate on the following passages from Hosea
1.  Hosea 4.1-6: How can you see that the knowledge of God is intimately bound up in keeping His Law?

2.  Hosea 8.1: Here Hosea uses the word “rebel” rather than “forgot” (4.6) to describe Israel’s relationship to the Law of God. How do these terms describe the same reality?

3.  Hosea 8.12: What’s the difference between regarding the Law as containing “great things” and regarding it as containing “strange things”?

4.  Ezekiel 36.26, 27: What is the role of the Law of God in the New Covenant, promised in Hosea?

5.  Meditate on Matthew 5.17-19: How did Jesus “fulfill” the Law of God? How does God’s judgment against Israel portend the work of Christ in fulfilling the Law? What did Jesus intend the role of God’s Law to be in His Kingdom?

Summary
We are fools to think we know better than God how we ought to live (Prov. 14.12). God’s Law is a Law of liberty and life; all those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ ought to walk as He did, in the commandments of God’s Law (1 Jn. 2.1-6). But if we “forget” the Law, or ignore it, we are actually rebelling against the Lord and consigning ourselves to lives without love (Matt. 24.12). And without love, we are not disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ (Matt. 22.34-40; Jn. 13.1-15, 35).

Closing Prayer
Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes,
And I shall keep it to the end.
Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law;
Indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart.
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments,
For I delight in it.
Incline my heart to Your testimonies,
And not to covetousness.
Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things,
And revive me in Your way.
Establish Your word to Your servant,
Who is devoted to fearing You.
Psalm 119.33-38

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.