Podcast Introduction

Our reading today Hosea 8-14. After the reading, I’ll have some comments for you. I’m calling today’s episode “Boundless Love.” 

Comments on

In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked by a Pharisee what the greatest commandment is. His response was, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” 

In Hosea, God judged His people because they were not faithful to Him. 

7For my people are determined to *desert* me.
They call me the Most High,
but they don’t truly honor me. (NLT)

Hosea 11:7 NLT

How many times had He told them that judgement was coming, but that He would forgive them if they would repent and come back to Him? 

1 Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for your sins have brought you down.

2Bring your confessions, and return to the Lord. Say to him, “Forgive all our sins and graciously receive us,

so that we may offer you our praises. 3Assyria cannot save us, nor can our warhorses. Never again will we say to the idols we have made, ‘You are our gods.’ No, in you alone do the orphans find mercy.”

4The Lord says, “Then I will heal you of your *faithlessness*; my love will know no bounds, for my anger will be gone forever…”

Hosea 14:1-4 NLT

The same Hebrew word is used in 11:7 “for my people are determined to desert me” and in 14:4 “I will heal you of your faithlessness“. The word means “backsliding” or “apostasy”. To desert or to backslide or to be an apostate means that at one point they were *with* God, but then they turned away. 

Notice what God said here in 14:4: I will heal you of your faithlessness, your backsliding, your apostasy. He didn’t say forgive. He said heal! Listen to what Spurgeon wrote about this: “as though he said, ‘My poor people, I do remember that they are but dust; they are liable to a thousand temptations through the fall, and they soon go astray; but I will not treat them as though they were rebels, I will look upon them as patients, and they shall look upon me as a physician.” 

After telling them that He would heal them of their apostasy, He said, “…my love will know no bounds…”. And it is because of His boundless love that he looked at their backsliding as a disease instead of a willful crime. 

Oh beloved, what a God we serve! Isaiah 53 speaks prophetically of the coming Messiah, Savior, Jesus. And in verse 5 it says, “5But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed.” That healed is the same Hebrew word as in Hosea.

Jesus came to earth as a man so that He could be in the same “stuff” as us, the same flesh. But He never backslid, He never sinned. When He was tempted, He never gave in. And so He was the perfect, spotless sacrifice for our transgressions and our iniquities. 

Beloved, the healing that God promised in Hosea was begun on the cross and completed with the empty tomb. And this work was all because of God’s boundless love. Hallelujah! 

God loves you more than you could ever hope to comprehend, and He longs to have you respond to that love by accepting His gift of mercy and grace. I hope you’ve done that. 

What a God! He is worthy of praise, don’t you think? I sure do.

Today’s Bible Translation

Bible translation used in today’s episode: Ch. 8-14 NLT

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The Team

Transcript Correction: Lifespring Family Berean, Sister Denise
Podcasting 2.0 Chapters: Lifespring Family Berean, Brother Sean of San Pedro and Lifespring Family Berean, Brother Michael Haner
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