When Israel was a youth I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son. The more they called them, The more they went from them; They kept sacrificing to the Baals And burning incense to idols. Yet it is I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them in My arms; But they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws; And I bent down and fed them. (Hos 11:1-4)That first verse is actually quoted in Matthew, and, interestingly enough, with an entirely different meaning. Matthew writes of Jesus as a baby in Egypt and quotes this text as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. But the text is quite meaningful beyond that. God is talking about Israel in Egypt and refers to them as "My son." He called them, He went with them, and they ignored Him. He taught them to walk and took them in His arms, and "they did not know that I healed them." Imagine that. All He did for them and they didn't know.
Some things never change. Most humans never notice that all things consist in Him (Col 1:17). But even believers fail to recognize that we can do nothing without Him (John 15:5). We are, in essence, semi-deists. We live, we breathe, we brush our teeth and earn a living, we feed ourselves ... all on our own ... never realizing it's all Him. So it's actually comforting to read, after all our failure to recognize Him in our lives, He "led them with cords of a man, with bonds of love, And I became to them as one who lifts the yoke from their jaws; And I bent down and fed them." We fail. We do. Even believers. We fail to see His hand in everything. And He? He leads and loves and frees and feeds us. He just ... keeps ... taking care of us. We don't often recognize His hand, but we are always ... in His arms.
21 comments:
I've often wondered if the majority of the "prophecies" that the New Testament authors pulled from were taught to them from the disciples on the road to Emmaus. There is no possible way for a normal person reading that passage to pull out one sentence as a reference to the Messiah without divine intervention.
I imagine our inability to recognize His complete sustenance of our very lives is a left over from our suppression of the truth. Thankfully, the more we recognize and acknowledge the truth, the more we can see His hand in everything, and turn away from our sin of unthankfulness.
I found the passage of Hosea you highlighted today particularly touching, and your reminder that I am in His arms and have been healed was just what I needed this Monday morning.
A commentary on the book of Hosea from my bookshelf (titled Love to the Loveless: The Message of Hosea), summarizes Hosea 11:1-11 with God saying, “How can I give you up? Do you think you mean as little to me as I mean to you? I was a father to you. I taught you to walk! But you have turned against me, and you have made up your mind. You must go through with it now, with everything that you were warned against. Yet how can I destroy you? My love remains, and in the end my sons will come back, shaken and ashamed, home to me again.”
The book’s back cover says it all: “Hosea’s awful portrait of the human condition is our lesson in pain. All of us have played the harlot by forsaking God and his ways. The picture is not pretty but it’s true. Yet Hosea’s clear illustration of God’s love for us brings joy. While we are yet sinners, God comes to us and loves us.” [emphasis added]
I’m eternally grateful that He is that type of God!
David, I have this theory on Matthew's take in that text. I think that it is entirely possible that Matthew understood that Hosea text as he did under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I know ... controversial, but ... indeed, understanding like that is not human. (And I would have LOVED to be in on that road to Emmaus conversation where Jesus explained all the Scriptures about Him.)
Lorna, that is the incredible message of hope that I get from Hosea (and the rest of Scripture). We have an angry God ... who won't let go of His children.
To the anonymous commenter that required two entries to say what he/she needed to say, let me reassure you ... I believe nothing of the sort that you're complaining about or attributing to me. Posting that long of a comment about something I DON'T believe and wasn't relevant to the topic isn't of value to the community, so I didn't.
On a side note, going to an AI to determine correct theology seems an extremely foolhardy approach since 1) the truth about God is rejected by humans (Rom 1:18-25; Rom 8:7) and 2) theological truth is not determined by majority opinion.
I recently saw a video of an Episcopalian bishopess(?) was complaining that the episode of Jesus calling the Canaanite woman a dog was embarrassing and not her Jesus. I had to wonder, if you're getting your Jesus from somewhere other than Scripture, where? I hadn't thought of AI. Maybe that's a nicer, gentler Jesus.
Thanks for taking time to address my comment. I thought seeing it on your page might prompt a person like Lorna to make us laugh with something like, "I once asked ChatGPT to give its exegesis of Revelation chapter 12, and..."
I am in that phase of life where I come out of a store and don't always remember where I parked my car. So, it is possible my memory from 10-20 years ago of you being in harmony with Hank Hanegraaff is in error. Hank saw Heaven as a restored planet Earth free from corruption, yet continuous in existence from the time of Adam on to a never-ending future of living in union with God. (Or possibly Hank made a distinction between "Heaven" and "New Earth," but that would bring up questions such as, "Do some humans end up in Heaven and others on the surface of New Earth? If so, what determines the destination for some specific believer?")
1st century Jews (especially boys/men) would have been much more familiar with the Jewish scriptures than most of us are today, which might explain it.
I also concur with Stan's hypothesis that the Holy Spirit played a significant role in showing the NT authors the connections.
Finally, I think that the Road to Emmaus, theory does have some merit. It's certainly possible that Jesus teaching drew on the connections between the OT and His life and that they were passed on to the rest of Jesus' followers.
If you don’t mind an aside on a side note: Your advice to avoid “going to an AI to determine correct theology” because “theological truth is not determined by majority opinion” is solid. It occurs to me, however, that it would be helpful for this one purpose: to ascertain the “majority opinion” on a matter; sometimes that is relevant and useful (but not for any serious pursuit of God’s truth, of course). It makes me wonder how soon before AI replaces things like Barna polls. Any thoughts on that?
Anonymous, no, I am not in line with Hank Hanegraaff. I've never referenced him nor have I ever argued anything at all about the nature of heaven or the New Earth. Never a topic I've considered, explored, or offered. "What will Heaven or Hell be like?" is too remote to be dogmatic about.
Anonymous, My name was mentioned in your comment, but honestly, I cannot understand why. I don’t believe I have ever cited ChatGPT when commenting here (I’ve never used it, in fact). (I have read a bit from Hank Hanegraaff, though). I’m glad I can provide humor, but please feel free to clarify for me.
My thinking was: I wonder if Stan or any of the regulars here have put a theological question to some type of AI? Would they place any credence in the answer AI gave them? And merely because Lorna comments so frequently here, I imagined her trying it and getting some answer she considered to be goofy and then passing the answer on to the rest of us for a laugh.
Given the concept of AI (where the "I" for intelligence is really misleading), I would never ask the AI (built by sinful humans) about theology and expect a usable answer ... especially when I have my Bible always at hand for ... you know ... a reliable truth source.
While I agree that scripture is much too vague to be dogmatic, it does seem reasonably clear that there is a "heaven/paradise" that is spoken of as well as a "new heaven and new earth". It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to conclude that those are not synonymous. But it's not something to be dogmatic about.
I could see asking AI as an experiment to see how closely it aligned with scripture, but I could never see using AI to supplant scripture or trusting AI over scripture. I share Stan's concern over the biases built in to any AI, and his distrust of using it for interpreting scripture. Will people do so, probably. Will they be foolish, probably. Is speculating about this really productive?
I appreciate the clarification, Anonymous (due to not seeing your original comment, I was completely clueless). Personally, I do often pose theological questions to Google--not usually for Google AI Overview’s “answers” (usually generic at best and undiscerning at worst) but to get links to reputable sources for biblical content. (For example, if I searched “what will heaven be like?” I might then go to the link to Randy Alcorn’s book Heaven.) However, as I mentioned above, I have found Google AI Overview helpful for this obvious purpose: informing me of the “popular opinion” or the “what are common beliefs about this or that?”--which is frequently useful for my thought process. The important thing to remember, to my mind, is that the information offered is representative of the world’s mindset--and must always be judged with that caveat.
In any event, I must say, Anonymous, that I am torn between being flattered that you perhaps see me as one who “does her homework” and being concerned that I can be depended upon to present “goofy” conclusions in my comments! :)
In order to be perfectly accurate, it appears I did reference Hanegraaff one time on my blog. Of course, it was a News Weakly entry post in which I questioned his entire theology. So ... if we learn anything about my views on Hanegraaff from my blog, it would be that I disagree with his theology.
And I will clarify to Anonymous that the Hank Hanegraaff books I read were Resurrection (which contained some of his views about heaven and the afterlife), published in 2002, and Christianity in Crisis: 21st Century, published in 2009--both long before Hanegraaff converted to the Eastern Orthodox religion. Sadly, he went from being the “Bible Answer Man” and dispensing solid Christian discernment and apologetics teaching to embracing an unbiblical faith (in the fashion of Scott Hahn).
I think Anonymous' comment was about finding the silly answers AI would give and presenting them as a joke.
Yes, and I trust that any “joke” comments of mine would be distinguishable from my regular (serious) comments! I think the real skill, however, would be in discerning the only slightly “silly answers” from good ones--both from me and from AI! As Charles Spurgeon famously said, "Discernment is not [only] knowing the difference between right and wrong; it is knowing the difference between right and almost right." This is the danger in relying on AI, in my opinion--just like any worldly source of “truth.”
Regarding the comments on the topic of the road to Emmaus, you all might enjoy this beautiful movie (only 24 minutes long) that appeared in my YouTube feed last evening. It’s called Road to Emmaus -- Full Official Movie, produced by Genesis Apologetics (a quick Google search will bring it up). I felt it presented the events depicted in Luke 24:13-35 very well (including the moment for the two travelers when “their eyes were opened and they knew Him…” (Luke 24:31) [I predicted exactly how that came about].
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