Sunday 11:25:12

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Paul says this love surpasses knowledge – it is too great to be ever fully known. But we can know this love more, apprehend it more fully, explore it, and experience it more in our lives. But we need the help of the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s too big for us. To understand the magnitude of God’s love, takes God’s power. God’s love is unfailing, loyal, faithful, stubborn, inexhaustible, and enduring. He loves us even in spite of our sin. He favors us even when we fail. Hosea 1:2 – “Go, take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness, because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the LORD.” Hosea 3:1 The LORD said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.” Hosea 11:1-9 vv. 1-2 - Hosea mentions the earlier history of Israel, looking back to the Lord’s words, “Israel is my firstborn son… ‘Let my son go, so he may worship me’” (Exodus 4:22-23). Israel was God’s son by God’s special choosing (Genesis 12:2-3; Matthew 2:13-15). God had multiplied the people of Israel and had shown his power in bringing them into Canaan. Yet despite these evidences of God’s love, Israel forsook him and worshipped other gods. God disciplined them through numerous foreign oppressions to call them back, but to no avail. vv. 3-4 – The Lord is shown as a father teaching an infant to walk, a picture of the Lord’s compassion in disciplining Israel. But they were blind to his healing purpose. God had “led” (literally, “drawn”) them with cords of “human kindness” and “ties of love”. He lifted “the yoke from their neck” as an owner would lift the yoke of an ox so that it eats comfortably. God had dealt gently with his people in spite of their sin. vv. 5-6 – A rhetorical question implies that an affirmative answer points to the impending captivity – the consequence of Israel’s sin, which had been compounded because the people persisted in it despite God’s continuing grace. v. 7 – In their apostasy the people were obstinate in unfaithfulness. The people would not listen opt the prophets who were calling them to return to God but were choosing instead to remain in the mire of sin. The last verses are like a window into the heart of God. He loves his people with a love that will never let them go. These verses look forward, beyond the coming chastisement to the Millennium, to the time, still distant, when Israel will truly return to her God and he will bless her once more. v. 8 – Two questions reveal the depth of God’s love for his people. Despite the sure judgment that was to come on unfaithful Israel, he could not bear to give up his chosen people forever. His enduring love precluded his treating them as he did Admah and Zeboiim, two cities that had been utterly destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah (Deuteronomy 29:23). v. 9 – In that future day God would not devastate his people Israel again. He is “God, and not man” – that is, his ways transcend those of sinful humanity. Because he is holy, he does not let bitterness govern his decisions. A prayer from Kathy Escobar: i often struggle with feeling loved. i know in my head i am loved by God as his creation. i know all the right answers. i know how to say the right things that make me sound like i have feeling loved nailed down. i can say with confidence that i feel more loved and secure than i have ever felt before but i can also say with confidence that sometimes the deep and wide and high and long love of God feels strangely elusive i don’t think this feeling is God’s fault. i don’t think he’s withholding something from me because i’m doing this or not doing that. i don’t think he’s mad at me for not holding on to this love 100% of the time, 100% of the way. i sense a lot of pleading in paul’s writings, his longing for the people he’s writing to understand more fully these important truths. i think God also pleads with me sometimes, hoping that i’ll “grasp” the truth in ways that will keep transforming me into more freedom, more wholeness, and more grounded in God’s love. i wonder if today, God might be pleading with some of us, too. knocking on the door of our hearts, not angry with us for not getting it, but hoping that some of his love will soak into our skin & bones & hearts & heads today in a deeper way. my love is above you & below you & beside you & in front of you & behind you & in you. nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate you from it. God’s love is unfailing, loyal, faithful, stubborn, inexhaustible, and enduring. rest in it today.