#DailyDevotion Do We Trust God’s Promise For Well-Being?
Hos. 4 7The more they increased, the more they sinned against Me. So I will change their glory to shame. 8They feed on the sin offering of My people, and so they’re eager to have them sin. 9The priests and the people are alike; I will punish them for their ways and pay them back for what they do. 10They will eat and not be satisfied; they will live in sexual sin and never have children, because they have stopped listening to the LORD. 11Prositution, old wine, and new wine take hold of their senses. 12My people ask their wooden idol for help, and their wand tells them what to do, because the spirit of lust has misled them; they leave their God to play the prostitute.
The LORD had promised Abraham to make his descendants as many as the sand on the shore. As He fulfills His promise, those very children turn against the LORD and sin against them. Their numbers were part of their glory. The LORD now is going to turn their glory into shame.
There is now a shift from the people to the priesthood. They are experiencing a perversion of their office. They should be looking for the people to avoid sinning. Instead, because of the sin offering command in Lev. 6:26, where the priest were commanded to eat the sin offering in which the blood is not brought into the Holy of Holies, to make atonement for the people, the are eager to see the people sin in order to have more sacrifices to eat.
The LORD then lumps people and priests together. One abuses the grace of God and the other greedily looks for the fruits of that abuse to be filled.
The priest will eat and not be satisfied and the people will live in sexual sin and stop having children. The blessing of many children for Israel was based on their adherence to the Mosaic law. God often punishes sin with more sin. They were sinning sexually while worshiping other gods (their worship involved having sex with temple prostitutes). So the LORD gave them into their lust. I liken it to giving you a shovel to dig your hole deeper with and when that doesn’t call you to repentance, He gives you something to make your hole even deeper. We see this in Rom. 1:24 “And so God, letting them follow the lusts of their hearts, gave them up to live immorally and dishonor their bodies 25because they traded the true God for a lie, worshiped and served what was created instead of the Creator, Who is blessed forever.”
The things they gave their hearts to, prostitution and wine, take hold of these people’s senses. We can see this in addictive behavior. Whatever we turn to instead of the LORD for every good thing, the LORD hands us over to it, to rule over us. These things are good in themselves when used as God intends, i.e. sex, alcohol, work, family, drugs, and the like. The LORD warns them here, “My people ask their wooden idol for help, and their wand tells them what to do, because the spirit of lust has misled them; they leave their God to play the prostitute.” So they are perhaps a little more crass in how they turned created things into idols with literal idols. We, in our sophistication may not pray to something created. However, we will offer up our reputation, wealth, relationships, our bodies, jobs and the like to get a momentary feeling of well being which is fleeting instead of trusting the LORD’s promise, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him,”(Mt. 6:8) and “Your Father in heaven knows you need them all.”(Mt. 6:32)
Gracious God and Father, grant us faith to trust Your promises so we may live at ease in the world and not chase after created things for our well being. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.