#DailyDevotion Don’t Be The One The LORD Has No-Mercy On
Hos. 1 6She became pregnant again and had a daughter. And He told him, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah [No-Mercy) because I will no more have mercy on the people of Israel but will take them completely away. 7I will have mercy on the people of Judah, and I, the LORD their God, will save them, but not by a bow or a sword, nor by fighting, nor by horses or horsemen.”
The prophetic action by which the LORD is speaking to Israel and Judah is taking its own sweet time. Jezreel would have to be weaned first before Lo-Ruhamah would be conceived and born. So let’s give it a year and a half at least. She would not be the last in this extended prophetic action.
So the LORD was no longer going to have mercy on the northern ten tribes of Israel, who after Solomon’s death are referred to in the Old Testament as Israel, Jacob, and Ephraim generally and the southern tribes would be called Judah because the king there was from that tribe. Now think about it—Lo-Ruhamah, No-Mercy is named that because the LORD would no longer have mercy on this people. There is nothing worse than that. First the LORD would take away the dynasty. Then He would take away the people. There is no forgiveness for these people. After several hundred years of sending prophets to them to call them to repentance, the LORD would remove them from the land and make them a people no more. Like the peoples the LORD displaced for Israel, whom Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob preached to and they would not repent, so to the people of Israel. Though the LORD grew their numbers like the stars above, they would dwindle down to nothing. Judah should have paid attention. There would come a time in a couple hundred years where the LORD would tell the prophet Jeremiah to not intercede for them anymore either.
Yet, now would not be the time to not have mercy on Judah. At this time, the LORD would continue to send prophets to that land to call the king and the people to repent of their idolatry and wicked living. God would have mercy on them and save them from the Assyrians who were coming from the north for blood and money. The LORD would save them without a bow, sword, nor by fighting, nor by horses or horsemen. We see his fulfilled in 2 Kings 19, “’34I will shield this city and save it for My own sake and for the sake of My servant David.’ 35It happened that night. The Angel of the LORD went out in the camp of the Assyrians and killed 185,000, and when people got up in the morning, they saw all the dead bodies. 36Then Sennacherib king of Assyria left and went home and lived in Nineveh.”
So we as Christians should take note here of how the LORD dealt with His people. Insofar as He sent prophets to call them to repentance, so the LORD, through His pastors, called the Church and the people of the Church to repent of their sins. We should not ignore these warnings. We should not call good evil or evil good. We should repent of our sins and place our faith in Jesus Christ our Savior. Secondly, as we live our lives, we should remember the promise of Jesus that the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church. This being so, we should as Christian be strong and courageous not fearing what the world threatens us with. Just as easily as the LORD took care of the Assyrian raiders, He can and will take care of the Church’s enemies. That does not mean we will not undergo persecution. It does mean the Church comes out on top in the end. If this is so, we should not live in fear of the world.
Heavenly Father, grant us true repentance and faith in Jesus Christ so we may live our lives strong and courageously. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.