Our hands-on heavenly Father

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Hosea 11:1

The Old Testament prophets are among the most difficult parts of the Bible to read.

Certainly, there are many wonderful passages. There is, for example, Isaiah 40:18-31, climaxing in that great promise, “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength”. There is Jeremiah 31:31-34, where God declares the promise of “a new covenant”, written on the minds and hearts of men and women, not just on stone. There is the rather weird, even slightly comical, vision of the “valley of the dry bones” in Ezekiel 37 – life born out of death. There is the prediction of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost in Joel 2:28-32, when “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”. And plenty more besides.

But there is also a lot which is difficult and puzzling, not to say completely baffling.

One regular feature of the prophets is the way passages of comfort and hope are set cheek by jowl with passages of fierce anger and judgment – and it isn’t always easy to see why. The simplest explanation is that when the prophets’ words came to be edited into the books we now onknow, different “sermons” were copied onto the page without titles or gaps or other ways of making clear where one ends and another begins – it’s simply up to the reader to bring their own judgment to bear. (We must remember that the Bible was humanly written as well as divinely inspired.)

Whatever… Hosea 11 is just such a puzzling passage. I encourage you to read it right through (it’s only 12 verses).

Verses 1-4 introduce one of the Bible’s greatest themes – the loving fatherhood of God: “When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son”. It was in the captivity in Egypt, described in the book of Exodus, that God moulded a rabble of slaves into what would become his holy people.

True, the pull of paganism remained too strong for them (verse 2): “But the more they were called, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the baals and they burnt incense to images”. But this only confirmed God’s tender love for them.

Anyone who has ever taken a small child by the hands, bending down gently to lead them (ouch, my back!); anyone who has ever lifted that child up for a kiss; anyone who has spooned food into a child’s mouth (yuk!) will be able to identify with the words of verses 3-4. This is hands-on fatherhood! And this is God!

We are sometimes told that we need to be sensitive in using God’s fatherhood to try and make him real to non-Christian friends – their experience of their own father may be full of pain and bitterness. I’m sure that’s a warning we need to heed. But the fact remains that the tender love of God is there for all time and for all people, and we can pray that, given time, they will find in God – the almighty God, the creator of the universe! – the father they never knew.

That theme of tenderness recurs in verses 8-11: “How can I give you up, Ephraim (that is, in effect, another name for Israel), how can I hand you over, Israel? How can I treat you like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboyim? My heart is changed within me, all my compassion is aroused…” (verse 8).

Never mind who Admah and Zeboyim are (you can look them up, if you like, in a Bible dictionary; you won’t find much). The thing to notice is the sheer emotion of God; he is virtually pleading with his wayward people; I don’t think I’m being sentimental in saying that you can almost see the tears in his eyes – oh, the agony of the parent whose child has lost their way! That’s an agony God himself knows.

Theological scholars tell us that God is unchanging and unchangeable (“immutable” is the technical word); it’s not correct doctrine to speak of him having emotions. Well, perhaps in some ultimate sense they’re right. But Hosea 11:8 isn’t going to go away; it’s right there in God’s word, and always will be. And why is it there? For our comfort! – why else? The very thought of casting off his children breaks God’s heart.

And so it continues in verses 9-11. God promises not to “carry out my fierce anger” after all. But then, as if to guard against the danger of being seen purely as a kindly, cuddly father, he gives the people the bracing reminder that “I am God, and not a man – the Holy One among you”. As if to say: “By all means, enjoy basking in my tender love – but no lapsing into sentimentality, please!” He even, rather frighteningly, compares himself to a lion (verses 10-11), but even that is good news: his children may come “trembling like sparrows” – but at least they will come, to be “settled in their homes”.

So… A chapter of good news. But how then do verses 5-7 and 12 fit in?

If nothing else, they reinforce that reminder that we are not to sentimentalise God: the tender, loving Father is also a God of judgment and wrath. Not until the end of all things will we see clearly how those two strands are reconciled.

But what we can take deep comfort from is that, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught them to address God as “Our Father…”

Have you ever stopped to reflect on what an extraordinarily wonderful thing that is? Why not do so now?

Dear Lord God, please help me to live my life day by day in the clear faith that you love me with a perfect, holy, tender and fatherly love. Amen.