The image of God (Hosea 11)

When you hear the word ‘God’, what associations does that bring up in your mind? The cartoon picture is of an old man with a long white beard, sitting on a cloud, maybe with a few angels hovering around him and playing harps. Hopefully, most of you reading this will have got a bit beyond that! So what words do come to mind when you hear ‘God’? Master? Taskmaster? Creator? Judge? Life force? Inscrutable being? Unfathomable? Friend? Lover? Companion?

If you have been moving with me through the book of Hosea, the words that might well come to mind are Wrath and Punishment. For ever since chapter 4 of the book, Hosea’s words to Israel and Judah, coming from God, have been a constant critique of their rejection of the Lord and their consequent wickedness.

But that is not the whole story. In this chapter the Lord laments the days of Israel’s youth, in slavery in Egypt (verse 1), when their relationship was so much better - rather like a parent weeping for a child who has made bad decisions and taken a bad path in life.

So he decides to do something about it - and it is not what we might have expected, based on the previous 7 chapters of the book. He says, How can I give up on you, Ephraim? How can I turn you loose, Israel? I can’t even bear to think such thoughts. My insides churn in protest. And so I’m not going to act on my anger. I’m not going to destroy Ephraim. And why? Because I am God and not a human being. I’m the Holy One and I’m here - right in your very midst (verses 8-9). Tenderness? Compassion? Change of mind? Are these words which we would normally associate with God?

John, who was probably closer to Jesus than any other human being while he was on earth, tells us, God is light (1 John 1:5), and also God is love (1 John 4:16) - not God loves, not love is a part of God’s makeup - but quite simply, God is love. His essential nature is love, and everything he does is rooted in love. We often find this difficult to comprehend, especially when faced with hard circumstances, because our understanding of his love is so small. We find it hard to grasp how he can hold light and love in balance - perfect holiness and perfect love functioning in harmony together.

Today Jesus is appearing to Muslims in dreams and visions in an unprecedented manner, all over the world. We are told that in the first decade of this century there have been 69 major movements - in all nine Houses of Islam - of Muslims turning to Christ and being baptised. How does Jesus appear to these Muslims? Usually in white clothing - representing his purity, a quality which is so important to Muslims in their worship of Allah; and he comes to them in love, compassion and tenderness, qualities which many Muslims find hard to associate with God.

And they are not the only ones. So many of us Christians have a hard time receiving God’s unconditional love, or even believing that God likes us. When talking to those who do not yet know Jesus, we have so often centred our message on sin and judgment - yet Jesus is not appearing to Muslims today as their judge, even though he rightfully could (John 5:22). Sin and judgment are important; but they are not the issues which will draw people’s hearts into God’s love. Indeed, Isaiah calls judgment the Lord’s strange work, his alien task (28:21).

Today I was reading in the Evangelical Alliance magazine the words of a lady telling of her experience of Sunday school, how it taught her to behave and be a ‘good girl’ and that Jesus loved her; catching a message that said: do this and God will be pleased with you. How many of us have been nurtured in our Christian faith with such ideas, explicitly or (worse still, because we were unaware of it) subliminally? As a result we are constantly engaged in the hopeless task of trying to approve ourselves to God by our actions, instead of opening ourselves to him to receive his love.

It is time to shake off the shackles of the past, to seek the Lord (Hosea 10:12). Yes, he will roar like a lion and we will come trembling to him (verses 10-11). But it just is as when Lucy asked in Narnia whether Aslan was safe. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver;

“Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”