Tag: Hosea

God is a Gentleman

I grew up Catholic, which meant that God was far away and most waiting with a big stick to whack me if I stepped out of line. Eventually I became an agnostic and that lasted into my teen years. Then I got saved in a Pentecostal church when I was about 15.

During these formative years of my faith I was taught that much of what God does depends on what we do. I was always told that “God is a gentlemen”, He will never force Himself of you. God sort of reacts to what we are doing and orchestrates His will accordingly. This is broadly called “Arminianism”. In this way of understanding God, much is made of human free will, but God’s sovereignty suffers rather severely.

Once I became a pastor I worked for a few churches and one of them was staunchly “Calvinist” — the opposite of Arminianism. This says that everything that happens is because God willed it to be so. On this understating of God, much is made of God’s sovereignty, but human free will suffers severely.

By the way, if this stuff makes your eyes glaze over, don’t worry about it. Both of these camps are going to be in heaven. This is absolutely NOT a salvation issue… even if both of these groups are wrong.

We see throughout Amos, Isaiah, and now Hosea that God repeatedly tells that people that once they turn back to Him, He will restore them. So clearly we need to find a way to balance the free will of the creature (God will not restore us until we repent) with God’s sovereignty (He is in control of everything). How is this done?

Well, it’s long and complicated, and takes more time to explain than I really want to invest in this particular post. But essentially I believe it works like this:

  1. God knows how you would respond in any given set of circumstances.
  2. God has total sovereign control over everything.
  3. God chooses not to override our free will, but to arrange the circumstances to achieve His desired outcomes.
  4. In this way God is sovereign over everything that happens, but we are also allowed to exercise our free will.

That to say that I think my youth pastor when I was 15 was right. And that position is backed up by the preponderance of the Biblical evidence. Essentially… God is a Gentleman.

Is Marital Sex for Personal Gratification?

No.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

In all seriousness, the answer is ‘no’. Of course it’s okay if you enjoy sex (within the bounds of Biblical marriage), but enjoyment is not why God created it. Sex actually serves two purposes. One is the production of children. God told Adam and Eve (and by extension, the rest of us) to “be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and steward it” (Genesis 1:28). The second — the one I want to highlight today — is union. This is also rooted in creation. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).

This second reason is what Hosea is highlighting in today’s reading. God (via Hosea) uses a sexual metaphor to talk about the re-union of Israel to Himself. This is meant to help us understand that our commitment to God is singular, intimate, and eternal. It is an act of devotion. Obviously with God these adjectives describe a NON-sexual encounter, but nonetheless our refusal to be devoted in this way is compared to prostitution!

In the same way for our marriages to be Biblical, the primary reason for sexual union should not be an orgasm. The primary reason is an expression of singular, intimate, eternal devotion. That’s why we’ve called it “making love”. This brings me back to my pity opening statement…

The title of today’s devo asks, “Is Marital Sex for Personal Gratification?” and my response, “No”, while technically true does not tell the whole story. The answer is, of course, that while personal gratification IS an outcome of the sexual union, it is not the primary or even secondary purpose. Instead, that gratification is a reward for our faithfulness and devotion.

Getting it Twisted

One of the more surprising things in the Gospel of John is when Jesus says that He must be lifted up by God in the same way that Moses lifted up the snake in the desert. If we go back to that snake in the desert, we see that God used the instrument of destruction to bring about healing. We call that “redemption”. But here we see that King Hezekiah (the most righteous king of Judah) had to DESTROY the bronze serpent because people began to worship it. Seems like we will worship just about ANYTHING, if it doesn’t get the in way of us doing exactly what we want to do. And so the people took a thing originally designed for good and twisted it for evil. To the point where it had to be destroyed for the salvation of those very people.

Just because something was designed for good or accomplished good, doesn’t mean it will always be good for all time. We still need to evaluate those things. I know as a pastor I have done events that were a huge success the first time, but didn’t yield the same results the following year. I think it’s important that we bring everything back to God. And if that event, or job, or thing, or dream that God gave you has become twisted… it might be time to destroy it and start fresh.