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Hosea 9 Commentary
by Brad Boyles
Hosea 9 continues to pound away at our human flesh. God’s people had “taken to sin like a pig to filth.” But, this did not happen overnight. It started with small compromises that that slowly eroded their moral conscience. It lulled them to sleep, leading them down a path that they never saw coming. This is the subtle, crafty effect that sin can have on us. It deceives us in such insignificant ways that we don’t realize how far we’ve gone until it’s too late.
“My wife’s family has a cabin on the Oregon coast. Every year they have a Fourth of July parade. People on the floats and trucks throw saltwater taffy into the crowd. One year after the parade, the streets were covered with taffy wrappers. Hundreds, everywhere. If there had been one or two, I wouldn’t have noticed, but the cumulative effect was striking. That pretty little beach town had become an eyesore. Lies are like that. They pile up. Take each lie and multiply it by tens of millions in business, school, family, and government, and you have monumental moral erosion. It’s like bleeding to death from ten thousand paper cuts.”
Randy Alcorn
God’s people were bleeding to death. The reason we know it crept up on them is because God Himself states that He has been keeping a record of their behavior over time.
The LORD says, “When I first found Israel, it was like finding grapes growing in the desert. When I first saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the first ripe figs of the season. But when they came to Mount Peor, they began to worship Baal and soon became as disgusting as the gods they loved.
Hosea 9:10 GNB
The call to repentance is there and the response is pending. God hates sin but He loves His people. For those who have eyes to see, the Holy Spirit will illuminate our sin and strengthen us with Christ’s power to overcome!