Today’s readings are 2 Kings 16 and Hosea 9.
This devotional is about Hosea 9:7d-g: “Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired person a maniac.”
Our society pretends that it has rejected God and our faith because it has advanced beyond belief in anything beyond the natural world. Scientific study has yielded so much truth about things that used to mystify people in the past. So many people to equate our faith with superstitions from the past that should be rejected in this modern age.
This passage confronts that thinking. People reject God’s word because they want to live an immoral, godless life. The verse says that the greatness of humanity’s sins is what causes people to think God’s servants are stupid. People today may have a more secular mindset in general. But they deny historical facts that are biblical, despise the moral commands of the Bible, or laugh at the miracles in scripture because of their sins. The greater the sin and unbelief, the stronger the negative reaction one will have to the commands of God’s word.
The cure for this is not to emphasize the points where some unbeliever might agree with the Bible or show how wise advice from the Bible makes for better living. The cure is more of God’s word; that’s what God gave Hosea despite the fact that prophets were considered “fools” and “maniacs” in Hosea’s day. Although sinners try hard to suppress the truth of God’s word, God’s word is like a hammer that breaks hard hearts and fire that melts them down (Jer 23:29).
The same is true for us believers. Although faith in Christ inclines one to receive and believe God’s word, your sin nature and mine, at times, may cause you and me to react to some of God’s commands as crazy. In those moments we need to immerse ourselves deeper in scripture, not sit in skepticism toward it. May God give us the grace to receive his word obediently ourselves, hold it out unflinchingly to the world around us, and find some who will believe it and obey it for eternal life just as we have.
