"God's Wayward People" November 28 Readings: Hosea 1-3, James 5, Psalm 133–134, Proverbs 29:7–8

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Reading the Bible in 2023

Each day this year we will read a selection from the Old Testament, the New Testament, a portion of the Psalms, and part of Proverbs. By the end of the year, you will have read the entire Bible. We read this way to give you a bit of variety. In reading four portions of God's word in a day, one of them is bound to speak to your life!

NOTE: If you get behind, do not give up. Read today's readings and try to catch up when you have a chance. The goal is not to "accomplish a task" but to meet God in his word. Read the word. Also, if you are short on time, READ GOD'S WORD and skip my devotional!

Bible Readings: Hosea 1-3, James 5, Psalm 133–134, Proverbs 29:7–8

    Scriptures linked to Bible Gateway in ESV version 

Daily Devotional: God's Wayward People 

The prophets did some weird things to demonstrate the anger of God against sin and the love of God for his people. One wore ill-fitting undergarments to show how irritating Israel's sin was. But Hosea's story is perhaps the most graphic of all.

God commanded him to marry a woman who would illustrate Israel's sin (Hosea 1:2). When she strayed back into her life of sin, God sent Hosea to reclaim her and bring her home. This story is a verbal painting of the love of God - nothing sweet, syrupy, or sentimental, but a gritty love, the kind that sticks around through the good times and the bad and changes lives.

Israel was a rebellious and spiritually adulterous nation, one that had left fidelity to the One True God and was chasing after the gods of the Canaanites. But God's grace was greater even than their infidelity. He told Hosea to illustrate that faithful love. The Old Testament is a record of two things - the constant infidelity of Israel and the even greater faithfulness of God whose love never fails.

Hosea's prophecy highlights the amazing and relentless love of God, and how he seeks and saves the lost. No, sin is never minor or inconsequential, but God's love overcomes. As he did with Israel, which sinned and failed repeatedly, God renews and restores us when we sin. He seeks and he saves. We are Gomer, wayward people who tend to drift into sin and away from God. We mimic the wayward wife, but the faithful God of Israel continues to overcome our sins today. By the powerful blood of Christ, he cleanses every stain and brings us back to the place of renewal, purity, and full fellowship with God.

Father, I thank you that your blood washes away every stain, and that when I fail, you are there to restore me and renew me. You are a good God - better than this Gomer deserves. 


Consider God's Word:

Did one of these passages speak strongly to you today? Which one? 
Is there sin in your life that needs to be confessed and dealt with that was revealed in one of these passages? 
Is there a struggle in your life that one of these passages spoke to? 

Consider the silliness of self-righteousness and our impulse to deny our sin and pretend we are "not so bad." The Bible consistently presents God as the friend of sinners, the one who seeks and saves the lost, the one who extends love to Gomer!

Thank God today for demonstrating his love to sinners...like you and me.




 

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