Hosea 7:12

Chastisement

"When they shall go, I will spread my net upon them; I will bring them down as the fowls of the heaven; I will chastise them, as their congregation hath heard." (Hosea 7:12)

The chastisement of the Lord is no laughing matter. Woe unto those whom the Lord chastises in His great fury. Thank God though for His wondrous grace, the difference between law and grace is seen in v. 2; He remembers their sin, while He forgets ours! Praise God our sins are gone! Ephraim was a heart break to God, she was His "beloved", but hath played the harlot, and chased after other gods. We can almost hear the sadness and the disappointment in His voice, but, He has no choice, in this case, but to chastise His own. There are times in our lives when the Lord has to chastise us too, and I am sure it breaks His heart to do so. We think of our Lord as a sort of tyrant, just waiting for us to mess up so He can zap us with a lightning bolt, or some other malady, but, in reality, He is a loving, caring, sometimes hurting, God. 

I once wrote a little story about Christ hanging on the cross, and me there throwing stones at Him as He hung between Heaven and earth. Every stone caused Him to flinch a little, and a look of pain was on His face, but He said not a word. This is a likeness of our sin, and how it hurts Him as He paid the price for our redemption. That is exactly what I think of when I read these pages in Hosea, the heartbreak of Christ over the sin of His people. Oh, Christian friend, can you see the torment we cause Him? It is the same that your children might cause you when they fall headlong into sin, and seem to find no way out. There is no pain as great as the pain of a wayward loved one, no matter who that might be. We have all felt it to some extent, but Christ felt it in its fullness, our sin, the sin of the entire world weighed very heavily on Him. Sin will bring chastisement, as well as the hurt it causes others, and when you think about it, we will deserve every bit of the chastising that we receive, and much, much more.

--Marty Dunn

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