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Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 5 of 5
Devotional: May 24th

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Hosea 7:1-16

"I would have healed Israel" (v. 1). "I would redeem them . . ." (v. 13 JND trans.). The Lord’s desire is the same towards you, if you are not yet converted. But His desire must be reciprocated (John 5:6). Later on, the Lord Jesus would say the same thing to Jerusalem: ". . . I would have gathered thy children . . . and ye would not" (Luke 13:34).

We have already considered the wretched condition of Israel, portrayed by an adulterous woman (Hosea 2:1-23) and by an obstinate heifer (Hosea 4:16). Here they are compared in turn to a mass of leavened dough (v. 4), to a cake baked on one side only (v. 8), to a silly dove (v. 11), to a faulty bow (v. 16). The LORD, speaking ironically, puts His mark on both their pride and their lack of intelligence. Contact with foreign nations has had the effect of exhausting Ephraim’s strength. "Grey hairs" (v. 9) are a sign that energy is failing, "yet he knoweth not". Let us recognise that, so far as we are concerned, fraternising with the world in whatever form breaks a Christian’s communion with the Lord and takes away, without his being aware of it, all his spiritual energy. The example of Samson confirms this in a most solemn way (Judges 16:19-20).

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