Consequences of sin

Hosea is the prophet that no one liked.

Did he want people to like him and align to his prophetic message? I’m sure he did.

“The days of punishment are coming, the days of reckoning are at hand. Let Israel know this.
Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired person a maniac. The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim, yet snares await him on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God. They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah. God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins.” (Hosea 9 v 7-9)

In the eyes of these people Hosea was a fool, a maniac and though he was their watchman they set traps for him because the prophetic message drew attention to their sins. They were not happy hearing that punishment was at hand for the depth of their sinfulness. Hosea draws their attention to the wickedness of the people in the time of the Judges in Gibeah. God’s people in Hosea’s day had sunk to the same all-time low as with the Judges. The sin in Gibeah is found in Judges 19.

This is a hauntingly powerful story of a woman from Bethlehem. She was a concubine. In a fit of anger she ran away from her master and owner to her father’s house in Bethlehem of Judah. The man found her and wooed her back.

 On the way back to his home in the hill country of Ephraim, it became late in the evening and they needed a place to stay. They depended on the hospitality of the people of Gibeah, but there was no hospitality forthcoming. Finally, an old man offered them a place to stay in his home.

 That night a set of townsmen knocked on the door. They demanded the body of the male visitor. In order to appease the sexual hunger of the men outside, the old man grabbed the concubine and threw her out and shut the door.

The crowd outside gang-raped her, abused her all night. When dawn broke they left her lying on the ground. When her husband came out he saw her lying dead at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold.

It is a horrible story told in Judges 19 and there is no mention of God. Does He not care? Was it too shameful to even make an appearance or speak a word?

Her memory calls out. It calls out to the psychological numbness of those around her, and it calls out to us down the centuries to amplify her silent cries.

There are people crying today because of acts that are too shameful to even mention where the presence of God seems remote. We need to speak up and out. We need to step into the shame and feel the dirt and the pain and we need to stand for justice. For the greatest shame is on those who turn away from that cry.

You may be called fool and a maniac and traps may even be set for you if you travel this path. But will we speak up for those who have been impacted by the sin of God’s people? Or do we just want people to like us?