Now
Israel pleads with me, “Help us, for you are our God.” But Israel has rejected
what is good.
(NLT, Hosea 8:2)
Hosea
warns the people of Israel that, because of their spiritual adultery, Assyria
is poised and ready to invade. They cry out to God for his help: Save us! We’re your people! But the
writer makes it clear their words are incongruent with their actions. About
this same time in history, the prophet Isaiah was writing to Israel’s sister
nation in the south: [The people of
Judah] come near to me with their mouth, and honor me with their lips, but
their hearts are far from me (Isaiah 29:13).
This
passage reminds me of Eddie Haskell from Leave
It to Beaver. He was an outwardly polite, smooth talking scoundrel, full of
empty compliments: Oh my, Mrs. Cleaver,
don’t you look lovely today. When the adults weren’t around he was a bully,
always getting Wally and the Beav in trouble. But it didn’t take long to see
through his shtick. And the best thing was he didn’t have a clue that people
were on to him.
Likewise
Israel wasn’t fooling anyone but themselves. Over 700 years later, Jesus would
speak these words: Not everyone who says
to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the
will of my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 7:21).
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