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Hosea 1:6-7  Gomer conceived again and gave birth to a daughter.  Then the LORD said to Hosea, “Call her Lo-Ruhamah (which means “not loved”), for I will no longer show love to Israel, that I should at all forgive them.  Yet I will show love to Judah; and I will save them – not by bow, sword or battle, or by horses and horsemen, but I, the LORD their God, will save them.”

God’s inspired word to his faithful prophet Hosea and to his apostle Paul in Romans 9 help us to understand what is going on in the land of Israel at present.  Without these revelations it is a mystery to us today as to how to interpret all the OT prohetic Covenant Promises given to Abraham, David, Solomon, and others about the ‘everlasting’ nature of his Chosen People, Israel, of God’s ever-forgiving love for them and of the ultimate supremacy of their King throughout the whole world.

Paul, himself one of these chosen people, had great anguish of heart about all that was happening in their real-time history that seemed to contravene these promises.  As Hosea foreshadows, and Paul makes clear, the key to this great mystery is Jesus.

Hosea pointed to God’s [s]electing process within the Covenant Promises (between the tribes who stayed faithful to the David-Solomon-Rehoboam line – ‘Judah’, and those who went with Jereboam – ‘Israel’.  Importantly Hosea also foreshadows how God would save the ‘elect’: not by miltary means, but by coming himself  and doing it.  We can now see that he did this in the person of his beloved Son, who shed his blood for our sin on a Roman cross!  The clear implication of this (as Paul, the descendant of Abraham, explains in Romans 9-11) is that while ever the descendants of Abraham refuse to acknowledge the truth of how God does the saving, they forfeit all the ‘everlasting’ promises which are all so comprehensively fulfilled in Jesus.

Thankfully, the prophet Zechariah foreshadows a wonderful Day when “They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son” (Zechariah 12:10).  This is why I think the Christian Church today has a big responsibility to be involved, by earnest prayer and witness, in Jewish evangelism!  The only solution to the Middle East problem is not military conflict, but is only for everyone, Jew, Palestinian, Arab alike, to look to the One we all ‘have pierced’ and acknowledge him as the only Saviour!

– Bruce Christian