The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 174: The Prophet Hosea (2023)

Episode Date: June 23, 2023

Fr. Mike takes a break from 2 Chronicles to enter into the book of Hosea. We learn that Hosea was a prophet called to not only witness to God's words, but to his actions as well. Fr. Mike also touches on hope in times of intense healing, and how essential this virtue is when striving to live a life for Christ. Today's readings are 2 Kings 5, Hosea 1-3, and Psalm 101. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 174, and we are reading from 2 Kings chapter 5 and continuing on with 2 Kings, but we're also dipping in for the next four days to one of the minor prophets, Hosea. We're reading chapters 1 through 3 today, as well as praying Psalm 101.

As always, the Bible translation that I am reading from is the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. I am using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. And if you'd like to subscribe to this podcast, you can click on subscribe. And if you can't, no problem. We'll just move it on because that's how we do it.

Because it's day 174 and we're reading 2 Kings chapter 5, as well as, as I said, Hosea is one of the minor prophets. He's one of the 12 minor prophets, but he's not called one of the minor prophets. If you have your Great Adventure Bible, you can see this in one of the footnotes. He's not one of the minor prophets because he was unimportant. Actually, the minor prophets are very important, but because their writings are a little bit shorter than the major prophets who are longer, like Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Isaiah. But today we have Hosea 1 through 3 and Psalm 101.

The second book of Kings, chapter 5. Naaman is cured of leprosy. Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Syria, was a great man with his master and in high favor, because by him the Lord had given victory to Syria. He was a mighty man of valor, but he was a leper. Now the Syrians on one of their raids had carried off a little maid from the land of Israel, and she waited on Naaman's wife. She said to her mistress, Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy. So Naaman went in and told his lord.

Thus and so spoke the maiden from the land of Israel. And the king of Syria said, Go now, and I will send a letter to the king of Israel. So he went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten festal garments. And he brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you Naaman my servant, that you may cure him of his leprosy. And when the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and

said, Am I God, to kill and to make alive, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Only consider and see how he was seeking a quarrel with me. But when Elisha, the man of God, heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent to the king, saying, Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come now to me, that he may know that there is a prophet in Israel. So Naaman came with his horses and chariots and halted at the door of Elisha's house. And Elisha sent a messenger to him saying, go and wash in the Jordan seven times and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean. But Naaman was angry and went away saying, behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of

the Lord, his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Farpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean? So he turned and went away in a rage. But his servants came near and said to him, My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather than when he says to you, wash and be clean? So he went down and dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God. And his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child. And he was clean. Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company. And he came and stood before him. And he said, behold, I know that there is no God in all the earth, but in Israel. So accept now a present from your servant. But he said, as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will receive none. And he urged him to take it,

but he refused. Then Naaman said, if not, I beg you, let there be given to your servant, two mules burden of earth. For henceforth, your servant will not offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any God, but the Lord. In this matter, may the Lord pardon your servant. When my master goes into the house of Ramon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow myself in the house of Ramon, when I bow myself in the house of Ramon, the Lord pardon your servant in this matter. He said to him, go in peace.

But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha, the man of God said, see, my master has spared this Naaman, the Syrian, in not accepting from his hand what he brought. As the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something from him. So Gehazi followed Naaman. And when Naaman saw someone running after him, he alighted from the chariot to meet him and said, Is all well?

And he said, All is well. My master has sent me to say, There have just now come to me from the hill country of Ephraim two young men of the sons of the prophets. Please give them a talent of silver and two festal garments. And Naaman said, Be pleased to accept two talents. And he urged him and tied up two talents of silver in two bags with two festal garments and laid them upon two of his

servants, and they carried them before Gehazi. And when he came to the hill, he took them from their hand and put them in the house, and he sent the men away, and they departed. He went in and stood before his master, and Elisha said to him, Where have you been, Gehazi? And he said, Your servant went nowhere. But he said to him, Did I not go with you in spirit when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, men's servants and maidservants? Therefore, the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you and to your descendants

forever. So he went out from his presence a leper, as white as snow. The Book of Hosea, Chapter 1. The word of the Lord that came to Hosea, the son of Be'eri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash, king of Israel. Hosea marries a harlot and has children. When the Lord first spoke through Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, Go, take to yourself a wife of harlotry, and have children of harlotry, for the land commits great harlotry by forsaking the Lord. So he went and took Gomer the daughter of Deblame, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said to him, Call his name Jezreel, for yet a little while, and I will punish the

house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel. And on that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said to him, call her name not pitied, for I will no more have pity on the house of Israel to forgive them at all. But I will have pity on the house of Judah, and I will deliver them by the Lord their God. I will not deliver them by bow, nor by sword, nor by war, nor by horses, nor by horsemen. When she had weaned, not pitied, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, Call his name not my people, for you are not my people, and I am not your God.

Israel's Restoration Yet the number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can neither be measured nor numbered. And in the place where it was said to them, you are not my people, it shall be said to them, sons of the living God. And the people of Judah and the people of Israel shall be gathered together, and they shall appoint for themselves one head, and they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel. Chapter 2. Israel's Infidelity, Punishment, and Redemption. Say to your brother, my people, and to your sister, she has obtained pity. Plead with your mother. Plead, for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband, that she put away her harlotry from her face and her adultery from between her breasts.

Lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born and make her like a wilderness and set her like a parched land and slay her with thirst. Upon her children also I will have no pity because they are children of harlotry. For their mother has played the harlot. She that conceived them has acted shamefully. For she said, I will go after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. Therefore, I will hedge up her way with thorns and I will build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.

She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. She shall seek them, but shall not find them. Then she shall say, I will go and return to my first husband, for it was better with me Verse 2. Therefore I will take back my grain in its time and my wine in its season, and I will take away my wool and my flax, which were to cover her nakedness. Now I will uncover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers, and no one shall rescue her out of my hand, and I will put an end to all her mirth, her feasts, her new moons, her sabbaths, and all her appointed feasts.

And I will lay waste her vines and her fig trees, of which she said, these are my hire, which my lovers have given me. I will make them a forest and the beasts of the field shall devour them. And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals when she burned incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry and went after her lovers and forgot me, says the Lord.

Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the valley of Ahor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, says the Lord, you will call me my husband, and no longer will you call me my Baal. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be mentioned by name no more. And I will make for you a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground. And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land, and I will make you lie down in safety, and I will espouse you forever. I will espouse you in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love

and in mercy. I will espouse you in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. And in that day, says the Lord, I will answer the heavens, and they shall answer the earth, and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine, and the oil, and they shall answer Jezreel. And I will sow him for myself in the land, and I will have pity on not pitied, and I will say to not my people, you are my people, and he shall say, you are my God. Chapter three, the Lord's love for his unfaithful people. And the Lord said to me, go again, love a woman who is beloved of a paramour and is an adulteress. Even as the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods and love cakes of raisins. So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and

a homer and a lethek of barley. And I said to her, You must dwell as mine for many days. You shall not play the harlot or belong to another man. So will I also be to you. For the children of Israel shall dwell many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or pillar, without ephod or teraphim. Afterward, the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king, and they shall come in fear to the Lord and to his goodness in the latter days. Psalm 101, a sovereign's pledge of integrity and justice. A Psalm of David. I will sing of mercy and of justice. To you, O Lord, will I sing.

I will give heed to the way that is blameless. O when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house. I will not set before my eyes anything that is base. I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not cling to me. Perverseness of heart shall be far from me. I will know nothing of evil. Him who slanders his neighbor secretly, I will destroy. The man of haughty looks and arrogant heart, I will not endure. I will look

with favor on the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me. He who walks in the way that is blameless shall minister to me. No man who practices deceit shall dwell in my house, and no man who utters lies shall continue in my presence. Morning by morning I will destroy all the wicked in the land, cutting off all the evildoers from the city of the Lord. Father in heaven, we give you praise and we love you and we receive your love from you because you show yourself to be faithful when we're faithless. You show you that you want us even when we are wanton. Oh, you show us, Lord God, that your love is unstoppable and your love is

unchangeable. It is not our beauty that draws you to us. It is your love that moves you to us. And so please continue to draw near, continue to take us back when we stray, and continue to bar our way when we want to walk, run away. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So two quick things. One is just a quick Elisha story. We have Elisha in the story of Nahum and the Syrian. And one of the things here is with the story of Nahum and the Syrian, he is a general in the king's army, the king of Syria's army, and man of valor, really brave man. He has everything going for him, honor, reputation, wealth, power, and yet he is a leper, which basically means he's a dead man.

And that's something that is worth reflecting on and pausing over for a little bit here, because it's possible that a person can have every possible blessing in life, but all of our lives have a ticking clock, right? All of our lives are an hourglass where the grains of sand are continuing to run out. And Naaman had it staring him in the face every time he looked in the mirror because he was a leper. So he had all the power he could ever possibly imagine, dream of, all the reputation and honor he could ever possibly imagine or ever want. And yet he knew his days were numbered because he could not escape the

fact that he was a leper. And this is worthwhile reflecting on for us as well, because we might be at the height of our lives right now. We could be in the low point of our lives. And without God, that means very little. Like without God, our success means very, very little. And without God, our tragedy means very little. And yet here is Naaman, Naaman the Syrian, and he's hopeless because there's nothing that can be done for leprosy. It is incurable. And you think about what changes the course of Naaman's life. What changes the course is this young girl who's living in his house as a slave. She's a Jewish girl. And let's stop over this for a second. Here's this young woman, this young woman, I don't know, child who was taken from her

home. She was kidnapped by the Syrians. And now she's working in the household of the general of the Syrian army, Naaman. And she's the one who comes to Naaman's wife and says, well, there's a man in Israel, a man of God in Israel named Elisha, who can heal my master. You think, here's a girl who's had everything taken away from her by the Syrians, everything taken away from her by Naaman. I mean, it's likely that when he's the one who kidnapped her and brought her back to Syria, when he had raided against, gone on a raid against the Jews. And you think, my gosh, why in the world would she want her master

to be healed? And it could be because he actually was an honorable man who just happened to be a kidnapper as well. Or it could be that she knows the heart of her God and our God. It could be that she knows the heart of her God and our God. And so she wants to extend his healing even to those who are her enemies. She wants to extend his healing to even those who would destroy her family and those who would destroy her life and bring her to a foreign place in Syria. And so this is worth reflecting on. Last little thing is as Naaman the Syrian comes down and he goes to the king of Israel, who's like, wow, yeah, don't have any

idea how to heal leprosy. Elisha comes on the scene. And I love this because Elisha tells him, you know, bathe yourself in the Jordan seven times and Naaman is not going to do it. And his servants point out, they said, well, listen, if he told you to do something really difficult, you would do that thing. But just, this is really easy, almost too easy. And this is a, I think it's a direct allusion to baptism. Baptism that makes us into God's sons and daughters, the God that, baptism that enables us to cry out, Abba, Father, when he gives us his Holy Spirit. And it's so simple. It is so easy. People say, well, really, could it really make that big of a difference? Just getting, immersing in water or getting water poured over you and saying, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. Like really? And the answer is yes, because for us, it's easy. Of course,

the price to win the grace of that sacrament of baptism was won by Jesus and his sacrifice. But for us, it is remarkably easy and it transforms our lives just like bathing seven times in the Jordan transformed Naaman's life. I love the fact that Naaman, all of his offerings were refused. And so he said, here's what I want to do. I never want to worship a false god again. I will only worship the God of Israel from now on. And so while this is the land, I'm going to take two mules worth of this land so that when I pray, he's going

to put it basically on his land. And when he stands on that land, he's standing on holy ground, right? Is the idea. There's actually a church in Rome that's very similar. It's called the Santa Croce in Jerusalem. And so it's the church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem because Helena, the mother of Emperor Constantine, she at one point went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and they filled her ships, the ballasts with earth from the Holy Land. And when they got back to Rome, rather than just dumping out the ballasts and emptying out the earth, she brought it into the city of Rome and had a church built on earth from Jerusalem. So it's called Church of the Holy Cross in the Holy Land. And here's the same idea with Naaman, he's saying, I'm going to put this earth down

where I live. And every time I stand on it, I'm going to be worshiping the true and living God, the God of Elisha, which I think is pretty cool. If we want to dip quickly, really quickly into Hosea, Hosea is a tragic figure, but a figure of God. And that's why he's so tragic, right? He's a tragic figure because many prophets are called to witness to the Lord by their words.

And some prophets are called to witness to the Lord by their actions. Hosea is one of those prophets who's called the witness to God by his actions and his words. And so what does God call him to do? He calls him to marry a prostitute, Gomer, knowing that she's going to be unfaithful. And that witness of Hosea's life is, Hosea, you have to be like me because Gomer is going to be like the people of Israel. Gomer is going to be like my people, that I give them everything they possibly could want, and they're going to chase after other lovers. They're going

to give their hearts to others. And so it's just remarkable, right? Even the names of the second and third children, one is not pitied and the other is not my people. What's going to happen is here's the fruit of their marriage is not pitied and not my people. And they keep turning away. In fact, in chapter two, it's just, it's remarkable. It's worth, definitely worth going back and reading this so you can really get the gravity of what's being proclaimed by hosea hosea is speaking to the people in the north in israel the kingdom of the of israel in the north and saying basically you keep doing this you keep running away from the lord um goes on to say that uh i will strip her naked and i'll make her as the day she was born in this chapter two and make her like a wilderness and slay her with thirst. Why? Because then she'll come back. The idea is I will keep on

taking stuff away so that at that point they wake up and realize, wait a second, I belong to the Lord God as opposed to what they're doing. It goes on to say, for she said, I will go after my lovers who gave me my bread and my water, my wool, my flax, my oil and my drink. And God later on says, no, she doesn't realize it was I who gave her those things. It was I who gave her the bread and the water, the wool and the flax, the oil and the drink. But you use those things as, as you thought they were signs of care for you by the false gods. And they aren't. And this is the thing going after those false lovers was like our own idolatry in our own hearts. And I love this in verse six of chapter two, it's God says, therefore, I will hedge up her way with thorns and build a wall against her so that she cannot find her paths.

She shall pursue her lovers, but not overtake them. She shall seek them and not find them. And this is what God does so often. I don't know if you've ever had this experience of God blocking the way when you were trying to sin, like you're, sin. Like you made up your mind to like, I'm going to go do this thing. I'm going to wander from the Lord. And God is hedging the way, right? Blocking your way with thorns, build a wall against you because he doesn't want us to walk out. He doesn't want us to run away from him. He can sometimes put obstacles in our way. And then what happens is she shall say, I will go back and return to my first husband for it was better with me then than now. And then what happens is she shall say, I will go back and return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now. And what happens is he says, I will lead her into

the wilderness. We talked about this when we were talking about in the book of Joshua, when the people of Israel came into the promised land and they had the battle of Ai, right? And in the battle of Ai, Achan had stolen some stuff and they had the Valley of Ahor, which is this place of devastation, place of defeat. And here in chapter two, God says, I will make the Valley of Ahor a door of hope. So the place that is a place of shame,

I'm gonna make that into a place of victory. I'm making it into a place where you know how deeply and how profoundly you are loved. And that is the word today. You are loved. The Lord God, even when we run away from him, because we do, I was going to say, even if you've run away from him, that's it. That's not an if. Even when we run away from him, he continues to pursue after us. And oftentimes he leads us into the wilderness so that he can speak to us clearly. If you find yourself in a desert, in a wilderness, and you find yourself in a place of real loss, oftentimes that can be God saying, I'm just trying to get your attention.

Because you've given your heart, you've given your life, you've given yourself to something or someone other than me, the source of your life and the source of yourself, the source of joy and of love. And so come back, come back. And so that's the word you are loved and loved by a God who loves you to the point where he is not going to abandon you. In fact, he will fight hard for you. He might even fight against you for you. He might even fight against you for you because we often choose stuff that is not good for us. And we have to be fought.

Fought for and fought against. Because above all things, God loves you. So turn back to him now. Like I'm turning back to him now. Let's pray for each other because without God's grace, we are stuck. We are dead in the water. And so I'm praying for you. Please pray for me.

My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.