devotional post # 2119

Hosea 8:5-7

Hos 8:5 I have rejected your calf, Samaria. My anger has been kindled against them. How long will they be stay unclean?
Hos 8:6 Because it is from Israel; a blacksmith made it; it is not a god. The calf of Samaria will be smashed to bits.
Hos 8:7 Because they plant the wind, and they will reap the tornado. The standing grain has no heads; it will sprout no flour; if it were to sprout, foreigners would eat it.

best effort

We are told that human religion is our attempt to connect with the divine, and that we should respect all of them the same. But God does not respect these attempts to explain and connect with him. He exposes them for a sham, as he did to the Samaritan calf. He told Samaria that their best effort was worse than useless. Because they trusted their own religious imagination, they stayed unclean. Judgment was coming upon it, and them. The crops they expected would not be eaten by them, but by foreign invaders, if they came at all.

The LORD’s message to all of us is that our best effort is not good enough. We must come to him on his terms.

LORD, we seek you today, through the mediator you have chosen — your Son, Jesus Christ.