Hosea 5:1,11,15

' "Hear this, O priests! Take heed, O house of Israel! Give ear, O house of the king! For yours [is] the judgment, Because you have been a snare to Mizpah And a net spread on Tabor." ' (Hosea 5:1)

The chapter doesn't start well for Israel. God wants Israel to hear Him. He wants their leaders to listen up. Again, they are being judged, and the reason is that they are like a trap to their neighbours. They are drawing their neighbours into evil with them. How much further from the original plan could they get? God originally drew out Abram to make a nation that could be His shining light on the world, and show His true character to the nations. And generations down the track, that same nation is snaring other nations into evil! No wonder God is upset.

We have to ask the question: how did they get to that state? You don't go from being God's special people to leading people away from God in a day. It's a slow fade, as Casting Crowns would say. Well we read further down:

'Ephraim is oppressed [and] broken in judgment, Because he willingly walked by [human] precept.' (Hosea 5:11)

They have been walking in their own understanding, doing what seems right, taking the 'wise' option. They have been dealing practically, reasonably and 'ethically', but they have NOT been dealing with FAITH and TRUST of God's way. They have not been acting obediently.

Let's not make this (very easy to make) mistake. We need to trust in God and His (sometimes impossible to understand) ways. He needs to be our axiom upon which all else is based, rather than something that fits into our natural axiom of happiness. Trust in Him, and let everything else be wrong if it must.

As I have come to expect from the many previous prophetic chapters, God doesn't let it end with Israel's judgment and destruction, and here we see the true heart of God:

'I will return again to My place Till they acknowledge their offense. Then they will seek My face; In their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.' (Hosea 5:15)

God's heart is not that any should perish, but that all should come to Him. He wants a relationship with us all. He wants us all to earnestly seek Him. But as our loving Father, He knows that sometimes the only way to provoke us to do this is to afflict us so that we come to a place of acknowledging our sin and our offense (for really that is what is!) to God. We need to come to that place, and repent, turn around and face Him and run into His arms. And we need Him to hold on to us.