And the Lord said to Moses, “You are going to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves to the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them.” Deuteronomy 31:16

Oh Israel. Beautiful Israel.

If you’ve ever read the Old Testament you’ll quickly come across the pattern.

God chooses a people to call His own. He delivers them, shows them how to live, loves them with His amazing love.

And then they go off and rebel, betray Him, and bow down to other gods, so He removes His favor from them.

They are sold into slavery and misery, they are attacked on every side, life gets horrible.

So He comes in, delivers them, shows them how to live, loves them with His amazing love.

And then they go off and rebel again, betray Him again, and bow down to other gods, again.

Over, and over, and over, and over, and over.

You start to wonder, why did He even bother with these people? They don’t even seem to have the ability to remain faithful.

Because He chose to.

Have you ever read Hosea? It’s a relatively short book in the Old Testament, only about fourteen chapters. In it God asks Hosea to do something that seems almost cruel from the pain it will cause him.

God asks Hosea to marry a prostitute. A promiscuous woman. This gal had a reputation, and she had earned it. We don’t know why she is the way she is, but her very actions show that she simply is incapable of being a faithful wife, as she cheats on her husband over and over again.

No matter how much he loves her, even buying her out of the slavery she sold herself into she keeps going back to her old lifestyle. He continually loves this wife God asked him to wed, she does nothing but betray him. In the end we aren’t really ever told if she ever changes.

Poor Hosea. Why would God do this to His faithful servant? What good would it serve?

You’d be surprised.

Because, through his wife, God was showing Hosea, Israel, us, even Hosea’s wife, how God loves us.

Hosea wasn’t unaware of what he was getting into when he chose to marry his wife, and yet he chose to love her.

God wasn’t unaware of what He was getting when He chose Israel. Even in its earliest days He fully recognizes that they will turn away from Him. Going so far as to plainly tell Moses what they would do.

Yet He chose them anyway.

I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction? Hosea 13:14

He chose us anyway.

From the very beginning, and forever after.

That, my dear friend, is how He loves. That is why nothing you have done or will ever do will ever be too big for Him to handle.

If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread out our hands to a foreign god, would not God have discovered it, since he knows the secrets of the heart? Psalms 44:20-21 (emphasis mine)

Let me make this clear to you my friend.

God knows you. He knows you better than you know you. He knows every crack and crevice of your heart. Every dark place, and everything you have in you, is fully and completely known to Him.

Has always been known by Him.

And yet…

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16-17

God so loved you, that He gave His son for you. Not to condemn you, but to save you.

Is it clear yet?

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, not any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separates us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:38-39

Why did God choose to love Israel?

Because that is what He does. That is who He is.

Just like how He loves you.

Joy Aletheia Stevens

Did this post resonate with you? Do you want to meet this amazing incredible God who loves you? I wrote a post just for you. Click Meeting the Mystery.