“Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.”
– Hosea 2:14
Hosea 2:14 is one of my favorite verses in the entire Old Testament. So here’s what I want to do. I want to read you the first word of Hosea 2:14. That first word is a therefore, and before I read the rest of it, I want you to know what happens in the 13 verses before that in Hosea chapter two. Basically, God describes all the sin of his people. Their idolatry, their immorality, their spiritual adultery, how they have gone after all sorts of, the language in verse 13 is “lovers in the world.” All the things of this world to try to satisfy them, how they’ve turned away from God and how they deserve His just and holy judgment. That’s 13 verses. And it’s piercing, the picture of their sin and how much they deserve judgment. And then you get to Hosea 2:14, and the Bible says, “Therefore,” so in light of all of the sin, idolatry, immorality, spiritual adultery, we read the word “Therefore”. We expect, “Okay, here’s the judgment coming.” But listen to what God says.”Therefore, in light of all of this, I will allure her and I will bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.” Is that not an amazing verse? God’s people deserving God’s judgment and he says, In light of your sin against me, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to allure you. What a word! Allure, captivate you with my love, and I’m going to pour out my affection on you in such a way that you would be drawn to me. I’m going to allure you. I’m going to bring you into the wilderness. In other words, I’m going to pull you aside and speak tenderly to you.
Oh, praise God for His grace and His mercy towards sinners like you and me. We don’t deserve the allurement of a holy God. We deserve the judgment of a holy God. We don’t deserve to be spoken tenderly to by a holy God who hates sin. We deserve to be cast out and condemned forever. Yet God in His grace and in His mercy, chooses to allure us. To bring us aside from the stuff of this world that destroys us and to speak tenderly to our hearts. This is the gospel. We deserve eternal judgment before a holy God.
And God, you want to talk about allurement? He has sent His son Jesus, God in flesh, to bear our judgment in our place on a cross. To rise after dying for our sin from the grave to make it possible for us to be forgiven of all of our sin. Him, united with him, in relationship with him forever lasting life. Forever and ever and ever.
God, we praise you for your allurement in our lives. We praise you for your love, for your loving pursuit of us, for your care for us, for your running after us, even when we weren’t running after you, and even when we’re prone to still run and go off into the things of this world, you still pursue us. All glory be to your name for your divine allurement.
And so God, we pray. We pray that you would help us to one, live in love for you, to walk in love for you, to let you speak tenderly to us every day and respond to your word in obedience. And then to lead others. May we be a picture of it. Your allurement. Help us to lead others to you. God, we pray for the Garre people of Somalia, 126,000 of them known followers of Jesus. God, allure them to yourself, we pray, and send us to be a picture of your allurement in their lives.
Jesus, we praise you, God, we glorify you for your alluring love today. We pray all of this in Jesus’ name according to this awesome verse that we love in Hosea 2:14. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
