Never Completely Destroyed

“O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.” (Ho 13:9 AV)

 

What a verse of encouragement!  Hosea is the prophet to a failed Ephraim.  The ten northern tribes are about to fall to the Assyrians (modern-day Iran).  Assyria would come, invade the territory, and carry off a vast majority of the Hebrew population back to Nineveh.  The book of Hosea is fourteen chapters, so this verse appears towards the end of the book.  After hearing much correction and warning, the LORD saw fit to give them a light at the end of a coming tunnel.  They would suffer for their disobedience.  Even their condition is not fully understood until they go through the invasion and captivity.  Israel did to herself what almost all of us do.  She destroyed herself.  She refused to live in faith and obedience to God.  This faith and obedience are the means of blessings from God.  Not just because He desires to bless, but because that is how creation is organized.  Israel, like us all, has decided they want to live in their own sin and pragmatism.  This inevitably leads to destruction.  The good news is, even though we may destroy ourselves, God is still our help.

Coming to a place of ruin is more than disheartening.  It is devastating.  In my few years of working as a school bus driver, driving the little ones was my greatest pleasure.  My first route was to pick up special needs kids and drop them off at a special school.  Then my next two routes were pre-K children.  Picking them up to go to a half-day school, then dropping them back off at home.  The last route was the special needs children which I dropped off at home.  Both sets of children were precious.  But it was those pre-K children who were a ton of fun!  We did special days on our bus.  One, in particular, was a baseball fan day.  I had half who wore White Sox stuff (yuk) and the other half, Cubs (Yeah).  On my bus were these two young boys who were best friends.  They were inseparable.  They sat together, they played together, they participated together.  The thing about young children is they can be very temperamental.  Anything can set them off.  So, we spent our time singing silly songs to keep their mind off their trouble long enough to get them home.  One afternoon, I picked up the children and they had made a special art project to send home.  These two boys were having fun and one of the boys ripped his project.  He was devastated.  It was his own fault for not watching what he was doing, but to him, his whole world fell apart.  There was nothing I could do to calm him down.  The only word of encouragement I could share is that I knew his daddy and his daddy could work miracles.  His daddy would fix it better than new.  Dad was at the stop and I told him to story.  His daddy affirmed that he could fix his son’s project better than it was before.  That was all this young man needed.  He had destroyed something of which he has spent time and emotion to make, and his hope was not in what he could do, but what his daddy could do.

When I read the verse above, I am immensely encouraged.  Sometimes we think we have made one too many wrong choices.  Whether it be sin, or lack of wisdom, or weak faith, we make those decisions and suffer the consequences.  We go to our knees and confess our sin.  But in the back of our minds, we think we have made way too many bad choices that even God cannot fix it all.  Let us consider Israel.  Carried off into captivity, the ten northern tribes have been mostly scattered throughout the world for almost twenty-five hundred years.  They rejected Christ the first time and have suffered great tragedy because of it.  One would think through all the wrong moves and lack of faith, there would be no future for Israel.  Yet, they are back in the land and following the reign of the Antichrist, we begin anew in the millennial reign of Christ a fully restored nation.  If God can do that with a nation, He can do that with a person.  We may have destroyed our lives, He is always our help.