My God will reject them because they have not obeyed him; they will be wanderers among the nations. – Hosea 9:17

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 17, 2020): Hosea 9

There is no mercy in the law. Either you are guilty, or you are not. It is a yes or no proposition. If you have ever been pulled over on the road by a police officer, you probably understand this fact. If it is a speeding violation that has gotten you into trouble, the first question coming from the officer will be, “do you know how fast you were going?” Obviously, the police officer knows the truth. His radar has clocked you at a specific speed, and you are guilty. The question is actually an attempt to get a confession out of you. Pick a speed. If it is even marginally above the posted limit, then you have confessed to the crime under the law.

Mercy does not exist in the law. But it does exist in the decision of the police officer. It has been a while since I have had a conversation with a roadside police officer, but I have often received mercy. Sometimes, the police officer has let me go with a warning. One officer went back to check me out and realized that I hadn’t had any moving violations for over the past five years, and so he returned to my window and let me go with the words, “good driving should have some benefit.” But even when I did receive a ticket, the officer often extended mercy by writing up the ticket at the speed that I thought I was driving, rather than the speed revealed by his radar gun. The law is without mercy, but a police officer, at least in my experience, is often filled with it.

Hosea would live to see the devastation of Israel at the hands of the Assyrians, and that devastation would result according to the letter of the law. Moses writes in Deuteronomy;

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess (Deuteronomy 30:17-18).

Israel would go first, but less than a century and a half later, Judah would also pay for their sins, both according to the merciless law. And it is this lack of mercy that necessitated a new covenant. According to the writer of Hebrews, “by calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear” (Hebrews 8:13). And maybe one of the most critical facets of the new covenant was the advent of mercy. God says that “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:12). If we can acknowledge our sin, God agrees to take care of it and never to bring it up again. This is the mercy of God and something that he promises to do in our midst.

 Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Hosea 10