The Recoiling Heart of God Text: Hosea 11:8-9
Introduction: Sentimentalism is Not Compassion
We live in an age drowning in sentimentality. Our culture elevates feelings to the status of divine revelation and defines love as unrestrained affirmation. If it feels good, it must be good. If it is sincere, it must be true. This therapeutic gospel has seeped into the church, producing a vision of God who is more like a cosmic grandfather than the Holy One of Israel. He is nice, He is tolerant, and He would never, ever be angry. His love is a soft, squishy thing, a pillow to comfort us in our sins rather than a fire to consume them.
But this God is an idol. He is a projection of our own therapeutic desires. The God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a God of holy love. And holy love is a terrifying thing to those who are in rebellion against Him. It is a love that is fiercely jealous, a love that disciplines, a love that judges, and a love that will not let go. The love of God is not a sentimental feeling; it is a covenant commitment. It is not an abstract attribute; it is a person, Jesus Christ.
The prophet Hosea was called to live out this reality in the most painful way imaginable. His marriage to Gomer, the unfaithful prostitute, was a living parable of God's relationship with Israel. Israel had played the harlot, chasing after every pagan idol, breaking every covenant stipulation, and spitting in the face of the God who had redeemed them. And so, throughout this book, we have heard declarations of fierce and righteous judgment. The sword will rage, the cities will be dashed to pieces, and the people will be dragged into exile. This is not the language of a soft deity. This is the language of a betrayed husband and a grieving father whose holiness demands that sin be dealt with.
But just when the thunder of judgment seems to be all that is left, the clouds part. And in our text today, we are given a glimpse into the very heart of God. We are allowed to overhear a divine soliloquy, a debate within the Godhead. And what we find there is not the detached impassibility of the Greek philosophers, but the passionate, yearning, and suffering love of the covenant Lord. This passage is one of the most profound revelations of the character of God in all of Scripture. It shows us that God's mercy is not a contradiction of His justice, but the very foundation of it.
The Text
How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I surrender you, O Israel?
How can I give you over to be like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboiim?
My heart is turned over within Me;
All My compassions are stirred.
I will not execute My burning anger;
I will not make Ephraim a ruin again.
For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst,
And I will not come in wrath.
(Hosea 11:8-9 LSB)
The Divine Dilemma (v. 8)
We begin with the anguished, rhetorical questions of verse 8:
"How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I give you over to be like Admah? How can I make you like Zeboiim? My heart is turned over within Me; All My compassions are stirred." (Hosea 11:8)
This is the language of covenant love in conflict with covenant justice. Ephraim, the leading tribe of the northern kingdom, stands for all of Israel. They have done everything to deserve abandonment. They have broken the contract. By all rights, God should hand them over. He should surrender them to the consequences of their spiritual adultery. But He cannot. The questions are not asked because God is ignorant of the answer, but to reveal the depths of His own heart to His people.
He then raises the stakes by referencing Admah and Zeboiim. These were two of the cities of the plain, destroyed along with Sodom and Gomorrah in a storm of fire and brimstone. They became proverbial symbols of total, irreversible annihilation under the wrath of God (Deut. 29:23). God is saying, "By every standard of justice, you deserve to be a smoking crater. I have every right to wipe you off the map." And He is absolutely correct. Israel's sin was, in many ways, worse than Sodom's because they sinned against such great light. They had the law, the prophets, the temple, the covenants. They knew the living God and turned from Him to worship sticks and stones.
So what stops Him? The text says, "My heart is turned over within Me; All My compassions are stirred." This is astonishing language. The Hebrew for "turned over" implies a violent churning, a complete overturning. It is as if God's very being recoils at the thought of utterly destroying His people. His compassions are not just present; they are "stirred," kindled, set ablaze. This is not the language of stoic detachment. This is the language of passionate, personal, and profound love. This is divine pathos.
This does not mean that God is subject to shifting emotions like we are. God is immutable; His character does not change. But His unchanging character is one of holy, passionate love. His compassion is not a mood; it is an attribute as essential to His being as His holiness. The tension here is not a conflict between God's attributes, but a revelation of how those attributes work together in the great drama of redemption. His holiness demands judgment, but His love demands salvation. And as we will see, both are satisfied at the cross.
The Divine Distinction (v. 9)
Verse 9 provides the resolution to this divine dilemma. The reason God will not act like a spurned human lover is because He is not one.
"I will not execute My burning anger; I will not make Ephraim a ruin again. For I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, And I will not come in wrath." (Hosea 11:9 LSB)
God declares that He will pull back from the brink. He will not execute the full measure of His "burning anger." This does not mean He will not judge them at all. The Assyrian exile is still coming; that is a settled historical fact. That is the discipline of a loving Father. But He will not make them a final ruin. He will not treat them like Admah. There will be a remnant. There will be a restoration. His judgment serves a redemptive purpose, not a purely punitive one.
And the reason is the central declaration of this passage: "For I am God and not man." This is the fundamental Creator/creature distinction applied to the realm of mercy. A man, betrayed and scorned as God has been, would lash out in vindictive rage. A human husband would cast off his adulterous wife forever, and be justified in doing so. A human father might disown a rebellious son. Men hold grudges. Men seek revenge. Men's love has limits. But God's love does not. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9). His capacity to absorb betrayal and continue to love is infinitely greater than ours. Because He is God, His grace is greater than all our sin.
He is not just God in some abstract sense; He is "the Holy One in your midst." This is a paradox that should shatter us. His holiness is the very reason He must judge sin, and yet it is also the reason He will show mercy. He is holy, so He cannot tolerate sin. But He is also holy, meaning He is utterly "other" than us. His character is not like our flawed, petty, vindictive character. He is set apart in His righteousness, and He is set apart in His mercy. And He is "in your midst." He has not abandoned them, even in their filth. He is present with them, a holy fire that both threatens to consume and promises to purify.
Therefore, He concludes, "I will not come in wrath." Again, this must be understood in its context. He will come in judgment, but not in the final, annihilating wrath reserved for His implacable enemies. He is coming as a physician with a scalpel, not as an executioner with an axe. He is coming to cut out the cancer of idolatry so that the patient might live.
The Cross in Hosea
So how can a holy God do this? How can He be both just and the justifier of the wicked? How can His heart recoil from destroying His people while His holiness demands that their sin be punished with the fire of Admah and Zeboiim? The tension that we see in the heart of God in Hosea 11 is only and finally resolved at one place: the cross of Jesus Christ.
At the cross, God did not hold back His burning anger. At the cross, God did "give up" His Son. He did "surrender" Him. On that dark Friday, God the Father treated God the Son as if He were Admah and Zeboiim. The full, unmitigated, annihilating wrath of a holy God against sin was poured out upon Jesus. All the fury that Ephraim deserved, that Israel deserved, that you and I deserved, was executed upon Him.
Why? "For I am God and not man." A man could never devise such a plan. A man could never pay such a price. Only God could be both the judge and the substitute. Only God could satisfy His own justice by bearing it Himself. At the cross, God's heart did not just "turn over" within Him; it was torn in two. The Father turned His face away from the Son, so that He would never have to turn His face away from us.
This is the glory of the gospel. God's compassion did not simply set aside His justice. God's compassion satisfied His justice in the person of His Son. He remains the Holy One, and yet He can dwell in our midst without consuming us, because we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. He does not come to us in wrath, because Christ has drunk the cup of wrath to the dregs for us.
Therefore, if you are in Christ, these words from Hosea are your eternal security. "How can I give you up?" The answer is, He cannot. He will not. He has bound Himself to you with the blood of His own Son. Your unfaithfulness, your stumbling, your sin, while grievous to Him, can never exhaust His covenant commitment. His heart is turned toward you. All His compassions are stirred for you. He is God, and not man. And because of that, your salvation is not dependent on the strength of your grip on Him, but on the strength of His grip on you. And He will never let go.