Out of Egypt I Called My Son

A toddler wobbles across the floor, arms out, about to fall. A parent's hands catch him, hold him steady, and lift him up to their face for a kiss. That is the picture God chose to describe his love.

Hosea was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel, about seven hundred and fifty years before Jesus. It was a time of wealth for some, but the people had turned away from God. They worshipped the Baals, the gods of the Canaanites, and burned incense to idols. Hosea's whole life became a message. God told him to marry a woman named Gomer, who would be unfaithful to him, and to keep loving her. That heartbreak was a picture of how Israel had treated God. And in chapter eleven, God speaks not as a husband, but as a parent remembering his child.

“When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.” God is looking back to the very beginning. Israel had been slaves in Egypt, a nation of nobodies making bricks for Pharaoh. And God called them out. He brought them through the sea and into the wilderness and made them his own. Not because they were great, but because he loved them. Like a parent who chooses a child, God says: this is my son. And then, sadly, God goes on. The more I called them, the more they went away from me. They sacrificed to the Baals. They burned incense to carved images.

But God does not stop at the hurt. He remembers the tender moments. “I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms.” Ephraim was another name for the northern tribes. God says: I taught them to walk. I held their arms as they took their first steps. “But they knew not that I healed them.” They did not even realise who had been looking after them. “I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love.” Not with whips, like a farmer driving cattle, but with ropes of human kindness. “I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.” Like someone who lifts the heavy wooden yoke from an animal's neck, and bends down to feed it.

The rest of the chapter is honest. Because Israel refused to return, Assyria would rule over them, and the sword would come to their cities. But even then God cries out, “How shall I give you up, Ephraim? My heart is turned within me.” God's love does not let go easily. He promises that one day his children will come trembling back, like birds from Egypt and doves from Assyria, and he will settle them in their homes. Judgement was coming, but love would have the last word.

Hosea's warnings came true in his own lifetime. In the year seven hundred and twenty-two BC, after a siege of three years, the Assyrian army captured Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom. The book of Second Kings records it, and so do the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Sargon the Second, who boasted of deporting over twenty-seven thousand people from the city.

Out of Egypt I called my son. You can read it in Hosea chapter eleven, verses one to four. Hundreds of years later, Matthew told how Joseph took Mary and the young child Jesus to Egypt to escape King Herod, and brought him back again. And Matthew wrote, this happened to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet: out of Egypt have I called my son. The God who loved Israel as a child sent his own Son, who walked Israel's road. So here is a question to carry with you. God described himself teaching his child to walk and lifting him to his cheek. How does it feel to know God loves you like that?