Advent: December 18

Hosea 13:14 (ESV) I shall ransom them from the power of Sheol; I shall redeem them from Death. O Death, where are your plagues? O Sheol, where is your sting? Compassion is hidden from my eyes.

In the middle of some hard preaching to the Northern Kingdom, Hosea breaks into this glorious promise of ransom from the power of death, the awful death that sin brings.

The day you eat it, you will die.

The wages of sin is death.

Ephraim has sinned. Ephraim will die, but God will not leave his people in death. He will redeem them from the power of death.

Let’s take an excursion to a New Testament writing and draw an arc back to our Hosea passage. Read the Apostle Paul’s words to the church at Corinth:

1 Corinthians 15:50-55 (ESV) I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

Paul, writing to comfort the church at Corinth about those who have passed on in Christ, reminds them that death will not have the final say. He preaches about the hope of resurrection because our Lord and God, Jesus, was raised. He tells about the glorious day in which the Lord will come again and raise to life those who have passed on in the faith. Want to guess what Scripture Paul preaches that message from?

Yep, Hosea 13:14.

How is God going to overcome the wages of sin? He’s going to send Jesus to die for sin, defeat sin, rise, and put on display in himself the prototype of what we will be like when we are raised to new creation life and how it will take place.

He told us this in advance through Hosea so we could have hope in the expectaions he set for us.

Advent. Jesus has come, and he is coming again to raise to life all who have been redeemed by faith in him. He promised, and he will deliver.