TCH Sheffield are currently in the middle of a teaching series in Hosea called The Passion of God: A Heart for the Harlot. The talks of which can be found here.
We’ve learned that we belong to a passionate God; a God so passionate that he did everything, at great cost to himself, to welcome us home. Hosea has shown us how passionate God is for a people who are faithful to Him. We see God’s righteous anger at Israel’s sin that doesn’t fit with them being His people and also God’s future promise of grace that He will win a people for Himself. Seeing God’s passion for a passionless people who worship other things is jarring. God demonstrated his passion for his people when he asked Hosea the prophet to marry a prostitute who was ultimately unfaithful and yet Hosea still goes out to the market place to buy her back from slavery to her lovers. God’s passion for his people is immense and yet His wrath falls on those who throw this back in His face like the Israelite’s were.
Praise God that this wrath, this passion for holiness, has ultimately fallen on Jesus so that we might be the blameless people that God desires. The passion of God is so clear at the cross. In that gruesome setting as Jesus hung there dying the most horrific death He demonstrated his love for the unlovely. Jesus was a man of passion to his very last breath. He had passion for the Father’s glory since he said ‘not my will but your’s be done’ and he had a passion for the lost as he died to pay the penalty they deserved that they might share in his glorious inheritance. We worship a God of passion. This has illuminated for me a line from a song we regularly sing in TCH, written by one of our own…
Our King is a king of passion
‘It is finished!’ he cried out and gave up his life
So we could be his family:
Our King is a king of passion.
So often we sing the words of song but never really get what they mean on deep level that impacts our emotions. God has used the book of Hosea to bring that line from that song home to me in a big way. Jesus shows us that we worship a God of phenomenal passion.
