God Will Tear Down To Build Up!

Hosea 6:1: "Come, let us return to the LORD. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds."


When we begin to think of who God is, we like to picture Him as the Sovereign One in the restorative business. We like to think of God as our Rescuer who comes to our aid when we are in trouble. We sing praises in worship to Him as our Savior, Redeemer, Restorer, Advocate, etc. When we walk through the valleys of despair, we seek His intervention to take us to the blessed mountaintops of Divine favor. But do we ever think of God as a Destroyer, who tears down the rebellious in order to get them to a place that He in fact can restore them?


To appreciate the context of the passage cited above, we must understand that the prophet Hosea wrote this Divinely inspired book at a time when the Israelites were brazenly defiant against the Lord. Eight hundred years before the advent of Christ, these Israelites engaged in all types of licentiousness in utter rebellion against the commands of the Lord. From corporate sexual promiscuity to abuses against the poor and disadvantaged to gross syncretism and association with occult practices, these Israelites had reached the utter depths of their contempt for the One True Lord.


True to His Word, God would not be mocked by such wickedness by His people (see Galatians 6:7-8). And in His infinite wisdom, the Lord knew that the only way to get the attention of the Israelites was to bring calamity upon them. Within a few decades, God would send the Assyrian army to bring destruction to the land of Ephraim. As the northern tribes of Israel were being plundered by the invading armies, the Israelites cried out to the Lord for deliverance. God would later send prophets like Nahum to remind His people that the "Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble, caring for those who trust in Him" (Nahum 1:7). God was willing to shower His people with the healing springs of His blessing, if they only would return to Him as their only God and Savior. And as tragic as the events were that brought such widespread destruction, still, God used such events to draw His people back into a right fellowship with Him as their Lord. God knew that only demonstrative misfortune would get their attention, since they had fallen so low in their state of despondency.


We must remember today that the Lord desires for us to be in intimate fellowship with Him, and if He believes that "tearing us down" is the catalytic ingredient to get our attention, then He will use such measures to break us from our obstinacy. Dr. James MacDonald in his series Downpour tells us that God will use any necessary means (illness, financial crises, etc.) to get us to respond to Him. And whereas we are not to think that all calamity is necessarily the product of God's restorative process, we must pause in the midst of those storms of life to see if in fact God is trying to get our attention to draw us back to Him. If we truly were honest with ourselves, we would agree that some of those painful trials were orchestrated to bring us back into fellowship with the Lord of Hosts. Still, God does not leave us in the upheaval of our circumstances indefinitely; if we are responsive to the Lord, He will heal us of our "wounds" and present to us the joy of His glorious presence in our lives. And deep down we know that being in close intimacy with the Father is exactly the state for which our souls earnestly long.


Let us therefore know that God loves us and desires us to be in close fellowship with Him. If He sees us straying far from His presence, He will use necessary measures (no matter how painful) to tear away our recalcitrance and draw us back into fellowship with Him. Let's not despise the Lord for such interventions; rather, let us celebrate that He genuinely loves us and will pursue us with such fervor and determination!