Hosea 8 Devotional

A Harvest Larger Than the Seed

“For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. There is no standing grain; what sprouts fails to yield flour. Even if it should produce, the foreigners would swallow it up.”Hosea 8:7 (BSB)

An alarm sounds over Israel for breaking God's covenant and rebelling against his law (8:1). They still claim to know him (8:2), but they have rejected what is good (8:3). They set up kings without asking him and make idols from their silver and gold (8:4). The calf of Samaria was made by a craftsman, and it is not God (8:6). Their many altars became places for sinning (8:11). God wrote out the great things of his law for them, and they treated it as foreign (8:12). Israel forgot his Maker and built palaces (8:14).

Hosea sums it up in one picture. They sow the wind and will reap the whirlwind (8:7). Sin always yields more than it seems to cost. Paul states the same principle for believers: God is not mocked, and a person reaps what he sows, whether ruin from the flesh or eternal life from the Spirit (Galatians 6:7-8). What you sow today matters, because the harvest is real.

To think about: What small seed are you sowing right now that could grow into something much larger than you intend?