Daily Archive

In Hosea 3:5 we read, “Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.” After we have seen The Plan, the Propitiation, the Purification, now we see the Penitent. There will be at some point repentance in Israel. Here is the promise – God will judge His people but there is hope of return, repentance, revival!

What is the need then for Israel and for us? First there is the need to repent. Then there is the need to return. Just as in the parable of the Prodigal, he came to his senses, saw his need, saw the solution, and it was in returning to his father. He needed to go home.

Deuteronomy 30:5 tells us, “Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers.” And Paul picks up on this in Romans 11:23 where he writes, “And they also, if they do not continue in unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.” Unbelieving Israel has been cut off, but when they repent and return they will be grafted back in to the Olive Tree that is the People of God.

There is also a renewal here. “Afterward the children of Israel shall return and seek the Lord their God and David their king.” Where is the significance here for the northern Kingdom? They were not ruled by the line of David. Yet Hosea is saying that for them to participate in the blessings here they must return to the house of David. How? By bowing the knee to David’s successor, Jesus. He is THE KING in the line of David. This is a call for reunification of the nation under One King, under the Messiah.

As this claim is made we see that “They shall fear the Lord and His goodness in the latter days.” The latter days refers to the end times. And this prophecy is echoed by Paul. “And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; for this is My covenant with them, when I take away their sins.’” (Romans 11:26-27).