Tag Archives: Scripture

The Living Word: Insights from Hosea’s Prophetic Revelation

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Hosea 1:1 – “The word of the LORD that came to Hosea…”

It’s a simple phrase, easy to glide over: “The word of the LORD came to Hosea.” But the more you sit with it, the more wonder it holds. How did the Word come? Was it a voice Hosea could hear with his ears? A vision blazing across his mind? A sudden, irresistible impulse of the Spirit that left him trembling?

Scripture doesn’t tell us. And perhaps that’s intentional. Because what mattered most was not the manner of revelation, but its source. Hosea didn’t dream up his message or craft it out of religious insight. He received it. The word came to him.

The prophets were not spiritual inventors but faithful messengers. Whether God spoke by a voice, a vision, or a burning conviction, the result was the same: “Men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). Calvin put it this way:

“The prophets did not speak at random, but as organs of the Holy Spirit, they only uttered what they had been commissioned to declare.”

That’s what we call inspiration—the Spirit of God superintending the words of men so that what they wrote was, in every part, the Word of God. As Paul wrote to Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim. 3:16). God didn’t simply whisper ideas and leave the prophets to fill in the rest. Nor did He bypass their minds and turn them into secretaries taking dictation. The miracle of inspiration is that the living God spoke His perfect Word through human voices—each shaped by its author’s time, place, and personality, yet free from error and filled with divine authority.

The Westminster Confession says it this way:

“The Old Testament in Hebrew, and the New Testament in Greek, being immediately inspired by God… are therefore authentical.” (WCF 1.8)

In other words, when we open the Bible, we are not reading about the Word of God; we are hearing the Word of God.

And yet, if we’re honest, we don’t always hear it that way. We can open our Bibles and walk away unchanged. The words may sound no different than those on the morning news or a grocery list.

This is why the Reformers spoke not only of inspiration, but also of illumination. The same Spirit who once inspired the prophets must now illumine the hearts of hearers. The Westminster Confession explains:

“Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.” (WCF 1.5)

Without that inward work, the Word remains a closed book. Jesus said as much when He told Nicodemus that unless one is born of the Spirit, he cannot even see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). The problem isn’t with the light of God’s Word, but with the blindness of our hearts.

When the Spirit opens our eyes, we begin to see that the Bible truly is what it has always been—the living and active Word of God. The change is not in the Word, but in us. The same Scriptures that once seemed distant or dull suddenly shine with divine truth. We no longer simply read them; they read us. They convict, comfort, direct, and delight. The same God who spoke to Hosea through revelation now speaks to His people through the written Word—and by His Spirit, that Word pierces to the division of soul and spirit (Heb. 4:12).

So when we read that “the word of the LORD came to Hosea,” we’re reminded that God still comes to His people by His Word. Not in fresh revelation—Scripture is complete and sufficient—but in fresh illumination. The Spirit still takes the inspired Word and presses it upon our hearts with divine power.

Every time you open your Bible, the living God is speaking. The question is not whether He will speak, but whether we will listen. And so we pray with Samuel, “Speak, LORD, for your servant hears.”

And if that sounds a bit too mystical, remember—it’s not that we wait for a new voice from heaven. We simply wait for the Spirit to make the written Word living in us. The word that came to Hosea still comes, by grace, to all who have ears to hear.

SDG

A light in the dark

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How does it appear that there is a God?
The very light of nature in man, and the works of God, declare plainly that there is a God; but his word and Spirit only do sufficiently and effectually reveal him unto men for their salvation.

The Westminster Larger Catechism: With Scripture Proofs. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1996.

Man is born in conflict.

As creatures fashioned by, and in the image of, our Almighty Creator God, there is within each of us a desire to know and be known by God, to enjoy the blessing of fellowship with God, and to find in God the meaning, purpose, and direction of life itself.

God has created the world in such a way that all things would point His creation to Him, that we would seek Him out in worship and obedience (Acts 17:27), that we would clearly perceive His eternal power and divine nature (Rom. 1:20), and that we would learn from the Eternal One the purpose of all life (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Not only does this “light of nature” direct us to know that there is a God, but so also does His mighty work of providence, the way in which God orders and ordains all things that come to pass, point us to find him. There is a super-abundance of evidence pointing us to the truth that there is a God who is worthy of our worship, praise, and obedience, so that “the fool says in his heart, ‘There is no god.'”

How foolish we’ve become.

While we have an inherent knowledge of the reality of God, there is also with each of us, as fallen creatures, a blindness of heart and mind (Eph 4:18; Rom 1:21), a refusal to bend the knee, an indignant balking at the Lordship of our Creator. We behold the evidence of the hand of our Creator and merely say, “How sublime.” We put the created thing in the place of the Creator. We turn, each of us to our own ways, and do what is right in our own eyes. We make ourselves to be gods, self-made men. We deny the evidence of God all around us, and we have become fools.

Such is the need, then, for something special to come along.

While the evidence of God is clear for all to see, because of our sinful hearts, the light of nature and God’s works in creation are insufficient to bring us to a saving knowledge of who God is and how we can be right with Him. We need something more. We need God to speak directly to us. And so He does, in the Scriptures. Through the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, the Scriptures were by God “to reveal Himself… to declare His will to the Church… to preserve and propagate the truth… and to establish and comfort the Church” (WSC I.I).

We can give God praise, then, for He has not left us to languish in the darkness of our foolish hearts, but has given His Word as “a light unto our feet” (Ps. 119:105), that we may know God and the salvation He has worked for us in Jesus Christ.