It’s often said that marriage between a man and a woman is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the Church.  It’s believed that some of that imagery begins here in the book of Hosea.  Hosea is asked by God to marry a prostitute.  An unkind, but fitting term for the woman he is asked to marry is “whore.”  Imagine being a godly man like Hosea and hearing God ask you to take a wife like Gomer.  God told Hosea, “Go, take yourself an adulterous wife…” (Hosea 1:2)  God’s purpose in all of this was to help Hosea and the people understand better the relationship that God had with the people.  The people had become adulterous and unclean in relationship to the Lord.  They had sold themselves out and prostituted themselves to foreign gods.  The most beautiful section of this scripture today is Hosea 3.  At this point Hosea has already married Gomer and the have children together.  At some point Gomer goes off again and returns to her life of prostitution.  Then God tells Hosea to go after her and bring her back.  So, Hosea goes out and buys back his wife and loves her in spite of his hurt and in spite of her actions.  What a wonderful picture of grace, love, and marriage vows.

As a youth pastor I love reading stories like those in today’s scripture reading.  The Book of Daniel tells the story of four pretty amazing young men (likely teenagers): Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.  These days when we talk about these four guys we still call Daniel by his actual name, but we usually know the other three guys by their Babylonian names: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  Here’s what impresses me about these four guys:

1. They were strong, handsome, smart, and hard-working (Daniel 1)
2. They were given gifts by God such as wisdom and the ability to interpret dreams (Daniel 1:17)
3. They were respectful to authority even when they didn’t agree with it. (Daniel 1:8-13)
4. They stood up for their faith in God even if it meant death.  They were men of honor. (Daniel 3 & Daniel 6)

I’m an Eagle Scout and a fully devoted follower of Christ.  This year I have the privilege of beginning to pass on my love for Scouting to my son, Anderson.  He and I are starting Cub Scouts this week.  Scouting is a great character building organization for boys.  In most cases, it’s not only a good character building program, but also a faith building organization.  These four guys written about in the Book of Daniel would have been good Scouts.  These young men lived honorably and had deep reverence and love for God…so much so that they were willing to give their lives for Him.

Tucked near the back of Ezekiel we find the story many of us have heard of Ezekiel’s vision of dry bones.  These dry bones are not some old Halloween tale or material for a cute kids preschool church song.  It was a vision of the state that the people had gotten themselves to and the new life that the Lord wants to offer.  It’s in Ezekiel 37: 11-14 that we see why God was showing Ezekiel these dry bones.

¹¹ Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ ¹² Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. ¹³ Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. ¹⁴ I will put my Spirit in you and you will live…