Forsaking God

Yet prosperity often conceals spiritual decline. In the marketplace, merchants quietly tip their scales for dishonest gain. Near the temple, practices drawn from pagan worship persist, including forms of ritual prostitution. The official message from leaders is reassuring, “This is how you worship Yahweh.” Sacrifices are offered. The golden calves still stand. Religion is active, visible, and culturally affirmed.

But something is deeply wrong. God’s people bear His name while giving their devotion elsewhere.

Into that environment steps a young prophet named Hosea. He speaks against corruption, idolatry, and hollow worship. Then one day, as he rushes from the temple, he announces something shocking. He is going to marry a prostitute because God commanded it.

That moment sets the stage for one of the most arresting prophetic messages in Scripture. The opening chapters of Hosea show us what it looks like to forsake God, what it costs, and how divine mercy pursues the faithless.

When we read the Gospels casually, it’s easy to miss just how shocking Jesus was to the religious world of His day. One way to think about it is that Jesus didn’t play by their rules. He didn’t treat religion like a checklist, a club with membership standards, or a game where you earn points. Instead, He upset the insiders by welcoming the outsiders.

If I were trying to capture their frustration in verse, it might go something like this:

The Privilege We Shrug Off Too Easily

Our culture has learned how to weaponize words, and one of its favorite targets right now is privilege. The word is often treated like a moral accusation, as if acknowledging any advantage is an admission of guilt. Beneath that resentment is a distorted assumption that life should distribute opportunity evenly and outcomes fairly.

That assumption has never matched reality.

Some people are born into stability, opportunity, influence, and security. Others are not. That disparity is real, and pretending otherwise does not make the world more just. At the same time, it is also true that in America, many people who work hard, exercise wisdom, and make good choices are able to overcome barriers and build meaningful lives.

What I want to do is reclaim the word privilege, not as a weapon, but as a good and honest word.

Hold that idea for a moment. Not privilege as something to deny or resent, but privilege as something to recognize and steward. There is a particular privilege given to us as Christians that is so familiar, so accessible, and so easily overlooked that we barely notice it anymore. We shrug it off because we no longer see it for what it is.

Before we can appreciate that privilege, we need to face two realities that Scripture refuses to soften.

What Jesus’ Authority Means for Our Bodies, Souls, and Ministry

Have you ever watched someone approach Jesus with nothing but desperation? Imagine a man rushing toward Jesus’ feet. The skin on his face, hands, and legs are flaking away, like dust from an old wall. This man had leprosy. In first-century Israel, leprosy didn’t just ravage the body; it erased a person’s place in the community. People backed away, fearful of becoming ceremonially unclean. You recognize the man in the crowd, even though you can’t recall. Once he was a familiar face in your town, but as his disease progressed, you, like everyone else, forgot him.

And then the man speaks from the dust:
“Lord, if you’re willing, you can make me clean.” (Luke 5:12)

Jesus does the unthinkable. He looks at the main, not with disgust, but with love, and He says, “I am willing.” He stretches out His hand and touches a man whom the Law had labeled untouchable. Immediately, the man is healed. The flaking skin disappears. He is restored.

The crowd gasped. Everyone knew the Law. No one was supposed to get that close to a leper. But Jesus touched him—had healed him! Then He instructed the man to go to the temple, to follow the Law’s process for declaring a healed leper clean (see Leviticus 14). And yet, He told him not to broadcast what had just happened. You couldn’t help but wonder if that was even possible. How could this be contained when a man who was declared untouchable had been made whole?