I’d like to share with you what happened to me in church one morning. I was there early and decided to sit down in my favourite spot (each of us has one) and follow up a lead that I had begun at home earlier.
I had been marking those verses in the Gospel of John where Jesus speaks figuratively. I got as far as John 2:19, where the Jews ask: “What sign do you show us..?” and Jesus answers: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews said: “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it in three days?” But Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body.
I was about to look for the next verse in John’s Gospel where Jesus speaks figuratively but happened to read on: “So later, after he had risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this to them, and they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had said.”
Well, I thought, “the words that Jesus had said” were clear enough — but what was “the scripture”? It had to be in the Old Testament. Suddenly, Hosea 6:2 came to mind. (I’ll begin at verse 1.) “Come, and let us return to the LORD, for He has torn but He will heal us; He has stricken but He will bind us up. (Verse 2) After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, and we will live in His sight.”
The question, as with all prophecies, is: Who is the prophecy referring to? Who are the “us” and the “we” being addressed in the prophecy?
The Jewish thinking would be that it is Israel, who would identify the Suffering Servant” as being themselves (described in great detail in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah). Christians identify the Suffering Servant as Jesus the Messiah. But wait! Is not the word “smitten” in Hosea 6:1 also used in Isaiah 53:4?
Yes! (Same Hebrew word, one that means “to strike or to wound”.) So the “us” and the “we” refers to the Jews in earlier history. But it also refers to Jesus, who was “stricken, smitten of God and afflicted” in the judgement court of Pilate; and Hosea’s “He will bind us up” links to Isaiah’s “by his wounds we are healed”!
“After two days” Jesus was raised from the dead; and “after three days” he “raised us up” when he ascended into heaven. “And we will live in his sight” links to Ephesians 2:1: “And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins…(verse 5) made us alive together with Christ…and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavens in Christ Jesus.” This through the concept of identification, of course — God seeing and accepting us in the Person of His Son.
How does the promise of Hosea apply to the Jews? Well, Jesus was a Jew and the first Christians were also Jews. The faith of Abraham was carried on through those first Christians and continues to this day (in a corrupted form). Jews were never excluded from the new covenant made by God to Abraham and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Hosea 6:2 is relevant to both Jews and Gentiles alike.
And there’s more! Hosea 6:3 reads: “Then shall we know, if we pursue the knowledge of the LORD: His going forth is prepared as the morning; and he shall come to us as the rain, as the latter and the former rain upon the earth.” After the wounding and the death of Christ and his resurrection three days later, and after his ascension to the right hand of his Father, the Spirit of God was poured out on the earth! There’s a world of spiritual wonder in the words of Jesus — and in the scripture he quoted that day to the Jews, which was almost certainly Hosea 6:1-3.
I’ve not yet preached this but thought you might like to follow it up yourself.