Podcast Introduction Our reading today Hosea 8-14. After the reading, I’ll have some comments for you. I’m calling today’s episode “Boundless Love.”  Design: Steve Webb | Photo: Ian Hutchinson on Unsplash Comments on In Matthew 22, Jesus was asked by a Pharisee what the greatest commandment is. His response was, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  In Hosea, God judged His people because they were not faithful to Him.  7For my people are determined to *desert* me.They call me the Most High,but they don’t truly honor me. (NLT) Hosea 11:7 NLT How many times had He told them that judgement was coming, but that He would forgive them if they would repent and come back to Him?  1 Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God, for your sins have brought you down. 2Bring your confessions, and return to the Lord. Say to him, “Forgive all our sins and graciously receive us, so that we may offer you our praises. 3Assyria cannot save us, nor can our warhorses. Never again will we say to the idols we have made, ‘You are our gods.’ No, in you alone do the orphans find mercy.” 4The Lord says, “Then I will heal you of your *faithlessness*; my love will know no bounds, for my anger will be gone forever…” Hosea 14:1-4 NLT The same Hebrew word is used in 11:7 “for my people are determined to desert me” and in 14:4 “I will heal you of your faithlessness“. The word means “backsliding” or “apostasy”. To desert or to backslide or to be an apostate means that at one point they were *with* God, but then they turned away.  Notice what God said here in 14:4: I will heal you of your faithlessness, your backsliding, your apostasy. He didn’t say forgive. He said heal! Listen to what Spurgeon wrote about this: “as though he said, ‘My poor people, I do remember that they are but dust; they are liable to a thousand temptations through the fall, and they soon go astray; but I will not treat them as though they were rebels, I will look upon them as patients, and they shall look upon me as a physician.”  After telling them that He would heal them of their apostasy, He said, “…my love will know no bounds…”. And it is because of His boundless love that he looked at their backsliding as a disease instead