The failure of leadership

The Bible is often written with tears. Sometimes it records the prophets and God weeping but most often the tears are soaked into the words that are written. At any given time the Bible could have been written for the day you read it and so the tears flow through your spirit as you step into the passage and apply what is written to your own setting. This is my experience this morning. I’ve spent the majority of my life in and around leadership. I’m thankful for God’s grace and mercy that has given me the freedom to grow in leadership. I have been blessed by leaders who have walked with God and I have seen leaders try to lead without the gifting or the anointing to do so. I have seen leaders finish their race filled with love, joy and peace and I have seen leaders fall before the finishing line. The glory of God grows in some leaders as they go through life and for some the glory diminishes as the years go by.

I say all of this because the last hour I have just sat weeping over these verses:

“Hear this, you priests! Pay attention, you Israelites! Listen, royal house! This judgment is against you: You have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on Tabor. The rebels are knee-deep in slaughter. I will discipline all of them. I know all about Ephraim; Israel is not hidden from me. Ephraim, you have now turned to prostitution; Israel is corrupt.” (Hosea 5 v 1-3)

God is moving His people into exile under the Assyrians. We know that unlike the exile of Judah which lasted 70 years the exiled northern people never made it back. They became known as the 10 lost tribes of Israel. They never made it back. They never came back. They were lost. Can those words sink into your heart and mind? For some Ichabod is real. The glory lifts and never returns.

Why did the Northern Kingdom, the 10 tribes of Israel go into exile? Failed leadership.

Everyone came under the judgment, they were all exiled, they were all to blame, but the focus is definitely on the priests. “Hear this, you priests!” And “Listen, royal house!” the leadership of the kings and the leadership of the priests failed the people. They could have kept the people close to God but they didn’t.

This is Spiritual leadership. It is to keep God’s people moving on righteous paths that He has created and purposed for them.

In these 3 verses God mentions 2 important sites where it all seemed to go wrong and never made a recovery.

Mizpah (1 Samuel 7) the place where Samuel set up a stone and called it Ebenezer because ‘the Lord has helped/watched over us” when God thundered and enabled His people to thwart the attack from the Philistines. The people repented because they had not respected the presence of God (the ark). It became a holy site.

Tabor (Judges 4 and 5) is the place where Deborah and Barak famously overcame the Canaanites.

These historical places of leadership have now become known for failure. They are a snare. There is slaughter (is it child sacrifice perhaps?) There is no depth that leaders can fall into taking people with them. Ephraim is highlighted and the name was interchangeable with that of Ephraim though its first king, Jereboam (1 Kings 12) was the first to lead them astray.

Is there any comfort this morning? Yes! Always!

In verse 3 God says ‘I know’ and ‘it is not hidden from me’

God is all-knowing. He sees everything. He knows what He has done. He knows what He is doing and He knows what He will do. It is okay God has this.

It is this omniscient God that we worship this morning and it is this fact that gives us hope and dries our tears.