Author: missionspaul

Easy.

It is possible to appear to be loyal to God and yet bow down to idols.

It is possible that what happens on the public stage is not mirrored with what the private life is like.

It is possible to claim many things and yet they not be a reality.

For a time.

“Israel was a spreading vine; he brought forth fruit for himself. As his fruit increased, he built more altars; as his land prospered, he adorned his sacred stones. Their heart is deceitful, and now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will demolish their altars and destroy their sacred stones.” (Hosea 10 v 1-2)

The Church grew numerically and they had a harvest with abundance of blessings, there were many testimonies, stories of transformation. They became prosperous and bought buildings and extended their staff, their community work was amazing, their ministry became known around the world and yet the leadership having admired the success, enjoyed the benefits of it and began to idolise what they had received.

The GIVER and the GIFTS had become separated.

They continued and more success came their way as they began to teach others the keys to their growth. “You can be like us”; “We will show you how we got these gifts”; “If you do this ABC principle then you will receive what we have”.

That’s not why the GIVER gave the GIFTS.

So God began to topple down that what was built. He broke down the idolatry by exposing it and all that was successful fell down. The success become the failure it always was.

And someone asked, ‘How did we get here?’

And the reply came.

“Easy”

Thank God today for the leaders of your church who teach and lead you along the right path.

“Because of all their wickedness in Gilgal, I hated them there. Because of their sinful deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will no longer love them; all their leaders are rebellious. Ephraim is blighted, their root is withered, they yield no fruit. Even if they bear children, I will slay their cherished offspring.” My God will reject them because they have not obeyed him; they will be wanderers among the nations.” (Hosea 9 v 15-17)

Good leaders honour what God did in the past and encourage others to make the same commitments their ancestors did. (Gilgal was the place that the Israelites first encamped after the miraculous crossing of the Jordan River but which later became the centre of idolatry).

Good leaders are continually calling people from drifting from the presence of God (these people would soon be driven from His home and into exile).

Good leaders are not focused on their own gain but are focused on the legacy that they leave behind (difficult to read perhaps but the One who forms us in our womb will lift His protection on future generations).

Good leaders teach the Bible in a way that it must be obeyed (they were rejected because the people didn’t obey).

Good leaders teach the Old testament history in light of a New testament covenant which is of course so much better (because of Jesus’ blood there is no hate, no being driven away, no blighting of the future, no withering, no fruitlessness, no slaying, no rejection and no more wandering, thank you Jesus!)

There is always a price to pray when we walk away from God.

^“I have seen Ephraim, like Tyre, planted in a pleasant place. But Ephraim will bring out their children to the slayer. Give them, Lord—what will you give them? Give them wombs that miscarry and breasts that are dry.” (Hosea 9 v 13-14)

When the glory of God is exchanged for idolatry then fruitlessness is the result. Growth is hindered because blessing has stopped and the potential (because Ephraim means doubly fruitful) is not fulfilled. Ephraim who lived in a pleasant place had enough things to look at to think they will be okay. They were surrounded by blessings and yet even pleasant places can experience the slayer.

God has stepped back.

Whenever we move from the Creator to the created for our satisfaction we lose.

Hosea cries out with a prayer asking for God’s help. But then realises that actually it is more merciful to cut off the future generation because of what is coming from the Assyrian nation.

Is that applicable to us in 2023 if we lose the glory of God?

Paul in Romans says to us the wages of sin is death meaning there are consequences to walking from God. This is why the enemy of our soul is working to redefine sin and to make sin more acceptable. To water down the Bible. To make sure Churches create false fire so that the deception is created that God is fine with idolatry. He is not. The consequences that Hosea realised remain today. Judgement continues to fall on the House of God. Celebrity heroes continue to fall and more will do so. Legacies are robbed and cut off. But not all. For those who return there is hope. Amen.

Those are the words that were spoken to me yesterday about a financial situation. ‘There has been a tangible decline’. I looked at the figures and sadness came over me as I saw how what used to be is no more. It is a very difficult situation to live under when there are just echoes of what used to be.

Israel started out like with fruitful potential, like ‘grapes in a desert’ God found her. But she chose a lifestyle of idolatry and as a result … ^“Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird—no birth, no pregnancy, no conception. Even if they rear children, I will bereave them of every one. Woe to them when I turn away from them!” (Hosea 9 v 11-12)

Israel’s glory is their population and it will diminish. Being moved into exile their numbers will decline

The word ‘glory’ in the Bible means ‘weighty, heavy’ and refers to the presence of God.
Nothing can change the presence of God. Nothing can affect His glory. It is unchanging. He will be where He wants to be. However His glory is not what is under scrutiny, it is our glory.

Our glory is the original condition mankind was created with.
Adam lost it because he wanted to be somebody else instead of being happy with who God created.
Adam lost it for us and Jesus gave it back to us but we keep on losing it because we want to be somebody else other than who God made.
We want to be and we want to have and we pursue this at all costs even if that cost is our glory.
We exchange our glory for idolatry. Hosea has taught us so much about idols. They exist in our world and they are the one reason for losing our glory.

The question is always this: is that image the image of Jesus? If it is not, then you are in danger of losing your glory.

Keep your glory: it is who you are created to be.

What will you become when you get older? It is the question of every child. And then life goes by in an instant and you become older. Did we become that man and woman we longed to become? Did we fulfil the potential within us? Do we still walk with Him?

“When I found Israel, it was like finding grapes in the desert; when I saw your ancestors, it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree. But when they came to Baal Peor, they consecrated themselves to that shameful idol and became as vile as the thing they loved.” (Hosea 9 v 10)

God found Israel as a faithful and fruitful people. I have never found grapes in a desert though I would imagine it would be a wonderful thing. I have grown things and got excited at the early signs of the fruit or the vegetable poking up out of the ground. I know what this means. It is exciting and hopeful.

Sadly I also know that those early signs can come to nothing. I know that as a below-average gardener and I know that as a Church Pastor.

Baal Peor was a watershed moment. The reason being is that it is one of the last sinful acts of their ancestors which led to the death of that generation. It is found in Numbers 25. It is similar to the golden calf in Exodus and has the same consequences because the wages of sin is death not because God enjoys punishing but sin has its consequences.

It is never how you start but it is always if you are still running the race when you are at the end.

Hosea is the prophet that no one liked.

Did he want people to like him and align to his prophetic message? I’m sure he did.

“The days of punishment are coming, the days of reckoning are at hand. Let Israel know this.
Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired person a maniac. The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim, yet snares await him on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God. They have sunk deep into corruption, as in the days of Gibeah. God will remember their wickedness and punish them for their sins.” (Hosea 9 v 7-9)

In the eyes of these people Hosea was a fool, a maniac and though he was their watchman they set traps for him because the prophetic message drew attention to their sins. They were not happy hearing that punishment was at hand for the depth of their sinfulness. Hosea draws their attention to the wickedness of the people in the time of the Judges in Gibeah. God’s people in Hosea’s day had sunk to the same all-time low as with the Judges. The sin in Gibeah is found in Judges 19.

This is a hauntingly powerful story of a woman from Bethlehem. She was a concubine. In a fit of anger she ran away from her master and owner to her father’s house in Bethlehem of Judah. The man found her and wooed her back.

 On the way back to his home in the hill country of Ephraim, it became late in the evening and they needed a place to stay. They depended on the hospitality of the people of Gibeah, but there was no hospitality forthcoming. Finally, an old man offered them a place to stay in his home.

 That night a set of townsmen knocked on the door. They demanded the body of the male visitor. In order to appease the sexual hunger of the men outside, the old man grabbed the concubine and threw her out and shut the door.

The crowd outside gang-raped her, abused her all night. When dawn broke they left her lying on the ground. When her husband came out he saw her lying dead at the door of the house with her hands on the threshold.

It is a horrible story told in Judges 19 and there is no mention of God. Does He not care? Was it too shameful to even make an appearance or speak a word?

Her memory calls out. It calls out to the psychological numbness of those around her, and it calls out to us down the centuries to amplify her silent cries.

There are people crying today because of acts that are too shameful to even mention where the presence of God seems remote. We need to speak up and out. We need to step into the shame and feel the dirt and the pain and we need to stand for justice. For the greatest shame is on those who turn away from that cry.

You may be called fool and a maniac and traps may even be set for you if you travel this path. But will we speak up for those who have been impacted by the sin of God’s people? Or do we just want people to like us?

Recently I was walking through a railway station that was once the centre of activity. Today it has display boards with pictures showing what it used to be like. People leaning out of the windows of the trains; the platforms filled with passengers waiting to board; the ticket office with a queue of excited people. Smoke, noise, atmosphere has been replaced by an uneasy silence. It looks like a railway station but the best days are gone.

“What will you do on the day of your appointed festivals, on the feast days of the Lord?
Even if they escape from destruction, Egypt will gather them, and Memphis will bury them.
Their treasures of silver will be taken over by briers, and thorns will overrun their tents.”(Hosea 9 v 5-6)

Hosea warns them that there is coming a day when they will not be able to worship God the way they used to because they will be in exile.

They have left the silver behind but no one is there to steal it. The Festival of Booths (which celebrated their ancestor’s journey in the Wilderness) with temporary tents for the celebration period will be a distant memory. The tents will still be there but uninhabited except for thorns.

Ghost town.

I know a man who worshipped passionately; who followed God for 30 years; prayer and fasting; witnessing; but today he lives in exile, it doesn’t look like he is going to return from the place he was never called to be in; and what is left behind is a memory of the man he used to be. He is a ghost-town believer.

This word from God is as true for today as for when Hosea spoke it.

Every success in your life, everything you have achieved and all that you have was given by God. It was not your good works that did it. It was not your plans, goals, priorities, money and possessions. Don’t ‘rejoice’ in those things. That’s what the ‘others’ do. Rejoice in God who gave you all things. That is the heart of the message as we move into the next chapter of Hosea. He warns God’s people not to celebrate like their world does for God is the God of their harvest.

“Do not rejoice, Israel; do not be jubilant like the other nations. For you have been unfaithful to your God; you love the wages of a prostitute at every threshing floor.
Threshing floors and winepresses will not feed the people; the new wine will fail them.
They will not remain in the Lord’s land; Ephraim will return to Egypt and eat unclean food in Assyria. They will not pour out wine offerings to the Lord, nor will their sacrifices please him. Such sacrifices will be to them like the bread of mourners; all who eat them will be unclean. This food will be for themselves; it will not come into the temple of the Lord.” (Hosea 9 v 1-4)

The problem:-

• There was not thankfulness for what God had given them.
• They celebrated idolatry like the world around them believing their own idols brought the success. Instead of gratitude to God they engaged in sexual practices to Baal in the places where the grain was processed believing it helped their harvest.

It seems so difficult for us to relate to what God’s people did. This is why we must understand idolatry in 2023 not as some statue that we bow down to but the culture and the character of the world which we welcome into our lives.

The neglecting to thank and honour their Provider God led to:-

• Their harvest failing. Ungratefulness will not lead to success.
• Them returning to exile. They will lose their authority in the place they are in.
• The rejection of them as His people. They will lose their promises that as you put God first He makes a way. There will be no early release.

We need a new season of renewal:-

Where we see humility, v1-3; the surrendering of man-made power, v4; where God becomes everything, v4-6; where results take place, v7; the development of purpose, v8-9; where there are seasons of increase and enlarging, v10; and the rebuilding of holy altars, v11-13; which does not cause us to walk from the Bible but submit to it, v12; and finally, when God is given the glory, v14.

“Israel has forgotten their Maker and built palaces; Judah has fortified many towns. But I will send fire on their cities that will consume their fortresses.” (Hosea 8 v 14)

There it is. The reason why it all went so badly wrong for both kingdoms. For Israel, they simply turned their back on God. They built for their own glory and not for God. Judah did the same as they built for their own security.

It is so easy to start with the Spirit and then end with the flesh (Galatians 3). Renewal reorders the glory to make sure God gets the whole of it.

Some may not like reading the Minor Prophets but we need them more than ever today as they call us back into the seasons of renewal. For if we ignore the call then there is nothing God will not do to bring His people back home. That includes ‘fire on the cities’ that we have built and being overrun by some enemy and taken into a place we were never created to be in, our exile.

We need a new season of renewal.

To those waking up to a darkness this morning hear this clarion call: open your Bible!

If you are needing to make a decision; or maybe the mountain is just too high and the valley simply too deep: get into the Word of God!

Hear the voice of God through the Word of God!

Pay attention to it for it is in this place that you will find an illumination of your heart.

The light will come into your deepest recesses of battle.

The renewal of our lives will always bring the Bible back to the centre of our lives.

“I wrote for them the many things of my law, but they regarded them as something foreign.” (Hosea 8 v 12)

 Remember how Jesus in the most excruciating unbelievable traumatic of times, hanging on the cross, quoted these words: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?

Why did Jesus say what he said? It is because as he went through hell the power of the Word of God held him. Just as he had done on many occasions where he would quote one verse from an Old Testament passage and the lesson wasn’t in what he quoted but the rest of the passage that he had been silent on. He endured because of the Scriptures.

What was Jesus saying? Maybe this: “Though I feel abandoned and am going through hell, I still trust Him. And I know later in this Psalm that I am quoting, a Psalm that speaks of me, that vindication will come after the suffering.” God’s written Word is at the centre of the cross. Psalm 22, the Messianic Psalm, was in the mind of Christ. He was being held together by the Word.

Hosea’s generation were not in renewal and they ignored God’s Word at their peril. The Scriptures were unfamiliar. The Law was given to show them the way. It was given to form culture.

Renewal brings us back to the culture of God because it brings a person into submission to His Word.