Category: Devotions

God promises that as Israel repents they would be influential like the popular trees of Lebanon.

“His splendour will be like an olive tree, his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.” (Hosea 14 v 6)

I love fragrance, don’t you? Fragrance isn’t just a sweet smell it is a reminder of a person, a time in your life well-spent and a magnet for new experiences.

I went into a church building a few years ago and it hit me as I walked in, the smell. It was that damp, stale odour of a building that perhaps hadn’t been opened for years, except they had just met the day before. They had got used to the smell. I said to the Pastor, “What’s that smell?” he said, “What smell?” You wouldn’t dream of leaving your home without first washing, would you? You would never go to a friend’s house stinking to high heaven because you couldn’t be bothered to have a wash that day, would you? The problem is people who don’t wash get used to their own smell. Their stinky, pongy, stained smell becomes to them au naturel. Everyone needs someone who will say ‘My friend, I love you so much I need to tell you, you stink.’ Think of the fragrant offering in relation to the Old Testament system. When a sacrifice was offered on an altar, the odour of the burning meat went up to heaven and the god to whom the sacrifice was offered was supposed to feast upon that odour. In the Jewish Synagogues they too used this system and a sacrifice which had the odour of a fragrance was especially pleasing and acceptable to God. It spoke ofthe sacrifice that Jesus gave. Love is fragrant. Fragrant love is influential. A building may have a stale smell and that can be fixed but what of the smell of the Church’s heart? Do they love each other? Do they love their community? There are smells in churches that should never be there. Is there bickering? Divisions and fall-outs? I wonder how many people would say they got hurt by Church? Everyone needs a friend to say, ‘my friend you stink, stop it, tone it down, shut your mouth.’ So climb down from the high horse. Humble yourselves. Lay your life down. Pay the price. Where is the sacrifice gone from the Church? Let’s love and love loud. I was in 2 churches yesterday who have been influencing their communities, one of them for many years and the other a church plant. In both cases their influence comes because of their love, their sacrifice, their fragrance. Think on this when you put some perfume/after shave on today.

God promises that as Israel repents they would benefit from the depth of their lives likened to the popular trees of Lebanon.

These trees were known for being strong, developed and also fragrant. Isaiah uses them in his prophetic imagery in (10:34; 33:9 and 35:2).

“Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots; his young shoots will grow.” (Hosea 14 v 5)

Here is the promise as you walk with God. Under the buffeting winds and storms that come your way, during the suffering seasons you will stand. You may bend but you will not break. My friend shared yesterday at one of my regional conference days how he had to adapt to living in the darkness. After his moving presentation one of my team members publicly commented that over his early years it was my friend’s parents who had instilled in him the ability to withstand suffering because of a deeply rooted faith.  That’s it. This is the point. As we walk with God we are growing deeply. A forest of great trees happens over many years. Today may be just another ordinary day of walking with God but all the time you are growing deeply into Him.

Whatever you are facing today be confident that you are rooted in God.

God promises that as Israel repents they would benefit from the dew resulting in the blossom.

“I will be like the dew to Israel; he will blossom like a lily.” (Hosea 14 v 5)

God is our source every day. Each morning when we wake He is there. He speaks to us, encourages us to move into the day in His presence and with His power. He is not only our sustenance, He is everything to us. You can do life in the most difficult of circumstances because of the dew every morning. He is here.

What does this dew produce? We prosper. We bloom like the flower of beauty. The lily was known as the flower that not only was fragrant but was the symbol of love. In the Song of Songs 2:1 “I am the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys” and if this is a representation of Christ then to blossom as a lily is to become like Him. But the lily is not only found amongst the valleys but also among thorns (SS 2:2). It doesn’t matter how difficult life is right now, even if you can describe it as valley or thorns, you can blossom as a lily, being like Christ, because of the dew.

What a wonderful promise this is!

Of course the Bible is full of them. But as we come to the close of what has been a challenging journey through Hosea we see that if Israel repented and came back to Him then the benefits are many:-

• I will heal their waywardness and love them freely.
• for my anger has turned away from them.
• I will be like the dew to Israel;
• he will blossom like a lily.
• Like a cedar of Lebanon he will send down his roots;
• his young shoots will grow.
• His splendour will be like an olive tree,
• his fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
• People will dwell again in his shade;
• they will flourish like the grain,
• they will blossom like the vine
• Israel’s fame will be like the wine of Lebanon.
• Ephraim, what more have to do with idols? I will answer him and care for him.
• I am like a flourishing juniper;
• your fruitfulness comes from me.

(Hosea 14 v 4-8)

15 promises. 15 benefits that follow repentance. None of them is of ourselves. They are all of His grace and mercy. They are all found in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His act led to these benefits for our lives.

Today we all need to hear these words of healing; love; mercy not anger; dew; blossom; rooted; growth; splendour; fragrance; protection; flourishing; blossoming; reputation; being heard and cared for by Him; flourishing again; fruitfulness.  They are all here.

Over the next few days we will unpack each one but maybe this morning it is simply that to meditate on one or two is what we need to face our day.

In this final chapter we are reading Hosea wrapping things up. It has been quite a message! A message that he has personally lived out with Gomer. One that has had him pleading for his generation. None more so than here in these next few verses “Return, Israel, to the Lord your God. Your sins have been your downfall! Take words with you and return to the Lord. (Hosea 14 v 1-2)

Hosea is doing all he can to save them. He even gives them a prayer that they should use. He wants to make sure they are saying the right thing to God.

Here is that prayer:

Confession of sin

Say to him: Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips, v2

To forgive is to take the sin away. It is to remove it. Owning the sin and asking for it to be removed and then at the same time asking to be received as if the offence no longer existed needs much grace. God abounds in grace thankfully! So in the confession of sin ask for grace.

• Renounce what has previously been wrongfully followed.

“Assyria cannot save us.” (v3) What they looked to could not be trusted.

God was their Saviour no one else. Here is the decision to turn away and turn to Him.

• Commit to trusting God alone.

“…we will not mount warhorses.” (v3) We will not put our trust in what we have always known to be successful and that is horses in war. The more horses we have the more powerful we are seen to be. For us it is any badge of qualification or experience and even gifts from God that we flaunt as revealing how strong we are and how successful we have been. We commit to putting our future in the hands of God and not these things.

• Announce the abolishing of idolatry

“We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made.,” (v 3) This is the commitment to go and do something. To destroy what is created for our own pleasure. A commitment to be counter-cultural. To not fit in. To be separated to Him.

• Ask for mercy.

“…for in you the fatherless find compassion.” (v3) We pray to the one who is a father to the fatherless. He is merciful to those in need. To ask for mercy is to see yourself in a mirror, to have self-awareness and to realise that you need Him.

They were flourishing. They had all that they wanted. Then this:

 “I will have no compassion, even though he thrives among his brothers. An east wind from the Lord will come, blowing in from the desert; his spring will fail and his well dry up. His storehouse will be plundered of all its treasures. The people of Samaria must bear their guilt, because they have rebelled against their God. They will fall by the sword; their little ones will be dashed to the ground, their pregnant women ripped open.” (Hosea 13 v 15-16)

Even though … despite what it looked like … it was over.

Assyria came and decimated God’s people.

It is a repeated message. We have heard it before. It is awful. And it happened. Ephraim and Samaria were destroyed and it was brutal.

And as we read these solemn verses, in the background are the words also found in this chapter:

 (There is) no Saviour except me, v4.

Then they forgot me, v6.
“You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your helper, v9.

Do you think some may have remembered Hosea’s words of v4, v6 and v9 when they were being killed or taken into exile?

When your flourishing days are over and the opposite are happening you would think at last you would call upon your God?

You would think wouldn’t you?

With so much evil and anger around the streets of our world we need the gospel of Jesus Christ more than ever.

4 Gospel steps from Hosea 13 v 12-14.

1. God knows everything about you. He has a record of every sin. “The guilt of Ephraim is stored up, his sins are kept on record”, v12.
2. These sins will bring pain like that of a mother with childbirth. “Pains as of a woman in childbirth come to him”, v13.
3. But the pain will not bring new life because you have not recognised the time of new birth, you think you know more than your mother. “…but he is a child without wisdom; when the time arrives, he doesn’t have the sense to come out of the womb”, v13.
4. So God does what is needed. He delivers and He redeems. “I will deliver this people from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?” v14 But it can also be translated “I will be your plagues and I will be your destruction.”

The Apostle Paul knew this gospel message when he wrote:

Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

! Corinthians 15: 54-57

If you don’t have the LORD how will you survive?

God’s people had wanted to be like every other nation and have a king (1 Samuel 8).

So God gave them a king though it wasn’t His purpose for their lives. He wanted them to be led by judges. The result was that they put their trust in the king and not the KING of kings.

And now facing the looming threat of the Assyrians:-

“Where is your king, that he may save you? Where are your rulers in all your towns, of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’? So in my anger I gave you a king, and in my wrath I took him away.” (Hosea 13 v 10-11)

Saul lost the kingship because of his sins and the northern kingdom, Israel, did not choose the line of David but their own kings, the first being evil Jeroboam. But in the end every king they chose was eventually defeated.

What they asked for, what they reached out to, who they took regardless of God’s will and purpose for their lives, led them to their downfall and destruction.

Be careful what you ask for and who you follow.

Some make the nature of God fit into their lifestyle which they will not repent from. His nature must bow to their nature. And of course that is nonsense. This is what we see in the next several verses of Hosea’s prophetic message to God’s people prior to the invasion and destruction from a foreign army.

“But I have been the Lord your God ever since you came out of Egypt. You shall acknowledge no God but me, no Saviour except me. V4
I cared for you in the wilderness, in the land of burning heat. V5
When I fed them, they were satisfied; when they were satisfied, they became proud; then they forgot me. V6
So I will be like a lion to them, like a leopard I will lurk by the path. V7
Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open; like a lion I will devour them—a wild animal will tear them apart. V8

“You are destroyed, Israel, because you are against me, against your helper. V9

(Hosea 13 v 4-9)

The other side of God is revealed.

He is a lion and a leopard lurking by the path, v7. And at that time the Assyrian army were indeed lurking nearby waiting to pounce.

He is an angry bear whose cubs have been stolen, v8. And soon the Assyrians will attack.

He is a lion who devours and a wild animal that tears at the flesh of its prey, v8. And Assyria does conquer His people bringing total destruction.

Why?

You are against me, your helper! V9

It could have been different. For God has another side.

But I …v4

Can you imagine what might have happened if they had listened to Hosea prior to 723BC and the invasion of Assyria?

Can you imagine what could have happened of through conviction repentance swept through the land?

If they had humbled themselves and changed from their arrogance to being in awe of God, what possible could have been the story?

Now think of the church in 2023: what could be possible?

You see, But I …

Is the Redeemer from Egypt, v4

The Saviour of our lives, v4

The Helper in the difficult seasons, v5

The Provider, v6

The One who Satisfies, v6

And here is why this side was not seen:

They forgot me, v6

In their pride brought on by the twisting of His blessing of their lives:

They forgot me, v6

And then

“You are against me” v9

No one would ever be so foolish to be against God especially those who say they have faith in Him.

Except if you forget Him.

If you forget His Word. If you forget the Bible and Prayer. If you forget what has been passed down to us. If you forget what you have been taught. If you forget the conviction. If you forget the prophetic Word.

If you forget and at the same time pursue you own path then that is when it can be said that your forgetting has moved into you being against Him who is your Helper.

It’s not worth it. Keep to the side of God which means you are close to Him. He is still bringing judgment. “Assyria” is still being used.

If you have ever pleaded with someone to change their thinking and their behaviour. If you have ever been almost on your knees calling for them to repent because you know the consequences of their actions. If you have as I have then you know not only the heart of Hosea but more importantly the heart of God.

Ephraim knew a day in their history when its people trembled before the Lord. They were successful and the other nations looked on with envy. But in their rise they experienced a fall because in their rising they forgot their God.

“When Ephraim spoke, people trembled; he was exalted in Israel. But he became guilty of Baal worship and died. Now they sin more and more; they make idols for themselves from their silver, cleverly fashioned images, all of them the work of craftsmen. It is said of these people, “They offer human sacrifices! They kiss calf-idols!” Therefore they will be like the morning mist, like the early dew that disappears, like chaff swirling from a threshing floor, like smoke escaping through a window.” (Hosea 13 v 1-3)

Hosea in a last ditch effort to call them back to God lays it out bare once again.

They turned away from God and turned to idols for their help.

Are we still asking God to help us?

Can we admit to the temptation of sorting ourselves out in our own way?

As we get older do we ask for the same kind of help we asked of God when we were younger?

Is God still our helper?

Hosea warns us all. If we stop seeking for God’s help then all that God had for us will be wasted for we will disappear from His purpose.

We will be like the:

Morning mist – gone because of the rising sun.

Early dew – gone because of the rising sun.

Swirling Chaff – gone blown away by the wind.

Escaping smoke – gone escaping into the atmosphere outside.

Some are not where they should be today because they did not go to God for help and today what they had and who they were has evaporated and blown away. Those who rise in this life must take their need for God’s help with them otherwise the higher you rise without Him the harder you will fall.