Category: Devotions

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 Smoke, noise, atmosphere has been replaced by an uneasy silence.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.

The reason for renewal is in essence a return to the worship of God and making our hearts the altar for God.

“Though Ephraim built many altars for sin offerings, these have become altars for sinning… Though they offer sacrifices as gifts to me, and though they eat the meat, the LORD is not pleased with them. Now he will remember their wickedness and punish their sins: They will return to Egypt.” (Hosea 8 v 11, 13)

Renewal leads to the altar. Ritual becomes relationship and duty becomes devotion. The altars are not shared with other idols of our life. Renewal is pure worship. Our eyes are not on the benefits of worship (ie the meat) but the benefactor of our lives, God.

Renewal does not point to what we do for Him and the sacrifices that we make but rather it points to Him. Not everyone who gathers at the altar does so with a renewed heart. 

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise” (Psalm 51:17).

Hosea 8 serves as a reminder that we need renewal but also the blessings of renewal.

Within renewal there comes the realisation that God gives the increase and He is the enlarger of our influence.

“Although they have sold themselves among the nations, I will now gather them together.
They will begin to waste away under the oppression of the mighty king.” (Hosea 8 v 10)

Although they have sold themselves among the nations

God does not want you to reach out for things or search for people to give you what only He can ultimately give. . He came to give you a thriving life, an abundant life.

In renewal we make room for Him.

In renewal we begin to prepare for the growth God is giving.

Can you begin to desire that what you think is unchangeable about you is changed?

God isn’t at work producing the circumstances you want; God is at work in bad circumstances producing the YOU HE wants!

You may have changed your plans for God but His plans are still the same and He is waiting. His plans contain promises. Promises not for your disaster but for your abundance. Plans and promises that bring a future and a hope.

They will begin to waste away under the oppression of the mighty king.

In renewal you realise that you have not been called to diminish.
God is an Enlarger, an Increaser, the Giver of life. With God we should expect more.

God is bigger than our imaginations. His plans are big plans. Right now across the world God is moving in great measures.

We hear of so much suffering and persecution and it is real and we need to pray and stand for justice but listen to this:

The number of Christians in Indonesia has grown from 1.3M forty years ago to over 20M today.  (Operation World).

The Jesus Film has been translated into nearly 1000 languages, 6 billion viewings and over 200 million people have indicated decisions for Christ as a result of the film (Campus Crusade).

No Christian was officially allowed to live in Nepal until 1960.  Now there is a church in every one of the 75 districts of Nepal with estimates of over half a million believers (Operation World).

Why even contemplate forsaking God who is our true source of blessing. Why reach for another? God’s people reached for Assyria and it would be that nation that caused them to waste away and they exiled God’s people in 722 BC.

Choose renewal today!

I was told yesterday of a Church member who attended an evangelistic training course. She was so greatly impacted that the next day she went to work and began speaking with a colleague who she had found it particularly hard to relate to over the years. The conversation resulted in her leading her colleague to Jesus.

Isn’t that amazing?! 

And it is happening in many places. God is using His people as vessels in His hand. He has called us to Himself and then sent us out into the world in partnership with His Spirit.

In every renewal the result is a release in mission to everyone in the world. 

God uses us. And it is wonderful.

“Israel is swallowed up; now she is among the nations like something no-one wants. For they have gone up to Assyria like a wild donkey wandering alone. Ephraim has sold herself to lovers.” Hosea 8:8-9

Read it again slowly.

When you are impacted by a renewal of the spirit:-

• You become opposite to people who are not wanted. You know God wants you! “now she is among the nations like something no-one wants”
• You have no need to go to any other place or person other than God. “For they have gone up to Assyria”
• You don’t wander because Gods gives you purpose. “like a wild donkey wandering”
• You are not alone for He is always here. “wandering alone”
• You live a separate life not following the cultures of those who are not walking with God. “Ephraim has sold herself to lovers.”

Those who read their Bibles long enough soon find out that there is a formula running throughout: what we sow we reap. It works for walking righteously and also for walking away from God.

Israel will not get away with their idolatry. They will get their results from it.

“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.
Were it to yield grain, foreigners would swallow it up.” (Hosea 8 v 7)

Quite simply when we turn away from God then the results are opposite to when we turn towards God. Blessings flow from relationship with Him. The kind of results that you get is determined by your walk with Him. That’s not legalistic and work-based. It is just how it is and it makes sense as we partner with the Holy Spirit. Any farmer knows this. Bad sowing produces bad reaping.

The Churches that see the good results from their mission activities are those who are pursuing Him and are walking with Him. The Churches that have “Emptied-out belief lead to empty pews” https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2023/29-september/comment/columnists/angela-tilby-emptied-out-belief-leads-to-empty-pews

God’s people had false expectations in their idolatry. They truly thought it would bring results. The sad thing is that it is still happening today. We reach out for successes, money, positions of power, anything other than Him and we have the stupidity to think we will get great results. And it leads to nothing.

Pride and power struggles are signs that we need a new season of renewal in our lives. The last verse of chapter 8 tells us clearly the problem, “For Israel has forgotten his Maker” and this is why we need renewal.

It’s not that He is not there in our minds; our Bible sits there; we pray our prayers and sing our songs; but we have forgotten Him.

Pride is there; Power-struggles are there and also idolatry.

“With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves to their own destruction. Samaria, throw out your calf-idol! My anger burns against them. How long will they be incapable of purity? They are from Israel! This calf—a metalworker has made it; it is not God. It will be broken in pieces, that calf of Samaria.” (Hosea 8 v 4-6)

It seems one man’s idolatry is stupidity to another. Especially thousands of years previously. Under the leadership of Jeroboam the worship of silver/gold crafted calves was common place. Its origins of course was when in Exodus 32, thinking that their leader, Moses, had forgotten them when he went up Mt. Sini to receive the law of God. With nowhere to be seen the people made a golden calf to worship. They did it because they felt a distancing between God and Moses and themselves. 

Today we may not be smelting down our gold jewellery to make idols but there is a temptation to make God fit our expectations and what we think we need when He is nowhere to be seen; we reach out for money and positions of power; anything other than our search for the Living God becomes a calf of worship.

Thinking that these things will make us greater than we are only leads us into further idolatry where there are no depths of sin that a man/woman of God can fall into in the search for fulfilment.

God asks the question: How long will this go on for? He promises that our attempts will come to nothing. He will break them to pieces. Why? Man-made attempts are not God.

There are so many man-attempts that do not look sinful and that we applaud. Our work and what we have achieved whether a Church ministry or becoming the star employee or building the award-winning business; or doing all the above through our children; can become idolatrous if it becomes more important than God.

Renewal will remove the calf-idols of Samaria so that God becomes everything to our lives.

We need a new season of renewal.

As we move into chapter 8 look at the last verse, ““For Israel has forgotten his Maker” and that is why we need renewal.

It’s not that He is not there in our minds; our Bible sits there; we pray our prayers and sing our songs; but we have forgotten Him.

“They set up kings, but not by Me; They made princes, but I did not acknowledge them.” (Hosea 8:4)

We need renewal because there are so many power struggles.

• Power: We have already seen in the previous chapter that many of the kings came to power through bloodshed.

There was a day when the kings were appointed through the prophets.

There was a day when Church leaders were called into position by a conviction of the Spirit of God.

There was a day when the kings were the first to call upon God in the day of battle.

There was a day when Church leaders spent the majority of their time on their knees and faces.

There was a day when the kings would use their authority to keep the people in obedience to the law of God.

There was a day when Church leaders would teach the Bible without the reinterpretation of it.

And before we start enjoying pointing the finger is there anyone not guilty of choosing to be so self-governing? 

There was a day: renew us in that day O Lord!