Missions Paul

Hosea 11

How can I give you up?
Even if I could, I wouldn’t.
I called you and you came to me
But then others called you and you left me.
Yet I stuck with you then and I don’t intend to change my pattern now.
I taught you to walk, I led you, I bent down and lifted you up.
It is within your DNA to walk away from me.
Every time.
But I am committed to you. And that is final.
So I ask, How can I give you up?
How can I let you be ruined?
I cannot.
For I am not like you.
I am the Holy One, the different One.
And I am here with you.
I will win you back.
I cannot let go.
I will not let go.
I know you will return.
I am waiting.

Hosea 10

Not all growth is good.
Israel was a spreading vine. It grew. But it wasn’t good.
In its growth it became wild with many branches (Jer 2:21). It developed branches that became thick and it began to look like a tree (Ez 15:2).
The vine was never planted to be a tree.
Some today want to become something they were never created to be.
They long to be somebody other than they are. They seek applause from man, they hunger for the stage, they promote themselves, tirelessly striving to be noticed.
Be still. Be who you are planted to be. A vine.
Let God produce through you fruit that is quality.
Quality not quantity.

Hosea 9

They became as vile as the thing they loved, v10.

You become what you worship.

The Israelites began to worship idols and God says they began to look like them.

Much is rightly taught today of the Christian in the market-place and rightly so. We have to get out from behind our church walls and our Christian masks and sacred/secular places and be Christ wherever we are, be a friend of sinners. At the same time we must be careful not to let the world demand and take our worship. We are Christians and we belong to God. That never changes.

Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, told a story about a goose who was wounded and who landed in a barnyard with some chickens. He played with the chickens and ate with the chickens. After a while that goose thought he was a chicken. One day a flight of geese came over, migrating to their home. They gave a honk up there in the sky, and he heard it.
Kierkegaard said, “Something stirred within the breast of this goose. Something called him to the skies. He began to flap the wings he hadn’t used, and he rose a few feet into the air. Then he stopped, and he settled back again into the mud of the barnyard. He heard the cry, but he settled for less.”

Be who you are. God is not asking you to be anyone else.

Hosea 8

Put the trumpet to your lips ..

Wynton Marsalis, one of the most easily recognizable jazz musicians in our day and one of the premier jazz trumpeters of all time was playing with a small, little-known band in a New York basement club. A few songs into their set, he walked to the front of the bandstand and began an unaccompanied solo of the 1930s ballad, “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You.” One journalist records that the audience became rapt as Marsalis’s trumpet virtually wept in despair, almost gasping at times with the pain in the music.
Marsalis came to the final phrase, with each note coming slower and slower, with longer and longer pauses between each one: “I…don’t…stand…a…ghost…of…a…chance—”

Then someone’s mobile phone went off.

It began to chirp an absurd little tune. The audience broke up into titters, the man with the phone jumped up and fled outside to take his call, and the spell was broken. “MAGIC— RUINED,” the journalist scratched into his notepad.

But then Marsalis played the cellphone melody note for note. He played it again, with different accents. He began to play with it, spinning out a rhapsody on the silly little tune, changing keys several times. The audience settled down, slowly realizing that they were hearing something altogether extraordinary. Around and around Marsalis played for several minutes, weaving glory out of goofiness.

Finally, in a masterstroke, he closed the set seamlessly to the last two notes of his previous song: “…with…you.” The audience exploded with applause.

(John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Faith Today)

Let’s copy our God today who brilliantly brings beauty out of ashes, applause out of annoyance, heroes from holocausts and love out of loss.
Learn to play the trumpet not with a sound that everyone has to listen to or else, but learn to play weaving in the sounds around you. Be adaptable, blend and embrace the true sound into the hurts and sounds of loss that are definitely there.

Hosea 7

I long to redeem, v13

Posted on a lamp post was a lost dog sign. There was a big cash reward for whoever found the lost dog, and a description of the dog. It said:
“He’s only got three legs, he’s blind in the left eye, he’s missing a right ear, his tail has been broken off, he was neutered accidentally by a fence—ouch!—he’s almost deaf, and he answers by the name ‘Lucky.'”

That dog isn’t lucky, he’s a walking disaster dog, one thing after another, bumps and scrapes, accidents and attacks.
The dog isn’t lucky but it is loved for there is an owner who wants him back.

You’ve been through some scrapes, battered, bruised, messed up a bit. You are are duct of your past. Sinner and sinned against. But Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so ….
He wants you back. He loves you and He loves to redeem.

Hosea 6

I desire mercy … I desire acknowledgment of me …
More than performance. v6

In an interview with a long-time friend, U2’s Bono, responded to the sometimes-stained reputation of the church throughout history:
“Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. A list of instructions where there was once conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship”.
(Michka Assayas, Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas)

Performance will never lead to true discipleship.
The church has rules. Christians have rules. Things we have learnt over the years that if we do them prove we are good.
We step into performance the moment we behave as if Christianity brings man to God.
Even that sentence may cause some of us to have to read it again as it appears correct!
But central to Christianity is the truth that it is the story of God coming to man, every other religion has it the other way round. Sadly the church sometimes follows suit. For we all like a good performance.

Hosea 5

God is a lion, v14.

A lion can tear people to pieces.
A lion can pick people up and carry them off into the lair.
Surely God wouldn’t do that would He?
John says no one will be able to stand on the great day of His wrath (Rev 6)
Who can stand?
Who will cope with the terror? (2 Corinthians 5:11)
Thank God for Jesus, thank Him for the cross!!

Hosea 4

God’s people were mixing idolatry to their worship of Him.
God speaks against them but also speaks and rejects ‘His priests’.
The priests through their preaching represented God to the people as well as representing the people to God.
They had neglected this duty of preaching, of teaching and instructing the people in the knowledge of God.
As a result there was:
No faithfulness; they did not teach the people to live with sincerity and honestly.
No love: they did not teach the people to be loving towards others, to show kindness to the many.
No knowledge: they did not encourage the people to grapple with the things of God found within the scriptures.
It’s a high calling is preaching.
There carries a high responsibility.
This week do not forget to pray for your Pastor who seeks to grapple with the truth of God’s Word.

Hosea 3

There is a wonderful word in this chapter!

Our God is an ‘again’ God v1

The most-sacred symbol in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is a tree: a sprawling, shade-bearing, 80-year-old American Elm. Tourists drive from miles around to see her. People pose for pictures beneath her. Arborists carefully protect her. She adorns posters and letterhead. Other trees grow larger, fuller—even greener. But not one is equally cherished. The city treasures the tree not because of her appearance, but her endurance.
She endured the Oklahoma City bombing.

Timothy McVeigh parked his death-laden truck only yards from her. His malice killed 168 people, wounded 850, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, and buried the tree in rubble. No one expected it to survive. No one, in fact, gave any thought to the dusty, branch-stripped tree.

But then she began to bud.

Sprouts pressed through damaged bark; green leaves pushed away gray soot. Life resurrected from an acre of death. People noticed. The tree modeled the resilience the victims desired. So they gave the elm a name: the Survivor Tree.
(Max Lucado, Facing Your Giants)

Friend, it doesn’t matter what has happened, nor how impossible it looks, you can go again because God is an again God.
Hosea loved his wife again though the circumstances were stacked against him.
Today you are that survivor tree. All around your circumstance may lay rubble but you can push through, you can begin again, you can reach out again, you can love again, you can go again.

Hosea 2

God makes all things new!

He creates a new relationship, v14-15. He will allure you taking the initiative, moving towards you. He will give back to you your fruitfulness. He will open the door of hope to you and cause you to sing again.

He announces a new relationship, v16-17. I am no longer ‘master’ but ‘husband’. It’s an alongside name. Not top down but walking side by side.

He announces a new covenant, v18-20. Coming to you in your circumstances is righteousness and justice, love and compassion and of course He is ever-faithful.

He will produce a new harvest, v21-23. There will be a time of productivity, of you seeing fruit for your labour and the prayers answered. Above all there will be a new you! The Message translates verse 23 like this:
“I’ll say to Nobody, ‘You’re my dear Somebody,’
How incredible is that?!
And we will all say …
“You’re my God!’”