Missions Paul

In response to the 5 promises we have seen over the last few days here is the incredible response:

“Ephraim, what more have I 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 8)

“Ephraim is finished with gods that are no-gods. From now on I’m the one who answers and satisfies him. I am like a luxuriant fruit tree. Everything you need is to be found in me.” (Message)

The intimacy between God and Israel is here to see.

Aren’t these words incredible?! “Whatever you produce comes from me.” “Whatever you hunger for is found in me.” “Whatever you need …”

It is not to be found anywhere else but in Him.

Hosea and Gomer are back together; Israel and God back together, NO.

They never did repent. They never gave up their waywardness. They didn’t come back home to God. They didn’t turn back their destiny of destruction by Assyria in 722 BC.

So is this prophecy dead?

No it is here still alive and available for you.

He will answer you. He will care for you. He will bear fruit through you. His all that you need. Come to Him.

God promises that as Israel repents they will be a blessing to others like people taking shade, flourishing, blossoming and being known for vintage wine!

Such imagery!

“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.” (Hosea 14 v 7)

Last Sunday I was privileged to be in 2 different churches who were exactly this to the people in their community. They have become a place of safety, strength and love where people thrive. The result being is that life has become better for so many. One of the first people I met was Sam who to his own admission his life had come crashing down but it was the church that offered him the shade to find recovery. The people of the church had blessed him back into life.

The day before I sat listening to a presentation at my regional day by Teen Challenge. Story after story of lives that were once broken and battered but had found safety and love and were now blessed beyond imagination.

This is the Church, the people of God. And this is you and me. As we turn around and walk with God we become a blessing to others.

You don’t need to do much either. One of our church planters in a town in the north east spoke a few days ago about how she simply heard the Holy Spirit lead her into a coffee shop and though there were many empty tables she asked if she could sit next to a woman who was sitting there alone. That simple act of obedience led to a wonderful encounter of blessing to the woman.

Today someone possibly will be taking shade from the intensity of their life simply because you are there with them. Others will be flourishing and blossoming as you bless them. And who knows you may become likened to a vintage wine!

Be a blessing today.

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.