Missions Paul

After the accusations from God and a prophecy of their upcoming judgment we have a welcome reprieve. Who is speaking is not clear but the call is. And even though it is short-lived we are for now, today, meditating on these words of hope:-

“Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. Let us acknowledge the Lord; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth.” (Hosea 6 v 1-3)

Is there anything more beautiful than these words?!

You can stand in prayer today on these very words. You can make any one of these 7 declarations or indeed all of them.

He will heal us.

He will bind up our wounds.

He will revive us.

He will restore us.

He will bring us into His presence.

He will appear.

He will come to us.

Do you also see the Messianic image? On the third day …

This is the prayer of the prodigal who has come to their senses.

This is the prayer of those who have not been fully devoted to God.

This is our prayer.

God is the healer and sustainer of our life.

Where is the prophet today calling the Church to return to the Lord?

The reason the world does not yet know God is because the Church needs to know Him first. Where is the prophet today calling the Church into the intimacy with the Lord?

Where is the prophet today calling the Church to a fresh expectation for a season of blessing? To pray for such. God will appear. He will come as sure as the dawn rising every day. He will come in due season, at the right time and for growth and blessing.

Let the prophet rise today and bring a fresh clarion call. Can you hear that call?

Recently I had the privilege of praying with a Pastor who was pouring out their heart because one of their children had drifted away from God. The other child was walking with God and was living at home. The words that have stayed with me about the prodigal child are these, “She is not in our home she lives nearby.”

How many are not home with God? Maybe living nearby but not home with Him.

Such is the generation that God was trying to restore and bring home.

“Ephraim is oppressed, trampled in judgment, intent on pursuing idols. I am like a moth to Ephraim, like rot to the people of Judah. “When Ephraim saw his sickness,
and Judah his sores, then Ephraim turned to Assyria, and sent to the great king for help. But he is not able to cure you, not able to heal your sores. For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, like a great lion to Judah. I will tear them to pieces and go away; I will carry them off, with no one to rescue them. Then I will return to my lair until they have borne their guilt and seek my face—in their misery they will earnestly seek me.” (Hosea 5 v 11-15)

This generation were ‘intent’ on walking away from total devotion to God. They even had the audacity to look to others for help, to the ‘great king’ of Assyria and not the King of all. They had stopped seeking God.

Sound familiar?

What lengths will God go to bring us home?

• He will lift off the beauty/His glory from our life like the moth impacting not only the clothes we wear but a setting in of a decaying rot that weakens our lives and structures. I thought of how the RAAC concrete was perhaps a prophetic word to our nation impacting not schools, hospitals, government buildings and churches, we are crumbling and need God!
• He will allow sickness and sores to come upon us and we will lose our abilities, our strength and our wealth. We will move into debt in order to be free. Ephraim did turn to Assyria with an alliance that brought more exploitation to God’s people.
• He will not only lift off and allow but He will actually move in judgment. The lion and the great lion suggest that God’s power is so much greater than that of Assyria who would not save them. If you have ever seen a lion with its prey you know destructive it is. “I will tear them to pieces” sounds unfair but it is what a lion does and it is the lengths God will go to preserve His people ultimately. For unlike the nature programmes our God will not consume but will ‘return to my lair’ so that His people can recover and choose their relationship with Him again.

If all that sounds heavy then it is meant to be. Being a prodigal is costly and the parent I prayed with was seeing this for themselves. What will it take to bring them home? The moth to the lion and everything in between. Perhaps. This is why we should stand shoulder to shoulder with the families who have the prodigals and not only support them but pray with them for those who used to follow Him to return.

Judah (the southern kingdom) looked to the prophetic doom coming on the north and were feeling smug. They were being led at the time by King Ahaz who had ironically forged an alliance with Assyria, the same nation that God would use to remove the northern tribes of Israel.

But God has a message to Judah also. They are not left out.

“Judah’s leaders are like those who move boundary stones. I will pour out my wrath on them like a flood of water.” (Hosea 5 v 10)

God points to those who through ambition try and grab more for themselves. They see what their neighbours have and they want it. So through ambitious corruption and cheating they move their borders so that inch by inch they take more ground.

Judah’s leaders were like that.

They were changing the borders between right and wrong. Making what was wrong less and giving more land to the right.

The church I was in when I was a boy believed more things were wrong than the church today. The purity list was a lot longer than today. Some of those things I think needed changing. The question is: does having a shorter list make the world a better place because they see Jesus more?

For Judah’s leaders it was actually taking the people away from God not nearer.

They too would receive judgment.

11,300 have died so far in the Libya flood and 10,100 are still missing. It is a tragic loss of life.

But flashing onto my news feed this morning was this: “Libya flood: fury that warnings went unheeded” The report goes on to say that a hydrologist researching the dams in the east, after gathering all his data, concluded, “I found a number of problems in the Derna Valley: in the cracks present in the dams, the amount of rainfall and repeated floods. I found also a number of reports warning of a disaster taking place in the Derna Valley basin if the dams were not maintained.” When was the research done?

17 years ago!

Let’s read our next verses:-

“Sound the trumpet in Gibeah, the horn in Ramah. Raise the battle cry in Beth Aven^, lead on, Benjamin. Ephraim will be laid waste on the day of reckoning. Among the tribes of Israel I proclaim what is certain.” (Hosea 5 v 8-9)

God is releasing the alarm! The trumpet and the horn was the warning of an enemy approaching. It was going to happen. There was no turning back, God was proclaiming ‘what is certain.’ Assyria would come and not just for the northern kingdom but the south too.

These towns are all of the south, in Judah. Beth Aven is the prophet’s name for Bethel. Bethel meaning ‘the house of God’ has become the ‘house of wickedness’. Gibeah was the home of Saul, the first king of Israel and Ramah was the home of Samuel, the first prophet who anointed him king. These 3 places are mentioned simply because Hosea is calling to Judah in the south, ‘You are next!’

Ephraim (the largest of the 10 tribes of Israel and so often interchanged with the name Israel because of its size) will be ‘laid waste’ (it happened when Assyria invaded in 722 BC.) It would be a killer blow. There would be no recovery. But Judah was no better. Disaster was knocking on their door too. Benjamin should look over its shoulder because judgment was coming.

Can you hear the alarm?

These kinds of Bible verses can go over our heads so easily. It is historical prophecy. We do have Jesus and He is everything because as the perfect sacrifice we can find cleansing and redemption. He is our Saviour. The question is will we return to Him?

For the alarm is sounding. God will not be mocked.

There are cracks in the dam wall.

Let the prophet’s prophecy.

Return.

Ever wonder how the and why the mighty fall?

There are so many and none more tragic than those who do so from within church.

Referring to priests, kings and the people of the northern kingdom:-

“Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God. A spirit of prostitution is in their heart; they do not acknowledge the Lord. Israel’s arrogance testifies against them; the Israelites, even Ephraim, stumble in their sin; Judah also stumbles with them.” (Hosea 5 v 4-5)

Discipleship is needed for the Church. To become more like Christ is to keep one another accountable to following Him more closely. If that is not happening every single day then on that day that it isn’t then we begin to drift away from His presence. Some drift for long periods of time until our hearts become hardened. It goes a bit like this:-

• Following Jesus, involved in Church, witnessing to others.
• Following Jesus, involved in Church, unconfessed sins.
• Following Jesus, attending Church, unconfessed sins.
• Following Jesus, unconfessed sins.
• Believing in Jesus, unconfessed sins.
• No desire for Jesus, unconfessed sins.

You have seen it and so have I. And all of us have at some point been somewhere in the process and are thankful for His grace and mercy that we didn’t get to the bottom of the list. But what takes us down the list? PRIDE.

The arrogance of the priests to continue to drift from their calling to God is the same today.

And look what happens next?

“When they go with their flocks and herds to seek the Lord, they will not find him; he has withdrawn himself from them. They are unfaithful to the Lord; they give birth to illegitimate children. When they celebrate their New Moon feasts, he will devour their fields.” (Hosea 5 v 6-7)

They wanted to have it both ways. Going to God and going to Baal worship (with all of its fertility goddess worship using sexual rites). Pride kept them in that position. Pride deceived them. The worst deception of all is self-deception. They went back to worship the true God but one day He wasn’t there, He had gone. Pride had closed the door.

The Bible is often written with tears. Sometimes it records the prophets and God weeping but most often the tears are soaked into the words that are written. At any given time the Bible could have been written for the day you read it and so the tears flow through your spirit as you step into the passage and apply what is written to your own setting. This is my experience this morning. I’ve spent the majority of my life in and around leadership. I’m thankful for God’s grace and mercy that has given me the freedom to grow in leadership. I have been blessed by leaders who have walked with God and I have seen leaders try to lead without the gifting or the anointing to do so. I have seen leaders finish their race filled with love, joy and peace and I have seen leaders fall before the finishing line. The glory of God grows in some leaders as they go through life and for some the glory diminishes as the years go by.

I say all of this because the last hour I have just sat weeping over these verses:

“Hear this, you priests! Pay attention, you Israelites! Listen, royal house! This judgment is against you: You have been a snare at Mizpah, a net spread out on Tabor. The rebels are knee-deep in slaughter. I will discipline all of them. I know all about Ephraim; Israel is not hidden from me. Ephraim, you have now turned to prostitution; Israel is corrupt.” (Hosea 5 v 1-3)

God is moving His people into exile under the Assyrians. We know that unlike the exile of Judah which lasted 70 years the exiled northern people never made it back. They became known as the 10 lost tribes of Israel. They never made it back. They never came back. They were lost. Can those words sink into your heart and mind? For some Ichabod is real. The glory lifts and never returns.

Why did the Northern Kingdom, the 10 tribes of Israel go into exile? Failed leadership.

Everyone came under the judgment, they were all exiled, they were all to blame, but the focus is definitely on the priests. “Hear this, you priests!” And “Listen, royal house!” the leadership of the kings and the leadership of the priests failed the people. They could have kept the people close to God but they didn’t.

This is Spiritual leadership. It is to keep God’s people moving on righteous paths that He has created and purposed for them.

In these 3 verses God mentions 2 important sites where it all seemed to go wrong and never made a recovery.

Mizpah (1 Samuel 7) the place where Samuel set up a stone and called it Ebenezer because ‘the Lord has helped/watched over us” when God thundered and enabled His people to thwart the attack from the Philistines. The people repented because they had not respected the presence of God (the ark). It became a holy site.

Tabor (Judges 4 and 5) is the place where Deborah and Barak famously overcame the Canaanites.

These historical places of leadership have now become known for failure. They are a snare. There is slaughter (is it child sacrifice perhaps?) There is no depth that leaders can fall into taking people with them. Ephraim is highlighted and the name was interchangeable with that of Ephraim though its first king, Jereboam (1 Kings 12) was the first to lead them astray.

Is there any comfort this morning? Yes! Always!

In verse 3 God says ‘I know’ and ‘it is not hidden from me’

God is all-knowing. He sees everything. He knows what He has done. He knows what He is doing and He knows what He will do. It is okay God has this.

It is this omniscient God that we worship this morning and it is this fact that gives us hope and dries our tears.

To bring the change that is needed. What will it take?

For you to be that person you want to be.

To be healthy. Will it take a doctor’s warning? Will it take something more severe?

“A whirlwind will sweep them away, and their sacrifices will bring them shame.” (Hosea 4 v 19)

What will it take for God’s people to turn back to Him?

God in His grace will even take His people into exile if it means they will eventually turn back to Him. That’s how much He wants us.

The exile (the whirlwind) that they will go into will lead them to become ashamed of their idolatry. It will bring them back. The exile will become part of their testimony.

Sometimes we end up in places we never dreamt of but it is there that we realise our need of the Lord and we begin to return to Him.

Sometimes we have to hit the pigpen before we get back into His presence.

He leads me beside quiet waters. Remember that? Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? Being led by our Good Shepherd. He looks after us. He knows what we need. He knows the paths we take. He opens the way for us. He guides us through the wilderness. At times He carries us. Above all Jesus has laid down His life for us.

But is that what we really want?

This is the problem:

“The Israelites are stubborn, like a stubborn heifer. How then can the Lord pasture them like lambs in a meadow? Ephraim is joined to idols; leave him alone! Even when their drinks are gone, they continue their prostitution; their rulers dearly love shameful ways. A whirlwind will sweep them away.” (Hosea 4 v 16-19)

You see they wanted it both ways. They wanted Him but they also would not give up their idols. The freedom of the meadow is opposite to being joined to the idols. They are missing everything they could have because of this lifestyle they have chosen. And this is not a once fallen state but this is a permanent, stubborn, decision made state that they do not intend to change.

So God says they will be left alone. They will be swept away. They will be taken into exile.

Idols will grip your life so tight that they become as much part of your life as the Good Shepherd is. If you don’t get rid then the idols will get rid of you. God’s people went into exile, into a place that they were never meant to be simply because they wanted it both ways. Exiles still exist today. So make sure He is the one who is shepherding your life.

In every walk of life to become what you want to become then you must decide first what you will stop doing. It is not about doing something new as much as not doing what you are doing now. The examples are endless: but if you are really trying to get out of debt but still carry and use your credit card and do not change your spending then you will remain in debt. If you are wanting to be healthy but are still feeding on the wrong foods then you will remain unhealthy. We have to carry around in our lives the important two words, DO NOT.

“Though you, Israel, commit adultery, do not let Judah become guilty. “Do not go to Gilgal; do not go up to Beth Aven. And do not swear, ‘As surely as the Lord lives!’ (Hosea 4 v 15)

The problem has always been that the people of God do not completely reject God but they compromise their walk with Him.

• Both Gilgal and Beth Aven (known as Bethel) had been places used by God in the past but now they are places of idol worship. It is important to simply stop going to certain places or meeting certain people.

• Before entering those places the people would declare, “As surely as the Lord lives!” or “Yawheh lives!” Then they would move right on in there to worship with idolatry. It is important to eradicate any justifications for actions that are not commissioned by God.

• God doesn’t want the southern kingdom, Judah, to go the way of the north, Israel. It is important to know the kind of person you do not want to become.

Looks the same perhaps but it can be very different when walking it out.

We go to church, worship, pay our tithes and demonstrate good works and that equals the arrangement we have that God blesses those things that have taken up residence in our hearts: our plans, goals, priorities, work, money and possessions. We need God. We need Him so that we can have these things. We call them blessings from Him. But we predetermine the list of blessings. They are our created blessings that we need Him to supply and maintain. We need Him to polish our idols.

“My people consult a wooden idol, and a diviner’s rod speaks to them. A spirit of prostitution leads them astray; they are unfaithful to their God. They sacrifice on the mountaintops and burn offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar and terebinth, where the shade is pleasant. Therefore your daughters turn to prostitution and your daughters-in-law to adultery. “I will not punish your daughters when they turn to prostitution, nor your daughters-in-law when they commit adultery, because the men themselves consort with harlots and sacrifice with shrine prostitutes—a people without understanding will come to ruin!” (Hosea 4 v 12-14)

The people were superstitious with the use of wooden sticks thrown in the air to see how they fell is akin to the toss of a coin or checking the horoscope for guidance.

The people fell into the cultural practices of sacrifices on mountaintops to be seen and under trees for their own shade. It did not please the Lord.

The people were immoral but the men had double standards. They castigated their own women for playing the harlot at these festivals and yet they took part themselves in these sexual offences.

The people had gone astray without letting go of their belief and worship of God. But that is not enough.

God but keeping Him out of the direction of our lives.

God but being more culturally relevant than obedient to the Word.

God but satisfying ourselves with whatever the world offers.

This leads to Him being our God but we not necessarily being His people.