There is a sense in which
Christianity is not about religion but relationship. God isn’t interested in you simply doing a
load of rituals to please him. He loves
you and wants a heart relationship with you.
The fact that you have fallen in love with him will show itself in your
attitude towards other people. It will
also show itself in you attitude towards what is really important in life.
In these chapters (Hosea
4-7), we are going to see God calling the people of Israel to come back to him
and they are going to show us how not to return to God.
God wants to change our
relationships with people (4).
So far in the book of
Hosea we have had a scene from the maternity room (as Gomer gives birth to her
children) and the marketplace (as Hosea buys back Gomer from slavery). Now it feels like we are in a courtroom. God is laying out charges against the people
of Israel.
While these charges are
against Israel, they are relevant to each of you. ‘As at Adam [like human beings], they have
broken my covenant, they were unfaithful to me there’ (6:7). Their unfaithfulness reflects the
unfaithfulness of the human heart. Their
sins are our sins! These charges speak
to our guilt!
The primary problem is
that they are not faithful to God, they do not love him, and they will not
acknowledge him (4:1). This broken relationship
with God affects their relationship with each other. They go from bloodshed to bloodshed
(4:2). Remember what happened after Adam
and Eve rebelled against God, the next chapter shows Cain murdering his brother
Abel.
How are things in your
family? When there is conflict, it is
because at least one person is not acting the way that God calls them to
act. God calls us to forgive as we have
been forgiven, but we huff with each other.
God calls us to consider each other as more important than ourselves,
but we insist of getting our way. If we
are leaning on the Holy Spirit, we will produce his fruit of gentleness and
self-control, but we shout at each other.
At the root of so much of our conflict is a simple unwillingness to
follow the example of Jesus. In as much
as it depends on you live at peace with each other. Daily repentance changes our relationship
with people.
Our conflicts also reveal
our idols. The people of Israel were
idolaters. ‘They ask a piece of wood for
advice. They think that their walking
stick can tell them the future’ (4:12).
Surly we won’t be so stupid. But
the world is an idol factory. As idol is
anything that we put before obedience to God.
We may not build idols of pieces of wood, but we serve our
ambitions. We sacrifice for people’s
approval. We will try to move heaven and
earth for a peaceful life. How would you
finish this sentence, ‘my life would be perfect if …?’ If the answer doesn’t focus on God then you
are in danger of living for an idol, and you will rage when people get in the
way of fulfilling that dream. We are
simply not content with God. If your
idol is to look like the perfect parent, you will rage when your children
misbehave or underperform. If your idol
is a peaceful night in, you will resent you children when they need to disturb
you. If your idol is to believe that you
are better than others, then you will always defend yourself against criticism.
God wants us to seek intimacy with him (5)
Having brought his charge
against the people, in chapter four, God now issues his verdict in chapter
five. God is going to withdraw his
presence from them. This is an act of
discipline (5:2). It is important that
we realise that this is discipline for God disciplines those he loves (Proverbs
3:11-12, Hebrews 12:6). He is
withdrawing from them in order that they will seek him.
Some of you find it hard
to feel God’s presence. It could simply
be your temperament or personal history.
You find it hard to believe that anyone loves you. It could also be that you are weary and
emotionally numb. God calls you to rest. But some of you feel emotionally distance
from God because you are not walking a life of daily repentance. It is not surprising that you don’t feel
close to him when you don’t take time to be alone with him. You don’t feel close to him because you are
not living in obedience to him. He is
calling you home. He wants to be
intimate with you.
Sadly, when Israel turns
back to God, they show us how not to repent.
They come with ‘their flocks and herds, they shall go seek the Lord, but
they will not find him; he has withdrawn from them’ (5:6). Why is God not embracing them as they come
back to him? God does not embrace them
because they are not actually coming home to him. They are offering sacrifices, but their
hearts are not in it. They are going
through the motions of religion, but they are not falling in love with the God
who loves them. We do this when we look
at our sin and simply resolve to do better. ‘I am better than this,’ we say in our pride,
‘I will prove myself to you. I will show
you that I am a good person.’ That is
not humbly depending on God! Repentance
says, ‘have mercy of me the sinner.
Create in me a clean heart, O Lord.’
Repentance desires intimacy with God.
On Tuesday we had Amin
for tea, as well as our friend Dave.
Dave was fascinated how Amin had changed from being a Muslim to being
Christian. He asked Amin, ‘what is the
difference between what you used to believe and what you now believe?’ The answer is that in Islam, like every other
religion, you simply try to make your self right with God through your various
good works and sacrifices. That is not much
of a relationship. In Christianity God
accepts you because Jesus has taken your guilt on the cross and you respond to
his love by letting that love transform you.
Repentance is not earning anything from God, it is simply a love
response to his love.
God changes us through
resurrection power (6-7)
There is a little bit of
debate about who is speaking at the beginning of chapter six. It may be that Hosea is interrupting the
court proceedings. He urges Israel:
‘Come, let us return to the LORD, for he has torn us; that he may heal us; he
has struck us down, and he will bind us up’ (6:1). God disciplined them so that they would
return to him. It may be that he is
doing that to you. He may be showing you
how fickle this world is, as people let you down. He may be reminding you how brief this life
is, as you travel through a time of sickness.
He works through our trials to get our attention. He seeks to lessen our attachment to the
things of this world, in order that we might depend on him.
What do you make of the
words ‘after two days he will revive us, on the third day he will raise us up
that we may be before him’ (6:2)? Many
Christians have seen this as a prophecy of the death and resurrection of Christ
here. I think that is reasonable. Christ is pictured as in the New Testament as
being the true Israel. He is the
representative of God’s people. He was
struck down for our sin and guilt. He
was raised to life on the third day. The
very power that raised Jesus from the dead can raise us in spiritual life. The very power that raised Jesus from the
dead is the power that can transform our lives.
How should we respond to
this call to repentance? ‘Let us press
on to know the LORD’ (6:3). ‘Do not wait
for God to zap you … Pursue God. Put
yourself in a place where you are exposed to His Word. Meet with His people. Read the Bible. Plead with Him. Acknowledge Him as Lord. Submit your life to Him. Put your faith in Him. And with Hosea, I promise you: He will come
to you – as sure as the dawn. And when
He comes, you will burst into life’ (Ash).
Sadly, again Israel shows
us how not to repent. They come back,
but their love is like the morning mist (6:4).
They are like the seed that was sown on the shallow soil, that lasts for
a while but has no roots. You resolve to
start coming to church regularly on Sunday mornings, but your heart really
isn’t in having a life transforming relationship with God. You haven’t really fallen in love with
Jesus. Start meditating on the cross,
and let his love transform you! Israel’s
return is only skin deep, it doesn’t affect how they view people. When Jesus was criticised by the
self-righteous of his day, he quoted Hosea, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’
(6:6). If your religion is not making
you less judgemental, more merciful and kinder to others then you are not
really connecting with the God of love!
‘Ephraim [the largest tribe in Israel, and another name for Israel] is
like a dove, easily deceived and senseless, now calling to Egypt, now turning
to Assyria’ (7:11). Like a silly dove
flitting about never settling never committing to God. When the pressure was on, they turned to
their enemies for help. They turned to
Assyria, the very nation who would shortly wipe them off the map. They turned to Egypt, the very nation who had
enslaved them. How stupid to look to the
wrong places to find peace! Yet we too
look for peace in things that will enslave us.
We crave intimacy, but rather than turn to God, we open the computer and
drool over a naked woman. We seek
satisfaction, but we do so through our latest purchase. We feel empty, so we numb that pain with a
few glasses of wine before bed. All the
time God has been calling us to himself!
Conclusion
Do you want to
change? I want to change. I would suggest that if you are happy with
yourself the way you are then you may not have understood what the Christian
gospel offers you. On one hand we rest
content in the love of God, on the other hand we restlessly pursue
holiness. The beauty of the Christian
message is in the fact that God gives you the power to change. You can’t change your heart, but he enables
true repentance. His Holy Spirit can
melt our temper, make us kinder, increase our gentleness, give us courage,
purify our heart and give us peace. He
offers to make us more like the beautiful person of Jesus. He shows us his love in order that we might
love him and each other. He makes us
peacemakers that we might be called sons and daughters of God. May God produce in us fruit in keeping with
repentance!
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