13 minute read
My Pulpit Message Notes: CHASTISING GRACE
from TT 184
by TIMES TODAY
CHASTISING GRACE
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The stage has been set for this wonderful relationship between God and His children Israel. It is as if we have been in a courtroom. We started the great demonstration of how strained the relationship between God and the children of Israel was. It could only be understood if Hosea the prophet married a prostitute to capture people’s imagination of how unfaithful they had become to their God and Father, Hosea 1-3.
The case of the unfaithfulness has been prosecuted in Hosea 4-8 and in Hosea 9-10 focus on the verdict of the case. It is as if we are in a courtroom and the Judge takes us through the verdict reminding us of the charge that has been presented by the prosecution taking us through the judgement that is declared against this nation and finally offering an olive branch as a mitigation.
The Charge
The initial relationship with God, as far as Israel was concerned, Hosea reminds us that it was very good. In fact, God ‘finding Israel was like finding grapes in the desert’. Grapes is a sweet fruit. It was like finding the first fruit on the fig tree in it’s first season Hosea Hosea 9:10. In fact he tells us that Ephraim was ‘like a trained calf that loved to thresh’. It was an obedient nation.
The picture here is of a very blossoming relationship. It is like that one of a young man and a young lady , the initial stages of dating and there is nothing they cannot do for each other. It is like those days we got saved, (those who are saved) and we loved to pray and read the Word of God and everything was just going right.
- It was a relationship that started very well and God was pleased with. It is a relationship that was in its honeymoon days.
- But in Hosea 9:10 this relationship continued until they came to Baal Peor (Hosea 9:10). Numbers 25, Baal Peor is when Balak hired Balaam to curse the Israelites. It is where Balaam was stopped by God from cursing Israel and was told, there is not witchcraft against Israel. There is no divination against My people because they are blessed. The only thing you can do is to bless them.
- And when it was impossible to curse this People, Balaam advised Balak that it is possible to make this People despicable before their God. Just have them prostitute themselves with their women, because by so doing they will start worshipping our god.
- So at Baal Peor, Hosea reminds these People that there their relationship with God started going south. The honeymoon stage of that relationship started suffering. There they started prostituting themselves with the women as they are still doing.
Then he says from the days of Gibeah, Israel has sinned. This is during the time of judges (Judges 19-21) ruling the land. This is where a man from Judah had separated from his wife and the wife had gone back home and this man went for his wife and the day they were going back, they left the father in law’s home a bit late and darkness found them on the way and an old man of Gibeah gave his man and his concubine accommodation. As they were eating and enjoying themselves this man who had gone for his wife, the wicked men of the village came and told the old man who had given the other man accommodation, where is this man you had brought because we want to have sex with him? This old man really pleaded for his friend until they had to give away the lady he had gone for and they raped her the whole night and the lady died in the morning. After that there was a civil war in Israel and the tribe of Benjamin who were the occupants of Gibeah was almost wiped out, being left with only about six hundred men.
- Hosea says this relationship was working until Gibeah.
- Hosea goes on to tell them, every sin of Israel is in Gilgal. The book of 1 Samuel 11:15, here we find that they consecrated Saul as their king. The Israelites said they wanted to have a king so that they can be like any other nation. It is in
Gilgal that they consecrated Saul and confirmed him as their king and so their relationship with God started going south.
- In our relationship with God, I believe there is something that happens, that we start giving ourselves to and it becomes a snare in our relationship with God.
- For Israel, it started at Baal Peor when they started prostituting themselves with the Midianite women and 25,000 of them died. At Gibeah, things became worse. At Gilgal, they said now they want a king. This God is so far removed from us. They wanted a king who will for before them so that they can be like every other nation. That is the historical problem where those three incidences, where they started sowing the seed that they are now reaping today.
Current Charge
i. Baal Worship - Hosea
- Hosea 9:1-3 They are worshipping Baal who is a god of fertility. So Hosea is telling them in every threshing floor, (where they would separate wheat from husk), they are thanking Baal because of the abundance of harvest and because Baal was a god of fertility, one of the ways of worshipping him was through sexual immorality. So Hosea reminds them that in every threshing floor you have accepted the price of prostitution.
The seed that was sown at Baal Peor is being harvest now. They have gone full swing in worshipping Baal. And as they harvest and celebrating the harvest, they are engaging in sexual immorality, they are worshipping and thanking the god of fertility who has given them abundance of harvest.
ii. Detest God’s Word - Hosea 9:7,
- They are calling the prophet Hosea a fool / mad man, and the other people who were telling them about God’s Word. -
But God tells them, that person you are calling mad, that is my watchman. That is the person I have put to declare my Word before you. -
Hosea was not the only one called a mad person. In Acts, Paul was called mad by Festus. He was told ‘you are out of your mind.’ When they did not understand Jesus, he was told He is demon possessed (John 7:20). And we have seen politicians wanting to put off those who preach, believers as if they do not know what they were doing.
iii. Faithlessness - Hosea 10:13
- These people had become faithless. Hosea 10:13 we are told they depended on their own strength and warriors. Remember they had said they wanted a king to be like any other nation, one who will go before them in their battles against other nations. At this particular instance the charge was they were depending on themselves rather than on God.
- Remember there in a nation where it started and they were told they are not allowed to have many military men because when you go to war it is not about you, but about God.
And the question we have to ask ourselves is, are there some seeds that we are sowing today that when it comes to reaping a year or two, five, or ten or twenty, the next generation that we are planting in this generation which our children, to grandchildren will reap?
- This is not the generation that was at Baal Peor. It was a different generation. It is hardly 40 years down the line. They are still reaping the fruit that their great grandparents planted at Baal Peor.
- We have to ask ourselves, are there some bitter fruits we are reaping today, that we planted a few years ago. When did we reach the point in this country where we can go gorge out the eyes of a nine year old boy, because we are fearing he is going to inherit the land? How did we reach a point where in our health survey they were saying an average Kenyan man has four sexual partners besides the one they are living with? Women are no better, they have two others apart from their husband. Some could be seated in the pews.
When was this seed planted? When did we reach where we are today in this country that drugs are so easily available that in our high schools if there is something driving them out of school are drugs? Not just boys/men girls smoke bhang. When was this seed planted? Because you reap what you sow? What we are reaping, when was it planted and is there a bitter seed we are planting for our children today? It will come to haunt them in years to come.
The Judgement
The party / honeymoon is over.
Soon there is going to be blood-berth in the nation and God tells them in Hosea 9:12 “Woe to you when I turn My face from you!”.
i. Against Baal Worship
God says the land will not produce. Hosea 9:1-2. There will be no winepress because the land is not going to produce.
The threshing floor is not going to feed the nation. i.e.. There will be no crop in the land.
There will be decimation of population Hosea 9:11-17. There is a lot of sexual immorality, but there will be no children. He says there is no pregnancy, no conception, where the children are born, you will be bereaved, he will give them miscarrying wombs, Those who give birth I will give them dry breasts, there will be nothing for the children to suckle. Their roots are dried up. There will be no fruit and children will be put to death. In other words, their sexual immorality will not lead to a population boom, but to the decimation of population.
- There are places in the world today where the population is in decline and aren’t those races some of people leading in sexual immorality? And yet God says there will be no children, no conception.
- He says there will be separation from God. No more drink offering. No more sacrifice. He is not interested. He says, ‘the bread you offer will be to satisfy your hunger’ not to worship Me.’ No more services, no more church, when you go to church you will do your own thing, that is today’s equivalent.
ii. Independence from God
- He tells them there will be military defeat. Hosea 10:2-10,14-15. Israel had sown wickedness and reaped evil in deception.
- He gives them the example of how Shalman devastated Beth Arbel on the day of battle. It seems this is a king who really beat the nation that he conquered. “as Shalman devastated Beth Arbel on the day of battle, when mothers were dashed to the ground with their children.”Hosea 10:14.
- By the time the mothers are being dashed to the ground there are no men. The military is completely defeated. They are not there.
- One of the charges was that they depend on themselves and their warriors. Now their military is going to be completely defeated. We know that in 722 BC this is what happened. They were completely defeated and went into captivity and never to rise again.
- “War will overtake you and nations will be gathered against you”. Hosea 10:10
- The end of kingship is also declared in judgement. They will have no king. The king will be deposed and destroyed. Without the king, without the nation you will become wanderers among the nations. Hosea 9:17
- Finally, captivity is declared. Hosea 9:3, He tells them, “You will return to Egypt. Yes you will go to Assyria. Memphis will bury you. (Memphis was a city in Egypt that was doing very well in the construction of pyramids where they bury their dead). Some of you will go to Assyria, some to Egypt, where they will be buried in Memphis.
- Even the calf idol at Beth Arbel (a corruption of the word Bethel - House of God), This is where Jeroboam had erected an idol in the form of a calf. Now God tells them, even that calf will be taken to captivity. That god you worship at Beth Arbel, you converted the House of God (Bethel to wickedness (Beth Arbel), that calf will go to captivity. “Woe unto you when I turn my face against you.”
- Many at times, I think we engage in many things, and we really try the patience of God. I think in this nation we have tried the patience of God in every way. The recent health survey index about how many sexual partners we have in this country did not cause an alarm. When university girls are murdered, it doesn’t cause an alarm. I usually feel it because I am a father of only daughters when I hear of a girl who has been murdered by her boyfriend.
- It has become so common for men to murder their girlfriends. I hear these days there is a dam in Juja where people go to drink and engage in sexual orgies in their cars until people are drowning on and off. There reaches a point where God says, “Woe unto you when I turn My face from you.”
- God is patient. By the time the Israelites are reaching this point, they have been at it for hundreds of years, decades. But at this point God is telling them, ‘Woe unto you when I turn My face from you.
God’s Grace - Hosea 10:12
- God is very gracious. God is merciful because in Hosea 10:12 He offers them mitigation, Himself. He tells them, “Sow for yourselves righteousness and reap steadfast love,.., for it is time to seek the LORD until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.”
- So if you were to ask, as the Kenya Health Survey is released, as you are gorging out children’s eyes because of land, we have murdered, shed blood because of land, corruption people are joking now that we should start taxing corruption money because it is not possible to do away with it, but as all this is happening and God is saying, “Woe unto you,the day I will turn away from you, then He says, “Sow for yourselves righteousness and reap steadfast love..for it is time to seek the LORD until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.”
