Hosea 10:1

All right, if you would join me, we're going to be in Hosea chapter 10 today. It's about that far across in your Bible. If you need a Bible, you can raise your hand, and one of the ushers will bring one to you. As you may have guessed, I am not Pastor Miles today. He is out, so I have the privilege of sharing this morning.

As we get there, let's go ahead and pray. Heavenly Father, as we dig into your word today, I pray, Lord, that you would, first of all, fill us with your Holy Spirit. Give us wisdom and discernment. Father God, make it profitable for your kingdom. What we learn today, Lord, may it draw us close to you, Jesus, and help us become more like you. Lord, I pray that you would speak to us today. Thank you, Father God, for all that you've done for us. I pray that you would be glorified in this service and as we study. We pray these things in your name, Jesus. Amen.

Now, Hosea chapter 10. It's very easy when we look at prophetic books to interpret them outwardly. It's easy to get wrapped up in the end times discussions and think, "Oh, well, that's talking about those people in that time and this thing." I encourage you to spend a little time thinking about it that way, but I urge you to spend the majority of your effort focusing inward.

This is not just for today, but for any time you're in the Bible. It's easy to see the things that apply to others, but we can't change them. The only person we can truly change is ourselves, and we're not even very good at that, right? So let's look for the personal application in this text. Let's do the hard work of self-confrontation, self-control, and self-direction. This is where we should focus our energy and efforts. We can approach the word and ask, "Lord, what do you have for me right now in my life?"

So, we're going to look at Hosea chapter 10 in that way. We'll start right off here in verse one, which says, "Israel is a lush vine that yields fruit for itself."

The more His fruit increased, the more they increased the altars. The better their land produced, the better they made the sacred pillars. Their hearts are devious, and now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars and demolish their sacred pillars.

God talks about Israel as a lush vine. At this point, Israel is very fruitful and productive. There are all kinds of blessings being showered on them. They were very affluent; God had blessed them, and things were going really well. However, the problem is that as things were going well, they did not take the fruit that God gave them and turn it into fruits of righteousness. Instead, in their comfort, they started delving into idolatry and began looking at other gods. God specifically mentions the altars and the sacred pillars. Their hearts became devious, and now they must bear their guilt. The Lord will break down their altars and demolish their sacred pillars. All the things they built are going to be destroyed.

In Galatians chapter 5, verse 13, it says they took the freedom that God had given them and the blessings He had provided. Instead of using that freedom to glorify God, they turned and glorified idols. Their hearts became devious, and the people became sneaky, deceitful, and cunning. Now they are going to face their guilt, and God is going to break down their idols.

The thing we know is that idols don't fall without consequences. When God looks at things in our lives and says that something shouldn't be there, that it is taking His place, He lovingly removes those things. Very often, this comes with pain and heartache because our lives are shaken up.

Point one in your outline, if you're taking notes this morning, is that God is going to destroy the places of idolatry. However, the hearts of people are not as easy to reform or repurpose. God will destroy the locations; the altars will come down, and the pillars will be destroyed. But the heart is harder to change.

In verse 3, we see that they are now saying, "We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord. What can a king do for us?" They are looking at this situation and equating the fact that they have lost their kingship.

They've lost political power. Their king is gone, and they equate that with recognizing that it is because they rejected God. It says, "We have no king, for we do not fear the Lord. What can a king do for us?" There is no one to help them anymore because their king is gone. The people see the loss of the king as a result of their rejection of God and their turning to idols.

The text discusses what happens to their society and community as they fall into idolatry and wickedness. It states that they speak mere words, taking false oaths while making covenants. Lawsuits break out like poisonous weeds in the furrows of a field. The trust between the people is broken; they no longer trust each other or the authority figures. When it says they speak mere words, it means their words are just noise—there is nothing behind them anymore, and nobody's word is trusted.

Instead, they start making covenants. They think, "I don't trust you to do what you say, so we're going to write a contract." However, even then, they are lying in their covenants. After they lie in their covenants, lawsuits break out like poisonous weeds. It is a good thing that this is not at all indicative of our society, right? We don't live in an overly litigious society, and we don't see the fruit of broken covenants and lawsuits everywhere.

The description of lawsuits breaking out like poisonous weeds in the furrow of a field illustrates how idolatry and the embracing of wickedness poison the relationships between the people. It is like hemlock in the wheat. This imagery reminds me of E. coli in burgers. Do you remember way back in the 1900s when some of us were alive? There was the whole big Jack in the Box E. coli scare. It was awful, almost as bad as the Wendy's finger in the chili incident. We had all these great things back then, and it was exciting to look at.

But it is that kind of situation where something that is supposed to be good—the relationship that the people are supposed to have with each other—suddenly becomes wrecked, defiled, and broken because of their embracing of wickedness. It says in verse 5...

It's interesting because there's a little bit of a word picture here. The residents of Samaria will have anxiety over the calf of Beth-Avon. Beth-Avon is not an actual place; it’s a play on words. The place where it is located is called Beth-El or Bethel, meaning the place of God. However, Hosea switches that out and refers to it as Beth-Avon, the place of wickedness. You've taken what was supposed to be a place of God and turned it into a place of wickedness.

As a result, it says that indeed, the idolatrous priests rejoiced over it. The priests were rejoicing over the wickedness, but the people are going to mourn over it. They will pay the price. It states that it will certainly go into exile; it will be carried away. The calf itself will be taken to Assyria as an offering to the great king. The offerings they made in building this idol, this golden calf, will all go away. It will all be taken by someone else.

It's interesting to consider the idea of a calf that they are worshiping. Immediately, that should raise our antenna. Israelites, calf, idolatry—oh! It brings to mind one of my absolute favorite passages of Scripture: Exodus 32:19. It says, "And he approached the camp and saw the calf and the dancing." Moses became enraged and threw the tablets out of his hands, smashing them at the base of the mountain. This is when Moses is coming down from the mountain with the tablets, the Ten Commandments, and the law. He sees what they are doing, and the King James Version says they were cavorting, which is a very sanitized way of describing their actions. It was gross.

Moses is so mad that he smashes the tablets on the ground. The next verse, which I absolutely love, describes what he did next: he took the calf that they had made, burned it up, ground it to powder, scattered the powder over the surface of the water, and forced the Israelites to drink the water. He took the golden calf, burned it, melted it down, ground it up, spread it across the water, and then made the people drink it. Do you remember what the golden calf was made of? It was all of the blessings that God had given them as they left Egypt.

He said to go to your neighbors and ask them for their jewelry, ask them for their gold. So they brought all of this gold and gave it to Aaron. Then Moses, surprised, questioned Aaron about it. Aaron replied that he just took the gold, threw it in the fire, and a calf came out. It was a strange excuse, and nobody believed it. It was reminiscent of toddlers when they lie; it was clearly not what happened.

Moses then ground up the gold and gave it to them to drink. The beautiful picture here is that all of these blessings were turned into idolatry, and now they had to consume it. All of that gold was left behind in the desert, and through their natural bodily processes, it became waste. I love the picture that God paints there. He showed them exactly what their idolatry was.

In verse 7, back in Hosea, it says, "Samaria's king will disappear like foam on the surface of the water. The high places of Avon, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed. Thorns and thistles will grow over their altars. They will say to the mountains, 'Cover us,' and to the hills, 'Fall on us.'" Samaria's king will disappear. He is prophesying what is going to happen; their king is going to be gone. They are losing self-governance and will no longer be in charge of their own destiny as a people.

God gave them that freedom, but they used it for idolatry. So God takes that away from them and says, "No, no, no. You're not even going to have a king anymore. He is going to disappear." The high places, the sin of Israel, will be destroyed. It will reach a point where, because they have rejected God and are dealing with the consequences, they see their best option as wishing for the mountains to collapse on them. They might think, "Just fall on me. Just crush me. Just get it over with. Kill me now. I don't want to deal with any more of this."

Hosea gives them some very kind, reassuring words, saying, "Israel, you have sinned since the days of Gibeah. You have taken your stand there. Will you not war against the unjust? Will you overtake them in Gibeah?" It is interesting because he references the days of Gibeah and the idea of overtaking them there. Historically, Gibeah has been a place where all kinds of horrible things have happened for the children of Israel. Miles touched on it a little bit last week and mentioned that we would cover it in the future, which is good because I don't want to have to teach that passage. That one is a miserably horrible passage.

But when He says that to the children of Israel, it recalls their greatest moments of national shame. It brings to mind when things were at their very worst. He points out to them, "You have sinned ever since those days. You have not gotten any better." Your worst days were here, but you haven't improved since then. You've gone back into idolatry and walked away.

In verse 10, He says something interesting: "I will discipline them at my discretion. Nations will be gathered against them to put them into bondage for their double iniquity." God states that He will discipline them at His discretion. We will explore this further in just a moment. He also mentions that they will be in bondage for their double iniquity. This is one of those places where biblical scholars and commentaries offer a variety of opinions on what this actually means. Much of it relates to some awkward constructs in ancient Hebrew, and there is uncertainty about whether it stems from a northern dialect versus a southern dialect.

However, as Miles says, when the text makes plain sense, seek no other sense. So, when I look at this and ask, "What is this double iniquity?" I turn to Scripture for clarity. Fortunately for us, Jeremiah lays it out clearly. In Jeremiah 2:13, it states, "For my people have committed a double evil. They have abandoned me, the fountain of living water, and they have dug cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that cannot hold water."

The thing that Israel did wrong, their double iniquity, was that they turned their back on the living God. They knew God and said, "No, thank you." In the second part of their sin, they decided to do it on their own. They built idols and chose to worship them, declaring, "We are going to take care of ourselves. No, thanks, God. We've got this." They constructed these cracked cisterns that cannot hold water.

God is going to use the nations to punish Israel. However, notice that He says, "I will discipline them at my discretion." He does not say, "I'm going to destroy them." He says, "I'm going to discipline them," which is important. If we look at discipline, Proverbs 3:11 states, "Do not despise the Lord's instruction, my son, and do not loathe His discipline. For the Lord disciplines the one He loves, just as a father disciplines a son in whom he delights." It is the love of God that leads Him to discipline His people. It is not out of hatred or a desire for destruction; it is discipline.

Leaving them in their sin and idolatry would be the worst thing for them. To leave them in a place of idolatrous sin has eternal consequences. So, God is going to do what He can to lovingly redirect them. However, to redirect them will require discipline.

As we look at this, it's important to remember point number two in your outline, if you're taking notes: God is not doing something to them; God is doing something for them. He is not interested in destroying His people; He is interested in bringing them back. He is doing something for them. But just because He is trying to do something good does not mean it will be easy. In this case, the good thing is to overthrow and destruct their entire way of life to bring their hearts and minds back to Himself.

In verse 11, it says, "Ephraim is like a well-trained calf that loves to thresh. But I will place a yoke on her fine neck. I will harness Ephraim, and Judah will plow, and Jacob will do the final plowing." Not many of us are familiar with using bovines to produce our wheat, but the way they would do it is by having an open area with a stone floor, usually on a high place to catch the wind. The job of the calf is simply to walk around.

As we learn from other parts of Scripture, we are told not to muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain. The ox is free; the calf is free to walk around and eat good stuff. He is just walking around, enjoying the grain. This is what it was like for Israel when God blessed them. That is the word picture He is painting. For Israel, their job was easy. They just got to walk around and enjoy the blessings that God gave them. All they had to do was glorify Him.

But instead, God says, "I will place a yoke on her fine neck. I will harness Ephraim. Judah will plow, and Jacob will do the final plowing." What happens is they go from a life of ease, a life filled with blessings and comfort, where the work was a joy because it was just walking around and eating, to a life that suddenly became very hard. They put the yoke on that calf, and now the yoke does a couple of things.

The yoke forces them into hard work. No longer do they have the option of just hanging out and enjoying things. Now, they are doing work. With the yoke on, they are harnessed into doing the difficult tasks. The yoke defines their choices; they don't get to choose to go right or left. They go where they are pointed because that's the whole point of the yoke. The yoke focuses their work in a particular direction and causes them to remember their prior life, back when life was easy.

I remember life was so good, and this kind of mirrors for me the Garden of Eden. If you go back to the Garden of Eden, what do we have? We have Adam, Eve, God, and this beautiful garden full of all kinds of wonderful things. They had one rule: one single rule—don't eat from that tree. We don't know how long they refrained from eating it, but for a period of time, they had a perfect relationship with each other and with God. There was no shame, no guilt, no pain, and no heartache. There was just them tending the garden, fellowshipping with God and each other.

Then it all changed. They ate the fruit, and everything fell apart. All of a sudden, they were trying to hide from God. They were at enmity with each other, blaming one another for their circumstances. Ultimately, they ended up being put out of the garden. Part of the consequence was that they would suffer through childbirth, which would be miserable and painful. The work of their hands would yield thorns and difficulty. Life would become very hard for them. Within one generation, their children were murdering each other. This is the result of sin in our lives; it brings about an immense amount of destruction.

God has shown me this often in my own life. I have a tendency to get complacent and comfortable, thinking, "Yeah, life is good." This is not a problem if I remember God. However, when things are good, I tend to enjoy the good and forget about the giver of good. God has a tendency, lovingly, to remind me and bring me to the place where I realize, "Oh yeah, I don't have any."

My cisterns are cracked and not capable of holding what God has for me. So when I find myself in a crisis like that, I'm forced to acknowledge once again that my cisterns cannot hold what God has for me. I need to remind myself in that moment, as point three in your outlines states, that God is not doing something to me, but is instead doing something for me.

I chuckle because we've had a slightly warm last couple of weeks, right? We are about nine days in now with no air conditioning in our house. Let me walk you through a little bit of the way my brain works. We had two main things we wanted to do in our house: we wanted to do the roof and we wanted to do the air conditioning. We chose the roof, completed that project, and then the air conditioning died.

It's that moment where I think, "But no, no, no, God, don't you understand? We took care of this. I can't do the rest of this right now, Lord. What are you doing to me?" Then there's that reminder that He is not doing something to me; He is doing something for me. I have to reframe the way I'm thinking. I need to look at this and ask, "Okay, Lord, what is it that you're doing for me here? How do I recognize what it is that you're doing?"

I can tell you that when the house is 90 degrees inside until like nine o'clock at night, there is a lot of crying out to the Lord. "Lord, please, why is it so hot?" But that reminder comes back: He is not doing something to me; He is doing something for me.

And then there's Anthony, God bless him. He is a fantastic worship leader, and he has a portable air conditioner that they are not using. He said, "Oh, you can use this." So now we have one room in our house that is air conditioned. It’s like, "Okay, I can't take it anymore. I'm going to go in the bedroom."

I share all of this because I'm looking for understanding. "Okay, Lord, I'm teaching. I'm thinking about this. I'm going through this. I know that you're doing something for me, but what is it?" So I call a guy for air conditioning, and the first guy comes. Well, you don't need to know that part of the story.

But anyway, I get to the point where the guy comes over to look at our air conditioning. He’s working on it, and we’re having all kinds of trials and tribulations because our air conditioner is from 1973. It’s an amazing act of God that it lasted as long as it did. I’m just sitting there praying, “Okay, Lord, you know me, you know my tendencies, you know what I’m like. I’m going to lay this before you.”

Everything just fell apart. Instead of being the easy fix, it turned into a not-so-easy fix. None of it is easy for me because I have no idea what I’m doing, but it’s even more difficult for the guy who is working with me, the one who actually knows what he’s doing. I told him, “You know what? This is just not going to work this way. We’re going to have to do the other option.”

I prayed about it and trusted that God would take care of this. The guy then apologized, saying he had been using a lot of language that he shouldn’t and that he wasn’t proud of it. We ended up having a conversation about Jesus, and it was a great conversation. It was really nice to share, and I thought maybe that’s what God is doing through this.

I also know God well enough to understand that there are many other things He is doing in and through this whole situation. When I can get that perspective right, when I remember that God is not doing something to me but is instead doing something for me, I can face those situations without being angry or full of heartache. There’s still some heartache, and I don’t want to act like I was completely unaffected. There’s plenty of heartache, but when I can remember that, it helps me approach it in a way that glorifies Him and helps me walk closer with Him.

When we reach those places where we hit our own insufficiencies and remember our need for Him, Hosea here in verse 12 tells us how to deal with that. In verse 12, he says, “Sow righteousness for yourselves and reap faithful love. Break up your unplowed ground. It is time to seek the Lord until He comes and sends righteousness on you like the rain.”

He starts out that verse by saying, “Sow righteousness.” Plant righteousness. What you plant, you will grow. He says to sow righteousness and do the things that God has called you to do in your life relentlessly. “God, what do you want me to do in this situation?”

I'm going to do that, and then you will reap faithful love. Recognize that when those blessings start coming, it's because I was faithful. I sowed righteousness, and I'm going to reap faithful love. It doesn't say you're going to reap riches. It doesn't say you're going to reap health. It says you're going to reap love.

Then he says, "Break up your unplowed ground." The immediate thought is, okay, so what are my hard places? When I start thinking about unplowed ground, I immediately go to the parable of the sower. In that parable, Jesus tells the story of a man who goes out to sow and scatters seed. Some of the seed falls on a hard path and can't take root, so it dies there. Some of the other seed falls on rocky soil, but it can't produce good roots because the soil is too hard, and it dies off there as well. Then some of it goes into weedy ground, and because the weeds choke it out, it can't succeed.

The thing that sticks out to me every time I look at the parable of the sower is that the results for the seed depend on the amount of work that's been put into the ground. That's the difference between those four patches. It says that the seed hit good ground, grew up, and yielded massive fruit. For those of us who garden, we know that gardening is hard work, especially in July in San Diego. Everything is just cooked.

The hard path, when the seed falls on it, just needs to be broken up. That path needs to be tilled so that the seed has somewhere to take root. The rocky soil needs to have the rocks removed. If you're familiar with pictures from Ireland, Scotland, and England, you see that rocky soil over generations turns into walls. The things that used to be obstacles become a defense. They have those walls because they've been pulling the rocks out of the soil.

When we have rocks in our soil, we need to remove those things. We take the obstacles out of our lives, and they become our protection. We can look at them and say, "Yeah, I used to be like that, but I don't do that anymore." I am reminded constantly that that's not who I am.

The weedy soil needs to have the weeds pulled. That's like removing dangerous tendencies and temptations from our lives. They spring up, and we've got to pull them out. If there's one thing we know in San Diego, it's that when the rain comes, everything turns green, and almost none of it is good green; it's all weeds. We have to do the work of pulling them out. We could try to cut them off, but the next time it rains, they just come right back. So, we need to take those temptations and the things in our lives, and we need to remove them completely.

Then, he says to seek the Lord. I think this is the most important part: to seek the Lord. It's not just about going to church on Sunday or doing a two-and-a-half-minute devotion if I have time in the morning before I rush out of my house. Seeking the Lord is a process that we engage in all the time, every day. When we're driving, we can ask, "Lord, what do you want to show me right now?" When we're working with our kids, we might wonder, "Lord, what are you teaching me through this interaction? How do you want me to approach this?" When we go to work, we can think, "Okay, Lord, how am I going to operate in this situation?" Even when our air conditioning dies, we might ask, "Lord, what am I going to do here?" Seeking the Lord means looking for Him in all of those situations, and He will be faithful to reveal Himself to us.

The last part says to be faithful, and He will come and bless you like the rain. It's an opportunity where, when we are faithful, we can be blessed. Remember, when you face trying times, it's not happening to you; it's happening for you. In verse 13, it says, "You have plowed wickedness and reaped injustice." This is directed at the children of Israel: "You have eaten the fruit of lies because you have trusted in your own way and in your large number of soldiers." They plowed wickedness and reaped injustice. As their society became more and more wicked, it became more and more unjust.

That's what we see happening there. If you've eaten the fruit of lies, if you've ingested the lies and believe them, those lies become part of you because you trusted in your own way. God is saying that you stopped looking for Him and thought you could do it on your own. You thought you could do it by yourself, and this is where that has brought you. You trusted in your large number of soldiers. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't have a large number of soldiers. Daniel has a large number of soldiers, but they're just this big and green. However, Israel was trusting in their armies to keep them safe.

We don't generally trust in armies. We tend to trust in the vast troops of Visa, MasterCard, and American Express to take care of us when things get difficult. The thing is, if we have a high enough balance, we can postpone the reckoning until we've planted a whole lot of wickedness. So, we need to be very careful to plant righteousness.

When he talks about planting, sowing, and reaping, they are tied together. If you plant wickedness, you're going to reap injustice. But if we plant righteousness, we have the opportunity to bless the people around us. I don't know if you have ever made the mistake that we made, where we planted our jalapeños in the same bed as our bell peppers. There is an interaction that happens; it's called cross-pollination, and it changes both of those plants. Our bell peppers tasted like jalapeños—not hot, but they just tasted like jalapeños. Our jalapeños also tasted like jalapeños, with no heat at all. We were just sitting there, looking for it, but there was no heat at all.

What happened is they cross-pollinated and affected the plants around them. If we plant righteousness, we will cross-pollinate the people around us. That will rub off on them. As we walk through life doing what God has called us to do, it will change the people around us. Now, I like spicy food, so the allegory kind of falls down there, but we can change the people around us just by doing what God has called us to do.

It calls us to plant. It says, don't plow wickedness and don't reap injustice. A lot of this points to Galatians chapter 6, verses 7 to 10. It says, "Don't be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a person sows, he will also reap. Because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh. But the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don't give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith."

It says to plant good things, and you will get good things back. However, as gardeners realize, the thing that you need to grow the most is your ground. You need to grow your soil. You can have the best plants in the world, but if you put them in bad soil, they are not going to thrive.

We have been gardening for a while now, and we have a couple of beds where nothing thrives. We keep trying to amend the soil and build it up, but it is a very frustrating process. This experience sparked a thought in my mind as I was looking at Galatians chapter 6, verse 9, which says, "Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don't give up."

I firmly believe that the single biggest determination of success in gardening and in following Jesus is faithfulness. Faithfulness, perseverance, stubbornness—call it whatever you want—it's the dogged pursuit of, "I am going to keep going. I am going to keep walking. I am going to keep chasing you, Lord, no matter what." I am going to keep trying to amend the ground. I will do soil testing and all these things. I want to do everything to make this work because my life is supposed to yield good fruit. That will only happen if I keep pursuing Jesus.

So, how do we foster faithfulness? There are three things we need to remember: who we are, why we are here, and how we are supposed to live.

The first thing is we need to remember who we are. 1 John 3, verse 1 says, "See what great love the Father has given to us that we should be called God's children. And we are." The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. From that verse, part of who we are is that we are loved by God. It is important to remember that we are loved by God. God loves you so much. He does not hate you, nor does He want to destroy you. He has not forgotten you. He loves you. That is who you are: you are loved by God.

You are a child of God. When we are children of God, that implies a bond. There is a family bond and a commitment there. We are held tightly together, even when it's hard, even when we screw up. That doesn't change the fact that I am a child of God. He holds on to me, and I do my best to try to hold on to Him.

The third part of remembering who we are is that we are foreign to the world. The reason the world does not know us is that it didn't know Him. The world is not going to understand us. It will not understand our motivations, the way that we act, or sometimes the words that we use. However, it will understand love. As we express love, we will feel more and more foreign the further our culture moves away from God. We will stand out more and more as our culture goes further away from Him. This is a good thing. We should stand out like a city on a hill, shining a light where people can say, "I don't like what's going on in my life. I don't understand why they're different. Let me talk to them."

We also need to remember the second part of this: why we are here. In Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8, it says that we are saved by the grace of God. We are not saved because we are awesome. God did not choose us because we're tall, good-looking, strong, short, or whatever characteristic we might have. He chose us because He loves us. It's not something that we earned; it was a gift. It was not a payment. He didn't have to give it to us; He chose to. He was under no obligation, and we didn't earn it. It was given to us.

Notice in that verse also that He says we are His workmanship. We are His project, the project that He is working on to bring the world closer to Him. I don't know about you, but I have a garage full of projects. I have projects that I like, projects that are frustrating, and projects that I have thrown across the room into the wall of the garage.

Because I have patience, long suffering, endurance, and self-control, God thankfully doesn't do that to us. We are God's projects; we are what He is working on. He is building us into something that He wants to use. The final part of that is that we are saved to do good works that God has created for us. We're not saved just to park. We're not saved to sit. We're not saved to go, "Wow, I'm just going to enjoy these blessings, Lord."

We're given freedom, but we're given freedom with stipulations. We need to go out and do good things. We need to do the things that God has called us to do, the things that He has prepared for us. He has work that He has prepared for us to do, and it's just waiting for us to discover what it is.

The third part of this is that we need to remember how we are supposed to live. This is in Galatians chapter 5, starting in verse 13. If you want to turn there, you can, but I'm going to go through it quickly because I've only got five minutes left, and I don't want to keep you guys here too much over time.

Galatians 5:13 says, "For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters. Only don't use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love. For the whole law is fulfilled in one statement: love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, watch out; you will be consumed by one another."

I say then, walk by the Spirit, and you will certainly not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is against the flesh. These are opposed to each other so that you don't do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

He says, first, you are called to be free, brothers and sisters. But don't use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. You are given freedom, but with stipulations. You have freedom in Christ, but there are certain stipulations to you. Don't indulge the flesh; we are called to serve one another in love. That's what our freedom is for.

All of our instructions come down to this one statement: love one another. Now, that's an easy statement to say—love one another. It's just three words, easy to say. Sometimes it's difficult to define, right? Because it can be really hard to figure out in a situation what the most loving thing for me to do is. How does God want me to be loving in this situation? But it's always hard to actually do. It's difficult to love one another, just as it's difficult for people to love us because we are challenging people. You guys are challenging people. I'm a challenging person. Because we're sinners, we are difficult.

But we are called to love one another and to avoid contentious behavior. It says not to bite and devour each other. Don't do these things.

When I was a kid, I think I was in fourth or fifth grade, I got a boomerang. It was a real wooden boomerang. The cool thing about boomerangs is that you throw them, and they come back. I was all excited, so I took my boomerang and threw it. It shot way up in the air, and then it started coming back. That's when it occurred to me: how am I going to stop this? This is a wooden boomerang moving at an extremely high rate of speed. Am I just going to try to catch it? No, that's going to hurt. Instead, we all dove and hit the ground as it flew over us. We were like, "Whoa, that was crazy!" Of course, we did it again because we were kids and not thinking clearly.

When we are biting and contentious, when we have a tendency to say mean things or do mean things, these are like boomerangs. We throw these out, and they are going to come back. The best way to avoid it is to not throw it out in the first place. I have a tendency to be harsh with my words with people sometimes. I can be cutting, and those words always come back to me. The best way to avoid that is to stop it at the beginning. If I don't do it, then it will never come back to me. So, avoid that contentious behavior because it's like boomerangs.

Then, walk by the Spirit, which I love. Sometimes it seems confusing. I like to think of it like when you're in a store with your little kids. You want them to walk with you, and occasionally you stop while they keep going or go in another direction. You stop and wait, and all of a sudden they realize, "Wait a minute," and they come back. That is the essence of walking by the Spirit.

When we walk with someone, it implies intention and proximity. I am intentionally walking with somebody; I am intentionally staying close to them. This is never more evident than in late junior high or early high school when you get your first crush. You walk by that person, and occasionally, it's like, "Oh, our fingers touched."

Proximity and intention are crucial in our walk with God. You can't walk together if one of you is not following. God determines the direction we are called to follow Him. Like I often tell my kids when we're hiking, you cannot follow from the front. Sometimes we have a tendency to go way ahead, thinking, "Oh, I know where we're going, God," and we take off. Meanwhile, God might be saying, "Well, I'm turning left," but we're way over there. As a result, we end up having to come back.

We also need to expect opposition, largely from ourselves. Nobody has ever caused me to sin; nobody's ever held a gun to my head and said, "Now you're going to sin." I have done plenty of horribly egregious things on my own accord. I need to be expecting opposition from my flesh. My biggest opponent is going to be myself. Therefore, we need to be able to repent continually and rejoin walking with Jesus.

All of this is personal application, with results that will affect the people around us. That's where our results are going to show up. Even if we do everything in a righteous manner, even if we follow God's calling, it does not remove us from our people or the places we are placed. Sometimes we can do everything right, and we are still part of a nation that is going to be under God's judgment. However, remember that God's judgment is for a people, not to a people. God desires that everyone should find Him and come to repentance. He chooses to use us, His workmanship, to be a part of that.

This is where we rejoice because God has given us an opportunity as His church, as His people, to go into the world and draw others close to Him. We are called to show people what it means to follow Jesus, to walk closely with Him, and to demonstrate that there is an alternative to what the world offers. We get to be like lifeguard attendants, pulling people out of the water. We are those rescue people. But to do that, we need to remember who we are, why we're here, and how we're supposed to live.

So the worship team is going to come up. I'm going to pray real quick, and then we are going to close out in a song together.

Heavenly Father, help us to remember, Lord, who we are, why we're here, and what You want us to do. Help us to be those who have grown close to You. Help us to be those, Jesus, who repent quickly. And Lord, help us to be those that are shining lights before You. When we fall short, we pray that You would forgive us. When we lose our way, Lord, we pray that You'd welcome us back.

Father, for those who are currently going through difficult things, I pray that You'd help us to remember, Lord Jesus, that those things are not being done to us. You're not doing something for our destruction, Lord God, but You're doing something for us so that we can walk closer with You. Thank You, Jesus. Thank You.