Faithful in Every Season | Sunday, August 4, 2024

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. As they called them, so they went from them; they sacrificed to the Baals, and burned incense to carved images. I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms; but they did not know that I healed them. I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them. (Hosea 11:1–4)

When God looks back on a love repeatedly spurned, what does His broken heart reveal—and where does our true hope finally rest?

Praying in a Time of Conflict

The body of Christ continues to do a great work around the world, even as we see chaos in the news. There seems to be an escalation in the Middle East nearly a year after the October 7th attack, with continued conflict between Hamas and Israel. If you know the Scriptures, you understand that physical manifestations of violence and war are indications of a spiritual battle taking place in an unseen realm.

When you become a Christian, your eyes are opened to that unseen realm, and you are called to be engaged in the battle there. We do not use earthly weapons. Paul says in 2 Corinthians that the weapons of our warfare are not earthly but are powerful in God for the tearing down of strongholds—and one of those weapons is prayer. Psalm 122:6 tells us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, but we are also praying for the kingdom of peace and the Prince of Peace to come and reign. He begins to reign first in our hearts, giving us peace in the midst of the storm.

We sang that nothing can stop our God, nothing can stand against our God. Those are true declarations of faith. If it is true that Jesus triumphed over the grave—and I believe it is historically verifiable that He rose—then it is a reality that nothing can stop our God. Until His kingdom comes, He has called us to be ambassadors and representatives of His kingdom of peace and light in this world.

The Seasons of Life

It is the first Sunday of August, the last little bit of summer before we move into the fall. These transitions remind us that life follows a pattern of cycles and seasons—not just spring, summer, fall, and winter, but seasons in our own lives. There are the fresh, new beginnings of spring; the zealous, growing seasons of summer; the reflective, maturing changes of fall; and the cold, stark endings of winter.

Twenty years ago I lived in Northwest Germany, and I really saw the transition from a stark, gray, depressing winter to the freshness of spring. Every season has its blessings and its challenges. Some stir optimism about what is ahead; others stir us to reminisce nostalgically about the past. That reflective reminiscing is what the winter season is associated with—and that is where Hosea finds the people of Israel.

God Reminisces Over His People

Hosea ministers to the people of the Northern Kingdom of Israel 2,800 years ago, in a dark, stark period of national winter. In Hosea 11, we have a kind of nostalgia from God as He, through the prophet, reminisces about His past time with His people.

In the earlier chapters of Hosea, God relates to His people as a husband to a wife—a covenant relationship the children of Israel broke through adulterous behavior with idols. Now the metaphor shifts from husband-and-wife to father-and-child. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son." Yet as He called them, they departed from Him; they sacrificed to the Baals and burned incense to carved images.

"I taught Ephraim to walk, taking them by their arms." Some of you remember teaching your children to walk, or to ride a bike—holding the back of the seat while they think, "I'm doing it!" not realizing you are holding them up. That is the picture here. God held Israel up, carried them along, healed them, drew them with gentle cords, took the yoke of bondage from their neck, and stooped to feed them. These images recall the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, and the entrance into the Promised Land.

Centuries of Demonstrated Love

From the time God redeemed Israel out of Egypt around 1,400 BC until this period in the 700s BC, about seven centuries passed in which God demonstrated His grace, mercy, love, and compassion. His compassion was clear from the very beginning. At the burning bush in Exodus 3, God said:

I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, a land flowing with milk and honey. (Exodus 3:7–8)

Deuteronomy 7 says God redeemed them because He loved them. Yet even after centuries of demonstrated love, they departed from Him again and again. The New International Version of Hosea 11:2 captures it: the more they were called, the more they went away. God recounts how He provided water from rocks, bread from heaven, protection against their enemies, and forty years of guidance through the wilderness—yet they did not recognize or acknowledge His care. There is a brokenheartedness in this passage.

Isaiah's Vineyard

Isaiah ministered at the same time as Hosea, but to the southern kingdom of Judah, and he expresses the same sentiment with a different metaphor.

Now let me sing to my Well-beloved a song of my Beloved regarding His vineyard... He dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it; so He expected it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes. (Isaiah 5:1–2)

Last week Pastor Jason used the image of planting bell peppers next to jalapeños—the cross-pollination produces bell peppers that taste of jalapeño and jalapeños that taste of bell pepper. That is exactly what happened here. God planted a choice vineyard, but cross-pollination with the gods of the surrounding peoples brought forth sour grapes. So God asks, "What more could have been done for My vineyard that I have not done in it?"

Point one: Israel's demise was not the result of God's inaction or indifference. It was not that God failed to make them fruitful, privileged, and blessed. Quite the opposite—He had done every possible thing to assure they would flourish. They had wonderful privileges and blessings, but they squandered them.

A Mirror for the Privileged

We are not Israel. I do not hold to replacement theology; I believe God still has a purpose and plan for the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We have not replaced Israel, and America is not the New Jerusalem. We do not inherit every blessing or promise we see in Scripture. But Paul tells the Corinthians that the things that happened to Israel are admonitions and instructions for us, so we should glean from their experience.

Here is what we ought to glean: we are a privileged and greatly blessed people. When you travel to Peru, to Mozambique, to Swaziland, to South Africa, to the Philippines—places of abject poverty—you realize how phenomenally privileged we are. Much research supports that our blessings are the fruit of generations building upon the bedrock of biblical, Judeo-Christian principles. Western culture is not perfect—there are blights in our history—but on the whole this foundation has produced the privileges we now enjoy. The question is: how are we using them?

How did Israel use theirs? Hosea 10:1 says, "Israel empties his vine; he brings forth fruit for himself. According to the multitude of his fruit he has increased the altars." Israel lived in a fertile region—the Jezreel Valley is still a breadbasket today—and God blessed them with fruitfulness. But they took that fruitfulness and used it for idols, squandering their wealth on adulterous idolatry.

This should stir us to ask convicting questions. Am I using the blessings God has given me to bless and glorify Him, or to glorify and delight myself? Am I using my privileges to honor and further His kingdom, or to satisfy and grow my own kingdom? I confess I don't enjoy meditating on that, because it is convicting—but it is exactly what passages like this call us to consider.

Judgment Because They Would Not Repent

Because Israel squandered God's blessings for centuries, judgment now comes. Hosea 11:5: "He shall not return to the land of Egypt; but the Assyrian shall be his king, because they refused to repent." They would not go back to Egypt's bondage, but they would be exiled to Assyria. Verse 6: "The sword shall slash in his cities... because of their own counsels. My people are bent on backsliding from Me. Though they call to the Most High, none at all exalt Him."

They had a form of godliness—they were "Israel," governed of God—yet they worshiped Baal, Asherah, Molech, and every kind of idol. As Isaiah says, they honored God with their lips while their hearts were far from Him. We can fall into the same danger. America is called a Christian nation, but you would be hard-pressed to prove it truly follows the precepts of Christ. We have an external show of godliness while the heart is far from it.

Point two: Israel's exile was the result of their refusal to repent. They were given countless opportunities to turn back, but they would not, and their temptation was to blame God—which is always our temptation. Go back to Genesis 3: when God asks Adam if he ate from the tree, Adam does not confess; he says, "The woman whom You gave me." He blames God. Husbands, take heed when you think you stand.

The Law of Sowing and Reaping

"Because of their own counsels"—that word is used elsewhere in the Old Testament. Solomon writes in Proverbs 1: "Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord... therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way." David writes in Psalm 5: "Let them fall by their own counsels." This is the deuteronomic principle, or in New Testament terms, the law of sowing and reaping. If you sow to the flesh, you reap corruption; if you sow to the Spirit, you reap everlasting life.

Israel repeatedly sowed to the flesh, and the inevitable consequences of sin—destruction, bondage, death, and exile—followed. "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap" (Galatians 6:7). This makes me pray: God, empower me by Your indwelling Spirit to walk in truth and sow to righteousness, because I know what comes from sowing to the flesh.

God's Broken Heart and Preserved Remnant

It brings God no joy to see people reap the consequences of their sin. Several times in Ezekiel He says He does not delight in the death of the wicked, but desires their repentance. Like a loving father whose son is about to go through the stark winter of exile, God's heart breaks.

How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I set you like Zeboiim? My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred. (Hosea 11:8)

Admah and Zeboiim were two of the five cities destroyed in Genesis 19, alongside the better-known Sodom and Gomorrah. There is archaeological evidence near the Dead Sea on the eastern side, in modern Jordan, that these cities existed and were utterly annihilated. God says, in effect, "I cannot let you become like them." He continues, "I will not execute the fierceness of My anger... for I am God, and not man."

How do we know He kept this promise? Today there are no descendants of Admah or Zeboiim—they are completely gone—but there are still descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God allowed a remnant to remain.

Point three: God's punishment is for the purpose of purification. Someone once commented on a video clip of this point that I clearly don't understand the Scriptures—but clearly that person hadn't read the Old Testament, because it is plain in Hosea and Isaiah that God punishes in order to return a remnant to Himself. His punishment is a form of discipline. Many of you are parents who had to discipline your children; all of you were once children. "Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of correction will drive it far from him." My mother's rod was a wooden spoon. Hebrews 12 says no chastening seems joyful at the moment, but painful; yet afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those trained by it.

A Future Restoration

They shall walk after the Lord. He will roar like a lion. When He roars, then His sons shall come trembling from the west; they shall come trembling like a bird from Egypt, like a dove from the land of Assyria. And I will let them dwell in their houses, says the Lord. (Hosea 11:10–11)

Israel was about to enter a dark, stark winter of decline and exile in Assyria. But like many prophetic passages in the apocalyptic genre, this text sees through and beyond the immediate darkness to a future restoration. Isaiah 9 pictures the same thing: darkness on this northern region, but a great light to come. Israel experienced this cycle repeatedly—exile under the Assyrians in the eighth century, under the Babylonians in the fifth century with a return under Nehemiah and Ezra, dispersion under the Romans in the first century, and a restoration to the land in the last hundred years. Yet all of these are minor fulfillments of something greater.

Point four: God's ultimate planned kingdom will come. Every restoration of Israel points to the bigger thing God is doing in history. We are not yet living in the kingdom of God. I am a futurist, a premillennial believer: one day Jesus will return and bring His kingdom, and of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end. That is why Jesus taught us to pray, "Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Like Abraham, we look for a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

Hope Not Anchored in This World

It may be that we, though we are not Israel, will pass through a winter of stark difficulty because of the inevitable consequences of the sin of our own time. But the beautiful thing about winter is the optimistic vision of the coming spring. Whatever season of life you are in, God has work for you to do—plowing and planting in spring, watering and weeding in summer, harvesting in fall, preparing tools in winter. There is never a time with nothing to do.

We are ninety-three days from a presidential election, and it doesn't matter which side you are on—both groups believe that if their person wins, everything will be fine. Imagine it is now November 6th, and the outcome you hoped for, prayed for, and voted for did not come. The temptation is to be depressed, to fear that everything will fall apart. But if you are a Christian, your hope was never in this world. Our hope must be seated in the kingdom that is to come.

I am tempted toward the same fear and dread that the chaos of the world produces. But God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. I serve the King of kings, whose kingdom will never end, and I am His ambassador. He wants you and me to be lights in a dark place, carrying the peace and rest of God even in the midst of difficulty.

The Test

At the end of the day, the outcome on November 6th does not ultimately matter, because God raises up one and puts down another. Do I really believe that? If Jesus rose from the dead—which we sang about just before this message—then nothing can stand before our God. This is the test, church. This is what all the studying has been preparing you for. Do you actually believe it, or are you a practical atheist?

I can say with my mouth, "I believe in God." But if I demonstrate with my life that I am fearful and full of dread because the other team won, then I am showing that I don't really trust Him—I have become a practical atheist. That is what Israel became. God help us to demonstrate with our lives that we actually believe what we say we believe: that our kingdom is not of this world, and that it truly does not matter what happens in Washington or Belgium, because our kingdom is not of this world.

Closing Prayer

Father God, sometimes Your word is so challenging for us. Like a sharp sword it cuts deep and divides between joint and marrow, soul and spirit; it discerns the thoughts and intents of my heart. I pray, God, that You would help me by Your Spirit and grace to trust in You fully and completely. We pray, Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven; but until Your kingdom is here, may the peace of Your kingdom rule and guard our hearts and minds. Help us to be ambassadors and representatives of Your kingdom in this time and place, because this culture in San Diego County needs to see a demonstration of Your rest and peace in Your people. So help us to be ambassadors, we pray.

And now may the Lord bless you and keep you; may He make His face to shine upon you; may He be gracious to you, lift up His countenance upon you, and give you His peace—peace that surpasses all understanding. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of His Holy Spirit be with you all. And all those that agreed said, amen.