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A message by
Rev. F. David Throop, Pastor
August 31, 2008 Scripture: Hosea 4:1-3; 11:1-2; 6:1-3 and 14:1-3
Please pray with me:
Loving and gracious God, every day of our lives we are on faith journeys, and today, as we continue our faith journeys through the strange land of the Old Testament prophets, please direct our journeys in such a manner that we will discover still greater truths of Your goodness, and that we will be transformed even more closely to Your will, through Jesus, our Savior and Lord, even a prophet himself, we pray. Amen.
I am going to begin by just saying it: Prophets are weird people! You heard me correctly — prophets are weird people, and some of them are really weird! In preparation for this personally challenging series of messages, I have been reading through what we commonly refer to as the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament. Please note: these prophets are “minor” only due to the brevity of their books as we have them. Their messages are as major and as powerful as any.
Prophets can be such a strange peculiar bunch. And if you don’t believe me, then read for yourselves these Old Testament prophets. Read their oracles and pronouncements, read of their actions and see what they are asked to do. And then you tell me if you think these prophets are normal, ordinary kinds of people, and that they’ve got their heads screwed on straight. Read them for yourselves, and then you tell me if these are the kind of people you typically run around with, and in public! Read these prophets, and then let me know if your first choice of a close friend or maybe a next door neighbor would naturally come from someone whose title is that of prophet.
Anyway, that’s my take on prophets, if you want to know my take: they’re a bit weird. And, in case any of you are wondering how Jesus felt about these prophets of the Old Testament, well, following the resurrection, Jesus laments the fact — are you ready for this? — he laments the fact that people have been so slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken (Luke 24:25)!
In light of this, and after you have read through these books of Hosea, Nahum, Habakkuk, Obadiah, and the others, on reading these prophets, just what would you want to say to your Lord Jesus as he laments how slow we have been to believe these prophets. Might your prayer possibly be along these lines:
“Dear Jesus, you’ve got to be kidding! You really aren’t serious, are you? I mean, Jesus, have you even read the prophets, all of them, and especially the twelve minor ones, including Hosea? For example, dear Jesus, Hosea could have married a wonderful woman on his own, a truly great help-mate, a woman faithful to her God, and one who could have become a wonderful mother of their children. But Jesus, he married a prostitute because he actually believed that God had asked him to! Jesus, what kind of God asks His faithful followers to marry a prostitute? And Jesus, had you forgotten that it wasn’t a good marriage, not by any stretch of the imagination? Hosea and his so-called wife had three children, Jesus, but remember the lingering doubts on whether or not the second and third children were even his?! And Jesus, his prostitute wife left him for another man, surprise, surprise. And then, Jesus, Hosea, this humiliated and broken-hearted man, rather than divorcing his prostitute wife, bought her back! But Jesus, what is really disturbing is that God directed Hosea to do all of this only to demonstrate to Israel how awful she, herself, had really been. So, Jesus, help us to understand what you want us really to believe about these prophets and their messages.”
Something I am not going to do on each of these Sundays is give you a lengthy lecture and extended history lesson. In providing a much abbreviated backdrop each week, let’s just say in a nutshell that these prophets were called of God to be the voice of God in the midst of a people and governance which were always moving away from God. I think this is probably the simplest definition of these Old Testament prophets: they were men of God, called of God, to be the voice of God, declaring the truth of God, to a people who were increasingly Godless. And yes, their messages were filled with both doom as well as hope. For if anything, these prophets saw things like they were, and without mincing their words, they declared the word of God as it needed to be declared. And they did so not only at great risk of great ridicule from the public, but they did so always with great faithfulness.
Theirs was a most unenviable task. Please note something here: for these prophets of God, the payback was often rejection. The payback at times was an even greater refusal of some of the people to return to God. The payback at times was an even greater wandering of some of the people from God. In other words, the payback for these prophets, at times, was an even greater rejection from the people of the way of life God wanted for them. That was the payback for the prophets. I will share my honesty with you: the more I read the messages of these prophets of old, the more I feel that we, who are ministers of God, are in good company!
And now, an exceptionally brief piece of Old Testament history related to the prophet Hosea. Following the reign of the three kings of the united monarchy — surely you remember Saul, David, and Solomon, Israel became a divided nation, north and south. Ten of the original twelve tribes retained the name of Israel for themselves and became known as the Northern Kingdom, and the two remaining tribes of the original twelve took the name Judah, and became known as the Southern Kingdom. So now, rather than a united monarchy, it was north and south. Nations do those kinds of things, don’t they!
In time, due to apostasy, that is, the rejection of God, both kingdoms were utterly destroyed. The Northern Kingdom of Israel was conquered by Assyria in 722 B.C., and the Southern Kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. Israel was no longer a nation.
Now, during most of the time leading up to the destructions of both nations, God called a number of prophets to declare His word. One of these was Hosea, a man living in the northern kingdom during the years preceding their destruction by Assyria. That nation, just prior to its destruction, claimed prosperity in every direction. They owned the world. They enjoyed personal wealth and national prosperity in which they placed their ultimate salvation. They especially enjoyed their own practices of religion, as the Baal gods they had were worshipped through the means of temple prostitutes! Just imagine, men would go to the Baal temple to worship their gods, but worship was not a worship service like this, but rather a few private moments with one of the temple prostitutes. “Honey, I’m off to worship now.” “But you just worshipped earlier this morning.” “Well, I know, but I really enjoy being a religious person!”
And so, from where Hosea — a prophet of God — saw things, his nation was not so much prosperous in every direction, but in truth, his nation was spiritually rotten to the core. Strong words, of course, but very true words, nevertheless.
In studying the book of Hosea alongside these times in which we are now living, I’m not one bit concerned that our own nation here is on the brink of national destruction from an adjoining nation. In modern times these things do continue to happen, of course, as witnessed by events over portions of eastern Europe as well as Africa during recent decades when nations were, indeed, destroyed by their enemy neighbors. But I do not fear the same for the United States of America.
What does bring concern to me, as it should to all of us, is our own inner core as a nation. Hosea saw the northern nation of Israel, his own nation, as one which was celebrating their own national prosperity in all directions. But inwardly, what he saw in his own nation was one which was spiritually rotten to the core.
As you look around our own nation these days, as you follow news events, as you follow issues related to family values, as you listen to the news throughout the day, as you follow the entertainment scene, the Hollywood and Las Vegas scene, as well as the inner, behind-the-doors political scene in Washington and elsewhere, do you suppose there are any similarities to what Hosea saw in his own nation in his own time?
As one who was called of God, Hosea focuses on the three larger sins of his own nation: the sins of idolatry, the sins of ingratitude, and the sins of hypocrisy. In other words, it all came down to national unfaithfulness. He saw in his own nation one which was living with greater self-pride in themselves rather than with trust in God. He saw a nation reveling in personal greed rather than serving the needs of its oppressed. And he saw a nation building its own altars to worldly idolatry, rather than remaining faithful to their God Who had brought them out of bondage from Egypt.
In other words, as Hosea saw things, their unfaithfulness to God was given witness by national idolatry, national ingratitude, and national hypocrisy, sins which simply intensified even further his own nation’s ongoing unfaithfulness to God.
I want us to think about something here. Faithfulness is not a percentage thing. If my pickup truck starts nine out of ten times, is it being faithful? If the lights in our home work only twenty-five days out of thirty, are the lights being faithful? And if the plumbing in our home works six out of seven days a week, would you describe that as a faithful plumbing system?
In each of our lives, whether toward God or toward each other, we are either being faithful, or we are being unfaithful. Period. There is no middle ground. What would you say to a man making this claim, “Well, I’d say that about 90 percent of the time I’m faithful to my wife.” What would you say to him? You know what you would say! You would tell him that 90 percent simply doesn’t cut it. Unless his faithfulness is 100 percent, he is being unfaithful to his wife. Period. Faithfulness is not a percentage thing. Being faithful to one’s spouse 90 percent of the time simply doesn’t cut it.
And by the same token, faithfulness to God is not a percentage thing. How would you respond to a member of the church who says, “Well, at least part of the time I honor God. At least some of the time I am in worship. At least once in a while I give an offering. At least occasionally, I read my Bible. At least every so often I pray, especially when I have a medical need. At least periodically I show a concern toward the needs and concerns of others. So, average it all together and I think I’m a fairly faithful Christian.” Just how would you respond to such a claim?
The bottom line call to the Church is faithfulness to God, not partially, not on a percentage basis, but fully. This was at the very heart of Hosea’s message — full, ongoing, and complete faithfulness to the Lord God was the requirement!
For the follower of Christ, greater faithfulness to the world and to the things of the world and toward the behavior of the world is the same as demonstrating greater unfaithfulness to God. Do you remember how the New Testament puts it? We are not to conform to the world (Romans 12:2). We are not to love the world (I John 2:15-17), we are not to be friendly with the world (James 4:4), and we are not to become spotted by the world (James 1:27). Our faithfulness is to God.
Unfaithfulness to God can also begin to result in lesser gratitude to God and greater gratitude to anything or anyone else other than God. The person who lives life like this will begin praising himself or herself far more than praising God for the blessings and goodness and successes of life. A person like this will speak of themselves as a self-made person, pulling himself or herself up by the bootstraps in order to be successful in life. A person like this will credit good luck, good fortune, “my lucky stars,” personal wisdom, personal know how, personal giftedness, and all the rest. Yet, no where in scripture are the people of God told to give thanks to themselves and to praise their own name. Everywhere in scripture our call is to “Praise God, and give thanks to Him.”
Right now, as you all know, we are living in between two national political conventions. The national Democratic Party has just completed theirs this past week, and the national Republican Party is about to begin theirs tomorrow. And I don’t know about you, but frankly, I’m already a bit tired of hearing all of the partisan condemnation as each side denounces the other. All week long this past week, in fact, ever since the beginning of the current electoral political season, it has been the blame game of one party against the other, and I am certain that we will probably hear more of the same this next week, not to mention for the next nine weeks!
If there have been failures in the government and failures in spending and failures in leadership and failures in economics and failures in diplomacy, blame the other party. But, if there have been successes in government and in spending and in leadership and in economics and in diplomacy, it’s because of what our own party has done, despite the other party.
And while I guess this is in part just the nature of beast, there are times when I think it creates greater harm than good, times when self-righteous self-serving political back-slapping along with the condemnation of the other may be serving not so much to strengthen us as a nation, but only to weaken us inwardly. And I’ve heard so many others of you lament the same.
Despite what was going on, I am certain that Hosea loved his country, as I am certain that both current contenders for the office of President of the United States love this nation. But when Hosea took a deep look at his own people, what he saw was not something which could be blamed on any other political party, but only on themselves, only on their own apostasy, their own abandonment of God.
Add it all up and there is no doubt about ancient Israel: she was indeed visibly prosperous in every direction, yet spiritually, she was rotten to the core. And yet, and yet, she was still loved of God and still worthy to be redeemed. And whether Old Testament or New, isn’t this the message of the gospel?
Today is Labor Day Weekend Sunday, not a holy day for the church, but a national holiday for our country. And doubtless, political rhetoric will abound everywhere, and especially tomorrow. And if we read scripture correctly, what makes a nation great is not so much what one political party can do over the other, but rather, what all political parties and all people can do working and living together. And what will ultimately strengthen the inner spiritual core of a nation, is how that nation demonstrates its ongoing faithfulness to God.
The Psalmist, I believe, is right after all, as he declares, “Blessed is that nation whose God is the Lord!” (Psalm 33:12) Copyright © 2008 by Rev. F. David Throop. All rights reserved. No part of this sermon may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of a very brief quotation, which will acknowledge the source. |
