Judgment is at Hand

Posted on July 12, 2018 by Don Merritt

Hosea 5

“Hear this, you priests!
Pay attention, you Israelites!
Listen, royal house!
This judgment is against you:
You have been a snare at Mizpah,
a net spread out on Tabor.
The rebels are knee-deep in slaughter.
I will discipline all of them.
I know all about Ephraim;
Israel is not hidden from me.
Ephraim, you have now turned to prostitution;
Israel is corrupt. (5:1-3)

God’s indictment of Israel is found in chapter 4, and His judgment is pronounced beginning in chapter 5. Notice that it begins with God judging the leaders of the people, for He is holding them responsible for leading the people into their state of general rebellion against Him. As we saw in the last chapter, there was violence abroad in the land, along with every sort of corruption both in the halls of power and in the lives of the people themselves: They have turned to idolatry, and away from God and His ways.

If you notice verse 3 there are two Hebrew parallelisms:

I know all about Ephraim;
Israel is not hidden from me.
Ephraim, you have now turned to prostitution;
Israel is corrupt.

You may recall other times when I have pointed this out− the two statements separated in English by a semicolon. Each side is parallel to the other, meaning that they mean the same thing. When you put it all together, it is clear that Israel is not hiding anything from God; He knows all of their secrets and has seen that Israel is utterly and completely corrupt.

As we continue on through verse 14 God makes it abundantly clear that He will act against them, for they are so utterly corrupted in their hearts that they will never turn back to Him in repentance unless He takes drastic action to get their attention: They will pay a heavy price for what they have done. That’s when we arrive at verse 15:

Then I will return to my lair
until they have borne their guilt
and seek my face—
in their misery
they will earnestly seek me.

The action that God will shortly take against Israel, and Judah also it would seem, is to get their attention, to break their habit of corruption and debauchery so that they, in their despair, will turn back to Him. Contrary to what many think, and others have even taught, God isn’t just getting even with them, He isn’t acting out of spite or just being nasty; He has a plan to actually save them as a people.

Sadly, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard people talk about God in the Old Testament as though He were some kind of a monster, just sitting around waiting for a chance to smite somebody, hoping that someone would mess up so that He could smash them. Yet as we have seen, and will continue to see, God was never like that. Instead He has been amazingly patient with the people, warning them, instructing them, working with them, forgiving them… and yet every time the people might repent for a while and then they would return to evil, getting worse and worse as they went until a time came when God recognized that if they didn’t get hurt, they would never stop.

15 years ago, I had 4 teenagers in the house. They were all good kids, but like all of us at that age, they thought that they pretty much had a handle on things, they wanted to try new things and were at a point in life where they had become, well let’s just say, a bit overconfident about their experience and knowledge of life in general. As a parent, I could see trouble ahead, and I warned, instructed and tried to protect them as much as possible, yet the day came when I knew that I would have to take a step back from time-to-time and let them learn certain lessons the hard way. I can only speak for myself of course, but for me, that was the most difficult part of parenting by far, because I knew that they would get hurt in the process, but such is the arrogance of youth that they actually thought they knew more about life than their parents. At one point I had a 15-year-old actually tell me that I didn’t know anything about how the world works!

What can you say to that kind of logic?

I managed not to laugh; that was a good first step I thought. I wanted to save her from herself, but I had to admit that there was only one way she was going to learn and as hard as it was to do, I let her get burned…

As I read these passages, I simply can’t help recalling these episodes from the past… and thinking to myself that being God can’t be as easy as it might seem at first.

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Photo of the Week: July 11, 2018

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Don Merritt

Here’s another photo contributed by our friend Bargo, taken in Grand Rapids, Michigan

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Naked Before God: Trials and Tribulations

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Don Merritt

Praying in true humility can be difficult for us, particularly early in our Christian walk, yet for many of us, getting through the trials and tribulations of this life may be even more difficult. These are times of disappointments, problems, hardships, and sometimes these can lead to despair and desperation; we might even begin to wonder if God has forgotten all about us. Even worse, we might begin to think that God is exacting punishment upon us for something we have done or not done; oh yes, these are hard times indeed.

More than any other time in this life, times of hardship are times when we need to approach God’s presence holding nothing back, laying everything out in the open, times when we need to bare all before the God who sees all anyway. This is not only a time for praying in humility, it is also a time when we need to be honest about our doubts, frustrations, fears and disappointments, for when we are candid with God, He will usually be candid with us, if we are willing to listen to Him.

Have you ever read the Psalms?  How often David cried out to God; how often David asked Him pointed questions about his struggles and misery! Do we dare do the same?

Here’s something to think about: David was no more perfect than you or I, David experienced many hardships, some of which were caused by his own poor decisions, and some caused by human treachery and just plain evil; David questioned God and exhorted Him, yet through it all David kept his faith and in the end he was said to have been a man after God’s own heart.

Few of us experience more hardships than David did, and fewer still will make the same mistakes David made; why then are so few of us willing to be honest with God about our struggles and doubts?

God desires intimate relationship with us, very intimate. God knows our hearts and our thoughts; why not just be open and honest, rather than trying to act as though we had no doubts, no fears, no questions? You see, dear reader, this too is being naked before God. As for me, I have dealt with struggles both ways in my journey with Him; some I have held back, acting as though I was not affected, while other times I have taken my doubts, concerns and frustration to Him openly. In the former cases, I relied upon my own strength, which is considerable if I were to be honest with you. In the latter cases, I have received His strength in dealing with difficulty: Do you really need to ask which set of circumstances worked out the best?

Needless to say, through my own trials and tribulations I have learned that being completely open with God is the best policy, even (or especially) when it isn’t very comfortable.

I hope that you will share your thoughts with us on this issue!

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Back to the Beginning

Posted on July 11, 2018 by Don Merritt

Hosea 4

Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites,
    because the Lord has a charge to bring
    against you who live in the land:
“There is no faithfulness, no love,
    no acknowledgment of God in the land. (4:1)

You may remember that earlier in this study I mentioned that prophetic writings have a tendency to repeat, and this is a case in point. In chapter 1 we had an overview of Hosea’s message to the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Then in chapter 2 we saw God’s indictment of Israel in more detail, then in chapter 3 we went back to the story of Hosea’s marriage from chapter 1 and saw its conclusion in a way that paralleled the last parts of both chapters 1 and 2.

As chapter 4 begins, we’re back to God’s indictment of Israel.

This is quite a stark contrast from they way that chapter 3 ended, with its messianic theme of redemption, yet, as I say, it is typical of the prophets. In this case, if you use the link to read these verses, you’ll discover that they are pretty much self-explanatory; there aren’t any tricky theological or interpretational elements to them or any difficult images to figure out. Reduced to their simplest form, the people have turned away from God to idolatry. Once they did that, they can justify almost anything because they live lives of drunkenness, greed and sensuality, resulting in lust, violence and gross injustice as each strives to gain everything he or she can to indulge themselves.

They live in a sort of constant stupor, they are not sensible in the slightest, and simply refuse to see the truth in front of them. God has tried to bring them back to sensibility, but they simply do not desire to hear from Him, or to hear of anything that will break the spell they are under. Even the priests have given themselves over to debauchery and greed; their situation is hopeless.

What will God do about this? What is the Plan?

That will begin to unfold in chapter 5- see you next time!

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Naked Before God: Praying in Humility

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Don Merritt

As you may recall when I last posted on being naked before God, I was giving the first practical suggestion: Recovering the wonder of being in His presence.

I’m sure that some of you might have thought it a bit strange to combine practicality and childlike wonder together as a “step one”, and if you reacted along those lines, I can hardly blame you, for it is counter-intuitive.

But then, the things of God usually are…

Believe it or not, there is actually a rationale for this “wonder” business, for you see, when we find ourselves in wonder and awe at God’s awesome Creation, or at being in His presence, our walls, barriers and defenses start to crumble; we stop holding back and begin to give it all up to Him.

We are never “naked” if we are hiding behind a barrier of some sort.

Clearly, step one is to recover that sense of wonder and awe before God!

Step two is to pray with humility.

Humility hides nothing, it holds nothing back, and it gives all to God with total honesty and a lack of shame, guilt or self. Humility is submission to God, His ways, plans and will; it is the recognition that He is God and we are not. Humility has no agenda. To put it another way, being ‘naked’ is nothing if not humbling.

Can you see why that childlike awe and wonder is so important? True humility isn’t something that comes naturally (in earthly terms) to most of us; we have walls and barriers we aren’t even aware of in most cases, for humility is far too intimate, and those defenses become an impediment to our relationships, in this case, our relationship with God, and they need to come down.

So, with all of that said, what does praying in humility look like?

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and in His response, He gave them a wonderful example which we often call the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4). There are differing teachings about this prayer, some believe it was intended to be recited, others teach that it is more of a template; I join with the latter thinking, while acknowledging that there is nothing wrong with reciting it. As a model for prayer, there are a few very fascinating things contained in it:

In Matthew 6:9-10, that God’s greatness and glory are acknowledged first, followed by His Kingdom, which is always His top priority, followed by the request that His will should be done on earth “as it is in Heaven”, where His will is the only will that is done. Think about it: Jesus taught that first and foremost we should pray that the Kingdom that He was proclaiming should come, and that God’s will would be the only will done on earth, just like it is in heaven.

There’s no room for my will; there’s no place for my latest “wish list”, for this is praying in humble submission to God, not a prayer advancing my own agenda.

In verse 11, we acknowledge that it is God who supplies our physical needs, and in verse 12, we ask to be forgiven our sins to the extent that we forgive the sins of others against us; another act of humble submission. Finally, we pray for God’s deliverance from evil, and if you think about it, since this is preceded by a big dose of humble submission to God, we are really saying in this that we are not relying on ourselves in anything; not on our own cleverness, not on our own strength, but instead are giving everything up to God and placing our complete trust in His provision for everything.

This, dear friends, is being naked before God.

Having mentioned this, I should point out that what I have just said about the Lord’s Prayer is a thumbnail; I have written on it in much greater depth more than once on this blog in the past; right now, I simply want us to see what praying in real humility looks like. Many are there and have been for a long time; others… not so much. My main thought and purpose here is this: No matter how mature we are, or think we are, we can always benefit from a periodic look in the mirror to ensure that we are still on track. Perhaps this might be a good time for some reflection.

My plan is to post again on this subject tomorrow with another suggestion for you to consider; see you then!

 

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A Chance for Reconciliation

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Don Merritt

The Lord said to me, “Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another man and is an adulteress. Love her as the Lord loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes.”

Hosea 3:1

Chapter two ended with a ray of hope that a better day would come for adulterous Israel. The Nation (wife) had turned away from God (husband) and had worshipped other gods (had other men).  As a consequence, for continuing in this pattern of unfaithfulness to its relationship with God, Israel would be conquered and taken into captivity by a foreign power, in this case, the Assyrian Empire. Even so, a better day would come.

In chapter 3, Hosea’s marriage to Gomer is used as the example to illustrate the situation Israel was facing. God tells Hosea to find his adulterous wife in her degradation and show his love for her, in spite of everything that has happened.

So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. Then I told her, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will behave the same way toward you.” (3:2-3)

Hosea tells us that he bought his wife back, which is to say that he “redeemed” her (as Jesus would redeem all Mankind), for about 30 shekels, half silver and about half barley. Then he takes her home and tells her that she must abstain from sexual intimacy with anyone (representing idolatry) for “many days”, and that he too will abstain.

For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or household gods. (3:4)

Gomer’s complete abstinence represents Israel’s captivity and its aftermath, in which she has been cut off from everything that is holy, not to mention God’s love and grace.

Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the Lord and to his blessings in the last days. (3:5)

It’s important that we remember that Hosea was a prophet to the Northern Kingdom, Israel, and that when their remnant was able to return, they were still estranged from Judah, the Southern Kingdom, for they were the Samaritans, and as we know, the Samaritans were cut off from the worship of God at the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem, anathema to the Jews. Yet when Messiah came, His offer of grace though faith was open for the Samaritans, and God’s plan for then was that through their hardships and trials, that they would finally come to repent of their evil ways and accept His forgiveness and grace through Christ. For in that day, all would be reconciled through Christ, both Jew and Samaritan, and both Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free

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TLP Living: July 9, 2018

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Don Merritt

Attitude is a Powerful Thing

Years ago, I had a management job in a company that had some issues.  There were things about the company that I didn’t much like, and things that were a lot of fun, so I suppose that like most jobs there were ups and downs.  One of the things that I didn’t much care for was that the highest level of management had a way of keeping people on edge, which quite frankly made my job a lot more difficult than it needed to be.  The man who started the company years before was a mixed bag, one might say, in that he was a really great guy when you got to know him, but a jerk until you did.  He seemed to love stirring the pot!

He did this by scaring people; that seemed to be almost a pastime for him.  He liked to yell and scream and intimidate, when all that was really necessary was for someone to explain something, and the result was that he was generally feared and his presence in the office was dreaded by most people who worked there; turnover was high as you might expect.

A person would get the idea that the “Big Guy” had noticed a mistake on their part, and paranoia would set in.  They would expect trouble, and sooner or later they would find it.  So many times, people would come to me and say that they were sure they were going to be fired for something because Mr. Big was ‘after’ them.  I knew when Mr. Big was unhappy with someone, and most of the time the people who came to me weren’t even on his radar, yet they were certain that they were going to be fired, and they began to act badly at work.

This kind of thing was so frustrating for me because no matter what I said or did, the people believed they were going to be fired and their attitudes would be in the dumpster, which altered their behavior and their work and eventually they would be fired.  Their belief became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It was entirely unnecessary.

Now there are certainly lessons for managers here; don’t act like a jerk just because you can.  There is a larger lesson for the rest of us: Watch out what you let yourself believe, for your beliefs will shape your attitude, your attitude will shape your behavior, and your behavior will cause a lie to come to pass.

I wonder how many believers in Christ allow a lie to creep into their minds and spiral down this cliff.  Let’s say they allow themselves to think that nobody likes them, and then the spiral begins and before long they are just too difficult to be around.  How many allow a lie to creep into to their thinking like, say… “I don’t think I’m really saved.”

I’ve seen people turn their backs on Jesus because of this one; maybe you have too.

This principle applies to so many thoughts and attitudes that originated with a little lie…  Faith destroyed, marriages destroyed, relationships broken; how often did it all start with a lie?

The New Testament teaches us to hold fast to the truth; to hold fast to our faith in Jesus Christ no matter what, in fact the whole book of Hebrews is written on this theme.

Yet we don’t always listen, for the little lie in the back of our minds seems more attractive, or more real than the reality right in front of our faces.

How tragic is that?  What needless misery…

It might interest you to know that Mr. Big was aware that people feared him, and he didn’t like it.  One day when we were alone and I was arguing with him about something or other, he asked me why I could talk to him “like a man” and everyone else was afraid of him.  I told him the truth, that I did not depend upon him for my job.  He seemed irritated by that, and in a rough tone of voice asked me how that could be.  My reply was that I didn’t depend on him because I believed that Jesus Christ was the source of my living and that if one job didn’t work out, there would be another one for me. Can you guess what Mr. Big (tough guy) said to that?

He said that he wished everyone else saw it that way because all he ever wanted was for them to just talk to him like I did…

Go figure?

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TLP Inspiration: July 9, 2018

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Don Merritt

Good Monday Morning from the Heartland.

Some time back I came upon a scene; this tree grabbed my attention because it was unusual…

The unusual thing about the tree isn’t the scar, but how well it has done in spite of the injury it sustained.  I’m not sure exactly what happened to the tree, my first thought was a lightning strike, but who knows.  It seems likely that whatever happened was storm related in some form…

We all deal with storms in our lives, sometimes literally, other times the storms are of a different sort.  Many of these are caused by our own actions and choices, many are not.  More important than anything else is how we respond to them.

When times are tough, do we let the circumstances keep us down; do we let circumstances defeat us?  When we are hurt by life’s storms will we dwell in our pain or rise again from it?  One of the most difficult lessons in life, at least in my life, was learning that we do have this choice.

Even more important than learning that we have a choice in how we respond to damaging storms in life is learning that we need not try to recover all on our own.  It may sound overly simplistic to some, but we can turn much of this over to our Lord, for His strength is greater than ours. We can rely on Him, we can lean on Him, we can trust in Him.   Living a Christian life is a life of setting self aside and serving the Lord Jesus Christ, and dealing with times of trouble is no different, so it stands to reason that He will sustain us all the more when we put our trust in Him and keep on serving others instead of serving ourselves.

Some may question all of this, but all I can say to them is “Come and see”

Incidentally, isn’t it interesting that medical science has noticed that people of faith have much greater survival rates from injuries and traumas than those who are not of faith?  It seems the same is true for heart attacks and strokes; where do we place our trust?

 

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Sunday Sermon Notes: July 8, 2018

Posted on July 8, 2018 by Don Merritt

Title: Jesus Runs into Controversies

Text: Mark 2:18-28

You Should be Fasting!

Mark 2:18-22

Parallel Texts: Matthew 9:14-17; Luke 5:33-39

The next scene Mark jumps to is one in which we find both John’s disciples and the Pharisees fasting, while Jesus and His disciples are going on as normal. Curious about this, one of John’s disciples asks about it; why aren’t you fasting? There is a fairly clear implication that they should be, at least in this man’s mind, but Jesus doesn’t think so.

Jesus gives the man three answers to one question, beginning in verse 19. Likening Himself to a bridegroom, and His disciples to guests of the bridegroom, Jesus indicates to the man that fasting is not appropriate at that current time, for they are in a mood of celebration, yet the day will come when the bridegroom is no longer with His guests, and they will have occasion to fast then.

The second and third answers to the question begin at verse 21:

“No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

Mark 2:21-22

In essence, Jesus gives two short parables that are designed to draw a profound distinction between the ministry of John, the Law and the ministry and purpose of Christ. John’s ministry was limited to prepare the way for Jesus, it was really a transitional ministry, under the Law. Jesus, on the other hand, had an entirely different purpose, for His was the purpose of fulfilling the Law and ushering in an entirely new order; the New Covenant. There was nothing about the ministry of Jesus that would serve to patch the old garment of the Law, He was not there to refill an old wineskin; the old garment and the old wineskin had served their purpose and Jesus would replace them both.

There would be no fasting! The Kingdom was at hand in the Person of Jesus Himself. While He was on the scene, fasting was not appropriate.

I often wonder if I harp on this point too much, the point being that the New Covenant has entirely replaced the Old. Am I simply riding a “hobby-horse”?

I think not: This is a key point in the Christian faith; the Law is over. Just as John’s ministry was transitional in nature, preparing the way for the ministry of Jesus, the Law was transitional in nature, illustrating the reality that was to come through Christ in the New Covenant; that is what Jesus is telling this man in the story, and it is the point we need to comprehend as well.

 

Lord of the Sabbath

Mark 2:23-28

Parallel Texts: Matthew 8:1-8; Luke 6:1-5

Mark has shifted the scene to the countryside. Jesus and the disciples, and apparently some Pharisees, are walking through grain fields on the Sabbath. They are hungry and the disciples pluck a few heads of grain to eat as they go along, and the Pharisees object, for it is unlawful to harvest a field on the Sabbath. The law on this point is contained in Exodus 20:10 if you’d like to read it just to bring in a little context. By the way, if you do look it up, you will notice that the law doesn’t say this. It says you shall do no work. Were the disciples actually working? Well, that is the real question.

As the years went by, it became apparent that Exodus 20:10 was subject to interpretation, and many well-intentioned leaders believed that there was a great potential for misunderstanding Exodus 20:10, so they adopted a very long list of additional rules to help people avoid an unintentional violation of the Sabbath. This list of rules is not actually part of the law, but as more time went by, it was treated as if it were the law itself; this is what the Pharisees were actually referring to.

In verses 25-26, Jesus cites a well-known example of David feeding his men food reserved by the law for the exclusive use of the priests when necessity required it, with the implication that necessity required the disciples’ actions that the Pharisees were objecting to. He concludes His answer in the following verses:

Then he said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”

Mark 2:27-28

I wish I could have been there to see the look on the faces of those poor Pharisees when they heard that!

As you know, there are those critics out there who claim that Jesus never said He was divine. Even if that were true, He sure implied it strongly on many occasions, and this is another of those.  If the Sabbath was made for man, and that makes the Son of Man the lord over the Sabbath, then it is because He’s also the Lord over Man.

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TLP Inspiration: July 7, 2018

Posted on July 7, 2018 by Don Merritt

“You must follow me”

The other day I was reading John 21 which is really a simple story of the resurrected Christ appearing to seven disciples at the Sea of Galilee; it’s a story that is very familiar to everyone, and contains a passage that the preachers preach often (John 21:15-19).  In this passage, Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him, and each time Peter says that he does, followed by Jesus saying either ‘feed my sheep’ or ‘feed my lambs’.  The third time Jesus asks, Peter’s feelings are hurt because Jesus keeps on asking…At the end of the passage Jesus tells Peter to “follow me.”

What really struck me was the part that came right after this usual passage.

Peter looks back and sees John trailing behind them and says to Jesus, “What about him?”  I wonder how many of us have done this sort of thing:  We know that we have been called to follow Jesus, and instead of quickly answering that call, we look at someone else and ask, “What about him?”  Now in Peter’s defense, Jesus has just indicated the manner of his death (v. 18) and maybe Peter understood this, the text doesn’t quite make that clear.  Maybe Peter was very sensitive at that moment because he felt guilty when it hit him that Jesus has just asked him if he loves Jesus the same number of times that Peter denied Jesus… The fact remains that Peter looked away from his call and tried to put the spotlight on someone else.

Answering a calling isn’t always convenient; it isn’t always what we want to do.  It may involve giving up a great deal to follow Jesus, a career, a great income, possessions, position and so on, and yet it is our call.  What must we do?

Jesus’ answer is classic: He tells Peter essentially that John’s relationship with Him is none of Peter’s business: “You must follow me.” (emphasis added)

Peter did.

What will we do?

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