I had said at the start of my sermon series on Stewardship and Life Management that I was going to then do a series on the “wrath of God” prior to looking for a new congregation. At the time I was only really joking about the matter. By that I mean the sermon on the wrath of God.
Given that I believe God has an amazing sense of humour the next few weeks I will be talking about “the reason for God’s wrath”. There are three characteristics of God that I believe we need to understand as we encounter his disapproval and as we come under the divine judgement of God. Now this might sound a bit heavy and hell fire and brimstone’ish but it’s not and hopefully the opposite will become clear.
The series is going to be based around charges God brought against the northern kingdom of Israel through the Prophet Hosea around the middle of the eighth century B.C; so we’re going back a while.
A bit of background might be of use here. At the end of Hosea’s time as a prophet in 733 B.C Israel was devastated by Assyria, leaving only two tribal territories intact and under control of the King of Israel ‘Ephraim and western Manasseh’ and they fell between 722-721 B.C. That was the end of the northern kingdom.
If we look at Hosea 7:11-16 we read the following.
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Now you could be right in thinking God is fairly strict and serious about this Ephraim crowd, and something worth remembering here is that, God had warned the Israelites a fair old number of times prior to this about their behaviour and that the consequences of this behaviour were going to hurt (repeat). Israel had previously submitted to Assyrian suzerainty, which is term that means Israel’s king was subject to the Assyrian ruler as were the rest of the Israelite nation.
Now after a while this relationship went to the pack as moneys that should have been flowing towards Assyria stopped and the Israelites sought an alliance with Egypt. This was really an international love triangle that could not end in any other way other than tears. Israel being the meat in the sandwich, it got munched! A good lesson in politics here!
Now we pick the story up at verse 11, read Israel in place of Ephraim, Like a dove easily deceived and senseless, we would say that Israel was naïve, calling this way, turning that way. God was too get involved, pulling them down, like a person catching birds in a net, ‘taking hold of the nation.’
But why?
Because they had strayed from God, because they had rebelled against God and because they spoke falsely about God! This was a nation who God had brought into being and it had turned its back on him.
When things got tough for them through their own foolishness, there was no seeking God, they slashed themselves, and appealed to other gods ‘small g’. The reason for this was because their crops had failed and they were mourning over this failure, their cutting of themselves was a sign of mourning, but this itself was forbidden by the Law of God due to its pagan background.
Also this rebellion showed Israel’s lack of respect and lack of gratitude to God. God had set them up as a nation “trained and strengthened them”; they had been a mighty nation. They had had God on their side in battle, “’I’m sure we can all remember Sunday School stories about Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho (what happened to the walls) and David making short work of that Goliath sized bloke Goliath. But now they treated God like an enemy, he had led them out of slavery and into the promised land he wanted to be their leader - but they desired a king, their kingdom was about to end because they treated God as their enemy. To the point where they plotted evil against God!
So what was going to happen? Grief huge amounts of dark miserable grief! What does verse 16 say? “Their leaders will fall by the sword because of their insolent words!” Ridiculed, laughed at, given stick, in the land of Egypt! The future did not look bright, mockery, they were about to be given tremendous amounts of jip!
1) God in this passage comes across in this passage as a ‘hard man’ a wrathful, angry God who has turned his back on his people… well he does excepting that in the passage we get a heartfelt comment from God! In five words we come to understand this part of God’s nature that trumps all of the hard man and wrathful stuff we may think about God, these five words are found in verse 13 and they are, “I longed to redeem them”, I’ll say that again, “I longed to redeem them”. God wanted to save these people from their own foolishness; he wanted to rescue them, to redeem them.
In scripture we see repeated a theme and as a good number of you have listened to a goodly number of my sermons now I’m about to set myself up for a huge fall or a small victory. In scripture Sin is followed by Judgement and then something else that God does for us when we turn back to him kicks into play, What is it, sin, judgement…[grace].
Yes the grace of God!
Now for grace to occur, for God to be able to save the lost, for God to be able to rescue those that require redemption what is it that has to occur?
Now God drops a few significant hints to the people of Israel, this great kingdom that is about to get flattened by mighty Assyria, and they are this ‘They have strayed from me”, ‘They do not cry out to me”, “They do not turn to the Most High”.
Who here as a child has ever been lost? Who has strayed from their parent? I remember when I was a wee tacker getting lost at the Auckland Zoo, while as a family we were up visiting my Mums sister and her family. I’d just like to point out that my aunty and her family lived in Auckland, they were not a zoo exibit! I wandered over to a lady who I thought was my mum but was told in short order she wasn’t. Interestingly the lostness I felt is nothing like the feeling you get when one of your children wanders off, even if briefly and you have to search for them.
This nation had intentionally gone off, away from God…stroll, stroll, wander, wander into thoughtless stuff; following false god’s, getting into prostitution, cheating one another, and doing all sorts of other deplorable stuff before God.
It went to custard for them, they made all sorts of stupid decisions and it all spun around and bit them in the buttocks. Did they call out to God for help? God said “They do not cry out to me”, the people of Israel lay on their beds bleating, they slashed themselves, they appealed to other god’s, the ones that had let them down in the first place.
They did not turn to the Most High, to the Creator of the Universe, to the one who lead them out of slavery, to the one who gave them the Promised Land, to the one who had made them a mighty nation, to the one who sent numerous prophets to warn them…of their impending doom.
This prophet Hosea was trying to tell them and the vast majority of prophecy is forth telling not foretelling. It’s that sort of stuff that says if you drive your car at 50km/hour onto a brick wall you are going to need a panel beater and a tow truck, also there’s a good likelihood you will also need an ambulance.
God had told the people this stuff, you are going the wrong way, turn back…did they listen?
They drove head long into the brick wall, foot flat to the boards, done!
The truth is that God is in the saving people business, he is in the rescue business, the wants to see people redeemed, not only is he in that business he “longs” to redeem people. What God wanted to do for these people was not just rescue them but he was even willing to buy them back from their own foolish actions. The Hebrew word redeems means to “buy back”. Jesus said something that rings a bell about this as he looked over Jerusalem, Matthew 23:37 (NIV), “How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.”
We find this characteristic of God, this longing to redeem, though people make the mistakes, God longs to buy them out of the fix they get themselves in! If only they would walk back, cry out, turn to God, he would redeem them if they were willing..
If only it was that simple.
In life we put ourselves in places where our own actions turn around and bite us on the rear.
We wander off, we stroll into actions that cause us sleepless nights, guilt, suffering, we lie we cheat, we steal, we break what we know to be right time and time again and we can even get to the point of becoming numb to these things.
Everyone else is doing it, young people throw away their innocence for a moment of pleasure, just one won’t hurt, the stolen fruit always tastes sweeter…and when it turns turtle we grizzle and we groan and we blame everyone but ourselves, we even place the result of own actions on God.
Have you heard the question “If there was a God why would he allow…?”
The God who longs to buy us back, the God who wants to pay the price for our foolishness so that we can be in a relationship with Him where all things come into alignment where there is no longer shame resulting from our actions.
If only it was that simple.
We suffer, we miss out, we throw our toys out of the cot because we are not getting our own way, nations suffer, politicians integrity is called into doubt, corrupt leaders are over thrown by the people who have suffered so long under vicious regimes.
All the time God waits in the wings while people foretell, forecast the coming suffering that people will bring upon themselves…this God who longs to redeem.
If only it was that easy.
Is there anyone here who wishes it was that easy, is there someone here who is over living that life in a place where they find themselves distant from God and ridiculed by man?
I serve a God who makes it clear that it is that easy…to be redeemed, to start that journey is that easy, it is as easy as turning back, crying out.
The apostle Paul, a former hardnosed persecutor of Christ’s followers put it this way, “that if you confess with your mouth that ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.” 9Romans 10:9)
Being rescued by God is that easy.
He longs to rescue the lost, he longs to save and redeem. Are you willing?
Appeal…
