Hosea 2:14-23 In THAT Day

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Don Filcek; Hosea 2:14-23 In THAT Day

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his series on the book of Hosea, A Study in God's Relentless Love.
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Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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I'm Don Filcik. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm glad to be together this morning. Do you guys know what today is?
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It's Sunday. It's Sunday. It's the Lord's Day. That's right. It also is Groundhog's Day. Apparently, Pax Atani Phil saw his shadow, meaning more weeks of winter or something.
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I don't know. We don't believe in all that stuff, do we? But it's a great day to be gathered together with people who are loved by Jesus and love him in return.
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I encourage you, look around. You're in good company. When we gather together at Recast Church on Sunday morning, it's a good thing.
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We are together with people who are in various stages of their journey toward God, and that's one thing that's really good for us to remind ourselves regularly.
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God is working in each one of us individually, not at the same pace, not at the same level, not on the same things, but together, and it's awesome to see
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God's work in other people's lives. Our lives are really, if we think about it, kind of like a long hike that ends at the throne of the
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Almighty. Everybody is that, and we will either arrive there having walked with his son or having kicked against his son.
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One of those two is reality in each one of our lives. In our text this morning, we're going to see what
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I'm going to call the most upbeat and encouraging passage in the book of Hosea. Now, that's my opinion, but I think it will be yours by the end as well.
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This section exists to remind us where things are heading in the long term. What does the future hold for God's people?
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God promises through Hosea a shockingly hope -filled restoration of his people and his world.
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Not just restoring his people, but the world as well. And all that has come before this in the book of Hosea has painted
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God as a jilted husband and his people as faithless tramps. That's the picture in the book of Hosea.
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So, as we prepare to read this, I want to encourage you to listen for what this passage does for you on the level of feelings.
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Now, there's content here. We're going to talk about content. We're going to walk through it and to walk through the words and the ideas and all of that.
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But I want you to start off by really kind of letting it strike you on the emotional level to see how you feel about it.
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From the opening twist of the therefore, which I'll talk about here in a minute, to the final cry of his people, you are my
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God. I want you to consider the positive, hopeful nature of this text nestled in the middle of a book about judgment.
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A pretty stern and prophecy about the coming judgment of his people. And so, here there's optimism and there's hope even in the middle of God's judging work.
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The twist in verse 14 is meant to be startling to us. I point it out and I have to state it because we're not going to read all of chapter 1 and 2 together because there's a paragraph break after verse 13 and a change in kind of subject and content.
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We will miss how stark and shocking the word therefore is in the way that it's used at the start of verse 14.
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It's meant to be startling. It won't be simply because we're not reading the whole letter together. But let me remind you what came before so that you get a feel for the shock and awe at verse 14.
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The very last thing stated last week in verse 13 of our text was that God is like a husband who came home from work to find that his wife is all gussied up for the night and getting ready to go out on the town with the guys.
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She's cheating on him. He knows it and she's not even hiding it. That's the image of God's relationship with his people at this time.
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And so, when the next thing we encounter is the therefore of verse 14, we might have some expectations.
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Read with me verse 13 for just a second. Look at it. What do we expect to be therefore because you're cheating, lying, adulterous?
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What do we expect? Therefore, because of this. And I might expect, therefore, I'm done with you.
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Right? Like how many of you think that's a reasonable response? Therefore, I'm done with you. Or therefore, I'm going on a rampage. Or therefore,
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I'm filing papers first thing in the morning. Like how many of you, those seem like reasonable responses in this scenario.
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But let's open our Bibles and see the next move of God in light of the unfaithfulness of his people.
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Open your Bibles, if you're not already there, to Hosea chapter 2 and we're going to read verses 14 through 23.
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Recast, this is God's holy word and this is what he desires to communicate to you and me this morning. Hosea 2, 14.
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She's Therefore, behold, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her.
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And there I will give her vineyards and make the valley of Achor, that's trouble, the valley of trouble, a door of hope.
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And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt.
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And in that day, declares the Lord, you will call me my husband and no longer will you call me my
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Baal. For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth and they shall be remembered by name no more.
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And I will make for them a covenant on that day with the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens and the creeping things of the ground.
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And I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land. And I will make you lie down in safety. And I will betroth you to me forever.
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I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy.
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I will betroth you to me in faithfulness and you shall know the Lord. And in that day,
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I will answer, declares the Lord, I will answer the heavens and they shall answer the earth and the earth shall answer the grain, the wine and the oil, and they shall all answer
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Jezreel. And I will sow her for myself in the land and I will have mercy on no mercy.
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And I will say to not my people, you are my people and he shall say, you are my
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God. Let's pray. Father, we're a people that need hope.
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We are quick to despair. The circumstances of our lives can quickly draw us down into discouragements.
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And we are a people just generally as fallen humans who miss the plot frequently and we can lose the purpose and lose the focus on the things that matter most.
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And sometimes it's a forest and trees thing and we just can't see the big picture. And we need passages like this that remind us where things are going toward a great and glorious restoration that you have more for us than what we experience here and now.
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That there are things that you are setting forth to accomplish for your people that we cannot accomplish for ourselves.
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That there's no utopia and no technological advancement that's going to get us to the place that our hearts really long for and desire and that we must lean on you and your promises to get us there.
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We thank you for passages like this in the Old Testament that highlight for us a glorious future that you have for your people.
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Yes, you take sin seriously, but you have taken it so seriously that you sent your son to die on the cross for our sins.
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We who are now beneficiaries of this new I pray that that would produce within us such great joy.
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A covenant in his blood. His blood shed in our place. He being both the priest and the sacrifice and doing it all on our behalf.
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Finishing it and completing it. Even uttering from the cross, it is finished. Father, I pray that we would be a people who delight and rejoice in this era that we live in that's a partial fulfillment of these things of Hosea, but knowing that there's still a full and complete and glorious fulfillment on the day of the return of our
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Lord and Savior. We look forward to that day, but in the meantime, we praise you. We rejoice here in this fallen place, brokenness, certainly valleys of trouble, but we know that those valleys of trouble will lead to glorious doors of hope because of your great mercy toward us.
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And so I pray that as we sing these songs now in the gathering of your people, you would be honored, lifted high.
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You are the only one that is worthy of this praise and we thank you, thank you, thank you for Jesus Christ and it's in his name that I pray.
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Amen. All right, thanks a lot to the band for leading us. Yeah, you can go to be seated, get comfortable, keep your
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Bibles open to Hosea chapter 2, starting in verse 14 is our text and we're going to be marching through that.
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Kind of important for us to understand a little bit where we're at when we come to the book of Hosea. I'm going to be reminding you of that regularly in this series.
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The book of Hosea is a hinge of sorts. It is prophesying the end of an old conditional covenant between God and his people
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Israel, at least a conditional portion of that covenant. They've been in a covenant together as of the writing of Hosea for several centuries.
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Prior to the writing of Hosea, several centuries, God met with them at Mount Sinai, you know, the giving of the Ten Commandments, Moses, the
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Exodus, all of that stuff, and many other laws were recorded for them. I'm actually in that part in my daily reading through the
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Bible. I'm in Exodus right now going through a lot of laws and rules and stuff like that. But there was a covenant that was struck between God and the people there at the mountain, read like a marriage agreement.
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You be my people, I will be your God. You follow my laws, I provide for you.
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But written into that law was also the consequences of disobedience. If the people did not do their part, then there would be all kinds of curses that would come upon them that were spelled out in the original contract, like it's in there.
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Like if you begin to worship other gods, you begin to go after other things, you begin to forget me and ignore me and leave me out of the equation, then these curses will come upon you.
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And those included conquest by others, exile, plagues, all kinds of things. And so it's pretty clear from the opening couple of chapters of the book of Hosea that the people have indeed forgotten their
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God. As a matter of fact, that's how the last verse, verse 13, ended for us last week is, they have, and I will punish her for her feast days, the bales when she burned offerings to them and adorned herself with her ring and jewelry, went after her lovers and forgot me, declares the
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Lord. There it is. They have indeed forgotten their God. And so Hosea is sent. Why Hosea?
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Like why is he here? What's he doing? Why this book? Hosea is sent as God's spokesman, a prophet, saying this covenant has been fulfilled and it's done.
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In Israel, you have not in any way or shape or form kept up your end of the bargain in this conditional covenant with God.
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God is, as if Hosea is saying, God has been patient even sending you prophets to warn you and to seek to call you back and to be patient and patient and patient with you as you go down this road of idolatry and he's tried to win you back but you've ignored him.
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Now it's clear all throughout this book that God is going to stick by his covenant and he is going to bring the curses down on Israel for their faithlessness.
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But that is not all that God is going to do and that's why this section of scripture is awesome to our ears.
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It's good news for us. Due to their faithlessness, due to the faithlessness of Israel in this old covenant law -based session of history because she's gone out after other lovers and worshiped idols and refused to be
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God's people, therefore, says God in verse 14, I will woo my people and win them back.
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It isn't in her, it isn't in God's people, it isn't in humanity to be faithful. So God says,
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I will do it, says the Lord God Almighty. She's no good and she's unwilling, therefore,
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I will pursue her with my relentless love because of who I am, declares the Lord. Old covenant faithlessness, church, resulted in New Testament grace.
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Old covenant faithfulness resulted in New Testament sacrificial love and New Testament security that we live under today.
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The old covenant is passing away according to Hosea but the new covenant is coming with, as the book of Hebrews says, better promises, better promises.
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So, and that's what this text is all about this morning. There's a new day coming. There's more to the story than Israel.
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There's more that's on the horizon in God's big plan. A new day generally spoken of in verses 14 through 15 with words like this.
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These are the types of categories and types of framework that God wants to tell us about this new day that's coming from Hosea's perspective.
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It will be one where he wins his people's hearts. He will speak tenderly to them. He will give them good gifts like vineyards.
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He will make the valley of trouble, Achor, into a door of hope and she will really, she's really genuinely going to fall back in love with him.
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His people will fall in love with him like she did back when they started dating in Sinai. Now, before we get to the outline, these first two verses set the stage for wonderful things that are coming in the future and they give kind of generalities describing that.
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God's relentless love towards humanity has not been exhausted, amen? Anybody glad for that? Like it's not old covenant done, scrap the whole thing, destroy the earth, it's over.
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No, not at all. I do believe that he's basically done with a huge lesson plan of law and Israel.
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It's not, I think that it's really fundamental that we understand this church because I think there's a lot of misunderstanding surrounding the old covenant and the new covenant and we can kind of get bogged down and go like, why does it even matter?
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But I want to make it very clear that God is not moving on to plan B. It's not as though he had an old plan and he was like, that went up, scrapped that one, that didn't work, let's try something else, let's, okay, enact plan
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B, Jesus, right? No, I want to explain to you and show you, the first plan ever spoken of in the
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Bible to redeem humanity was a single male born of the offspring of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.
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That's the first time we ever hear good news after the fall of mankind into sin is the promise that one is going to come who's going to, does that sound like Jesus?
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Does that sound like the plan has always been Jesus? That's always been what it's all about. It's all about him.
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And then you can fast forward a little bit in the book of Genesis to Genesis chapter 12 and you get to the promises to Abraham.
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God singles out an individual, Abram, and he promises to make him a great people, give them a great land so that they could bring forth that great offspring who would be the blessing to all the nations, who would be of the, of Eve, who would crush the head of the serpent.
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And all of these promises in the Old Testament start to compound and solidify in the person of Jesus Christ, pointing to the
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Messiah, pointing to the one who will come to save us all. The law was, here's what I'm trying to get at.
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The law was never the main point. The law was never the main point. It was never that you are going to be okay if you just obey
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God and do his ways. But we needed to learn that, didn't we? Because how many people have tried to please
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God on the basis of laws and rules? Isn't that still a problem today in many churches, where we are basing our performance and our
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God's love for us based on our performance and how good we do? And I can understand if you, if you study the
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Old Covenant and you don't understand what, what we're looking at when we're looking at the law, a massive case study in human inability and God's holiness.
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If you don't understand it is that, then you begin to read the Old Testament and go, aren't we supposed to do all these things?
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Aren't we supposed to obey and do this and this and this to be acceptable to God? And that was never the main point. It was always, the law is an important sidebar in the entire scope of human history, showing us
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God's severe holiness and humanity's severe unholiness. And how many of you know the law does a great job at that?
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It does a fabulous job showing us that, doesn't it? It shows us our inability and you go through the Old Testament and you don't see heroes there.
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You see people falling on their face, seeking in honesty to try to keep the law, try to obey.
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And you've got David with Bathsheba and you've got all this mess with Joseph screwing with his brothers and the brothers messing with him and all of the messes that you see there.
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There's no perfect people in the text of scripture, except for one, the one sent to save us and rescue us.
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The plan from God given to Eve and given to Abraham and given to David and given promises that I'm going to fix it.
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You're not going to fix it. I'm going to fix it. That's what God is getting at. God's love for his people is going to be known in the future in this new covenant that he's bringing forth.
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But the law was never the main plan. And all of that law in Israel and the rules based on them, all of that's coming to a close in Hosea.
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And so God gives him a vision of a much, much better future. God's love for his people is going to be known in this future.
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He will take them back out into the wilderness. And that might sound to you at first like a negative, like he's taking them behind the woodshed, right?
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Back out to the wilderness, you guys, to figure this out. But what you need to understand is that when he talks about wooing them, alluring them, taking them back out to the wilderness, speaking tenderly to them, all of those words are actually a positive, not a negative.
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Where did the relationship between Yahweh and his covenant people, where was that initiated? Where did that begin?
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It began out in the wilderness. It began, I mean, their dating scene was between Egypt and Israel, wasn't it?
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That was kind of like where God's people got to know their God. And it was all of that wilderness wanderings and all of that.
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And they were dependent upon God and God was leading them. Remember the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud? And I mean, the connection between God and the people never closer, right?
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And I think many of us have had a dating scene. Lynn and I dated in Grand Rapids.
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So that was kind of like when we go back there, there's nostalgia. There's like, oh, remember this place? Remember that place? Remember when you broke up with me at Cheddar's and then we got back together again a couple weeks later?
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And it's a true story. That kind of stuff really happens. But it worked out. Here we are.
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I paid the bill and she was like, okay, all right. No, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. That was not it at all.
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But no, we worked that out. But it's all good. But Israel's dating scene, like if she went to Calvin, I went to Cornerstone and we go back up there and it's just like, oh man, so many memories, so many good things.
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And how many of you have a place like that? You have a place like that with your spouse or somebody that you care about? Like there's just a place that you can go and it's like, oh, remember.
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They're going back to where it all began, back out to the wilderness. And he said, he will respond graciously and compassionate, speaking tenderly to his people.
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And he will give good things to his people, gifts like vineyards and things like that. Just really good stuff. And I love this image of turning the valley of trouble into a door of hope.
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You see that valley of Acre. The reason it's not translated, it's a physical valley. Like it's a real geographical location.
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So the translators are kind of like, well, I think there's a metaphor here, but we'll go ahead and just leave the word the way that it is.
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But it's the valley of trouble into a door of hope. And this is so fundamental now to the new covenant that we live in that we don't even hear anything surprising in it.
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But I think it would have been a surprising thing to their ears. Isn't our God always turning our trouble into hope?
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Isn't that the very nature of our relationship with him? Just this past week was my personal annual reminder of how our
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God turns trouble into hope. My dad died on January 27th, 1981. I was three days after my eighth birthday.
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Trouble for me indeed during that time, yes, but hope as I came to wrestle with understanding spiritual things at a young age and even gave my life to Christ shortly after that event.
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So I kind of look at that and I go like, yes, he brings us through valleys of trouble.
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Amen? You guys know that? How many of you experienced a couple of valleys of trouble? But at the end of that valley of trouble is a door of hope.
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Praise God for that. Trouble and trial for the follower of Christ has meaning only because we know that there's a
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God behind it all working us toward hope, working out all things for good for those who love him and are called according to his purposes.
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But all of us, all humanity, not just us as Christians, all humans go through the valley of trouble.
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Did you know that? Every single person will go through a valley of trouble, but only those with understanding of God can truly grasp what it means that there's a door of hope at the end of every valley of trouble.
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And I just want us to just consider the fundamental reality of this new covenant in which we live.
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Consider Jesus who for the joy set before him, door of hope, endured the cross, valley of trouble.
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Isn't that the very fabric of reality? Isn't that what reality is made up of in a fallen world?
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This entire cosmos plunged into trouble and in Christ, a door of hope.
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Amen? I'm convinced that if we're just honest about our lives, we can testify right along with Jacob who testified to Pharaoh.
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Now, the dude is 130 years old when he says this, and I read this a few weeks and it always tickles me every time
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I read it. But he's 130 years old and he meets Pharaoh, like the ruler of Egypt, the head of all.
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He's an old wizened, probably I picture him kind of craggy and kind of like hair coming out of his ears and stuff.
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I mean, he's just an old, old, old guy, 130 years old. He bows before Pharaoh and he says this, my years have been few and hard.
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130 years and he's like, few? I've had a few of them and they've been hard. But for us, no matter how many years
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God gives us, our testimony is the knowledge that they end in hope. They end in hope for the child of God.
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Amen? And that's where we live. And so that's where we're going to come into the outline now is with that hope.
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The God who takes us from the valley of trouble to the door of hope is restoring things. And that's where the remainder of our text outlines really well.
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There's the restoration of relationship with God first, verses 16 through 17, the restoration of shalom in verses 18 through 20, and the restoration of provision verses 21 through 23.
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Now, all these restorations center on the phrase, in that day. From Hosea's writing, he's saying there's a day coming.
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It's way out there and it's way in the future. But there's a day coming where these restorations are actually going to transpire.
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God is prophesying through Hosea a future in which there will be a radically altered relationship between he and his people and the world and material.
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A new relationship that results from a new covenant. A covenant in his blood shed for us, a covenant in which he is both priest and sacrifice.
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And so in that new covenant, in that day, there will be a restoration of relationship with God verses 16 through 17.
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This is our first point. And in that future day of restoration, his people will no longer call him by the title, my
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Baal, but they will call him my husband. Now, what verse 16 is conveying is really 16, most of this passage is conveying a massive shift in the relationship between the people, between God's people and Yahweh, their
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God. They will see his love and not merely his commands. Not just a law giver, but they will see a gracious savior, one who loves them.
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A term of endearment, my husband, will stand in the place of merely a term of master or slave.
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Now, church, I just have to clarify, and I think it's true for all of us and we might be kind of mystified by this, because the word
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Baal, if you put it in lowercase, if you put it in capital letters, it's an actual like ancient near eastern deity that was actually worshipped.
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He was the storm god. He was considered to be the one who brought the rains and brought fertility and all of that kind of stuff.
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And so he was actually worshipped, capital B, Baal, you've heard that. But lowercase B is
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Baal is just Lord. It just means master or the ruler, the one over me.
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And so I just have to clarify that in a very real sense, like God is my master, right?
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I'm gonna raise your hand and say God is my master. He's over me, right? But church, hear me, he's also my
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Abba father. He's a friend that sticks closer than a brother. He is my king for sure, but he's also my strength and my help and a shield against the adversary.
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He is my peace. He is my hope. He is my love. He is my delight. Do you relate?
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Are you ever testifying fully about your God when you call him your master?
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I think you're getting something off a little bit if the only thing you testify of him is he's my master.
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The word Baal, little g, God, cannot suffice for what we mean when we're talking about this one.
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How can we call him our Baal? This would be like talking to a Hindu and telling them that my
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God is, you know, just to clarify it for you, just to make you understand what I think of God, he's my idol.
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Can you imagine saying that to a Hindu? He's my idol. Would you be testifying anywhere near honestly about the nature of the almighty
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God to call him your idol? That's not sufficient, is it? Or to a
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Muslim calling him your master? Certainly he is indeed our master, but if that's all you know him as, let me invite you, and I mean this sincerely, like invite you into his love, invite you into his grace and his mercy and his kindness through his son
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Jesus. Let's talk later. I mean, come with boldness and come and talk with me. If you only know
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God as your lawgiver and judge, maybe today is a day to understand another side of him.
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He is gracious and merciful and loving and kind, a friend, a father.
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In verse 17, that new day of restoration comes also with another thing, not just a change in relationship from my
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Baal to my husband, but in verse 17, the restoration comes with the removal of the names of the gods and goddesses from the mouth of his people.
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Look at verse 17 with me, for I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth and they shall be remembered by name no more.
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Now, you might go, look, I found an error in scripture because I can pronounce the syllables of Molech.
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I can say Baal. I can say Asherah. I can say the names of these deities.
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So how, in what way has he removed their names from our lips? Well, instead of being kind of like Dwight Schrute about it, we could actually get to the heart of what he's communicating here.
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They will no longer be called upon in worship in any meaningful way. They will be a thing of the past.
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And I want to point out that this has indeed, this verse 17 has indeed been at least partially fulfilled in our midst, in our church, in our era where his people do not worship
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Baal and do not worship Asherah and do not worship Molech and all these other pagan gods and goddesses.
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It's been partially fulfilled, I say, but will one day be fully fulfilled in yet a future return of Jesus when all idols of our heart will be put out and put away forever.
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Amen? A day is coming when there will be no worship aside from the worship of the one true
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God. We will worship him in integrity. But right now, we could pride ourselves in saying, well, I don't worship
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Baal. I don't worship Asherah. But my goodness, church, we still have our idols, don't we? We still have things that we worship that are not
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God. And we need to be cautious about being chronologically snobbish about this and looking back at them and going, they were idiots.
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We're idiots ourselves, right? Like, we worship all kinds of things that are not God, but there will be a future restoration, a future day when there will be none of this, none of this uttered.
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There'd be no cause except maybe in mocking, just to like talk about these old gods and the things that we used to worship.
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But the restoration of God's people into relationship was initiated, and what you need to understand is it's not complete yet.
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That's why I keep talking about it being partial in our era. It was initiated with the first advent of Jesus, Christ and his coming, but it will be completed at his second coming when the relationship with our
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God will be fully realized. And then we will know him even as we have been fully known by him, and all other loves will fade into the background as we worship him with integrity, with truth.
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Man, I tell you, there's nothing that my heart longs for more than that day when I can worship my God as I was intended to, with none of the fog between us, none of the cloud of my sinfulness, none of the brokenness of my own motivations.
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How many of you just struggle with your own motivations at times? You're not even quite sure whether you're pure in your motives at any given point, and it's like, oh,
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I look forward to that day. But before we get too caught up into something that makes the dudes in the room uncomfortable, leading us toward notions of God as our husband, anybody even notice that?
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Like I did. I'm just here like, okay, well, I don't have a husband, but I like terms like father or friend or king or things like that.
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But the point being like a relationship of intimacy, a closeness, an actual genuine love and care and provision for us.
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There's more that's going to happen, by the way, on that day than a restored relationship to a being restored to a right relationship with the heavenly father.
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That restored relationship will indeed take center stage, but also on that day, there's other things that are going to change.
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And that's where we get our next movement. The restoration of Shalom is the second thing that's initiated on that day or in that day.
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The relationship with God will be restored in the new covenant. He will make that covenant with his people through the blood of his son,
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Jesus Christ, but also our relationship with the created order and with each other will be restored as well.
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So it's not just a restored relationship with God, but it's a restored relationship with creation and a restored relationship with other people as well.
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And I want you to know that that's like fundamental to our brokenness in the fall into sin is three primary broken relationships that honestly,
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I read a book that defined poverty this way, by the way, and this is a really good definition of poverty. Poverty is a broken relationship with God, a broken relationship with others, and a broken relationship with the created order.
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And you need really all three of those to produce poverty. But that's the reality of what's going on here in this text.
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A restoration of those things are all pledged here. In verse 18, we see that the relationship with animals will be restored.
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That can seem kind of strange to us. Elsewhere in scripture, this is an image, an image of the lion laying down with the lamb, right?
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How many of you heard of the lion laying down with the lamb? That's a joke. I got some of you because it's actually, that's one of those
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Mandela effect things. It never says that the lion will lay down with the lamb. It says the wolf will lay down with the lamb. Did anybody catch that?
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Did anybody catch it when I said it? It's a little reality there that in Isaiah, it talks about the wolf lying down with the lamb, but it's weird to think about like the restoration of the animal order, right?
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Like the animals will be, like a relationship with them will be fixed, and their relationship with one another will be fixed.
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And you think about the way that the world is broken, and we probably don't think about that super much. But the imagery is the peaceful nature of the garden that we were first put into being restored on the new earth.
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And while animals are particularly mentioned in our text, we are seeing a radical transformation of the creation, at least the creation that I've lived in.
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What's described here isn't relatable to me. Like the world that I live in, sharks like to try to take a nibble.
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Like they'd like to get a little taste, you know, just one little bite just to see what you taste like. Lions, you can look it up, lions still kill people in Africa every year.
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Every year people die of lions, but not as frequently as they die of hippos. I don't know if you knew that or not, but hippos kill more people in Africa than lions every year.
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You can look that up if you don't believe me. It's substantially more. Hippos are beasts.
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They're terrifying. But what's more scary? What's the most scary animal?
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That's what I have written down. Mosquitoes. Yeah, let's go there. They claim astronomically more lives, obviously through malaria and through diseases, mosquitoes.
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But the change in relationship with the animals, maybe there won't be mosquitoes on the moon. I don't know. Or maybe they just like, they like just drink juice.
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I don't know. But it's like, that's sitting on your orange just having a treat next to you, your little pet mosquito.
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I don't know. That's not in my notes. But there's a change in relationship with the animals, but that signals a more fundamental shift in the order of creation that we know is coming.
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The blanket idea, of course, over this whole text is that creation now kills.
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It's dangerous. We have to all agree, I think, we're honest with Lord Tennyson's assessment that nature is red in tooth and claw, right?
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The way he put that is a very succinct way of saying animals eat each other. There's a lot of blood on paws in nature and on teeth.
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But that's going to change. And yet that radical change in the way that the order of creation, how many of you, like when you picture a world where animals don't eat one another and they don't try to eat you, like all of a sudden that's a game changer.
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Is that a game changer? Raise your hand if you think that's a game changer. That affects camping, right?
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That affects a lot of things. Like the way that you kind of like go out, you know, yeah, going for a swim in the bayou.
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I don't know. Like you're just kind of like, yeah, it's not that big of a deal. But that is nowhere near the shock that should come to our system with the next prediction.
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The bow, the sword, even war itself will be abolished. And now we're talking about some really dramatic changes.
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God's people will lie down in safety without Smith or Wesson under the pillow. Neither one's needed.
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You don't even need Smith or Wesson. So nobody, I mean the first service laughed at least a little bit.
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I mean, no one? Okay. Thanks, you got me.
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Okay. Consider the really, like think this through. Consider how much humanity ourselves have to be changed for verse 18 to happen.
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For that to be a reality, we must be changed for there to be any true and abiding, lasting shalom.
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We have to be changed in our hearts. Our hearts have to be changed. My favorite movie, probably,
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I think it might be my favorite. I say one of my favorites is The Village by M. Night Shyamalan.
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Anybody ever seen the movie The Village? Probably. It's one of my favorites. And now you're going to go out and look it up and it's interesting.
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It's my favorite movie partly because of the moral lesson that we see in it. It's an extremely,
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I don't think the guy's a Christian, but the moral of the story is intense. We might try to run from sin.
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We might try to hide ourselves away from brokenness and sinfulness, but we find it wherever we go.
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Why? Because we carry it with us. It's in us. We bring it with us in our hearts wherever we go, and we cannot outrun sin.
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And so the problem of our culture, the problem of our world is not education.
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Oh, if everybody just learned the right things and we just educated them right, then we'd have utopia. It's not political in nature.
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If we just had the right rulers, then we'd have utopia. It's not technological. Oh, we need technological advancements to feed everybody and get enough food on the planet.
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There's already enough food on the planet to feed everybody. Did you guys already know that? Like what's the problem here? The heart.
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The heart is the problem. It's not a technological solution. We live in a day and an age that's revamping the fever dream pie in the sky utopian dream.
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If we could just get the right technology, the right education, the right leaders, then we'll fix it, right?
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How many of you have heard that kind of mindset out on the internet? We just need more of this, A, B, or C.
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No, there's a future coming. And in that day, shalom will be restored. And who's going to do the restoring?
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God. A peacefully ordered creation is coming, and it is not some pie in the sky utopian fever dream we're talking about here.
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This is the promise of Almighty God recorded for us in Scripture here. Do you see it?
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It's coming, church. And I want to remind you that the God who promises these things to us in these few verses at the end of chapter 2 in Hosea is the very same
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God who a bazillion times, that's a technical designation, a bazillion times in Scripture says, I do not lie, and I am the faithful one, you can trust my promises.
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How many times does he say that? All the time. Why? Because he's going to make some promises that are going to be hard for us to take in from our vantage point where we live.
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A perfect world? The animals don't eat each other? There's no war? There's no destruction?
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There's no people shooting at each other? There's not even a need for those things? Can you envision a world like that?
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Well, you can imagine it, but you've never lived in it, not for a second, right? And here in this ancient text,
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God is pledging the future, that future that we will all one day live in. In verse 19, he describes the new covenant with his people.
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He says, it will be an eternal covenant. It's going to be forever. I'm not going to break, there's not going to be any breach, there's not going to be any curses associated with this.
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It's going to be a straightforward covenant that I make with my people. If you're one of my people, you're going to be under this covenant forever.
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The bride gifts in verses 19 through 20 are spelled out. This reads like an ancient betrothal document and people can see it and so they can take apart and put in what place is the agreement and all of that stuff.
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And in verses 19 through 20, we find the place where we would expect to find the shekels of silver pledged from the husband to the bride.
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It starts in verse 19 where we expect there in this betrothal agreement, I will betroth you and I will betroth you with not silver or gold, but we find much better gifts pledged by the almighty to his people.
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Gifts like righteousness. He will give to his people a gift of righteousness. They won't deserve it. They won't earn it.
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He will just give it justice. He will give to his people an ability to navigate the world with blind love toward all, a genuine care and concern for all.
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He will give us steadfast love. He will give us an ability to stay constant in love because of course he has first demonstrated that love toward us.
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Mercy. He gives us his mercy so that we can be gracious and forgiving and merciful toward others.
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And lastly, he gives us and pledges to us his faithfulness in this betrothal, his faithfulness to us, but also our ability to in turn be faithful to him.
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Our perseverance in him is pledged by him. It's glorious. There is more here than I have time to unpack, but the gospel is basically here in verses 19 through 20.
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It's in the Old Testament. It's in Hosea. He says to Hosea, as the old covenant is coming to a close,
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I'm going to make a new covenant with my people and I will give righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness forever.
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And lastly, as the shalom is being restored, his people, it says, will know him. This is a relational word.
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This is written to an old covenant people who have just been accused of forgetting their Lord. And in that day, in that future day from Hosea's perspective, his people will really know him in relationship.
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And it seems, I think it's worth stating that, didn't they know him then? Well, yes in part, but it seems as though the old covenant was to some degree shrouded in formality.
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Have any of you ever read the Old Testament? There's some formality to the relationship between people and God due to the barrier caused by his holiness and our sinfulness, our unholiness.
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There was a thick veil in the temple, for example, and only the high priest could go behind it. There was a cloud of smoke and lightning on the mountain.
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And I just read a couple of days ago in my quiet time that they were told, don't touch the mountain. Don't even approach it.
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Don't go near that mountain. While the glory of the Lord descends on it, only Moses walked up that trail, at least on that one day.
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There were priests and prophets and intermediaries, people between God and the people to protect them.
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And the people's response to God was to use him like an idol. As long as he provided what they wanted, they were in with him.
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But the minute that they didn't get what they wanted out of him, they bolted for other gods and goddesses.
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But we now live in a time of knowing the Lord, don't we? In partial fulfillment of this restoration of shalom, but there's still an era of more full knowing as people spend eternity, will spend eternity in a rightly ordered new creation, knowing him more and more fully.
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And in the last three verses, we see a restoration of something that strikes us as kind of petty.
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And I'll explain that here in a second. It's a restoration of provision, verses 21 through 23. It seems strange to our ears, but the chain of communication between sky, earth, crops, and God's people serve as a declaration from God that Baal is not the provider.
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The people in their pagan worship of Baal would be crying out to him for rain regularly. He was the storm god.
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He was the one who brought the rain so the crops would flourish. They thought of him as the storm god.
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They would cut themselves. They would do illicit things. They would go crazy and shouting fits and dancing to try to get his attention, to try to get him to send rain for them because rain mattered.
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Why did rain matter? Because they needed food. Why did they need food? To survive. And God says,
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I'm in charge of all of that. And in that day, I will answer the sky. What's the question? What kind of question does the sky ask?
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Well, it's obviously it's a figure of speech, but what's the sky meant to be asking? When should
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I rain? When's it time to rain? Is now the time? Is it time to rain?
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And the answer, God says, yeah, I'm in charge of that. God answers the sky. Sky answers the earth.
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What's the earth asking? Is it time to grow? Earth answers grain and wine and oil, and all of them answer Jezreel.
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Jezreel is a play on words. It means God's planting, which is used here for his people.
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Why does God bless? Why does he give produce? Why does he send rain to water the crops? All for the goal of blessing his people.
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This is also a part of shalom. A rightly ordered natural world responds in blessing to God's people.
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And God is here pledging that in that good, good, good future, provision will no longer be a problem.
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And let me point out what's missed on us, what we just don't quite get. For the vast majority of people who have ever lived on this planet, this is crazy good news.
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That God will provide for his people in the end is glorious. Well, we don't relate because we've always had food.
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And I'm going to go out on a limb and venture a guess that no one in this room has been at risk of starvation ever.
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As a matter of fact, I remember about 10 to 15 years ago when I first heard the word hunger applied to a food problem in America.
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Does anybody remember the shift from talking about starvation to hunger? Do you remember that?
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I remember seeing it on a billboard for the first time and I was like, why? What's hunger? Like, why is that the word that's used here?
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And when we started talking about hunger in America, it was a demonstration of the needle and the gauge being shifted, measuring poverty in America by experiencing not three meals a day, right?
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Not starvation. And I'm just pointing out where we live. Few of us have ever struggled with hunger at all.
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None of us have been close to dying of starvation as people have down through the centuries and still do in other cultures and countries.
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But the answer to the problem of provision is a fundamental human question. For millennia of human existence, most of the people had to work directly in providing their own food and they were one bad month away from death.
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You think about that. You think about if the only thing you ever were able to eat was what you grew would you do?
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I think Liz would do all right. Everybody needs to go over to Liz's house, but a couple of you would do probably pretty good.
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And now I just outed you, so it's like, uh -oh. Everybody's going to Liz's house.
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No, I mean, some of us, very few of us would do very well, right? Is that true? Is that true?
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Would you be humble enough to raise your hand and say, I don't think we'd do very well? I think we'd be in trouble. We don't even have hardly any clear land.
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We're all woods. Like, we'd have to clear land just to grow some crops. Like, we'd be in trouble. God says here,
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I'm in control of that. I'm in control of provisions. And for eternity, I've got you. And he riffs on the name
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Jezreel at the start of verse 23 with the words, I will sow. If you look at verse 23, it starts off and says, and I will sow her for myself in the land and I will have mercy on no mercy.
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That I will sow is the word Jezreel and he will plant his people in a good land. This is the reversal of the negative meaning of Jezreel in chapter one, where it was used for scattering and destroying armies.
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A word that has double meaning. It's actually a physical location. Two different. It's a city. It's a valley.
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It's also used for scattering an army, like kind of scattered. And it's also for scattering seed.
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So it's a positive and a negative metaphor. Uses a negative one in chapter one.
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But remember that Hosea and his promiscuous wife, Gomer, had three children and they were told by God their names.
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Jezreel, which means scattered in the negative connotation. Lo -Ruhamah, which means a daughter, which means no mercy.
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Really catchy names. And then Lo -Ami, which means not my people. Not the most encouraging things to name your kids.
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And all three names were given to display judgment of God's people back in chapter one. But in that day, remember we're talking about in that day, from Hosea's vantage point, in that day, their names will be transformed.
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And scattered will be called planting. No mercy will receive mercy.
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And not my people will be called you are my people. And you are my people will say you are my
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God to Yahweh, our King and Lord. We live in a partial fulfillment of that day.
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But when Christ returns, church, that will be the day. Do you know what I'm talking about?
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That will be the day. So as we consider all the amazing things Christ has done for us in striking this new covenant as we're reading about the old drawing to a close and promises and hopes for the one that we live in now, giving us where he has made a covenant, a new covenant in his blood, giving us righteousness, justice, steadfast love, mercy, and faithfulness forever.
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It would be good for us here in this moment to pause and consider how we put this glorious prophecy into practice.
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And I think it's going to be at the point where I'm going to ask you to consider and really genuinely contemplate some questions. But those ought to produce some kind of action items for you.
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Some things that you ought to consider, think through, wrestle through, and really maybe even draw up a plan about. The first is how is your relationship with God?
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Now that's a really generic question. And if somebody comes up to me in the lobby and says how's your relationship with God? I'd say
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I'm pretty good. But I'm encouraging a deeper reflection on this. You see, the new covenant is all about a restored relationship with God.
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This is described as no longer calling him my bail, my master, as if I'm his slave, but my husband, as if he loves me.
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But I fear that for many who call themselves Christians today, he is viewed as a taskmaster, a killjoy, or even a terrifying, terrible judge.
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And so let me ask you, do you know his love for you? Are you living in his mercy and grace?
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It's possible that some here, and I think it's likely that some of you here, think that you're in a relationship with God because you're doing a bunch of stuff for him.
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But maybe there are some here who have never once come to rest at his feet. To stop your striving and accepting his gift of grace.
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I think this is much like the CEO of a company walking through the hallways, a small company, and he finds somebody there working and they never came through the hiring process.
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He doesn't know them. They didn't come through the HR. They just showed up and started working.
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But they're not part of the company. They're not drawing a paycheck. They're not in with the company.
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Does that make sense? And I mean, I fear that there's some in the room who are that way with God, like you've just come in through the side door and you're just doing stuff for God, but you've never come in through the door.
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Who is the door? Who is the door of Hope Church? Jesus Christ. Have you come through the door?
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Have you come through the King? Stop your striving and accept his gift of grace today.
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If he's a taskmaster to you, it's possible that he isn't your Savior. If the only thing you know of him is taskmaster, the only thing you know of him is judge, the only thing you know of him is terror,
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I invite you to know him as Savior. To know him as the one who loves your soul.
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Now I'd encourage you to reach out to me, reach out to Dave, one of the elder on duty.
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Maybe just find some, if you're intimidated by dudes, I recognize up here I often say, you know, come find a dude, but if you're intimidated by dudes, go find a lady who looks like she's smiling and happy about something and then talk with her.
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And then if she can't answer your question, go find another lady who's smiling until you find a lady who's smiling for the right reasons and she can tell you about her relationship with Jesus Christ.
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So I just kind of encourage that and get a little train going through the church of like ladies following, looking for another lady who can tell them about Jesus.
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That would be awesome. But where is your hope? That's the second thing that I want to identify for us. Where is your hope?
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I mean, I recognize that most of us in this room are believers, we do know Jesus, and many of us can get caught up in other hopes.
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I mean, we get up and get caught up in political hopes and aspirations or we can get caught up in that future retirement or building a good emergency fund or we get hopeful in our new diet, you know, or we're just kind of concerned seed oils will kill you just like living, right?
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And so, did I say that out loud? I probably offended someone.
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But yeah, God is pledging a good future for his people, church, and I don't think we often live like it.
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I'm just being honest that all who are trusting in Jesus for salvation, you know, that are here in this room, remember that he is the hope for shalom.
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And I believe that all people want it. I believe that everybody sitting in this room, I can say something that I believe is true of you. You want peace, you want health, you want safety, you want provision.
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Am I right? Did I get it? I think it's true of all of us. And what I think God is saying through this text and what he says when he reminds us of the future that he has for us, he's really saying, chill out.
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I've got this. As much as we might try to scramble to get it all in this life, why not live for eternity?
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Why not follow Jesus who said to us to store up treasures where? In heaven where rust and moth cannot corrupt and thieves don't break in and steal.
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You see, this life is slipping through your fingers no matter what you eat, no matter how much you exercise.
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It's true. You got a date on the calendar. You just don't know which one it is, but it's on the calendar.
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It's got a year, it's got a month, it's got a date, and it's there. This life is going to give way to the one promised here in this text by our
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God. Amen? It's going to give way to that. I'm not making a case, by the way, at all here for stupid living.
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Then go eat at McDonald's every day and go eat all the fried fatty foods and you're going to be okay. No, I'm not at all. I'm not at all making a case for stupid living, but I'm also making a case against stupid trust.
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Do you know what I mean by stupid trust? Trust that implies exactly against the words of our
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Lord that you can add a day to your life. Follow my workout plan. You're going to be fine. You're going to live to...
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I'll fill in the blank and I'll tell you how long you're going to live. If you eat this diet, if you do this, then you're going to add years to your life and you're going to be okay.
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To what end? For what purpose? You cannot, Jesus testified, you cannot add a single day to your life.
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Not one. Is he lying? Ironically, I find in that phrase, you can't add a single day to your life, a really gentle, nice, demure way to talk of death.
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You can't add a single day to your life because you have a day you're going to die. But he didn't say it that way.
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He said it kind of nicer than I did. But his teachings amounted to live for heaven because the stuff of this earth ends with a coffin for us.
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The valley of trouble will lead to the door of hope. What's the door of hope?
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Jesus Christ, our resurrection. What are you living for? And if I were to, I mean, just to be honest, some of you might receive some conviction about what you're communicating.
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Some of you are out there and your Facebook feeds and all of your socials look like you're living for today.
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Look like you're living for adding days to this life. All of the stress on wasted things live for what truly matters, church, and trust that the coming life is so much better than this one.
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Amen. That's better. That's better. Lastly, let's consider the amazing way that God brought us into this new covenant.
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It's a covenant in his blood. We come to communion every week to remember this covenant of grace.
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Jesus told us to take some bread and wine to remember his body broken for us and his blood shed for us. So we take the cracker and juice every week.
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But let me encourage you this morning to go to these tables with awe and wonder. If you've asked Jesus to be your king and your savior, then go to those tables and take that cracker and juice, recognizing that you are participating in the commemoration of the start of this awesome and glorious restoration.
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You see, it's because Jesus died that our relationship with God is being restored. It's because of his sacrifice that we can trust that true and eternal shalom is coming.
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It's because of his resurrection for us that we can trust him to provide everything that we need for eternity.
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Rejoice in what he has done for us, church. And then let's go out from here loving God, living for God, and keeping our hope securely resting in him.
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Let's pray. Oh Father, I am so grateful for hope.
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I don't know where I would be without the trust that there's a better promise, there's a better reality that you hold out of restoration for the future.
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So that I don't need to clamor for things in this life. I don't need to try to make it all fit. I don't need to make it all work for me.
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I don't need to try to just get it all in the here and now, live my best life now.
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You've pledged a better life in the future. Help us to live for the right things.
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Help us to focus our attention on the right things, even now as we come to the tables, to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to be re -centered on that hope that's bought for us there.
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There's so many promises, empty promises from the world, empty promises that we give to ourselves, empty promises that we hear from the media, empty promises from commercials, and advertisements, and diet fads, and exercise, and routines, and all different kinds of things, and medications, and just so many things bombarding us.
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But Father, I pray that you would slice through all of that for all of us this morning with the clear call that the hope is
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Jesus. This life, a life of trouble, with the door of hope.
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Jesus Christ, our door of hope. And Father, I pray that if anybody has not come through that door, that today would be a day of coming to the door, recognizing the hope that is there, and going through it for salvation.
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Help us to focus our attention, even now in these last closing moments of the service, on Jesus Christ, the author and perfecter of our faith.