Hosea’s Message: "from sacred to sinful"
Hosea 8:11 “Israel has build many altars to take away sin, but these very altars became places for sinning!”
The prophet Hosea has a sharp word for Israel. Hosea exposes Israel’s disobedience to God; their disloyalty; and pronounces God’s judgment upon them. The verse claims that the very things that are to be sacred; the places where Israel experiences the presence of God have turned into places of sinning. Israel has taken that which should help them grow closer to God and those places have become roadways that lead them farther away from God and who God desires them to be.
I can’t help but read this verse this morning and hear the church today. At times I feel somewhat guilty for being so down on the church but yet I love the Church and believe that the Church is the vehicle God has chosen to spread the message of Jesus Christ to the world…..which leads me to constantly desire to expose where the Church is not living into that call. The church is that sacred space where we are to experience the fullness of God and be formed into the people God desires for us to be. Yet, the Church has become (like Israel’s altars) places for sinning. Here in the southeast the church continues to be silent to the call of the gospel and becomes more and more a place where racism, prejudice, judgment, hypocrisy, and idolatry flourish. Just this past weekend I watched a 4th of July parade where a “claim to be Christian” road a tractor (flying the “rebel flag” and carrying a sign with an eagle holding a picture of Bin Laden in its mouth with the words “God Bless America, Forget Hell!” What else is their left for God to do other than send the Church into exile……maybe we are already in exile? What would it mean for the Church to stop being a place that is an obstacle to people coming to know Jesus and to begin being a place of grace and mercy that seeks to be instrument of people coming to know Jesus? I fear that we (the Church in the southeast) have know idea how close we are to God spitting us out of His mouth if it hasn’t happened already. At the same time, I have this great desire and passion to seize the opportunity of being a part of a community of faith that calls us back to our first love and allows God to make into a place of sacred space instead of a hotbead of sin.
Lord, I come to you today and lift up your church here in the southeast. I pray for the pastors and leaders of all churches and ask that you would help us to hear Hosea. Give us the grace to not get caught up in our culture and allowing the last 100 years of disobedience seem like this is your eternal plan. Give us the grace to go back to allowing your word to speak to our lives in its fullness; help us not to reduce your word to a couple of verses that allow us to live our own agenda but may the totality of your word drive our being and shape our lives together. Help us to remember that you are not just the God of yesterday and tomorrow but you are the God of today and that you have called us for such a time as this. Give me the courage and strength to continue to speak for you and use me as you see fit in the midst of these exilic times. Amen!
There is a great opportunity to speak prophetically to the church in the southeastern United States.
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