God has feelings too

When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction was so utterly complete that it wiped out everything in the valley. There were other cities in that territory—Admah, Zeboim. (Deuteronomy 29:23)

Amos 4:11 says, “I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.”

Jordan explains, “The destruction God is going to place on Israel in that captivity is going to be like Sodom and Gomorrah, but it’s going to be so thorough it’s going to get the whole territory. And what He says in Hosea 11:8 is, ‘How can I do that to you? How can I just bring an utter end to Israel?’

“The verse says, ‘How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.’

“The Lord says to Jeremiah, ‘I will not bring an utter end to Israel. I’ll do what verse 9 says: I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim: for I am God, and not man; the Holy One in the midst of thee: and I will not enter into the city.’

“The context here is, ‘I’m heartsick about what’s happened.’ Isaiah calls judgment 'His strange work.’ You see how He says in verse 8, ‘mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together?’

“ 'How shall I give you up? I got to punish you but I’m just not going to execute the fierceness of mine anger—the finality of wiping you out completely. I’m going to restore you. I’m going to fix it so that your heart is turned back to me.'

“Verses 8-9 is an amazing passage where God talks about being heartsick about the necessity of punishing, chastening and disciplining His wayward people.

“When He says ‘mine heart is turned within me,’ He’s going this way, then He goes that way. Then He goes this way, then He goes that way. ‘I got to punish them because of their sin but I love them and want to deliver them. I got to punish them because of their sin but I love them.’ He’s back and forth and He calls it repentings.

*****

“You’ll see it in Genesis 6. God tells Noah, ‘It repented me that I made man.’ How is it that God can repent? First of all, if you don’t understand what repentance is in the Bible, and you think it’s sorrow for sin, you’d have a problem because God has no sin to be sorry for.

“If you get your theology from Billy Graham and from Rome, and you think repentance is just being ‘sorry for your sin,’ which is the common, religious, fundamentalist adage, then you got a problem with this.

“In the Bible, repentance means to change your mind. God says, ‘I am the Lord, I change not.’ The issue isn’t God changing His mind in the sense of vacillating. What you see there about ‘mine heart is turned within me’ is you’re seeing the various facets of the nature of God conflicted.

“You would understand that. You would understand someone that you loved who had messed up. That judgment would say they have to pay for that and you understand that, and yet you love them and you don’t want to see them damaged and hurt. A parent can understand that about their children.

“Well, God has a nature; He has feelings about these things. He can be grieved. That’s what you see here; you see grief over their sin.

“God doesn’t change His mind in the sense that He changes; what happens is man changes in relationship to God and now that man is shifted, God relates to man where he is.

“Here’s an illustration. Wasn’t it really warm today? We’ve been cold and today is warm. Now, did the sun get hotter? What happened is the relationship between the earth and the sun changed. You follow that?

“That’s what’s going on here, but it causes problems for people’s theology who believe God can only be one way and that He’s not free to react to His creation. What you’re going to discover in Israel is that isn’t the case.

“Jesus looked at Jerusalem and said, ‘How often I would have gathered you as a momma hen gathers her chicks. How often I would have gathered you to myself but you would not.’ That’s the Luke 13 and 19 version of what’s going on here.

*****

“In chapter 12, Hosea talks about the mechanics of restoring the nation. Verse 12:9 says, ‘And I that am the LORD thy God from the land of Egypt will yet make thee to dwell in tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn feast.’

“In other words, ‘I’m going to take you back into the land and I’m going to fulfill those feasts back there in Leviticus 23 about the regathering of Israel, the restoration into the land and the tabernacling in the kingdom.’

“All those things, in verse 10 He says, ‘I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets.’ All these illustrations and dress-rehearsal events in the Old Testament point to Israel’s restoration.

“Hosea 13:9 says, ‘O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.’ You get one little verse now and then that just kind of encapsulates everything.

"You go back in chapter 4 and it says, ‘Israel hath destroyed itself for lack of knowledge.’ Not because they didn’t have knowledge, but they rejected it.

“Hosea 13:14 says, ‘I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.’

“God’s going to restore Israel; He’s going to redeem Israel, He’s going to resurrect Israel and He’s going to avenge Israel’s enemies. He’s going to restore the nation. The future for Israel is, as Hosea comes to the end, ‘Hey, they’re going to be cast away into the captivity because of their failures but God isn’t through with them.’

“One of the great things to get in these prophecies back here is that God promises to finish what He told Israel He was going to do--what He covenanted with Abraham to do, give them a great nation in the land, permanently living in the land as His people; Him be their god and they be His people.

"There’s that spiritual blessing, that physical nation living in that piece of real estate that God promised to them. A literal, physical, visible, earthly, Davidic promise God made and is fulfilling through the nation Israel.

“All of those things are rejected by 98.7 % at least, if not more, of Christendom. All the big-shot scholars that you hear, every denomination and denominational seminary and school in the country, actually the whole world, rejects these things.

“Hosea’s real clear, so what you do is you either believe what the Bible says or what the scholars say; what religion says. If you believe what the Bible says, you know He’s not threw with Israel and He’s going to restore Israel. Now the question is, how come?

“And, of course, we understand the reason is that God’s interrupted prophecy with a secret program called the ‘dispensation of grace’ where we live today. And if you don’t understand how to rightly divide the Scripture, you’re never going to be able to get the Scripture.

*****

“Chapter 14 begins with, ‘O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.’ That’s basically the whole sum of the Book of Hosea. He details the indictment through the book, but the summary is right there. Verse 2 says, ‘Take with you words, and turn to the LORD: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips.’

“Hosea, in essence, told Israel, ‘Cast yourself upon God’s grace. Just bring words. Come with your confession and tell the Lord, Take away all iniquity and receive us graciously.’

"When they do that, verse 3 says, ‘[3] Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.
[4] I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.
[5] I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.

“You just go on down through the passage and you see the glory that’s going to be Israel’s when He restores them into the kingdom. They’re going to bring words and speak graciously.

“In the words of Jeremiah 31, He says they’re going to find grace in the wilderness. This is a chapter that contains the new covenant for Israel. That wilderness is being cast out into that Fifth Course of Judgment; being cast out among the nations into the dessert places (the wilderness) as they wandered in Exodus.

*****

“Hosea 2 says, ‘Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.
[15] And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.
[16] And it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call me Ishi; and shalt call me no more Baali.’

“That’s the wilderness of Jeremiah 31. They’ll find grace in the wilderness. That’s what they should have found; that’s what God tried to teach them back in Exodus when He brought them into the wilderness to start with.

“They weren’t designed to live in the wilderness for 38 years back there. They were designed to go out and it was just going to be a few weeks when they would leave Egypt and He’d take them into the Promised Land. But He schooled them in His grace.

“You go back and read Exodus 14-18 and you see Him take them through a series of five specific events that was to teach them about His providing for them everything they needed. He’d delivered them out of Egypt; now He’s going to be their provider, and they didn’t get it.

“They came to Mt. Sinai and what did they do? He says, ‘Let me give you a test and see if you’ve learned the lesson.’ And the lesson was, ‘Every time you have a need, I’ll do it for you.’

“They come to the place and the water’s bitter, He says, ‘Here, I’ll heal water.’ Next chapter, they don’t have water, He says, ‘Here, I’ll give you water out of a rock.’ They need something to eat and He says, ‘Here’s manna.’ You got an enemy attacking you? ‘Here, I’ll defend you.’

“I love the similitude thing in Exodus where Moses strikes the rock and water’s a picture of the Holy Spirit. The Book of John, when He puts His Spirit into them and it flows out of them, and as soon as that happens--the Amalekites in the Scripture are a type of the flesh. They didn’t attack Israel until they got water. Your flesh doesn’t attack until there’s something to attack.

*****

“We were talking Sunday night, in I Timothy 2, about lifting up holy hands in prayer. People say, ‘Well, that’s a justification of holding your hands up like that when you pray.’ Problem with that is it says ‘holy hands.’ You never had a pair of holy hands in your life, so you know when he says ‘lifting up holy hands,’ he’s not talking about you!

“When you try to make posture in prayer a prerequisite, well then you’ve forgotten Galatians 3:3: it’s your access to God through the spirit.

“In Exodus 17 is a great illustration. Joshua’s down in the valley fighting the Amalekites. Moses is up on the mountain and, as long as his hands are up, Joshua's in the battle and the sword prevails, but as soon as  he gets tired his hands come down, Joshua doesn’t prevail anymore and it’s a picture of the word and prayer working together.

“Joshua’s down there whipping up on the Amalekites until Moses gets tired and his hands come down so Aaron and Hur, Moses’ sidekicks there with him, literally set Moses down on a rock and hold his hands up FOR him!

“Years ago, when I worked at the rescue mission in Mobile, they had what they called an A&H Club. The Aaron and Hur Club was people they enlisted to be prayer partners for the rescue mission and to support the mission and hold up the hands of the mission--not physically, but so the Word would prevail when the mission was going forth.

*****

“Well, all that stuff back there in Exodus is designed to teach Israel about God providing for them what they couldn’t provide for themselves and how God would do it, and it takes them through five lessons in Exodus 15-18; specific things to teach them about Him being their provider.

“He told Moses, ‘Go tell them I am that I am.’ Sort of like Popeye: ‘I yams what I yams.’ You say, ‘What kind of a name is I am?’ Well, it’s obviously an incomplete sentence. It needs a completer; you write ‘I am’ and you need to fill in the blank. Well, what do you fill in the blank with?

“What God was doing was demonstrating to Israel what to fill in the blank with. ‘Fill in the blank with me! What do you need?! You need healing, I’ll heal you! You need victory, I’ll be the one who provides victory for you! You need water; I’ll be your provider!’

“And there are all those compound Jehovah names in the Old Testament that demonstrate what God is going to provide for Israel.

“There’s a bunch of names, but those seven primary names, you go to Leviticus 23 and you take those seven feasts, including the Passover and so forth, and there are seven Jehovah compound names that fit each one of those feasts.

“If you go to the Book of John, there are seven times Jesus said ‘I am.’ I am the light of the world. I am the bread of life. I am the way, the truth, the life. I am the door. I am the vine.

“Those seven match those seven compound Jehovah names that match the seven feasts back here and what that’s telling you is God’s going to provide for Israel everything they need to carry out that calendar of redemption from the exodus all the way into the kingdom.

“He’s going to do it for them! He began to educate them in that when He brought them out of Egypt.

*****

“In Hosea 2, Achor is where Israel had sinned against God and Aiken had hidden the Babylonish garment. Joshua, you know, they all went up and conquered Jericho, and went up to Ai and got the britches beat off of them, because Aiken had disobeyed God.

"They went out in the valley of Achor and judged that sin, put it away, and He said, ‘I’ll give you that place of judging sin in Israel and putting it away as a door or hope and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt.’

“The standard is going to be bringing them up out of the land of Egypt. There was an educating process going on at that point with Israel. By the way, the problem is that in Exodus 19 when they got there, having been instructed all that information, God gave them a test and said, ‘You know, I’ll make you all this stuff. I’ll make a deal. If you keep my commandments you can have all that. Deal or no deal?’

“Now if they had learned the lesson, they would have said, ‘Hey, no deal!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘You already promised it to us!’ But they didn’t do that. They went about seeking to establish their own righteousness and didn’t submit themselves to the righteousness of God.

“They said, ‘Yeah, whatever you say, we’ll do it.’ And in Exodus 19 they blew it.  He added the law to teach them that they couldn’t do it themselves. It doesn’t work for sinful man just for God to show them what he will do for them. The grace of God only accepts faith as a response, but it requires faith. And if you add your effort, the grace of God is taken out of it.

“Brother Lange used to call it ‘The Bible’s Biggest If.’ IF you’ll keep . . . they should have just said, ‘No thank you. Bad deal. We already got a contract. We already got you swearing it, putting it in an oath. We’ll hang on with that.’

“But they didn’t. They thought they could do it. What they didn’t do is they didn’t learn they couldn’t, so they didn’t cast themselves simply on His grace.

“He’s going to take them out into that wilderness, the Tribulation, and that last stage of that Fifth Course of Judgment is going to convince them there’s nothing in them that they can ever trust. It’s only going to be in the Lord. That’s where they find God doing for them what they couldn’t do for themselves.

“And so the restoration of Israel, if you go to Hosea 11, comes about because they come into the wilderness, they see their guilt, they see they’ve been put away and they cast themselves only on the Savior, the Messiah, to be the one who will restore them.

*****

“God starts out in verse 1: ‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.’ That’s almost a quote of Exodus 4:22-23. Notice in your mind as you go down through here how often He references the Pentateuch.

“Hosea 11:2 says, ‘As they called them, so they went from them: they sacrificed unto Baalim, and burned incense to graven images.’ Just as surely as prophets called Israel to be His son, Israel went away from Him. Just as quick as God said, ‘Here, come do this,’ Israel said, ‘Uh-huh, we ain’t having that,’ and they refused.

“In other words, He loved them and called them, gave them this special sonship position, and yet they weren’t grateful for it. They said, ‘We’d rather have what Baal can do for us.’

“Verse 3 says, ‘I taught Ephraim also to go, taking them by their arms; but they knew not that I healed them.’

“They’re like a little child He picked up and said, ‘C’mon, let me teach you to walk.’ He said, ‘Look, I called you to be my son and then I’m educating you. I’m trying to teach you how to walk as my son.’

“Verse 4 says, ‘I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love: and I was to them as they that take off the yoke on their jaws, and I laid meat unto them.’

“You look at that and you see His love. When He drew them with bands of love--the tug. If you have a rubber band and you put your hand in it and stretch it out, it pulls it back together. He said, ‘I reached out and put a band around your heart and sought to pull you to myself.’ He wasn’t driving them; He was pulling them with what? Love.

“And when He did it, then He took the yoke of bondage off of them. Then He laid provisions on them. You look at that and you say, ‘Man, what did they do?!’

“They were just intransigent. He loved them but they weren’t grateful. He taught them, sought to educate them, but they didn’t understand. They knew not it was He that healed them. Just totally insensitive to what God’s doing. Then He drew them with bands of love and they just refused. Spurned it.

“You see all that and you say, ‘Wow, they were really a bunch of spiritual knuckleheads!’ But you shouldn’t judge them too much because they were the only people in the earth who still had any relationship with God and they represent exactly what all people do. If they were the best of human flesh, then you and I didn’t measure up even to that, so it’s an example to us all.”