Sports, sports, sports

If you want illustrations of what happened to Israel biblically all you have to do is look at our culture today.

As II Peter 2:12-13, for example, sums it up: “But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption;

[13] And shall receive the reward of unrighteousness, as they that count it pleasure to riot in the day time. Spots they are and blemishes, sporting themselves with their own deceivings while they feast with you.”

Jordan explains, “People are sporting themselves, bragging about their wickedness/sinfulness, and if you call it into question, what do they do? You’re the enemy, not them.

“Whether it’s stealing, lying, cheating, immorality of all kinds, they sport it. You know what guys do when they sport; they’re out bragging about it. They’re out making money on it.

“Who in the world in our culture makes more money by doing less than sports people and entertainers? They contribute absolutely no ‘wealth’ to the community; they contribute entertainment.

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Hosea writes in Hosea 7, “They are all adulterers, as an oven heated by the baker, who ceaseth from raising after he hath kneeded the dough, until it be leavened.
[5] In the day of our king the princes have made him sick with bottles of wine; he stretched out his hand with scorners.
[6] For they have made ready their heart like an oven, whiles they lie in wait: their baker sleepeth all the night; in the morning it burneth as a flaming fire.
[7] They are all hot as an oven, and have devoured their judges; all their kings are fallen: there is none among them that calleth unto me.”

“The baker can go to sleep because the die is cast,” says Jordan. “The leaven has leavened the lump. They are all hot as an oven. They’re just burning up. What are they burning up with? With the lust of depravity.

“They’re burning up with all these sinful things—the falsehoods, the thefts, the adulteries, the robbing, all of these things that have overtaken the nation. The swearing, the lying, the stealing, the killing, the committing fornication.

 

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“Hosea continues, ‘Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not: yea, gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not.’

“What happens when you get salt and pepper hair? Usually you’re becoming an old man. Here’s the old dude yet he knoweth not. Israel has become like some oblivious old man who has wasted his life and is just doddering around and doesn’t know what’s happening.

“The thieves are pickpocketing, taking his stuff and he’s just like some old man. When it says he knoweth not, it’s not like he has Alzheimer’s. He’s just oblivious to what’s happening.

“Verse 10 is the problem: ‘And the pride of Israel testifieth to his face: and they do not return to the LORD their God, nor seek him for all this.’

“In spite of all their problems, their pride keeps them from hearkening. The middle letter of the word ‘sin’ is the same letter that is the middle letter of the word ‘pride.’

“Right in their FACE you can see they won’t turn to the Lord because of their pride.”