God: 'But in me is thine help'

When God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the destruction was so thorough it wiped out everything in the valley, including the nearby cities of Admah and Zeboim. 

As Deuteronomy 29 confirms, [23] And that the whole land thereof is brimstone, and salt, and burning, that it is not sown, nor beareth, nor any grass groweth therein, like the overthrow of Sodom, and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboim, which the LORD overthrew in his anger, and in his wrath: [24] Even all nations shall say, Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land? what meaneth the heat of this great anger?

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 utterly complete it’s going to get the whole territory. And what God says in Hosea 11 is, ‘How can I do that to you? How can I just bring an utter end to Israel?’

Hosea 11: [8] 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.
[9] 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'?

“He's saying, '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 see this in Genesis 6 when 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: [9] O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.

"You get one little verse now and then that just sort 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: [14] 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.’

*****

“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 to start with back in Exodus when He brought them into the wilderness.

“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.

*****

“In Hosea 2, Achor is where Israel had sinned against God and Aiken had hidden the Babylonish garment. Joshua, you know how 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.’ They blew it.  He added the law to teach them that they couldn’t do it themselves. 

“Brother Roy Lange in Alabama 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 of Hosea 11:  [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 this chapter how often He references the Pentateuch.

“Hosea 11:2 says, [2] 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: [3] 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: [4] 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 itself 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 was 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.”

(new article tomorrow)