SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/5/2015
10:55 PM
My Worship Time Focus: Sin of
Hypocrisy
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Hosea
2:10-13
Message of the
verses: “10 “And then I will uncover
her lewdness In the sight of her lovers, And no one will rescue her out of My
hand. 11 “I will also put an end to all her gaiety, Her feasts, her new moons,
her Sabbaths And all her festal assemblies. 12 “I will destroy her vines and
fig trees, Of which she said, ’These are my wages Which my lovers have given
me.’ And I will make them a forest, And the beasts of the field will devour
them. 13 “I will punish her for the days of the Baals When she used to offer
sacrifices to them And adorn herself with her earrings and jewelry, And follow
her lovers, so that she forgot Me," declares the LORD.”
When the Lord gave certain festivals they were to have
meaning to the people for instance the Passover celebration was to remind the children
of Israel how the Lord brought them out of Egypt, but even much more than
that. The blood of the sacrificial lamb
was a picture of what their Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ was going to do for
them showing them that the only way for someone to come to the Lord was through
the blood of an innocent lamb of which Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world.
However even when the Israelite people were celebrating certain festivals
they were using them to worship Baal, and so it is not surprising that the Lord
would be upset with them, and this is what is called hypocrisy. The problem is that the Jewish people in the
Southern Kingdom were doing the same thing in the temple at Jerusalem. We looked at this in the early chapters of
the book of Ezekiel when the Lord transported him to the temple and that is
what he saw.
Dr. Wiersbe writes “How easy it is to attend divine
services and go through the motions of worshiping God when our hearts are
really far from Him (Matthew 15:7-9).”
God would expose their sins as seen in these verses and
eventually the Northern Kingdom would be destroyed by the Assyrians. God would take the blessing that He gave to
them away and judge them for their unfaithfulness to Him as they worshiped
idols. The greatest judgment that the
Lord can bring upon people is to let them have their own way as they sin and
the consequences of sin will always catch up with them. You see God is holy and He will not permit
His people to enjoy their sins. When you
read the first chapter of Romans we see the word “and God gave them over” a
number of times. This is how the Lord
can punish sin by allowing man to do what they want to do. We read many times in the Bible that God is
Holy and this is problem the first attribute of God that a person can study as
it means that God is different and we are not that kind of different so no one
is as holy as God.
6/5/2015 11:12 PM
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