SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/19/2015
10:57 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Nation’s False Repentance
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Hosea 6:1-3
Message of the
verses: “1 "Come, let us return to the
LORD. For He has torn us,
but He will heal us;
He has wounded us, but He will bandage us. 2
“He will revive us
after two days; He will
raise us up on the third day, That we may live before Him. 3 “So let us know,
let us press on to know the LORD. His going forth is as certain as the dawn;
And He will come to us like the rain, Like the spring rain watering the
earth."”
In today’s SD from the book of Hosea we move into a new
chapter and also a new main point from Warren Wiersbe’s commentary on
Hosea. He entitles this second main
point “God Rejects the Appeal” and it will cover the sixth and seventh chapters
of Hosea. He writes the following as his
introduction to this main point: “It isn’t
unusual for the accused in a trial to express regret and remorse for what they’ve
done and to ask for another chance. That’s
just what Israel did, but God anticipated their hypocritical subterfuge and
expressed not only their duplicity but the sinful way they had treated the
Lord.” We now move on to look at their
false repentance.
As we look at these words in these first three verses
from the sixth chapter of Hosea we can believe that they are sincere, and that
Israel desires to repent and turn once again to the Lord, but if we look ahead
to Hosea 7:10 we read “Yet they have not returned to the LORD their God, Nor
have they sought Him, for all this.” Verse
13 reads “they have spoken lies against me.” And then verse 16 reads “They return,
but not to the most High.” So we see
that even though these words seem sincere, they are not.
Israel does not say anything about repenting of their
sins in these verses, but doe speak of the Lord healing them after they had
been wounded. Israel saw that their
nation was in a bad situation and they wanted God to make things right, but we
don’t see that they had a broken heart so that they would surrender to the
Lord. It seems that they were looking
for happiness, and not holiness, and there is a big difference between those
two things. It is kind of like the
saying that there are no atheists in a fox hole.
In verse two we see that Israel wanted the Lord to do
things quickly, on their own timetable in just two days. If you repent you want the Lord to heal you
in His own way, and not tell the Lord how to do it. The people were looking for a quick fix, as
they demanded things from the Lord.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes “One more evidence of their shallowness
is the fact that they depended on religious words rather than righteous
deeds. When we truly repent, our words
will come from broken hearts and they will cost us something. Hosea considered words to be like ‘spiritual
sacrifices’ brought to the Lord (14:2), and we must not give Him something
cheap (2 Sam. 24:24). Words can reveal
our conceal, depending on the honesty and humility of the sinner. We must take to heart the warning in Ecclesiastes
5:1-2 “1 Guard your steps as you go to the house of God and draw near to listen
rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools; for they do not know they are
doing evil. 2 Do not be
hasty in word or impulsive in thought to bring up a matter in the
presence of God. For God is in heaven and you are on the earth; therefore let your words be few.”
6/19/2015 11:22 PM
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