SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/2/2015
9:53 PM
My Worship Time Focus: God
Pronounces the Sentence PT-6
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Hosea 8:11-9:9
Message
of the verses: “11 Since Ephraim has
multiplied altars for sin, They have become altars of sinning for him. 12
Though I wrote for him ten thousand precepts of My law, They are regarded as a
strange thing. 13 As for My sacrificial gifts, They sacrifice the flesh and eat
it, But the LORD has taken no delight in them. Now He will remember their
iniquity, And punish them for their sins; They will return to Egypt. 14 For Israel has forgotten his Maker and built
palaces; And Judah has multiplied fortified cities, But I will send a
fire on its cities that it may consume its palatial dwellings.
“1 Do not rejoice, O Israel, with
exultation like the nations! For you have played the harlot, forsaking your
God. You have loved harlots’ earnings on every threshing floor. 2 Threshing
floor and wine press will not feed them, And the new wine will fail them. 3
They will not remain in the LORD’S land, But Ephraim will return to Egypt, And in Assyria
they will eat unclean food. 4 They will not pour out drink offerings of wine to
the LORD, Their sacrifices will not please Him. Their bread will be like
mourners’ bread; All who eat of it will be defiled, For their bread will be for
themselves alone; It will not enter the house of the LORD. 5 What will you do
on the day of the appointed festival And on the day of the feast of the LORD? 6
For behold, they will go because of destruction; Egypt will gather them up, Memphis will bury them. Weeds will take
over their treasures of silver; Thorns will be in their tents.
“7 The days of punishment have come, The days of retribution have
come; Let Israel know this! The prophet is a fool, The inspired man is
demented, Because of the grossness of your iniquity, And because your hostility
is so great. 8 Ephraim was a watchman with my God, a prophet; Yet the snare of
a bird catcher is in all his ways, And there is only hostility in the house of
his God. 9 They have gone deep in depravity As in the days of Gibeah; He will remember their iniquity,
He will punish their sins.”
The sub-title which we are looking
at in this SD is entitled “Egyptian Bondage.”
I have highlighted those sections which speak of Egypt in this section
of Hosea.
When we do a search of the word “Egypt”
in the book of Hosea we will find it is there thirteen times and it is broken
up into three categories. The past—The exodus
of the Jewish people from Egypt as seen in (2:15; 11:1; 12:9, 13; and
13:4. The present—Israel’s the unholy
alliances with Egypt as seen in 7:11, 16; and 12:1. The future—Egypt as a symbol of their
impending bondage to Assyria and this is seen in 813; 9:3, 6, 11:5, and
11. As we look over our text for this SD
we will see that three times the prophet announces that they shall go to Egypt
and this is a symbol for Assyrian bondage:
“He shall not return to the land of Egypt; but the Assyrians shall be
his king” as seen in the NKJV of the Bible.
Hosea contrasts the Exodus from
Egypt with the impending “Exodus” into bondage that will take them to Assyria
which is seen as the new Egypt. When
Israel left Egypt in the exodus they had not yet received the Law nor did they
have the tabernacle and all of its systems of worship and sacrifices. We know that by the time of Hosea that the
Jews have had known of the Law and all of the sacrificial systems that were in
place. The problem was that they
rejected the Law of the Lord and they also allowed the priesthood to be
contaminated. Verse 11 in the NIV reads
as follows “Though Ephraim built many altars for sin, offerings, these have
become altars for sinning.”
We have already learned that Israel
did not call upon the Lord for help when the Assyrians were about to attack
them, but they put their trust in the nations around them and in their
idols.
7/2/2015
10:18 PM
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