SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/20/2015
8:24 PM
My Worship Time Focus: The Reasons
for Discipline
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Hosea
12:7-13:6
Message of the
verses: “7 A merchant, in whose
hands are false balances, He loves to oppress. 8 And Ephraim said, "Surely
I have become rich, I have found wealth for myself; In all my labors they will
find in me No iniquity, which would be sin." 9 But I have been the LORD your God since the
land of Egypt; I will make you live in tents again, As in the days of the
appointed festival. 10 I have also spoken to the prophets, And I gave numerous
visions, And through the prophets I gave parables. 11 Is there iniquity in Gilead? Surely they
are worthless. In Gilgal they sacrifice bulls, Yes, their altars are like the
stone heaps Beside the furrows of the field. 12 Now Jacob fled to the land of
Aram, And Israel worked for a wife, And for a wife he kept sheep. 13 But by a prophet the LORD
brought Israel from Egypt, And by a prophet he was kept. 14 Ephraim has
provoked to bitter anger; So his
Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him And bring back his reproach to
him.
“1 When Ephraim spoke, there was trembling.
He exalted himself in Israel, But through Baal he did wrong and died. 2 And now they sin more
and more, And make for themselves molten images, Idols skillfully made from
their silver, All of them the work of craftsmen. They say of them, "Let
the men who sacrifice kiss the calves!" 3 Therefore they will be like the morning cloud And
like dew which soon disappears, Like chaff which is blown away from the
threshing floor And like smoke from a chimney. 4 Yet I have been the LORD your
God Since the land of Egypt; And you were not to know any god except Me, For there is no savior besides Me. 5 I cared for you in the wilderness, In the
land of drought. 6 As they had their pasture, they became satisfied, And being satisfied, their heart became proud;
Therefore they forgot Me.”
I want to begin by giving a reminder from something that
I learned when I studied the book of Ezekiel.
There was a section in Ezekiel where he wrote about the sins of
countries other than Israel and when I studied that section I remember that in
his commentary Dr. Wiersbe wrote that God was going to destroy those countries
that Ezekiel was writing about because they were not His children like Israel
was. The reason that I write this now is
because we can see from the above passage that though God will discipline
Israel, they still belong to Him, unlike the other nations that we read about
from Ezekiel and other prophets.
Hosea identifies some of the sins that Israel has
committed in this section however some he has already mentioned earlier.
In 12:7 we read “A merchant, in whose hands are false
balances, He loves to oppress.” We see
two sins here that Hosea mentions, first a false balance and then oppressing the
people who buys from him. This is
followed by pride as seen in verse eight, and this leads to
self-sufficiency. One of the things that
God has taught me, and I suppose it is fair to say that He is still in the
process of teaching me and that is to trust the Giver of the gifts He gives to
me rather than the gifts that He gives to me.
Let us look at a verse we have already studied from the book of
Revelation and chapter three and verse seventeen: “’Because you say, "I am rich, and have
become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you
are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” Because of this sin the Lord promised to
humble them, as He tells them that instead of enjoying their houses they would
have to again live in tents. Dr. Wiersbe
writes “When the Assyrians were through with Israel, the Jews would be grateful
even for the booths they lived in for a week during the Feast of Tabernacles.”
We can see from 12:10 that the prophets that God had sent
to Israel were not listened to as Israel turned away from the Word of God and
instead practiced idolatry as seen in verses 11-13. Dr. Wiersbe writes the following on the word
Ephraim: “Hosea singled out the arrogant
attitude of the tribe of Ephraim (13:1-3.
The name Ephraim is found thirty-seven times in Hosea’s prophecy. Sometimes ‘Ephraim’ is a synonym for the
whole Northern Kingdom, but here the prophet was addressing the tribe of
Ephraim in particular. Ephraim and
Manasseh were the sons of Joseph whom Jacob ‘adopted and whose birth order he
reverses (Gen. 48). Manasseh was the
firstborn, but Jacob gave that honor to Ephraim.”
Ephraim felt like they were an important tribe in Israel
that people should listen to and obey.
There were certain people that came from this tribe like Joshua and also
the first king of the Northern Kingdom came from Ephraim. In the early days of Israel in the Promised
Land the city of Shiloh was where the Tabernacle there and this was in Ephraim. When the first king of Israel, Saul died
Ephraim would not submit to David, which was a mistake on their part, and when
the Northern Kingdom came into power Ephraim continued to make more mistakes as
they were not worshiping the Lord as He desired because of their pride and
because the temple of the Lord was in Jerusalem. Next we see that Ephraim abandoned the Lord
and began to worship Baal, and this was the straw that broke the camel’s back
so to speak.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes this section by writing: “The name ‘Ephraim’ means ‘fruitful,’ and
this was a very fruitful tribe. Through
Jacob, God had promised abundant blessings to Joseph and his sons (Gen. 48;
49:22-26), and that promise was fulfilled. It’s too bad the people didn’t use
what God gave them for God’s glory.
I want to mention how verse six touched my heart as it
says “As they had their pasture, they became satisfied, And being satisfied, their heart became proud; Therefore they forgot Me.”
This touched my heart in a way that I can see that if a person does not
follow what is written in this verse they will be better off, as this is a
warning not to follow this spiral downfall.
7/20/2015 9:06 PM
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