Dev Ramcharan - Hosea - When Israel was a Child, I Loved Him - Class 3 (Exhort) - When Israel was a Child, I Loved Him

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Good morning, my beloved brothers and sisters, and the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning we’re going to begin in Ezekiel chapter 16. Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, ’cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say Thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem, Thy birth and thy nativity is of the land of Canaan.

2. 0:30

   Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother and Hittite. And As for thy Nativity and the day thou was born, thy navel was not cut, neither was thou washed in water. To supperly thou was not salted at all, nor swaddled at all. You know, in these ancient Gentile times, brothers and sisters, it was a very common thing among Gentile nations, all the way up to the Romans, to take a child, a newborn baby that you didn’t want, and to expose them naked somewhere out in a rubbish dump area. Little babies cast out because they were considered to be repugnant to the parents, to the mother of that child. It might be a child born out of wedlock. It might be a child that was diseased and could not live a normal life.

3. 1:39

   There were many reasons that one might not want that child. And God. God walks by this child in this beautiful parable, this analogy, this metaphor. And he sees that little baby. There’s nothing attractive about that baby, covered in blood with its umbilical cord, not even cut out there in the open, kicking around in her blood, in the dust. What would you do if you saw something like that? He sees this little baby, he says. None I pitied thee to do any of these things unto thee, to have compassion upon thee.

4. 2:32

   But thou wast cast out in the open field to the loathing of thy person in the day that thou wast born from the 2nd, that Israel was born apart from God, she was doomed to death with no hope, nothing, nothing that she could pull upon as any recourse to save her. Outside of God, she was nothing.

5. 3:09

   But that’s not just a picture of Israel, is it? It’s a picture of you and me. It is exceedingly hard for people in the Western world, with all of the opulence of our material affluence, our wealth, to imagine ourselves to be of no value, incapable of doing anything that could save us. When we do so much with this little arm of ours, this, this flawed and faulty hard drive in our skulls that fitfully, sporadically delivers out of trouble, it’s hard for us to see what we truly are. And that is what we are.

6. 4:05

   We are that baby. We are that little helpless one with no eye pitying us, doomed to death because of sin and our nature that we carry inside of us that internal leprosy that is ours, that that manifests itself in the wrong things that we do and think and say. And yet God looked at all of that. God looked at you with everything that you are and said, I love you and I’m going to take care of you. And and that is exactly what he did. That is exactly what he did.

7. 4:53

   When I passed by thee, and saw thee polluted in thine own blood. I said unto thee, When thou wast in thy blood, live, Yeah, I said unto thee, When thou wast in thy blood, live. God gave Jerusalem life. God gave Israel life. God gave Judah life. God gave you life. He gave you life.

8. 5:29

   Remember when you were learning about the truth as a kid or someone coming in from the outside in to the community? Remember that time just before you were baptized, where you almost felt this sense of desperation. You want to be baptized right away, even before the lessons had concluded, because you were afraid God would send his son before you’d been baptized. And and what would your condition be then? There was a a fervent desire to be associated with him through baptism, because God had said to you, live, I want you to live, and you wanted that life.

9. 6:17

   And then it says in verse seven, I caused thee to multiply as the butt of the field, and thou hast increased and wax, and great thou art come to excellent ornaments. Thy breasts are fashioned, and thine hair is grown, whereas thou wast naked and bare. Now when I passed by thee and looked upon the Behold, thy time was the time of love.

10. 6:48

    And I took, I took my skirt and I I covered it. I covered you with it, I married you. You became my wife. And we know that that we came into the truth like little babies, and were washed by God in the waters of baptism, And in that those waters of baptism we died to a king to whom we were slaves.

11. 7:23

    King’s sin, who worked us to death with nothing after no reward, no hope, a life of sin outside of God’s truth, with nothing in the end, not even a handful of dust. King’s sin giving us the wages of sin, death. And when that king lost his servant in the water of baptism, be arose as sons and daughters, as servants of the living God, a new master, someone who didn’t just rule over us with rigor the way the Egyptians did with Israel, but with love and looks at us as his children. Now for wealthy people like you and me, these words may sound very commonplace and work a day and not that rich in meaning and substance.

12. 8:32

    But when you are a poor African brother making an average of $100 a month in the Congo trying to raise 10 kids, and you hear words like that, they mean everything to you. And when you are a 90 year old sister and your hips give way every time you try to stand up, you can’t lift your arms above your head. When you step down in the morning, you feel pain all the way through your lower leg, up into your thigh and up through your lower back.

13. 9:14

    When you turn suddenly because of a loud noise beside you, you feel intense pain in your neck. When you’re in that condition, these words mean everything. It’s only the in between bit of illusory strength and the ability to do things for ourselves that puts us into that dream state of everything is all right. And I’m happy with my life as it is. I have what I need and I can do for myself, and all of that is a period of illusion.

14. 9:53

    It’s gone so quickly. You were 20 yesterday. You’re 60 today. You’re 80 or 90 tomorrow. And you realize that all of what you thought you could do for yourself, you really couldn’t do for yourself. And so this, this, this woman becomes beautiful. And look what God says. Verse 9 then washed I thee with water. Yeah, yeah, I truly washed away thy blood from thee. Now she’s all grown up.

15. 10:29

    But what God is saying to her is this. Whatever uncleanness I found you in when you were a baby is still with you, and I still love you. I had to wash you and care for you then, and I’ve had to wash you and care for you all the way through to the day you are my bride.

16. 10:51

    Now if we just take that then and and overlay on top of it our marriage to the Lord Jesus Christ, which happens at the return of the Lord right now, we are His betrothed. We’re engaged. Does that washing not happen regularly? Are we not here this morning for a washing through the Word, through the the bread and the wine, and the memory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and what he did for us? I clothed the also with the broided work that reminds us of the King’s daughter, all glorious within, and all the needlework and brocade she has on her in Psalm 45. It also pitches our minds forward to Revelation 19 and the bride clothed in linen that she has been given, that she’s also prepared for herself, the two working together, a life she lived and a garment given to her by the Lord. The righteous acts of the Saints, the revised version says, And that passage And so God washes us, God clothes us. But it doesn’t just end, spiritually speaking. Every one of us in this room is sitting in clothing that belongs to God and was given us by him.

17. 12:27

    And you might think, well, what? I worked hard. I bought this for myself. This is mine. I bought it for me. But you see, that’s what Israel said about the wine and the cloth and the grain in Hosea. And God corrected that and said, no, no, no, it’s my wine, it’s my grain, it’s my wool that I gave to you.

18. 12:54

    And so Israel lost all those things. And it wasn’t till then that she would realized, realize those things did not belong to her. They were not hers. God had given them to him and to her. Now, brothers and sisters, this woman begins then to become renowned for her beauty, Speaking of Israel, Speaking of Judah, renowned in her beauty, wealthy, prosperous, a place of great trade and trade agreements with foreign nations.

19. 13:35

    And as they entered more and more into these agreements, they became more and more tied into the world and its worship and its cultural norms and behaviours. So that it says in verse 15 without its trust in thine own beauty. And whose beauty should she have trusted? In the beauty of the Lord.

20. 14:00

    The beauty of his word, the beauty of his sacrifices, the beauty of his temple, the beauty of the privilege of priesthood, of service, of all the things that honoured God, all the beautiful things that he had given to her. Now what do you and I have then that is like that? Well, there’s the word of God and rejoicing in it and daily engagement with it. But then there is ecclesial life, and that’s not a thing that we can give or take, be involved in or not. That too is a part.

21. 14:42

    That too is a part of what God has given us to be continuously engaged in. It’s a part of our waiting, this life of waiting for people in the West. You just need to go on to Amazon or eBay and click a couple of clicks on their keyboard and then get what they want tomorrow or today. Waiting is not something we’re wired for, is it? But we are waiting.

22. 15:16

    We’re waiting for our Lord to return. And part of our waiting is a quiet trust and believe that God is going to do everything he said he’s going to do with us and with his people, Israel. But the waiting is an active and busy waiting too, active and ecclesial life and in our families. If we think that we can wait and not be involved with our ecclesias, then there’s a whole realm of what that waiting involves, that we are denying ourselves and denying ourselves too, in service to our brothers and our sisters. Now, you might think to yourself, look, I’m 85 years old.

23. 16:07

    I can barely get up out of this chair. What can I do to help my brothers and sisters? You can do the most powerful thing a human being can do. Now you might think that’s building their house for them, fixing their car for them, taking them in your car to the hospital or to the doctor’s office, taking a brother and sister and being with them as they journey through their long term chronic disease. But none of that is the greatest thing you can do for your brothers and sisters.

24. 16:43

    The greatest thing that you can do for them is to pray for them. Just think what you’re doing when you’re praying. You are engaging the attention of Almighty God Yahweh Elohim, the great and holy God of Israel, the Father of our Lord. You are connecting with him above all the kings and Queens, Princess and princesses of this world, directly to ask His help and involvement the life of somebody in the Ecclesia.

25. 17:28

    Old brother, old sister. All you need to do is listen to what’s going on in the ecclesia to know what to pray for. You can be lying in your bed, immobile and still doing the most powerful thing you can do for your ecclesia. There’s nothing that God cannot do in answer to prayer according to His will. And when you think you are most helpless and of no value to the ecclesia, you’re wrong.

26. 18:04

    And when you wake up in the morning and you think, why am I still here? Why didn’t I die last night? It’s because God’s not done with you yet, and you still have work to do. You still have people to pray for and love to express to your brothers and sisters. An old brother hugged me yesterday.

27. 18:32

    I will never forget that for the rest of my life. That’s the impact, old brother, old sister that you have on the Ecclesia. Do not underestimate the value, the wisdom, the power that God has given you in your old age. This woman trusted in her beauty, in her own strength, and then she ran with the abominations and the worship of the world. And think of what a short period of time she enjoyed that before she lost everything.

28. 19:18

    Everything. But God loved her, this wayward woman, this Gomer of Judah and of Israel, all the way through her life. You ask yourself, how can God love me with all my sin, all my brokenness? If my brothers and sisters could peel back the layers of my brain and look inside, they’d be horrified.

29. 19:46

    They’d never talk to me again for the rest of my life. And if that’s you, that is also me. And if we were to be honest with ourselves, that is every one of us in this room. And yet God looks at us with the blood, the gore, the frailty, the weakness, the gaps, the deficiencies, the defects in every one of us.

30. 20:14

    And he says, I know you, Ephraim. And I still love you and I still gave my son for you. We talk about that Greek word agape, Agape. We say we say it means self sacrificing love and we’re wrong. That’s not the right definition of that word. The Greek word means this love that chooses its object with decision of will and is devoted to it. Now what does that mean?

31. 20:55

    When your teenaged boy mum is shaking his fist in your face and swearing at you with the most gutturally foul language imaginable and you look at that child and you say to yourself, I’m still going to love you? That’s agape love. That’s a love where you choose to love him in his utterly unlovable state. That’s what it means.

32. 21:27

    And when Christ looked at every one of us, look down, look down at that surging, raging crowd of people and all of the poisonous, extravagant, horrific language that was hurled at him. When he saw his mother, his aunt, and his disciple at the foot of the cross, when he looked at all of that mess, he chose to love all of those people, Not not just the ones that were in him, but the one for the ones for whom he prayed and said, Father, forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing. And so God looks at every one of us in all of our palpable ugliness, and he says, I love you in spite of it all. I love you so much.

33. 22:27

    I gave my son for you, and I want you to love your ugly brother and sister with their brokenness the way I love you.

34. 22:45

    And that’s what I want you to be like. And so we go then, brothers and sisters, to Hosea, Chapter 11. And the nature of the study is such that we can’t go through every chapter and every verse. That would take 20 weeks of effort. We can only pick out themes. Hosea 11 When Israel was a child.

35. 23:15

    When Israel was that baby in her blood, in the dust, cast out as refuse with no value assigned to her. When Israel was a child, then I loved him, called my son out of Egypt. And so God would take that child that was under the domination of King Sin in Egypt and bring his child out into the wilderness. God would look at his beloved Son, who would fulfill all of the potential of Israel and do it perfectly and call him out of Egypt.

36. 24:08

    But God would look at you and me and call us out of the the Egypt of flesh and all the hope that it has, which is nothing at all, and ask us to be his kids, to be his beloved children, he says. You know, the more I call them, the more they went away from me.

37. 24:38

    They burned incense to things that didn’t exist, but I’d taken them and had not only brought them out of Egypt as babies, I taught them to walk. I had them hold on to my hands as they walked, like the beautiful picture that is on screen. I put little cords around their arms, near their shoulders, so that they would learn to walk step by step in the truth. I did all of that for them.

38. 25:12

    I drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love, love, perfect love, Love that made a choice to love the unlovable and has stayed loyal and faithful and at your side every day of your life, every day you’ve been in the truth has been with you as you’ve struggled and had your trials.

39. 25:57

    Has never, ever walked away from you. Even when anyone else would walk away from you. Has had moments when you have walked away from that love or not realize the way that that love applies to you and how you love one another. And that love, that drawing, the drawing of all men unto God through Christ, continues even today as we preach God’s truth and as we remember the things that we do today with the bread and the wine.

40. 26:39

    And then we see the heart of God open up like a flower. We see it in its fullness. And he says, How shall I give thee up, Ephraim, with all of your behaviour, with all the vadnais of your life, with all of your disloyalty, with all of your forgetfulness, of everything I’ve done for you all through your lives? Psalm 78 says to you, old brothers and sisters, give testimony to the generations of what God has done for you in your life.

41. 27:20

    Tell them how God got you through problems. How God saved your marriage or saved you when it fell apart. How God saved your children. How God got your ecclesia through a tunnel of fire. Tell them those stories. How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver thee? How shall I make thee as Admah?

42. 27:47

    How shall I set thee as Zeboim? How will I destroy you like those cities of the plain? I can’t do that to you because you’re still my wife and I still love you, though you don’t love me and have forgotten me, he says. When I was angry, I turned myself away from expressing that and feeling that my heart is turned within me.

43. 28:22

    There’s an internal turmoil that God feels because of his love for her. My compassions are kindled together. I will not execute the full fierceness of my anger towards you, because then I would destroy you and I’m not going to do that to you.

44. 28:44

    This God did not destroy you in your sin and has not destroyed you in your failure sins. He brought you out of flesh. This God has continued to take care of you and love you, but there is a place every one of us has to go to that we do not want to go to. Chapter 12, verse three.

45. 29:21

    Speaking of Jacob the womb, he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he had power with God. And therein lies that split in our hearts. Because Jacob, through his wits, through his arm, could do so much for himself. But there had to come a moment in his life when Jacob couldn’t use peeled steaks.

46. 29:56

    He couldn’t do anything. He was completely and utterly helpless and Western man and woman. If you haven’t had that day, it’s coming for you.

47. 30:13

    Because that’s when you meet your God. That’s when you finally know who he is, in a pool of tears, utterly and completely broken in pieces, with no one else around you but you and God in that darkness, wrestling with him as he puts your hip out, as he breaks through and into your life, as you see everything fall apart around you and you can’t do a thing. Not one thing.

48. 30:49

    And then none of your power, none of your might, none of your money, none of your friends, nothing. You drive No title you have in this world. None of that does anything for you.

49. 31:03

    What becomes powerful for you is what’s powerful for old brothers and sisters. Your tears and your pain and your crying out to God with a certain belief. He’s with me. He can hear every word I say, and he gave his Son for me. Many of you have been there.

50. 31:38

    Some of you are there right now. Know that in the middle of that pain, that loss, God is saving you. In the middle of the excruciation of the crucifixion, God was saving you and brothers and sisters, as you eat this bread and drink this wine, God is saving you and me even now.