A Cry for Help

Intro

Have you ever been in this situation. Some one comes to you for advice. They are desperate because they feel as if everything is going wrong. So you listen to their issues, and you try to figure out exactly what is going wrong, so that you can give them good advice. and once you fully and truly understand their problem, you offer them great advice, like the best advice you could possibly give them, and they completely don’t even listen. Has this ever happened to anyone. Or perhaps someone badly needs advice, but will not ask and so you butt into their life to try and give them advice. Anyone ever done that? Did it work? Hosea is in that position in our chapter today, we don’t know if Israel asked for his advice, or he is just sharing it but, Hosea is giving this advice that he knows is going to fall on deaf ears.

Where Help comes from

Last week we talked about the question, who do we turn to when all help fails us. In our scripture we have seen that the Israelites have become confused. We talked last week about how The Israelites have tried to turn to the assyrians in order to rescue themselves. This was as we talked about a terrible idea they should have turned to God. So know here in chapter six the prophet Hosea is crying out to the people of Israel, imploring them to turn back to God. he cries “Come, let us return to the Lord” Hosea cuts straight to the point, we have to turn back to God if we want any chance of of being restored and of being rescued. The rest of the verse says that God has torn the people of Israel and that God may heal them, that God has struck them down and that God will bind them up. Basically saying here that despite the fact that everything has crumbled around Israel, God can still fix this. God can heal the nation. What a message that is, honestly, A message that we need to hear today, that God can heal a nation. Look around doesn’t America need healing today?

Now certainly we are not in the same situation as Israel, America is not the chosen people of God, so God does not make the same promises to us that he did to Israel, however it does not change the fact that God has the power to heal a country.

God will revive

Hosea goes into the second verse of the chapter and says that in two day he will revive us, and the third day he will raise us up. I don’t know about you but when I hear a verse in the bible talking about the third day, I am thinking that its talking about the Resurrection of Jesus, and my mind and heart get excited and I want to go some place. But as my Prophets professors always told me, wait a second and look at the context. Because this verse may well be a allusion to the death and Resurrection of Jesus, but it also had significance many years before Jesus when Hosea spoke it. So what is that significance,

What Hosea is saying is that, though the punishment and struggle will happen The restoration of the people of Israel is in sight. It is not so far away that it cannot be seen, The reason I think that Hosea says this, is because he understands that hope doesn’t feel like hope when there is no end in sight. I am sure that most of us have been in situations whether in jobs, or financially, or mentally, in which we have felt helpless and haven’t been able to see any sort of way out. If you think back on those situations, there was a point when you could see the end of the situation, and you knew that you might be able to make it. And that is all you need to continue to power through. So when Hosea says after two days God will revive us, he is not saying literally two days into captivity God is going to save us, what he is saying is that it will not be a permanent punishment.

Of course God is not going to rescue anyone, who is not going to live for him, or before him. The very last line of verse two says that God will raise us up, that we may live before him. In other words what Hosea is saying is that God wants to rescue his people but he will not do that if they are not committed to living for him.

This is clearly a message for us today as well. we need to understand that our hope does come from God, but if we abandon him, and refuse to live for God, we wont be able to find help from God, because God desires real devotion from his people, The prophet Joel in a similar plea to God’s people cried out in for God’s people to “rend your hearts and not your garments” getting our hearts into the correct place is absolutely critical if we want to find help from God.

Pursue God

In verse three Hosea implores the people of Israel to press on to know the Lord. Shouldn’t God’s people already know the Lord? if you remember a few weeks ago when we were in , we read the verse where Hosea said There is no knowledge of God in the Land. So Hosea knows what he is talking about, the people of Israel have forgotten who God is and if they want to return to God they will actually, shockingly have to make an effort for themselves to learn who God is. Not only to learn who God is, but the people of Israel must pursue God for themselves so that they can again understand that God is actually consistent. As Hosea says God’s going out is sure as the dawn, he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

That is some flowery language to say that God is doing the same thing every day, and even though the people of Israel may feel as though God has abandoned them, Hosea is throwing shade at them saying its not God, God hasn’t changed you have changed. You have abandoned the ways of God and then blamed your failure on God. That is plain crazy.

In college one time I walked into class and sat down, and looked around and everyone had notes out and were studying I thought it was kind of strange because it was Tuesday, and I knew that our test was Thursday. Turns out I had gotten the test day confused and we had a test that day. Needless to say I failed the test because I wasn’t prepared. Now if I was like the Israelites I would have blamed my professor for failing that test. It wasn’t his fault it was my fault because I screwed up.

The Israelites screwed up and Hosea has to remind them that it wasn’t God’s fault they screwed up, so God’s not going to come get them, they need to turn their own lives around and remember the greatness and consistency of God.

Conclusion

We hear Hosea’s message today, like a clarion call “Let us return to the Lord” those words are so filled with impact, and are a powerful urge to us today. Return to the Lord, press on to know the Lord. What more do we need to say. If we want God to do great things in our lives, in our church, in our city, in our state, in our country, we need to do these two things that the prophet Hosea urged the Israelites to do so many years ago, Return to the Lord and press on to know the Lord. There are many ways that I could tell you to go about getting closer to God. But most of you know them all already. So I will ask you what I ask myself, what is keeping us from drawing closer to God.