Hosea 6:6

Publicans, prostitutes, and lepers--swindlers, tempters, and the disease ridden.  These were the riffraff with whom Jesus spent time.

The refined, educated people were indignant, even outraged.  They demanded that the rabbi explain himself. 

But Jesus never answers to others. He made them answer to him.  He told them to go back to school and learn their scripture again. He quoted Hosea 6:6

For I desire mercy, not sacrifice. (Hosea 6:6).

                       

Mercy is more important than any religious trappings we might display.  

How well we understand God depends on how kind we are to those who don’t deserve it. 

On Hosea 6

God instructs Hosea to marry a prostitute who continues to be unfaithful when they’re married. It’s kind of a live action sermon illustration to describe Israel’s unfaithfulness to God, and which God is justified in punishing.  

Yet the prophet holds out hope that all can be restored if they go back to a God who waits for them. 

The words of verse 1 trouble me:

He has torn us to pieces
   but he will heal us;
he has injured us
   but he will bind up our wounds.

It bothers me that God is on record as being vengeful. 

There have been times when I thought God was hurting me deliberately. It wasn’t that he was standing back to let me reap from what I had sown, but as Hosea wrote, he was actively punishing me.

In order to find my spiritual equilibrium I had to forgive God for hurting me just as God chooses to forgive me for hurting Him. 

That sounds presumptuous in the context of my Christian theology, and no doubt people will want to straighten out my thinking.  But I doubt they’ll say anything that I hadn’t already considered. 

It’s what I had to do to be friends again with the God I serve.

On Psalm 150

 ¹ Praise the LORD.

  Praise God in his sanctuary;
   praise him in his mighty heavens.
² Praise him for his acts of power;
   praise him for his surpassing greatness.
³ Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet,
   praise him with the harp and lyre,
⁴ praise him with timbrel and dancing,
   praise him with the strings and pipe,
⁵ praise him with the clash of cymbals,
   praise him with resounding cymbals.

 ⁶ Let everything that has breath praise the LORD.

   Praise the LORD.(NIV)

The urge to praise is especially strong when I am very happy or very sad. 

Perhaps praise during time of celebration makes sense, but it’s when I’m grieving that the need to praise becomes acute.  Loss makes us feel helpless and defeated. Praise reminds me that I’m neither. 

I remember when a death in the family hit me hard that I cranked up the stereo to play “The Hallelujah Chorus,” along which I sang with my voice cranked up at full volume, too.

It was my way of defying darkness and declaring my loyalty. 

It felt right. 

Two Different Agendas

I want to expand on something I said in the pulpit on Sunday. I said that we needed to avoid expending our resources on exerting political muscle and instead focus on the truly powerful qualities that stem from the grace of Christ. 

I did not mean that Christians should avoid being part of the community at large. Certainly, Christian individuals need to exercise their right to vote and speak freely and even campaign for things about which they feel strongly. 

But the church as an institution needs to focus on the mission of Christ which has a different perspective from political agendas of a government.  We change the world through the word of Jesus and acts of grace, which is different from a government’s perspective.

I wanted to be clear on this because in our congregation we have people who hold positions in the government and do a terrific job in their service to the community, and I do not want to devalue them.  In fact, I appreciate them very much.

And no, no one came to me with a complaint. I reviewed my sermon on Sunday afternoon and decided I needed to be more precise.  

What Will the Children Think?

I heard a parent on television object to taking her children to church because she wants to allow them to make up their own minds about religious stuff.  

That’s what I want for my kids, too. But to make good decisions, children have to have some information, starting with what their parents believe.

This is true about money matters, driving, dating, work, marriage and family, exercise, hygiene, lawn care, food, car maintenance, etc. 

Children do indeed grow up to think their own thoughts and make their own decisions about everything.  When they're young, we give them information, guidance, and structure, so they’ll be equipped to make the best choices they can.  

So why not help them with religion and spirituality? 

To put it bluntly, I think some of us have gotten pretty lazy about having spiritual convictions. If we are going to teach the children, we have to have something to teach them. If we don’t read, pray, think, meditate, show appreciation for God, and practice spiritual values, then we don’t really have anything to teach the children.  
 
And they’ll HAVE to find it on their own. 

I hope they’ll do better than the generation before them. 

Sermons on the Web

I finally learned how to put some of my audio sermons on the net.  You can check me out at:


sermon.net/davidmercer

Beyond the Sacred Page

I just heard a person described as loving the Bible with all her heart, mind and soul. 

Commendable, I guess. 

However, the most important command of that Bible is to love the Lord, thy God with all our hearts, minds, and souls.

I love the Bible, too. But the Bible isn’t God. It isn’t a person at all.  It is a tool by which I can gain insight into the nature of God. 

Am I just splitting hairs? I don’t think so. If you worship an inanimate object, that’s called idolatry. In fact, there is a specialized term for people who worship the Bible: bibliolatry.  It leads to death, dissatisfaction, and loneliness, just like any other form of idolatry.

I hate to talk about this in an age when so few people really look at their Bibles. The Bible is important. It’s a collection of our most ancient and basic documents upon which Christianity is based. People need to know their scriptures because it’s a principle way of getting to know their God. 

But the Bible isn’t God.    

Like the song said originally: “BEYOND the sacred page, I seek thee, Lord.”