Grafted-in, Pt 4: Israel has stumbled.

Hosea 14:1-3, 9                      1Return, Israel, to the LORD your God.  Your sins have been your downfall!  2Take words with you and return to the LORD.  Say to him: “Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we may offer the fruit of our lips.  3Assyria cannot save us; we will not mount warhorses.  We will never again say ‘Our gods’ to what our own hands have made, for in you the fatherless find compassion.” ….  9Who is wise?  Let them realize these things.  Who is discerning?  Let them understand.  The ways of the LORD are right; the righteous walk in them, but the rebellious stumble in them.

We often hear that Israel is God’s chosen people and that we are grafted into that family through our acceptance of Jesus as our Savior.  But what does that mean?  What does it mean to be chosen?  People often answer those questions by saying that God intended to use the family line of Abraham (the eventual nation of Israel) to bring his message of salvation to the world.  We tend to think of that message as one of blessing, thinking of the eternal greatness a person receives through his personal salvation experience.

Sins bring consequence

But there is another side to that coin:  The revelation of God’s love through Jesus is the fullest expression of God’s message, but it is not the complete story.  God created people to have relationship with him; he seems to have intended daily interactions in the Garden with his new family (Adam, Eve, and their family).  But Adam’s sin broke the intimacy of that relationship because God cannot interact with sin.  So God set about teaching the world through the nation of Israel what righteousness and holiness is all about and what relationship with God means.

That instruction had a fullness of scope that we don’t think about very much.  We like to talk about the blessing of being in God’s family, but we don’t talk much about the necessary discipline that comes from rebellion against God’s precepts.  The head of any human family has certain principles and precepts he lives by, and he expects his family to follow them.  When his children don’t, especially in their teenage years, he issues discipline as a way of teaching why his principles are valuable and important.

It was no different with God’s teaching of his children.  Israel’s obedience to God’s precepts flowed and ebbed through the centuries as Godly and ungodly kings rose and fell.  In fact, the establishment of the monarchy was itself sinful because it meant the rejection of direct Godly rule through the prophets because the people wanted to be like other nations and have kings of their own.  As a consequence, the wavering under bad kings into idolatry and immoral practices brought correction from God in the form of drought, or pestilence, or even invasion by the Assyrians and Babylonians.

Stumbled in many ways

Israel did stumble, sometimes in big ways, sometimes in little.  We wouldn’t have thought wanting a kingship to be sinful, but it was because it rejected God’s direct rule.  A whole list of sins can be listed as to the ways Israel stumbled:  Things like idolatry, rebellion, temple prostitutes, immoral behavior, pride, and child sacrifice reared their ugly heads at the various low points throughout Israel’s history.

But these are just symptoms of the greater sin, which was Israel’s rebellion against God their creator.  The first word of the verse indicates the problem.  Israel was deliberately chosen to turn away from God and they need to return.  God didn’t reject them; they rejected God.  Israel’s sins were blatant, but also easy to understand.  God is invisible after all, so Israel fell into sin common to humanity.  They trusted in what they could see.  They trusted in the protection offered by armies and horses; they trusted in idols represented by things they could make with their hands.  Their whole national life, an expression of each individual life, was a flimsy fabric of political, economic, or religious instability.  The reaction to instability is to strike out in any way necessary to find security and steadiness. 

The LORD’s ways are right

The Israelites failed to understand that security and steadiness are exactly to be found in the very thing they rejected.  God’s precepts are intended to provide the pathway to righteousness and holiness.  “Well, how does that change anything?” you might ask.

17Be sure to keep the commands of the LORD your God and the stipulations and decrees he has given you. 18Do what is right and good in the LORD’s sight, so that it may go well with you…. (Deuteronomy 6:17-18)

The answer to the question is that God brings rewards and consequences upon people based on their choices.  When we avoid evil people the temptation to act like they do diminishes.  When we stop swearing, we lessen the likelihood of offense.  When we stop drinking alcohol, we also stop the likelihood of diminished responses affecting our lives.  Following God’s precepts keeps us on the right path, but wavering opens the door to unexpected consequences.

What about me?

Israel’s history is replete with successes and failures, but the ebbs and flows of nations are the result of an accumulation of individuals’ various successes and failures.  One can be forgiven for thinking that one decision has little impact on their nation’s course, but that thinking is incorrect.  Every decision is based on situations and decisions which have gone before.

But people can think independently.  We follow a God who holds righteousness and holiness to be good things.  To align ourselves with this precept, we must acknowledge that the world’s ways are not God’s ways.  The world has said 62 million times that it is OK to end a life that is inconvenient, but sooner or later God will bring consequence on a nation which has killed 62 million unborn people.

We can be different.  We can choose to follow God’s precepts.  We can live holding to the greatest and second-greatest commandments.

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” 29“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  There is no commandment greater than these (Mark 12:28-31).

So let’s ask ourselves, “How to we respond to life’s ebbs and flows?”  Do we respond like we used to before we came to Christ?  Do we curse, moan, and wail?  When we face an opponent, do we realize he’s just a little boy struggling to understand what’s going on?  Loving God with all our strength means being in relationship with him.  It means asking him what to do in situations (prayer).  It means listening for an answer.  Even as believers, all of this is foreign to our natural selves; we must cultivate and grow our spiritual selves.  No time better to start than right now.