Hosea 9:1 - 17
Chapter 9 describes the turmoil in Israel that is consuming everyone from the man on the street to the priests. He makes it clear that His judgment against His own people is just. He wants to judge them holy, but cannot because of their reckless and deliberate sin and rebellion.
Verses 7 through 9 say that, "Because your sins are so many and your hostility so great, the prophet is considered a fool, the inspired man a maniac. 8 The prophet, along with my God, is the watchman over Ephraim, yet snares await him on all his paths, and hostility in the house of his God. 9 They have sunk deep into corruption,…"
O my goodness. How much more relevant could the Old Testament get than these verses? Christians today are considered by many to be either fools or maniacs. The world seems to deliberately place traps in their paths with the "you should not have" incidents around the country. "You should not have": invited a coworker to your church; laid your Bible in plain sight on your desk; peacefully demonstrated at an abortion clinic; wrote a paper for school on Jesus as your most admired hero; told someone that salvation comes only through Jesus. Even some Christian leaders have fallen to the temptation to adjust their words so as not to offend the world's sensibilities.
How many Christians today have also joined ancient Israel in their pursuit of idols? Our idols are not made of stone, but of steel, electronics, investments, power, prestige, and our position compared to our neighbors'.
How do we answer our culture, and even some of our Christian brothers and sisters? We answer with love. No, not the love that says we approve of the disastrous changes in our country's moral center, but the love that says we care enough about the people around us to speak out.
Too many of us are speaking by our silence. We grant de facto approval to the sin going on around us by remaining silent. Is the fear of being labeled as a Christian fanatic worth allowing sin to be promoted on television, in books, in movies, sometimes on the news, and even in the courts, without refutation? The Holy Spirit lives in us. He has the power to work through us, but we have to be willing participants. Through us He can show a world that is convinced that we are judgmental jerks that Jesus really does love the sinner but hate the sin.
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