Learning & Listening from the Prophets [Hosea and Our Obedience]

it's good to be with you again the beginning of this new year what a wonderful opportunity to allow god to lead us into 2021. i look forward to the time we have together in the morning to open our bibles to pray together to invite god into the midst of our lives after all the isolation of 2020 it's so valuable to know that we're not alone that god has his people in the earth in fact they're all over the earth i get messages on a regular basis from christian brothers and sisters in armenia in russia and south africa and jerusalem around the earth standing together praying for one another trusting god for his best our lesson today leads us towards that it's about listening to the prophets learning from the prophets not so much telling the future but learning about god's perspective on what's happening in the earth one of the most confusing things right now is what you trust for a source of information and at the end of the day our beginning point is god we need to know how to hear from him to understand his word and to trust him he will lead us through this year triumphantly we don't have to begin the year afraid grab your bible let's take some notes most of all open your heart god has something for us today see the great value of the word of god is it enables us to know the character of god he's not like us you know there are some respects the bible says in which we're made in his image but we have limits we're creatures and we are finite creatures we're subject to time and to the limits of our strength and our intellect and our five senses god is the omnipotent all-powerful omniscient all-knowing creator he's not like us he doesn't think like us he doesn't respond like us the bible tells us that that god's ways are as high above our ways as the heavens are above the earth that his thoughts are that far beyond our thoughts we can't think god thoughts unless he puts one in us so when we're reading through particularly like the prophets you want to read don't get bogged down in the names or the countries or say god help me to see your character we fall into a habit of reading our bibles that is not helpful you read it with a cynical attitude it's prevalent it's been introduced to us by academia it's been introduced to us by theology schools which means it's been handed to us from pulpits and professional christians but reading your bible with a cynical tone is not helpful instance if you if you read the bible and says god parted the red sea and you go i don't know if i believe that what's wrong with you if you picked up a book about watermelons and you're going to read about watermelons and it said it's a large green it's a large green skin when you break it open it's red on the inside i don't believe that what do you mean you don't believe that why are you reading the book do you understand how damaging it is to to read it and dismiss it i say that because when we read hosea hosea chapter one is bizarre and there's a window into the character of god that has been bouncing around inside of me for a while now i try to read ahead a little bit because and so i've been living with this a little bit let's just hosea chapter one we'll read a few verses the word of the lord that came to hosea during the reign of uzziah is going to list now the kings while he prophesies the book is a collection of sermons or prophecies that have come from this person named hosea in the 8th century bc during the reigns of uzziah jotham ahaz and hezekiah the kings of judah and during the reign of jeroboam the son of jehoash the king of israel now that's a timeline reference and there's two nations referenced and if you don't pay attention you'll miss it and you'll just think they're busy empty words but they're really not you'll remember some of you that after the reign of solomon who's the first king of israel saul not really a trick question second king of israel david and the third king is solomon for three kings the nation of israel is 12 tribes one united nation after solomon's death there is a civil war and the nation of israel is divided there's a northern nation 10 tribes in the north and that nation is still referred to in the bible as israel the capital of israel after the division is samaria somebody gets to go to the head of the class i heard that the southern nation the southern kingdom is judah and the capital of judah is jerusalem now you know enough of your bible to know there's a problem where's the temple jerusalem and god didn't initiate the civil war he didn't intend there to be two countries so the sacrifices and the pilgrimage feasts the three times a year they're commanded to go to the temple means that everybody from all 12 tribes would have to go to jerusalem to worship but there's a separate nation and those kings are politically astute enough and economically aware enough they don't want their people traveling to jerusalem with an expression of loyalty to a temple in another nation and they certainly don't want to take them taking economic resources to do that so they create alternative places to worship in the northern kingdom of israel idolatry and they begin to compromise on the principles that have defined them as a people so the northern kingdom the nation of israel after the division the divided monarchy never has a single king that the bible acknowledges is godly but when you're reading through the prophets some of the prophets prophesied in judah and some prophesied in israel but as the books are put together to give you a historical perspective they tell you who was king in jerusalem in judah and they tell you who was king in samaria in israel now let's read those first two verses again the word of the lord that came to hosea during the reign of uzziah jotham ahaz and hezekiah kings of judah where did they reign jerusalem you go to the head of the class and during the reign of jeroboam the son of jehoash the king of israel now hosea is a prophet to the nation of israel to the northern kingdom in fact he's the last prophet for them before the ten the ten tribes are destroyed so it's a very important message this is their last invitation now listen to what god says to hosea verse 2 when the lord began to speak through hosea the lord said to him go take to yourself an adulterous wife and children of unfaithfulness because the land is guilty of the vilest adultery in departing from the lord so he married gomer see right there you've got to stop him laugh for a minute and she conceived and bore him a son now i know it's in the bible and we read it like this makes perfect sense but i'm telling you it's a very unusual story god says to hosea i have a mission for you an assignment from you sir yes sir i want you to go marry a prostitute sir in fact there's a word if you know this word you understand the message of the book of hosea it's a hebrew word it doesn't really have a direct translation into english in hebrew it's khased there's a letter in hebrew it's a it's not a sound we use in english it's a guttural sound you hear it sometimes in scottish or it's it's a it's often transliterated as a ch but it's a hard ch means five i was in hebrew class at the university there and they told me that one of the letters in the hebrew alphabet was and i knew they were messing with me because where i came from starts a fight but the words chesed and it the the meaning of the word doesn't translate just directly word for word but the essence of it it's the attitude which both parties of a covenant need to maintain covenant's the most binding form of agreement in the bible and chessed is the word that you want both parties in the covenant to adhere to so the book of hosea in multiple places it's about this idea that there's a covenant so if you were looking for word to word equivalence it would be like faithfulness perhaps or to be trustworthy or maybe loyalty the message in the book of hosea is that has broken down it's a book about israel's unfaithfulness the nation of israel's unfaithful the ten tribes of the north and of god's faithfulness to them in spite of their unfaithfulness hosea is their last prophet destruction is coming 721 bc the assyrian army came besieged the city of jerusalem the assyrians their pattern when they conquered a people was to take the inhabitants of the land and distribute them throughout their empire and to repopulate that land with people from another place that's why when you hear about the 10 lost tribes it comes from that habit of the assyrian people because those 10 tribes in the in the nation of israel the 10 10 of the 12 tribes of israel were scattered throughout the assyrian empire hosea's book is about faithfulness and trustworthiness now there's some lessons here again i suggest to you that when you read your bible you're we're trying to get to know the character of god and i know what's in your bible and you're doing it as your daily bible reading but if you read hosea we've got to rethink and reimagine what it means to follow god we've grown up in an age where the primary presentation of the biblical message was about personal salvation and god meeting our needs that sound right how to get saved how to cause the blessings of god to flow up on your life and if they're not to figure out what the roadblocks are and pull up the road blocks now i'm not opposed to blessings i don't want you to misunderstand me but when you read hosea that's not what god's assignment to hosea was about i want you to go marry an unfaithful woman go marry a prostitute and when you have a child conceive a child with her and name the child no love because israel has no love for me and have another child and name that child not my people that kid's going to have trouble in school because you tell israel they're not my people. so this isn't a short assignment this wasn't like a difficult 30-day window for hosea it wasn't going to be an awkward summer he had more to do he has more to endure than a season of covert this is stretching out over months and years a marriage to a prostitute children from a prostitute this is not really a happily ever after narrative is that fair and it's very very clear hosea didn't miss the assignment he's not punished with this because of disobedience or wickedness or hardheartedness or carnality or any of those things that we would introduce into the discussion god said jose i have an assignment for you this nation needs a message and i need you to deliver it for me go marry a prostitute hosea has a life assignment it's filled with purpose it's complete with divine interaction with supernatural affirmation of his message with words that god puts in his heart and on his lips and heartache wait a minute are you willing to know god that way say pastor that's old testament yeah you're the one that thinks god gets prozac after malachi i know but in philippians chapter 3 the apostle paul says i want to know christ in the power of his resurrection amen me too right there i want the power of god pulsing through my and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings i might become like him in his death fully obedient so that somehow i might attain to the resurrection of the dead again that's bumping up against the the way we typically hear the gospel we'd expect paul to say absolute certainty i'm going to attain to the resurrection of the dead i had that damascus road experience i got an extensive resume they know me in jerusalem i got converts all over around the mediterranean but he's praying i want to know the power of god and the fellowship of sharing and his sufferings now if god gives you an assignment and it's unpleasant if it requires discipline if it requires endurance doesn't mean he's abandoned you it means he's prepared you in first peter it says god's given us everything we need for life and godliness i think we typically flip that means that we've been given every blessing we could ever want and it's true that god's blessings are abundant in our lives most of the problems in our lives are first world problems we have too much stuff we need a storage space there's too much of us we need a treadmill we're too busy we can't keep up we're exhausted our kids have so much that they can't decide what they want then it makes them miserable most of our problems are from abundant blessings but are we willing to read and imagine that god would ask us assign us to something that's unpleasant i think it's biblical like i know it is not saying that the gospel we've received is false because i believe the core of it is true but i believe we've wrapped it in something of a carnal package because we have lived with so much freedom and so much liberty and so much abundance that we really didn't have to depend upon the lord and we could use our faith as kind of an eternal insurance component and after all we wanted to be christian we're a nation with a christian heritage and we understood that but i believe one of the impacts and one of the outcomes of this year for which i am very very grateful in my own heart in life is that god is shaking us a bit and helping us to reevaluate how we've imagined that relationship i believe we're more ready for an assignment than we've ever been i believe we are more willing to to endure did you know self-discipline is one of the nine fruit of the spirit i believe we are more prepared than we were a year ago tonight i know you i've been with you out there when it was really hot you were melting and out there when you're huddled around a fire pit acting like you're having fun god is doing something you know how precious and priceless that is what an amazing gift have we forfeited some things in 20 yeah we have it's been messed up and goofy but on the other hand we are gaining some things that are of infinite value i will take a couple of minutes i i want this notion of faithfulness that comes from hesed the alternative faithfulness is unfaithfulness and that's really the story of hosea the faithfulness of god the unfaithfulness of the people have you ever heard the expression marching to the beat of a different drum well i want you to play with that i want you to think about that beyond our little visit together tonight what's the beat you're marching to are you really do you imagine that you're marching to the drama of the kingdom of god we've we've fit in too well we've been too well camouflaged we have it's one of the lessons of this year the distinction between the people of god and the ungodly people is so small we don't even have a category for it we don't even think in terms of faithful and unfaithful always they're a good person and they're living an ungodly life so far from god and you hang the label oh they're good really what's your criteria you're not a good friend if you're standing close to somebody and the judgment of god's going to come on them and you don't say anything about it you would warn them if you were had tested positive for culverd and for 99. something of us that's a a minor inconvenience the judgment of god is more than minor inconvenience and if you're close to somebody that's living an ungodly life it's not kindness to them to oh you're wonderful everything's good no wait you can be their friend but you want to tell them the truth faithfulness and unfaithfulness it's an issue for god's people it's really not relevant for the ungodly if they don't know the lord and they're living an ungodly life tell them about jesus tell him what he's done for you how he's changed you how he's brought a purpose to you how you used to be on that other treadmill and you found a better way to make your journey under the sun so there's no condemnation if they don't know the lord tell them what are you waiting on well they might reject oh that's a reason if you spend time with people that don't know the lord and you don't tell them what do you think they will say to you once they understand eternity i've told this story before it happened a long time ago but you know the last place i wanted to come pastor was the town where i grew up i knew god had made a scheduling mistake but i played i went to riverdale played basketball through junior high and high school back then we didn't have lots of options so it was a pretty small group of us and we used to pray before games can you believe that we would pray at a school [Music] we pray in the locker room so we're doing a pre-game prayer and it was the last game of our junior year and somebody said jackson you pray so i prayed and one of the guys i'd played ball with a long time when i said him and he said dang jackson that really wasn't the way he said it he said i didn't know you knew how to pray you don't want people that you spend a lot of time with to not know that you know the lord see at that time in my life it was more important to me that they thought i was tough that i wouldn't quit i wanted to impress them with other parts of my life my faith i left it way way way in the background i mean i wanted a faith if i needed it i wouldn't be able to pull it forward because i knew there could be consequences but i certainly didn't want to i don't want to lead with that folks don't spend time with people and not tell them that you know jesus and if you're spending time with people that imagine themselves to be christ followers and they're they're engaged in practices that you know are far from the kingdom of god begin to ask the lord to give you a way to have a dialogue with them what do we need to happen for the blessings of god to to come upon our nation again we need a change of heart do you want somebody else to be engaged in the change of heart are we willing to say lord here i am if we just all helped three people have a heart change in the next 90 days do you know what the impact of that would be remember the little paradigm angus uses after you respond to one of his invitations he wants you to tell the next five people you meet this week you know what that would do to our world if we would stop stop saying that christianity matters and then acting like it's irrelevant hosea go marry a prostitute well wait a minute god i had it did you not hear me you can't deliver a message on faithfulness if you're being unfaithful new testament acts 26 paul's on trial for his life before another one is sending an endless set of judges but it's king agrippa he said king agrippa i was not disobedient to the vision from heaven he's telling me about his conversion experience on the road to damascus and he said i had a vision and now he's years later and he said i have not been disobedient i have been faithful to what god asked me to do acts chapter 5 it's a different group this time it's peter and john but they're being brought before the sanhedrin if you don't remember that's the austere body that orchestrated jesus execution so they're powerful and they're a real threat and peter and john know it they brought the apostles and made him appear before the sanhedrin to be questioned by the high priest we gave you strict orders not to teach in this name yet you have filled jerusalem with your teaching and you're determined to make us guilty of this man's blood jesus has been a point of division for a long long long time what are you going to do what am i going to do what are we going to do with the 21st century let's know what peter and john have to say peter and the other apostles replied we must obey god rather than men the god of our fathers raised jesus from the dead whom you have killed by hanging him on a tree now that's kind of sticking the knife in and turning it i mean god exalted him to his own right hand as a prince and savior that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to israel we're witnesses of these things and so is the holy spirit whom god has given to those who obey faithfulness you can't be a person of faith unless you're a faithful person it's not so much about knowledge or great blocks of information or high iqs or foreign languages it's a willingness to be faithful in the position in the place that god places you faithfulness there's another word that gets introduced in hosea partially because of the name he gives to his child no love it's not about his relationship with gomer or even his relationship with his children it's a it's a message to the nation of israel but the words of love and discipline are used so much in our culture and i think we've drifted so far from a biblical understanding of our roles in a home what those lines of authority are what god expects of us we read the bible and we set it aside sale it's just not convenient to me we've we have evolved beyond that really you've evolved beyond the creator of all things that's a good trick can you speak a world into existence oh evolved one when i hear that it's code for i'm too big a rebel to submit to the authority of god i'm too filled with pride and arrogance to submit to god's law so i'll make my own i think we've got to recalibrate a little bit again we have to come back to our bible and and think about what we're reading and the what the story that's being told to understand the character of god you see if you don't understand his character it has consequences if you don't understand the physical properties of water it will have consequences for you you could drown if you don't understand the physical properties of fire it has consequences for you you could burn i read a book by a father whose son had a neurological disease he didn't feel pain physical pain and you think well that'd be wonderful but but not so much because he said if his wife was baking chocolate chip cookies the the son would see him in the oven open the oven pull one out and eat it and blister his lips with the molten chocolate see if we don't understand the character of god you're rejecting it you're acting like you don't understand it doesn't protect you from the consequences you can say i don't believe in gravity but if you step off the edge of the church gravity will believe in you all the way to the ground 9.8 meters per second squared splat and if we set aside the character of god if we don't learn the lessons we suffer the consequence and we forfeit the benefit that's why we read our bibles not so much to figure out where samaria is or where the 12 tribes were located that's all fun backstory but what we really want to know is the character of god love and discipline john chapter 10 jesus is speaking it's verse 18. he's talking about his life no one takes it from me but i lay it down of my own accord i have authority to lay it down and authorities take it up again this command i receive from my father this is the incarnate jesus god's son that laid down the privilege of heaven and came to the earth and he said i'm here because my father did what commanded it whoa do you have a room in a conversation about love for the word command do we have any imagination that we're under any authority that is strict enough meaningful enough that we would accept a command john 14 jesus again i'll not speak with you much longer he's talking to his disciples for the prince of this world is coming and he's no hold on me but the world must learn that i love the father and that i do exactly what my father has commanded me come now let's leave why does jesus endure what he's going to endure in his passion and ultimately his crucifixion because the father commanded it again we've got some thinking to adjust hosea just opened the door for us a little bit do you think god could command you to do something that was unpleasant well if he did i don't know if i'd follow him really let's go back to that faithful word for a minute well you say that's jesus and that's different john 15 next chapter as the father has loved me so i've loved you i hear people say oh jesus is all about love yes he is that's true so have i loved you now remain in my love if you obey my commands you'll remain in my love just as i've obeyed my father's commands and remain in his love jesus just eliminated the gray area i've been obedient to the commands of my father and he loves me he's god told us he did at his baptism that's my son i'm well pleased with him at the transfiguration he affirmed him again many many ways but then jesus said if you obey my commands do you when you open your new testament when you start reading through your bible do you accept it when you read something and it there's a deviation between your practice and what you're reading how do you respond to that philippians chapter 2 it tells us about jesus being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to death jesus humbled himself and became obedient obedient to what to god's command and the command led him to death even death on a cross therefore god exalted him to the highest place the exaltation came but the pathway to that was obedience jesus said to you and me unless you take up your cross and follow me you cannot be my disciple why does it matter because we're walking through a difficult season and it's not changing with the conclusion of this calendar folks the fresh calendar is not going to fix this the solution's going to come from a heart change hallelujah god hasn't abandoned us hebrews chapter 5 and verse 7 says during the days of jesus life on earth he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death jesus wasn't anxious about this we get it wrong we think jesus was going oh i get to go to the cross no no no loud cries and tears save me from this we ask god to save us from consequences from our ungodliness we don't deliver us from the difficulty of life and the challenges that come with that and the ungodliness in the world when it touches us do we have the imagination of accepting a god assignment that's strenuous enough requires enough discipline from us that we're crying out to god to help us why would you do that well in hebrews it says for the joy that was set before him jesus endured the cross folks there's a greater joy before us than anything you can glean from your days under the sun there is we don't talk about it enough we're not sure we believe it we've sat in that skeptic seat little so long we think i'm not sure question are you really in submission are you really in submission to jesus christ and the word of god i don't mean are you born again i don't mean are you bad are you really living your life submitted to the authority of jesus as you know him and to the word of god and i can't answer that for you it's not intended to be an indictment i want to ask you to think about it a little bit you know the bible uses this category of this world meaning that it's temporary it's carnal it's term and then it uses the phrase not of this world not of this world being a better category how much of your life which aspects of your life are of this world and which aspects of your life are not of this world and how you use your time your talent your money whatever i'll give you an example i think it highlights this principle acts chapter 17 paul and silas are on one of their journeys and they're pitching their story again one of the people that watches our content lives in texas when i talk to him he calls what we do at church a sales pitch he said you've got a good sales pitch for jesus i'm all right with that if people are buying what we're selling i'm good with it but the jews were jealous so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace they formed a mob and they started a riot in the city they rushed to jason's house in search of paul and silas in order to bring them out to the crowd when they didn't find them they dragged jason and some other brothers before the city officials shouting these men have caused trouble all over the world and now they've come here that'd be a fun reputation so committed to jesus we've got 21st century equivalence that if you say that that's hate speech and we'll take it off our platform it's not a new thing are you of this world these men that have turned the world upside down have come here and jason welcomed into his house they are defying caesar's decree they say that there is another king one called jesus the opposition party the critics of paul and silas say these men have lived in such a way so yielded to authority that strangers understand them to have another king reigning over their life do the people who know you know you that way i want it increasingly to become my story i don't think we should walk past the fact that in the book of acts at least there's not many revivals without riots i think we have been vanilla too long i believe we wanted the approvals of the crowds more than the blessings of god for too long i'll read you one more passage just to translation for me it's jose jose opened up a bunch of things in my head malachi it's the last book of the the old testament the last two verses of the book of malachi so it's the last two verses of the old testament did you know that the last verse in the old testament is a curse i'm glad there's a new testament i don't want god's last word to us to be a curse malachi 4 see i'll send you the prophet elijah before the great and dreadful day of the lord comes and he'll turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children of their fathers or else i'll come and strike the land with the curse the hebrew word there is much stronger the hebrew word isn't just curse it's the curse for devoting something completely to the band you they put jericho it's the same word that god used when he said there's a curse on the city of jericho and they tore down the wall the walls fell down they plowed the city with salt it's as if you offer the whole entire thing to a sacrifice to god and set fire to it it's a strong word central to this message though is the fathers do you know men have a god assigned responsibility not about your day job not about your christian assignment not about your discipleship place or your spiritual gift mix you have a god-defined assignment as a father and you cannot understand the assignment apart from the word of god you cannot understand what you need to be as a godly father if your only input or your primary input are cultural trends to what extent do you have you allowed the secular culture to define that assignment for you it's an important question it is a very important question because the reality is fellows we have struggled with this assignment general boykin was here a few weeks ago the beginning of the summer when we started outside he came and spoke it was the he was here the weekend that the riots had just begun in some of our major cities and if i was with him off stage for a few minutes he would say to me he'd see a video or something he'd say where are the men where are the men he was beyond anxious he said pastor what's happened where are the men how can this be happening in our cities and he didn't mean so much standing guard it was the the young men that were responding where are the fathers we have struggled with this assignment the reality is we failed to present the truth to our children we have failed to impose godly discipline on them you know i think if you had to distill it there's two primary requirements in parenting love and discipline i know you could expand it but love and discipline both are needed both are required both are absolutely necessary discipline without love produces rebels and love without discipline produces irresponsible people and i think we've had such an emphasis on love and contemporary christianity even within evangelicalism discipline's been a little we wanted them to know they were loved and cared for and we've we've got multiple generations now that struggle with responsibility it's uncomfortable to them it's awkward to them self-discipline the fruit of the spirit evidence of the spirit of god is something you're cooperating with someone you're cooperating with excessive indulgence does not prepare us for a good life it just does not the bible's clear discipline is not just for correcting wrong behavior discipline is not just about saying don't steal don't be immoral discipline is about being directed towards being directed towards unpleasant or undesired behavior that's a behavior you need to engage in even though you may not enjoy it that's a path you need to take even though you don't perceive it to be pleasant why because submitting to discipline will bear good fruit in your life who said god remember what jesus said i'm here to do something extraordinarily unpleasant because my father commanded me to do it dads we have an assignment to help our children understand discipline we have to love them but every assignment every aspect can't be pleasant or we strip them of what they need to thrive we're wrestling with this as a people hebrews chapter 12 verse 11 says no discipline seems pleasant at the time no if it's pleasant it's not discipline amen is the word you're searching for i know you're scanning through your repertoire right now no discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful later on however it produces a harvest of righteousness how do you get a harvest of righteousness lord we need a harvest of righteousness in our nation in our schools and on our university campuses in our churches we need a harvest of righteousness how do we do that what's the what are the seeds that need to be planted no discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful later on it produces a harvest of righteousness hosea was called to a disciplined life mary a prostitute i'd rather not i didn't ask you misunderstood i didn't send you an invitation i gave you a commandment the root of many of the problems we face as a culture is delinquent men in all fairness i think men have faced an unprecedented hatred that's been unleashed against them in recent years i can give you many many examples of that but a basic spiritual issue in the pages of scripture pay attention as you're reading his fathers and children jesus came to show us a heavenly father i know that's been offensive there's been a whole theological movement now for several decades trying to render god gender neutral folks the language of scripture is very intentional it's not accidental it's not a diminishment of a women women was god's idea it's another discussion my time's up don't imagine that hosea and joel and amos hosea and amos are both 8th century prophets similar time periods amos is in judah but don't imagine why you're reading the prophets that there it has no relevance for us it has enormous relevance for us listen for the character of god we want to be a faithful people we want a people we want to be a people that understand the love of god and submit to the discipline of god we want to be a group of people who can demonstrate the love of god and also demonstrate god's discipline it's important we are undisciplined and i grew up around animals it's easy to talk about animals grew up around horses my dad was an equine vet so when i lived at home all they had was horses horses had tremendous strength i was always just completely fascinated by the strength of horse if you do surgery in a horse you have to lay it down my assignment a lot of times was to to kneel on the neck of the horse if you can hold their head down the horse will stay down so you give them enough anesthetic to get them a little wobbly because you don't want them just to collapse they could hurt themselves so you try to get them wobbly enough that you can help them lay down and not injure themselves and then my assignment was to hold the head down i was a little anxious they were bigger than i was their teeth were this tall you know my dad wasn't afraid of horses so he'd say you know do this and i think what do you mean do this it took me a while to learn not to be afraid if you don't know the love of god if you don't know discipline spend time with people that do that's how you learn it it's not an academic exercise this is real world laboratory stuff so i'd kneel on the on that neck of the horse not cutting off its air just there's a huge muscle in their neck and if they weren't fully anesthetized when he would start to do whatever he's going to do they'd start to get up and that or just with he just flip his head and throw me across a room incredible strength so in order to to live in space with an animal with that much strength they need to be disciplined because if they're undisciplined they will hurt you they may do it inadvertently get frightened and behave in a way and they don't know how to behave and there's no trust built an undisciplined animal an undisciplined dog chew your hand off a horse needs to know what woe means they need to understand what stop means and the tone with which you say it and understand it if we're undisciplined we're dangerous we're self-destructive we took care of a horse one summer that had killed people it's violent undisciplined and we all understood that if there was if that discipline that we could hold broke down completely the future for that animal was not good our future is not good if we have no discipline don't think of discipline as being loathsome or burdensome it's an expression of love the absence of discipline is not greater love god is the greatest expression of love we know and if he loves us it says he disciplines us if you're a legitimate child he disciplines you again he doesn't just say don't do that he puts your feet on a pathway that you wouldn't choose without that discipline well i thought he wanted to bless me he dies at the end of the discipline there's a blessing jesus became obedient even to death even death on a cross a public humiliating death therefore god exalted him to the highest place i want to know christ in the power of his resurrection the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings i want to learn to yield to the discipline of god thank you hosea for the reminder you and gomer when i read gomer that morning in reading jose all i could think of was sergeant carter some of you are way too young to know ask rabbi google i brought you a prayer actually i brought you a proclamation i'm done let's stand i think we can put it on the screens it's a passage of scripture i want us to read it together and then we'll read the proclamation that goes with it the passage of scripture is isaiah 41 and then i just took it and put it in first person so you can say it about yourself saying what the scripture says about you is a powerful powerful tool of discipleship so it's isaiah 41 4 verses let's start in verse 10 so do not fear for i am with you do not be dismayed for i am your god i will strengthen you and help you i will uphold you with my righteous right hand all who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced those who oppose you will be as nothing and perish though you search for your enemies you will not find them those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all for i am the lord your god who takes hold of your right hand and says to you do not fear i will help you do not be afraid o worm jacob o little israel for i myself will help you declares the lord your redeemer the holy one of israel now the proclamation that goes with that you ready this is our statement about ourselves based on that passage of scripture almighty god is my strength he upholds me with his righteous right hand therefore i do not fear nor am i dismayed all who rage against me will be ashamed and disgraced those who oppose me will be as nothing and perish those who wage war against me will be as nothing the lord has taken hold of my right hand and said do not fear i will help you therefore i am not afraid the holy one of israel is my helper and my redeemer amen hallelujah [Applause] hey this is pastor allen thank you for watching this video if you enjoyed it like it and most importantly share it with your friends if you want to be notified when there's new content when we post new material if you'll just subscribe to my channel and hit the bell you'll get the notification most of all i pray god blesses you as you continue on your spiritual journey and open your heart to the lord god bless [Music] you

Channel: Allen Jackson Ministries

Views: 9,158

Keywords: Pastor Allen Jackson, allen jackson ministries, world outreach church, alan jackson, sermons, preachers, how to be saved, Finding Jesus, pastor allen jackson sermons, Learning and Listening from the Prohpets, prophets, prophetic, Hosea, Obedience, Obedience to the Lord, How to be Obedient, How to be obedient to, how to be obedient to god, god assignment for you

Id: TjD3YezTmSo

Length: 49min 50sec (2990 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021