Wednesday, May 29, 2013
TEXT: HOSEA 9:1-9
(Hosea 9:7).
An American comedian, actor and writer, William Claude Dukenfield, was said to have had an unusual interest in the Bible at the point of death, not for genuine salvation but to excite his pride and arrogance. When a friend visited him in the hospital, he was shocked to see him thumbing through the Bible, a thing he had never done before. Astonished but curious, his friend asked him what he was doing with the Bible. Dukenfield replied: “ I'm looking for loopholes”.
As revealed from our text, the Israelites equally behaved the same way. While delighting themselves in idolatrous practices, they expressed a strong conviction that they had got the loopholes to justify their excesses, which had strained their relationship with God. They appeared comfortable in their evil ways. But God warned them of judgement resulting from their unfaithfulness.
Israel’s problem was deep-seated. For breaking their covenant with Him, God reversed the fertility of their land. God pronounced that He would reduce them, while in their captivity, to eating food which was ceremonially unclean instead of the grain and wine they previously enjoyed in their own land. They would no longer have their former privilege of offering joyous sacrifices because their food would be “bread of mourners.”
God’s judgement is upon sinners and backsliders in all generations, except they repent of their evil. He is only patient for a while “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
Thought for the Day : Doomsday for obstinate evil doers is near.
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