Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna| Tuesday, May 15, 2018 | Topic: Conscience 19
Scripture: My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. Hosea 4:6
Note: The ordinary shepherd from Tekoa, Amos, who became the vessel through whom God spoke to Israel, was actually birthed in the neighbouring land of Judah. Tekoa was a town in the hill country of Judah near Hebron built by king Rehoboam of Judah. Amos means burden. The man whose native land was Judah but doing his business in Israel, became the conduit that God used to reprove a nation of her waywardness. Amos virtually took upon himself the spiritual burden of the whole nation.
Amos began it all, but whatever prophecies and warning he gave to Israel fell on deaf ears. Israel was a prosperous and stiff necked nation that had entered into apostasy, without any conscience. Inspite of the apparent rejection of the warning from the prophet, God didn’t give up on Israel. God’s love would compel Him to send another prophet, whose ministry would last through the reigns of four kings of Judah; giving them sufficient grace for their hardened hearts, in order that they might be brought to repentance.
Hosea means Jehovah is salvation. At the heart of all the messengers that were sent to the people was a desire to see the nation turn back from their idolatry and adulterous lifestyle and return to God. However, the tendency of most people, just like Israel did, is to reject the call of God to salvation with the lame but reckless excuse that they have more time to make a decision. What began from one prophet but failed to achieve the desired results was committed to another prophet, who spoke with the same intensity and passion as his contemporary. Yet, for all the glaring warning, the people continued to persist in their sins.
Even though the message was the same from both prophets, Yahweh decided to do something more drastic about the presentation of the message. Aside the burden of carrying the message to a stubborn audience, Hosea was instructed by Yahweh to take to himself a wife of doubtful background. The next phase of the ministry of Hosea would be a duplication of his domestic life upon the whole nation. God would use his troubled marriage to speak to Israel about the seriousness of her waywardness which she had failed to appreciate during the period of the reign of king Uzziah of Judah.
Food for thought: Time is the most abused natural resource which once lost, is irrecoverable by anyone. It waits for no one.
Declaration: To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. Eccl 3:1
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
