Tehillah Generation Chapel
Daily Manna | Wednesday, May 16, 2018 | Topic: Conscience 20
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 instruction to Hosea to pick a wife of doubtful background by society’s standards and expectations, is a nagging source of worry to many people within the Christian faith, who deem the instruction as going contrary to God’s word on morality, and the need for every believer to cultivate the Christian habit of proving all things that we think come from God (1Thess 5:21). What believers fail to realize however, is that the things that seemingly stink in our nostrils are a microcosm of our stinking life before God except for His grace upon our lives.
Our intolerance for that which stinks based on our own measure of our self righteousness, becomes the measuring rod by which we conclude on what ought to be for others. We are all beneficiaries of grace through faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. Yet, the very grace that redeemed us becomes the launching pad for us to assert our own self righteousness while condemning and rejecting others. We are all like the unforgiving man in the proverbial story told by Jesus of the man who was forgiven much but failed to equally forgive another person who owed him just a little.
The choice of Hosea’s wife had been questioned by legalistic Christian minds who seem to be the standard bearers for what they considered right or wrong. Our myopic understanding on the essence of pleasing God instead of the high premium that we place on pleasing people, has been the key barrier that has held many believers in the jail of self righteousness, men pleasers and praise singers clubs. Most Christians have ended up mounting their own high moral horses instead of abiding in the grace of God that had been freely given to us.
The ministry of the prophet Hosea would have been dead on arrival in our generation due to the type of wife that she got married to. He would have been massively rejected, taunted, made mockery of and become the butt of jokes to both Christians and non Christians alike. Forget about “Thus said the Lord.” Forget about hearing from God. Forget about trying to please God at all cost. Nobody will risk their image and that of their ministry, church or institution to accept a controversial person such as Hosea. Just as he was massively rejected by the nation of Israel whose conscience was already seared with hot iron in sin, Hosea is sure to receive a unanimous verdict of total rejection just as Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was rejected at His trial by the court of public opinion and the religious authorities of His day.
Food for thought: When a man is on God’s side, no amount of rejection can frighten or intimidate him.
Declaration: Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifies. Rom 8:33
©Author: Rev Fred Aboe
