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Text: Hosea 5:15-6:2 W Laetare (4th Sunday in
Lent) Time Out In the name
of him through whom we have been set free of the law of sin and death, dear
friends in Christ: I wonder if we have
any fans of the great game of ice hockey here.
Anyone? As I suspected: not too many.
You almost have to be from Minnesota or Michigan or some other place
next to Canada that’s frozen half the year to really get into it. But for those who are fans of the game, this
hasn’t been a very good year for it.
There’s been some kind of ongoing dispute between the players and the
owners and, of course, the lawyers
for both sides (just not enough money to go around, I guess). Anyway, the result is that there’s been a
“freeze” on the game schedule. They
haven’t been playing. Then a couple of
weeks ago, because it was getting so late in the year and there weren’t enough
games played, they just went ahead and cancelled the season altogether. And the worst part of it (for the players and
the owners anyway – I’m sure their lawyers still get paid) is that nobody
seemed to notice. It’s like,
“Hockey? Cancelled? Huh … well, now that you mention it, I guess they
haven’t been playing.” The NHL took a
time out for a whole year, and almost no one seems to care Now, I have
to confess that my own history of hockey watching is limited to the evening
news sports highlights in which they usually show one or two scores from a
couple of games, and then several minutes worth of scenes of the bloody fights
and brawls that erupted in all the rest.
So I don’t know a lot about the game.
But I do know a few things: like
there’re good reasons for all that protective gear the players wear – even
beyond all the fighting, I mean; that, and hockey is one of the few games in
which a player’s misbehavior on the playing field – or ice, as they say – can be penalized against his team by having the
offending player sit for a specified period of time out of the game. For example, when a player makes illegal
contact with an opponent, depending on the seriousness of the offense, he can
get sent to the penalty box for two to five minutes. And while he’s in there, his team is forced to play on with the disadvantage
of being a team member short. What that
means, of course, is that while that player is sitting in penalty time out,
it’s a lot easier for the other team to score; which means that your team might
even lose the game while a player is in time out – particularly if he’s one of
your star players. And in case you’re
wondering where I’m going here, it relates to certain themes suggested in
today’s rather intriguing Old Testament lesson.
There we hear the Lord say to his people through the prophet Hosea,
“That’s it. I’ve had it. I’m taking a walk. I’m going back to my place to sit it out for
a time. And while I’m gone, you’re on
your own. Let’s see how well you get on
without me.” (And yes, that’s something
of a paraphrase.) But what we’ve got
going on here is that the Lord is taking a time out; not, of course, on account
of his own bad behavior, but because of the continuing unfaithfulness of his
people Israel. So, what events led up to
the Lord deciding to take this drastic action?
Well, maybe you remember hearing of the ministry of Hosea the
prophet. He’s the one who was called to
be a living illustration of the Lord himself, specifically in his personal
life. The Lord said to him, “I want you
to go down to the red light district of the city and find yourself a prostitute
to marry. Lift her up out of that
dishonorable life she’s in. Treat her
like a respectable woman. And devote
your heart to her; love her, cherish her, and make your life together with
her. Do everything you can to give her a
happy home.” Well, though it surely
caused something of a public scandal for a man of God to do such a thing, Hosea
obeyed the Lord. And because of the way
things worked back in those days, he actually had to buy the young woman from
the pimp who controlled her. But he did
that too; and he brought her home, and loved her, and gave her dignity and
everything he possibly could to make her happy.
And she was happy. For her it was
like a Cinderella story. The difference
was that she was more like one of the wicked stepsisters than the virtuous
Cinderella. She knew she didn’t deserve
the way she was being treated. For her
it was better than a dream come true. The trouble was that it
didn’t last; not because Hosea wasn’t holding up his part and being faithful,
but because his wife kept running off and returning to her former way of life. Hosea would come home after a hard day’s work
at the prophet’s office and find the house empty. And when it happened the Lord would tell him,
“Well, go find her and bring her back.
Forgive her, love her; make her respectable again.” And so the poor guy would go searching for
her in the dark alleys of the seedy part of town. And make no mistake: there was nothing glamorous or attractive
about it—like in some Hollywood fiction starring Julia Roberts. This was humanity at its worst: cheap, tawdry, dirty; women being controlled,
used, and abused; selling and degrading themselves and the pretense of their
affection for a couple of coins, most of which they didn’t get to keep. This is where Hosea would find his wife. And then he’d buy her back again, bring her
home, and treat her as the dearest person in his life. Now, all of this was meant
to be a living picture of how the Lord behaved with his people: how he first lifted them up from the gutter,
bought them out of bondage, placed them a good and spacious land, made them
prosperous, and gave them the honor of his own name. And how, despite all the love he showered
upon them, they kept running off to worship other gods, and to indulge in other
pagan practices and every sin imaginable.
But when that happened, the Lord would go after them again, and he kept
buying them back, bringing them home, washing them, forgiving and loving them,
and restoring their dignity and honor.
And then the people would be happy and grateful and sing their praises
to the Lord. They’d profess their
undying devotion to him; but it never lasted. In
this same section of Hosea, the Lord tells his people, “Your love is like the
morning mist.” And we have to understand
that Israel is a very dry country.
Around here, because the air is often very moist, the morning dew can be
quite heavy. Sometimes the grass stays
damp all day; but that doesn’t happen in Israel. The dew appears in the hour after sunrise,
when the temperature drops to its lowest point in the day. It’s very light and thin, and as soon as the
sun starts to warm things up a bit, it’s gone.
That’s the way the Lord describes his people’s love for him: shallow, short-lived, there for but a
fleeting moment, and then it vanishes. And
what the Lord is saying in the section of Hosea we heard this morning is that
after so many futile attempts to use kindness to evoke some kind of sincere and
lasting response of love from his people, he’s compelled to do things
differently. “Because you don’t learn to
love me through my tender caring for you, and my patience and forgiveness,
you’re going to have to learn the hard way.
You’ve run off again, but this time I’m not coming after you. I’m taking a time out. I’ll go home and wait until you come back to
me.” God’s people thought about him
about with about the same frequency and interest that I think about hockey – or
even less if that’s possible. And now
the Lord was telling them, “Fine, if that’s the way you want it, let’s just see
how well you do with your most valuable teammate sitting it out. And when you figure it out, I know that
you’ll earnestly seek me.” Funny,
isn’t it, that you never seem to really appreciate some things until you don’t
have them for a while? That’s certainly
the way it is when it comes to the Lord.
We recognize our need for him most when he’s not around – but that’s
not quite right. It really doesn’t
capture the whole picture here. You see,
the Lord God is everywhere present. It’s
really not possible for him to go away and leave his people alone. As long as you’re still part of his creation,
he cannot withdraw from you entirely. Or
to say it another way, he’s not really gone when he’s taking a time out. A better way to think of it is that what he’s
actually withdrawing is his gracious, merciful, and forgiving presence. He’s still very much there, but in the
absence of his merciful compassion, his presence is made known in his justice –
and when dealing with sinners such as ourselves, justice means his terrifying
wrath and judgment. If you turn away
from his love and mercy, there’s nothing left but his law and condemnation. And that’s what we see in this passage. In the verses immediately preceding it, the Lord speaks of how he will be like a lion ripping and tearing at his people. He speaks too of injuring them – and the word that’s used means to hack at someone as with a sword or similar weapon. The thing to see here is that the Lord is not passive, just sitting there pining away like a heartsick lover waiting for his faithless and two-timing spouse to return to her senses and come home. No, he’s actively putting the pressure on his people so that, as the passage says, “in their misery” they seek him with their hearts. This is important. In response to some of the hardships we sometimes face – especially the ones we bring upon ourselves by our turning away from the Lord, and ignoring him and his Word – too often I hear well-intentioned but misinformed Christians speak about how “God allows these things to happen”. No. The Lord is very much in control of these things. He makes them happen. He rips, and tears, and injures in order to cause his people pain and misery precisely so that they will turn to him for healing and restoration. He hurts in order to heal. Couple of things to mention here:
first, it’s important that we see that the Lord really doesn’t want to
deal with his people in this way. He
avoids it if possible – that’s the message of Hosea: the Lord wants his people to respond
to his love and his tender care for them.
But when they won’t – when we won’t – after repeated
attempts to deal with us in compassion, he still cares enough about us to let
us go for period of time without his gracious presence precisely so that we
won’t have to suffer that way for all eternity.
He knows how stubborn, and rebelliously strong-willed we are. And he knows that sometimes it takes real
suffering before we will seriously begin examine ourselves in the light of his
law and come to him in repentance.
Sometimes we need to experience time without him to know how much we
need him. Think for example of David who fell into adultery with Bathsheba and then
to murder to hide his sin. He thought
for a while that he’d gotten away with it.
In his heart, of course, he knew otherwise. But in his pride and hypocrisy he wasn’t
about to admit it. It wasn’t until the
prophet Nathan put the finger on him and said, “You are the man” that David
really began to feel the shame of what he had done. Now, the Lord forgave him at that point – but
his “time out” from David wasn’t quite over yet. You may recall that as a result of David’s
sin, the Lord told him that his son conceived in adultery would die. It was a devastating judgment. David spent the next seven days lying on his
face praying fervently for the baby’s life.
And let me suggest that it was then that David really felt the
seriousness and weight of his guilt, when his son lay dying for sins that he
himself had committed. It was then that
he felt the Lord’s absence. The Lord, it
seemed, had shut his ears to his prayers.
Now, there’s no question that that hurt David and Bathsheba more
than most of us could possibly imagine.
But it’s vital to see that the Lord wasn’t doing it to hurt anyone
ultimately. In the grand scheme of
things no one was harmed permanently.
David’s son was received into glory, and both David and Bathsheba lived
more faithfully and dependently upon the Lord than they would have it they had
not known the Lord’s time out. And the point to be made here is that the Lord continues to deal with his
people today in the same way. When it
becomes necessary, he gives us a time out of his presence of mercy. He pulls it away from us so that we feel his
absence. And then he wounds so that he
can heal, and he injures to draw us more willingly and closely to himself. And knowing all this should go a long way toward helping us live from day to day. First, because we know that we can avoid a lot of suffering by simply cherishing the grace we have been given and continuing to live in it. If we don’t run off in the first place, despising God’s grace, worshipping the gods of pleasure and self-indulgence, and pursuing all kinds of sins, the Lord won’t have to use such drastic measures to get us to return. That’s not to say that we won’t sometimes be called upon to suffer. The Lord has other good purposes that are accomplished by it, like the strengthening and hardening of our faith; but there’s a big difference between suffering in faith with the Lord’s grace and suffering in despair without it. Secondly, there are a couple of things we know that we can rely on when we
find that for just cause, the Lord has placed himself in a time out for our
sakes. One is that it is for our
sakes. If he hurts us, we know that it’s
for our ultimate good. He’s not doing it
to be mean or vindictive. If he strikes
a painful blow, it’s because he’s reaching out to save us from pains far worse
and permanent. And in today’s reading,
we also see that these times of the Lord’s withdrawal are by his design to be
of comparatively short duration. The
passage promises, “After two days, he will revive us; and on the third day he
will restore us.” Now that’s poetic
language, so we don’t want to press it too far; but the idea is that the Lord
doesn’t intend to leave us wallowing in isolation and misery indefinitely. The time is relative. David, we saw, was in agony for seven
days. Seventy years – a whole lifetime –
is a drop in the bucket compared to eternity.
And even two or three days can seem like an eternity when they are spent
in pain. But regardless of the time, the
Lord’s goal is not to stay away but to cause us to live in his presence. When his “time out” (however long it might
be) has served its purpose in causing us to return, we can be sure that he’ll
restore us into his grace and forgiveness. And the reason we know that with
absolute certainty because of what he’s already displayed and done for us in
his Son. It’s probably already occurred
to you that there is something prophetic and Christological in this passage
from Hosea. When it speaks of the Lord
tearing to pieces and injuring the sinner, it ultimately refers to what
happened to Christ upon the cross. There,
while he was on the cross bearing the sins of us all, God the Father withdrew
his presence of compassion and mercy from him.
There he was torn and injured and made to feel only God’s wrath. From a divine perspective, it was the
ultimate time out. Jesus was all alone – the sinner rejected by
God – totally isolated from his mercy and love.
This is why he cried out, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” The thing to be grasped here is that the Son of God who carried all of our
sins on the cross didn’t stay in that isolation. He was revived after two days. He was restored to live in God’s presence on
the third day proving that all sins were atoned for. Now, if Jesus who carried all the world’s
sins was restored and glorified, how much more will you whose sins were carried
by him be restored into God’s grace and favor after your period of experiencing
a “time out”. There is no condemnation
for those who are through faith in Christ Jesus. So, when we suffer, when because of difficult
circumstances we rightly feel the withdrawal of the Lord’s gracious presence,
we are to remember these words from Hosea:
“Come, let us return to the Lord.
Though he has injured, he will heal”.
For the sake of his Son he will revive us, restore us, and cause us to
live in his presence here in time and there with him in eternity. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria!
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