Hosea 7, Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: GOOD HAPPENS

It’s the repeated pattern in Scripture.  Evil. God. Good.  Evil came to Job.  It tempted him and tested him.  Job struggled.  But God countered.  He spoke truth and declared sovereignty.  Job, in the end, chose God.  Satan’s prime target became came God’s star witness and good resulted.

Evil came to David and he committed adultery.  Evil came to Daniel and he was dragged to a foreign land.  Evil came to Nehemiah and the walls of Jerusalem were destroyed.  But God countered.  Because He did, David wrote songs of grace, Daniel ruled in a foreign land, and Nehemiah rebuilt Jerusalem with Babylonian money.  Good happened.

With Jesus, bad became good like night becomes day– regularly, reliably, refreshingly, and redemptively.  Evil. God. Good.  When God gets in the middle of life— evil becomes good!

Hosea 7

“Whenever I would restore the fortunes of my people,

 whenever I would heal Israel,
the sins of Ephraim are exposed
    and the crimes of Samaria revealed.
They practice deceit,
    thieves break into houses,
    bandits rob in the streets;
2 but they do not realize
    that I remember all their evil deeds.
Their sins engulf them;
    they are always before me.

3 “They delight the king with their wickedness,
    the princes with their lies.
4 They are all adulterers,
    burning like an oven
whose fire the baker need not stir
    from the kneading of the dough till it rises.
5 On the day of the festival of our king
    the princes become inflamed with wine,
    and he joins hands with the mockers.
6 Their hearts are like an oven;
    they approach him with intrigue.
Their passion smolders all night;
    in the morning it blazes like a flaming fire.
7 All of them are hot as an oven;
    they devour their rulers.
All their kings fall,
    and none of them calls on me.

8 “Ephraim mixes with the nations;
    Ephraim is a flat loaf not turned over.
9 Foreigners sap his strength,
    but he does not realize it.
His hair is sprinkled with gray,
    but he does not notice.
10 Israel’s arrogance testifies against him,
    but despite all this
he does not return to the Lord his God
    or search for him.

11 “Ephraim is like a dove,
    easily deceived and senseless—
now calling to Egypt,
    now turning to Assyria.
12 When they go, I will throw my net over them;
    I will pull them down like the birds in the sky.
When I hear them flocking together,
    I will catch them.
13 Woe to them,
    because they have strayed from me!
Destruction to them,
    because they have rebelled against me!
I long to redeem them
    but they speak about me falsely.
14 They do not cry out to me from their hearts
    but wail on their beds.
They slash themselves,[f] appealing to their gods
    for grain and new wine,
    but they turn away from me.
15 I trained them and strengthened their arms,
    but they plot evil against me.
16 They do not turn to the Most High;
    they are like a faulty bow.
Their leaders will fall by the sword
    because of their insolent words.
For this they will be ridiculed
    in the land of Egypt.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Monday, June 29, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:

2 Kings 5:9–14

 So Naaman went with his horses and chariots and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house. 10 Elisha sent a messenger to say to him, “Go, wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored and you will be cleansed.”

11 But Naaman went away angry and said, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, wave his hand over the spot and cure me of my leprosy. 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed?” So he turned and went off in a rage.

13 Naaman’s servants went to him and said, “My father, if the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much more, then, when he tells you, ‘Wash and be cleansed’!” 14 So he went down and dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, as the man of God had told him, and his flesh was restored and became clean like that of a young boy.

Insight
The Jordan River, where Naaman was told to “wash [himself] seven times” (2 Kings 5:10), was the primary source of water in the ancient Near East and is the most well-known river in the Bible. The melting snow of Mt. Hermon in the north is the main water source for the river that winds for 156 miles through the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea and has no outlet. Joshua 3 records the parting of the waters of the Jordan so the Israelites could enter the land of Promise. Twice the waters of the river were parted in 2 Kings 2 when they were struck with the cloak of Elijah (vv. 8, 14). In the New Testament, John the Baptist baptized believers in Jesus and even Christ Himself in the Jordan (Matthew 3:6, 13–17).

Simply Ask
Before they call I will answer. Isaiah 65:24

Her doctor said her detached retinas couldn’t be repaired. But after living without sight for fifteen years—learning Braille, and using a cane and service dog—a Montana woman’s life changed when her husband asked another eye doctor a simple question: could she be helped? The answer was yes. As the doctor discovered, the woman had a common eye condition, cataracts, which the doctor removed from her right eye. When the eye patch came off the next day, her vision was 20/20. A second surgery for her left eye met with equal success.

A simple question also changed the life of Naaman, a powerful military man with leprosy. But Naaman raged arrogantly at the prophet Elisha’s instructions to “wash yourself seven times in the Jordan, and your flesh will be restored” (2 Kings 5:10). Naaman’s servants, however, asked the military leader a simple question: “If the prophet had told you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?” (v. 13). Persuaded, Naaman washed “and his flesh was restored and became clean” (v. 14).

In our lives, sometimes we struggle with a problem because we won’t ask God. Will You help? Should I go? Will You lead? He doesn’t require complicated questions from us to help. “Before they call I will answer,” God promised His people (Isaiah 65:24). So today, simply ask Him. By:  Patricia Raybon


Reflect & Pray
How complex are your prayer requests? What life problem can you offer to God in a simple prayer?

Dear heavenly Father, when life feels complicated and difficult, thank You for Your promise to hear even my simple prayers.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, June 29, 2020
The Strictest Discipline

If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. —Matthew 5:30

Jesus did not say that everyone must cut off his right hand, but that “if your right hand causes you to sin” in your walk with Him, then it is better to “cut it off.” There are many things that are perfectly legitimate, but if you are going to concentrate on God you cannot do them. Your right hand is one of the best things you have, but Jesus says that if it hinders you in following His precepts, then “cut it off.” The principle taught here is the strictest discipline or lesson that ever hit humankind.

When God changes you through regeneration, giving you new life through spiritual rebirth, your life initially has the characteristic of being maimed. There are a hundred and one things that you dare not do— things that would be sin for you, and would be recognized as sin by those who really know you. But the unspiritual people around you will say, “What’s so wrong with doing that? How absurd you are!” There has never yet been a saint who has not lived a maimed life initially. Yet it is better to enter into life maimed but lovely in God’s sight than to appear lovely to man’s eyes but lame to God’s. At first, Jesus Christ through His Spirit has to restrain you from doing a great many things that may be perfectly right for everyone else but not right for you. Yet, see that you don’t use your restrictions to criticize someone else.

The Christian life is a maimed life initially, but in Matthew 5:48 Jesus gave us the picture of a perfectly well-rounded life— “You shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

Jesus Christ is always unyielding to my claim to my right to myself. The one essential element in all our Lord’s teaching about discipleship is abandon, no calculation, no trace of self-interest. Disciples Indeed, 395 L

Bible in a Year: Job 14-16; Acts 9:22-43

A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, June 29, 2020
Crunch Time Promises - #8731

Somehow, children become very effective psychologists without ever taking a day of Psychology Class. They learn to push Mom and Dad's buttons really well. They learn to play Mom and Dad against each other to guilt trip their parents. (I wonder where they learn that, by the way?) They learn to pout - all kinds of methods of getting their way. Fortunately, most of us parents gradually develop some immunity to being manipulated by our kids. But I've got to tell you, there's one thing my kids would say to me that grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go and almost always worked. It was those times they just said, "But, Dad, you promised!" Man, those were convicting words. If I had promised, I just had to do everything within my power to keep my promise.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Crunch Time Promises."

Far more significant than any promises we might make to one another, even to our children, are the promises we've made to God. This very day, God is trying to get the attention of one of His children who's listening right now, and He's saying gently but firmly, "You promised." But you've either forgotten what you promised or you've been running from what you promised.

Today would be a good day to remember what you promised God, and to recommit yourself to what you promised maybe a long time ago. Listen to these stirring words from Psalm 66:13-14, our word for today from the Word of God. "I shall come in your house with burnt offerings; I shall pay You my vows which my lips uttered and my mouth spoke when I was in distress."

That's often when we make our promises to God, isn't it, when we're "in distress." Maybe you were in financial distress when you made God those promises, or you were facing a medical crisis or a family crisis. Maybe you promised God if He would spare your life, give you a mate or a child - meet a need only God could meet. God had your attention then, and you realized there were things that needed to be different in your life - a life, by the way, that His Son died to save.

And you made promises then: promises about your giving to His work, promises about a change in your priorities, or maybe about some sin you were going to abandon (remember?), promises about serving Him with your life, or about changing the way you were living. It was a crunch time promise, but it was a promise you meant, and it was a promise you needed to make wasn't it? But something happened. You've forgotten what you promised, but God didn't. You got past the pain and you disregarded your promise. God didn't.

And today, your Lord is coming to you with a very important reminder, and it is straight from heaven. Listen to Him: "My child, you promised." Frankly, until you give God what you said you'd give Him - what you should give Him - your life just isn't going to work as it should. The end of a lot of guilt, the end of a lot of frustration, the end of a lot of wasted years will come when you say to your Lord with the psalmist of old, "I shall pay You my vows which my mouth spoke when I was in distress." The Bible actually says, "It is better not to promise than to promise and not pay."

The return to the promise you've made but maybe not kept is the beginning of fulfilling God's destiny for your life and experiencing His peace and His joy and His pleasure. Because remember, you promised. And it was God you promised, and what you promised was right.

It's time to keep your promise to the One who has kept every one of His promises to you.

Hosea 6 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: Suitcases of Guilt

Do you carry a load of guilt?  So many do. If our spiritual baggage were visible, you know what you’d see? Suitcases of guilt, bulging with binges, blowups, and compromises. The kid with the baggy jeans and nose ring? He’d give anything to retract the words he said to his mother. But he can’t. So he tows them along. The woman in the business suit that looks like she could run for Senator?  She can’t run at all. Not hauling that carpet bag wherever she goes. So what do we do?

In Psalm 23:3 David said it like this, “He leads me in the paths of righteousness.” The path of righteousness is a narrow, winding trail up a steep hill.  At the top is a cross. At the base of the cross are bags, countless bags full of innumerable sins. Calvary is the compost pile for guilt.  Would you like to leave yours there as well?

From Traveling Light

Hosea 6

Israel Unrepentant

“Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces
    but he will heal us;
he has injured us
    but he will bind up our wounds.
2 After two days he will revive us;
    on the third day he will restore us,
    that we may live in his presence.
3 Let us acknowledge the Lord;
    let us press on to acknowledge him.
As surely as the sun rises,
    he will appear;
he will come to us like the winter rains,
    like the spring rains that water the earth.”

4 “What can I do with you, Ephraim?
    What can I do with you, Judah?
Your love is like the morning mist,
    like the early dew that disappears.
5 Therefore I cut you in pieces with my prophets,
    I killed you with the words of my mouth—
    then my judgments go forth like the sun.[d]
6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
    and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.
7 As at Adam,[e] they have broken the covenant;
    they were unfaithful to me there.
8 Gilead is a city of evildoers,
    stained with footprints of blood.
9 As marauders lie in ambush for a victim,
    so do bands of priests;
they murder on the road to Shechem,
    carrying out their wicked schemes.
10 I have seen a horrible thing in Israel:
    There Ephraim is given to prostitution,
    Israel is defiled.

11 “Also for you, Judah,
    a harvest is appointed.

“Whenever I would restore the fortunes of my people,

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion   
Monday, June 29, 2020
Today's Scripture & Insight:

Acts 9:1–4, 10–18

Saul’s Conversion

Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3 As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4 He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. The Lord called to him in a vision, “Ananias!”

“Yes, Lord,” he answered.

11 The Lord told him, “Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying. 12 In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight.”

13 “Lord,” Ananias answered, “I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem. 14 And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on your name.”

15 But the Lord said to Ananias, “Go! This man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. 16 I will show him how much he must suffer for my name.”

17 Then Ananias went to the house and entered it. Placing his hands on Saul, he said, “Brother Saul, the Lord—Jesus, who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here—has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” 18 Immediately, something like scales fell from Saul’s eyes, and he could see again. He got up and was baptized,

Insight
While Saul was on the way to Damascus, Jesus spoke to him from a heavenly light. Afterward he was blind for three days (Acts 9:8–9). We’re not told why or how Saul was blinded. It may have been a natural consequence of the light, or it may have been a supernatural occurrence. But it’s interesting that it was through Ananias that his sight was restored. While God caused the blindness, He chose to remove it through a person. Sometimes God works in unexpected ways.

Redemption’s Hope
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Acts 2:21

The man seemed beyond redemption. His crimes included eight shootings (killing six) and starting nearly 1,500 fires that terrorized New York City in the 1970s. He left letters at his crime scenes taunting the police, and he was eventually apprehended and given consecutive sentences of twenty-five years to life for each murder.

Yet God reached down to this man. Today he is a believer in Christ who spends time daily in the Scriptures, has expressed deep regret to his victims’ families, and continues to pray for them. Although imprisoned for more than four decades, this man who seemed beyond redemption finds hope in God and claims, “My freedom is found in one word: Jesus.”

Scripture tells of another unlikely conversion. Before he met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus, Saul (who later became the apostle Paul) was “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” (Acts 9:1). Yet Paul’s heart and life were transformed by Jesus (vv. 17–18), and he became one of the most powerful witnesses for Him in history. The man who once plotted the death of Christians devoted his life to spreading the hope of the gospel.

Redemption is always a miraculous work of God. Some stories are more dramatic, but the underlying truth remains the same: None of us deserve His forgiveness, yet Jesus is a powerful Savior! He “[saves] completely those who come to God through him” (Hebrews 7:25). By:  James Banks

Reflect & Pray
Do you know someone who seems like a “tough case” for redemption? Nothing is too hard for God! Bring that person before Him in prayer.

Dear Jesus, thank You for loving us so much You died to bring us into a relationship with You.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Held by the Grip of God

I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. —Philippians 3:12

Never choose to be a worker for God, but once God has placed His call on you, woe be to you if you “turn aside to the right hand or to the left” (Deuteronomy 5:32). We are not here to work for God because we have chosen to do so, but because God has “laid hold of” us. And once He has done so, we never have this thought, “Well, I’m really not suited for this.” What you are to preach is also determined by God, not by your own natural leanings or desires. Keep your soul steadfastly related to God, and remember that you are called not simply to convey your testimony but also to preach the gospel. Every Christian must testify to the truth of God, but when it comes to the call to preach, there must be the agonizing grip of God’s hand on you— your life is in the grip of God for that very purpose. How many of us are held like that?

Never water down the Word of God, but preach it in its undiluted sternness. There must be unflinching faithfulness to the Word of God, but when you come to personal dealings with others, remember who you are— you are not some special being created in heaven, but a sinner saved by grace.

“Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do…I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13-14).

WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS

The vital relationship which the Christian has to the Bible is not that he worships the letter, but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible spirit and life to him.  The Psychology of Redemption, 1066 L

Bible in a Year: Job 11-13; Acts 9:1-21