“Love While Being Disappointed" Hosea 11 - 12:1 Pastor Daniel Reese

If you have your Bibles, we're gonna be in Hosea chapter 11 this morning.

Hosea 11 · chapter mention

Now, in my lives, there have been times in my life where expectation did not meet reality.

Think about the first time you learned about taxes, right?

You knew how much you were getting paid per hour.

You knew how many hours you worked.

But then you get your first check, right?

And you learn about things like FICA and Social Security.

And you're just kind of disappointed with what is in front of you, right?

Or think about the upcoming NFL season, right?

There's all this hype around your team.

And this is going to be the year that they win the Super Bowl.

You let them get a few wins under their belt.

Maybe they go undefeated for an entire month.

And the expectations just get worse.

This is our year.

But the cowboys are gonna do what the cowboys do.

The bears are gonna do what the bears do.

And then by November, everybody's like, well, next year, right?

Next year is gonna be our year.

We're gonna make some changes.

And we're gonna get our act together and win, right?

It's a crazy cycle.

My wife loves coffee in the morning.

A few weeks ago, I walked into the kitchen.

She's sitting down at the table.

She's drinking her coffee.

She's being really sweet.

And I hear her say, you are the best part of my morning.

I don't know what I would do without you.

And so I repeat those things to her.

Like, I can't imagine my life with you, without you.

Right?

You messed that one up.

But anyway, so I repeat these things to her.

And she says, I was talking to my coffee, not you.

So how do you handle disappointment?

Think about last week, chapter 10.

We hear all about the times that Israel had disappointed the Lord.

They continually chose idolatry.

They didn't give much thought to the things of God.

They were constantly trying to find fulfillment in other things.

Pastor Drew went through the narrative in Judges,

where the people were just doing things that seemed right in their own eyes.

And we are all guilty of that.

We do what we think is right and good,

without really giving any thought to how the Lord feels about it.

So keep that in mind. Let's look at chapter 10.

I'm sorry, chapter 11.

We're going to do the first four verses here.

When Israel was a child, I loved him.

And out of Egypt, I called my son.

The more they were called, the more they went away.

They kept sacrificing to the bails and burning offerings to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk.

I took them up by his arms.

They did not know that I healed them.

I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love.

And I became to them as the one who eases the yoke on their jaws,

and I bent down to them and fed them.

Now, I don't know how you interpret that text.

I'm going to read the first four verses.

But I see a father caring for his children,

who are unaware of all that he does for them.

In this context, Israel is just like a naive child.

Expectation has not met reality.

So the Lord begins to speak,

and he is referring to Israel as a child.

You see, one of the basic ideas in Hosea's prophecy

is God does care about what we do.

God does care what we are like.

God is concerned with our loyalty.

But Hosea saw, I think, a lot more deeply than you and I see,

that God is hurt when we are not what he intended us to be.

God feels a keen pain when we are less than his hopes for us.

But more than that, God shows us how to channel those feelings,

and how something positive happened from disappointment.

Now, our kids will disappoint us,

even though we have loved them unconditionally.

Even though we spent, we lost a lot of sleep when they were babies,

trying to get them back to bed.

Even though some of us have worked two to three jobs

to make sure that they have everything they need.

This is how children are.

They don't care how the food gets on the plate.

You just better have it on the plate.

Children, they don't care what your schedule is like.

They have places to be, right?

And so children are naive to how much we protect them,

how much we provide for them, and how much they are loved.

They are going to do what's right in their own eyes at times,

without any consideration for the parents.

But I want you to see how God reacts to disappointment.

Because if you were like me, it's quite different than how I react.

God thinks back to the love that he had for them at the beginning.

It's like he's pulling out the baby book,

and he's looking through pictures,

and he's reminiscing about those times

before these children had attitude, before they could talk back.

He is remembering their first steps.

He is remembering those times when they were helpless,

and he had to feed them.

Think about the last couple chapters of Hosea,

and this is God's response.

He bends down to feed them.

He isn't some cruel being,

just throwing food out like we do when we go to the pond

and we're feeding the ducks.

We just throw bread out and we kind of watch them fight.

That's not what he does.

He is careful and thoughtful as he cares for us.

Have you ever been in the store with one of your children?

And your kids get upset because you don't buy them some certain object they want.

Some random object they see on the aisle, and you don't buy that for them.

My kids, not all the time, but there were times where they would just lose it.

Start crying.

You don't love me.

Sometimes they'd fall on the floor and start rolling around.

Like, what do you do in that situation?

If you're like me, there isn't a whole lot of being led by kindness in those moments.

There's being led by me grabbing your arm and dragging you out into the parking lot.

You know the kind where you're dragging them and only every other foot hits the ground.

Like, that's how I lead my children when they disappoint me.

God's response is different than that.

Israel has just caused a scene.

They've just messed up and God is remembering the times that he led them in kindness.

Even when they didn't deserve it.

He makes the yoke easy.

I mean, think about it.

Tracking down wilderness, tracking down food in the wilderness,

every single day would have been taxing.

So God makes it easy.

And he just rains down manna from heaven.

Israel is like a spoiled teenager who is completely unaware of how much they are loved and cared for.

So let's see what happens in verse 5.

It says, they shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king.

Because they have refused to return to me.

The sword shall rage against the cities, consume the bars of their gates,

and devour them because of their own counsels.

My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the most high,

he shall not raise them up at all.

Now there comes a point in a parent's life where you have to allow your kids to make their own decisions

and live with the consequences.

If you are a helicopter parent, this is going to be hard for you.

We can't protect our kids from everything, no matter how hard we try.

And even if we could, we shouldn't.

Sometimes the decisions they make, even though we know they are bad,

they need to happen so that they will learn.

At times we have to understand that God's wrath is passive.

He lets us live with our decisions.

He is going to let them be overcome by the Assyrians.

Many of them are going to be killed by the sword.

And he says it all is because they keep turning away from me.

They keep leaving me.

They have refused to repent.

They have refused to listen to my commands.

So I am going to leave them to their own devices.

Several years ago, my kids all had hoverboards.

You know what I am talking about?

Even Riker at the time, he was two.

He didn't have his own, but he was still his brothers.

He was two.

Not walking for very long, he would get on this hoverboard

and he would hold on to the table or the couch and he would get his balance.

He would do that all day long.

After about a week, he got the hang of it

and he didn't need the support of the couch or the chair anymore.

He could just do it.

So I had this two-year-old cruising around my house

from room to room with a sippy cup.

I mean, until that thing died, he was on it.

Then he would charge it up and do it again.

So I am watching my two-year-old cruise all over the house on this hoverboard.

So naturally, I began thinking, I could do that.

If a two-year-old can do that with such ease, why can't I?

I have good balance. I've been riding the bike for years.

I'm somewhat athletic. I can handle this.

So I take the hoverboard over to the doorway

and I'm holding on to the door frame just to kind of get my balance, get my bearings right.

When I feel pretty confident, I let go of the door and I'm ready to cruise.

Next thing I know, my feet are above my head and I feel like I broke my hip.

Needless to say, I haven't tried it since.

But never once did I shake my fist at heaven angry at God

because he allowed that to happen.

It was my dumb decision to think that I was still young enough to be able to do that easily.

God wasn't punishing me for not following him

or for not giving him the attention he deserves.

He was just letting me live in my decision.

I can't count how many times I have heard from people who are mad at God

because their life is a wreck.

If God was loving, he wouldn't let me live through this pain.

If God cared for me, then I wouldn't be living in the conditions that I am.

When in reality, you might be experiencing the wrath of God

by him just stepping back and letting you live with the decisions that you've made.

God isn't striking them down and wiping them off the earth. Notice this text.

He has already done that and he's promised not to do it again.

He is just leaving them to go down the path that they've chosen.

No matter how many times he's told them, that's going to go badly for you.

That's going to end badly.

Now, don't think of God's passivity as something that he is approving of.

Just because there isn't a loud voice from heaven coming down

doesn't mean that he's pleased with your decisions.

Now, when you get slapped in the face with disappointment, what is your natural reaction?

What is it you want to do? How do you handle it?

Well, some of us just retreat to the corner and pow and feel sorry for ourselves,

but others of us, we want to punish.

We want to hurt. We want to react and manipulate and extend our control if we can.

Guess what? God feels the same way too.

Even God feels anger. Even God wants to rebuke and to punish.

And as much as some of us would prefer to get rid of all the harshly judgmental passages in the Bible, we cannot.

They're there. God speaks in wrath. God's feelings flare up.

And his disappointment turns into a desire to strike out.

But here's what I want you to notice this morning.

God's way of dealing with disappointment, God's way of expressing his wrath and his anger,

is not so much to strike out, strike us down and destroy us as it is to just leave the people to their own devices.

So sometimes his wrath is him just taking a step back and watching you go down the wrong path

and learning a lesson from the decisions that you've made.

You continually try to do things on your own and have failed to give him praise for all that he has done for you.

And he just kind of steps back and watches you go down that road.

About 14 years ago, I left the ministry and I'm just going to make it on my own.

I went and got a secular job because I wanted to make money and because ministry had kicked me in the teeth quite a few times.

In the span of two and a half years, I had six jobs.

My marriage wasn't in the best shape. I was struggling mentally and I wasn't content.

From the world's perspective, I wasn't doing anything wrong.

I was still going to church.

I was still serving when I was asked, but something was off.

I was running from what the Lord had called me to do.

He left me to my own decisions and the consequences weren't catastrophic, but they weren't pleasant either.

Eventually, you just get tired of running.

Eventually, it just wears you out.

And I'm so grateful for that little church in La Mesa that God used to get me back on track.

How is God getting your attention?

For some people, it takes an Assyrian army and captivity and pain.

For others of us, maybe he will use a worship service just like this one to get you back on track.

In light of all that, let's see how God responds in verse 8.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

How can I make you like Adema?

How can I treat you like Zeboim?

My heart recoils within me.

My compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger.

I will not again destroy Ephraim.

For I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

The word that stuck out to me when I was reading that passage was the word recoil.

Recoil is to find this drawing back of something as a result of a force of impact.

So in light of our unfaithfulness to God, his response is to draw back into himself.

Scripture says that God is love.

So when a force comes at him, he recoils back into love.

I handed my son a 20 gauge shotgun several years ago.

We got his stance correct, because there's a certain way you stand, right?

We got it. We got it.

He said, really push it into your shoulder, because we're trying to prepare him for the recoil.

He pulls the trigger, and he hands up on the ground.

It just knocked him down.

It was too strong of a force.

That force is what God says he absorbs into his heart.

When sin continues to grow, unfaithfulness is running rampant, and idolatry is our focus.

God is saying his heart goes back into that never ending fountain of love, the fountain of who he is.

And his compassion grows warm and tender.

He says he does that because he is a God and not a man.

When someone comes with force against you, how do you respond?

If somebody were to come out to me and shove me and force me, and I lose my balance, and it takes me off guard,

I'm going to come back at you with a different force.

I'm not going to take that, and then come try and hug you.

I'm probably going to come out swinging, right?

Because my anger in that moment will take precedence because of my sin nature.

God's anger is absorbed in himself.

And the response is love because that's who he is.

This is another prophecy of Jesus.

He will not come and wrath against you, but instead he will come and wrath against himself.

And the result will be the punishment paid by the broken body of Jesus.

That's not passive wrath.

The brutality placed on Jesus is the result of our sin.

We are no better than the Israelites were.

We are just as corrupt, just as easily distracted, just as idolatrous, just as unfaithful,

and God's response to you is not to destroy you, but to love you.

There's a story of a pastor of a Methodist church who asked one of his members,

who was a craftsman, to make a cross for the children to carry each Sunday into the service.

Now, I've never been to a Methodist church service, but I can just imagine kids walking up the aisle with, you know, holding a cross.

He said he wanted a plain cross that wasn't too heavy, but would symbolize that we are entering into worship under the banner of the cross.

The craftsman, however, did not follow his instructions.

The cross was heavy and splintered.

He painted it to look like he had blood on it.

He carved this really intricate image of Jesus hanging on the cross with nails through his hands and feet.

It was a really beautiful piece of art, but it was hard to look at.

The pastor was furious.

We can't use that. It's too heavy for the children to carry,

and people are going to be offended by the grotesque nature of Jesus.

We aren't Catholic. We don't want to see Jesus on that cross.

I mean, how telling is that?

When we look at the cross, we see the finished work of Jesus, right?

He isn't on the cross anymore.

He is in heaven with the Father reigning forever.

That is all true, and all of that should be celebrated.

But sometimes I think we need to be reminded of the cost of our sin.

It's ugly and painful and it's offensive.

It is too heavy to carry on our own.

But too many times we have the clean version, right behind me.

We have the clean version of the cross on our minds,

and we forget about the wrath of God poured out on the cross

because of his recoil back into love.

We forget sometimes how offensive our sin is to a holy God.

We forget sometimes the punishment of being idolaters,

the punishment of binging Netflix instead of studying the Word.

We forget about those things.

When we choose other things before him,

we forget about the grotesque nature of our sin.

As ugly as it is, the cross is the greatest picture of love

that you can ever lay your eyes on.

Sometimes I think we need that picture of Jesus to remind us

that God heals people.

After that, let's see how the people respond.

Verse 10,

They shall go after the Lord.

He will roar like a lion.

When he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west.

They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt

and like doves from the land of Assyria.

And I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord.

This is another prophecy that God will restore.

A time is coming when the people of Israel will come to their senses

and return to the Lord.

They're going to go through some trials.

They're going to go through some pain.

They're going to be uncomfortable for a long period of time,

but it's a prophecy that they will return to the Lord.

From all directions, they will come and he is going to restore.

So even while his wrath is passive at times,

he never leaves us.

He is right there waiting for you to hear his voice,

to hear his roar, and there God will be found.

He's never left us.

So is he calling you this morning?

Is he calling you this morning to return?

Are you aware of how much you are loved and cared for?

Was there a time in your life when you were walking closely with the Lord?

Can you think back to those times when you were walking closely with the Lord?

You were aware of how much he was providing for you?

How much he protected you?

You were aware of how he healed you?

But lately, you've been so consumed with life

that you're now walking down your own path.

He isn't hiding.

He isn't aloof to your situation.

Maybe this morning you hear him roaring in your heart

because he wants to restore you.

He wants you to return.

No matter how many times, my children disappoint me.

I'll never turn my back on them.

No matter how many times they're ungrateful,

I'm still going to provide for them.

No matter how many times they give me attitude,

I'm still going to feed them and show it, lead them in kindness as best I can.

Why would God do any less when his love is so much greater than mine?

He's ready to restore.

Are you listening for his voice?

Let's pray.

Fathers, we get ready to remember your sacrifice for us.

As we remember the bloody, broken body of Jesus on the cross,

as we remember those times where you've made our life easier,

as we remember those times that you've healed us and provided for us

and sustained us,

as we remember all those times that we've disappointed you and failed you,

I pray God that in this moment you will restore

because that's who you are.

You're a God of love.

And so Father, as much as we look down on Israel with judgment,

thinking how can they be so ignorant,

I pray God that we will see that in ourselves,

that we are so much like a naive child unaware of how much you do for us,

how much you care for us, how much you love us.

And so Father, right now I pray that many of us in this room will hear your roar this morning.

That we will hear that still small voice of you calling to us,

calling to us to restore us, calling to us to return.

So Father, I pray that you speak.

I pray that your spirit will move in this place.

So Father, forgive us.

Forgive us where we fail to acknowledge you.

Ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.