This too is a work in progress.
I've gone ahead and printed out the Scripture that I want us
to acknowledge right up front. So we'll read from the Old Testament
prophecy of Hosea 5.15 down through 6.3. Perhaps the reason why there's
a chapter division between 5.15 and 6.1 is because verse 15 of chapter
5 is obviously the Lord Himself speaking. And then chapter 6
comes from a different direction. Then it becomes the expression
of the hearts of His people, His elect. So with that understanding
being given to you, let's read this portion of Scripture. The
Word of God says, The Lord says, I will go and return to my place
till they acknowledge their offense and seek my face. In their affliction,
they will seek me early. Chapter 6, verse 1, our response. Come, let us return unto the
Lord, for he hath torn and He will heal us. He hath smitten,
and He will bind us up. After two days will He revive
us. In the third day He will raise
us up, and we will live in His sight. Then shall we know, if
we follow on, to know the Lord. His going forth is prepared as
the morning, And He shall come unto us as the rain, as the latter
and former rain unto the earth." I've titled this presentation,
God's Love Always Leads to a Learning Experience. Dear ones, Philippians
2 verse 5 says, Let this mind be in you, which was also in
Christ Jesus. This mind of Christ is that same
mind that Paul was led of the Spirit to tell the Corinthians
about from 1 Corinthians 2 and verses 14 and 16. He, in essence,
told them that they already had the mind of Christ if they were
indeed not the natural man. The natural man, while hopelessly
unregenerate, never can nor ever will receive the things of the
Spirit of God. The mind of Christ is the Holy
Spirit-quickened and renewed mind of spiritual understanding
that is found only in the new man. It is the mind that has
been renewed by the soul-quickening, life-transforming, perspective-converting,
indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit of Christ our God. Ephesians
4.23 says, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Oh, the sad state of religious,
intellectual, fallen humanity. There's no question about it.
Unregenerate religion is so often being exuded by so many in our
present day. And these are highly respected
persons. that are seemingly so rich in
theological knowledge and yet so bankrupt in the Holy Spirit. They lack the light that only
the pure truth concerning the Lord Jesus Christ can provide. Their spiritual understanding
being so darkened, their life being so alienated from the genuine
life experience of God and His grace, they literally cannot
see the forest for the trees. where the simple yet profound
eternal truth concerning Christ is biblically being presented.
This is truth that God must reveal to you. The mind of Christ is
not ever in any way attained by fallen sinners, but it is
obtained by God's blessing, even by His creation. Ephesians 4
verse 24 says, "...put on the new man, which after God is created
in righteousness and true holiness." The mind of Christ is obtained
only by grace. And it is given to us by the
one who owns it. It's not earned by us through
educational achievement. It is given even by Christ Himself. 2 Timothy 1.7 tells us, For God
hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of
love, and of a sound mind. This wonderful text is announcing
the gospel that God has given to us His own Holy Spirit who
manifests His presence in our lives in accordance with these
grand descriptive aspects. Power. Love. a sound mind. Therefore, the mind of Christ
has been given to us along with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, is the presence of
the Holy Spirit revealed from within us by the sound and healthy
doctrinal truth that has so much displaced all our iniquities
or all our perversions of the truth that we have held and heralded
forth. The mind of Christ has captured
our thoughts and brought forward our converted perspective opinions
that have to do with the very person and work of the obedience
of Christ on our behalf. Praise His name. By the revelatory,
regenerating experience that the Holy Spirit causes to personally
take place in our lives, we see the truth that we indeed, having
been chosen in eternity and in eternity been placed in Christ,
According to Colossians 3, 1 and 2, we have also been risen with
Him in His glorious victory over sin and death. And we in turn,
led of the Holy Spirit, do set our minds upon things above in
eternity, where our eternal Redeemer sits as our eternal surety on
the right hand of eternal God. But what exactly are these things
that so much come to preoccupy our thinking and that have such
an impact upon us as we continue to live out our lives here in
this fallen world? Well, I think it must be true
that there surely is more than just one answer to this important
and revealing question. Nevertheless, I truly believe
that a part of the answer lies in that which is being brought
forward from this text from Hosea. And I would like for us to focus
a little bit on that which is being declared from here. This
text serves to bring forward a descriptive view of just how
it is that our Lord God causes us, while we are still here in
this world, to grow in grace and knowledge of Him being our
eternal Lord and loving Savior. First of all, from Hosea 5.15,
there is an action of the Lord that is being described. where
he and the personal relationship that he owns and controls with
his own people is concerned. And he says that where in regards
to the sense of the proximity of his presence with them is
concerned that he will remove himself and go and return unto
his place until or so that they will quote, acknowledge their
offense, unquote. In other words, God constructs
the platform for and orchestrates the circumstances in which his
chosen child will have a genuine learning experience. Oh yes,
it is a platform that he makes for their personal discipline.
He then orchestrates and governs their circumstances that will
directly involve their chastening experience. A chastening that
He performs out of His love for His chosen and adopted son or
daughter. This experience in turn produces
from the life of the child of God, by their being exercised
by it, the peaceable fruit of righteousness that can only be
harvested from our lives in this precise manner. Hebrews 12.11
relates this to us very succinctly. It says, Now no chastening for
the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Nevertheless, afterward
it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which
are exercised thereby. So then, Hosea 5.15 tells us
that the Lord purposely withdraws the sense of His intimate presence
from His people. And He does this in order to
cause them to have to acknowledge the reality of their offense. Their fallenness before Him is
their offense against Him. Why does He do this? even because
it will, in this fallen and oppressive world, bring upon all who are
truly God's people a circumstance of affliction that will cause
them to have to cry out for the Lord. And as the Lord says, in
their affliction, they will seek Me early. This is a principle
of the workings of grace. Psalm 27.4 has the psalmist telling
us this. One thing have I desired of the
Lord, that will I seek after. And what exactly is it that the
psalmist says he desires and seeks after? He answers, that
I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life
to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple. When the Lord seemingly withdraws
from His child, that child then suffers the real affliction of
that withdrawal. The child of God genuinely feels
the sense of the Lord's absence. And sovereign, all-governing
God sees to it that this time of affliction then becomes a
time of real profitable learning and growth in the child's knowledge
and trust in Him. Psalm 119, verse 67 declares,
Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now have I kept Thy
Word. And verse 71 confesses, It is good for me that I have
been afflicted, that I might learn Thy statutes. And then verse 75, lovingly avers,
I know, O Lord, that Thy judgments are right, and that Thou in faithfulness
hast afflicted me. When the ever faithful Lord seems
to leave the scene of your life and experience, your personal
sense of offense, your personal understanding of your fallenness
immediately increases. Your need for the only Savior
for your soul that there is grows and becomes more apparent to
you. All who are truly God's people,
Then with purpose and intent say, Hosea 6.1, Come, let us
return unto the Lord. The Lord has gone and returned
unto His place and you not being there suddenly sense His absence
and your offense against Him. You then, in true repentance,
determined to return unto Him, to find Him in His place, to
once again realize His presence. And you diligently strive to
do this in the biblical purity of gospel truth. You discover
that this indeed is a great mercy from the Lord for you to feel
this way. Wandering from the way of the
Lord is a very solemn and wearisome thing. And we do wander from
the way of the Lord whenever we walk according to the flesh
and not according to the spirit. It is our innate proneness to
walk according to the flesh, to follow the feelings of the
flesh. We are fallen sinners. We need
to be taught and trained to wait on the Lord. Wait on the Lord. We need to be taught and trained
to follow the Spirit of the Lord. We need to be taught and trained
to forsake the world and follow only Christ. Only Christ. This divinely inspired determination
on your part is brought upon you when you suddenly see the
Lord's sovereignty over all your experience. You then declare
of Him, for He hath torn and He will heal us. He hath smitten
and He will bind us up. We see that He has done it all. we ultimately learn that He has
never really ever left us or forsaken us. We have only ceased
to be able to sense His presence. And therefore, we have ceased
to believe that He's there. But when the pure truth of the
Gospel reality of His omnipresence is once again by us reckoned
and remembered, then we understand that He has to be there or He
isn't God. Then we understand that what
has happened is that He has only ceased to make Himself known
unto us. Then shall we know if we follow
on to know the Lord. This descriptive declaration
is intended to be a statement for us of encouragement and endurance. It's a descriptive statement
for all of God's children. It is, in fact, also a statement
of conclusion in reference to the Spirit-fostered experience
of returning unto the Lord. Then shall we know if we follow
on to know the Lord. The fact is, God is sovereign
over every detail of our life, our walk, and our relationship
with Him. He's sovereign over every detail
of it. As fallen persons with feet of
clay, we are so prone to pursue in this life the things of the
flesh rather than the things of the Spirit. And whatsoever
a man sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.
Galatians 6, 7. The gospel of God's great and
all-powerful grace, however, is the good news of the Lord's
healing and our total transformation. Where we suffer the wounding
of walking awry, our Lord and Savior causes us to return unto
Him and He binds up our wounds. And by the leading of His Spirit,
we learn the truth of verse 3, that then, Shall we know Him
when we follow on to know the Lord? You see, the word if in
this phrase of verse is literally not really even found there.
It's not there. As a true child of God, a child
of the light, a real recipient of God's grace, the fact is we
will follow on to know the Lord. We will. It is not a conditional
reality at all. It literally says, then shall
we know. Period. We will follow on to
know the Lord. Period. There's almost heard
an echo from here in our Lord and Savior's own voice that declares,
blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness
What? For they shall be filled. Matthew 5, verse 6. Hence, this
is a dogmatic, descriptive declaration that the Spirit of Truth will
lead everyone who is truly born from above, who has genuinely
been regenerated, to follow on to know the Lord. But how is
this desire brought to so much prominence in the life of the
child of God? The text specifically says that
He has torn and that He has smitten. The question may be posed, would
a loving God do this? And an answer to this question
is given in Revelation 3, verse 18, from where the Lord Himself
says, as many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. And then as a result,
He says, be zealous therefore. and repent, then shall we know. We will follow on to know the
Lord. Or there is even a more elaborate
and explicit declaration from Hebrews 12, verses 5 through
10, which says, And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh
unto you as unto children, My son, Despise not thou the chastening
of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked by him. For whom
the Lord loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom
he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God
dealeth with you as with sons. For what son is he whom the Father
chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement,
where all, that is, all of God's true children are partakers,
then are ye bastards and not sons. Furthermore, indeed, we
have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave
them reverence. Shall we not much rather be in
subjection unto the Father of spirits and live? For they verily
for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure, but He for
our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness. And then there's Job 5, verses
17 and 18, that even more substantiates for us that which Hosea 6, 1-3
is teaching us when it says, Behold, happy, or literally blessed,
is the man whom God correcteth. Therefore, despise not thou the
chastening of the Almighty. For he maketh sore and bindeth
up. He wounded and his hands made
whole. So we see how what 1 Peter 2,
2 and 3 refers to as the pure, the sincere milk of the Word
relates to us. How that the Almighty Sovereign
Lord of our lives, because He loves us, Because He would have
us to truly be profited as persons of His particular choice, because
He has purposed that the peaceable fruit of His righteousness is
to be reaped from our miserable, undeserving lives through having
Christ's powerful resurrection power come forth like a bountiful
harvest from us, He chastens us. He rebukes us. And we are torn and smitten and
scourged and wounded. And then after we have by Him
been chastened, been disciplined, He heals us. He binds us up. He makes us whole. Oh, my friends,
we have too much of this world that caters so to the flesh within
us, within our hearts. And Christ must cut it away.
He must circumcise it away. And He is the only one that can
do it. We cannot perform this much needed
operation on ourselves. We will not do it. It is the
destruction, the rendering powerless of our own very flesh that we're
talking about. As Romans 2, 28 and 29 accurately
says, For he is not a Jew which is
one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward
in the flesh. But he is a Jew which is one
inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit,
and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of
God. And this circumcision is all
of Christ, and none of it is of ourselves. Colossians 2.11
tells us this very same thing. It says, "...in whom also you
are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands in putting
off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of
Christ." This is Colossians 2.11 and Colossians 3.11 nails this
truth down when it says that Christ is all and in all. In other words, if it is not
all Christ. then it is all wrong. Just as everything divinely necessary
for our salvation and acceptable standing before God's holy justice
is done for us in Christ, God's only begotten and eternal Son,
even so is also this operation upon our inner beings. He must
do it or it will not ever be done. Every true Jew of the tribe
of Jesus Christ, the lion of the tribe of Judah, according
to Revelation 5, 5, becomes a true Jew by this circumcision of their
heart. How is it, though, that the true
child of God experiences by God being torn? Oh, my dear ones. He will graciously and lovingly
tear away from us our worldly fleshly lovers, our worldly fleshly
habits, the worldly fleshly places that we are prone to haunt, our
worldly fleshly ways of dressing and our general appearance. Suddenly,
the warning exhortation of 1 Thessalonians 5.22 closes on our hearts with
deep substantive meaning. When it by the Holy Spirit speaks
to us and says, abstain from all, that is every form of appearance
of evil. When Christ reveals that He is
indeed truly a part of your life, look out. He comes in and changes
everything. Oh yes, He does. He changes your
heart. He tears away that old, hard,
stubborn, selfish, pride-filled heart that may be in you right
now resisting everything that I'm trying to show and tell you
from His Word. Pride in a true child of God is just begging
to be humbled by God. You cannot be a true child of
God with a humble and contrite spirit and be proud. Only the revelation of the Lord
Jesus Christ can deliver you from that proud heart. Why? even because it has reign and
control of your whole being. Without Christ being your Lord,
that wicked heart of yours lords over you. But when Jesus shows
up, and He can come into your life whenever He pleases, but
when He does, That old heart in you that has made you to be
what you are as an enemy of God and His pure gospel of grace
truth, that old heart has got to go. That inner spirit in you
that has so often exuded an independent rebellion from you against God
and His pure gospel truth has got to go. It is only under the
reigning and controlling power and influence of God's new heart
and new spirit That the things of His eternal Spirit and the
things of the person and work of His eternal Son will forever
unite and bond with your desires, with your intents, and with your
motives. Ezekiel 36, 26, and 27 declares
it. A new heart also will I give
you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away
the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of
flesh that is a heart that is moldable and responsive to the
holy will of God. And I will put My Spirit within
you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you shall keep
My judgments and do them. So then, It makes no difference
who we may think we are. It makes no difference how good
we may think we are living or what good we may think we're
doing in this world at this present time. If we are not following
on to know the Lord, then we are continuing on in our feeble
and worthless, our vain and self-righteous attempts to justify ourselves
in our present state. as being all that we can make
of ourselves before God and man. And that, dear ones, is just
so much hooey. And we still need disciplinary action from our
loving Heavenly Father. Discipline that will involve
our being torn, being smitten, being scourged, and being wounded. And let me say this. Preachers
especially need to have torn away from them any and every
doctrine that they hold to that is nothing but iniquity in their
lives, in their perspective opinions, where the pure and plain truth
of the gospel is concerned. The problem seems to me to be
that most of us think that where gospel truth is concerned, we've
already arrived. It's outrageous for us to even
imagine that there might be, that there indeed is some really
gross perversion of the truth that is continually being propagated
through our preaching. Take a test. The Spirit of the
Lord commands, as the Word itself says, examine yourselves whether
you're in the faith. Prove your own selves. Preacher,
are you preaching the pure and plain truth of the Gospel of
God's Word? Is it the Gospel that the Word
of God says is only truly believed in by the faith of Jesus Christ? Revelation 2.18 is where the
glorified Jesus Christ addresses the church at Pergamos and says,
I know thy works, even where Satan's seat is, and thou holdest
fast my name and hast not denied my faith. His faith, He says. We do not want to, we must not
ever deny His faith. And yet, most preachers today
either openly deny it or just live and preach in a kind of
quiet, unassuming, and yet compromising denial of the pure truth of the
faith of Jesus Christ. all the time. And beloved, this,
especially where preachers are concerned, if they are truly
God's children, Christ will cut out of the equation of their
preaching as they also, by God's grace, truly will follow on to
know the Lord. He will either cut it out of
them or cut them off. Now in closing, let me address
the two portions of this context from Hosea that I have not yet
directly acknowledged. They include that which is related
to us from verse 2, which says, after two days will He revive
us. In the third day, He will raise
us up, and we will live in His sight. And then that which makes
up the last part of verse 3, which tells us that His going
forth is prepared as the morning, and He shall come unto us as
the rain, as the latter and former rain unto the earth. Herein,
in these portions of this context, we have the Gospel being declared
unto us. The good and great news of the
glory only of the Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, as far
as verse 2 is concerned, when the Apostle Paul was inspired
by the Holy Spirit to write to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians
15 verse 4, that he declared unto them that Jesus was buried
and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,
It was most likely that this particular Old Testament scripture
was a part of the repertoire of scriptures that he was referring
to when he wrote this. This is because there definitely
is an obvious parallel with the resurrection of Christ that is
being made here. But what does that mean to us
where the loving chastening of the Lord upon us is concerned?
I think it is obviously this. Whenever we are genuinely exercised
and trained by the chastening of the Lord, there is a time,
however short or long it might be, that we feel as if we have
indeed been slain. That we actually feel dead inside. We are smitten and sense no hope
at all for recovery from or by ourselves. And that's because
there isn't any. The Lord has withdrawn Himself
from us. He has seemingly killed us by
His doing this. The sense of His lively and quickening
presence, He has removed from us. He is our life. And with Him gone, We feel like
we are dead. This in turn ignites in us a
real burning desire to once again have restored by Him the good
and godly sense of His presence in our lives. Therefore, do we
begin to really seek the Lord in prayer. We are absolutely
in no way content to exist without Him being first and foremost
in our lives. Therefore, What good news it
truly is. What a comfort it is. And what
a source of strength it then becomes for us to know that after
two days, will He revive us? In the third day, He will raise
us up and we shall live in His sight. This is the resurrection
power that Paul was inspired to describe for us from Philippians
3, verses 9 and 10, which he wrote after denouncing all of
his life as a Pharisee that he lived according to his Jewish
tradition and self-righteous religion. He descriptively declared
his new heart's great desire from this portion of Scripture.
In his own words, he defines this great desire. that I may
win Christ and be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness
which is after the law, but that which is through the faith of
Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may
know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship
of His sufferings being made conformable unto His death. Then in Philippians 3.12, he,
as it were, echoes Hosea 6.3 when he says, "...but I follow
after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended
of." Or literally, that I may lay hold of that which I was
laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Surely, to be able to apprehend
the same things that He, Christ, has used to apprehend us is the
same as saying, then shall we know. We will follow on to know
the Lord. We follow Him in death and also
in being revived by His resurrection power. His going forth and our
following Him is prepared or established, fixed, appointed,
and rendered sure as the morning. It is scriptural. So therefore,
it must come to pass. Dear true child of God, do not
despair of your seeming lack of growth in grace. Wait. on the Lord. Trust only in Him. God is faithful. It is certain
to happen, as sure as Jesus said in advance of His own atoning
death, that there will be a resurrection morning. Malachi 4 and verse
2 describes our Savior when it says, But unto you that fear
My name shall the Son of Righteousness arise with healing in His wings. He hath torn, and He will heal
us. Times of chastening, disciplining,
and the afflictions that they bring into our experience are
times of both profitable training and darkness. But then the loving
hand that has chastened us for our prophet causes the Son of
Righteousness to rise up and shine its blessed light upon
us. And He causes the peaceable fruit of that same holy righteousness
to be reaped from our lives. And from Revelation 22, verse
16, the Lord Himself says of Himself, I am the root and offspring
of David, or I am the root and the fruit of the Messianic line,
and the bright and morning star. And dear ones, as the wise men
at the time of Christ's birth into this fallen world were led
to follow the moving star in the heavens right to where the
Savior, Lord, and King was, even so do we follow the Lord, who
is our bright and morning star. We follow on to know the Lord. And as the brightness of the
sun is a blessing to us, even also is the rain. Both are necessary. The sunny days, bright and cheerful,
and the rainy days, dark and dreary. These two are needed
for a healthy growth of good things that come forth from this
earth. As I understand it, in the land of Israel, they principally
had only two main rains per year. One during the time of the sowing
of the crops, and the other right before the time of harvesting
the crops. These are the latter and former
rains. And just as the earth cannot
help but receive these good and healthy rains in their divinely
appointed seasons that again are so necessary to the earth's
fertility so that it will bring forth a most bountiful harvest,
neither can we. Through His loving discipline
upon us, help but receive the dark and rainy, yet healthy times
of God's chastening. We need this so that we may grow
more intimate in the grace and knowledge of our loving Lord
and Savior. We will follow on to know the
Lord. Hebrews 6, 7 aptly declares,
For the earth, which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon
it, and bringeth forth herbs, meet for them by whom also it
is dressed, receiveth blessing from God. It is indeed from this
portion of scripture that the applicable exhortation is also
delivered from verses 11 and 12. And we desire that every
one of you do show or that every one of you do indicate by word
and act the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto
the end that ye be not slothful or dull of hearing bastards,
but followers. of them who through faith and
patience inherit the promises. Even so, Lord Jesus, make us
to be Thy true children and faithful followers of You unto the end. Amen.