Title: God's Mercy for You
Contents
Title: God's Mercy for You
(January 28, 2007, Sunday worship service, Hosea continuous expository sermon, main text: Hosea 11:1-11)
There is a movie called Schindler's List directed by Steven Spielberg. The film was a masterpiece that swept seven parts at the 66th Academy Awards. During World War II, Nazi Germany slaughtered Jews. They were imprisoned in death camps, tested, killed and tortured. One of the scenes that overwhelms us the most is the scene where Jews are stripped naked and thrown into gas chambers to kill them. It was a scene that showed the cruelty and cruelty of war as it was. Oscar Schindler, a real person at the time, buys Jews to save them. He built a factory in his hometown, bought Jews, and made them work there. This was a measure to save the Jews. In this way he saved a large number of Jews, as many as 1,100. And finally, when the war was over, he declared liberty to the Jews he had brought with him. “Now that all wars are over, and you are free, go back home now,” he declared. The Jews cheer and rejoice and return home.
Losing freedom, becoming a slave, and living in a state where you never know when you will die is so miserable and terrifying. However, if freedom were declared to them, it would be a very shocking sound, a sound that they have no choice but to react with trembling. That scene is verses 10-11 of today's text. Verses 10-11: “They will follow the LORD, who utters iron like a lion. When the LORD utters his voice, his descendants will come trembling from the west, and they will come trembling like birds from Egypt and doves from Assyria. I will do it, saith the LORD.”
However, the situation of the people of Israel today is not at all like that. Their appearance clearly shows that there is no reason to give them such freedom. They were so rebellious that they fell into injustice and sin. See verses 5-7. The Israelites did not want to return to God (verse 5). They will also come under Assyrian attack and domination because of their iniquity. No matter how God calls them to return, they make up their minds and do not return to God (verse 7).
This behavior of the people of Israel was never to be done. How much God loved the people of Israel, could they act like that? Look at God's love for them in the past. Verses 1-4.
(Verse 1) ‘When I was a child I loved’: In my iniquity (Romans 5:7-8), ‘I called my son out of Egypt’: ‘Son’, not ‘Slave’. Called through prophets (v. 2a)
(Verses 2b, 3b) Israel's response to such God's love: sacrifices to the Baals, offering incense before carved idols (vs. 2b), not realizing God's healing (v. 3b)
(Verses 3-4) However, God never gave up on them. He taught them to walk, held them in his arms and led them (verse 3a), guided them with human cords and of love (verse 4a), removed the yoke from their necks (verse 4b), and placed food before them (verse 4c). ).
Thomas Watson put it this way to explain ‘God’s mercy’: “If love is like a friend visiting a lover, then mercy is like a doctor visiting the sick, if grace is love for those who are in sin, if mercy is love for those who are in misery as a result of sin” This mercy of God has renewed us today. Come before this mournful love.