Dr. Alan Redpath, Message, God's Problem with the
Soul.
Good morning.
That's better.
It's all the polite ones.
And that makes me feel better now.
I want you to turn with me this
morning, The Prophecy of Hosea, the sixth chapter.
The sixth chapter of The Prophecy of Hosea.
I was telling the folk in Jamaica from
which island I have just come, it's about
Saturday with Mr. Walsh, that just over a
year ago I knew that I was facing
the possibility that my ministry was over and
that I would not again be able to
speak for the Lord in public.
It seemed as if the bottom had dropped
out of everything.
And at that time, when I was in
a nursing home, I was visited by one
whom you will all know, Dr. Martin Lloyd
-Jones, from Westminster Chapel.
If you want to buy a good book,
buy his books on the Sermon on the
Mount.
They're a masterpiece.
He happened to be speaking at the anniversary
services of my church, and he came along
to the nursing home to see me.
And he spoke to me, prayed for me.
I shall never forget how he knelt down
and laid hold of God for his healing
touch.
And in the course of speaking, he said,
you know, I met a few years ago,
some years ago, a Welsh evangelist who had
the same trouble as you had, only much
worse.
And he was laid aside from preaching and
from all work for two or three years.
I often heard him.
He was a fiery preacher.
But after he'd come back from his illness,
I went to hear him again, and again,
and again.
And I never could hear him after that
without wanting to weep.
Because Jesus Christ was so absolutely real to
him and through him.
The fire had all gone.
But in place of the fire, there was
a tenderness and a love which spoke of
the reality of Christ.
Somehow that day, a gleam of hope came
to me.
And I said, Lord, do that for me.
I shall never be able to speak again
in the same way as I did before.
But if only the tenderness of Christ can
get through, that's what matters.
And that's why in recent months, I have
spent much time in the prophecy of Hosea,
which is the most tender, most loving, yet
most dreadful and most solemn of all the
prophets of the Old Testament.
We'll just read this chapter together.
Now, you would do me a good turn.
I wonder if you'd help me by reading
it to me.
Hosea chapter 6.
I'm sure you've all got your Bibles, the
Bible hour, or you can borrow one.
Hosea chapter 6.
I've given you plenty of time to find
the place.
Are you ready?
Then go.
Lord, with thy word open before us, we
say, speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.
Speak just now some message to meet my
need, which thou only dost know.
Speak now through thy holy word, and make
me see some wonderful truth thou hast to
show to me, for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
First thought.
Oh, Ephraim, this is God speaking.
Oh, Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?
Then missing out the next phrase.
For your goodness is as a morning cloud,
and as the early dew, it goeth away.
This prophecy is a most amazing revelation of
the struggle in the heart of God over
the soul of a nation, as he fought
to win this people in surrender to himself.
Now, at once you may say, God does
not deal with nations nowadays, and therefore that
cannot have any particular application to us.
In a sense, that is true.
But every nation has a soul, has a
secret to its strength or to its weakness.
And I suggest to you that the soul
of a nation is the church, is the
body of people within that country who have
been redeemed by the blood of Christ, and
who, of whom the Lord Jesus would say,
ye are the light of the world.
I think back to my little island home
in Britain, fifty million people in it.
I read in the newspaper the day after
Christmas that in Britain, during the Christmas week,
the nation spent no less than 300 million
pounds on intoxicating drinks.
That is about 850 million dollars.
Fifty million people, and if you count among
them children and those who are old, you
realize something of what that means.
That's 300 times more than is spent in
our country on missionary enterprise in a year.
And as I thought of that with a
horror of it, it's easy to stand in
judgment.
But then I asked myself, how much more
did Christian people spend in Christmas week on
buying Christmas presents and exchanging Christmas greetings than
they do in missionary enterprise in the whole
year?
I believe there's an ache in the heart
of God over that little country, and if
I may say so too, in America.
I lived long enough here to recognize that
within this land there is a tremendous company
of believing godly people whose hearts hunger for
all that God has for them.
But there is also a vast number of
nominal Christians who are heedless and indifferent to
the things of God and carry little of
his burden upon their hearts.
The struggle of God for the soul of
a nation.
And Hosea was given a humanly impossible task.
If I may put in the picture of
the background for a moment, you will remember
perhaps that he prophesied, he preached, in the
northern kingdom of Israel and was the contemporary
of Isaiah in the kingdom of Judah in
the south.
He was preaching to a nation which had
already rebelled against God.
They had revolted against his rule.
Of course, they had not become pagan.
They had not become atheists.
They had set up a form of religion
which, as nearly as possible, was like the
real thing which they had known when they
were all one nation with Judah.
Satan's masterpiece is not to turn out a
nation of atheists, it is to turn out
counterfeit to reality.
The devil has a motto, and it is,
give them anything but Jesus, give them anything
but the cross, and the nearer he can
get his counterfeit to be like the real
thing, the better is pleased.
And this was a nation of counterfeit religion,
with all the sacrifice and all the form
and all the outward ceremony that looked like
reality, but it lacked the power to do
the one thing essential, and that was to
bring men into fellowship with Jehovah.
The one thing that an aching, longing heart
desired was not provided for in that system
of religion, and into that situation Hosea was
called to preach.
The nation had gone from bad to worse.
Its priesthood was corrupt, therefore its people were
corrupt.
And that's always a principle.
If the pulpit is rotten, the pure is
rotten.
No man can lead a congregation nearer to
God than he lives himself.
No man can raise a congregation to a
higher standard of life than that upon which
he lives.
A corrupt priesthood means a corrupt people, and
a minister not right with God means a
congregation not right with God.
A minister who is careless, busy, fuzzy, active,
will produce a congregation which doesn't pray but
which works, but is utterly ineffective for the
kingdom.
And into that situation God sent Hosea.
What a hopeless task!
From the human angle, he would be judged
by a standard of, and would be reckoned,
a complete failure.
A church can forgive a minister anything, provided
he gets results.
But if he hasn't baptisms, and if he
hasn't got conversions, he's no good, pity the
poor missionary.
Some who are the very queen of the
Christian church, I know, who've been in India
for a lifetime and haven't seen a single
convert, are they failures?
My friend, what a false standard it is
to judge a ministry by success.
The only standard to judge a ministry is
by whether or not, in the course of
a man's ministry, that man himself becomes more
like the Lord Jesus, more lovely in his
character, more gentle in his life.
And Hosea is sent into this situation to
preach, to declare the word of God to
that people.
But there was a price to pay.
God couldn't give the man the honor of
such a strategic ministry of that, unless he
was willing to pay a terrific price.
And you remember the story.
The first three chapters tell us.
Hosea, early in his ministry, was married at
the command of God.
And there were three children to the marriage.
And then tragedy broke into the home.
Goma, his wife, was unfaithful and left him.
He could have looked back upon that marriage
and said to him, said to himself, that's
the biggest disaster of my life, but God
ordered it.
And the home broke up.
An all too familiar story.
But then something very strange and wonderful happened.
God said to Hosea, go and get her
back again.
And take her back to yourself.
And so he had to swallow his pride.
And he went down to the slave market
and bought her for half price, just how
low she had sunk.
Half the price of a slave and a
day's rations of food.
She was just a prostitute, you see.
And he brought her back to his side,
to his wife, to be his wife once
more.
And out of that experience, Hosea learned that
the one who suffers most when a man
sins is the one who is sinned against,
is the God against whom he sinned.
Hosea learned something of the suffering that came
from the sin of his wife in the
home.
And then he learned something more of the
tenderness and the love and the forgiving mercy
of God, which would go to any length
to rescue a soul that had fallen.
Had he been sent to preach in that
situation, without that lesson, he would have thundered
hellfire at the whole lot of them.
He'd have told them in no uncertain sound
what he thought of that country.
But God didn't want him to do that.
The only hope for that country was that
they would understand what was the true character
of the heart of God.
God filled Hosea with love, with tenderness, with
sweetness, and yet with firmness.
And therefore he went to preach to that
people as the very voice of God for
the hour in which he lived.
My dear brethren and sisters, God has never
left himself without witnesses.
God has his man for this twentieth century,
his man for your town, for your church,
but he's got to pay a price.
And the Lord has to bring some of
us very, very low down before we learn
to pay it.
And Hosea began to preach to the people,
and you get something of the theme of
his message in the previous chapter.
Just glance at it one second.
Verse 12, Therefore will I be unto Ephraim
as a moth, and to the house of
Judah as rottenness.
Verse 14, For I will be unto Ephraim
as a lion, and as a young lion
in the house of Judah.
I even, I will care and go away,
I will take away, and none shall rescue
him.
God speaks through his serpent and says, I
will be to this people like a moth.
The subtle unseen decay which goes on and
on till it renders something useless and powerless
and corrupt.
And then I will be to this nation
as a lion.
I shall meet them with disaster and with
tragedy.
The moth and the lion.
Do you know anything about that in your
life?
Do you know anything about the hidden, unseen,
almost unnoticed, heady decay of spiritual experience, eating
away strength and life and vitality?
And do you know anything about the sudden
onslaught of some tragic circumstance and experience which
has come with some shattering blow upon your
life?
That's how God was going to deal with
this nation.
And then he said, I will go and
return to my place till they acknowledge their
offense and seek my place.
In their reflection, they will seek me early.
I'll leave them alone, said God, until they
acknowledge their offense.
Until.
When God withdraws the sense of his presence
from us all, it is his last resort.
He doesn't do it willingly.
He doesn't want to deal with people that
way.
But if they won't learn any other way,
that's all he can do.
And when God withdraws the sense of his
presence, he doesn't withdraw his government.
A man or a woman are always in
God's hands in every circumstance, never out of
his sovereign control.
I will go and return unto my place
until.
Thank the Lord for that word, until.
The door for a return to the Lord
is wide open.
And no sooner had that word been uttered
than there is sounded out by whose ears
a great appeal, from which our text has
taken, full of the promise of blessing.
God has been to you, he says, as
the moth.
He has been to you as the lion.
Now, I trust that the Holy Spirit this
morning has applied that to your heart.
There's a hymn of John Newton's that I
don't like.
But if we were honest, I wonder if
we wouldn't sing it.
Really, that would be the song of our
heart.
Oh, for a closer walk with God, a
calm and heavenly friend, a light to shine
along the road that leads me to the
Lamb.
Where is the blessedness that once I knew
when first I saw the Lord?
The so refreshing view of Jesus and his
word.
Where?
You'll go back to the day of your
conversion, can you do that?
I can.
Do you recall?
Oh, the simplicity of it, the sweetness of
it, the wonder of it, the thrill of
it.
Like Christian in abundance, pilgrims, progress, you gave
three leaps for joy.
The burden had snapped and fallen from your
back into the sepulchre, never to be seen
again.
And my word, you went round shouting hallelujah.
It was all so wonderful and Christ was
all so real.
My brother, my sister, is it like that
today?
Has it been like that with you?
Has God been dealing with you like the
moth?
And has he even dealt with you like
the lion?
And has he even taken the last step
and said, I will withdraw?
He never takes his Holy Spirit from us.
When we're born again, we have him.
But the consciousness of his presence and the
effectiveness of his power is gone.
And like a train, a mainline train running
along the line, and it shuts off the
power, it goes on for miles on its
own momentum.
And you've been going on for miles like
that, preaching, singing, talking, witnessing, speaking, serving, bearing
testimony.
But oh God, how dead it's all been.
How bad.
And in your heart, you know it.
And in that situation, Hosea made this plea,
come, and I would make it with you.
Come, let us return unto the Lord.
For he hath torn, and he will heal.
He hath smitten, and he will bind us
up.
And suddenly, there breaks into that appeal, it
almost seems as if, just as if God,
as if Hosea, in the act of his
preaching, is interrupted, and heaven steps in, while
Hosea is yet talking and still appealing, let
us return unto the Lord.
After two days, he will revive us, and
the third day he will raise us up,
and we shall live in his sight.
And God suddenly breaks in and says, O
Ephraim, what shall I do to thee?
Thy goodness is as a morning cloud.
As the early dew, it goeth away.
Here is an amazing, amazing text.
Amazing revelation.
It's the revelation of God in a difficulty.
The struggle of God for the soul of
a nation.
The struggle of God for his dear child.
Let me examine with you this difficulty, and
then let us ask ourselves the answer to
it.
What is this difficulty?
The more I think about it, the more
it staggers me.
I can understand a man saying, what must
I do to be saved?
I wish I had them say it more
often.
But this is not a picture of a
man in difficulty because he can't find God.
It is a picture of God in difficulty
because he can't deal with a man.
Now that's very arresting.
What does it mean?
Wherein lies the difficulty?
The answer is given, and please note very
carefully that the difficulty does not lie with
human sin and failure.
Oh, the whole of this precious book is
full of the story of that.
But sin never creates a difficulty to God.
It is an opportunity for him to display
his healing power as soon as faith and
repentance are exercised, and faith is placed in
the divine remedy, the blood of Jesus, God
steps in to save.
He's never failed to do that, never once.
Anyone who truly repents and truly believes at
that moment steps out of darkness into light.
Oh, sin is no difficulty.
Ah, perhaps that word is just a word
of comfort to someone in this church this
morning.
Perhaps you labor under a sense of failure.
You imagine that it's all too big a
mess for God ever to come in and
clean up.
My dear friend, as I part, I would
say to you today, that our message of
that be your thinking is, though your sins
be as scarlet, they shall be white as
snow.
Though they be red like crimson, they shall
be as white as wool.
Sin is never God's difficulty.
Though the defeat and the bondage may have
gone on for years, and may have gone
an awful long way, it can't go so
far as the power of the blood of
Jesus to save you from it.
And though the tragedy may have gone deep,
deep down to the depths of your soul,
the cross can go deeper.
Just let him have his way with you,
and in answer to your willingness, he's able.
Sin isn't God's difficulty.
Then what is God's difficulty?
Here it is.
Your goodness is as the morning cloud.
Not sin, but goodness.
That's the divinity with God.
Now, isn't that arresting?
Goodness as the morning cloud, as the early
dew which goes away.
Beautiful, every blade of grass shining in the
sun.
But the moment the sun comes up, God
never produces any harvest, never encompasses anything permanent.
God's difficulty with the soul is not created
by its simple-ness, but by its goodness.
Now, what is meant by this word goodness?
In the margin of the authorized version, you
will find mercy, or kindness.
I am no Hebrew scholar, and I don't
know a word of it, and I don't
want to pose as one.
You can go a good long way with
a concordance, and it sounds quite impressive to
say that the Hebrew meaning is this.
But having disposed of any imagination, if you
think I have any scholarly bent, I understand
that the root meaning of this word goodness
is, in the Hebrew, bending the neck.
Submission.
And goodness, and kindness, and mercy are all
the outcome of submission.
O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?
For thy submission is like a morning cloud.
Do you see it?
God says, I will withdraw myself until they
acknowledge their offense, and seek my face.
Then Hosea pleads with them to return, and
God breaks in.
Ah Hosea, but that's the trouble with this
people.
They've come back to me so often.
They've returned so frequently.
They're always doing it.
They've submitted so sincerely.
But it's like a morning cloud.
I've looked for something permanent, but it never
takes place.
And their way down in the southern country,
Isaiah, was saying the same thing to Judah.
Listen.
My beloved hath a vineyard in a very
fruitful hill.
He fenced it, gathered out the stone, planted
it with the choicest vine, lit a tower
in the midst of it, and the wine
pressed therein.
Looked that it should bring forth grapes, and
it brought forth wild grapes.
What could have been done more to my
vineyard than I have not done in it?
Wherefore when I asked that it should bring
forth grapes, brought it forth wild grapes.
Now do you see God's difficulty?
I want to put it very clearly, very
simply to you.
Not my sins, which may bear like a
mountain.
He can deal with them.
But my submission, which in all sincerity I
have given to him, perhaps.
I've kept the convention every year I've attended
it.
And I've resolved, and I've determined, and I've
yielded, and I've consecrated myself.
And it lasted twenty-four hours.
Because I refuse to give up the principle
upon which I live my life.
I refuse to admit that I was beaten.
I thought that I could still, with help
from reading my Bible, with help in prayer,
I could still live the Christian life.
I could still make myself a good Christian.
Polish up the flesh.
Improve it.
Refine it.
Sanctify it.
I will make myself live this Christian life,
and I'll come to Keswick and take all
the notes of sermons that I can ever
hear, and I'll seek to put them into
action, and I'll do my best.
And all you do, my friend, is to
try and make yourself, just think of it
with me, try and make yourself, who couldn't
even live an unconverted life to your own
satisfaction, that's why you turn to Jesus, try
and make yourself live a Christian life.
Hmm.
No wonder the psychiatrists are kept busy.
No wonder that many Christians have to live
with coffee and tranquilizing pills.
All the tension in the heart that says,
I will be God.
There's a chorus that we sometimes sing in
the old country.
Perhaps you know it.
If my memory serves me rightly, it's so
long since I've sung it, but it goes
something like this.
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in
me.
All his wondrous compassion and purity.
All thou spirit divine, all my nature refine.
Huh.
What a hope.
If that chorus said, all thou spirit divine,
make all thy nature mine, then I could
go along with it.
My dear friend, Keswick does not teach simply
because the New Testament does not teach sinless
perfection.
Keswick teaches, and the New Testament teaches, sinful
corruption.
And the only goodness that you and I
will ever know is the power and life
of God the Holy Ghost replacing and taking
the place of the corruption of the flesh.
Oh, Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee
for thy goodness?
Is this a morning class?
Of course it is.
You've responded and surrendered and stood up and
hold your hands up and signed cards and
gone back to your church and you're determined
to live the life and make good and
I tell you, some of you, you're back
here in the same old mess as you
were before.
And I will withdraw myself, says the Lord,
from all sense of my presence until we've
been so sincere with our determination to pray,
our determination to give, our determination to serve,
our determination to witness.
We bought books by the latest Keswick speakers
from the bookstore and they're half read and
half marked and they haven't been completed and
we left the sanctuary and left the convention
and went back into the rush and bustle
of business and home and we've never faced
this issue really in our lives at all.
That's God's difficulty.
It's expressed perhaps the most, most touchingly in
the 14th verse of the 7th chapter.
And they have not cried unto me with
thou heart when they howled upon their bed.
They assemble themselves for corn and wine and
they rebel against me.
There it is.
Oh yes, we can do this.
We'll go back and howl upon our bed.
Howl at the mess we've made and the
failures we've been and the resolutions we've failed
to carry through.
But we haven't turned to the Lord and
cried to him and we've come again for
corn and wine at another Keswick convention and
yet in our heart basically is a great
big realm of rebellion against God.
My doctor told me I'm to speak for
20 minutes and to keep quiet.
I'm not doing very well this morning.
I have one more minute to go.
Let me say to you because I must
say this and will develop it more clearly
in the week.
What's God's answer to all this?
What's the solution?
Well, here it is.
Let me read to you the opening verses
as they appear in the revised version.
Come let us return unto Jehovah 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.
On the third day he will raise us
up and we shall live before him.
Let us know.
Let us follow on to know.
Jehovah.
Notice this word.
Let us.
Let us return.
Let us know.
Let us follow on to know.
Verse six.
The knowledge of God is more than burnt
offering.
David said, Lord, unite my heart to fear
thy name.
The Lord is saying to you this morning,
I can deal with your sin, but I
cannot, cannot deal with you as long as
you insist on maintaining the place of sovereignty,
the place of control.
As long as you say self can do
it, I can make it with God's help.
One minute you swept off your feet by
emotion and the next minute you become as
cold as steel.
Look at the language of this people at
the end of the prophecy.
And with this I must close.
Chapter 14, verse four.
I will heal their backsliding.
I will love them freely for my anger
is turned away from him.
I will be as the dew unto Israel.
He shall grow as the lily and cast
forth his fruit as Lebanon.
His branches shall spread and his beauty shall
be as the olive tree and his smell
as Lebanon.
They that dwell under his shadow shall return.
They shall revive as the corn and grow
as the vine.
The scent thereof shall be as the wine
of Ephraim.
Ephraim shall say, what have I any more
to do with idols?
God says, I've heard him.
I've observed him.
I'm like a green, like a green fir
tree.
From me is thy fruit found.
My friend, listen.
The only good thing about a Christian is
Jesus.
Have you made that discovery?
I would close, I think, by reading you
the last verse of this prophecy.
Who is wise and he shall understand these
things?
Couldn't, and he shall know them.
For the ways of the Lord are right
and the just shall walk in them, but
the transgressors shall fall therein.
Oh, what shall I do unto thee?
Thy goodness is like a morning cloud.
I wonder if in this closing moment of
course we bow in prayer.
You would realize that your struggle and deceit
and failure have all been because you've refused
to forsake your belief in your own goodness.
Will you get to the place of despair
in it this morning?
The place where you say, Lord, I can
never try again.
I just give up.
Praise the Lord.
That's the place of it.
For then, the goodness of Jesus will replace
that which is of yourself, which is like
a morning cloud.
Let us pray.
Let the beauty of Jesus be seen in
me.
All his wondrous compassion and purity.
Oh, thou spirit divine, make all thy nature
mine.
Tell the beauty of Jesus be seen in
me.
Forgive us, Lord, for our stubbornness, for our
rebellion, for our insistence upon our own way.
May we truly turn from all of ourselves
to find that Jesus himself is, as the
early morning dew to his people, the fountain
of living water within our hearts, springing up
into everlasting life.
We ask it in Jesus' name.
Amen.