PLOUGHING/SOWING/REAPING

Today’s Reading: Hosea 9-10

Click scripture link to read online or HERE to listen online (then click the symbol of the audio speaker above the scripture portion).

A Farmer at Nazareth Village in Nazareth uses a sickle. Reaping before modern farm implements was a very labour intensive task. Over and over again, the Scriptures make the point that what we sow in our lifetimes, we will inevitably reap as a harvest, as in our key verse, either “mercy” or “iniquity.”

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Key Verses: Hosea 10:12-13a

Sow for yourselves righteousness;

Reap in mercy;

Break up your fallow ground,

For it is time to seek the Lord,

Till He comes and rains righteousness on you.

You have plowed wickedness;

You have reaped iniquity.

In Hosea 9 & 10 the message is clear. A Holy God and sin cannot co-exist. Therefore, sin must be dealt with. The sacrificial offerings were a way of covering sin by the picture they presented of the final sacrifice for sin by Jesus Christ (Messiah) on the cross. We can learn from Hosea. We must determine to live holy lives in order to please God. Every day we are sowing by our actions and we reap in our lives, and in our families, the consequences of sin. Breaking up fallow ground (ploughing) is hard work, requiring firm discipline. “IT IS TIME TO SEEK THE LORD!” Sin almost totally destroyed God’s chosen people. They sowed sin and reaped a crop of destruction and pain. While our sins are forgiven and we have the assurance of eternal life because of the cross of Christ, as long as we are in this life, we hurt ourselves and our loved ones as a result of sin.

Jesus taught about sowing and reaping. When our hearts are hardened by sin, the Lord’s efforts to plant good seed are thwarted. Are there stones that need removal from our lives? Or have thorns grown in our lives which hurt ourselves and others? (read Luke 8:4-15).

PRAYER FOR TODAY:

Lord God, I repent!!! I pray for Your rain of righteousness to fall on me, soaking me with pure and holy living. I seek You, Lord Jesus! Forgive my sin and change my heart and mind! May I take deliberate actions to move away from the occasion of sinning and from those who would entice me to sin. By repentance I break up the hard ground in my heart, and I ask for the good seed of Your Word to penetrate into my innermost being, producing a harvest of holiness!!! In the Name of Your 100% Holy Son, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen!!!

100 PERSONAL WORDS:

Here are some random thoughts. Surely Hosea 9:17 has been fulfilled, “They shall be wanderers among the nations.” Until 1948 God’s ancient people had not had a sovereign state for over 2,000 years. They wandered the world over. They are gathered back to Israel, but a national revival of faith in God and obedience to God is still to take place there.

Hosea 10:3b, “As for a king, what would he do for us,” reminds me of President Kennedy’s statement, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country.” It is rather obvious that the people of Israel were refusing to take responsibility for their own lives and wanted big government to do almost everything for them.

The summer I turned eight, my Uncle Harvey Lindsay, on whose farm we lived while my Dad was overseas during the WW2 years, taught me to break up the hard ground with a one-furrow plough behind Mischief, his one and only horse. He reprimanded me whenever I was distracted and took my eyes off the post across the field. By a steady gaze at that post, I was to plough a straight furrow. I’ve never forgotten that lesson. As long as I keep my eyes fixed on Jesus, and by focusing on His unchanging holy Person, I can continue to live straight.

Yours for consistently living a holy life by God’s grace given to us as we plough up the hardness in our lives, sowing daily the seed of God’s Word in our hearts and minds, reaping holiness before our Holy God,

David