1 Corinthians 1:10-25



direction that could help them in their pain and need – God. “Let us return to Him,” they cried. “He is the answer to what we need.”

If you have an aching spirit, if you feel stressed out, if you feel the pain of life overcoming you, what do you do? Where do you go? Some people go shopping. Others turn to amusement parks. But the blessings that you need which will last can only come from the eternal God. The anger, the gloom, the pain will return because sin is still present, and the signs of the end times remain. The pain will be there unless the heart and soul are healed and find rest. Only Christ cuts through the darkness to heal the heart and soul. We do have somewhere to go for the blessings we need. We go to God, through Christ, on our knees for forgiveness and in prayer.

Sin is the cause behind all our problems, not necessarily a specific sin, but our disobedience to God. So, on our knees we go, confessing it. And then we thrill to hear God’s answer – He still loves us, He still cares for us, and for His Son’s sake forgives us. To Christ we go in faith, and He blesses us with what we need. Hosea pictured the refreshment this way: “His coming forth is as sure as the coming of dawn. He comes to us like the winter rain, like the spring rain that waters the earth.”

When the farmer plants his crop in Israel, he plants it earlier than we do. He’s already planting. When he plants his crop, he’s counting on the rain to fall and the sun to shine.

Likewise, in our suffering and pain, Christians count on God with confidence. He will be there. He will revive us. He will restore us. He will come to us like the sun and the rain to refresh the dry soil of our hearts and help it produce good fruits in Him. See in this a gracious call to repentance and a stronger faith in the Savior. We need Him. Our world needs Him now as much as ever.

What a Friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear; What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer. Oh, what peace we often forfeit, Oh, what needless pain we bear, All because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer….In His arms He’ll take and shield thee; Thou wilt find a solace there.”

God grant our world the wisdom needed to sit up, take notice, repent, and believe in the Savior. Thank God, We Have Somewhere to Go…when inflicted with the pain of our sin and when in need of His blessing. We have a Savior. God grant it to us in faith for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent March 22, 2020

Text: Hosea 5:15-6:3 Three Year Series-A 20:2183

Theme: Thank God! We Have Somewhere to Go!

What do you see happening in the world today, in the fallout from the Corona Virus? Do you see God in this? Everything that happens in the world, especially in trying times, should remind people as to who God is, who we are, and where we are headed.

Such reminders are called “Signs of the End Times.” They are things that we see taking place around us in nature, in society, and in the Church that remind us an end to this world is inevitable. They serve to keep us alert and watchful because we do not know when our Lord is returning in judgment. He will come at a time when people do not expect Him (Mt.24:42f).

Jesus told us these things when He spoke about wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, persecution, love growing cold, people falling from faith, and so on (Mt.24). In the book of Luke (21:11) He added to the list “plagues in various places.” Diseases, epidemics, plagues - such things happen throughout history.

In the 1300s the Bubonic Plague (Black Death) decimated the population in Europe. Historians estimate that over half the population of Europe died. During the Thirty Years War in the first half of the 1600s, famines and disease took hundreds of thousands of lives. In the early 1900s our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents suffered the ravages of swine flu, smallpox, and polio. More recently people died from SARS and H1N1 (swine flu) epidemics. Now we’ve got Covid19 and the entire world is on edge. Why do these things take place? What’s happening? Several things.

I. …When we are inflicted with the pain of our sin.

Ever since Adam and Eve first bit into the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden and disobeyed God, the consequences of sin came into our world. Pain, toil, sickness, death did not exist in the perfect world. Sin brought it upon us all. Sickness is a consequence of sin. But there is more involved. Things don’t happen without God.

When He allows them, like the 10 plagues in Egypt, they could be sent as punishment on people who reject Him. They can fall on believers as well, not as punishment to destroy but as chastisement to turn us from our wandering ways and keep us in Him. The writer to the Hebrews says (12:6f), “Endure suffering as discipline. God is dealing with you as sons. Is there a son whose father does not discipline him? ...No discipline seems pleasant when it is happening, but painful, yet later it yields a peaceful harvest of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen your weak hands and feeble knees…For the Lord disciplines the one whom He loves.”

Consequence of sin, reminder of the end times – illnesses serve those purposes. And in them God graciously turns our thoughts, which so easily wander, to Him as our eternal Savior whom we need and in whom we rejoice. This is how the Bible and Christians will see what is happening in our world today. But it seems that many just don’t get it. Israel in Hosea’s day didn’t get it either.

Israel had turned away from God. Due to their prosperity, they became very worldly. Besides pursuing luxuries and worldly goods, they ran after Baal and Ashtaroth, Moloch, and other idols, and they rarely worshipped in God’s House. The Lord accused them of committing adultery, not physically but spiritually, against Him – unfaithfulness to Him who should be their first love. They would not listen to God anymore and He was done with it.

If, as a parent, you have had it with the way your children are acting, what do you do? Do you just ignore it? Do you not say anything? What kind of a parent would you be if you said nothing?

God reacts. It wasn’t going to be pleasant. He said, “I will tear them to pieces and go away…I will return to my place until they admit their guilt and seek my face. In their distress they will earnestly seek me.” He would inflict them with the pain of sin.

Do you like pain? Nobody likes pain. You have to be a masochist in order to like pain. We don’t want to endure a toothache or headache, so we take aspirin. Who wants to hurt? But there is a beneficial side to pain.

It’s good that we feel it. If we were sticks or stones, we wouldn’t have pain. But then, we wouldn’t know when we needed help, and we’d be broken, crushed, or burned out of existence. But as God put us together, He allows for pain, for a purpose. Pain leads us to seek help when we need it.

Think of the nerve endings in your body. The nerves are a network of sensors that let you know what is happening to you. If your hand gets too close to the fire or your finger gets caught in a car door, the nerve endings shout the alarm: “Pain! Something’s wrong; something’s got to change or be fixed, or you will be in deep trouble! Find help or something worse may happen!”

With such intent God allowed the Children of Israel to be inflicted with pain so that they would turn back to Him.

It’s somewhat similar to that which people experience if they find themselves lying in a hospital bed and say: “God put me on my back so I would remember to look up.” That can happen to those who are mindlessly wandering apart from Him or it can happen to those who are close to Him in order to keep them closer. If you should catch this virus, that is what He is doing. He is graciously drawing you closer to Him. But it’s not so much the physical pain that helps the most; it’s the inner pain of conscience that does.

Perhaps we could compare the conscience to a nerve ending. It sounds alarms when sin cuts into our lives and threatens our souls eternally. That alarm was barely ringing anymore in Israel. So, in an effort to wake them up, God said, “I will return to my place.”

Go away? What if God should go away from me in my life? That’s a frightening thought. Where would we be without Him who created us and holds all things together (Col.1:17) for our good (Rm.8:28f)? Remove Himself from my life! How could I go on?

If we refuse to admit our guilt, God could remove Himself. What pain that would cause! But even if He should remove Himself, as He threatened, He never stops caring for us. He would only threaten to go away as a last attempt to wake us up in our sin.

The One who felt the horror of that for us was the Lord Jesus on the cross when He cried, “My God, My God; why have You forsaken Me”(Mt.27:46). Christ was forsaken with our sin on Him so that we might have forgiveness and never be forsaken by God in eternity. Paul said in the Epistle Lesson today, “So then, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Ro.8:1). For Jesus’ sake God forgives, forgets, and opens wide His arms to receive us back in faith. He sent His Son here not to be served, but to serve by paying the ransom price for sin so that we might obtain the blessings of salvation and eternal life (Mt.20:28).

Thank God! We Have Somewhere to Go when we are inflicted with the pain of our sin. We have a Savior. Go to Him!

II. …When we need His blessing.

So, Israel, after feeling pain, responded, “Come, let us return to the LORD. He Himself has torn us, but He will heal us. He is wounding us, but He will bandage us. He will restore us to life.” Finally, Israel was looking in the right direction, the only

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