Your Pedestal                                                                                                                    

August 25

            “Sow to yourselves in righteousness, reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you” (Hosea 10:12).

            Hosea was a prophet of God, serving in the Northern Kingdom from 760 BC to 725 BC. He was known as the “weeping prophet,” a heartbroken man serving the Lord at all costs. Hosea was instructed by God to take a wife of whoredom, a prostitute named Gomer.

            Obedience can come at a heavy price. In this case, God needed to make an example for His people. He chose Hosea to represent Him and His love for people symbolically. Hosea loved Gomer, but she wasn’t faithful; by that, I mean unfaithful. At one point, Gomer left him for another man, wound up in debt, and was on the auction block to the highest bidder. God told Hosea to go and redeem her; imagine how Gomer felt when she heard the voice of Hosea bidding for her.

Symbolically, Gomer represented the sins of the people. Hosea’s broken heart showed God’s love for people and willingness to redeem us at any cost.

            All sin has one name, and that name is sin, and we have all sinned. Sin will take you farther than you want to go; it will enslave you into its grasp and place you on a unique auction block, a pedestal of our own making.

            We’ve all stood there, but thanks be to God, our Redeemer, standing waiting to place the highest bid at all costs and raising the cross every time the enemy counters with another sin.

But in this auction, we’re the ones that call out the winning bid, and the winning bid is “repentance.” When you repent, suddenly Jesus becomes the judge, your judge. A judge knows we can never pay the fine in full because we lack the proper payment, and that payment is His blood, and with His blood, He pays the penalty.

            Repentance is how you can sow righteousness by breaking your heart’s hardened (fallow) ground.

“…for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.”  

He will come.

He is: Jehovah-Tzidkenu

The Lord Our Righteousness

Blessings