#DailyDevotion Do We Stand With The Truth? Are We Hospitable?
Hos. 9 7The time will come to punish. The time will come to pay back. Israel will know it. The prophet is considered a fool and the spiritual man crazy because of the sin and your great hostility. 8The prophet is a watchman for God over Ephraim; yet a trapper’s nets are laid on all his paths, and there is hostility in the temple of his God. 9They have deeply corrupted themselves as they once did at Gibeah. He will remember their wrongs and punish them for their sins.
When the LORD has decided and pronounced, it is as good as done. The time has come to punish Israel for their sins. They will pay back with their lives because they had turned against the LORD their God and worshiped idols and foreign gods against the commandment of the LORD. Delitzsch in his commentary thinks the prophet and spiritual man in verse 7 are false prophets. I don’t think so considering the verses that follow. No, the prophet and spiritual men were considered fools and crazy by the inhabitants because of Israel’s sins and hostility towards God and those who represented God. It is the same today. The men of God who are faithful, who call sin evil and good righteous are thought of as fools and face hostility from the people who ought to listen to them.
The prophet were watchmen for God over Ephraim as Ezekiel was called a watchman for the people of Judah. The people of Israel however tried to lay traps for these prophets whom the LORD sent to warn them and to call them back to repentance. He even faced hostility in the place of worship from those who claimed to follow the LORD.
The people had corrupted themselves as they did in Gibeah. The incident in Gibeah can be read in Judges 19-20. Levite’s concubine left him and went home to her father in Benjamin. When the Levite finally left with her from her father’s house they stayed in Gibeah, an Israelite town, as opposed to other places which were not Israelite towns. No one from the square took him, a brother Israelite, into their home, so he was staying in the square. Strike one against Gibeah for a lack of hospitality. Finally an old man found them in the square and took them into his home. When he did this, the men of the village told the old man to send out the visitor so they could have their way with him. Hospitality would not allow that. Instead the old man allowed them to have the man’s concubine and they had their way with her. The priest found her lifeless in the morning at the threshold. He took her body, carved it into 12 parts and sent it to the tribes of Israel who then came against Gibeah. The Benjamites however defended the people of Gibeah. Ultimately, the LORD, by the hand of the other tribes, wiped out Gibeah and a fair amount of the people of Benjamin because they defended what the men of Gibeah did. So too, the people of Ephraim are like this to the prophets of the LORD and those who are close to them. They have treated them shamefully. For this sin, the LORD will remember their sins and punish them for their sins.
Where are we in all this? What lessons can we learn? How do we treat our pastors who preach the pure word of God, calling out sin and proclaiming forgiveness in the name of Jesus? Are we hospitable to others in need or do we mistreat them? Do we defend those who stand for the truth or do we attack them when they call our friends and family to repent of their sin? Jesus is still using men to the world to repentance and faith in Him so they may not experience the wrath to come.
Heavenly Father, give us hospitable hearts to those in need around us, courage to stand for what is right, and faith to trust in Christ Jesus. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.