Hosea's prophetic career certainly had a very strange
beginning. “Go, take to
yourself a wife of whoredom and have children of whoredom, for the land commits
great whoredom by forsaking the Lord.” What would we think today of a prophet who
said the Lord had said such things and named their children things like
"No mercy" and "Not my people"? We would surely think the person was mentally
ill. Hosea is commanded to live out the
word of the Lord to the people of Israel in order to re-inforce the prophetic
word. He is sharing in the misery of the
people by all these things. The prophet
is not standing outside the community lecturing or hectoring it, his own life
is given up to the proclamation of the word.
The Lord is punishing the nation for its own whoredom, chasing after
other gods, and announcing their punishment and ultimately their restoration
through Hosea's message.
We learn here that Peter was a married man
as Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law. Again
we see demons giving testimony to Jesus as Messiah and yet it is not based on
the testimony of demons that we come to Him.
His power over such demons, His power to heal, and His teaching with
power and authority are to be the witnesses for us. If our belief is based in the testimony of
demons then have we not then allowed them control? At the end of this passage we see Jesus going
away to a desolate place to be alone in prayer and the word He received is that
even though he was popular and there was much ministry to be done here, He was
to move on to other places that the kingdom might not be a local phenomenon.
So, was Paul a boring preacher? He put people to sleep because he delayed
preaching until late and then went long.
A young man slept in the window and fell out to his death. Paul, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is
able to raise this man from the dead. Paul
was a man of God and he was so enamored with the Gospel and his desire to
instruct and inform the people was so great he couldn’t help himself but to
impart as much as possible. We need men
who are filled with that Spirit and passion for the building up of the church
in our day if we are to walk in the authority and power we have been given by
Jesus. We need men and women who are
prepared to be poured out for the kingdom of God.
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