So there I was, the third day of my second year in Carpentry class at college. Our instructor a few minutes earlier had asked each student to go build him a wall and set it up on the edge of the house we were beginning to build as a class. I was proud of myself as I had finished setting up the wall before many of my classmates. As I stood there looking at the framed up wall, it looked sturdy, strait and standing tall ready for the next phase of construction. My professor came over and looked at the wall standing there with me and asked me a simple yet profound question. “Did you use a level to plumb up your wall and make sure it is standing at a 90 degree?” It hit me standing there looking at my wall that looked strait that I had not used my 6 ft. level to make sure the wall was plumb and standing strait up. My professor went over to my wall with his level and checked, showing me that my wall was 7 degrees out of plumb and that if it was to stay that way, the entire wall at the point where it would meet the roof 2 floors up would be over 6 inches out of whack and be a serious unfixable problem. I should have used my level to plumb the wall, and that is a day that I will never forget and a lesson that I will always remember.

Today, in the reading from Amos 7, God uses the picture of a plumb line on His people. God’s people have gotten out of plumb/level with God and needed to get back on track before the judgement of God would come. The people of God were looking at their lives and their lives seemed ok and great, but then God held His plumb line against the people and they failed miserably. This is the same truth we need to realize and hear today. When the church looks at itself with its own eyes, we look great and like we are doing well. But when the church holds the plumb/level line and standard from God against itself, the church realizes how wrong they are and how much they need to turn back to God for and repent of. What do we ask is the plumb/level line from God? God’s Word is the plumb line for the church. Just like Amos was the Word of God for those people and the standard which they needed to hold themselves against, so today the Bible is the standard that the church needs to hold itself against. When we look at ourselves with our own standards and human experience we will always look great and be at peace. But when we hold the Word of God against ourselves, we realize how much we need to grow and how much we need to repent of. The Bible is sufficient for all that we need in this life, it is the guide for life, the standard for life, and the plumb line for our souls. Do we hold ourselves against the Word of God or do we judge ourselves by our own standards and experiences?

My favorite verse (I do not like the term “life verse” because all verses in God’s Word should be for your life) from the Bible is Philippians 4:4. It states, “Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again rejoice.” This statement from Paul has taught me that no matter the circumstance in my life, both good and bad, I should have joy in the Lord. This means when my joy rest in who God is for me and the glory I can bring Him, my joy should never be ending or ceasing. But then I read Hosea 9:1. That verse states this, “Do not rejoice Israel; do not be jubilant like the other nations. For you have been unfaithful to your God…” So how do I reconcile these 2 verses together? Well, God was telling His people not to have joy because they were unfaithful or disobedient. God was telling His people that because they were being rebellious, so they should not have joy and until they repented of that rebellion, they should neither celebrate nor experience any joy in their lives. That told me, to obey the Lord is to rejoice in Him and to have joy in God is to obey what He tells me to do. That challenged me to the fact of obeying God is equal to joy in God. And if I am rejoicing in the Lord, I had better be obeying what He tells me to do. So that has asked me 2 questions that I am thinking about today.

1-Do I obey God with a joyful spirit?

2-If I claim to rejoice in God and enjoy Him only, is obedience a part of that?

In reading through chapters 7-8 of Hosea, the thing I noticed the most was the seriousness of sin, if it was not already stressed in reading through the other Prophets or the rest of the Bible for that matter. Sin is serious to the point where it is a killer. As Christians we can either kill sin in our bodies, as Paul lays out in Romans, or we can let sin kill us. What I also noticed reading these 2 chapters is, not only is sin serious, but the people of Israel were rejecting God’s help in getting rid of and removing sin from their lives. The end of chapter 7 talked about how the people slash their bodies (literally cut themselves for idol worship) and reject God, rather than turning to Him for help in defeating sin. This made me ask the question, do I turn to God for help in killing sin in my life or do I blatantly reject God’s help and instead enjoy my sin all the more? Reminded me of being a parent. I helped my son learn how to ride a bike. I held on to the bike and kept it steady and helped him stay upright until he could master riding on his own. Imagine if my son had rejected my help and told me he would ride his bike and teach himself. Imagine how much pain he would have gone through by falling over or running into things. This is similar for us. God wants to help us kill sin and remove it from our lives. To reject His help is choosing to slash ourselves and bring much more pain and suffering to us. Here are 3 ways God gives help to us in killing sin in our lives.

1-Prayer. As soon as we feel any temptation (which is not a sin), we need to communicate with God right away, turning it over to Him and asking His help to remove it from our lives. To not turn to God in communication is showing a sign of your faith.

2-Bible. What better place to find help from God in our battle with sin. Reading God’s Word, letting it speak to us, and having it convict and equip us is where the power is to fight and kill sin. Not reading and saturating yourself with the power of God’s Word is telling Him you can do it on your own.

3-The church. God has given us a faith family for a reason. Let the faith family encourage you in your battle with sin. Let the faith family hold you accountable for your sin. Let the faith family support you. And lastly let the faith family see your repentant heart when sin does win the day. To not turn into your faith family is to tell God you want nothing to do with Him.

Today was the second section in the reading from Hosea. Hosea is an interesting book and prophet to study, because the first 3 chapters are an illustration of the message that the prophet was about to give. God told Hosea, His mouth piece, to go and marry a slut (I know these are harsh dirty words, but it is the truth of the women). Then after she continually commits adultery to the point she sells herself, Hosea was command by God to go back and buy the slut back and covenant to her again. This is all done so that the people around Hosea, during His ministry as prophet could not only hear what God was telling them, that they were sluts just like Hosea’s wife, but also see with their eyes an example of what God was telling them He would do for them in buying them back. In the reading today I found 4:6 to be an interesting verse.

Hosea 4:6 states, “My people are destroyed from a lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the Law of your God, I will also ignore your children”. This is Hebrew poetry so the first line sets the truth and the second and third line explain what the truth is and how it effects the listener. So, the second and third line help us to understand the fact that the Law of God and the Word of God is knowledge. So because the people of God have not obeyed the Word and Law of God, they have left knowledge behind. Because they have left the knowledge of God, they will be destroyed because of it. Wow, so here is what that all means for us today. The Bible is knowledge. If we do not stay reading and saturating ourselves in the Word of God, then we are technically dumb. To gain knowledge and call ourselves smart, is to stay true and obey and saturate ourselves in the Word of God. Knowledge is life, dumbness is death. So we need to ask ourselves, do we want the favor of God? If we answer yes, then we need to stay in and obey His Word. Simple, yet very hard to do in a broken world that our flesh continually pulls us to its own desires. I pray reading through Hosea this week will help keep us focused on obeying the Word of God.

Reading through the Bible like have been this year can be very fun, challenging, thought provoking, and transforming. Reading through at the pace we have been this year, means we will not catch everything God’s Word is saying to us. Every text of Scripture has application for us today as the people of God. But sometimes for one reason or another the application is missed or applied wrong. The best way to prevent ourselves from misapply God’s Word to us or miss the application period, is to understand the original audience that God was writing to. Reading through the Minor Prophets this month will be one of the more challenging sections of God’s Word to see the application. So I have given a chart below that will help us know the original audience of each book better, and some thoughts they were thinking, so we can see the application better and not make the mistake of misapplying it.

Hosea

Written to Northern Kingdom, Israel

We can worship other gods beside Yahweh, right?

Joel

Written to entire nation of Israel

God will never judge us and does not see what we are doing

Amos

Written to Northern Kingdom, Israel

Life is all about getting rich and making sure we are comfortable.

Obadiah

Written to Southern Kingdom, Judah

Where is God when we are getting sinned against?

Jonah

Written to Northern Kingdom, Israel

God only cares about blessing and caring for His people

Micah

Written to Southern Kingdom, Judah

God’s justice is all about me getting more, more, more no matter what

Nahum

Written to Entire Nation of Israel

Where is God in the middle of this broken world with bad people?

Habakkuk

Written to Southern Kingdom, Judah

God why are you allowing this to happen to us, your people?

Zephaniah

Written to Southern Kingdom, Judah

God is ok with my life the way it is, even with some “small” sins

Haggai

Written to returning Exiles

I need to figure my life out first and make sure I am set up for success

Zechariah

Written to returning Exiles

Does God really care about my future at all or should I take care of it?

Malachi

Written to returning Exiles

I am good the way I am, I believe in God so it is all good