Door of Hope

Hello. Good morning. How are you all? Good. I'm not sure what fun we're going to have because we're looking at a really, really intense scripture today. Or we might have a little bit of fun. Why can't you hear some? You're sure we will. What are you doing next door? You don't know. You're not leading. You're staying here? Are you? Okay. Just checking with John because sometimes I sneak next door to the kids church and they're having so much fun. I kind of just sit down and I'm like, can I join in? Not because I don't want to hear who's preaching in here, but it's pretty cool next door. Anyway, so can you remember two or three weeks ago we started talking about... - Hosea. - Hosea. How do you say it? - Hosea. - Hosea. I say Hosea. You say Hosea. I say tomato. You say... - Tomatoes. - Tomatoes or tomato. Okay, yeah, there you go. So we're speaking about Hosea and we got as far as chapter one and we looked a little bit about what was different about Hosea. So he was a prophet in the Bible, if you missed that. And God asked him to demonstrate how God was feeling and the prophetic word that God wanted to speak over Israel by his own life. And so we're going to look at chapter two today. Now, chapter two, so it's kind of split into three sections, really, Hosea. There's the first three, one, two and three, chapters one, two and three. And they very much look at the example that Hosea has to demonstrate with his own life and how God is feeling about the people of Israel, how angry and frustrated he is, but the redemption of them. And then again, it looks at how God demonstrates through Hosea what it is that God is wanting to say. So we're going to go one, two today, and then I'm going to come back and look at three with us. But I wanted to draw the comparisons with what God was saying to Hosea 2,700 years ago to today. So Hosea was living in a climate where Israel was in a good season. They'd stopped fighting with the armies around them, with the Syrian armies, and they were getting on with them. They were relating to them, they were trading with them, but the problem is they got sucked in by all of their gods. When we looked at that last time, they'd been worshipping Baha'u'll, they'd been involved in temple worship, ritual worship, sexual worship, lots of other really difficult and challenging things. And the more that they'd embraced the worship and the gods from those Assyrians and the other tribal nations around them, the more they got sucked into being adrift and a disconnect between them and God. And this broke God's heart. And so what he did is he used Hosea to demonstrate this physically because he said to Hosea, "I want you to go and find a prostitute and I want you to marry her and make her your wife." And it was a demonstration that that was how God was feeling. He was feeling like his bride, his loved one, Israel, was just in a place of sin. So we look at chapter two. Did anybody read chapter two? Did anybody go away and read it? No, no, it doesn't matter if you didn't. Can I suggest if you haven't got the Bible app on your phone, download the Bible app, it will take you one minute to read it. I could read it to you now, but it is like you could read it in several different versions and some of them are a little bit more explicit than the others. Some of them are a little bit more tasteful, but God is super upset. So he pours out in this prophecy that the Hosea gives about how angry he feels and how broken he feels because his beloved bride has been unfaithful to him. His beloved bride being Israel has been unfaithful to God. He says about how he wants to strip Israel bare and expose Israel's body parts. He wants to hedge Israel in so that Israel cannot run away to his lover or her lover. He talks about how he wants to cut off all of the areas of provision, all of the areas of harvest. He wants to stop all of the celebrations and it talks through the first part of chapter two about that. Now, this could be a very depressing soap opera if all we had was the negative. But in the compassion and in the love and in the redemption of God, the whole second part is all about the way back. It's all about the fact that God flips it and he turns it around and then he runs back after Israel and embraces Israel, takes Israel back, loves and nourishes and cares for Israel. And instead of calling Israel, Israel needing to call him master, he says to Israel, "You can call me husband." So instead of just being Israel relating to God as their boss, as their master, he says, "Relate to me as your husband, as your loved one, as your cherished one." And so God brings it around amazingly in the second part. And so what I want to do is I just want to bring some of that together in three simple points in the 20 minutes that we have and bring it into the 21st century today, where we stand today and have a look at that today. But I would ask if it's possible, I'd love it if you went away and you read just chapter one, two and three, because that will bring it into some context for you. And that would be really great if you did that. It would take you just two or three minutes, but it would really help you understand where it was that God was coming from when Hosea gave this prophecy. So firstly, we want to look at, your trouble isn't the end. God turns it around. So in Hosea 2.15, God says, "I will make the valley of Acre a door of hope." Now what does that mean? God says, "I will make the valley of Acre a door of hope." Well that sounds like code for something. So what is the valley of Acre? Does anybody know? It's the valley of trouble. Okay, so the valley of trouble. Why is it the valley of trouble? Well if we go all the way back, wind all the way back to Joshua. Alright, this is a bit of a teaching session here, sorry. If we wind all the way back to Joshua, we find out that there's a chap called Akin. Okay, and Akin deceived in a battle. He took some of the goods in the battle and he hid it in his tent. And remember God was really angry about this. And so the next battle that Israel had, they fell on their face, they were humiliated. And God said, "I'm so angry about that, that I want this dealt with." And actually a really gruesome thing happened. His whole family was stoned in the valley of Acre, the valley of trouble. So the valley of trouble was a place of judgment. It was a place of a reckoning, a place of coming to pay for your sin. It was a place of real trouble. And where you faced up to what you had done wrong, and then it was dealt with once and for all. It was not a nice place. So let's go back and read what God says in Hosea 2.15. "I will make the valley of Acre a door of hope." So let's look at the context. He is saying to Israel, "You should really pay for what it is that you've done. You've gone off and worshiped all of these other gods. You've totally rejected me. But what I want to do is I want to give you a doorway of hope." Isn't that like the God that we want to relate to? You know, when we find ourselves in a position where we've messed up, where we've done things our own way, where we've got distracted and we've gone off target, we might think to ourselves, "There is no way back. I'm in a place where I can't possibly expect God to forgive me. I can't possibly expect to change the outcome because I should remain here in this valley of trouble, because that's what I deserve." But God is saying differently. He is saying, "I have given you a doorway of hope." Well, I tell you what, let's take a deep breath, because if God can do that in that situation for Israel, He can do that for us. It's fascinating when we know that Christ is called the door. Isn't it amazing how the Bible just links everything up? You see, Christ is the doorway to hope. Isn't it incredible when we know that if we walk through Christ, the doorway of hope, that our valley of sin and trouble is forgiven and we can come into the presence of forgiveness with God. Wow. That's incredible. That was spoken about in Josiah and went all the way back to Joshua. I love the fact that the Bible links up and makes sense. Does anyone else? Or is it just that I can't help? I think it's an age thing. I used to just want to preach about comeback power and about all of those kind of things. But the older I get, I get inspired by the fact that actually there is so many significant ways that God's Word can change our today. And do you know that your today is changed? Because if you find yourself in that valley of trouble, God is not saying to you, you need to stay there. He is saying to you, I have made a doorway of hope and get out of the trouble now. Run, run through the doorway of hope. Quickly, quickly, quickly, get through that doorway of hope because there is a hope and there is a purpose and there is a plan for your life. I say it again and again and again and I mean it. You see if you keep yourself looking down in the valley and you don't look for the hope and the future that God has for you, you are going to have a miserable existence. That is never what God wanted. God did not want Israel to stay unforgiven, unrepented, separated from him. He built us for relationship. He's given us a doorway to walk through so that we can have that relationship with him. How incredible is that? You see, God is flipping the story. God is flipping the picture. He's taking Israel from a place of trouble to a place of triumph. Shall we just say that? God's flipping the story. Come on. What's he doing? He's flipping the story. He's flipping the story. He's taking us from a place of trouble to a place of triumph in our lives. Don't allow trouble to define where you're at. Grasp hold of triumph and run through the door with both hands gripped hold of triumph and take hold of the success that God has for your life. Secondly, let go of distractions and come back to God. It's interesting in verse 13, it talks about how the people are distracted by Baal. And I want to say to you, we are so distracted in our lives by other things that we've forgotten how it is to just sit in God's presence and spend time. Does anybody else just like really purpose themselves that they're going to sit and spend time with God? And then, oh my goodness me, I forgot to put the oven on. What time have I got to pick the kids up? What is it that I had to get from the shop? Hang on a minute God, yeah, because I want to spend time with you God. And I really want to just bring this thing before you. Oh yeah, I remember to let the dogs out. Does anybody else have that happen to them? It just seems to be that the more we purpose to spend time with God, the more distracted we get. Is that anyone else or is it just me? Yeah, it is hard isn't it? Because we want to, you know what it is, does anyone else find this with their friendships or with their relationships that they've got with people? The more determined you are to ring your mate or spend time with your husband, the less chance there is that you'll do it. But it's like that in relationships, you have to be deliberate. There is so many distractions. I wonder if the reason there is so many distractions is because Satan hates us being in relationship with the one who created us because he knows what will happen when the power we will receive when we do. When I come out of a time when I've been in the presence of God, not only do I feel refreshed, I feel brave. I feel like I can take on the things that I didn't feel I could manage the day before. I feel that my faith level is a different place. I feel like those bills that I didn't think I could cope with, I remember that they're God's bills, not mine. I remember that situation, that relationship issue that I felt overwhelmed by. I remember that actually God is the one that takes care of that. And when we spend time with God and we're not distracted by all of the other things around us, we change our story. We change our day, we change our tomorrow, we change the relationships with our colleagues, we change the relationship in our families, we become a better person actually. I think I'm a nicer person when I'm in spending time in God's presence, because he's able to gently say to me, "Gosh, you were grumpy today, weren't you, Jo?" Whereas Phil says to me, "You were grumpy today, Jo. I wonder what reaction he might get." You're smiling quietly, Phil. The children of Israel were distracted. Do we think that they deliberately worshiped other gods? I really don't think they did. You see, they were distracted by the wealth and the harvests and all of the things that were happening. So when the Assyrians were giving thanks to Baal for the amazing harvest, which he was the God of the harvests and the rain and all of the... When they were giving thanks for those things, they thought, "Oh, we must thank that God for those," because he's obviously provided them. They got distracted. They forgot the source of their supply. We forget the source of our supply sometimes. It's very easy to think, actually, the NHS is the source of my supply because they're the ones who put the money in my bank account this week. It's very easy to think that actually the people who put the money in our account are the source of our supply, but they're not. God is the source of our supply. God is the provider of everything. He has this unlimited well of provision for our lives. We just need to remember to look in and draw from it every day. Whatever it is that we need, we need to look in and focus and draw from that well of provision every single day of our lives. It's so important that we refocus in this next season. I think the thing with refocus, and I can say this now because I'm getting older and I'm having to do a lot more refocusing. I've even got a pair of glasses in there and maybe in the near future that I might have to start using them to refocus. I know that I have to refocus regularly. If we're only going to set an alarm to refocus once a month in our lives then we're going to have a problem because the other 30 days, 29 days of the month we potentially could drift out of focus. We need to have a daily focusing on what it is that God wants to do for us. So it's time to refocus. Let go of distractions and come back to God. Thirdly, God's love never gives up. He restores. I've just put in brackets, God's love is ridiculous. He is ridiculous. Right, I'll tell you why it's ridiculous. If I let you down so badly, are you going to keep giving me a second chance? No, if I let Phil down and I went off and I had an affair and I kept doing that, he'd changed the locks I think eventually. God didn't change the locks. He gave Israel a new key. He said, "Come in, come back in and not only will you be in this position where you feel I'm telling you what to do, but I'm actually going to make you my bride. I'm going to give you a whole other chance and a new relationship." God loves ridiculous. He keeps forgiving us every time we mess up. He keeps loving us every time we get it wrong. He keeps opening his arms wide. His love is totally and utterly ridiculous. There's this joke in our family that I use the word ridiculous a lot. It's usually when the kids are downstairs like 11 o'clock at night cooking food and I walk down and I'm like, "This is ridiculous. Go to your room." That's exactly what I said. "This is ridiculous. Go to your room." And so we have this continual joke where I'll say, "Well, that's ridiculous." And everybody will say, "Go to your room." Even if it's like one o'clock in the afternoon, there's nothing to do with that. I could just say, "Oh my goodness, that's ridiculous." And everyone turns around and says, "Go to your room." So it's a standing joke. So God's love is ridiculous. [audience laughter] Well, Daddy, got it. You can all come and live with us. God's love is ridiculous. Yeah, go to your room. He restores us and He never gives up. I'm not going to sing it, but if Sara was here, she would. He never gives up on us. He never runs out on us. His love never runs out. He never gives up. He just keeps pouring out his love again and again and again. Does he get angry and mad? Oh my goodness me, when you go home and you read Hosea 2, you'll see that he gets furious sometimes. It breaks his heart. His heart, I guess, is really broken when he looks at the church sometimes. And he looks at how we've looked for other sources to worship and forgotten to look for him. I reckon it breaks his heart when he thinks that we are looking at other idols, whether it be a church leader, whether it be an organisation, whether it be the riches of something, whether it be a big building, whether it be whatever it might be. I reckon it breaks his heart. But you know what, his love's ridiculous and he loves us anyway. He chooses to embrace us regardless. I've got a couple of minutes, that's all. And I want to put this in three simple things. God turns our trouble into hope. Let go of the distractions and come back to God. Thirdly, God's love never gives up on you. He's always ready to restore you. I can ask for the band to start to come up. Wherever you find yourself today, whether it's in that valley of trouble or whether it's on top of a mountain, praising God in your best place ever with a fantastic relationship with Him, wherever you find yourself today, God's love over your life is, and I won't say the word because otherwise you'll repeat, go to your room. He's flipping the story. He's not leaving you in a place of trouble. Don't stay there. Don't stay there. Make sure that you refocus your life and come back to God. Jono, we didn't send you to your room. You can come back in. He's knocking on the door. Somebody needs to open. I don't know if I need to go and open it for him, but I can hear him. He's locked out. He's knocking on the door. Open the door of hope from the valley of trouble. Come in, Jono. Come in. The door is open. Come out of your place of trouble. I think maybe two of the worship leaders are stuck outside. It's Michael. We're just saying, come in through the door of hope. No longer do you need to be stuck in the valley of trouble. We joke about it. I mean, I'm joking about it, but actually, please don't stay in that place. If you need somebody to come into the valley, to take hold of your hand and help you walk through the door, then we're here. God made us. He built us for a relationship. And then when our relationship got messed up and broken and we got distracted, He thought, how can I mend this? What can I do? And that's when He sent Christ. He sent Jesus so that Jesus could connect the separation of God and the separation of man with the sacrifice. Jesus came so that He could join the picture. He could literally stop the gap. He could fill the gap with peace, with forgiveness, with love. He could join the picture back up and he could reunite the relationship. So we can have that relationship through Him. He literally opened the door where He became the door and said, "Man, come out of your place of trouble, because I am going to be the door and I am going to be opening up a place where you can have love, forgiveness, reunification, peace and all of those things. Let's stand together." And if you haven't got that in your life or you feel like you're stuck and you feel like you don't know how to get out, I want to pray for you this morning. We've had an interesting service today where we've really proclaimed that God heals. You may feel that you're in a place where your healing is just not breaking through and you feel sick, you feel in pain, you feel troubled by that. You may feel you're in a position where your relationships aren't breaking through. You may feel that you're in a place of trouble where you're in a workplace situation that isn't breaking through. Well, I think we need to stand together with each other and we need to pray and we need to believe that God will bring release. So if that's you, let's just lift your hand and we will pray for you. So Father God, right now Lord, we just pray that you will be the God of breakthrough that you are. Father, I pray that you will come and meet us right where we're at. Father, right now in the middle of the troubled place that we find ourselves, Lord, I pray that you will come right into that place and that you will open the door Father for us to come out. Father, I pray Lord that you will give us the courage, the strength, the boldness to walk through into a new story, into a new situation. Father, I pray for broken relationships, Lord God, to be healed. Father, I pray for situations in the workplace, Lord God, to be changed. Father God, I pray for physical bodies that feel broken, that feel in pain, that feel sick, that have conditions, that there is no answer to Lord God in the natural. I pray for a supernatural intervention from heaven. Father, I thank you that you are the God that heals and Father, I pray right now, like we sung earlier, that you are the God of miracles. I pray right now through all of these situations that you, God of miracles, will interact with the problem and that you will bring a solution and a healing and a freedom, Lord God. And you will be flipping the story, Lord God. You will be flipping the situation, Father God, right now in Jesus' name. Amen, Amen. [Applause]