HE WILL COME TO US LIKE RAIN Hosea 6:1-3 During the 1930’s there was a drought that lasted nine years. Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought took the fertile and productive breadbasket of our nation and turned it into a “dustbowl.” The grasslands of the plains had been deeply plowed and planted to wheat. During the years when there was adequate rainfall, the land produced bountiful crops. But as the droughts of the early 1930s deepened, the farmers kept plowing and planting and nothing would grow. The ground cover that once held the soil in place was gone. The winds whipped across the plains raising billowing clouds of dust to the skies. The skies could darken for days, and in some places the dust would drift like snow, covering farmsteads completely. By 1934, thirty-four states were experiencing serious drought conditions. On Sunday April 14th a small dust storm turned into a black blizzard into a raging storm that would be remembered as “Black Sunday,” a day when thousands of acres of topsoil were literally blown away. The breadbasket of our nation was decimated and times of great desperation fell upon all of those who relied on the land for their livelihood. 1 In his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck wrote; "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Car- loads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land."1 We’ve been through a few hot, dry summers, but we have never experienced anything like that and thankfully we are now enjoying one of the wettest springs I can remember. It is from a time of spiritual dryness not physical in the history of Israel that I have taken our message today. Title slide & text The prophet Hosea preached for about 80 years as a contemporary of Micah and Isaiah. He is the first and most theologically complete of those writers in the Bible we call the Minor Prophets. To simply summarize his book, the main question he posed and answered is 1 The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck 2 this: “Does God love us even when our hearts are far from Him?” The answer is, “Yes, He does!” Hosea lived in a time when God’s people were prosperous and successful, but they had become wayward, idolatrous and self-indulgent. Sound familiar? The chosen of people of God had lost their intimacy with the very one they were created to enjoy the most. Hosea was called to marry an unfaithful, prostitute named Gomer, and his unconditional, enduring love for her would become a prophetic picture of God’s persistent, pursuing love for His disobedient and obstinate people. In our text He pleads with Israel to repent and return so they might experience and enjoy the abundance God had created them for. The same invitation is being extended to us this morning. No matter where we are spiritually; no matter what you’ve been through or been guilty of; no matter how dry and hardened our heart has become, if we will come and return to the Lord there is a wellspring of His redeeming grace and transforming presence waiting for us! 3 I. COME, AND LET US RETURN… Hosea 6:1 Come, and let us return to the Lord; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. A. Just as the Lord God called the chosen of Israel back to Himself through Hosea, I believe in this hour He is saying the same thing to us, to the Bride of Christ: “Come back to me!” The invitation is to come home. 1. We do not have to stay in disappointment, heartbreak and sorrow. 2. We no longer have to bear the weight of guilt and shame; we were not designed to exist in misery, but in fullness, joy and abundance. 3. There is a place where doubt can become faith, discouragement can become joy, despair can become fulfillment and defeat can become victory. Matthew 11:28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. B. The Hebrew term translated as “return” is used more than 1000 times in the OT. In reference to what God desires for us, it is used more than any other term, and is a picture of repentance, reconciliation and restoration 4 1. The term is used 23 times in the book of Hosea and all the way into the last chapter Hosea is pleading with God for His people and God promises to answer if they will just return to Him Hosea 14:4 "I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, For My anger has turned away from him. Hosea 14:7 Those who dwell under his shadow shall return; They shall be revived like grain, And grow like a vine. Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. C. Returning to the Lord is a decision made at a specific point in time as a deliberate act of our will. Getting up from where we are, and returning to where we have been, not physically, but spiritually. 1. For example: It is just like hearing a fire alarm; at that moment we are faced with a choice. We can react or we can rationalize away the danger, ignore it and remain where we are. 2. Right now, in this moment, we all have a decision to make; can you hear the alarm? 3. Our Father God wants to perfect the image of His Son in us. 4. He wants to overwhelm us with His presence and His love. 5. One simple decision that has the potential to ignite a passion, a joy and a holy fire within us. 5 D. Lets look a little more in depth at this returning so we can understand it better. 1. Turning to the Lord is Recognition. a. A recognition that we may no longer rationalize and justify our sins; we must repent! We must begin to look at everything in our lives in the light of the Holy Spirit and be honest if there are some things we have allowed into our lives that must go. b. We must recognize where we are is not where God wants us to stay! (He has more for us!) 2. Turning to the Lord is Repentance. a. When we finally see the sin as God sees it and decide we do not want it in our lives anymore, we are ready to repent. b. I have a question for us this morning: “Are we truly ready to be completely honest with ourselves before God?” Are we truly ready to say, “Father, I have been wrong and I see now that it is against You, and You alone that have I sinned. I recognize that I am unworthy, and undeserving, but I am returning!” c. Just like the prodigal son, I am heading back home! d. It is repentance, not performance that brings the refreshing from the presence of the Lord. Repentance brings us humbly before God and 6 prepares us for the outpouring of His amazing Grace! Acts 3:19-20 Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, 3. Turning to the Lord is actually a “Re-Turning.” a. It is not an emotional response but an intentional act of our will to return to relationship and intimacy with God. b. A place where we were quick to repent and acknowledge that we were the ones needing His presence and power. c. It sounds like this: “Lord, I am leaving this sin once and for all. No more excuses, no more trying to put the blame on everyone else, I am swallowing my pride and I am coming back to where I left You!” E. Before I leave this thought of returning to the Lord I must say one more thing: This is not a “do-it-yourself project.” Don’t try and fix yourself before you come back to God. Here what that sounds like, “Well, I’ll just get things sorted out, I clean up my life and then come back to God.” 1. God does not need our help, our efforts at self- reform to restore us; He is the omnipotent creator 7 of the universe and He is quite capable of doing the work. 2. All He truly desires is for our hearts to be as close to His as possible, as soon as possible. Listen, He is calling, “Come back to me!” II. OF CRISIS AND PROCESS A. We need to understand the difference between faith in a crisis and faith in a process. 1. Our conversion to Christ usually comes in a crisis moment in life. You heard the good news of Jesus, turned from your sin, cried out to Him and received forgiveness from God. That conversion is by faith. 2. Then we enter the process and the focus of our Christian life changes from God Himself, to learning how to live as a believer, be a better mom or dad, manage our finances and being faithful to read the Bible, pray and show up for everything that happens at the church.