Ugly History

Welcome it's good to have you here today. It's good to have you here online as well And we have started a new series called an ugly Christmas, and you might go like what well Yeah, can you tell I've got an ugly sweater on well. We tried to uglify it Emma my daughter worked well Notice I'm gonna jingle all the way through this service There's not gonna be a thrill and we've got polar bears with face masks just for 2020 And then the Christmas trees are up in flames like most of the west of the United States was this year Perfect and Mary is spelled wrong so there you go. It's an ugly Christmas. It's the time of the year that we expect fairy tales of plum fairies sugar plum fairies wrapped presents bright lighted trees pine scented candles St. Nicholas and children that are just joyful all the time, but this Christmas seems a little more foreboding With kovat 19 deaths on the rise high unemployment political turmoil And then our isolation and anxiety all to boot, but I dare say the first Christmas the original Christmas is much more like this year than any other year that I've experienced in my life. It wasn't wonderful. It wasn't beautiful It wasn't glorious. It was actually an ugly time of the year an ugly time for the world and that the all the prophecies that you see in the Old Testament from Isaiah to Jeremiah to Ezekiel to Micah were not spoken during a time of joy and wonder but a time of darkness and difficulty with just terrible leaders on the throne at that moment in time and the people were questioning their own existential survival as a nation Let alone anything else going on So the Christmas season this year Like it or not You might be able to we might really experience it more like the original when we strip off all the glitter all the glamour all the tinsel and We get down to seeing the real world that God showed his love to all of its ugliness the real issues that we all face and how It's that world that the Messiah Jesus comes for so today we're starting this series off in Hosea chapter 11 and our series today is going to be looking at an ugly history So you can read along with me through the Bible app. I loved him and out of Egypt. I called my son The more they were called the more they went away They kept sacrificing to the bales and burning offerings to idols yet It was I who taught Ephraim to walk I took them by their arms But they did not know that I healed them I led them with cords of kindness with the bands of love and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria will be their king because they have refused to return to me The sword shall rage against their cities consume the bars of their gates and devour them because of their count own councils My people are bent on turning away from me and though they call out to the Most High he shall not raise them up at all How can I give you up? Oh Ephraim? How can I hand you over? Oh Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zeboim? My heart recoils within me my compassion grows warm and tender I Will not execute my burning anger I will not again destroy Ephraim for I am God and not a man the Holy One in your midst And I will not come in wrath So tell me when you want to Tell the story of your life Where do you start? Do you start with your birth or? Do you start with where your parents met you know kind of the show how I met your mother or do you go? farther back than that and You start with your ancestors may be coming to this country Maybe that's where you start well You know ancestry.com for example would love for you to believe that when you discover like generation after generation after generation of your family as far back as you can go then you're going to learn something about yourself, or Spend a little more money get your DNA tested to find out where you quote come from and that defines who you are But I have a feeling that ancestry.com is a bit wrong They don't go far enough back and your genetic makeup does not define who you are According to the Bible and according to our story today the radical nature of it asserts That your identity is found in your relationship with God and your relationship with all of humanity and we have to go all the way back to our first parents Adam and Eve and then as other examples along the way people like Abraham and then Jacob who is later called Israel as Hosea does in our text and what we're going to find. It's not a pretty history at all. It's kind of an ugly history An ugly history for Israel Which is emblematic for everyone and yet God chooses Israel God chooses you God chooses me and he continues to have a history with us at great cost to himself and How he has a change of heart in this text that we'll look at Hosea chapter 11 is rather amazing Walter Brigham and an Old Testament Scholar says this Hosea 11 is among the most remarkable oracles in the entire prophetic li...