"If You Love Me..."

[dave c]

simpletruth #138am Revisited 01SEP10 salicart@msn.com

HOSEA 10:12—Part Thirty Nine: “If You Love Me…”

by rev. dave c

Hosea 10:12, Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you (NKJV).

As discussed in Part Thirty Eight of this series, Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:5 ["You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (NAS)] and Leviticus 19:18 ['You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD (NAS)] when He answered the lawyer’s question regarding the ‘greatest’ of God’s commandments in Matthew 22:36-39 ["Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?" 7 And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' 38 "This is the great and foremost commandment. 39 "The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' 40 "On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets" (NAS)]. Then in John 13:34&35 Jesus tells us, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. "By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another" (NAS). The primary points to be gleaned from these verses are the exhortations to love God with our whole person, to love those around us, and to love one another.

Simply put, the trunk of the tree of life is our love freely given for our Creator/Sustainer/Lord God—out of which grows the twin branches of practical love for the community of man and our sacrificial love for “the brotherhood of believers” (1Pe 2:17). Furthermore, Chapters 14 and 15 of the Gospel of John contain the key to unlocking the secret to developing the ability to love both generally, and specifically. With careful reading there are to be discovered some seven testimonies made by Jesus in reference to the surrender of His will to God the Father as intertwined with seven proclamations that if we love Him, we will obey our Savior’s commands. In other words, the substance and the evidence of love is our willful obedience to God’s command to love. Given our understanding that God is love (1Jn 4:8&16)—this should not come as a surprise.

We see God’s exhortation to love Him with every fiber of our being reflected throughout the Old Testament posed as “if...then...and…” statements whenever His people experienced times of hardship. Please consider Deuteronomy 4:29 "But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. 30 "When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when [if] you turn to the LORD your God and obey His voice 31 '(for the LORD your God is a merciful God), [then] He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor [and He will not] forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them (NKJV). Some 700+ years later the language and the essence of these passages is repeated in Jeremiah 29 beginning with verse 11 as Israel strayed off the path of, from, and to righteousness: 'For I know the plans that I have for you,' declares the LORD, 'plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. 12 'Then [if] you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and [then] I will listen to you. 13 [if] 'You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. 14 [then] 'I will be found by you,' declares the LORD, 'and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,' declares the LORD, 'and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.'

In Part 11 (“Love Of The Thresher”) we saw that Hosea 10:12, as our key verse, is like a banner of hope held aloft between verses 10:11 and 10:13 where God proclaims the consequences for the sinful waywardness of the Jews during the time of the prophets Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah from the middle of the 8th Century B.C. to the beginning of the 7th. While 10:12 is imperative by nature, there is still a sense of God pleading with His people to “stop” (what they were doing), “drop” (to their knees), “and roll” (on with life as intended by the Almighty). From the fall of Adam and Eve through the book of the Revelation, the Lord’s urgent desire is consistently portrayed for all of humanity to return to Him through obedience born of love.

God told King Solomon in Second Chronicles 7:14 ...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and [I] will forgive their sin and [I] will heal their land (NIV). May we take this Divine “if...then...and…”directive to heart, head, and hands as we wind our way through these times of hedonistic paganism, rampant homosexuality, and horrendous child sacrifice. “If we, who are called by His name, will humble our selves and pray, then He will hear us from heaven; if we will humble ourselves and seek His face, then He will forgive our sins; and if we will humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways, then He will heal our land.” Lord, please make us willing to be willing to learn the way of real love through obedience to Your word and to Your will. Amen