11-11-18

 Good Morning All,

          Hosea 10:12, “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.”

    Now that harvest is mostly over thoughts turn to next year.  For many, next year cannot come soon enough.  Tough weather, tough prices, strange politics and throw in a few other wild cards like interest rates, aging farmers and mergers merging into bigger mergers and life on the farm will no longer be “kind of laid back”.  

    Our verse for today is definitely one of the “farmer verses”.  It uses farmer language and talks to farmers.  It starts with us sowing righteousness; how do we do that?  Here God is speaking to us after we are converted and reborn as Christians.  Here we are not talking about our righteousness before God; rather we are talking about our righteousness (provided by Christ) before our fellow man.  Sow your righteousness; let your light so shine; Go into all nations preaching the promise of salvation in Jesus; in other words; be about the work of God’s kingdom. 

    When we are about the work of the kingdom, we reap steadfast love.  We reap God’s gifts to us because of his grace and mercy, yet we experience this the most when we give those gifts away.  God enriches us as we live our lives as his children, satisfied with his gifts, sharing with those around us.

     So now it is time to break up your fallow ground.  Think of the places where you go in a day or a week.  Are there places where you avoid witnessing?  Are there places where we are uncomfortable?  This is our fallow ground.  These are the places for us to spread God’s Word.  Break it up and sow God’s Word.  It might be good ground or rocky ground or thorny ground or packed ground; we only plant the seed God is the harvester.

     So why now?  For it is time; it is time to seek the Lord.  Some of you always debate me when we discuss the condition of the world.  Some of you think it is getting worse every day; I think the world has never been good and it is as bad as it always was.  Either way, this world is full of pain and problems; broken lives, broken relationships; just plain broken people.  It is time; it is time to really reach out to those around us who are hurting.  It doesn’t matter if people are in the predicament they are in because of circumstances beyond their control or because they made some bad choices in their lives.  We are all God’s children and in the end; we are all only beggars before God deserving wrath but receiving righteousness because of his mercy.  The age old question remains:  if not you, then who?  If not now, then when?  The Lord has called us to justice; to serve with justice and peace and out of his love; he will rain righteousness upon you.

Gracious Lord, your mercies pour over us like a river.  Move us with your Spirit to do justice and live to serve all your people.  Give us the wisdom and the courage to go forth into our fallow fields and speak your Word of truth to all.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s peace,

Pastor Bret