On this Independence Day weekend we think about our nation’s history, our nation’s life. As we do so I want to assure you that we will be wrestling with the word of God, not just scattering political opinions over the landscape like birdseed. I am not here as political pundit, but as a pastor and preacher. I am here to remind us that the word of God stands in judgment over all things, including political systems. And that means that God’s word speaks to our own nation today.
I have to say all of this, I suppose, because I come from a particular political heritage, as most of you do, and it’s hard to keep that from coloring what I might say. I think I’ve told you about my great-grandmother; we have a book at home, biographies of various prominent Kentuckians, and she had a page in the book. It says of my great-grandmother, "Mrs. Moorman, being from western Kentucky, is of course, a Baptist and a Democrat!” Of course!
Well, her great-grandson is here today as a Kentuckian in exile, a Baptist, and, never mind the party, that doesn’t matter. I am here as a preacher of God’s transcending word.
The great theologian Karl Barth said on one occasion that the Christian ought to read the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, in order to discern what God is doing and in order to shed light on these days. So· that is what we are going to do today -- we are going to let Hosea, the prophet of Israel in the 8th century before Christ teach us what it is to struggle to be a people of integrity in the 20th century after Christ.
Quickly, the setting of the eighth chapter of Hosea’s prophecy, which I am about to read: it is a day of tremendous turmoil and uncertainty in Israel’s life. There is an empire to the north called Assyria, and its king is a fellow with the awkward name of Tiglath-pileser. You got that? Tiglath-pileser. I plan to test you on it after the service!
Anyway, old Tig, we’ll call him, had gobbled up nation after nation, and was on his way to taking Israel. When old Tig marched toward Israel, there was a reaction. For one thing, political stability got lost. They had five kings in twenty-five years, and all but one of those kings reached the throne through conspiracy and murder. Not exactly a band of saints.
More than that, men like the prophet Hosea and the prophet Amos, his contemporary, see corruption, greed, sexual permissiveness, religious idolatry, a whole host of issues. And finally the day comes when Hosea can contain himself no longer. He speaks the word of the Lord to remind a people how they ought to be struggling, struggling to be a people of integrity. Listen to what he says:
Hosea 8:1-7a
“They sow the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind -- how long will it be till they are pure in Israel?”
When we pledge allegiance to the flag, we speak of one nation under God, with liberty and justice for all, but who will deliver liberty and who will guarantee justice? One nation under God, a people of integrity, who can make that happen?
Or we sing the national anthem – at least maybe you sing it; if you can, you’re a better man than I! But we conclude it singing of the land of the free and the home of the brave – not, by the way, as they do in Atlanta, the home of the Braves! – and it is not true, incidentally, that the last words of the national anthem are “Play ball”! But we sing of the land of the free and the home of the brave. Who will bring us that freedom and who will exercise the bravery to keep it? Who will have the kind of courage we sing about? It certainly doesn’t just come automatically. Who has courage enough to secure our freedom?
I believe that God’s people, Christian people, believing people, will secure that freedom. I believe that our God is calling us to be salt and light and leaven in this nation. And so He instructs through this Scripture what it means to be a people of integrity, and it will not be easy. It will be a struggle. But in a wonderful way, a "good news" way, our God will provide us what we need to carry on that struggle.
There is really a great deal in this eighth chapter of Hosea, but this morning I am going to lift up just two lessons, two key ideas; you come next Saturday to the LIFE Seminar and we’ll dig out the rest of it.
For one thing, Hosea teaches us that people of integrity will not act as though God is automatically on their side. A people of integrity will not presume on God and think they have him in their pockets. A people of integrity, believers who struggle to be people of character, will understand that they must be obedient to God and do not treat him as if He were some heavenly messenger boy.
Listen to Hosea’s indictment of Israel: "They have broken my covenant, and transgressed my law. To me they cry, ’My God, we Israel know thee.’ But Israel has rejected the good." Did you catch the note of sarcasm in Hosea’s voice? "They have broken my covenant and transgressed my law, but to me they cry, ’My God, we Israel know thee. ’" Recklessly, glibly, they cry, ’My God we Israel know thee’, but they have rejected God’s way of life.
Somehow we’ve gotten it in our minds that the United States of America is something called a "Christian nation". All kinds of rhetoric have gone out describing us as a Christian nation. That makes Jews and Muslims and freethinkers and just garden-variety non-Christians feel very unhappy and very excluded. And that’s a problem.
But for me the most serious problem with thinking of the Untied States as a Christian nation is that we have trivialized what it is to be Christian. We make so little of personal Christian discipleship. We have acted as though we had God in our pockets, that God had chosen us for something special and that we therefore had it made, all without paying attention to what it means to follow Christ, what it really means, morally, to be Christian.
So we get all wrapped up in symbols rather than in substance. In recent years we had all this outcry about prayer in the public schools. Politicians courted voters by bellowing their support of prayer and criticizing the Supreme Court, but, as one of my friends puts it no power on earth can either prohibit or compel prayer. Prayer is something that people of integrity do, in school or on the job or anywhere they want to, no matter what the state says. Our trouble was that we got wrapped up in the trappings of religion more than in its substance. We got more excited about prayer as a symbol than we did about just stopping to pray. We thought it was enough to proclaim, “My God, we Israel know thee” but God says, no, you have ignored me, “They have broken my covenant and transgressed my law, and that’s what’s important.
And now we have a surge of emotion about flag-burning. Politicians from both parties are hurrying around to get on the bandwagon and create a constitutional amendment that would prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States. Well, I sit right in front of a flag every Sunday, but that scrap of cloth has no value in itself. It is not the flag that is sacred. Fear not him who burns the flag; far more fear him who trashes morality and puts integrity on the ash-heap. I certainly do not defend flag-burning, but at the same time I know that true patriotism is not about flags and parades and rituals and symbols; true patriotism is a life dedicated to liberty and justice and personal righteousness, and no fire can destroy that.
If we are going to be a people of integrity, the first lesson we learn from Hosea is that our God insists on goodness more than on hollow proclamations of allegiance.
The second thing we learn from Hosea is that a people who struggle to be a people of integrity will pay attention to the way in which they choose and value their leaders. A people of integrity are marked by selecting leaders who are concerned with the will of God and not just the will of the crowd.
Here is what God’s prophet says: “They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but without my knowledge.” In other words, they did whatever they wanted to about leadership, but without any reference to the will of God.
Now to me the next verse is important too, because it tells us why they, the people of Israel, just ignored God’s choice of leadership. Listen: “With their silver and their gold they made idols for their own destruction.”
Watch now, how these things go together: “They made kings, but not through me; they set up princes, but without my knowledge …with their silver and gold they made idols…"
Is it too much to suggest that when the people chose leaders they chose leaders who promised them silver and gold, leaders who pandered to their greed? The idols, the false gods, were silver and gold, and I suspect it is no accident that God’s outcry against the idolatry of money goes hand in glove with His outcry against unworthy leaders.
Last week in Milwaukee I had a couple of hours free while Margaret was in her meetings, and I took a walk through a public park near the Convention center and near some of the local government buildings. Up high on one of these buildings was the Latin slogan, “Vox populi, vox Dei.” If my high school Latin fails me not, that says, “The voice of the people is the voice of God.”
Well, I understand how that sentiment is designed to encourage democracy, but I don’t really agree with it, do you? I don’t agree that the voice of the people is always the voice of God. I don’t agree that just because the crowd wants something, that’s what God wants.
But, you see, in ancient Israel at the time of Hosea, the crowd had taken charge. Not theocracy, not democracy, but mobocracy. They put up kings and then they took down kings. Five kings in twenty-five years, put there by conspiracy, murder, extortion, mob rule, and by greed. Maintained by greed, sustained by selfishness, kept there by venality, and then tossed out if they threatened the pocketbook.
I just believe today that this is a significant issue everywhere you turn in our nation. And you and I if we are going to be a people of integrity are going to have to struggle against our own selfishness. The people will elect almost anybody who promises, “No new taxes.” The people will throw out those who make the hard choices to invest public resources for the welfare of the people. And while I know that there is corruption in government, and while I will not for one moment defend four hundred dollar hammers and Robin Hud and all the other mess we’ve read about, I must say, on the basis of Scripture, that to struggle to be a people of integrity is to grit our teeth and pay the bill and elect leaders who will take our money and use it for the needs of the people.
Someone has said that taxes are the price we pay for freedom. I don’t much like what’s happening to my tax bill, it’s true; but if I believe that as a Christian I am here to work for the redemption of all, then I pay and I pay with a sense that I am working with my Lord.
If you must read somebody’s lips, read Hosea’s lips: "With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction."
A people of integrity will not cheer leaders who make empty, self-centered promises.
How, then, will we get to be a people of integrity? If I’m right that God is calling us as American Christians to be more concerned about justice and righteousness than about silly symbolism, and if God is calling us to follow leaders who will, with us, pay the price required to deliver what our people need, then how do we get the strength to obey Him? Where do we get the courage to do these unpopular things?
I told you last week that the key verse in the prophecy of Hosea lay in the 14th chapter; there Hosea opens up the heart of God for us: "I will heal their faithlessness, I will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them". The key is that we respond to the love of God, the empowering love of God. The key is that we let our God heal us, renew us, change our minds, give us new hearts. The key is that we let our God be for us healing and wholeness, life and health, and then we’ll not be afraid; we’ll not be afraid to be exactly what He has called us to be, a people of integrity.
Come then to the Lord’s Table. Renew here your covenant with Him; make it solid and substantial. Remember here the price that has always had to be paid for making men whole. And here gain the courage and the strength to love your country well because first of all you are loved by your God. Come here to be made into a people of integrity.
