Sow the Wind: Tuesdays with Tata

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Well, friend, we're back on the side of the North Platte River in Nebraska,

and it's a super windy day, isn't it, Ta-Ta? Oh, it has been, yes.

I walked down to the shop, and I thought I was going to blow away for a time.

It was crazy. And I ran a half marathon this morning.

Nothing much left of us. Twenty nine degrees. My water in my water bottle froze during the race.

Goodness. Well, if it's Sunday afternoon and we're sitting by the river,

it must be Tuesdays with Tata. I think so.

Tata has been a little under the weather. You feeling better today,

Dad? I am just a little slower. That's it. Good.

Well, I don't know if you remember, Dad, but last year I gave you three very

strange Bible verses that I wanted to do episodes around.

We talked about, what all did we talk about? The children have eaten sour grapes,

or the father have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge.

We talked about the great speckled bird.

And we talked about what it meant to be saved to the uttermost.

Remember those three? Yes, I do. And they turned out to be great episodes because

I think any time you get in the Word, God says the Word doesn't return empty. study.

There's value in studying the Word, even the weird parts. So I've done it again.

I came at you with what in the world does it mean, Tata, in Hosea 8-7 when he

says, for they sow the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.

That's what we're going to talk about today.

Well the first thing we have to do, we have to look at all of the prophets, what they said.

And what they were saying is what God was going to do. God was mad at them.

One, because they were worshipping idols, because they had forsaken Him and

they were not abiding by His commandments.

He was angry with them. Each one of the prophets had a different approach to the situation.

And Hosea is kind of strange when you read it, but when you keep that in mind.

This is based on what God is saying.

That the Israelites had forsaken Him.

They had gone after other gods

and they had made idols and they were worshiping, they were in idolatry.

So there were several things going on here, but one of the things that you have,

and also we'll look at Psalm 79 and just a couple of points in Psalm 79,

and an aside to all of that is.

Patty when she was very ill, my wife, she loved the Psalms and I would read

them to her at night until she went to sleep.

And so, and I'm back in the Psalms, I don't know how many times I've read them,

but one of the the things that I keep asking God is to help me understand.

And what I'm beginning to see is a common theme. There's a thread through all of the Psalms.

And part of them are crying out to God because what God had said was going to

happen to them has already happened.

And they feel like the writers feel like they've been deserted.

And that God, His anger has gone away and He's not even present.

But He is. Because He said He would be with us always.

But He gave them many opportunities. Now I don't know what the timeline is.

I don't know how many years this went on that God was warning them.

Probably through a couple of generations. Maybe even more than that.

But He kept reminding, the prophets kept reminding the Israelites of where they had come from.

They had come out of slavery and God had blessed them and God had led them it

led them through the Red Sea, brought them out of Egypt.

And still they were rebellious, and even God knew that. And that is so interesting

right there, just that one point.

That God knew that they were stiff-necked and hard-hearted and that they were rebellious.

And that they would rebel against God. And they did that. We talked about that

last time where Moses came down out of the mountains and God was already mad

at him because they built a golden calf.

Excuse me, I'm sorry, we're a little stuffy today. So looking at Hosea,

Hosea starts out, God starts out talking to Hosea and He said set the trumpet to your lips.

One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord.

So evil was already present. The Assyrians are coming. That's right.

Because they have transgressed my covenant.

And rebelled against my law. And then down in verse 3, God, Israel has spurned the good.

That would be hard for us that the enemy shall pursue them.

There's other things that I don't believe or mention anywhere else in the prophets,

but one of the things here that God is already upset about is they made kings, but not through me.

They did not ask for God's help.

They set up princes, but I knew it not.

God said that. With their silver and gold they made idols for their own destruction.

And down in verse, part of verse 5, my anger burns against them,

how long will they be incapable of innocence?

How long can they go?

And then we get to the verse that we were talking about, for they sow the wind

and they shall reap the whirlwind.

So, every, in several different occasions in Scripture, especially in the Old

Testament, but sowing the wind is chasing after evil.

Yeah. Chasing after idols, chasing after your own lust.

And the- Yeah, that's mentioned in Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes,

that type of metaphor, sowing the wind.

Yeah. And it's applicable to us today because you think about it and the wind

that blows here on the North Flat River, I have never experienced anything like that in my life.

And I can remember sometimes when I thought the house was just going to blow away.

And probably thinking about it and I know I saw several limbs that were on the ground the next day.

But God was warning them that for they've already done that.

They've already been chasing after idols. They've been chasing after idolatry.

They've been chasing after their own desires, and they've been chasing after idols.

And now they're gonna pay for it. They're gonna reap the whirlwind.

And God has already threatened, told them what was going to happen through the

prophets and verse down in verse 13 the Lord,

Now now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins Now all is often

and always I always thought about and I'm guessing that it's in translation

But when God remembers something,

So I know he doesn't sit around think about evil things.

No because he's good. Yes He's full of love and compassion mercy and peace.

That's right But then he remembers that they have been rebelling against him

and that now he's going to punish their sins And he did that and we see that

it's already happened when we when we look at Psalms 79,

or Yeah, Psalm 79,

and the first verse oh Oh God the nations have come into your tabernacle,

they have defiled your holy temple.

Just like you said they would. That's right, and they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.

And then it talks about all of the other destruction but then down in verse

6, how long oh Lord will you be angry forever?

And I know 70 years, I don't know about to you, but 70 years to me is a long time. Yeah.

You think about that, being in captivity for 70 years.

Yeah. And the Babylonians took them back to Babylon and they were captives and

integrated into the culture.

That's right. Both in language, name, and worship, and everything. Yeah.

Except for Daniel, Daniel rebelled against all that. That's right.

And then we talked about that as well.

And then in verse 8, Do not remember against us our former iniquities.

Let your compassion come speedily to meet us, for we are brought very low.

Just as they had been warned. Yeah. And help us, O God, of our salvation for the glory of your name.

Deliver us and atone for our sins for your name's sake.

And then down in verse 13, but we, your people, the sheep of your pasture will

give thanks to you forever.

From generation to generation we will recount your praise.

Yeah. It's kind of late. A little late.

And I think sometimes that the lesson for us is this, is that we think we start too late. Yeah.

And we don't think about it that God is, and maybe it's because of the passage of time, I don't know.

And we know that some people are, and we're warned about don't be dull of hearing,

don't be dim in vision, because I'm coming.

And all through all the Old Testament, the people were warned.

To follow God. That's all. And that warning, and what does the Old Testament say to us?

People have said to me that, well, the Old Testament law is no longer applicable,

but it's there for our learning.

It's a foreshadow of things to come. It's very applicable because it shows us

how God interacts with people.

That's right. And it shows us the result of sin, and it shows us the result of repentance.

Absolutely. And we also learn the language of prayer and lament.

And I almost chuckled when I asked you to do this passage because I remember,

a very different scale of course, but I remember when I was little,

and my dad would say, don't do that thing or there'll be a consequence.

And sometimes it was even just in fun, like if I was acting like I was gonna

try to wrestle with him when I was a little boy, and he would say,

fool around and find out.

Mess around and see what happens. And that's kind of what God's saying here,

except on a much grander scale.

He's saying, you people have not been following my word and you're getting ready

to find out what happens when you sow the wind for a long time.

You're gonna get the whirlwind.

You're about to find out, and they did. And it caused the downfall of their

society, it caused them to be fallen into slavery, and it caused all the events

that we read about through the whole Old Testament.

It's tragic in retrospect for us to look back and see, because it seems so easy

to us, like all you had to do was obey.

That's right. But then do we have the same problem?

Well, but think about the time that the prophets appeared.

Many times the prophets were considered to be insane.

Yeah. Many of them were killed.

Some of them were thrown into wells. That's right. And cisterns.

Like Jeremiah, yeah. And lived to die.

Because the people could not. and the people knew because the question always

came, where is the man of God?

What does that mean? The prophets were nothing but mouthpieces for God.

The prophets spoke what God told them to say. And they spoke truth,

it was all relevant to the time that the people were living in.

And it's hard for me to understand how they could be so rebellious.

But then I look at us today, what are we doing as a society?

We say, well, this is my truth, this is what I'm going to do, what makes me feel good.

Maybe that's what these people did too. It is what they did.

They followed after their own

lusts and their own hearts and what they thought would make them happy.

The thing I think is beautiful here, though, is like you said,

God used the metaphor of the wind, the whirlwind. And just like this,

we're sitting here on the bank of the river watching the wind blow the cattails.

And it's probably blowing about 40 miles an hour today. It's rough. Hard to be outside.

It's hard to withstand that wind, even though it's not a tornado.

It's a wind, but it's not fatal to us.

But God used a metaphor of the whirlwind. And the thing about the wind here

on the prairie is there are calm days. There's a time when the wind passes.

Yes. And he tells Hosea down in 14 to say this, and of course the whirlwind

came upon Israel and it was what, 722 BC, I'm reading in an article here,

when Assyria invaded, as you said.

But in Hosea 14, God promises that He still has grace and love for them.

And He says, I will heal their apostasy, I will love them freely,

for my anger has turned from them.

And the point is, the whirlwind doesn't last forever, Tathai,

God's judgment is unyielding, but He relents if we repent.

The other side of it is down in the latter part of verse 7, He makes it very

and puts it into terms that they can understand.

The standing grain has no heads.

It shall yield no flower. If it were to yield, strangers would devour it.

So that's very simple to understand. Yeah, you know they're not gonna have anything

to eat and they did not that's right,

He's saying people are going to come and take your crops, which would have been devastating.

If you make your living growing things and somebody comes along and raids your

barn and takes everything you grew. Yeah, that's devastating.

Absolutely. He's saying it's the it's the result of their sin.

That's why that's going to happen. Yes.

And that's what was happening to the Israelites.

And what what got me is this isn't the first time they keep doing that.

They were they were doing it to some degree. and in Jesus' days.

The Pharisees were holding on to the old law.

That's right. But they were not keeping the law, but they were holding on to it.

That's right. And the Sadducees said, there's no spirits, there's no life after death.

Where did they get all of that? That's right. Seems to me that they did too

much thinking and not enough reading.

That's right. They did not get in the Word. They forgot the Word.

That's a great time to remind everyone, like, you don't have to wonder where

to find the answers in life.

You don't have to keep asking, where is God and why is God? You can go to the Word.

That's right. And you can see all throughout history back to creation. He's been faithful.

And we're in the middle of this long story. We talked yesterday on the podcast

about an article that I read from Richard Foster's group.

And he talked about the two kinds of rescue that God's involved in.

He's involved in the immediate and the long rescue.

Sometimes He comes into the middle of the story, right?

He shuts up the mouth of the lion or He makes the furnace not burn you up but

the real deliverance is the long rescue that we're in the middle of.

At the end of times. That's right. And that's why we have hope. Absolutely.

And I'm convinced too that there's some evil that God punishes now.

He does. and it's by his hand.

I believe that. It's scriptural.

Paul talks about that in Romans chapter 8 I think.

Maybe those are the police officers and maybe those are soldiers, I don't know.

But I believe that they worked for the government.

But anyway the whole point here is they were warned.

Repeatedly, over and over again, over and over again, the same message,

maybe different venues, but it was the same message.

You keep doing it, you keep doing what you're doing, you're going to pay for it.

And that's what Hosea is saying in verse 7. You've sown the wind,

now you're going to reap the whirlwind.

Because you've been chasing after idols, you've rejected God,

you don't want Him. You don't talk to Him anymore.

And now he's going to wake you up. That's right. And that's what he did. That's what he did.

Can I give you a metaphor that I thought of in this? Yes, yes.

So we live in Nebraska, in the United States.

And if you're not familiar with Nebraska, the economy here is heavily based around agriculture.

Yes. And so there's farmers, Jerry Deaver, my friend Jerry Deaver,

that farms the hay fields outside our house here, is probably listening to this podcast.

So Jerry, I'm going to give you some principles of agriculture,

you're free to use in your business if you didn't already know them, I bet he does.

But there's two principles of agriculture that we see here at play in Hosea,

and one is the principle of duplication.

You reap what you sow, right? You put corn in the ground, you don't get apples, you get corn.

And so God's telling them, you've been sinning, you've been following idols,

you've been worshiping false gods, you've been abusing my temple,

and you're getting ready to find out what's gonna grow up out of that crop that

you planted, and it's not gonna be good for you.

So you're gonna get what you sow. The second principle is multiplication.

When Jerry plants one seed of corn or one seed of alfalfa, he doesn't just get one back.

He gets a whole bunch of it back, right?

And you plant a whole field of alfalfa, you get a crop that'll feed the cattle

in this state during the hard winter months and take care of them. You get much more back.

God's magic in the soil, God's grace is that when we plant, we get a bountiful

crop many times, most of the time.

So he's telling these guys, you sowed the wind, you're about to get the whirlwind.

It's gonna duplicate and multiply, and you're gonna get a lot of it.

But I'm just telling you, God did a neat thing, in my opinion,

I've been thinking about it a lot.

The only time in agriculture that those two laws are violated is when Christ comes into the picture.

Because Jesus said, and here's the scripture I thought of is in 2 Corinthians 5.17.

If any man is in Christ, if anybody's in Christ, they are a new creature.

Old things have passed away and all things have become new.

And what happens is if we die to ourselves and we let Jesus raise us up into a new life.

We plant something, but we get something different on the back end.

And the new thing we get is a life that's resilient and able to have hope in

hard situations and able to reap what we did not sow.

We get grace instead of justice. Right? Isn't that beautiful?

That's very good. And I know that

there's probably some people people are listening to this podcast today.

And I think often the people that are in the Middle East, those children,

the Israelites are there.

And they're battling for their own homeland, they're battling for their own people.

And we know that God told Abraham I'll curse the ones that curse you and I'll

bless the ones that bless you.

And we're part of that lineage.

And so they're living in times that And I know the question is asked often,

how can God allow such a thing?

God doesn't allow it to happen.

We do it to ourselves. It's self-inflicted.

We turn from Him. Now I'm not saying that there aren't instances where when

people are not rebellious against God they suffer as well.

Because that's true, they do. In this life, in this world we'll have trouble.

Jesus told us that. Yeah. And because this world is broken.

It was violated in the garden. And so evil that is present today is not from God.

It's brought to us by the devil himself. And so the people that are living in

hard places and suffering in unmeasurably ways, I can't even comprehend how

badly some of the people are suffering.

I think often the people in Syria and people in Turkey, you don't even see that

in the news anymore, but those people are suffering from earthquakes that happened some time ago.

And people like the people in the Ukraine. Think about the children and the

people that are defenseless.

But anyway, being part of God's family, we have Him to talk to.

And so when you look back at Psalm 79 that first verse, crying out to God,

that's what we do. That's right.

We cry out to Him for help. That's right. Now is He going to help us?

Yes, if we're part of His family, He's going to help us. That's right.

Now, and I know that that's contrary to some popular belief because people wonder

why people that are evil are so prosperous sometimes.

That's right. And I have no answer for that.

But that occurs. occurs.

But I know that God is faithful and I know that His covenants and His gifts

are irrevocable. That's right.

Well we just constantly have to surveil for any place in our theology or our

thinking that makes us think that suffering has anything to do with God's favor

in our lives or whether we're saved or how much He loves us or any of that.

Suffering has nothing to do with any of that. That's right.

Suffering is because He suffered and it's because we are in a fallen world.

And He's promised us that that long rescue is coming. It's already established.

And we know we are going to be rescued from this. I think about Psalm 103.

I say it, in fact, I pray it every morning. I look at that big picture of Jesus in the office.

I love that painting Lisa hung up there. It's Jesus walking away.

And you can see His hand hanging at His side and the nail hole is visible.

It's just a beautiful painting, but I tell him every morning,

I say Psalm 103, bless the Lord, oh my soul.

Let all that is within me bless his holy name. Bless the Lord,

oh my soul, and forget not all his benefits.

There's five things that he says are benefits of knowing him.

He forgives all our sins.

He heals all our diseases.

He redeems our life from the pit. He crowns us with love and compassion and

satisfies our desires with good things so that our youth is restored like the eagles.

That does not mean that he heals all our diseases in the way and in the time

at which we think that he should.

But there's gonna come a time, Bible says it plain, I'm gonna wipe away all

your tears. I'm gonna give you a new body.

I'm gonna give you one that does not corrode.

That's right, give you a name and a place and a family and a hope and all that. It's already happened.

We just have to wait for it to get here. So suffering has to be in the context

of knowing that we're in the middle of a long story that ends with our redemption

and ends with all those promises coming true.

And you're right, sometimes he brings judgment immediately and in the present,

sometimes he brings relief and redemption.

In the present and the immediate, sometimes he does not.

And we know that suffering produces character, and character produces hope. Right?

That's why we suffer. That's right. Because if we... And I don't know what has

happened in the people's mind and in their heart to reject God and worship idols.

The only thing that comes to mind, because they said it, because when they first

wanted a king, they said, we want to have kings just like everybody else around us has.

They have kings, so we want to have a king. And God said, you want a king? You're gonna get a king.

And the prophet at that time told them very clearly what was gonna happen to them if they got a king.

That's right. He would take the best of the best. And the king would take the

young man and put them in his service.

He would take their animals. So everything has consequences.

So when we choose to sin, when we choose to rebel against God,

then we're gonna suffer for it.

It may not be immediate, it may not be right now, it may be when we die,

when we take our last breath.

When we close our eyes here and open our eyes there.

Where we will be. That's right. That's a hard, that's a hard thing to think about. It is.

Very encouraging word from Hosea. I love studying the Bible because there's

always something you can grab that'll give you hope and give you peace and help

you clarify your thinking.

And I guess today we've covered a lot of ground.

We've covered that agricultural principle of duplication and multiplication.

And what we really want is the spiritual principle of transformation.

That's it. Instead of reaping what we sow, we want to reap what we will.

That's right. We want to reform our mind and reform our thinking.

That's right. That's Romans 12 too, and that's a good place to land today.

Don't be conformed anymore to the way the world wants you to be or think or feel.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. That's right.

That's right. And so will you be alone?

No. That's right. God will be with you. So I guess the question for our listener,

for our friend today then, is do you wanna sow the wind and reap the whirlwind?

Or do you wanna let God let you reap a crop that you didn't plant,

and He planted one that's for your benefit?

I guess if we're gonna quit sowing the wind and hopefully quit reaping the whirlwind,

when should we start? Start today. Start today. Hey.

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