Why We Don’t Listen to the Prophets // Hosea Week 6

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“Words are your gods, and somebody is insulting your religion.” –Words and Pictures, 2013


“Honey, you don’t have to talk to him. He’s such a conversationalist, he takes care of the whole thing.”

“Fathers and sons are supposed to have conversations. They’re supposed to understand each other, look at each other, and smile. Walk along the railroad tracks and throw rocks in the water.”

“Go fishing.”

“Go fishing.”

“Well, you’re very lucky Dad isn’t crazy about doing any of those things.”


Someday I’m going to have those words framed. They’ll sit on my nightstand, and every night I’ll turn the light out on them.

The words, spoken in an ordinary conversation in 1971 by Lance Loud and his mother, Patricia Loud, stole my attention with their casual propensity to dismiss and conserve.

If you observed this inaugural reality television family, you would see that the words were latent with infidelity, laxity, cosmetics, and shame.

Words that could change the tone of “Happy Father’s Day.”

Words that allured America to do just that.

 


 

Words are powerful because they come from a source.

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God and the Word was God.

Here we see a source. A powerful source. God’s people were quite aware of the authority attached to the Word.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself, and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

So Moses spoke to them instead. Different source. Same words.

Fast-forward.

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses, who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what ha happened to him.”

Oh no. The source disappeared. I know Moses said not to put any gods before God, but he’s not here right now and we need gods.

And just like that, the words stopped having clout.

I can’t help but wonder what would have been different if the Israelites had heard the words from the Word, and not from the prophet.

Would they have all died, like they said they would? Would they have lived differently? Would they have trusted Moses more?


Today, our words with God are latent with adultery. And though God stays faithful, we can’t find Him through the noise. When the prophets come and urge us back to Him, we listen as the Israelites did.  We listen, but we do so carelessly.

We chase the words and not the Word.

Because the prophet is just a person.  We pay too much attention to the source.

“Why are we so terrified for God to speak to us? It is because we know that when God speaks, we must either do what He asks or tell Him we will not obey. But if it is simply one of God’s servants speaking to us, we feel obedience is optional, not imperative.” -Oswald Chambers

If we won’t let God speak to us because we’re afraid, and we won’t listen to His servants because they don’t have as much authority, what then, are we listening to?

Just as America saw the source of a flawed family and allowed the words to change their perspective of a dad, we too see the source of a flawed prophet and allow the words to change our perspective of obedience to the Father.


 



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