DISMANTLING INAPPROPRIATE LEADERSHIP

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Then they will say, ‘We have no king because we didn’t fear the Lord. But even if we had a king, what could he do for us anyway?’ They spout empty words and make covenants they don’t intend to keep. So injustice springs up among them like poisonous weeds in a farmer’s field.”

“Samaria and its king will be cut off; they will float away like driftwood on an ocean wave.”

Hosea 10:3-4, 7 (NLT)

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.”

These words from Job (Job 1:21) underscore a reality in life that any believer needs to understand, especially when it comes to the matter of abusing a gift the Lord has brought your way. 

In other words, the Lord could grant you a blessing but if you sinfully misuse or abuse that blessing, He could always take the blessing away from you. This truth is confirmed and affirmed in the scriptures many times over.

As an example, let’s consider the matter of leadership, particularly in the context of being a blessed opportunity God might give someone. In the instance of biblical times, we often found God elevating people to positions of leadership over His people. Go back to the earliest examples of someone being chosen to lead the Israelite people and you will God at the center of the appointment, at least through the period of the judges. For we know that once God granted His people approval to have kings, there were many of those kings, a majority actually, who chose to lead and live in ways that were evil in God’s sight. These kings were blessed with the opportunity to lead the Israelites but opted to allow sin and wickedness to be an integral part of the way they ruled and conducted their personal business. As you would guess, this did not sit well with God and so He moved to do something about it, dismantling inappropriate leadership in the process. We get a snapshot of this in today’s verses taken from our continued study of Hosea 10. Look at them again here:

Then they will say, ‘We have no king because we didn’t fear the Lord. But even if we had a king, what could he do for us anyway?’ They spout empty words and make covenants they don’t intend to keep. So injustice springs up among them like poisonous weeds in a farmer’s field.”

“Samaria and its king will be cut off; they will float away like driftwood on an ocean wave.”  Hosea 10:3-4, 7 (NLT)

Our passage opens with the people of God giving us a glimpse of what life would look like after God’s judgment. The Israelites chose to worship false gods and idols in direct violation of one of God’s most fundamental commands (to have no other gods before Him) and so God sent punishment upon them in the way of the Assyrian empire who attacked the northern kingdom of Israel and the Babylonians who laid siege to the southern kingdom of Judah. When the dust was settled, the people of God were displaced from their homeland, taken away into captivity. Thus, they had no king over them anymore nor did they have a homeland because they had decided to “not revere the Lord.”

But note the words of the people of God who provide us a window to peer into the integrity of the kings when Israel and Judah did have them. The bottom line was that there wasn’t any integrity displayed by their kings. They made false promises, took false oaths, and brokered dishonest agreements, so much so that injustice was said to spring up “like poisonous weeds in a farmer’s field”.

This wasn’t the kind of leader God wanted.

This wasn’t the kind of leader who sought to please God with the way they ruled His people.

This wasn’t a leader who chose to rule honorably, respecting God’s call to righteousness.

Taking all of this into consideration, this was the kind of leader who God needed to dismantle, something He will do to any leader who decides to abuse the blessing of leadership He provides, a blessing that is a privilege, not an obligation.

Thus, God’s word tells us that “Samaria and its king will be cut off” and indeed, that’s what happened when the Assyrians and Babylonians came calling.

I find this message from God’s word especially timely as America is fast approaching election day in a presidential year. The people are facing the daunting task of selecting their next leader and frankly, the choices are not appealing in replacing a leader who in many ways has not glorified God through the way he has ruled either. Perhaps we are in a place where it’s time for God to act again as He did in Hosea’s time and dismantle inappropriate leadership, particularly when that leadership trends toward behavior that is sinful and contrary to the will and word of the Lord.

For rest assured of this, God will have His way and make sure that justice reigns supreme here within His kingdom here on earth. He always has and He always will.

Amen

In Christ,

Mark
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