Unless It Dies

[dave c]

simpletruth #138at Revisited 30OCT10 salicart@msn.com

HOSEA 10:12—Part Forty Six: Unless It Dies

by rev. dave c

Hosea 10:12, Sow for yourselves righteousness; Reap in mercy; Break up your fallow ground, For it is time to seek the LORD, Till He comes and rains righteousness on you (NKJV).

18 Then Moses said, "Now show me your glory." 19 And the LORD said, "I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. 20 But," he said, "you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live." 21 Then the LORD said, "There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. 22 When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. 23 Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back; but my face must not be seen" (Ex 33, NIV).

While in Second Chronicles 7 we are told to “seek God’s face,” in Exodus 33 we are told that “no one may see God’s face and live.” Similarly, although David beseeches God in Psalm 27:8&9, My heart says of you, "Seek his face!" Your face, LORD, I will seek. Do not hide your face from me, do not turn your servant away in anger…, Jesus tells us in the New Testament, No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only he has seen the Father (Jn 6:46). The word “seek” is translated from the Hebrew word baqash (#1245); a primitive root; to search out (by any method, specifically in worship or prayer); by implication, to strive after. In one sense, to seek God’s face is to humbly present ourselves before the Almighty through worship, prayer, and petition; to conscientiously pursue knowledge of His person; to search out His will with fear and trembling. In another sense, to seek God’s face is to boldly desire His attention as One Who is intimately known and loved.

God the Father is spirit and His Person is outside of our ability to see, to hear, and to touch; but God the Son became flesh as one of us so that we might see Him face-to-face, to listen to His voice, and to experience His touch—as His glory passes among us in the power of the Holy Spirit in this life—and through the immediacy of His presence in the next. In this way, Jesus is the face of God and we need seek Him with our whole being. Just as God told Moses in Exodus 33:20, however, no one may see me and live. Make no mistake, once we have met Jesus Christ, once we experience the truth of His reality, we must choose to die to this life so that we might live in the next; or else we choose to continue to live for the temporal, and so suffer death eternal. As Adrian Rogers used to say, “Born once...die twice. Born twice...die once”.

Listen to Paul’s exhortation in Romans 14:11&12 as he quotes Isaiah 45:23, It is written: "`As surely as I live,' says the Lord, `every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God.'" So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God. Everyone, every human being from Adam and Eve to the last child just conceived within the mother’s womb, will see in Person the living Son of God/Son of Man. At that moment, will we kneel before the Lord and pronounce His sovereignty in the full expectancy of His blessing, or will we know only terror at the horror of our mistake as our knees buckle beneath us and our confession is wrenched from our lips?

No one may see me and live. Jesus tells us emphatically in John 12:24&25, "I tell you the truth [literally, amen...so be it], unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Mt 10:37-39; NIV).

We must choose death to self, or we allow death to choose us. Let us pray to God that we can come to understand Paul when he tells the Church, I die every day--I mean that, brothers--just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord (1Co 15:31). Regarding our life and our death in these bodies, Paul goes on to tell us in verse 36, What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. In the same fashion, unless they are first buried in the good soil of our faith and obedience to God’s Word, our time, our talents, our resources, and all of our efforts are seeds scattered upon rock and amount to little more than vanity.

Luke tells us in 10:21-24, At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. "All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, "Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it" (NIV). Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great: He appeared in a body, was vindicated by the Spirit, was seen by angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was taken up in glory (Ti 3:16; NIV). Amen.