Category: Exile Stream

Posted on

April 13


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Hosea 3-4

We are reading from the Exile Stream today while using the Lexham English Bible.

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Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

God wants to love His people and to bring them back.  He asserted that come chapter two of Hosea. But all they seem to want to do is run in another direction.

Someone called Hosea’s writing the throbbing of a broken heart.  It certainly is.  The passage today is filled with the words that clearly indicate that the horrible behavior of the people that once inhabited Canaan is reigning again. They ARE now fully behaving like the people they were to drive out.  What is God supposed to do for, pity sake? This symbolic marriage that Hosea is ordered to walk through is making God’s pain [that we are inflicting on Him] all too personal to us.  If God could have gotten to Israel another way perhaps He would have.  But what works anymore with these “moral hyenas” ?
3 – Israel is completely behaving like pagans and Judah is too to a point. So God is buying them back and He will chasten and discipline them. After this they will fear and follow God … yes? maybe? soon? ever? when?
4 – reads like a guilty verdict – because it is. Israel is so bad in its sinning that the land itself is suffering, and so are the animals.  This is a subtle theme that is still seen today. We’ve seen a land that is blessed turn thorny and repugnant, Gen. 3. Then Gen. 6 brings on a cleansing flood because of sin; nothing else brought on such weather.  There are vast deserts in the world today that were productive and fruitful farms back when they were a Christian majority. But violence and paganism and false religion came in and since Living Water (Jesus) was expelled, H2O / water left too.   Don’t get mad at God for this!.  No mystery here! It’s obvious. Read v. 3 again and there’s the testimony. Sin left undealt with ends up punishing the whole place. From top to bottom, Israel has gone amok. They act like they don’t know God; —-> and it’s NOT God’s fault!  They told Him to “get out!”
v. 8 says “they feed on the sin of my people…” This may sound puzzling, but it’s a billboard in all of our faces that there’s a terrible amount of money made off of wrong doing. It’s been going on so long in so many realms that the people can’t see it any other way.  Think of all the occupations that would be out of business today if all sin would stop.  Plenty of leaders and politicians worldwide perceive sin as something that must be massaged to keep employment numbers up.  A sinless world is very frightening to the analytical type and especially to the political type. I’ll leave this alone.
The list is bad in ch. 4: the whoring, prostitution, drunkeness and contests that exist to keep the people this way are astonishing in their lewdness. (God’s love on the other end of the scale is equally astonishing, btw) .  Symbolically the land is going to spit these people out at the rate they are going.  God’s main contention is with the Priests who are steering this nation into darkness and doing so aggressively.  The Priests are making sure of this.

v. 14 may seem strange, “I will not punish…” Sometimes a rascal of a kid in a classroom is so unteachable, that it becomes a waste of time and energy to even try anymore. So they are dismissed and the teacher needs to stop even caring where the kid ends up just to save sanity.  That’s the case here in Israel.  Disaster is on the whore-izon

God, keep us in your Word, for what we have read today is the “Way of all Flesh”. The song says that we are prone to wander (Lord, I feel it).  Thank you God for hanging on to us even when we haven’t the strength to hang on at all. More than being astonished by the sin, may we be amazed by Your Grace; Your Amazing Grace.  Amen.
Posted on

April 6


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Hosea 1-2

We are in the Exile Stream starting a new book – Hosea. We are reading from the World English Bible this week.

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Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

What we read of Hosea the Prophet is found almost solely in this book.  There is precious little written about Hosea elsewhere.  He came on the scene just before Isaiah and Micah, and was younger than Amos.  His work of living and prophesying to the north was right around 760 B.C. – 720 B.C.  For what it’s worth, the first stones of the city of Rome were being laid and the first columns and colonnades were being erected as Hosea was beginning his painful years of ministry.  When he began, the northern Kingdom had been split from the south for about 200 years and was at it’s height of power and wealth.  During Hosea’s lifetime it went from it’s height under King Jeroboam II to being decimated as the Assyrian Army ransacked the nation under Israel’s King Hoshea. God had sent Elijah, Elisha, Jonah, and Amos to the north. All four had come from the south. Now he was sending Hosea into ministry – he was from the north. So they may have referred to him as “a local”. Hosea is addressing the nations rampant problem of adultery. They had worshiped an idol of a calf for two centuries and that had long morphed into a horrendous mess. The population in the north was utterly degraded. Hardly a child, nor a home, nor a marriage was intact. Chastity was not valued or protected.  At the rate they were going, it would not be long before God would “vacuum up” THESE particular people and throw them it into the dustbin of history.

Hosea 1 – notice the kings listed here are the same kings listed in Isaiah 1.  From the start, Hosea is ordered to ‘do as the locals’: have children with a prostitute. SHE will be your wife. God had been true to these people all through their history, and yet they go about “whoring” – to use KJV term.  Imagine the pain that adultery causes God. We are called to one God and to live it out with one spouse.  But humans want a dark version of “freedom” from this…and from God. Hosea, under God’s orders, has three children with Gomer the prostitute. Jezreel, Lo-Ruhamah, and Lo-Ammi.
Jezreel is the first son’s name because the House of Israel would finally end here (722BC) The bloody mess that Jehu responded to would be avenged (see II Kings 10:1ff)  Son; Jezreel’s birth was a statement that retribution was on its way. The decapitations in
 II Kings 10 would be repeated by the Assyrians swarming in (II Kings 17:5 ca. a century later).  It would be a horror show sequel to put it lightly.  Only the death scale would rise “1000” times over.
Lo-Ruhamah, a daughter is born and her name means “not loved”. The love and mercy from God is soon overwith for Israel. They had smacked God in the face for two centuries. He had had enough of the Northern Kingdom.
Lo-Ammi another son is born and his name means “not my people”.  It’s sad symbolism, isn’t it?!  The death of a people was imminent
Still God’s goodness comes forth in the final two verses as God tells of his intention to grow his people and to unite them.
Hosea 2 – The 2nd and 3rd children are referenced in the first verse here.  Mr. “not my people” and Miss “not loved (no mercy)” are to be told, “you ARE my people, You ARE loved.”  Mother is to stop the prostitution.  All are to come home again to where she was truly cared for and not just offered gifts and luxuries at a pimp’s place – though soon to be deserted by this liar.  God wants to call them home like parents call children for supper.   But they won’t come. but He still loves them, still they won’t come. But He still loves…  So God’s love will be opened up (Hosea 1:10) to whosoever will (Romans 9:24-26). The Romans’ reference is worth checking before the day passes.  God is certainly good to us, regardless how we dismiss, ignore, or swat away his love.
Lord make us like you, please make us like you. Your goodness, even in the face of being treated treacherously by your own children, is nearly unfathomable. May we be infused with your relentless love. Amen
Posted on

March 30


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Daniel 11:36-12:13

We are in the Exile Stream and will finish the book of Daniel as we read from the God’s Word Translation this week.

7streamsmethod.com | #7Streams | @7StreamsMethod | @serenatravis

Commentary by Dr. Drake Travis

Jesus, we thank you that our destiny is as glorious as Daniel’s and that our home is paradise with you. Amen.

-11:36 ff. This part of this chapter in Daniel is about Antiochus Epiphanes – the worst menace of the time; the 400 years between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Some have called these four centuries “the silent years”.  They were not silent at all.  A.E. was beyond horrible. His life was a murder spree aiming at genocide. Verse 41, “he will invade the beautiful land and tens of thousands will be defeated” is when he went into Israel and Jerusalem and killed 80,000 people just because he was mad.  And he was mad because of his failures to be victorious in other countries – so he vents his rage at the Jews. He was so completely treacherous that by the time his end comes, no one comes to his aid. That’s why it ends (chapter 11 and his life) it says. “no one comes to help him.”  He really was a bad bad man. That section of scripture in some ways is an overlay of the Anti-Christ.  It refers to Antiochus Epiphanes AND the antichrist at the same time.

12 – This is the End Times; no mistaking or multiple meanings. Michael, is Michael the Archangel. Also in v. 1 “everyone written in the book.” is the Lamb’s Book of Life more definitively spoken about in Revelation 21:27. The trouble and distress spoken of certainly is what is seen and growing today. But far worse is coming. Verse 2 speaks of the great resurrection and the judgment that is coming for unbelievers.  V. 4 talks of increased travel and knowledge.  That is certainly today. A journey that took weeks and months all through history is now taken in hours. Anyone anywhere in the world can be on the farthest part of the earth less than 24 hours later. As for knowledge increasing – one patent attorney was describing the process and its acceleration as being dizzying. The process of inventing and learning about new things is going way far faster than it ever has.  Some products, especially in technology, as soon as they reach the shelf at the stores, there is already another product going through the patent process that will make the prior invention obsolete. The learning and revelation process is happening that quickly now!  Messages were taken across the U.S. by rail train and it took days and days. Messages are sent in seconds to anywhere on earth now. Satellites relay information at the speed of light. Daniel is being told this over 2500 years ago.

The 1290 days is 3 + 1/2 years and it refers to tribulation.  The timing of it all, who is inflicted, who is protected from it, Christ’s Return, the Millennium, all this is further and more completely explained in Revelation and by Jesus.  To understand the end times requires a cross comparison of Daniel, Revelation, and Jesus words about the end times; the apocalypse. Jesus comments are found in Matthew 24, Mark 13 and Luke 21.

God tells us what is coming because He cares about us, He wants us to know that He is in charge and that there is nothing to fear. God is this way because he loves us. The intent of this apocalyptic literature is not to frighten – it is written to assure. Let’s let it affect us this same way. Let’s let it make us more loving. Let’ s also resist the urge to get into arguments and get ugly toward others.  Too many have declared that anyone who views the end times differently than they personally do, THAT person is a heretic, and needs to be put out of THEIR church.  This is the wrong way to immerse into end time studies.  Let’s let end time studies make us more loving people.  It does finish well for us.  Daniel is told, “go on until the end. You will rest, and you will rise to receive your inheritance at the end of time.”  Our finale~ is as glorious as Daniel’s and this is cause for rejoicing.  The angel was talking to Daniel who is talking to us.  This is Amazing!