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And it's as good a time as any
to review the basic argument of Hosea and why Hosea is important
to us as believers. The book of Hosea is in the collection
in the Old Testament called the Nabiim. Nabi is the Hebrew word
for prophet. Im is the plural ending in Hebrew.
And so the Nabiim consists of a plurality of books, 15 to be
exact, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then the 12 minor prophets.
We call the Book of the Twelve, one of whom is Hosea. So the
Naveen books like Hosea, these have as a practical effect in
the life of a Christian deal specifically with deep problems
of carnality. The prophet's job in these letter,
these books was twofold. It was first to convict the nation
of deep, deep problems of sin in order that the nation might
repent Yet if she did not repent, there was a coming judgment of
God. And second, that to communicate that the nation was eternally
secure and would finally be restored. So the work of the prophet and
all of these prophetic passages of scripture, you will find yourself
going back to when you are facing deep, deep problems of sanctification
in your own soul. When you have areas and times
and when you know things aren't going right and you have that
conviction that There's just something wrong somewhere. Well, then the prophets are the
books to start reading. If you're working with someone
else who's in deep, deep trouble, the point where they to the point
where they become terribly emotional and start to manifest certain
psychosomatic illnesses and things like that, then the Naveen are
the books to read to solve these problems. So these are the books
where excuses for sin are put aside and it's all exposed. in
all of its grotesqueness, sin for what it truly is. We see,
for example, in the argument of Hosea, the first three chapters,
God established a historic parallel between his relationship with
the nation Israel and Hosea's relationship with his wife, Gomer.
And the whole point of those first three chapters is that
there has been violation of a contractual arrangement. And that is nothing
short in God's eyes of prostitution. As nasty and grotesque as that
is, it's deeply offensive and it's deeply personal how God
responds to our sin. You have to realize, we all need
to realize, that God is not sitting there in the heavens when we
sin and the word gets to him or something. Oh, yeah, yeah,
so and so sinned, uh-huh, who cares? And that's not, that is
not what happens when we sin. That's not how God responds.
He personally responds to this, and his response at times can
be very violent toward us. It can be very sudden. It can
almost appear merciless. Conversely, of course, when God
blesses, the blessing is astounding. So the first three chapters reveal
that if you have trusted in Jesus Christ, that God is interested
in you personally and he's going to respond to you personally.
Chapters four through ten, the Hosea, Hosea's marriage and God's
marriage with the nation Israel sort of slip into the background.
They're still there. But here we go into a verse by verse analysis
in the form of a covenant lawsuit, what we call the Reeve. The question
is, why does God use a Reeve or a lawsuit format against the
nation? The basic answer is to teach
us about true conviction of sin. True conviction of sin is not
to be confused with guilt feelings. You may feel guilty, but that
doesn't necessarily mean that sin is the issue. So what we're
learning here is how a point by point analysis, a very detailed
analysis of very specific violations of a contract had to do with
conviction of sin. And finally, chapters 11 through
14, God's great love for the nation Israel. Finally, the nation
will be blessed because these problems are going to be resolved.
God has a way of solving the problem, a problem that Israel
couldn't solve. And so we see God's grace as
the final note of history. Now, when we work with this,
we want to remind ourselves of the history of this nation. Remember
that Hosea is convicting a nation of national sin. We're applying
it to our own personal individual sin. But we have at this point
in the nation Israel from 926 B.C. onward in time, the northern
kingdom and the southern kingdom. The southern kingdom is called
Judah. The Northern Kingdom is called Israel. Sometimes in the
book of Hosea, it's called Ephraim. Now, those are the titles for
the Northern Kingdom. Hosea has his ministry in the Northern
Kingdom, and his ministry is to a generation that is going
to be destroyed eventually by the Assyrians in 721 BC. So he
is living in the last period of the existence of his country,
and he's having to watch them go down. And he is bringing God's
lawsuit against his country. And he's announcing it, that
God is going to judge my country. Now, the country at that time
was in deep, deep carnality. There's a difference, though,
between deep, deep carnality and just carnality. Carnality
is just being out of fellowship. And then you confess and you
get back in fellowship. That's the David type response
to the conviction of sin. Deep, deep carnality is when
you get out of fellowship and you stay out of fellowship and
you begin to develop habitual sin patterns in your life and
you reinforce these through negative volition, negative volition,
negative volition to the word of God. So that puts you in a
state of deep, deep carnality. Now, there are stages to this
as you go into greater and greater depths of carnality. It doesn't
just happen overnight. It takes time to decay into this
kind of a carnality. And so you'll see decay come
stage by stage. And there's a sequence, a specific
sequence outlined in the word of God, particularly in Romans
one. You want to study that more that charts the very sequence
of decay. It's always the same sequence.
OK, so if you see you see you're somewhere in this sequence, you
at least know where you are in the sequence and how to get back
on track. So the first step, by way of review, what's the
deal here? I think the lamp is going out
on this thing. or something, because it keeps
giving me trouble lately. And so I don't know what the deal
is, but so you'll just have to write these down. The first step
is the rejection of the knowledge of God, rejection of the knowledge
of God. Now, this comes this is not just
Bible knowledge. We're not talking about just that. We're talking
about general revelation about God and nature. This comes in
the form of suppression. Romans one describes it as suppression
of known truth. God makes himself known to every
single human being that has ever walked the face of this planet.
including the Helen Kellers who didn't have all their senses.
All men know God. And therefore, when we suppress
that knowledge of God and we don't give thanks for the rain
and the crops and the oxygen that we breathe and we just go
around acting like it's all just there. And then we have a big
problem because God in his grace is supplying all of our needs.
He is giving the stability and order to this universe so we
can function. And so this is the very first step. This is
a rejection of the knowledge of God. The second step that
immediately follows is the mind begins to darken. The mind begins
to darken or the darkening of the mind. Darkening of the mind
means a reorientation of one's ultimate presupposition for interpreting
reality. And obviously it's a negative
reorientation. So this is a judgment in and
of itself. Yet if you reject the knowledge that God has given
every human being. then the reasoning processes
of your intellect begin to distort data. It doesn't mean we become
stupid at all. It means the thought processes
become oriented against God, though. And by the way, this
holds true for believers and unbelievers. Don't think this
just applies to unbelievers, and they're the only ones that
can do this. There are plenty of believers that are in this
kind of a pattern. And a believer in this pattern
at this stage would be saying things like, There's just too
much teaching of the word of God here. We need this program.
And why can't we just hold hands on Wednesday nights? And I'm
just so sick and tired of coming here. And all we do is open the
word of God. Isn't there something more, you know, to the Christian
life besides, you know, if I have too much of the word, boy, I
might get spiritually fired or something. And we don't want
that. So it's always some scheme that is there to malign in some
way the word of God. And what's happening as this
goes on in the mind, as you take in less and less of the Word
of God, because you're in rebellion, you don't want to hear that,
and more and more stuff begins to come in from other sources,
and you begin to reinterpret all the incoming facts. So we're
constantly barraged by the, quote, facts, but now you begin to reinterpret
the facts according to a new authority, which authority is
always ultimately in man. So in this stage, the intellect
is in a period of reorientation. We call that the darkening of
the mind. The third step is demonic influence. Demonic influence. So at this point, we are really
sucking up the pagan ideas in our culture that are prevalent.
We are convinced now that basically man has the answers. Those answers
are demonically sourced, of course, ultimately, but, you know, it's
when you're saying stuff like, well, who really believes all
that Bible stuff anyway? So at this stage, the reorientation
has basically taken place. And now we're rapidly organizing
according to a new absolute. And behind all the demonic activity,
we begin to project, we begin to create images such as I've
used the popular one in our day evolution, that a projection
that is an all explanatory principle and it's independent of God.
So they they are manifestations. that we are in autonomous rebellion
against the Creator and ultimately these are demonically inspired.
The demonic influence of course is powerful and it's widespread
in our world. Demons hold sway which is precisely
why Satan is called the god of this world or the prince of the
power of the air. The air, why does it say the
air? Well it's because that's where all the ideas float around
and so this is basically his major operation is to infiltrate
in the way that men think and distort. The fourth step is outright
idolatry. Idolatry. And this is when we're
convinced that this demonic idea is right and the Bible is wrong. It has errors or something. You
know, in our hearts, we seriously do not think that the word of
God is true. That God isn't really in control
of history. And by this stage, you have begun
to transfer the attributes of the creator over onto the creation.
We have we have to have done this by this point, because to
say that the word of God isn't true. Requires a standard outside
of the word of God by which to judge. And so now we have relocated
absolutes from the creator over to the creation and wherever
you relocated them, that's your altar of worship. The nation
Israel went through all four of these steps that we just mentioned.
Fertility for her because she was an agricultural society was
ultimate because that was, you know, I have to eat and I have
to provide for my family to eat. And so this became ultimate.
And since Baal was the fertility god of nature, then Baal became
ultimate. And so the absolute in this case,
the idolatry in this case was to take the attribute of God's
grace that he supplies all of our needs. and relocated over
in nature forces. Nature forces supply all my needs.
Nature forces provide for my well-being and for making my
soil fertile so I get good crops. And that is nothing more than
the ancient continuity of being under the idea of the Baal cult.
That ultimately, in this frame of reference, this frame of mind,
one sees that all reality is one. That the gods and the goddesses,
man, animals, rock, everything is part of the same mystery.
And everything on there just sort of differs by degree. And
so I can move up the scale in these degrees. I can manipulate
up the scale to get better produce and so on. And this is all idolatry.
So we might address what are some of the other idolatries
of our generation. I'll address three or four. Evolution, of
course, is the one I'll start with as always because it's the
big idea. And that is the modern parallel to the ancient Baalism
that we just described. So don't fool yourself. OK, modern
neo-Darwinian evolution is not a new idea with Darwin. All Darwin
did was supply a mechanism for an ancient belief that was held
by the Egyptians. It was held by the Canaanites.
It was held by the Babylonians. It was held by the Greeks. The
basic idea is that all is one and everything only differs by
degree. OK, that is a pagan idea. It's
pagan worship. So this is why we're so insistent
that, you know, you as a Christian, When some other Christian comes
to you and says, when you're witnessing someone, why do you
always have to bring up all this creation business and evolution?
Just leave all that stuff off to the side. Well, here's the
issue. You can't avoid it. It's simply
unavoidable. It's like saying, let's discuss
the Christ without discussing idolatry. Tell me how you can remain idolatrous
and accept Jesus. If I'm idolatrous by nature,
that means I locate my absolutes inside the creation and not outside
of it. So if I'm still an idolater and
I present Jesus and I accept as Jesus or something, then I'm
accepting nobody more than another person like you and me that is
encompassed by the same creation. And that means that Jesus is
nothing more, nothing more whatsoever than maybe a great moral leader,
a fantastic teacher, but that's all he is. And that's an impotent
Jesus. That is not the saving Jesus
who controls history. So you can't avoid these kind
of discussions if you're interested in someone genuinely being saved
and not just saying, yeah, I believe in Jesus. Another modern form
of idolatry, we would move over to political party loyalty. These become ultimate in a person's
mind, and no matter what the issue, I'm going to remain loyal
to my party. The problem with that is that party platforms
drift so that what your party may believe in 2009 is the same
thing that the opposing party believed in 1959. So obviously
the party drifts, and if you make party loyalties ultimate,
then you're drifting in your beliefs. And if you're drifting,
that means that you're a relativist and not an absolutist. So truth
is relative, and that means basically relative things change. What's
true changes with the times. So as time changes, truth changes.
But in any case, party loyalty is idolatry, and this is where
we have to insist that new parties step up and make sure that their
platform is heard. And so we can see when they apply
their principles how that gives a different answer to the same
problems. So the reason we haven't seen so much of that being successful
is basically because What we're seeing is mass party idolatry.
That's what you're seeing. And so the two-party system is
evidence of idolatry itself. Another form, a third form of
modern idolatry is economics. Value and wealth become ultimate. And so whatever benefits my wallet,
that's what I'm going to support. And I never make any decision
that's not good for my wallet, no matter what ethical violation. or principles might be involved.
So everything gets oriented around that. Wealth becomes absolute.
So these are some of the popular idolatries of our day. There
are others, but we want to come to the fifth step in this decay,
and that is the social chaos. The social chaos that eventually
breaks out. The behavior that is naturally
associated with the demonic ideas. When the mind is warped like
this and the demonic infiltration has occurred, then the natural
byproduct is chaos in the heart. Chaos in the heart leads to all
kinds of strange behaviors in society, things like mothers
murdering their children, fathers shooting their family, you know,
stuff like that. Other things that become rampant, and I'll
list at the end of Romans 1, but things like lying. Lying
just becomes a way of life. It's totally accepted. A lot
of politicians, of course, tend toward this sin pattern. But
after a while, we just redefine You know, the way that these
people say things is, well, it's just a point of view. It's not a lie. And so we've redefined sin so
that it's an accepted societal norm. And this is a part of the
relativizing that goes on when society is in this fifth stage.
Other things include increased homosexuality and homosexuality
itself being redefined as a normal behavior. And so you can go through
the end of Romans 1 and read all about these kinds of behaviors
that typify a wicked, wicked society. You know, haters of
God, disobedient children, greed, malice, gossip. It's all in there. OK, they're all marks of chaos
in the heart and chaos in society. And that brings us to tonight,
the sixth and final step. And that's what we see in verses
16 and 17. There comes a point. When God removes his divine protection. God removes divine protection,
that is the sixth stage. And this is a very severe form
of discipline. When God says, I cut off my gracious restraint
toward you, then you've reached the point of no return. And we'll
elaborate this point and prove it from Scripture, but that's
the picture Hosea has for the Old Testament nation Israel and
by parallel for you and I as a New Testament believers in
Christ. Now, verse 15, though you Israel play the harlot, do
not let Judah become guilty. We're in Hosea 4. I think everybody
knows that. Though you, Israel, play the
harlot, do not let Judah become guilty, as the Lord lives. Since
Israel is stubborn, like a stubborn heifer, can the Lord now pasture
them like a lamb in a large field? I left something out. I left
out the Gilgal and so forth, didn't I? All right. Now, this
is one of three passages that the biblical doctrine of backsliding
has been developed from. I grew up, if you have King James
Version, it uses backsliding in that verse. I grew up in a
Baptist church, and Baptists always talk about backsliding.
Now, this is a very popular form of gossip. So, so-and-so is backslidden. That's the kind of thing that
was always going on. And the idea I got was that backsliding
was like somebody who just wasn't coming to church or something
for a little while. And what they were really getting at was
that so-and-so had fallen into a sin pattern, and they got stuck
in this sin pattern. Now, that's not what this passage
is talking about. The original is very different from the idea
of backsliding. And I can't really find that
the backsliding they were talking about has anything to do with
what's being said by Hosea here to the nation Israel. Though
you, Israel, play the harlot, do not let Judah become guilty.
And there you see the divided kingdoms. In 926 B.C., we said,
Rehoboam made a poor political move, and his two tribes stayed
in the south. That's Judah. And then the ten
tribes stayed north. That's Israel. And the verse
is addressing Israel. Israel, though you, Israel, play
the harlot. And that's a present participle.
It means continual action. They continually play the harlot.
Now, playing the harlot is the idolatry and the parallel to
spiritual idolatry in the marriage is physical adultery. The first
three chapters of Hosea mark out that God set in motion a
historic parallel between his relationship to Israel and the
prophet Hosea's relationship to Gomer. Now, both of these
girls, so to speak, were committing adultery. And the question is
why? Are these terms linked with marriage? Well, there are two reasons.
Reason number one is because marriage is a contract. Marriage
doesn't begin when you fall in love with someone. Marriage begins
when you enter into a contract with them, whether you love them
or not. Many marriages throughout history have been arranged by
parents because the kids are too imbecile to choose a good
spouse. And the parents thought their wisdom was greater than
the children's, which is the case. And so learning to love
has always been the model that's developed in scripture. It was
never love first and then marry. It was always marry first and
then learn to love. And so it was at Mount Sinai.
Just imagine. Do you think the nation Israel
loved God at Mount Sinai? No, they had to learn to love
God after Mount Sinai. And so point one of this marital
language is because both relationships begin with a contract. That's
something that's definitely lost in society. But the problem is
the second thing here, and that is that they played the harlot.
They have broken the contract. So they entered into the marital
contract, but they said, you know, this contract, this thing,
this just isn't working. It isn't sufficient. This isn't
meeting all my needs. And so I'll go elsewhere to meet
all my needs. And this is the idolatry. And
the reason they think this is because they've already advanced
through these six stages. So obviously, When they receive
all the blessing in their land and so forth, they cannot attribute
it to the proper source of who is supplying all their needs
because they don't think properly about reality. Now, let's look
at more verse 15. Though you, Israel, play the
harlot, do not let Judah become guilty. So for a moment, Hosea
thinks about, he stands there and he thinks about the border
kingdom of Judah. Judah was more, we would say,
spiritually with it than the northern kingdom of Israel because
her life centered on the Davidic dynasty. They had Jerusalem and
they had the temple. So they were more spiritually
stable than Judah. But there's always this danger
that if you hang around fornicators, you're going to become a fornicator
yourself. And that's the principle of Matthew 15, 14 and so forth.
But that is a problem. You know, so don't think that
you're going to go witnessing down at the red light district
or something. There may be people in the red light district that
you love. There may be people down there that I love. There
may be people down there that God loves. But don't think that you
can go down there and come out unscathed. It's just stupid to
go down there and think that you can come out unscathed, uncorrupt. So they're corrupt people. And
then we get more explanation, and I'll fill in the details
so this makes sense. They are not to go to two places, because
if they go to these two places, the point is they'll become corrupt.
Both of these places are in the northern kingdom of Israel. So
the southern kingdom of Judah is not to go up, first of all,
to Gilgal. Now, Gilgal in the time of Elisha, was a center
of the school of the prophets. This is where the word of God
was studied in great detail. This is where students were trained
in the seminary there. And so it became famous for producing
all the great exegetes. And so they would make pilgrimages
up there to this great seminary. And God says, don't even bother.
The place is an apostate seminary now. You don't find any good
exegetes coming out of Gilgal. The whole thing's turned into
a big idolatrous shrine. And this, by way of application,
is the kind of thing that happens about every 75 years. Historically,
every seminary and church, generally speaking, stays Orthodox no more
than 75 years. Now, that just comes out of the
study of analysis of history. So the basic trend is they'll
start building a church for a number of years. Then they'll go into
a golden era and then the church will decline. And after about
75 years, that's all that's left is just a golden memories of
the golden era. And of course, the reputation
for their orthodoxy holds around for a while. And then, you know,
it distances itself. And God says, you know, Gilgal
may have a fine reputation for producing the greatest exegetes
in the world, but not anymore. So don't go there. It's an empty
place. Avoid it. The second place, neither go
up to Beth-Aven. Beth-Aven. And this is a figure
of speech called At-Bash. It's a Hebrew figure of speech,
so I'll spell it A-T-D-A-S-H. Sounds like at-bash, those two
words, at-bash. At-bash is a Hebrew way of substituting
one place name, like a city, for another place name, such
as a city. You see this in Revelation 10,
again, where Sodom and Gomorrah is substituted for Jerusalem.
The context makes clear that Jerusalem is in view, but Jerusalem
is under the heading of Sodom and Gomorrah because of what
Jerusalem had become. And so the same is true here.
Beth-el is under Beth-aven, because of what Beth-el had become. Beth-el
comes from two words, Beth, like the name, Beth, meaning house,
and el, meaning God. So Beth-el means house of God.
It was known as the house of God because in Genesis 28, this
is where Jacob met with God and he made an oath. And so the people
of Judah always wanted to make pilgrimages up to this place
because, well, Jacob met with God there, and I'll take the
same oath that Jacob took, and that's great. But later, Bethel,
in the history of Israel, became an idolatrous shrine where Jeroboam
set up the golden calf and so forth. And so Hosea refers to
Bethel as Beth-Avon, Avon meaning wickedness or iniquity. So Beth-Avon means house of wickedness. And so he uses this figure of
speech, Akbosh, to say the house of God, Bethel, has been turned
into a house of wickedness. But even so, don't bother going
up there. You'll just be corrupted. Now, the oath that you would
take that it goes on to describe when you go up to Gilgal and
Bethel, you make the pilgrimage, you go up there to this place
that has a great history in your nation and you would take some
oath. You'd promise the Lord something
or another. And the oath would always be sealed with the words
at the end of verse 15 as the Lord lives. This was the formula.
And he says, don't waste your time going up there and making
these O's and going through the routine, because I'm not paying
attention. Now, why is he not going to pay attention to the
O's they make at Bethel and Gilgal? Well, because they're not worshiping
them according to the Word of God. The Word of God says worship
in Jerusalem. Go up to Jerusalem. So if you're going to go up to
Gilgal and Bethel, don't use his name. Those are apostate
shrines. It's like a lot of people today in evangelical circles.
People who could basically care, for the most part, care less
about the Word of God are always going around, well, you know,
the Lord led me to do this and the Lord led me to do that. And
you're attaching the Lord's name to all this stuff. Now, the Lord
didn't do anything in the majority of these cases. You just have
experience or an emotion and you want to feel spiritual, so
you attach God's name to it. When all that really happened
is you just have overactive emotions. And the way you can tell this
is that basically what happens doesn't line up with the Word
of God. And so five months later, the Lord is leading this person
to do this. And five months later, the Lord is leading them to do
that. And none of it ever gets finished. And the way you know
that that's not the Lord is because none of it ever gets finished.
And the Lord finishes what he starts. So therefore, that was
just your overactive emotions. And that's the kind of thing
that's going on here. Now, let's get to verse 16. This beautiful
picture right here, mistaken often for backsliding. Since
Israel is stubborn, like a stubborn heifer, Can the Lord now pasture
them like a lamb in a large field? Now, the translators in the New
American Standard here have translated that as a question. Technically,
this is not a question. There's no interrogative pronoun
introducing this. So it's just a declarative statement.
But they've had trouble with the text. And so the question
format is one of the ways that translators have handled this.
So we'll do our best to straighten out what's going on. You'll notice,
first of all, the word stubborn. since Israel is stubborn like
a stubborn heifer." You see it there twice. The key word is
stubborn. Okay, that refers to stiff-necked
rebels. Stiff-necked is what the word
means, and they're likened to a stubborn heifer. Now, a stubborn
heifer, of course, is a heifer that you can't get to move. You've
got the animal all restrained by a yoke, so you can move the
animal, but a stubborn heifer won't move. And the reason is
because she'll take her front legs And she'll just straighten
them straight out like a board. And at that point, I don't care
if you push them. I don't care if you pull them. They're not
going to budge. So she's a big, fat, stubborn heifer. And until
she moves her legs, she's not going to budge. And God says,
Israel, you're a big, fat, stubborn heifer. You are locked down in
negative volition of the word of God. And you don't want to
hear it. So they can't stand this yoke,
this restraint that God puts on them to try to get them to
move. And now the next statement says what God's going to do as
a result. Now, the Lord will pasture them
like a lamb in a large field. Now, what is this? Let's take
a large field. A large field is a metaphor for
an unprotected area. It's not safe. And the Lord is
saying, I'm going to continue to pasture you, but I'm not going
to protect you. I'm going to leave you completely
out in the open. And this tells us something about how God corrects
believers. Because we have our five steps that we've gone through,
right? You wrote them down. Rejection of knowledge. Darkness
of the mind. The demons infiltrate. You have
idolatry. And then you have the social
chaos breaking out. And God is saying, all right,
I've had it. You're a stubborn heifer. You won't go positive
with the word of God. You will never confess your sin. And therefore,
this is what I'm going to do to you. I'm going to turn you
loose. And you are going to be sitting
out there like a dead duck in the middle of an open field.
And the wolves are going to come in like predators. And you're
just going to be like a little bitty lamb. You know, lambs are some
of the stupidest, weakest animals on the planet. They're one of
the great evidences against evolution. You know, how do these things
ever survive? Basically, they're totally helpless creatures. And that's the picture of Israel.
God is saying, no more divine protection. I'm turning you loose. So this is the sixth step of
the six that we went through. This is the picture of God removing
his divine protection over his elect nation. Now, he's not going
to restrain them anymore. You want to walk in chaos? Go
ahead, have chaos. But just know when the predators
come in there, they're going to eat you alive. Now, to see
that the same thing is taught in the New Testament for the
New Testament Christian, the believer, turn to 1 Corinthians
chapter 11, verse 30. What we have here is something
parallel to that which leads up to the sin unto death. or
the fact that the sin and the death has already occurred and
there's a temporary delay in its execution. First Corinthians
1130. This is the context of communion
service and they basically had turned the whole thing into a
drunken party. So verse 30. They're getting chided for this
activity is the way they treat the Lord's. Table. So verse 30. For this reason,
many among you are weak and sick and a number sleep. Now, you
can't get around that this verse is saying that physical sickness
as well as physical death here were due to disciplinary function. Now, this is not saying that
all sickness is this way. There are reasons for suffering unrelated
to your choices and there are reasons related to your suffering
from your choices. And you know, those we've been
we've been over those I don't know how many times, but there is
some physical suffering that can come because of your choices.
And this is one of them right here. Now, turn back a few chapters. to first Corinthians, chapter
five, verse five. Here's how Paul dealt with a
terrible case of social chaos in the heart at Corinth. Corinth
was the sex capital of the ancient world, and they had a problem
with one of the members in the church. So Paul says in verse
five, I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction
of his flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the
Lord Jesus. In other words, as an apostle who had authority,
he says, I cut so-and-so believer off from divine protection, and
I just let Satan have at him. It's not loss of salvation. Notice
that's eternal. You can't lose that. But this
is a form of discipline where Satan gets to feast on a believer. Now turn to First John, chapter
five. First John 5, 16. Now, this is
going to tell you what to do when you see a person, a Christian,
do this kind of a sin. We've basically categorized in
the death and you get all the details on the tape that we did
for first on five sixteen and seventeen. But basically a son
of death and the present era has three basic characteristics. We say first of all it's publicly
done something done in a corner. It is publicly done before the
congregation or those who represent the assembly. Secondly they are
intentional sins. They willfully do this. They
know exactly what they're doing, and they do it anyway. And third,
it is somehow against the character of God. Somehow it's an attack
on the character of God. And you'll always find those
three characteristics in any sin unto death, whether it be
Old Testament or New Testament. So it's public. It's intentional. They know exactly what they're
doing. And three, it's in some way attack on the character of
God. So if you see someone commit a sin like that, then 1 John
5, 16 gives you the instruction. What are you supposed to do?
So there's no loss of salvation, but something else does happen.
Let's see. The verse begins, verse 16, if anyone sees his
brother committing a sin not to death. OK, so the first part
of the verse is dealing with some other general sin, not a
sin unto death. OK, in that case, it says he
shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit
sin not to death. OK, so that's category one. Now
there's another category of sin, sin to death, which would have
the three characteristics I just mentioned. And it's mentioned
next. There is a sin to death. I do not say that he should make
requests for this. Do not make requests for that.
That's a command. Now, what this is saying is when a New Testament
believer gets so out of shape and he commits this sin unto
death and has those three characteristics, don't even pray for that person.
Do not. That is not something you should
pray for. It's just a waste of your time if you do that, because
it's useless. It is totally a waste of your time. It's totally a
waste of God's time to sit there and watch you do this. OK. And
so, you know, God has already tried to work with this person. Don't you get in the way and
try to help these people. Don't have a big prayer session
for them. Just leave them alone. That's what the text is saying.
Now, God has decided this person he is taking out of the equation.
And that's final. So that's the kind of thing that
God's getting at in verse 16. God is removing his protection
and now the predators can come in. They're going to devour him.
So go back to Hosea chapter 4 verse 16. That's the kind of thing.
I'm going to leave you out in an open field like a lamb and
all the wolves are going to come in and just devour. Verse 17. Ephraim is joined to
idols. Now we said earlier Ephraim is
another name for the ten tribes. So you'll see it throughout Hosea.
It's a synonym. for Israel. Ephraim is joined
to idols, and the word joined means stuck or glued. Okay, they're glued to idols
and they're not going to come unglued. So he instructs the
people of Judah, the other kingdom, let him alone. Here it is, see?
That's the instruction. Don't bother with a person that
is involved in this. Don't bother with them. Leave
them alone. John told the congregation, he said, do not pray for them.
Don't help them. Don't encourage them. Don't pat them on the back.
Just leave them alone. Now, that may sound harsh, but
that's God's word. Just leave them alone. Get them
out. Get away from them. OK, they
are going to corrupt you. And you cannot help these kind
of people. OK, don't waste your time with
them. I'd say go spend your time working
with someone that hasn't gone so far away to where they're
in all this kind of trouble. So their judgment is determined.
He says Ephraim is joined to an idol. Leave him alone. Now,
verse 18, that sounds harsh, but that's God's decision. Verses
18 to 19, the conclusion in the fore view of the judgment. I
tell you, we probably don't see that too often. Come up afterwards,
I'll tell you what their liquor gone. They play the harlot continually. Their rulers dearly love shame.
The wind wraps them in its wings and they will be ashamed because
of their sacrifices. Now, here we'll have to work
again with some of the translation issues. So let's try to work
it out. First of all, their liquor is gone. The liquor gone and
the word liquor, there is the word in the Old Testament for
Hebrew Very strong drink. This is the kind of stuff that
you get drunk on real fast. We'd say the modern parallel
is somebody sitting at the bar taking a bunch of shots. You know, something
like that. Something that gets you wasted
real fast. And what the Hebrew is saying there is that they're
all out of liquor now, OK? They're all drunk and they're
all out of liquor. And the Hebrew here is in a causative connection
between the heavy drinking there and the harlotry that follows.
So we translate it like this. It'd be a little better. When
their liquor is gone, They play the harlot continually. And that
follows, you know, so you drink liquor till you're drunk and
that opens your body up to fornication. And then they just jump on Baal's
altar and go at it. So this is the ancient equivalent
to the modern sex, drugs and rock and roll. So this tells
you exactly in very vivid detail what was going on at the religious
ceremonies down at Baal's worship center. So after they run out
of alcohol, it says they, quote, they play the harlot continually.
This is difficult to translate because that whole phrase, which
is five words in English, is just two words in the Hebrew.
And it's the same word repeated twice. Just two words. Zaynab,
Zaynab. Now, the first, though, comes
in the form of the main verb. The second is an infinitive absolute.
And this intensifies the mood of the main verb. And the main
verb here is in the hissyl, too. So this is very, very important. This is trying to communicate
very strongly something that's going on. So this is not a simple
action. If it was in the Hebrews, a simple
action would just be the cal stem. That just means simple
action. It'd say something like, oh, they play the harlot. Okay,
well, okay, great, move on. But the hithil means this. They caused, they caused to play
the harlot. And putting this all together,
we have something like this, a translation. They really caused
extremely intense harlotry. They really caused extremely
intense harlotry. So now we're in a strange position
in the text because the question is, well, who's they? Who's the
they who are causing this extreme harlotry? And who is it that's
actually doing the harlotry? Because there's an outside influence.
They caused others to involve themselves in intense harlotry.
So it's very difficult in the original text, but in the final
clause of verse 18, we have the answer for who they are. Their
rulers dearly love shame. Okay, so that's who the they
are. The they are the rulers. They are the ones who cause the
people to engage in extremely intense fornication. And now
we come to these rulers. Who are they? Literally in the
Hebrew, they're the Magen. M-A-G-E-N. the Megan, which is the word
for shields, you know, a shield everywhere else. This is translated
as shields, but here they translate it rulers. So let's look at it.
Literally, it would read like this. Their shields dearly love
shame. Now, the function of the shield
in war is to protect. It is to protect the vital organs
and that saves your life. And so the shield provides a
protective function for the nation's security and well-being. And
so who provided protection for the Northern Kingdom? Who provided? Well, it was their military,
obviously. It was their soldiers. So the military's function was
to be a shield to protect the nation from the Assyrians and
from the Egyptians and from all the other threats. So the military
is the shield of the people against the foreign armies. But here
they have a serious, serious problem because the soldiers
who are supposed to provide this shield function to protect the
people have not protected the people. They have not been a
shield for the people. Instead, they have directed these
people to go into false Baal religion. And they themselves
are involved in this false Baal religion. They love it. They
lap it up with a spoon. Now, this is what a sex cult will
do. It's very attractive to all the young people. Everybody wants
to get involved. You know, everybody come down
here and have all the sex you want. And that includes the soldiers,
of course. You know, come on down, get the next prostitute.
So the soldier who ought to be out you know, keeping his post
and guarding the nation. You know, he wanders over to
the local Baal worship center. You know, I'm on patrol here.
You know, I'm patrolling over here right next to the Baal worship
center. Yeah, right. OK, give me a break. So he's abandoned his post temporarily
so he can go fornicate. And all this does is it opens
up the nation to enemy attack. So the soldiers function was
to be a shield for the people, but they weren't doing their
job. And the whole nation during this period was suffering very
terrible sufferings. This was a period of the Syro-Ephraimite
wars from 734 down to 732, and gradually Israel was losing more
and more in real estate, and she was being shrunk down mostly
to the tribe of Elad and to the tribe of Ephraim, which is another
reason that they're used so commonly in this book. So we have a serious
problem in the National Defense Department of the Northern Kingdom,
and that brings us to verse 19, where the whole thing falls to
pieces. With the weakening of national
defense, Now, Hosea says, the wind wraps them in its wings
and they will be ashamed because of their sacrifices. What's this? The wind wraps them. OK, them,
that's Ephraim, that's Israel. So they're going to get wrapped
by the wind and carried away in its wings. OK, it's a metaphor
for rapid destruction by foreign military powers. Rapid destruction
by foreign military powers. The wind pictures, you know,
a force that just comes in and just sweeps An area just totally
clears it of all the debris. And the pictures of the nation,
and the nation's like debris in God's eyes by this point,
and they're being blown away by the foreign army. And so this
is the military power just sweeping in and chopping them to pieces.
Because remember what God said in verse 16. Glance at that verse.
You're going to be like lambs in an open field. No protection.
You're going to be open to the wolves. And now the wolves are
going to come in and they're going to blow in. And it's a
perfect description of what happened. In 721 BC, the Assyrian army
came in and blew them away. And you have these people being
relocated all over the map. That's how the Assyrians did
it. They come in, they say, well, you're out of your land, and we'll put
you in so-and-so's land, and we'll move so-and-so into your
land. And they moved people all over the place and relocated
them. And so that's what happened to the ten tribes. They were
blown to all different places. which is why it became very popular
at the time to say they were the lost tribes of Israel, the
ten lost tribes. They're not really lost, but
this is where the idea began, because at first everybody thought
they had been lost. And then finally, the end of
verse 19, and this gives some further insight about what happens
when we're in compound carnality. The wind is blown, okay, that's
military defeat. And only after all this defeat,
it says, they will be ashamed because of their sacrifices.
Now, the they is obviously the Northern Kingdom. And the first
thing that we can say is that while they were in deep, deep
carnality, which we've sketched in details, these six steps that
go down, during all that time, they were deeply deceived. They thought they were worshiping
the true God. But the nature of deception is that you're in
a position where your thinking is wrong. Your thinking is all
screwed up. That's deception. And so they'd
go down and they would offer their sacrifices at the ball
cult. And they really thought this was doing something. They
really thought this was accomplishing something. Why did they offer
the sacrifices? Not because they wanted to get
rid of their cattle or their lambs, but because they thought
they were really appeasing the God. who provided fertility for
their soil. So they thought this was really
having an effect, because we'll give the sacrifice that pleases
Baal, and Baal gives us this blessing on our land. And after
all this is said and done, after the military defeat, then finally
he says they will be ashamed. That means finally they will
wake up to the fact that our sacrifices weren't doing a thing.
They were putting their trust in something that was just a
production or a projection of their own finite imagination.
See, this is the end. When you reject the knowledge
of God, what you know to be true, don't stand there and say, I
don't know God. It's just not clear to me that
God is really there, because you know very well that God is
there. You know He's giving you life
and breath and all things. But once you start down that
path of rejecting that, deception is the inevitable consequence.
Inevitable. And it won't be until too late
that you realize it. All this time, you mean I've
been trusting in a vain object that came totally out of my false
pagan imagination? Yes. It's just an imagination. You are just projecting this
image out there. And when you realize it, you'll
be ashamed. You'll be humiliated because you built everything
in your life upon that foundation. And then you'll come to realize
that the foundation that you erected, the whole thing collapses
And you realize there was no foundation there before it even
to begin with, that it was just an imagination. And that's what
it means when it says they will be ashamed. It says that we realize
that we have trusted in something that we ourselves created in
our minds, and there was nothing there. It was total vanity. So
that's a humiliating situation. So in conclusion, the lesson
is we can go through these six steps, and we can get ourselves
in the sixth step, and that kind of a situation is a very bad
situation for a believer to be in. It's sobering. It really
is sobering to see how far a believer can go in his rebellion against
God. It doesn't mean you lose your
salvation. It's just that when we do maximum,
when we do go this far, it means that maximum discipline is leveled
against us. And at that point, the Lord says,
if this is a fellow believer, he says, just leave him alone.
Don't pray for him. That's what John says. He says,
don't waste your time. Praying for them, because God has sovereignly
decided to kill them. Okay? Which by way of parallel
we see in the destruction of 721 BC. Thousands and thousands
of Israelis who thought all along, I'm really worshipping the true
God. They hadn't been worshipping the true God. And they got their
teeth smashed. Now it's closed with a word of
prayer. It's another lovely message, isn't it, from Hosea. But a lovely
negative lesson. Stay away. Don't do this. Don't
go down that path. Let's close with a word of prayer.
Hosea 4:15-19, Israel Plunges Beyond Recovery
Series Hosea
| Sermon ID | 1018212134227410 |
| Duration | 49:41 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Hosea 4:15-19 |
| Language | English |
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