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.