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The third section of the Book
of Hosea, the book of Hosea has three parts, chapters one through
three, which deal with the parallel between God's marriage to Israel
and Hosea's marriage to Gomer, the prostitute. And the chapters
four through ten deal with the reformat, the violations that
the nation Israel had done against the Mosaic covenant. And therefore,
we come now to the third section. At this point, God is basically
in the history of the nation Israel in the 8th century before
Christ, under no legal obligation whatsoever to keep the nation
Israel around. He could destroy her legally. OK, but God loved Israel with
an elective love and a half love A.H.A.B. That's one word for
love in the Hebrew Old Testament. And so, therefore, chapters 11
through 14 are dealing with God's elective love that gives eternal
security to the nation. So in these closing chapters,
we have one of the most powerful presentations of God's elective
love that can never, never, ever be undone. There is no object
in history that has been elected that can lose its destiny because
of God's elective love. And so some people don't like
the doctrine of election, but in case you don't like the doctrine
of election, then basically you're saying you don't like God's love
because it's God's elect choice is a loving choice now. Last time we looked at Hosea
11 verses one through four. OK, the fatherly love of God. Now, the technique in these verses
that God is using is to reach back in Israel's history to the
early years when God Ahab Israel, when he electively loved her,
when he chose her. OK, and this is the word Ahab,
as we said, for God's elective love. It's a love of choice. It is a love that is based on
who God is and has nothing to do in the least with who Israel
is or who she would become. It is simply that God chose to
love them and God entered into a covenant with them. And because
of that covenant, God had a father son relationship with Israel.
And so in verse one, he's reaching back to the Exodus and he's saying,
I loved you. And out of Egypt, I called you.
In verse two, he says, I sent my word to you through the prophets
over and over and over. And the irony of verse two is
that the more they heard the word of God, the more they went
away from the word of God. And the irony of church history,
the irony is still there, in that the church, as it has uncovered
and delved deeper into doctrine and understood more and more
throughout the ages of the church, she has gone farther and farther
and farther away from the word of God and turned to idols. OK,
so they were rejecting the training that their gracious father was
giving them. Then in verses three through four, he says, I taught
you how to walk. So again, back in the early infancy of the nation,
I taught you how to walk. I carried you on my shoulders
as a father would carry a little boy. I healed you when you fell
down. You broke your arm because you
couldn't walk. I coaxed you with my love. I lifted your burdens. I bent down and I fed you in
the wilderness for 40 years to train you. that man does not
live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth
of God. And how have you responded to my love, Israel? They rejected
it, and they rejected it, and they rejected it, and they rejected
it and went over to Baal. And so tonight we want to begin
in verse 5. Verse 5 is describing now how God responds to this
rejection. And tonight we're going to see
again the heart of God real strong. In verses 5 through 7, we're
going to see more of the judgment. They're in violation of the Mosaic
Covenant, and God is going to judge them with fifth degree.
He's going to send them to exile. But then, in verses 8 through
11, we're going to see real strong the Ahab love of God, that elective
love that stretches back further than the Mosaic Covenant to the
Abrahamic Covenant. And this gives us a picture of
the great heart of God. Now, God is in these two covenants
with Israel, and the two covenants set up a tension. And so there
is a tension inside the heart of God of the universe. Now,
this may bother you if you've gone too far, maybe, and you're
thinking about God's immutability. But this attribute can be dangerously
misunderstood. And so God gives us a corrective
here to his immutability. So we don't slip ever into the
thinking that God is like a big rock statue up in the sky, totally
unconcerned, totally faceless. God has a face and God has a
personality, and there are things that go on in God. when you rebel
against him, that are something like what goes on in you when
your son rebels against you. You have loved them. You have
stretched out to them. You have gone to great costs
for them. You have trained them and they rebel. And this emotion
is what is brought forth in the text tonight. So let's look at
the first half of this, verses five through six. God is going
to judge them for violations of the Mosaic Covenant and the
Reeve proceedings. Now verse 5, he brings up Egypt
and he says, you're not going to return to Egypt. Now, why
of all things, after he's been talking about what he did for
him out in the wilderness, why does he bring up Egypt? Well,
if you know your Old Testament history, if you stay pretty close
to the book of Hosea, then you have here, you know, something
over most of the believers. They don't know. What was the
deal with Egypt? Well, in the 8th century when
Hosea ministered, they broke the deal, the international alliance
they had made with Egypt. Assyria, and they had made a
deal with Egypt. And Assyria found out that they
had went over to Egypt, and they said, uh-huh, so we see how you
play the international game of politics, and so we're going
to teach you a lesson. And Israel was sure that, well,
you know, if Israel comes down here and tries to teach us a
lesson, well, we'll just go down to Egypt, and the good old Egyptian boys,
they'll take care of us. But God had already said in Deuteronomy
17, centuries before, in the Law of the King, that the king
should never cause the people to return to Egypt. Never, ever,
ever. God had set them out of Egypt,
set them free. They should never go back. And
because the Lord said to them, you shall never again return
that way. And so any attempt to return
to Egypt is doomed to failure before it even gets underway.
And so this is what we call a gimmick solution. OK, so this is saying
your gimmick for national security under Egypt is not going to work.
They will not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria, he will
be their king because they refuse to return to me. And the word
return here in context is talking about confession. It would be
the believer refusing to use 1 John 1 9. They refuse to do
it, you know, in spite of all I have done for them, all I have
provided them. And still they would not confess
their sin. They just went from one human
viewpoint gimmick over to another human viewpoint gimmick. It was
just gimmick after gimmick after gimmick at the close of this
this kingdom. Hosea 11 verse 6. The sword will whirl against
their cities and will demolish their gate bars. Now the gate
bars there are the poles. You see in the movies when they
close the gates of a big city that's about to come under siege.
They put these great big poles across the back of the door.
And so in back of these war gates, when the enemy would come against
the city, they would close the gate and they put these huge
poles through it. But interestingly, the word for
bars means vanities in Hebrew. It means they place their trust
in these great poles of vanity that stand in the war gates.
And they think these poles are going to keep them safe inside
the gates. And God says they're going to be demolished in verse
six. And the people inside are going
to be consumed because why? Because of their councils. Now,
that's a gimmick solution that they're talking about here, the
council that they use to say, well, we're going to go down
to Egypt and see, they've tried all kinds of gimmicks. You know,
where everybody gets together and and they share their ignorance
and they come up with this plan. And you can tell from verses
five, six and seven that God hates gimmick solutions by believers. God has loved them. He has provided
solutions for them through the prophets who speak the word of
God. And he's gone to great lengths
to take care of these people. And all they can get all they
can do is get together and share their ignorance. And that's all
this is, is believers sharing their ignorance with one another.
And I want you to notice that as he enumerates the problems
in verses five, six and seven, he will never mention not one
single time some big overt sin. Notice what he's talking about.
He's talking about human solutions. He's talking about human counsel.
There's not a single violation of some ethical code in society
here, not one. And the reason is, is because
the thing that angers God more than anything else is not necessarily
some big ethical boo-boo. OK. It's rejection of his grace
and going over to some gimmick. Now, this is why, again, we said
before we say again, David was acceptable to God. And King Saul
was rejected, David sinned, and everybody knew it, and everybody
in the church knows it, too. But David knew something that
Saul never seemed to figure out, and that was that when it came
to trusting God, David had Saul hands down. OK. With the result
that God's analysis of David, when it was all said and done,
was he was a man who followed fully after the Lord. And the analysis
of Saul is that he was a rebel. And he was worse than a sorcerer.
And he never figured out how to get with God's program of
grace and get oriented. So, Hosea 11, 7. My people, he
says, are bent on turning from me. Though they call them to
the one on high, none at all exalts him. Now, verse seven
is important because this solves the problem of difficulty. The
word bent, my people are bent, is not, bent is not what the
word means. The word bent meant to be hung
on something. For example, you see King Saul,
he's killed by the Philistines along with his sons, and they
are taken over to Bet-Shean, city of Bet-Shean. They are hung
on the wall. They are impaled and hung on
the wall. OK, this is the word used to
describe how their corpses were hung up on that wall. So the
picture is of a corpse hung up on a wall and there they are.
They're stuck there on a wall. And that's one of the things
they used to do in the ancient world to show who was the boss. So the
picture here is that God's people are hung up on a wall and they
have absolutely no life in them. My people are hung on bending
on turning from me, though they call them to the one on high.
None at all exalts him and see the one calling there. That's
the prophet. The prophet is calling out to this corpse that's hanging
on the wall. He's standing there. He's looking
at this wall and the nation is hung like a corpse on a wall. And there's no response. Why
is there no response? Well, because the nation is portrayed
as a dead corpse hanging on a wall. Of course, a dead corpse can't
respond. And so they've had it. They're dead. And that's the
whole point. The nation is dead. OK, as far as as far as any kind
of response by the nation to God, they can't respond and they
have died. And they have died because their
sins have piled up so high they cannot bear to look up to the
one on high. OK, so they're lifeless. And
this would be akin to a believer who refuses, refuses to confess
his sin. And it just builds up like a
big pile. And so that believer is like one hung on a wall. He
cannot in the least even even think about looking to God. OK,
and so they're lifeless. Now, in verse eight, we're going
to turn over to God. OK, Hosea 11, 8 through 11, we said is
going to allow us to peer into the heart of God in this kind
of a situation. On one hand, these people are dead. They have
absolutely no response to me, he says, and therefore I'm not
obligated to keep them around. I can ditch them. But then on
the other hand, there's my love for them. And these two things
are mixed in the heart of God and they produce certain divine
emotions. Hosea 11, 8. How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Adonai?
How can I treat you like Zeboim? My heart is turned over within
me. All my compassions are kindled. Now, can you sense the tension
in the heart of God as you read that? How can I give you up? How can I surrender you? I can't
do it. I want to do it, but I can't
do it. Now, this is one of those verses that pagans have jumped
on to attack you as a Christian and say, now look you Christians,
the Bible speaks about God as if he's a man and therefore the
conclusion is that God is just a projection of man. Man made
God up. Now this opens up the question
of what we call in the Bible an anthropomorphism. In other
words, anthropopathism. So we'll put these two words
up. Big two dollar words but basic meanings. Now, the word
anthropomorphism is two words. Anthro, for man, and morph, for
form. Okay? So what we mean here is
that the Bible does talk about God at times as if he has eyes. God's eyes. And God's right arm. And God's nose. And this kind
of expression is used. And you say, by gosh, well it
sure sounds like God has a human body. And this is why the Mormons
have argued all the way down through history since they were
founded God does have a body. Just as the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, has a body, you say, oh, the Father has a body. But
what this is, really, this is just what we call anthropomorphism.
It's simply speaking about God in human terms. In other words,
we are human beings. We have eyeballs. We know what
eyeballs do. Eyeballs see. So when we say
God's eyes, what we're saying is God scans the earth. He knows
what's going on. He sees. And when we say God's
right arm, the right arm is the arm of strength, the arm of power.
And so we know when we say God's arm that we're talking about
God's strength, you know, that, you know, God can take care of
all my needs and so forth. OK, so that's what we call anthropomorphism.
And so God reveals himself in human terms. So because the human
is the best thing in all creation that reveals his true nature.
Now, how do we know that, by the way? I mean, other things
are used to reveal God, but the human being is the greatest.
And we know that it's the greatest because when God chose to reveal
himself in the utmost form, What form did he come in? Did Jesus
Christ come as a tree? Did Jesus Christ come in as nature
forces? Did Jesus Christ come into history as a giraffe? No,
obviously, he's God. He could have done whatever he
wanted to. But when God sent himself as the highest revelation
into history, he came as a genuine, bona fide member of the human
race, minus the sin nature. And so when God was creating
Adam, And we deduce from this, how did God decide he was going
to how he's going to make Adam? We decide on the basis of how
he knew one day he would reveal himself in Jesus Christ, how
he himself would come into history as a bona fide human being. And
therefore, Adam is fashioned after the model of Jesus Christ.
And so the form that we have as human beings is not by chance.
Evolution says that the shape that we have and the shape of
all animals is simply just pure chance. It has nothing to do
with just that's the way it happened by random mutations. The scriptures
say it is totally by design because God oneself knew one day himself
would come into history. But to say ultimately that God
has a body, as the Mormons do and others, is anti-biblical.
OK, because Jesus says directly in John 4 that God is spirit. So he's not a body, but just
know when you speak of God as spirit and so forth, that that
spirit has some kind of form. It's not some kind of vaporless,
you know, form, formless vapor, excuse me, it's not some kind
of a spooky thing, okay, it's what the expression is trying
to communicate is that he has a certain type of nature about
him. He is spirit, okay, so we have
to be very careful with this kind of talk and not fall off
on either side of the boat. The second word we want to talk
about is anthropopathism, and anthro means man, again, and
pathism means emotions. So here we're talking about the
emotional side. We talk about anthropomorphism, that's the
physical side. We talk about anthropopathism, that is the
spiritual or emotional side. And what we mean here is that
God has emotions. We mean God has a will. God has a volition.
These are not physical things, but they are spiritual things.
And we have these things in finite form. So God can get angry. God can love. God can hate. And so can man. And this is what
our verse is showing us. When he says at the end of verse
8, my heart is turned over within me, all my compassions are kindled. That very strongly shows that
God has emotions. But for this description to communicate,
we've talked about one side of the equation. Anthropomorphisms
and anthropopathisms. There's another side to this.
And that is that man must be made as a theomorph. We must be theomorphic and theopathic. In other words, this is the other
way around. God has made us in his image, is what we're saying.
And if we don't have this side, then language doesn't communicate. Finally, everyone has to face
the problem. Can man know God? What I'm proposing
to you here is the answer to this problem. We are made in
his image, and God has condescended. Every time God speaks in the
Word, that is a condescension to man. He has come down to us
to reveal himself to us. He has spoken to us in human
language, in human terms that we can understand. And so we
can know him in part. OK, always in part. Never know
him exhaustively. He is incomprehensible ultimately.
But if this relationship is severed, then we know absolutely nothing
about God whatsoever. And the liberal is right. And
the Bible and fundamentalism are totally wrong. OK, so this
is very important idea that the Bible is describing in verse
eight. So the Bible speaks of God in terms of anthropomorphisms,
but man is made as a theomorph. It's got to be both ways for
the linkage to be intact and for this language to mean anything
to us. God must be anthropomorphic,
we must be theomorphic. That deals with the physical
principles. And God must be anthropopathic
and man must be theopathic to deal with spiritual principles
to communicate. And now we can know something about God. The
question here comes now to God's immutability. We said God responds
to you. OK, he's not sitting there like
a cold, dark statue, sort of like an icicle, and he never
moves. No matter what you do, he's just there. You know, that
is not the God of the Bible. But we still have the attribute
of immutability and we want to turn to a few passages that teach
it. And here's the question we want to pose as we read. When
you read these passages, do you get the idea that God is a statue? Or do you get the idea that God
is, His immutability is something else? Hold the place and turn
to Malachi chapter 3, verse 6. Malachi will be right at the
end of your Old Testament. Jews knew it as the seal of the
prophets, last one. God states here his immutability,
Malachi 3, 6, his changelessness. He says, verse six. For I, the Lord, do not change,
therefore, conclusion, you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed. So
there he says, I do not change. Now, that's saying God is immutable
and because God is immutable, the nation Israel is not going
to be consumed. The implication, of course, is that if God did
change, In the nation, Israel would be consumed. OK, so what
is it about God that does not change in this verse? Why are
the sons of Jacob not consumed? Because God made promises to
the sons of Jacob, God made certain promises to the nation Israel
that guarantee that she will survive as a national entity
in history. OK, and where are those promises
sound? They are found in the book of
Genesis and the Abrahamic covenant. So this doesn't this verse tie
immutability in with God's promises. Once God has promised something
in history, isn't this verse saying he's not going to change
that? Now, turn to Hebrews, the book of Hebrews, great high priesthood
book. Difficult book, Hebrews, chapter
six, verse 17. Again, God's immutability and
that he's unchangeable in some sense. We're trying to discover
what that is. Verse 17, in the same way, God desiring even more
to show to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeableness of his purpose
interposed with an oath. OK, so God is promising something
here. And sure enough, in what context do we find it? We scan
back up to verse 13. Abraham, for when God made the
promises to Abraham, since he could swear by no one greater,
he swore by himself. OK, immutability, his promises to Abraham are unchangeable
because his character is unchangeable. OK, finally, turn to James 1
17. That'll be just to the right
next book. Chapter one, verse 17. Every good thing given. And every
perfect gift is from above coming down from the father of lights
with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow. OK, so this
is the lights in the heavens, and he's contrasting God with
the lights of the heavens and the lights. They they're very
they shift. They cause eclipses and those
are changes. But he's saying God isn't like
the heavens. Not light and dark, God is only light, and therefore
there is no variation in the sense that he is all good, and
therefore, if we have anything that's good at all, It has come
to come from him. OK, now, so these three verses
Malachi three, Hebrews six and James one reveal God to be unchanging,
but unchanging in what sense? That's a question we're trying
to answer. OK, what do we mean when we say God is unchanging?
It means that God's character is forever perfectly stable,
such that when he makes a promise, he sticks with it. OK, when God
says I'm going to do something, he's going to do it. You can
count on it. One hundred percent guaranteed. He is faithful to
his word. OK, in other words, that's that's
what we mean by immutability. OK, now, most of you have heard
heard that before and understand immutability. But now when we
approach the Hosea passage, you might get jarred a bit by by
this immutability if you've got the wrong idea here, because
you can carry this is one of the attributes you can easily,
easily carry a little bit too far in your thinking to the point
where where your mind does begin to think like God is sort of
like a statue just up there, uncaring. OK, and if that's what
you think, there are some passages in the Bible that are going to
cause you problems. So let's turn to two of those. First one
is Genesis chapter six. Verse five, this comes right
in context before the great global flood. Genesis six five. what John Wickham calls the end
of the worst period on the face of earth, barring the next great
worst one, which will be the tribulation, the latter half.
Verse five. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness
of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the
thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was
sorry. Look at that. The Lord was sorry
that he'd made man on the earth and he was grieved in his heart.
The Lord said, I will blot out man whom I've created from the
face of the land, from man to animals, to creeping things and
the birds of the sky. For I'm sorry that I made them." So God
is said to be sorry, nakam in the Hebrew, you know, that he
wishes he hadn't made man. You say, well, that sounds like
a change in God's thinking. Like now he just wishes he never
made man to begin with on the sixth day and got this whole
thing going. So what do we do with this? Is God no longer immutable
because the passage is like this? It looks like God's changed his
mind. Now, there are other passages like this, another one, Exodus
chapter 32. OK, this is a serious threat. This right after the great exodus
event here out in the desert. Exodus 32 verse nine. Now, the Lord said to Moses,
I have seen this people and behold, they are an obstinate people,
sort of like people before the flood. Right now, then let me
alone that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy
them. And I will make of you a great nation, Moses. And so
God threatens to destroy the nation Israel. Now, notice that
both the Exodus passage and the Genesis six passage are connected
with a certain doctrine. OK, Genesis six is connected
with the flood. And the flood is a great picture of judgment,
salvation. The exodus event is connected with the exodus. And
the exodus, as we always teach, is connected to what great doctrines?
Same as a flood, judgment, salvation. OK, so there's a doctrinal similarity.
So you see God in judgment situations. OK, when you see God in a judgment
situation, you will always find there is a hesitancy for him
to judge. God is not just itching to judge
people. OK, something in history bothers him. And he threatens
to judge it. But there is something in God
that shows us he does not like to judge. OK, so you have you
have these attributes in God. A, you have God is holy. OK,
and holiness looks down and holiness sees sin, something contrary
to his holiness. And it says judge. OK, but you
also have in God's character his great love and his love looks
down and his love says, I don't want to judge. So you're getting
revealed to you through these passages that God's immutability
is not like, it's not statuesque. Don't get immutability so fixed
and so set in concrete that you cannot ever conceive of God even
getting mad at you or joyful. OK, if you get so fixed that
way where God can't get mad at you or even be happy with you,
then you destroy the proper balance of the Christian life. OK, and
if there's one thing we have learned from the book of Hosea
is that God can get mad or joyful at you. OK, so now let's turn
to Hosea and see how God in history has this inner turmoil. OK, because
on one hand, he has got the promises of the Abrahamic Covenant and
those promises say security, keep them around, do not destroy. And on the other hand, the Mosaic
Covenant and it's saying curse them, destroy them. OK, and so
he's in the middle of that destroy mode when he comes to verse eight. How can I give you up, O Ephraim?
How can I surrender you, O Israel? How can I make you like Admar?
How can I treat you like Zebulim? My heart is turned over within
me. All my compassions are kindled. OK, and the reason there there's
this tension is because of that great Abrahamic covenant. God
chose Israel with his elective like love. And that's that's
the love that keeps coming up in these last chapters. So God
is going to go further back in time. Let's put it up by way
of a diagram. He's going further back in time.
Then the Mosaic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant comes about 1450
B.C. or so. The call of Abraham, the
Abrahamic Covenant comes back around 1875, 1900 B.C. OK, and
so here's Moses down here and he made this covenant with Moses
and the people of Israel and they've been violating that covenant.
And so God says, I want to destroy you. But then God is looking
back. He's looking back further. He says there was another promise
I made. It's the great Abrahamic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant.
I promised that I would give you a land. I would give you
a seed. I would give you a worldwide blessing. And so that guarantees
the national survival of this of this country. And so God,
under the Mosaic Covenant, he has no legal obligation to them.
He wants to destroy. He can just blast them. He can
totally blow them away. OK, legally, he's free to do
that. However, back back here much earlier, see, he made certain
promises. And since he's immutable and
his promises always come true. And so he promised them national
existence and they will have it. So God here, he in the light
of sin, he's going to work his way all the way back beyond all
the infractions of the Mosaic Covenant. He's going to go all
the way back to the Abrahamic Covenant. He's got to because
he's made promises and his promises never change. OK, and God never
goes back on his word. You can bank on it. And he says,
I'm going to be faithful. I'm going to faithful to my people,
to my word in the Abrahamic Covenant. Despite the fact that you're
a bunch of stinkers and I'm going to keep you around just because
of my word. OK, but the way it's expressed in verse eight, you
want to catch it's not so statuesque. He says, he says, how can I do
this? OK, and he says it four times here. How can I do this? And it shows you that his yes,
he's immutable, but it's not a tranquil immutability. OK,
there's agitation in the very heart of God himself. OK, and
so we see right here he is on the verge of totally annihilating
this people. OK, because notice where he says,
how can I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zebulon?
He said, what are those two cities? Those are two cities that were
around the Dead Sea, and they were destroyed by tremendous
judgment at the time of Sodom and Gomorrah. Everybody debates
about where Sodom and Gomorrah is. But, you know, Dr. Randall Price, he points out
one of the great archaeologists of our day. He located around
here, along with some other archaeologists in 1956, 1963, 1976, and certain digs and archaeology studies
of this area along the eastern coast of what's called the Dead
Sea. So here's Jerusalem, and of course you have the Mediterranean
out here. Here's the Sea of Salt, or the Dead Sea. And along this
east side, archaeologists have found about five cities. Now,
in some of these cities, the ones most northern, they found
seven feet of ash covering the city. So, but when God rained
down fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, there was a tremendous
blast, and these cities that were south of there, the other
four south of there, they got judged too, and it blasted the
whole thing. And today, if you look pictures of the Dead Sea,
you'll realize, well, there's nothing that can grow there.
Just absolutely nothing. I mean, it's just a big salty
cesspool. And so the Dead Sea area today stands as an everlasting
monument to this people, And so the people who heard this
knew clearly, they knew exactly what God was saying when he mentioned
these two cities, Amman and Zebulunim. God was threatening to judge
them as he had judged these cities, because their sins were just
as offensive as the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Okay, and we know
what those sins were. Homosexuality. Yesterday, the
church can't even figure out, is that really a sin? That is
a characterization of how stupid the church is. Stupid, stupid
believers, just like Paul was talking in Galatians 3. Stupid
on the wet thoughts, believers, absolutely no mind, not thinking
about the Scriptures. They've gone rebellion against
God and now they're blind, blind. They can't even tell homosexuality
is a sin. Well, homosexuality is just as much a sin as lying
is. And I don't give people who lie a license to do it. You know,
I'd love to have one. You'd love to have one for your
special little sin, but you're not going to get one. And God
doesn't give him give him out to anybody. Now, there's a lesson
in here in these verses for believers. They had done terrible sins.
And this proves that God's people can commit sins that are equal
to or worse than unbelievers. Now, we have a problem today
in the church with believers running around saying, well,
so-and-so can't possibly be a believer because I saw them do X. They
commit a fornication or something. And so they they just did so
big of an immorality. It's not possible for them to
be a believer. And what a person does has become the end all gauge
of whether they're really a believer or not. And this is just total
baloney. Okay, unbelievers can do very
moral things that people could walk up to an unbeliever and
see the great moral thing that they didn't say. They are just
must be a nice Christian boy and they must be a Christian.
And believers can do some very nasty immoral things and people
write them off as anything but Christians. Okay, but that is
not the gauge that the Lord uses to measure. Okay, the Lord simply
considers whether this individual has believed in me or not. Now,
what are we to do when believers are acting like Old Testament
Israel? Is there anything we can do when we do see a believer,
someone who professes to be a believer, acting like a totally immoral
person? Well, the Bible says in the New Testament that basically
we can, because we can challenge them. We can walk up to them
and say, now you are a Christian, right? Well, yes, I am. Well,
why aren't you living like one? That's what Paul does. He does
it over and over. He doesn't say, well, you're
not really a believer then. He says, now, you should start acting
like a believer if you really are one. That is a perfectly
legitimate thing to do. Challenge a professing Christian
to live like a Christian. But you don't just write people
off, well, they did a bad thing. Everybody does bad things. There's
days I probably look at your life and days you look at my
life and you say, that guy couldn't possibly be a believer. But the thing
about it is probably the believers that do the worst things, you
know, the out in public, the big immoral people, They're usually
not the ones that are so bad. OK, they just certainly have
a sin problem in a certain area. And yours happens to be a hush
hush area and nobody knows about it. And so you hide it in your
heart and nobody can see it. But anyway, let's move on. Verse
eight. God is reacting to their sin. OK, they've been just as
sinful as Sodom and Gomorrah. But see, there's something else
going on, and that's something else is God has chosen them.
And God says, I want to judge them, but I've chosen them. And
you say, well, wait a minute, does God, are you, do you mean
to tell me that the God of the universe has all this going on
in his person? Yes. It says at the end of the verse,
my heart is turned over within me. Okay. Perfect tense. It means
God has made a choice way back to the Abrahamic covenant and
the mosaic covenant. And it's, it's a two choices
that are now causing tension in his person. He says, all my
compassions are kindled another perfect tense. It means he, He
has a love for this nation like a father does for his son. Have
you ever been emotionally in turmoil over your son because
of something they did? Well, of course you have, but
you're committed to him, but you want to destroy him. Now,
we all know that if you have kids. Now, if this seems strange
to visualize the God of the Bible this way, it's probably because,
you know, you're infected with Platonism and you don't even
know it. OK, you just visualize God as some sort of immutable
stone up there. You know, he's not a real person. It's just
a concept. And do you know where it's going to affect you most
if that's the way you think? I mean, we're all subject to
this. We're Greek. I mean, our background is Greek. OK, thoroughly Greek.
Well, the biggest place is going to affect you is your prayer
life, because if you if you are off balance on the nature of
God in the area of immutability, it's going to show up in whether
you pray or not. OK, if you have a fatalist view
of history and of God, Then the only time is you're going to
praise when you're being inconsistent with your fatalism. But because
the fatalism is the order of the day, then prayer is a waste
of time. OK, so carefully you have to
balance this doctrine of immutability. Now, verse nine is a result.
OK, this is what God decided he was going to do in light of
all this inner turmoil. I will not execute my fierce
anger. I will not destroy Ephraim again.
I want to do it, but I'm not going to do it. OK, this word
fierce anger here is a word for fierce burning. This is a burning
sensation that goes on in your throat. OK, it comes about when
you're really mad. And physiologically, when you're
really mad, there's an effect physiologically. And so the Jew,
when he used this word for fierce burning, he's now speaking of
God exactly the same way. Someone has this fierce, dry,
burning throat sensation. OK, so this is another one of
those anthropo morphisms, or anthropopathisms, an emotion
of man ascribed to God. And then the word for anger there,
this word comes from the nostrils. It's a picture of when the adrenaline
gets going and you start breathing really fast, respiration increases,
and you are a very agitated person. So the Jew called it, you know,
this anger, this word af, okay, A-P-H. Okay, when you're angry,
you get really upset, then your body begins to respond. Okay,
so God says, I will not Execute my fierce anger. OK, there's
something in God's character. That is something like what we
have when we get angry. That's what this is saying. For
I am a guy. I am God and not a man. Now that's
the explanation for God not going back on his word. Which gives
you a pretty good characterization of what God thinks about man
and his word and a man breaks his word all the time because
man is mutable and so man breaks his work. And if God were a man,
he says, I just break my word in the Abrahamic Covenant. But
he says, I'm not a man that I would do something like that. I am
immutable and my word stands forever and I'm faithful. And
so the lesson we can learn from this is something very practical.
You can use this probably every day of your life. You can teach
your kids this when someone lets them down, because we're all
going to be let down by some other person. And so when so
and so lets you down, you always want to come back to this principle.
There is only one person that is immutable. There's only one
person that you can always rely on 100% of the time, and that
person is God. And you need to teach your children
that, of course, early, very early, because the earlier you
teach that to your children, the earlier they will learn to develop
realistic friendships. And if you don't teach that to
them, or if they reject the truth and they turn away from the truth,
They're going to be very miserable people in life because they're
going to go all along in life. And therefore, it's going to
go to this person and they're going to be attracted to them. And then they're going
to go to this other person and then they're going to go to another
person, hoping that they're maybe at least here. I've got a friend
and I can trust them and hoping that maybe and then they'll marry
someone hoping this person they marry. Well, this person is going
to give me perfect stability in life and then they're going
to fall through. Now, this gives you the the parent. as a parent, the opportunity
to sit down with the word of God and explain. Son, you know,
this is why so and so person fell through. OK, God's word
says this about humans and humans aren't totally reliable. And
here's what you can do about it. OK, so those are teaching
opportunities that God, the Holy Spirit, is giving you. And he
gives you dozens of them every single week. So don't miss your
chance. OK, because these opportunities
will be gone. And if you don't take advantage
of them, you're going to be miserable and you're going to create misery
in other people's lives because you gave up on all these opportunities
that God, the Holy Spirit was giving you to teach something
to your children and to learn a lesson yourself. OK, but the
point is, is that you you can enter you as a Christian. You
as a believer who has the God of the universe as immutable
and a 100 percent reliable person. You can enter into relationships
with people because you have a stable relationship with the
Lord. You're not depending on this other person and their stability
in life. OK, and so but if you don't understand
that the Lord is the only stable thing and you don't understand
that he alone is the holy one, OK, he alone is not a man, but
God, then you can never have a stable friendship. You will
not be able to relax with people. Part of you will not be able
to trust people fully. OK, part of relaxing, enjoying
someone. is, is knowing this person is
going to disappoint me. I'm going to disappoint you.
And probably you're going to disappoint me. Okay. And if you
don't understand that, you're probably just going to be uptight
about everything all the time. So just relax. I mean, if you drop the
ball, you know, just pick it up again and, you know, move
on. Okay. And that's the way you
ought to handle friendships and relationships. Obviously, that's
the only way you're ever going to survive in a marriage. You
know, you've got to get that down good or you're never going
to make it. Now in verses 10 through 11, no offense, God demonstrates
in verses 10, 11, his immutability by prophecy,
a tremendous panorama, panorama prophecy of the nation. He's
demonstrated that they are going to survive. Okay. Because they
have the Abrahamic covenant. Okay. It doesn't guarantee everybody
in the nation. Israel is going to believe. Okay. Just national
survival. and God surely will protect the
nation. And so in verses 10 and 11, he says, they will walk after
the Lord. He will roar like a lion. Indeed,
he will roar and his sons will come trembling from the West.
They will come trembling like birds from Egypt and like does
from the land of Assyria. And I will settle them in their
houses, declares the Lord. Now, this passage in prophecy
is, of course, a denial of what we have called our millennialism,
our meaning, no millennia, meaning the thousand year kingdom on
Earth. And amillennialism, they say, well, Christ died on the
cross. Then we have the church age and
at the end of the church age, Jesus Christ comes back and we
go into eternity. OK, premillennialism, pre meaning
before. OK, referring to the coming of
Christ and millennium again refers to the kingdom of God on earth.
So premillennialism says this. Christ died on the cross. Then
we have the church age and then we have Christ's second coming.
And when he comes back to Earth, we're going to have a thousand
year kingdom on Earth. OK, then after that, we're going
to eternity. OK, that's premillennialism, because Jesus Christ will come
back before the kingdom is on Earth for a thousand years. Now,
that was the view of the church, by the way, for about the first
300 years. And that is the view that respects God's promises
in the Abrahamic covenant, that they are literally going to be
fulfilled because God is a faithful God. He's faithful to his word.
He's immutable in that sense. Now, we are premillennial. Why? Well, because the passage is
like this. And hundreds, hundreds like it. OK, they OK, verse 10,
they that is Israel. OK, the 10 lost tribes in this
case. Which obviously could not possibly
be lost. If the Bible is true, God's God
promises to fulfill it to the 10 lost tribes that are lost.
God couldn't fulfill them. They that is the 10 tribes will
walk after the Lord and they do that because one generation
of Israel. OK, this is what all the Old
Testament prophets are looking for. This is what John the Baptist
is looking for. This is what Jesus is looking for. This is
what Peter's looking for. This is what Paul's looking for. They're
looking for that one generation of Israel that will repent. So
the Messiah can return and give them the kingdom. OK, and so
they will walk after the Lord. In other words, one generation
of Israel will repent and God is going to put a new heart in
them so that they will walk after him. He will roar like a lion. OK, and if you've had the privilege
of hearing a lion, Then you can hear the roaring of a lion a
long way off. OK, and so the Lord is going
to roar and the nation Israel is all over the earth at this
time. They're spread all out. And so they're going to. But
his roar is going to be heard by Supernatural Way and the nation
Israel is going to be longing to come back to their homeland.
OK, so this roaring is what stimulates the regathering of the nation
Israel to her land from the four corners of the earth. OK, so
this regathering, we say in the Bible prophecy, comes in two
stages. Here's a diagram illustrating two phases. This is not uncommon
to break in prophecy something into two parts. So, for example,
the coming of the Messiah is broken into two parts, isn't
it? First coming, second coming. Coming of the Holy Spirit is
broken into two parts. Acts chapter 2 and Joel chapter 2, the millennium. OK, so this is not uncommon.
So the first regathering, we say, is in unbelief came before
the tribulation unbelief, and the second one is before the
millennium in belief. OK, one regathering is is happening
in our 20th century in 19th, starting 1948. One of these prophecies
is being fulfilled right now in front of your face. And that's
the prophecy of Ezekiel 20, 33 to 38. Also over in Chapter 22. There's a way you've got a whole
list of them under there. OK, the furnace of the Holocaust.
in the late 30s and early 40s, which resulted in the UN decision,
November 1947, to give Israel her land. Okay, that's part of
her regathering in unbelief. Ezekiel 20, 33 to 38 discusses
this regathering. Okay, it's a gathering that occurs
by a furnace, a furnace judgment. We say the Holocaust. Okay, God
is going to use judgment to regather them in unbelief. That's phase
one. Okay, and that we said is happening right now. Phase two
is The gathering in belief, passages like Isaiah 11, 11, Matthew 24,
31, would be talking about a second regathering. So Jerry will get
into all of that discourse, of course. And you have two of these
returns. One to get Israel in the land,
the gathering in unbelief, because certain prophecies had to be
fulfilled before Christ's return. There's got to be, for example,
at least an altar on the Temple Mount before Christ returns.
And that presupposes that Israel has control of the Temple Mount.
OK, I don't know how they're ever going to build an altar
there, but the Bible says they're going to do it. And already they
have temple preparations being made. They're building the furniture
for the temple. They're training a high priesthood.
They're searching for the red heifer. All these things are
preparatory for the nation to fulfill prophecy. So there are
a number of things that have been happening since 1948 to
get things in place. OK, the nation was founded, we
said, A, 1948. Jerusalem came under Israeli control in 1967,
Six Days War. Temple furniture, priesthood,
all this is coming into place. OK, so that's regathering and
unbelief. That's phase one. Then we have phase two, the regathering
in belief. And this is after Jesus Christ
comes back. At that point, all the rest of the Jews from all
over the world who are believers in Christ, who have become believers
in Jesus Christ during the tribulation, he will send his angels out to
gather them from the four corners of the earth. That's Matthew
24, 31. That's the second return mentioned in Isaiah 11, 11. They
will return a second time, Isaiah says. So these will be people
who will be evangelized and become believers during those awful,
awful, awful years of the future tribulation. So God will roar,
this verse says, and he certainly will. And his sons will come
trembling from the West. They will come trembling like
birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Syria. Now,
the word for West. In verse 10 is is the word for
sea. It was usually used in the Old
Testament for the Mediterranean Sea, which is directly west of
the land of Israel. So on a map, unfortunately this
block is out there, but you know what we're looking at. Out here
you have the Mediterranean Yame, which is the word here, the Mediterranean
Sea, that which is west. Up to the northeast you have
Assyria. And over here, of course, you have the Nile Delta, which
is over in Egypt. Now this prophecy says that there
are going to be Jews from the West. You say that doesn't make
a lot of sense in this passage, because no Jews went west in
the 722 dispersion. They all went northeast. They
all went to Syria, to these three little areas that are in the
green is where they scattered them out, actually. OK, so Jews
didn't go west to a large degree until much later when the Greeks
occupied land in the first century before Christ. And you had the
Hellenization of the Jewish population by the first century. You have
a lot of movement West, you have Jews in Alexandria, you have
Jews all over, and you read the New Testament, the Book of Acts,
wherever Paul goes on his missionary journeys, there's Jews that seem
to be there, and that's because they spread out to the West by
that time. So this prophecy, they will come trembling from
the West, could not have possibly been fulfilled in the partial
restoration of 516 BC. This has to be bigger than that.
This has to be after they've already gone West. And so this
prophecy can only be fulfilled at a future time when the Jews
are regathered. They haven't been regathered yet, so either
Hosea is a liar or this prophecy hasn't been fulfilled and it
has to be in the future. So here's one of those prophecies
talking about the Jewish people will be regathered from the four
corners of the earth. He says, and I will settle them
in their houses at the very end, verse 11. And that's the final
establishment of the nation Israel in the land of Israel. God has
been faithful. Then the Abrahamic covenant. God kept him around
because of this promise, because of his elective love for the
nation Israel. And finally, he's going to fulfill
his great promises to her. Israel is going to have her land.
Israel is going to be ruled by her seed, the Messiah, Jesus
Christ. And they're going to be a worldwide
blessing. All the nations in the kingdom.
And don't ever forget, Israel is going to be the chief nation
in the future millennial kingdom. All the nations are going to
flock to Israel in that kingdom. And so you see, in the end, God's
love will win out.
Hosea 11:5-11, The Immutability of God
Series Hosea
| Sermon ID | 1018212138393552 |
| Duration | 51:03 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Hosea 11:5-11 |
| Language | English |
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