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.