Lord, we ask that you'd be with us here in this evening, in the middle of the week, that we might be encouraged by your word and our fellowship with one another and time of praying with each other. And we do ask that you would, as always, bless our Pioneer Clubs and our children and those who are teaching them. And we ask that you'd bless and watch over and care for them. Lord, again, as always, we look around, we see, well, there are some folks who we usually see who are not with us tonight, and we know that some of them are traveling and others of them have not been feeling well. We know the Newnhams are in Washington, D.C. for a week. We know Gus Cardenas is visiting his sisters in Mexico, and so on. And so we ask, Lord, that you would watch over and care for our brethren who are not with us this evening, and that you would be pleased to guard them and minister to them. So Lord, we ask that you would be with us in our time of study and prayer, in Christ's name. Amen. In Hosea chapter 13, God is dealing with the Israelites in terms of reminding them of their sin, particularly in the area of idolatry and how they have turned their back upon God. And in verse 3, God has dramatically warn them about the nature of their sin, the repercussions of that. Starting in verse 4, he begins to give them sort of a history lesson to once more remind them of their relationship with him, perhaps more properly spoken, his relationship with them and the ways in which the Lord has blessed them. In verse 5, you can see that God talks about how he has ministered to them during their time in the wilderness. And in verse 6, I want to suggest to you that he turns this over and begins to talk about how he blessed them in the land of Canaan. So we pick up our discussion tonight with verse 6, as the Lord continues with this lesson of covenant history, and yet it is a lesson that has a devastating effect. If you look at verse 6, God says, As they had their pasture, they became satisfied, and being satisfied, their heart became proud. Therefore, they forgot me." That's a devastating verse. We've seen several of those in Hosea's prophecy. But there is a spiritual progression here that we need to note and do a little of our own searching of our own hearts with these matters. Notice there are four parts. to the progression. It begins with a divine blessing. It begins with the fact that God, as a matter of grace, has set his blessing upon the Israelites. They had their pasture. He has moved them from wilderness where there's no water. Now he's moved them to a pasture of the land of Canaan. There's a great blessing there. That blessing translates into a sense of personal satisfaction, there is a sense of contentment, a sense of having arrived, there is a stayed-ness to this, and we generally say, well, there's nothing wrong with that. Those are things for which we might all pursue. But notice, as the Lord goes on, that this personal satisfaction translates into spiritual pride. He says, in being satisfied, that is, being content, being set, their heart became proud, and then, of course, the spiritual pride translates into an apathy towards God. Therefore, they forgot me. It's devastating. It ends by the fact that the people have become apathetic towards the Lord. They have dismissed Him in their lives. They have forgotten that, for the most part, that God is there, but they've certainly forgotten what God has done. They've certainly forgotten the basis upon which God has acted in their lives as He has been merciful to them and He has been gracious to them. And we say, how did that happen and where did that begin? We look at verse 6, we say, well, it began with the fact that God blessed them as a matter of grace. They went from divine blessing to apathy and dismissal of God. And how did they get there? What in the world happened? And that's what we want to try to address this evening and analyze as best as we can. They had their pastures, it says, they became satisfied. Again, this is moving from the wilderness area, the wanderings that were there in verse 5. As you can see, that's described by the language there. This now is language in verse 6 that describes that land of prosperity, the land of God's great covenant promise. This was what the people had longed for since the days of the patriarch Abraham and those first great covenant promises that God gave to him. We can think of some of the ways in which the land was described in the scriptures. For example, in Exodus chapter 3 verse 8, the Lord says to the Israelites at this time, I have come down to deliver them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them up to that land, to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, which is one of those great characteristic statements in the scriptures that are used to describe the land of Cain. Remember, this is God's description of it. He says this is a good land. This is a spacious land. This is a land that is overrun with milk and honey, a description of the great blessing that the land really was. We see something similar over in Numbers chapter 13 when the spies If you remember, who went out to spy the land under Moses, came back and made their report amongst a variety of the things that the spies said, verse 27, they said, we went into the land where you sent us, and it certainly does flow with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. And with that last phrase, we said, well, what are they referring to? They had, referring back to verse 23, where the spies came to the valley of Eshkol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes. And they carried it on a pole between two men with some of the pomegranates and the figs. And the language that is used here has generally been understood that these figs and pomegranates and this one cluster of grapes were all so prosperous, so fruitful, so heavy that it took two guys to carry the stuff on a pole in between them. It wasn't just pick off a cluster of grapes like that, but it was representative of the fruitfulness of the land. In fact, today in modern Israel, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism has as its symbol a modern rendition of two Jewish guys who were called Joshua and Caleb, with a pole between them and a big cluster of grapes that's as big as they are. And that's the symbol today of the Israeli ministry of tourism. So they're even thinking back to the great blessing that God has provided for them. All that's true. It is also true that God warned them. As he brought them in to this good and to this spacious land from time to time we've in our studies of Hosea We've come back and looked at certain portions of Deuteronomy 8. I want to read Started with verse 11 listen to this where you can follow along. This is Deuteronomy chapter 8 beginning with verse 11 The Lord says, Beware lest you forget that the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statutes, which I am commanding you today, lest when you have eaten and are satisfied. There is that word again. Is that word satisfied? That's when you have eaten and are satisfied and have built good houses and lived in them, and when your herds and your flocks multiply and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies, then your heart becomes proud. Does this sound familiar? Remember, this is Deuteronomy chapter 8. This is before they got there. We are many generations removed from this in Hosea 13. But notice how God is just nailing the human heart at this point. Then your heart becomes proud and you forget the Lord your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. He led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water. What does that sound like? Doesn't that sound like Hosea 13.5? He brought water for you out of the rock of Flint. In the wilderness he fed you manna which your fathers did not know. that he might humble you, that he might test you to do good for you in the end. Otherwise, you may say in your heart, my power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth. But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who is giving you power to make wealth, that he may confirm his covenant which he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And it shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God, and go after other gods and serve them and worship them. This is exactly what Hosea has been talking about for some 13 chapters now, his prophecy. He says, if that ever happens, I testify against you today that you shall surely perish. Remember who is on the borders of Israel at this point? The Assyrian army is on its way under the providence of God. Verse 20, like the nations that the Lord makes to perish before you, so you shall perish because you would not listen. to the voice of the Lord, your God." That's a pretty straightforward warning, is it not? And yet what happened? God, by way of Hosea, says, brought you into my blessing, you've become satisfied, being satisfied, your heart has become proud, and the result of a proud heart, therefore they forgot me. At this point, John Calvin writes Quote, the Israelites had extinguished the memory of their redemption. I keep using the word devastating. That's the only thing I can think of. Even Calvin's description of this is devastating. The Israelites had extinguished the memory of their redemption. Remember, this is why God has said twice. He said it here in chapter 13. He said it in the previous chapter. I have been your God since I brought you out of Egypt. But the Israelites have forgotten all of this, and we ask ourselves the question, how can that happen? How can that possibly be? How could this take place in their lives and in their hearts? One commentator at this point put it this way. when he says God's people had been unable to abide prosperity. In other words, the suggestion is being made they didn't know how to handle the blessing of God. They didn't know what to do with God's grace to them. I want to suggest to you this is not in any way an isolated incident. Few generations after where we've been in Deuteronomy 8 and 2nd Chronicles chapter 26 we find this about King Uzziah beginning in verse 15 and in Jerusalem he made engines of war invented by skillful men to be on the towers and on the corners for the purpose of shooting arrows and great stones hence his fame spread afar for he was marvelously helped until he was strong verse 16 says but when He became strong. His heart was so proud that he acted corruptly and he was unfaithful to the Lord, his God, for he entered the temple of the Lord to burn incense on the altar of incense. Uzziah, who is blessed of the Lord, remember God said in Deuteronomy chapter eight, I'm the one that gives you the power to make the wealth and to receive the blessings that you have. And so here's Uzziah. who under the providential blessing of God has become strong and famous as a mighty warrior king and he gets so full of himself that he thinks that he can serve as a priest, that he thinks that he now has the right to mediate between God and God's people. That is not a right that had been given to him. We can go outside of the covenant community We can look at Sodom and the way in which the Sodomites were described in Ezekiel chapter 16, the same thing. God had blessed them and they forgot God. Or King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in Daniel chapter 4, God blessed him tremendously and he began to take credit for everything that God had done and worked in his life. And so you see, this in no way is an isolated matter. That which the Israelites are falling prey to here under Hosea's ministry is something that God had warned about from the very beginning. It is something that has taken place historically amongst the people prior to this. It is taking place now. It has happened to those outside of the covenant community. And therefore, the question we have to ask is, are we in danger of this? Have you been blessed? Have you been blessed of God? We can ask that question this evening of ourselves both corporately and personally. As a congregation, have we been blessed of God? And the answer is yes. How many ways do you want to talk about that and negotiate that this evening? No, ours is not a great and a mighty congregation, but God has tremendously blessed our church family in countless ways. With that blessing, are we becoming satisfied as a congregation? Are we becoming staid and content? Another way to say that is, are we becoming complacent as a congregation? Are we becoming spoiled as a congregation. And then, of course, we have to ask that question for ourselves personally. You know, have you been personally blessed by God? And look at the various ways and avenues in which you have been blessed. And then the follow-up with that, of course, is, well, how am I responding to the great blessing of the Lord? I look at all the ways in which He has pursued his divine grace in my life, and I have to ask myself the question, am I becoming satisfied in where God has brought me? Am I becoming complacent? Has God blessed me to the point in my own life where I am becoming apathetic? Am I spoiled? All of you, I'm asking myself this question, and you're all going like this. You're making me feel bad here. You know something I don't know. I'm assuming those head nods are, yeah, yeah. I'm with you. I'm with you. And this devastates me. I've been forced from the scriptures to have to go back and look at my life. I've been looking at our church this week as I've been studying this, looking at my own life. And it bothers me. It bothers me that I don't think, for myself personally, I don't think I'm willing to take the spiritual risks I was willing to take 20 years ago. I'm pretty satisfied. I'm not willing to put much of it on the line anymore. Not like I used to be. Does that sound familiar? And then, of course, as a congregation, we were vagabonds for many years without property, dependent on God week by week, even though we may have had a rental contract with different places and so on. Now God has blessed us with this property and this building. Modest, to be sure, but what a blessing this has been. We haven't had financial trouble in 15 years. In this church, God has blessed us tremendously. I wonder if we're getting complacent and apathetic and spoiled. I'm not accusing you, I'm asking. I want you to ask with me, is that where we're coming? Is that what is happening to us? It has happened over and over and over. Most God's people in the scriptures and therefore we should not think that we are beyond that. or that we ourselves are above that, whether personally, again, or corporately. So, if we're in danger, what shall we do? I want to suggest to you from the Scriptures that the key to these matters this evening has to do with, of course, the heart. There's nothing wrong with the blessings of God. Nothing wrong with God being gracious to us, corporately or individually. Not at all. It's what we pray for, it's what we long for, it's our heart's desire, and so on. But the heart is the key, Matt. There's nothing wrong with God's blessing. There's something very wrong with our hearts. And so we have that exhortation in Jeremiah 17.9 that I think you're surely familiar with, where Jeremiah says, is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick. Who can understand it? Jeremiah says, look, the primary issue here, the primary question is one of the heart. Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes 9.3 says this, furthermore, the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil. And I like what he says here. And insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. Insanity. Hearts are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives. You know, for the people of God, to sin against God is spiritual insanity. And for a people who have been the recipients of God's grace, multiplied time after time after time, to become satisfied, complacent, spoiled by God's grace, that's spiritual insanity. And we need to be aware of that. and prevent that. Jesus is talking about it this way, the heart, in Mark chapter 7 beginning with verse 20. He was saying that which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, Pride, there's our favorite characteristic this evening. Pride and foolishness, all these evil things proceed from within and defile the man. So, the problem is not God's grace. The problem is not God's grace in our lives. The problem is not the blessings that God's grace in our lives brings forward for us. The problem is us. The problem is our hearts, the problem is the way we see these matters, the way that we receive these issues, and then of course the way that we see God, the way that we see ourselves in reference to God, the way that we understand and interpret God's grace and his blessings within our lives, and the responsibility then with which we approach God's grace as that has been extended to us. And so the problem is our hearts, and therefore we need to examine our hearts, Therefore, we need to guard our hearts. And again, we have to ask ourselves the question, okay, how do I do that? And once more, we come back to the scriptures, and I think the first issue is we have to recognize the deceitfulness of our hearts, Jeremiah 17.9. You can't trust yourself. You cannot trust your own heart. Scriptures have said to us, and I've read only a few passages, what the real condition and issue of our hearts really are. They are deceitful, and therefore we need to be aware of this, we need to be constantly examining our lives according to the truth of the Scriptures, and we need to be guarding our hearts from deceitfulness. And that whole issue of the deceitfulness of heart has this insidiousness to it in that it deceives us. It's not so much that my heart deceives you, it's that my heart deceives me. I think one of the best biblical examples of that is in the parable of the prodigal son. Some of you have heard me talk about this in other contexts. Do you remember the story? We all know the story. Do you remember when the prodigal comes back and he is welcomed by the father and all the issues associated with that? Do you remember the response of the older brother? He was not happy about this. Do you remember what the older brother accused his younger brother of doing while he was in the far country? You remember when the father goes out to the older brother and says, you know, son was dead. He's alive. Come and rejoice. And the older brother begins to complain. He says, I have served you all of these years. I've never asked for a single thing that you have never given me anything with which to throw a party for me and my friends. But when this son of yours comes back, he says, having squandered your inheritance upon harlots, Remember that? In the story, as Jesus told it, the younger son didn't do anything with Harlots. He squandered his inheritance on a variety of other things, but Harlots was not a part of it. So how did the older brother know? He didn't. What he knew was, if I had run off to the far country, That's what I would have done. And so he assumed that's what his brother did. See? You see the deceitfulness of the heart? You see why we have to examine, why we have to guard our hearts? How do we do this? How? We need to recognize the nature of our hearts and we need to guard them from sin and to righteousness. We do this, one of my favorite passages in the scriptures, in Joshua chapter 1, where God is now instructing Joshua, who's taken Moses' place, he's getting ready to lead God's covenant people into the land of covenant promise, kinds of things we've been talking about this evening, and beginning in verse 7, this is what God says to Joshua, only be strong and very courageous, Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous And then you will have success, have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." There's a variety of things in there in terms of being strong and courageous, relying upon the presence and the promise of God to be with you, but the thing that keeps coming back over and over as God is speaking to Joshua has to do with what? the Law of God, the Truth of God, the Word of God. He is saying, you are to meditate on this. It is to constantly fill your mouth. You are to spend time with it. You are to obey it. And you are not to turn to the right nor to the left. It is the Word of God. It is the Word of God. It is the Word of God by which we must guard ourselves from our own hearts. It's not just an Old Testament issue over in Hebrews chapter 2. Remember the unity of the message of the scriptures, Hebrews chapter 2 beginning with verse 1. For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For if the words spoken through angels proved unalterable in every transgression, and disobedience received a just recompense, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? Is that not exactly what the Israelites are doing in the days of Hosea. They are not guarding their hearts from its own deceitfulness. They need to pay much closer attention to what they have been taught in terms of the truth of the Lord, lest they drift away from it, which is exactly what they have done. And remember, they have extinguished the memory of the redemption of God from their hearts and their minds. And the writer of Hebrews says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation as God has given to us by his grace? Well, beloved, again, what we're left with is to look at these Israelites of long ago and to recognize that we are they We're just like them. The hearts that we possess this evening are just like theirs. What they did, we are perfectly capable of. And therefore, unlike them, we must move in a different direction. A direction which has to do with the exhortation of the scriptures that we've seen this evening. Remember the progression here. The recipients of the blessings of God by grace, which translates into a sense of satisfaction, contentment, which leads to a heart of pride, which moves us to an apathy towards God. And so we don't ever want to become satisfied and content with where we are in our walk with Christ. We must always hunger for more and guard our hearts that we might continue to move forward and feast further upon the truth of God's Word, that we should grow up in the things that belong to Christ, and to do all that lest we too forsake our salvation. Let me pray for us all. I think we need it. Lord, would you take the Scriptures this evening and search us and sift us with it? Would you do that corporately? Would you do that personally? Lord, are we spoiled? Or have we become complacent? Have we become content with the grace and the blessings that you have given us thus far and say, that's plenty, that's enough. I need nothing else now, including you. Lord, we pray that you would create within us a hunger for righteousness. That you would create within us a real sense of the deceitfulness of our own hearts, that we should not be deceived, but that we should see ourselves for who we really are before you. We are a people who are completely dependent upon you and the grace that you have given to us. We are a people totally undeserving of the grace that you have granted us, and yet our God we recognize in this next moment we need so much more grace from you. We remain dependent upon you. So help us, God, to see the true nature of our relationship with you, and the true nature of our need of you, and that we would never be content and satisfied with what we have thus far received, thankful to be sure. but always hungering and thirsting for more. We want more of you. So help us God, we pray, in the name of Jesus our Redeemer, and all the people of God can say, Amen.