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Lord, we come before you once
again on this middle-of-the-week evening, asking that you would
encourage our hearts and our souls with the truths of your
word. We do pray, Lord, that you would be with us as we give
our attention to the matters that are before us. We continue
to pray for our children's classes and ask, Lord, that you would
be with them and those who lead them. We're grateful for the
fellowship and the food that we have had. Even as we've spoken,
we know there are some who are out of town, obviously quite
a few, who are traveling. We pray that you would grant
mercy to them and protection for them as well. Now, Lord,
as we give ourselves to these matters of your word and prayer
tonight, we do pray that you would be with us and encourage
us in these things. And we pray for this in Christ's
name. Amen. All right, brethren, we're in
chapter 10 of the prophecy of Hosea, and we're going to finish
this up. It won't be tonight, but pretty
soon. And remember that it's in Hosea
chapter 10, of course, that the Lord is really bringing to bear
upon the lives of the Israelites the issues of their unrepentant
sin. I was just working today on going
on into a chapter 11 and one of the issues that we're going
to look at is there's a transition that takes place at the beginning
of chapter 11 going on through chapter 14 at the end of the
book. And where we have been really
chapters 4 through 10, God has been progressively turning the
screw on the Israelites, talking to them about their sin, about
the consequences of their sin and the repercussions of the
fact that they refused to repent because of their sin. Now with
chapter 11 there's going to be a transition where God is really
going to woo them back with love and grace, but we're here at
the end of that section of chapters 4 through 10 where the Lord has
really been confronting His people with their actions and with their
covenant breaking. He continues to do that here
as we come to this last section of the chapter. Verse 11 is where
we are tonight, and it says, And Ephraim is a trained heifer
that loves to thrash, but I will come over her fair neck with
a yoke. I will harness Ephraim. Judah
will plow, Jacob will harrow for himself. Now, I know that
blesses your life tremendously, but I'm going to go back and,
Chris is saying, are you sure? I'm going to go back and try
to help it accomplish some of that. Let's look at the first
part of it. Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh. Ephraim, of course, is maybe
the primary way in which Hosea has been referring to the northern
kingdom of Israel during the divided kingdom period, historically,
where this is. And so we know that God, by way
of Hosea, is talking about the Israelites at this point, but
he likens them to a trained heifer that loves to thresh. And this
I want to suggest to you is a picture, we could call it an analogy of
the fact that Israel has been tremendously blessed by God. The picture goes back to Deuteronomy
25.4. where it was a part of the Mosaic
law, part of the law of Moses for Israel under the Old Covenant,
Israel in the Old Testament, that they were, quote, not to
muzzle the ox while it is threshing. Now, that doesn't sound like
much of a big deal, but here Hosea is using that to communicate
the truth about how God has treated Israel, even in the midst of
their unrepentant sin for generation after generation after generation.
That principle of Deuteronomy 25.4, of course, do not muzzle
the ox while it is treading out the grain, was the idea that
the worker is worthy of his wages. There's another way in which
Peter talks about that in the New Testament, particularly in
the ministry of the church. And the idea was that the ox, under
whatever circumstances, whether it was pulling a grindstone or
whether it was just simply walking around in a circle on top of
the grain and showing it essentially, if you will, however the method
was, the ox was always allowed to eat the grain as it was walking
around and around and around in all of this. It was a cushy
job, in other words. What other circumstances in this
time in the ancient world would an ox have that kind of that
kind of latitude or that kind of blessing. An ox that has been
put in a yoke that's going to pull a plow out in the field,
he didn't get a chance to stop and eat grain as he was going
along. Or an ox that was hooked up to a cart or a wagon that
was hauling needed to get someplace. That's a part of what the work
was. And so it was only the oxen that
was treading out and threshing the grain that had this great
cushy privilege as far as oxen go. And that's what God is talking
about now when he says Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves
to thrash. He's using this language to talk
about the way in which he has dealt with them through the generations
even though they have been pursuing idolatry and covenant breaking
and sin and they have been doing it without repentance. The point is, Israel's lot, under
the grace of God, has been easy. He has been gracious to them.
He has been generous to them. He has treated them with kindness. He has been patient with them,
again, generation by generation by generation, in the midst of
their sin and their covenant breaking. But God is going on
to say, that is all going to change. He says, but I will come
over her fair neck with a yoke. I will harness Ephraim. The fair neck that the Lord is
referring to at this point of Israel is that neck which has
had no hard yoke. placed upon it. They haven't
had to work hard. They haven't had to pull a heavy
load. They haven't been yoked into. Everybody's sitting over here
tonight, okay? So I want to make sure you get in the right spot.
If you go over here, you're really going to mess it up. So it'll
be helpful. We have sheep are all over here
tonight. So please come join the sheep. What he's talking about, this
fair neck, is one that has not had a heavy yoke placed upon
it. And we can see an analogy of
some of that even in our modern day, here in the ranch country
of New Mexico, that we have. You have a horse that is used
a lot, that's saddled up, bridled a lot, and has worked hard, as
is often the case, although it may be a bit seasonal, or they're
gathering cattle, particularly in the fall for shipping or in
the spring to gather the cattle for branding and so on. The saddle,
the girth, the bridle, the harness will all leave marks on the horse,
on its head, on its back, on its girth, so that a horse that
has been used a lot, a horse that has been hooked up a lot,
if you will. I'm trying to figure out how
to say this to city people. A horse that's been worked hard
is going to show the marks that this has been the case. And I have seen that with folks
that I've worked with. But what God is saying at this
point is Israel doesn't have any of those marks. They don't have the marks of
a heavy yoke that has been put upon them, even though, again,
because of their sin, God would have been justified long ago
To put them under a heavy yoke of his just Judgment, but he
has been kind and he has been patient and he has been gentle
with them Through the generations, but again as we say that is going
to change. He says I will harness Ephraim
and so you begin to see do you begin to see what he's what he's
talking about this point? He's saying Israel has really
gotten off pretty easy That's going to change. It's going to
change because they refuse to humble themselves before the
Lord in repentance. And so he goes on to say, Judah
will plow, Jacob will harrow for himself. Judah, he brings
into the conversation at this point. Remember that the kingdoms
are divided. Israel, Ephraim is to the north.
The southern kingdom is Judah. The prophecy of Hosea is primarily,
although it's not exclusively, as we have seen, given to Israel,
the northern kingdom. Once in a while, God brings up
Judah and warns them, too. And this is one of those instances
where the Lord shows that he knows the sin that is going on
in the southern kingdom also. He knows the covenant breaking
and the unrepentance that is happening. In Judah, too, it
may not be as great as it is in Israel at this particular
point in time, but it is there nevertheless. And God warns Judah
about their sin as well, but he warns them to no avail. He
talks about Judah will plow, and then he says Jacob will harrow
for himself. Now, here is the tribal national
equation, I guess. Ephraim plus Judah equals Jacob. And that's what he's talking
about here. Who are Israel? Who are the tribes of Israel?
Don't forget the divided kingdom, but the twelve tribes of Israel,
the children of Israel. Children of who? Children of
Jacob, of course, all the tribes coming forth from each of the
twelve sons of Jacob. And so if you put all the tribes
of Israel together, even if they're there in the midst of this divided
kingdom, you put all the Jews together and they make up what?
They make up Jacob. And that's what God is talking
about here. And that's what he means in the
way that he is speaking. He warns Ephraim, which stands
for the northern kingdom of Israel, about their sin, their lack of
repentance. He also includes Judah, the southern kingdom tribe
as well, about their sin. But as I said, he warns them
to no avail because in the end, he says, Jacob will harrow for
himself. In other words, God's people
are going to be placed under the yoke of his just judgment. So here at the end of the verse,
he's talking about how Judah will plow, Jacob will harrow. And I want to suggest to you
that this is hard work. How many of you have an agricultural
background? Grew up on a farm? Know anything
about what it means to do field work? I was afraid of this. Well, I grew up on a farm. I
think there is an advantage to agricultural people in their
ability to interpret the scriptures. It's just a natural advantage.
We just have a certain understanding about some of these things. Take
my word for it. Harrowing a field can be very
difficult. We live in a day where the agricultural
industry has advanced to the point where They do what they
now call minimum till or no till, and that is just one swipe through
the field and they're gone. They planted for that year and
they're out of there. As I was growing up on a farm,
it would take us three, four, five sweeps through a field doing
a different thing every time before we were finished with
the seed in the ground and ready for the harvest to come. Harrowing was one of those things
that we would have to do, which was an effort to really sort
of break up the ground, and particularly the clods that might be there
so that there would be a better consistency of the dirt for a
plant to grow. Plowing, you all know what plowing
is, don't you? If you've watched Little House on the Prairie, has anybody seen Little House
on the Prairie? Don't do this to me. Some of you are yanking
my chain. Well, you know what plowing is.
It is essentially where you're taking about 12 inches of ground,
and you're turning it upside down. And you're breaking up
the ground to prepare it for planting. This is hard work,
and what makes it even More difficult is when you're out plowing in
ground that has not been plowed for several years. I remember
years ago when I was, again, growing up on my dad's farm,
he sent me out to a field that we had let just sit for several
years, and he had me plow it up. That was so hard that by the
time I finished and got back to the house, I felt like I'd
been beaten up. I mean, it was just, that was a bear to do that. All of that is simply to say
what God is talking about and the analogies that he is using
here, it is hard work. The things that he is talking
about at the end of verse 11, completely different in nature
from the work he's talking about at the beginning of verse 11.
This idea of an oxen threshing grain where he can just eat as
it goes along as much as he wants. That's easy. That's a piece of
cake. And God is saying, that's how
I have treated Israel. But that is going to change now. I'm going to put Israel under
the yoke of my just judgment. And it is going to be difficult
for those who refuse to repent. Does that make sense? You see
the movement of the verse. And so what we're finding here,
I want to suggest to you, is the fact of, or let me put it
this way, the patience of God is seen in the very fact of his
warning. Everything God has been talking
about in the prophecy of Hosea has been a warning upon warning
upon warning. The Lord could take those who
sin and refuse to repent, and he could let his judgment in
its full capacity, fall upon them. And he would be perfectly
just in doing that, wouldn't he? He most certainly would. I think that is clear throughout
the scriptures. But God, in his mercy and in
his kindness and in his patience towards the Israelites, have
not done that. Rather, ad nauseum, he has patiently
warned them about their sin and called for them to turn from
their sin in repentance. And the very fact of these constant
warnings that God is giving show that He is being exceedingly
patient with them. Contrast the yoke, then, of Hosea
10, 11 with a yoke out of the New Testament,
what comes to mind. Matthew chapter 11 verses 28,
29, 30, where Jesus is talking. Can you recite it? Come unto
me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek
and humble and tender of heart, and you shall find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Two yokes
now you see out of the scriptures, one from Matthew chapter 11,
one from Hosea chapter 10. The one is a yoke of the just
judgment of Christ. The other is the yoke of the
merciful grace of Christ. You see that? And the point of
the scriptures, and we're comparing these two together, is you will
be under a yoke that belongs to Christ. You will be. What matters is, well, it's just
a matter of which one is it going to be. Is it going to be the
yoke of the judgment of Christ, or is it going to be the yoke
of the grace of Christ? And of course, that all comes
down to, what have we done as a matter of repentance and faith
with Jesus Christ? The Israelites, we understand
what they have been doing. We can go back and look particularly
at Hosea chapter 8, where Hosea has warned them that they do
not fear the Lord, they have not thought about God, they have
broken Kono, they have pursued idols. So we see that the yoke
that they are moving towards is the yoke of the judgment of
Christ, which they're being warned about here. Of course, the Christian,
the converted child of God, that Jesus is referring to in Matthew
chapter 11, is the one who has taken upon themselves the yoke
of Christ's grace. And as is always the case, we
need to sit down personally and say, okay, which yoke am I laboring
under? There is no more important question
to answer from the scriptures than that. Which yoke is mine
tonight? Verse 12, having warned Israel
and Judah, of course, about God's just accountability for their
sin, now in verse 11, God now exhorts Israel to repent. He says, so with a view to righteousness,
reap in accordance with kindness. And here, the spiritual principle
of reaping what you sow is brought to the fore again. This is a
principle that we find in the scriptures. One of the places
where we are always going to is Galatians chapter 6, verse
7, where that principle is clearly laid out where the Apostle Paul
writes under the inspiration of God's Spirit and says that
you will surely reap what you sow. It's that very principle
that God is appealing to by way of Hosea now here in verse 12. Sow with a view to righteousness,
reap in accordance with kindness. And that word for kindness can
be translated as mercy. And so the issue here, I guess
the idea here is, do you wish to receive the mercy of God? If the answer is yes, then you
must sow in righteousness, for you will reap what you sow. And we'll talk about that a little
bit here in terms of the gospel and grace in just a moment, but
one of the other issues that well, that's that's the issue
of this principle that you You reap in kind what you sow. But another part of this, when
we take the principle and we turn around, the principle states
that you will not reap what you do not sow. And you see, that's where the
Israelites were. They wanted to reap from God mercy, yet they
refused to sow in righteousness. You see, we have seen that throughout
Hosea's prophecy. The times when they thought of
God at all, which were pretty rare, as we have seen, they expected
God to be gracious to them regardless of how they have acted or lived
in their relationship with him, regardless of whether they have
lived with or without repentance. In their view, it didn't matter
how they lived or what they had done. or how they dealt with
God, or what they thought of God, or how they treated God,
or whether God was the object of their worship or not. Those
things didn't matter. All that mattered was, in the
end, when it came time to reap, they expected God to reap with
kindness and graciousness toward them. But what we are explicitly
told in Galatians 6, 7 is this. Told this in the context of this
principle, you will reap what you sow. We are told God will
not be mocked. And that is mockery of God to
think that we can simply go out and live in any way that pleases
us and expect God to feel obligated to respond towards us with mercy
and grace and kindness and patience. That is a mockery of God. And the scriptures are very clear
that God will not be mocked. And we also know from the scriptures
that God will not be ignored. It is, again, the apostle Paul
writing in Philippians 2 who says, there is going to come
a day when what? Every knee, every knee shall
bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to
the glory of God of the Father. Again, the issue here is everybody
is going to acknowledge God, and everybody is going to acknowledge
that Jesus Christ is the Lord of God the Father. What is going
to matter is when are you going to acknowledge that great truth
about Christ. You will acknowledge it then
as a matter of your punishment and judgment, or you can acknowledge
it now as a matter of being a recipient of God's grace. in Christ. And so God will not be mocked
and God will not be ignored. And the point is, if you wish
to reap the kindness and mercy of God, then you must sow righteousness
in your life. And what we recognize as one
of the great hallmarks, one of the great fruits of righteousness
is repentance. John the Baptist was talking
in Luke chapter three, verse eight, when he called for the
Pharisees to bring forth fruits that were consistent with repentance. And so practical righteousness
will always bring forth the fruit of repentance. Perhaps we can
even turn that around and remember, therefore, that this is what
was lacking in Israel, is it not? This is what was lacking. Throughout Hosea's prophecy,
the people would not humble themselves before the Lord. They would not
repent of their sin. And this is then seen in the
next metaphor of verse 12, where the Lord says, break up your
fallow ground. And as I just mentioned to you
a few moments ago, this is hard. Fallow ground is a ground that
has been neglected, ground that hasn't been plowed or worked
or planted. for some time. It is ground that
is hard and grows only weeds rather than profitable produce. And to plow it up is very difficult
work. And this is what God is calling
the Israelites to do. He is calling them to do the
hard thing. He is calling for them to live
differently. He is calling for them to change
their hard, fallow hearts. But plowing up a hard, fallow
heart is very hard to do. For them to change the way that
they live is, in fact, impossible on their own. And thus, God goes
on to say, after He exhorts them Break up your fallow ground,
he says, for it is time to seek the Lord until he comes to rain
righteousness on you. The point here is only God can
plow up the hard heart. Only God can do that. What God
is exhorting the Israelites to do and what he is requiring them
to do and what he is holding them accountable to do is something
that only he can do. in their lives. Only God can
plow up that fallow spiritual heart. Only God can change their
lives and ours. True practical righteousness,
then, you see, comes only from God reigning it, as he's talking
about here, upon us. Now, understand, then, what this
is really talking about. The principle here is if you
want to receive the kindness and the mercy of God, then you
must sow righteousness in your life. Where are you going
to get that righteousness to sow in your life from which you
can reap the mercy and the kindness of God? You're not going to be
able to produce it on the fallow hardness of your own heart. It
is too difficult. You're not capable of plowing
up your own heart. You're not capable of planting
the seed. You're not capable of growing
true, practical, genuine, real righteousness in the sight of
God before Him on your own. God is going to have to plow
up your fallow heart and rain righteousness upon you and plant
it in your heart so that it might grow within you, that you might
take that righteousness that He has given to you and that
you might sow it in your life that from that you might reap
the mercy and the kindness of God. Do you see? Who's the Redeemer? God. The very thing that we have
to turn around and invest back so that we might reap the kindness
and mercy of God has to come from God Himself. He has to give
it to us so that we can turn around and sow it back towards
Him. And because that principle is
true, that our salvation, our redemption, our righteousness
begins and ends with God's redemptive work within us. This is why it
is always time to seek the Lord. You see how he says that? Break
up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord. But
beloved, it is always time to seek the Lord. Isn't this a remarkable
scriptural truth? These Israelites, we know from
Hosea's prophecy, are a truly debauched people. We know that
in the two times in Hosea, chapter nine and chapter 10, where God
has likened them to the Benjamites of Gibeah. Remember how he keeps
talking about that? They are a debauched people. And yet what God is saying even
here in Hosea 10 is that he remains ready to receive and forgive
them, to restore and to bless them, if they will only repent
and seek Him. That's it. The great prophet Isaiah, you'll
recall, is a contemporary of Hosea. Put in your notes somewhere,
remind yourself in conjunction with Hosea 10 to go back and
read Isaiah. 55, where he talks about similar
sorts of matters, albeit with with different words. And so,
again, the issue for us tonight is where are we in reference
to repentance? What is the condition of our
heart? Has it been plowed up? By the gospel of Christ, has
he done that work in your heart or does your heart remain hard,
fallow, growing only the weeds of distrust and disobedience
against Christ. I know fairly well all of you,
and I'm getting the notice from the rest of you, and I have good
hope and trust that it is the latter in your lives that God
has indeed sowed the gospel seed within you. But always search
your heart with the light of the Scriptures to make certain
that he has indeed done that work of reigning righteousness
in your heart. Let's pray, shall we? So, our
God, again, our souls are laid open. Our souls are bared before
you from truths of the scriptures such as this tonight. Lord, as
you do that through your word, we pray that you would help us
to take a long and a good and a hard look at the condition
of our hearts. Lord, we pray that as we do so
according to the standard of the gospel found in your word,
that we might indeed be a people who are found to have had Christ
reign righteousness in our hearts and convert us. Lord, we pray
that we might have the assurance that that is the case. And where
that remains perhaps a question, Lord, we pray that you would
answer it according to the truth of the gospel and that you would
convert us and make us to be people who belong to God. A people
who belong to God strictly because of the work that you have done
in our lives in Jesus Christ. We thank you, Lord, and we worship
and praise you for that work of your gospel. Help us, then,
Lord, to sow righteousness in this life that we might reap
the kindness and the mercy of God. And we pray this in Jesus'
blessed name. Amen.
Hosea - Part 50
Series Minor Prophet Series-Hosea
| Sermon ID | 42906184117 |
| Duration | 32:54 |
| Date | |
| Category | Teaching |
| Bible Text | Hosea 10:11-12 |
| Language | English |
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