The scripture reading this morning is the chapter in Hosea that we are looking at. Hosea chapter nine, if you would turn there. Hosea, the ninth chapter. Rejoice not, verse one, rejoice not, O Israel, exult not like the peoples, for you have played the whore, forsaking your God. You've loved a prostitute's wages on all the threshing floors. Threshing floor and wine vats shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria. They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord, and their sacrifices shall not please him. It shall be like mourner's bread to them. All who eat of it shall be defiled, for their bread shall be for their hunger only. It shall not come to the house of the Lord. What will you do on the day of the appointed festival and on the day of the feast of the Lord? For behold, they're going away from destruction, but Egypt shall gather them. Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver. Thorns shall be in their tents. The days of punishment have come. The days of recompense have come. Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool. The man of the spirit is mad because of your great iniquity and great hatred. The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God, yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways and hatred in the house of his God. They've deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity. He will punish their sins. Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw your fathers. But they came to Baal Peor and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame and became detestable like the thing they loved. Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird. No birth, no pregnancy, no conception. Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them till none is left. Woe to them when I depart from them. Ephraim, as I have seen, was like a young palm planted in a meadow. But Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter. Give them, O Lord. What will you give? give them a miscarrying womb and dry breaths. Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal. There I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more. All their princes are rebels. Ephraim is stricken. Their root is dried up. They shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will put their beloved children to death. My God will reject them because they have not listened to him. They shall be wanderers among the nations." And there is the word of God toward people who reject Christ. and refuse to love and obey the Lord. Well, let's move in for a closer look at those verses, and let's pray before we do so. Father, we do ask your help and blessing as we look into this chapter of your word. It is a sober and severe word, and yet, Father, it also reminds us of how blessed we are to have Christ, to have a Savior, else we would end up just like Sodom and Gomorrah ourselves. We would end up just like Hosea's countrymen did in that day. In our sin, we would reject you. We would pursue wickedness. And your judgment would come upon us. Thank you, Father, for Christ and this great salvation that is in him. And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Satan has always worked He did it right from the beginning in the Garden of Eden. He's always at work to lead people away from God's word, to tell them that it's false, to change it, to twist it, and to tempt people into unbelief. He works to deny that the scriptures are the word of God. And there are many, many tactics that he uses to accomplish those evil, evil deeds. One of the methods that we've seen in church history, and it's all around us then today as well, is to deny Satan has his minions, his preachers and so forth, theologians that work for the dark kingdom. He speaks through them and tells people that the Bible's plain assertions of truth are not the true essence of religion. Now, stay with me on this and we'll develop this and I'll show you how, you know, Satan is a liar and his methods are cunning and subtle and he loves to introduce them into the church and into seminaries and so on. So he will maintain that what really matters is not doctrine, not objective statements of truth, not objective assertions, but what really matters In Christianity, because this is a counterfeit Christianity, what really matters, what we should really be concerned with isn't the Westminster Confession, it isn't the London Confession of Faith. You know, those things are all divisive and so forth, but rather what we should be concerned with is discovering the historic Jesus and to experience him. Right? Let me read you a few quotes here that I think will help you understand this kind of a tactic that I'm trying to describe. The first couple of quotes are from the book Christianity and Liberalism, which was written way back, I think, in the 1920s by J. Gresham Machen. He was a warrior for God's truth, J. Gresham Machen. You've probably heard of him. And he says this, presenting an issue sharply, that means clearly, plainly. Presenting an issue sharply is indeed by no means a popular business at the present time. There are many who prefer to fight their intellectual battles in what Dr. Patton has aptly called a condition of low visibility. clear-cut definition of terms in religious matters, bold facing of the logical implications of religious views, is by many persons regarded as an impious, that means ungodly, proceeding. May it not discourage contribution to mission boards. You know, if we have this confession of faith and we say this is our doctrinal position of our church, this is the gospel, this is what we believe, well, you know, if you do that, you're going to discourage contributions to the work of missions. You're going to hinder the progress of consolidation. What he means there is false unity, ecumenism, and so forth. And you're going to produce a showing, a poor showing, in the columns of church statistics. If you make these bold doctrinal assertions of truth, then Some people are going to leave. They won't like that. I want to hear that, you see. So you shouldn't do that. What you've got to do is look to Jesus as a person. For largely the New Testament, Apostle Paul and so forth, they kind of added extra things. But what we got to do is get back to the primitive Christianity, the seed. Get back to Jesus and boil your doctrine down to the golden rule. As Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. There, that's all the doctrine that you need. Machen goes on, but with such persons we cannot possibly bring ourselves to agree. Light may seem at times to be an impertinent intruder, but it is always beneficial in the end. The type of religion which rejoices in the pious sound of traditional phrases, regardless of their meanings, or shrinks from controversial matters will never stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding. The really important things are the things about which men will fight. The really important things, like the gospel, are the things about which we must contend for. Those are the things that are worth fighting for, you see, but as he is describing this false Christianity, this liberalism, well, those kind of people deny all of that. He also said, vastly more important than all questions with regards to methods of preaching is the root question as to what it is that shall be preached. What is it that shall be preached? Well, liberalism says, doesn't really matter. What really matters is, let's just make some bold, moralistic-sounding statements about Jesus, and it's your experience of those words that really matters. Jesus can be one thing to you, and it can be another thing to you. And we can all be together anyway, you see. Now, similarly, Martin Luther talked about the same kind of a thing when he wrote his book, The Bondage of the Will. And the reason he was writing The Bondage of the Will is it was a rebuttal to the humanist Erasmus, And Luther began by admonishing Erasmus severely. In fact, Luther even ridiculed him. I like Luther. People criticize Luther. Oh, he's too severe. You know, there's many times in history you need a severe person, right? You need somebody like a Luther to come on the scene. And what he admonished and ridiculed Erasmus for was Erasmus refused to make assertions. He's just like the liberal theologians of the day. And so Luther said, hence it was not from a multitude of engagements, nor from the difficulty of the undertaking, nor from the greatness of your eloquence, nor from a fear of yourself." And what he's doing there is people have criticized him because Erasmus had written what he's called his diatribe quite a while before and Luther hadn't answered it right away. And so people began to, oh, Erasmus has got Luther now, and Luther's afraid of Erasmus, and so forth. But when Luther actually responds to him, he says it wasn't for any of those reasons. It wasn't out of a fear of yourself. But his hesitation was from mere irksomeness. indignation, and contempt, or so to speak, for my judgment of your diatribe, that my impetus to answer you was dampened. Not to observe in the meantime that being ever like yourself, and here's where he begins to nail him here, you take the most diligent care to be on every occasion slippery and pliant of speech. And while you wish to appear to assert nothing, at the same time you assert something." He tells him he's more conscious. He says he's like Ulysses. And you know, the voyage, that Greek mythology, whatever, voyages of Ulysses. steering his course between, so there's like these two sea monsters, Cilia and, I guess you say, Charbdis, and he's going through these narrow straits with these, Ulysses is with these sea monsters, and you gotta get a course, you have to go right down the middle, that's what you gotta, and so Luther's rebuking Erasmus here, you know, you're slippery, and as he points out, This kind of deception, it claims, you know, well, you know, I wouldn't really want to say. I don't want to, you know, we just need to, Jesus is who you want him to be. We respond to him. We don't want to be divisive in that regard. And Luther is jumping all over his case. He continues here. How often does the Apostle Paul require that assurance of faith, that is, that most certain and most firm assertion of conscience, calling it confession? Quote, with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. And Christ also says, whosoever confesses me before men, Him I will confess before my Father. Peter commands us to give a reason of the hope that's within us. But why should I dwell upon this? Nothing is more known and more general among Christians than assertions, statements of fact, statements of sound doctrine, right? Take away assertions and you take away Christianity. Nay, the Holy Spirit is given unto them from heaven that he may glorify Christ and confess him even unto death, unless this be not to assert, to die for confession and assertion." Well, he goes on and he rebukes Erasmus some more, tells him that, well, another reason that I've taken my time in responding to you is you haven't said anything that hasn't been said before many times. And so he gets all over his case. But the point is this. That word slippery, that's a good one. These slippery, lying dishonesties that come out of the mouths of people who claim to be Christians, they claim to be eminent theologians and so on, are nothing less than the denial of the Word of God. The man who insists that he's the most pious Because he accepts all religion, you see. The man that disdains any effort to require him to clearly state his doctrine is an emissary of hell. And we need to call it as such. You don't need to leave this community to find those kind, all right? They're all over the place today, parading as Christians, the churches. are filled with these kind of people and have been for a long time. I remember years ago trying to contact numbers of the pastors in Tillamook, in this community, to form some kind of a fellowship. There was a pastor's fellowship here, but it was totally compromised, not even worthy of the name Christian. So I sent out some invitations to half dozen pastors or so, and we got together for lunch. And over the years, these 40 some years almost now that I've been a pastor, this kind of effort, I don't even do this anymore, those kind of efforts have always been dismal failures. And in this case, I began our meeting together by handing out to each person a basic fundamental doctrinal statement. And it was basic. It was the essentials of the gospel, all right? Things like the deity of Christ, and what Christ's work on the cross was, and faith alone by Christ alone, and those kinds of doctrines. And I said, you know, if we're going to meet together and be a witness for Christ in this community as we kind of pool our efforts and energies, it seems to me that we need to be on the same page. We need to all be Christians and we all need to... Anyway, I asked them to affirm their agreement with these things. They didn't even look at it. They didn't even look and read through it. They were angry and offended that I would be so audacious You know, who are you to ask us to have to adhere to this stuff? They wouldn't even do it. Now you see, that's the kind of person that Machen and Luther were talking about here. People who profess to be Christians, who profess to be shepherds of supposedly Christ's church. But the reason they were offended, you know why they were offended? Because these kind of slippery people, they don't like to be pinned down. That's why the church has the confessions of faith. That's why they were hammered out. in the history of the church. That's what it was all about. This is what we believe. This is what the Bible says. And we are willing to shed our blood and die for these truths, because without these truths, the church isn't the church. And the gospel isn't the gospel, you see. So you have to be wise, because the enemy is cunning. And just because there's a so-called church with its building on a street corner, it's got a sign out front that says that, you know, here we are as a Christian church, you know, or community church, whatever it is, and then you You attend it for a while, and you look at it, and they have a doctrinal statement. And their doctrinal statement, even on the surface of it, can look good, sound good, and so forth. But you must look deeper. And what you will find out is it's very easy for people to write things down. It's another thing entirely to truly confess those words, you see. And anyway, that's just another example of what Machen and Luther were dealing with. Well, back in Hosea's day. Hosea was confronted with a nation filled with wicked people there in Israel that denied God's word, and they were slippery about it. They still claim to be the people of God. At the same time, they worshipped all kinds of false gods, deities, and idols that they crafted then for themselves. So for instance, Here is a bold assertion that they were fully aware of. Exodus 20, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that's in heaven above or that's in the earth beneath or that's in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." Now, what did these people think? That's a bold theological doctrinal assertion of truth. It's a command from the Lord. What did they think? Well, they thought God's word doesn't really matter. We can fashion and mold our religion into whatever form we want it to be. And we, you know, we don't want to get bogged down, you know, with facts. Don't confuse us with doctrinal facts. But the Bible makes assertions of doctrine. It asserts things as being true or false. The virgin birth of Christ is an assertion. Liberal Christianity, as Machen pointed out, denied the virgin birth of Christ. In fact, you can go in our library and find a book that he wrote on the virgin birth of Christ. Because it doesn't matter. It's just a myth created by the church later on. We've got to get back to the real historical Jesus. And you'll find there. Well, what you'll find is he's just a man, great moral teacher. Listen to his moral statements and do your best to try to emulate him. And you know, all he was doing on the cross was giving us a great example of self-sacrifice. And we should be able, we should be willing to emulate that great sacrifice ourselves, you see. That's the liberal in his theology. Christ giving himself as a ransom for us is an assertion of scripture. All who believe in him will be saved, and all who reject him will end in hell. Christ rose from the dead. That little statement in scripture, he is risen. That's what transformed the apostles into rather weak, feeble individuals, and then seeing that Christ, he has risen from the dead, and that's the message that they began to preach. The assertion that Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead, you see. Assertions. And the devil and his lying representatives tell us Look, you can disregard those kind of assertions. You can disregard the claim that the scriptures make about God being the creator, about the Trinity. You can put those aside as you choose. The slippery wickedness of these kind is that they continue, then, to call themselves Christians, and they continue to use in their vocabulary as they preach and teach and so on, their false gospel, Christian phrases, biblical phrases. They'll talk about the cross. They'll talk about Christ. They'll talk about the love of Christ and all of these kinds of things, but they will redefine them. But the reason they continue to put on that Christian disguise is because they are creeps who creep in. They don't want to be totally exposed, so they pretend. and put themselves across as representatives of Christ. Well, here are the Lord's pronouncement of judgment upon people that claim to be the covenant people of God. Verse one, look at it again here, verses one through three. Rejoice not, O Israel. It's like the party's over. Exult not like the peoples. For you've played the whore in idolatry, forsaking your God. You've loved a prostitute's wages on all threshing floors. Threshing floor and wine vats shall not feed them, and the new wine shall fail them. They shall not remain in the land of the Lord, but Ephraim shall return to Egypt, and they shall eat unclean food in Assyria." So they'd been, instead of turning to the Lord in repentance of their sins, They had been turning to Assyria and turning to Egypt, trying to make treaties with them, military alliances, and looking to them for deliverance instead of looking to the Lord. Also, I think what we see here, particularly in verse three, is God's pronouncement of an ironic judgment that we might call an anti-Exodus. If you will not serve the Lord who brought you out of slavery, out of the land of Egypt, out of that oppression, into a land flowing with milk and honey, then I will remove you from the land of milk and honey, and I will send you back to slavery in Egypt. And that is exactly what happened. Matthew Henry says, the sins of those who have made a profession of religion, and relation to God are more provoking to him than the sins of others. Let me say it again. The pew in the Christian church is a dangerous place. A person who hears the gospel, who hears God's word, week after week after week, year after year after year, and yet is a fake, They profess to be a Christian. They profess Christ. They profess to stand in saving relation to God, but in fact are not. Well, as Matthew Henry says, they're more provoking of the wrath of God than your unchurched pagan out there, you see. Matthew 7, we see this. stated again by Christ, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? See, they're claiming that he's their Lord. He's not. Did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, and do mighty works in your name? Then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. Verse four, let's continue here. They shall not pour drink offerings of wine to the Lord, and their sacrifices shall not please him. It shall be like mourner's bread to them. All who eat of it shall be defiled, for the bread shall be for their hunger only. It shall not come to the house of the Lord. What will you do on the day of the appointed festival? and on the day of the feast of the Lord. Here's another aspect to God's judgment upon people who know of Christ, but continually reject him, right? The Lord, this form of the Lord's judgment is that he will bring an end to all of their false outward religion. Drink offerings, sacrifices, unleavened bread, all the appointed festivals and feasts, all gone forever. Listen to Matthew Henry once again. In the land of their enemies, to which they shall be driven, they shall have no opportunity either of giving honor to God or obtaining favor with God, by offering any acceptable sacrifice to him. They should not be in a capacity of keeping up any face or show of religion among them. And so it should be, as it were, quite cut off from any expression of relation to him. from all signs of grace and means of reconciliation with him, which would be to them a token of their being rejected of God, estranged from him, and no more owned by him as his people. They shall have no sacrifices to offer, nor any altar to offer them on, nor priest to offer them. They shall not so much as offer drink offerings to the Lord. much less any other sacrifices, because all of their homeland would be lost. They'll be cast out, taken off into captivity. They won't even have their northern kingdom, false worship centers like Dan and Samaria, their false golden calf idols and so forth. It will be all gone. Now, this is a very sobering thing for us to apply. In hell, there will never ever again be an opportunity to honor God. For all eternity, in hell, in hell there will be no opportunity to pray to him, to exercise any kind of a means of grace. There will never be opportunity to fellowship with Christ's people. There will never again be opportunity to read God's word or to come to the Lord's table. There will never again be a Lord's day on which people in this era still have opportunity to leave off their daily affairs and come and worship God. In hell, there will never be again a Bible to read, a sermon to hear, or a chance of doing deeds of charity. The counterfeit, fully exposed for what he or she is, will never again be able to pretend. Hebrews 3, therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, today, if you hear his voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion on the day of testing in the wilderness. Will people in hell, are people in hell that are there right now who spent their lives disdaining the gospel, disdaining Christ, partying on? on the Lord's day, completely disregarding the Lord, never read their Bible, thought it foolish to go and hear God's word preached. Are there people in hell now who wish they could? Perhaps in a sense, it's true. But one thing that is true, that opportunity is over for them. They will never again be able to hear this admonition today, if you hear his voice, because they won't hear his voice ever again. Well, Hosea continues at verse six, for behold, they're going away from destruction, but Egypt shall gather them. Memphis shall bury them. Nettles shall possess their precious things of silver. Thorns shall be in their tents. Those are curse terms, by the way. Thorns, nettles, and so forth. Verse seven, the days of punishment have come. The days of recompense have come. Israel shall know it. The prophet is a fool. The man of the spirit is mad because of your great iniquity and great hatred. The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim with my God, yet a fowler's snare is on all his ways and hatred in the house of his God. What does he mean, the prophet is a fool? The prophet is the watchman of Ephraim, and Israel shall know it. Well, again, when it's too late, the people will realize They've been misled and duped by these false watchmen, by these false prophets, but they liked what the false prophet told them. Luke chapter six, Christ also told them a parable. Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? And that's what happens in a place where a blind man, a wolf, a false prophet is teaching and preaching people. And it tickles their ear. And they like it. And they listen. But one day, one day, Israel shall know it. When judgment has come, it'll be too late. And they'll realize we were duped. I think it's Amos, the prophet, calls them. Let's see, where is this here? Well, it's in this quote by John Calvin here. Israel shall know the prophet to be foolish, the man of the spirit to be mad. Israel shall then understand that he was deluded by flatteries when the false prophets promised that all things will be prosperous. These liars are called by the prophet Micah, the prophets of wine and oil and wheat. And what he means by that is the message of these prophets were, oh, there's going to be prosperity. There's going to be all kinds of wine and oil and wheat. You don't need to repent. Everything is just fine. Are there false prophets like that in our nation today? They're all over the place, all over the place. Unfortunately, our nation is led by them, largely today, promising wine and oil. Do you know what gaslighting is? Gaslighting is a wicked tactic by which an evil person, let's say in this case, a false prophet. Let's say the nation Israel. Things are falling apart. There's famine. There's invasions by foreign enemies. Things are not going well. But the false prophet comes on the scene and says, everything's okay. Everything's just fine. There's plenty of wine and oil and wheat. It's just fine. Wait a minute, that's not what I'm seeing. Listen to me. Don't trust your own senses. You listen to me. Well, in the day when Christ comes in judgment, the people that listened to these kinds of false, crazy-making tactics and messages will find out, you know what? I was right. Our land was under God's judgment. Those guys were lying, but it'll be too late. Israel will know, as Calvin ends that quote, the world always wishes to be deceived in this way. Want to start a megachurch? just come up with a message, a deceiving message that of wine and oil and wheat, because the world loves that deception. And that's part of God's judgment upon a world that has rejected then Christ. We'll look at verse nine here. They have deeply corrupted themselves as in the days of Gibeah. He will remember their iniquity He will punish their sins. Gibeah is referred to there because if you go back to Judges, I think it's chapters 19, 20, and 21. of the language there about the sins of Gibeah are very much identical to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. And that's the account where you have them coming into a visiting Levite, and he's the guy that seems pretty weird, you know, he ends up, I guess they killed his concubine, cuts her up and sends the parts out. Anyway, the point is that As in the days of Gibeah, Hosea's days, the Israelites had corrupted, deeply corrupted themselves. And God announces he will punish their sins. Verse 10, like grapes in the wilderness I found Israel, like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw your fathers, but They came to Baal Peor and consecrated themselves to the thing of shame, to that idol, and became detestable like the thing that they loved. Now, the emphasis there, I think, is that Israel was nothing. She was nothing. in the wilderness when God chose them, small, powerless, like tiny grapes in the desert or a few figs on a new tree. And God chose them, and he blessed them mightily. And what'd they do? They chose Baal. They worshiped that detestable idol. And Hosea tells us they became detestable like the thing they loved. I've mentioned to you before G.K. Beale, and one of the books that he wrote is called, it's a theology of idolatry, and he calls it, we become what we worship. We become what we worship. As detestable as the false god Baal and his worshipers were to God, The Israelites had come to that very same condition. Consider, think about it. To be a detestable thing in the sight of God. Psalm 115, their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They, the idols, have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see. They have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell. They have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk. They do not make a sound in their throat. Here's the punchline. Those who make them become like them. So do all who trust in them. Why is our nation becoming more and more evil and filled with violence? It's because people have been worshiping false gods for a long time. And they're becoming more and more like those false gods, you see. That's what's going on. Franklin Graham is correct. I don't agree with everything he preaches, but he is correct when he says, this nation's only hope is God. Bottom line, politics aside, whatever, we'd like to see certain people elected, others cast out, those would be great things, but even that, even that, what is really required in a nation is repentance from sin and a humbling of ourselves and a turning back then to Christ. As long as we refuse to do that, we will continue to become like the false gods, you see, spiritually dead. Revelation 3, and to the angel of the church in Laodicea write, the words of the amen the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works. You're neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot, so because you are lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I'll spit you out of my mouth. I'll spew you out of my mouth. You see, what is it to become, to come to a point of being detestable in God's sight. Well, that's what had happened in the days of Hosea. Similarly, Isaiah 1, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. How well do you think that sermon would go over in most churches today? But you see the point. That's what Isaiah is doing. He's preaching to the Jews. He's preaching to the so-called church in his day. And he calls them, he says, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah. What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord, I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed bees. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who is required of you this trampling of my courts? Bring no more vain offerings, incenses and abomination to me, new moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations. I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly. Your new moons and your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood." And that is the Lord's attitude toward any false church, any false so-called Christian, you see, that the Lord sees and he holds such people in derision. Somebody sent me a picture recently. You know, one of those heretical church signs that you see when you're driving around? This is a classic one. Here's what it says. God loves you no matter what. God loves you. no matter what. That's a lie. That's a lie. That statement on that sign tells us all we need to know about that so-called church, or certainly at least the leaders. That is a false gospel. Think of this. Is that what Hosea and Isaiah, is that what the Old Testament prophets, is that the message that they were preaching to their countrymen? God loves you no matter what. You've rejected me. You've pursued these detestable idols. You've trusted in everything else but me. You've broken and trampled on every one of my commandments. But God loves you. No matter what. No matter what. Doesn't matter. God loves you, you see. A more appropriate message for a church sign, according to Hosea, if you worship a detestable idol, you are detestable to the Lord. You are a stench, then, to the Lord, you see. And so this ninth chapter concludes. Verse 11. Ephraim's glory shall fly away like a bird. No birth, no pregnancy, no conception. By the way, where are the Northern Ten Tribes today? After 722 BC, that was it. They're gone. Even if they bring up children, I will bereave them till none is left. Woe to them when I depart from them. Ephraim, as I have seen, was a young palm planted in a meadow, but Ephraim must lead his children out to slaughter. Give them, O Lord, what will you give? Give them a miscarrying womb and dry breasts. Every evil of theirs is in Gilgal. There I began to hate them. Because of the wickedness of their deeds, I will drive them out of my house. I will love them no more. All their princes are rebels. Ephraim is stricken. Their root is dried up. They shall bear no fruit. Even though they give birth, I will put their beloved children to death. My God will reject them because they have not listened to him. they shall be wanderers among the nations. And so it was. Israel, the northern kingdom, gone. And so it is with all people now who refuse to believe and obey God's word. Don't you be one of them. Father, we thank you for these sober warnings from your word. We thank you once again for Christ. Thank you that by him and by the work of your spirit, you regenerate our hearts. You give us a new mind that we might love you and obey you. Father, We pray that not a person here, not a person listening online would be like one of these Israelites of Hosea's day who hardened themselves until the day when they knew that they'd been duped, that they willfully believed a lie, but it was too late. We pray, Father, that you would show them mercy, convict them mightily of their need of Christ, that today they would hear his voice. And we pray all of these in Christ's name. Amen.