Hosea. Let us not neglect to savor these words. I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord. As we read through the judgments that Hosea promises, we can't lose sight of the heart of God in this prophet's message, that I will win you, my people, back to myself. So there's a sense in which chapter 10 before us is nothing new, but at the same time, there's an opportunity for us to look closely at the sin of Israel and consider how their sin and ours provokes the living God while also cherishing his patience toward us, his steadfast loyalty to his people. As we work through the text this morning, and we're going to do it sort of as we go instead of trying to read the whole thing and digest the whole thing in one go, Hosea warned Israel that their idolatry and their prideful obstinance was going to be met with the wrath of God who had been patient with them. but was prepared to administer long overdue judgment against their sin if they did not immediately turn to Him in heartfelt repentance." I'm emphasizing these two sins in particular, idolatry and what I'm calling prideful obstinance, because I believe that they best capture the sense of Israel's rebellion as it's spelled out by the prophet here. And I want to take the message of Hosea as best I can with the help of the Spirit and let it speak directly to you and to me this morning. So hear me when I say this and when I try to condense the message of Hosea 10 into this, that God is patient with us, but He will pour out His wrath against our idolatry and our prideful obstinance if we refuse to repent and seek Him. So read with me starting in chapter 10 and verse 1. It says, Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields its fruit. The more his fruit increased, the more altars he built. And his country improved, and he improved his pillars. Their heart is false, and now they must bear their guilt. the Lord will break down their altars and destroy their pillars. For now they will say, we have no king, we do not fear the Lord, and a king, what could he do for us? They utter mere words with empty oaths, they make covenants, so judgment springs up like poisonous weeds in the furrows of the field. In these verses, Hosea speaks to what Israel portrays themselves to be outwardly and who they really are inwardly. We're familiar with these kinds of dichotomies where something appears to be something outwardly, but inwardly it's something different altogether. And Hosea speaks directly to this. From the outside, all the trappings of Israel are trending in a positive direction. They give a pleasant appearance. So the statement, Israel is a luxuriant vine, makes sense to talk about the Northern Kingdom. But inwardly, there's something different happening. And another way to think of this or look at it is to say there's one sense in which Israel and their neighbors see them. There's another sense in which God sees Israel for who they really are. You have to understand that during Hosea's ministry, at least the majority of it that's recorded in the scriptures here, Israel was experiencing a time of real prosperity and success. There was political success, there was military expansion, there was geographical success in the sense that they were reclaiming some of the borders that had been previously lost. Probably during the time that Hosea is speaking here, Jeroboam II is the king in Israel. and under Jeroboam II, Israel went back and reclaimed all of the land that had been lost during the previous decades. So you're thinking, if you want to have like concrete reference points, the kingdom splits in two, and then you're thinking well down the line from that, after Israel has already been divided, and during this succession of kings, they're losing territory every time a new king is inaugurated. And this is happening both in the southern and the northern kingdoms. So Israel is shrinking. So their influence is shrinking. Their economic ability is shrinking. Opportunities are becoming fewer. And Jeroboam II becomes king in Israel, and he brings about a reversal of that. So they reclaim the lands that had been lost under previous kings. And as you regain more land, you gain population, you gain economic opportunity. Obviously, to gain these lands from their enemies, they had to experience military success. and military success meant security. It meant they were safe, even though they were a small nation tucked in amongst huge regional powers at that time. And so, at the surface of this, Israel is experiencing a rebirth of their power. In 2nd Kings 14, it describes Jeroboam's reign. And it says, Here's an interesting little nugget if you came for one this morning. Whoa, we didn't know we were going to read about Jonah this morning. But Jonah had said, that God would raise up Jeroboam and he would reclaim the lands, the territories that had been lost. It even says this, that the Lord saved the Israelites by the hand of Jeroboam. It says of Jeroboam, he is the instrument of God's prosperity and Israel's success during this time. You hear all that and you probably think, well, what else does it say about Jeroboam? It says, he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. And he did not depart from all the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. So that is Jeroboam the first, which he had made Israel to sin. Now, you remember what Jeroboam I had done, right? The first king of the northern tribe. The kingdom splits. Jeroboam is afraid that because the temple, Solomon's temple, is the center of worship, that all the people in the north are going to travel to the southern kingdom, they're going to offer sacrifices in the temple, they're going to worship there, and they're going to look around and go, wait a minute, we don't want to be Yankees, we want to come down here to the south. And if they do that, the kingdom's going to crumble in the north and they're going to lose everything that they had assumed they would gain by departing from Israel and trying to distance themselves from Rehoboam and his oppressive leadership. And so he goes to Dan and Bethel and erects these golden calves there. And what did he say of the calves that he built? Hey, these are beautiful calves. No, he said, these are the gods that took you out of Egypt. That's what he said of the calves that he built and put one at Dan and put it at Bethel. And he said, you've heard the stories of how your forefathers came out of Egypt. Here are the gods that did that. And this would have been familiar, in a sense, to people who still had the backdrop of Egyptian worship. It would have been familiar to people that lived amongst the Canaanites. And even though all of their pantheons were different and they treated different deities in different ways, the bull was the symbol of deity incarnate. And here's the king of Israel. Ten of the twelve tribes reside under his reign, and he points to these golden calves and says, These are the gods. These don't represent the gods. Remind you of the gods. These are the gods that brought you out of Israel. And so Israel's trajectory from there, understandably, just begins to spiral. Because now you have this dangerous combination of outward prosperity, but inwardly, there's a syncretistic, idolatrous, covenant-breaking worship that is taking place. And like you and I often do, we look at how things are going and say, if things are going well, then the things that I'm doing must be contributing to that in a positive way. And even though I know this doesn't speak to the day-to-day life of individual Israelites, there's this overarching sense that Israel is prospering. And it doesn't matter that they're worshiping these golden calves at Bethel and at Dan. It doesn't matter that their worship has been integrated with the Canaanite worship. You could imagine a religious professor or a religious studies professor looking at this and going, you know, this is evidence that Israel's religion is just a construct in their mind of how they should worship deity, but it doesn't really matter. They're prosperous no matter what they do, even if they build golden calves for themselves and say, these are the gods that have brought us up out of Egypt. And if that doesn't sound overly offensive, you understand this is the most important theological event in the Old Testament from the perspective of the authors of the Old Testament who wrote later. The deliverance from Egypt is the supreme picture of God's power and authority and His steadfast love for His people. And it's unthinkable to me, and apparently is unthinkable to Hosea, and certainly is unthinkable before God, that Jeroboam would build up these high places, these places of Canaanite worship, which they had conquered. and put a calf on it and say, here are the gods that brought you out of Israel. I'm going to jump off of that hobby horse for a minute, as much as I want to keep preaching against it, because there's a lot of text. But I want to impress on you, this was no small thing that Jeroboam had done. And so the summary of Jeroboam II's reign, decades of being king in Israel, is reduced in 2 Kings 14 to just a few verses that say he perpetuated the sins of his father. Eventually, not, by the way, his biological father, but his forefather. So Hosea warned Israel that because their outward prosperity had turned their hearts from the Lord to idolatry, the Lord would tear down the idols. And he makes this shocking statement in verse 2, that he would make them bear their guilt. Eventually, Israel would realize that they have a ruler, but they have no legitimate king like Yahweh, would have been their king. And their idols would be powerless to save them in the day of judgment. Now, sometimes there's a place you know, to come in here and start calling out idols. And that's a fun thing to do, you know, when you're preaching is to come up and call out idols, especially if you can avoid your own and just call out the idols of other people and say, your idol over here is football. Your idol over here is business. Your idol over here is networking and building relationships. Your idol is loving this thing and loving that thing and doing this and that. But I don't feel like I have to come up here and do that because you already know what your idols are. You don't need me to tell you what they are. You know, I've prayed, I was praying last night, I was praying this morning, God, there's one idol there that you can strike down. And maybe it's one of my idols, maybe it's something in me that I came, that I brought this morning, that I don't know what it is, but there's some idol that you can strike down in us. These idols are things that we love, and this is important to build on later in this passage, they are things that we love with the burning passion with which we should be pursuing a knowledge of God. So our ambitions may be our idols. Or whatever it is that our affections for comfort and pleasure are set upon, these things become our idols. When our love for God has to compete with anything else, those things are our idols. And we know what they are. So you hear the warning of the prophet this morning, that God is patient, but he will pour out his wrath against idols. Idolaters must, again in the words of verse 2, bear their guilt. If you go on to verse 5, it moves into a little bit of a new section. It says, the inhabitants of Samaria tremble for the calf of Beth-Avon. Its people mourned for it, and so do its idolatrous priests, those who rejoiced over it and its glory, for it has departed from them." Now, this is looking almost from a futuristic perspective. It's looking back from the perspective of the exile into the calamity that has fallen on Israel. The thing itself, that is the idol at Beth-Avon, shall be carried to Assyria as tribute to the great king. And Ephraim shall be put to shame, and Israel shall be ashamed of his idol. Samaria's king shall perish like a twig on the face of the waters. The high places of Avon, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed. Thorn and thistle will grow up on their altars, and they shall say to the mountains, cover us, and to the hills, fall on us." The prophet here paints, really, very pitiful picture of Israel's response to God's judgment. They're seen trembling when their calf or their calves are carried off in the war chest of the Assyrian king. Trembling with fear, but also trembling with the look of someone who has just seen their wife carried off by a warlord to a foreign country and they're powerless to stop him or intervene. And you would think that their response when the Assyrians plundered their cities and carry them off into captivity would be for them to weep in remorse over their sin. So when they think about their destruction, you think their response would be to say, Lord, we have sinned against you. And they put on sackcloth and ashes and rend their garments and do all of the things that they do in national repentance. And they are brokenhearted because they know how God has been patient and tender with them. And yet they've forfeited all of that in pursuit of these idols. But instead, they are weeping over the idols themselves, to which they ascribed honor and glory, which they loved. They're weeping because Israel would have a king no more, even though they recognized their king was ineffective and powerless. They were weeping because the priests would be priests no more. And notice that the prophet refers to Bethel, the house of God, as Beth-Avon, a house of wickedness. He won't even speak of Israel in her idolatry, in her adultery, as being the place where the true God is worshipped. And the altars there at Beth-Avon, the sin, singular, this is the sin of Israel. You don't want to be before the Lord with one thing that He can say, that is the sin of such and such people, or the sin of this person. This sin, this treachery, will be no more. Its altars will be covered, it says, in vines and weeds. The high places will be destroyed. Hosea warned Israel that their idolatry would result in their disgrace as the Lord poured out His wrath against them. There's even eschatological language here. And of course, Jesus later uses this to describe the persecution that would follow his death and resurrection. And you can go to Luke 23 and you can read about it there, where Jesus is using this kind of language, this imagery of the hills covering us and the mountains falling upon us to describe the persecution that was going to come in the days that immediately followed his resurrection. And I'm sorry, because there's one or two or three post-millennialists I'm going to offend this morning, but he's even looking to the end of time. He's even looking beyond the persecution that would happen to the people walking with him. And he's saying the trajectory from his death and resurrection to the end of time is going to culminate in a time where God's people say, I wish that the hills would cover us and the mountains would fall upon us, that it would be preferable to die than to live and suffer. I shudder. I still shudder. when I think about the Jewish women that are walking with Jesus, and you remember they had to take the cross off of them and put it on Simon, and they're making their way to Calvary, and he turns around and he says to them, of course, a time's coming when they're going to call out for the mountains and the hills, but he asked the women this, if they do this while the wood is green, what are they going to do to it when it's dry? That puts a little chill in you. You go, wow, God's wrath is going to be poured out against Israel with that kind of ferocity, with that kind of intensity that the people will flee and say, cover us up with the hills and mountains because death is preferable to a life of idolatry. The Israelites should rejoice, of course, at the destruction of their idols, but that's not how idolatry works. Instead, they weep because these things which they passionately love are being stripped away from them. This is the cost of our unconfessed, unrepentant idolatry. God is patient with us. And I feel like I can't say that enough. Maybe it's to try to balance out all of the judgment that's put forward in the book of Hosea. But God is patient. He is kind. He is a gracious and compassionate God. His love abounds to thousands and His mercy to ten thousands. He is long suffering with His people who are sinners. But He will put us to shame for our idolatry. That's how God pours out His wrath against us, as He brings us out into disgrace. Look at verse 9. From the days of Gebeah you have sinned, O Israel, and there they have continued. Shall not the war against the unjust overtake them in Gebeah? When I please, I will discipline them, and nations will be gathered against them when they are bound up for their double iniquity. Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thrash, and I spared her fair neck, but I will put Ephraim to the yoke. Judah must plow, and Jacob must harrow for himself." There was a time, even though it feels and it literally is hundreds of years prior to this, when Israel was living comfortably in the safety and peace of the covenant that they had made with God. And this particular language here may not sound all that affectionate to us, but it's really tender the way that the Lord describes His affection for His people. Even when He says something like, Ephraim was a trained calf that loved to thrash, and I spared her fair neck. So I invite you, I even challenge you to write that on a card, send it to your wife with a bouquet of flowers. I also strongly encourage you to make sure your affairs are in order before you send that to her on your anniversary. But this language is tender. It's tender. God loves Israel. Even to this moment, even up to this moment of this prophecy, God loves her. And He looks at her and He can remember, and they should be able to remember, walking in the safety of their covenant with God. But that's far in the past. And those days, by the time of Hosea, are long gone. He looks back all the way to the time of Judges and invokes, arguably, the most reprehensible, grotesque story in the Old Testament. And if you go back and you can read, like you could go home and read Judges 19, 20, 21, where this story is told, I give it to you in the shortest of bullet points and oversimplification, but a Levite man goes, he gets a runaway concubine, takes her out of her father's house, He's traveling through the town of Gebea, has to stay there for the night. An older man invites him into the house so he doesn't stay in the city square, which he didn't understand at first, but soon came to understand why that was. And pretty soon the man is sitting in a house, it's surrounded by men who are insisting that the Levite man be sent out so that they can have homosexual relations with him. And the man refuses, but says, I'll offer you my daughter instead, and the man's concubine. And eventually, they settle for just the Levite man sends his concubine out there. They sexually abuse her to death in the night. And in the morning, the man wakes up and sees what's happened, travels back home, dissects her into 12 pieces and sends her remains out with a message to all the other tribes of Israel to say, this little village in Gebea, a city of Benjamin, has perpetuated this evil and they have to pay for it. And the other tribes agree. And so they amass an army, they go out to Benjamin. Benjamin says, we will not send the perpetrators out to you. And so this sparks a war. They plunder, after a series of events and interventions, they plunder the Benjaminites. and don't totally wipe them out, but they have to provide wives for them in the aftermath. And it's a civil war, even within the context of Israel's tribes. It's just a really massive story. And I think that the prophet invokes it for two reasons. Number one, he's going back. You realize he's going way back. past Jeroboam, past the United Monarchy, back to the earliest days of Israel being constituted as something of a nation, and saying from that time all the way up to now, you have been a wicked people. But I think the second reason is really the primary reason, and that is because the Israelites are familiar with this story. It's one of the worst in Israel's history. And they're used to hearing that story and thinking of themselves as the heroes within it. The evil Benjaminites did this thing, and our tribes went to them and demanded that they hand over the perpetrators, and when they wouldn't hand over the perpetrators, we took them by force, and we administered justice. But in this story, they are the Benjaminites. They are the people of Gebea. who have perpetuated wickedness after wickedness, and their evil is no less than the evil of the people of Gebeah. This is like the moment when Nathan tells David, you are the man. God is saying, you are the Benjaminites. He's going to send the Assyrians to plunder and conquer them, because all the way from that time to the present, real justice has not been administered in the land. They still have not really satisfied the injustice that happened at Gebea. But you know, for every story of Gebea that's written down, what's not written down? What happened that wasn't being told? What was happening behind? You see somebody on the news and they are finally arrested because they've committed some great fraud or some great abuse. Do you think they were caught for the one and only that they perpetuated? No, behind the scenes is where all of the filth really lies. And now in that story of Gebeah, the prophet Hosea is pushing it back to them and saying, you are the ones who have committed this wickedness against the Lord. Hosea warned them that God had been long-suffering, but that their judgment was overdue. And I hesitate, I hesitate to use the word overdue. You've got scholars like Ryan Bush here this morning, and he might think of that and go, overdue? You know, everything happens in God's providential timing. Everything's right on. And that's true. But from the perspective of Israel, wasn't it time to settle accounts? From the perspective of a scorned husband, bearing with his unfaithful wife, wasn't it time that justice would be done? Their judgment, of course, was not just on account of their idolatry and their general wickedness, but because of their prideful obstinance. Y'all knew I was going to come back to that term, and I am going to explain it a little bit. Jump down with me to verse 13. You have plowed iniquity, you have reaped injustice, you've eaten the fruit of lies because you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors. Therefore, the tumult of war shall rise among your people and all your fortresses will be destroyed. As Shalman destroyed Beth Arbel in the day of battle, mothers were dashed in pieces with their children. Thus shall it be done to you, O Bethel, because of your great evil at dawn, the king of Israel will be utterly cut off. The agricultural metaphor here is satisfying because it's easy to understand and it's easy to explain. When you go out and you plow up the ground, and you take in your hand little seeds of unrighteousness, and you cast them out there, and the rain falls on it, and the sun touches the blades of grass as they come out of the ground, that injustice is going to grow, and what are you going to reap? You're going to reap what you've sown, right? That's what Hosea is telling them. What lay at the heart of Israel's wickedness and their idolatry was this, in verse 13, that you have trusted in your own way and in the multitude of your warriors. So at the heart of Israel's evil was this prideful obstinance that they could do things on their own terms, they could do them in their own power, their own way, and that they did not need the Lord to lead them. And the Lord was threatening to strike directly at this sense, this prideful sense of self-sufficiency. They took pride in their warriors so war would come. They took pride in their fortifications so the Assyrians would destroy their fortifications. The prophet references some event that to you and I has been lost to history but apparently would have elicited a visceral response in the people when he says, Shalman destroyed Beth Arbel in the day of battle and the mothers were dashed to pieces with their children. And thus shall it be done to you. Reading the Bible sometimes desensitizes you to such. unthinkable, really unthinkable statements. The mothers and their children were dashed to pieces, and so too will you be. I keep using this term, prideful obstinance, and I'm betraying myself a little bit, but frankly, because I can't think of a better way to describe what's happening in this situation. So Merriam defines obstinance as stubbornly adhering to an opinion, a purpose, or a course of action in spite of reason, arguments, or persuasion. My definition of prideful obstinance is stubbornly adhering to a course in spite of reason because our judgment is so clouded and our hearts are so darkened with sin that we can't think to turn from our own way to pursue the Lord. And that's Israel. That's really the history of Israel in a six minute lesson is prideful obstinance. This determination that they're going to live so mired in sin that they can't think their way out of it. They can't imagine what it would be like to step out of it and pursue the Lord again. God is patient with us. But you need to know that he will tear down our prideful obstinance. that if we insist on living in sin in our own way, he will mete out his judgment against us. Well, this is pretty bleak, and I knew it would be by this point. And so I hope Jeff is going to preach on something really upbeat this morning. If not, I'm going to go to him and say, Jeff, we need a good just hallelujah, the Lord is going to return and take us home kind of message this morning. If God is patient, but he will punish our idolatry, if he's patient, but he will put us to shame for our idolatry, If he is patient, but he will tear down our prideful obstinance, how exactly are we supposed to conclude this message? Well, I'm gonna take you back to verse 12, which even though it's in the middle of the passage, really serves as its logical fulcrum and serves as its conclusion. In verse 12, it says, so for yourselves righteousness, reap steadfast love. Break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord that he may come and reign righteousness upon you. This verse reads so much like verse 13. The same principles apply, the same metaphors are in play here in terms of what Israel was being commanded to do. and unbelievably in spite of all that they had done to offend the Lord and to break their covenant with them, Hosea assured the people that God was steadfastly loyal to them and that he would relent from his anger if they would turn to him. They had been sowing seeds of iniquity and reaping lies, but if they would go back to those same fields, if they would take the plow out, and if they would furrow the ground underneath, and if they would put out seeds of justice, if they would redo what they had done, that God would hear them and they would reap his steadfast love. In the face of imminent judgment, Hosea was inviting the people to change course. And of course, this wasn't an easy thing. It wasn't a quick thing. They had to uproot centuries of idolatry here. They would have to depose their king in order to do this. They would have to get rid of all of their priests. They would have to tear down all of their places of worship. So it wasn't a small undertaking to return to the worship of Yahweh, but they could do it. They could heed His words. They could return to worshiping Yahweh as was governed by the Torah. They needed to cover themselves in ashes, rend their clothes, repent, but in spite of all their rebellion and idolatry and prideful obstinance, if they would do it, God would lavish His love upon them. There are many parents here this morning. I'm a parent. Sometimes I will, and we have one child that is, she is so tender hearted. It's just, if it falls on the floor, it breaks in a million pieces. And if she's about to walk into danger, and I just say to her, stop, she thinks I'm getting onto her, right? And you can see it in her eye, and she just melts into just a puddle there. And she doesn't even want to pick her eyes up and look at me because she thinks I'm mad at her, right? And so I'll have to get down on a knee and I'll have to look at her and say, I'm not getting on to you. I just don't want you to, you know, walk off the porch or stick your hand in that outlet or whatever crazy thing she's about to do. And so I'll look at her and I'll say, I'm not about to get on to you. And that's when the tears start flowing because all the emotion that was pent up, now it just comes out. And God is looking at Israel and saying, in spite of all of this, all of it, if you would repent, I would have you back in a moment. I would lavish my love upon you. There may be this morning these unconfessed, unrepentant idolatries, this prideful obstinance that you have brought with you. And you might have brought those things with you this morning and you didn't even know it. You didn't even know they made the trip. With this very message of Hosea, that judgment is at the door, yet God is eager to forgive, has a name here. We call it the gospel of Jesus Christ. The promise of God to those who turn from their idolatry and repent of their prideful obstinance is that He will rain righteousness upon them. He will cover us, not in our own righteousness, but in the righteousness of His perfect Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Wrath is still poured out, by the way, but it's not poured out on us. It is poured out on Jesus in our place. What a mystery this is, that God would cover us in the righteousness of His Son, who bore God's wrath against us in our place. Such a thing leaves you almost speechless. But as y'all know, preachers are never speechless. There's always more to say. In spite of our sin, God is patient with us. and has invited us to turn to him. And the scriptures say of the Lord Jesus that whoever believes in him will not be put to shame. Ron, would you come and lead us in prayer?