Summary: Exposition and Application of the Book of Hosea

By

Pastor Bob Marcaurelle

Hosea-The Hurt of God Sermon 1

Hosea 1:1-2

THE TIMES AND TEARS OF HOSEA

Picture the scene. The house is dark. The children are in a bedroom crying. The pastor has been called in. The wife stands across the room and never looks him in the eye. The husband sits in front of him with his face in his hands, sobbing. He looks at his pastor and at his wife and says, “Why did you do this? How can you leave me? How can you do this to the kids?” It’s an old story and a familiar one, this wife sought and found love outside of her husband’s arms and now she was ready to give up all the people in her home for the arms of her lover.

Can anything good come out of this? I’m happy to say God can mend such a mess, and that man and his children can rebuild their lives. This same kind of thing happened nine hundred years before Christ, and in the broken hearted husband of that ancient home, the soul of a preacher was born. His name was Hosea and this is how God called him, “When the Lord first spoke through Hosea He said, ‘Go and take a wife of adultery (harlotry) for yourself and have children of harlotry for the people have turned from the Lord to harlotry.” So he went and married Gomer.” (1:2-3a).

The Jerusalem Bible puts it very graphically,

“Go, marry a whore and get children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning Yahweh.”

Some people feel that God would never tell anyone to marry a harlot, and thus we have here the fact that Hosea married a pure, chaste Hebrew girl, who later betrayed him, and went after other lovers. It was then that God showed him that this would be used to make him not only a better person, but a prophet who knew something of the pain in God’s heart. The language of the text, however, seems to indicate that Gomer was an immoral woman when Hosea married her. Either way, Hosea learned to love her as she became the mother of his three children. Since only the first one born “to Hosea” (1:3)) the probability is, the other two were not his, but the result of illicit love affairs. But this great man loved them as his own and loved their mother. In Hos. 2:1, after she has left them and the court day came for the divorce, he tells the children, “Plead with your mother, plead. . .” In 2:8, after she fell on hard times, Hosea saw that she received things like grain, oil and wine, so she could have some of life’s essentials. Years later, she hit rock bottom. Hos. 8:9 says she had to pay men to make love to her. Then, to pay her debts, and with no one to help her, she sold herself into slavery. She was a piece of trash dirty men could buy and sell and do with what they pleased. And what did Hosea do then? We read it in 3:1-2 as God says to him,

“Go again (Like he did when God called him to marry her in 1:2), and love this woman, who is loved by others, this adulteress. Love her like the Lord loves the people of Israel, though they turn to other gods.”

Hosea found her naked (2:3) on the slave block, scraped together enough money to buy her back, and took her back into his home and heart (3:3-5).

That’s the tragic story of Hosea, found in the first three chapters of his book. But it is also the tragic story of God and Israel; of God and Judah; of God and you and me; and anyone and everyone who tramples on Him and His blessings, and turns to walk in the ways of the world. But thank God, it can be the triumphant story of salvation, for we have a God who will come to us, as we stand used and abused and naked in sin’s slavery. Like Hosea loved Gomer, He loves us. Like Hosea paid the price for Gomer’s release, in Jesus, He pays the price of ours. The question for each of us is whether our life will be the tragedy of sin or the triumph of salvation. To answer that look first at. . .

I. THE APPROACHING SADNESS (1:12; 2 Kn. 17)

Verse one sets the general time of Hosea between 787-715 B.C., the Eighth Century. That era could be compared to a steep roof going up, up, up to success under Jeroboam (786-746) and Uzziah in the South (783-742). But with their deaths it plunged down, down, down to the sadness of Israel’s destruction in 722 and the Judah’s subjection. In 722 God destroyed the Northern Kingdom, Israel, that had been set up 200 years before, in 922 by Jeroboam I. The Assyrian storm troopers marched against Israel for years, then weak king after weak king came after Jeroboam II, until the finally came twenty years after his death and destroyed cities, captured the people of god, deported most of them to foreign countries, and settled foreigners, with their gods, in the land (2 Kn. 17). The prophets warned about it and saw it as a work of God. Isaiah called Assyria “the rod” of God (Isa. 10:5).

Why did God destroy His own people? To answer that we have to go back 400 years, to Mount Sinai, where God delivered Israel from Egypt. Through Moses in Ex. 19:3-6 He issued a covenant challenge that would make them His special people and would require obedience. The people agreed and then God warned them of the terrible consequences of disobedience, of following the worship and the ways of the gods of the of the Canaanites, where they would live. God promised in Deut. 28, “You will be cursed in the country and in the city. . .The Lord will drive you into a nation unknown to you . . .you will be come a thing of horror and the object of scorn and ridicule to the nations where the Lord will drive you” (Deut. 28:15-16; 36-37). God gave them a song about this in Deut. 32, so they would never forget it, but they did. Ignoring the song and the sermons of the prophets, they followed the ways of earthly gods and God destroyed them as He promised.

II. THE APPLAUDED SUCCESS (1:1; 2 Kn. 14:23-29)

It was against this awful background of doom that Jonah, Hosea and Amos preached in the North and Isaiah and Micah preached in the south. We can only guess, but it seems that Hosea, stirred by Amos, who blew out of Judah into Israel like a tornado around 765-760, preached from that time to over forty years later, during and after the fall of his nation. Like Jeremiah would do in Judah, a century later, he witnessed to, warned and wept over his decadent nation until he watched it die at the hands of God. As Gomer had been dragged into slavery, they would be dragged into slavery.

The problem, for Hosea and all these other prophets, was that the people never saw it coming. They did not believe all these hell-fire and damnation preachers. Hosea, speaking probably from personal experience, says in 9:7 the prophet is called a “fool” and a “maniac.” The people liked the sermons of the cult preachers who Jeremiah said, “preached peace, peace, where there was no peace.” (Jer. 6:14).

What blinded the people was the unparalleled success and growth and prosperity in the first half of the century. Assyria, the monster nation of that day, was busy with internal problems and resisting her foes from the North. Syria had been crushed by Assyria. Egypt was weak, And so Jeroboam restored the Kingdom of Israel so that it covered all the land David had controlled, except for the tiny province of Judah (2 Kn. 14:23-29). Israel, free to buy and sell and induce and protect merchants from all over the world, had prosperity like never before. The people, if we asked them how it was with them, could have cried, “It is the best of times. God is showering us with blessings on top of blessings.” They filled the worship centers to praise Him (Amos 4:4). But friends, God doesn’t see things like we do. Prosperity, safety and gaiety and even having a lot of people coming to church, are not necessarily signs of His favor, even though that may be what you hear every day on religious TV programs. God saw this success as only apparent, for when it came to the spiritual, it was coupled with. . .

III. THE ADULTEROUS SINS (Read 1:2)

God showed Hosea that what Gomer had done to him, Israel had done to God. God described Gomer and Israel here with the worst possible words. Gomer was not a good girl who slipped up in the passion of the moment. She was “a prostitute” (Davies) and Israel committed the “vilest adultery” (NIV). The Jerusalem Bible captures the meaning, “Go, marry a whore and get children with a whore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whore by abandoning Yahweh.” The Eighth Century, like the days before the flood, like the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, like the days when Jesus walked the earth, like the days just before He comes again and like the days in which we live, were days when sin reached fever pitch and hell was literally spilling over on earth. That’s why God sent the flood on Noah’s generation, the fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, the Roman Army on Jerusalem in A.D. 70, why He will send Jesus back in flaming fire (2 Th. 1) and why He sent Assyria in 722.

There were many sins in Hosea’s day like crime (4:2); bloodshed (4:2); oppression of the poor (Amos 5:11); prostitution in the houses of God where they worshipped Him and Baal as one and the same (4:14-15). We will look at these and others in the days ahead, but today we look at the ROOT that produced the rotten FRUIT, what God calls SPIRITUAL ADULTERY. God said “the land has committed the vilest adultery in forsaking Me.” (1:2).

Now this is not just sexual sin, although it includes it. It is the creature, man, being unfaithful to the God who made him and blessed him with life in this world. It is the child of God, whether he is an Old Testament or a New Testament sing, turning to admire or to walk in the ways of the world that hates and opposes God. From the very day God called Israel as a nation He saw Himself in competition with gods men make for themselves. His very first commandment was, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3). From the very first, He saw going after these other gods as “playing the harlot” (Ex. 34:15; Lev. 17:7; 20:5; etc.), “unfaithfulness” (2 Ch. 21:13) and here “adultery.” Jesus drew on this and called His sign seeking generation “adulterous” (Mt. 12:39) and James 4:4 puts it best, “You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you realize that whoever chooses to be the friend of the world, makes himself the enemy of God?” It is obvious from the context that James is not talking here about loving PEOPLE but their sinful ways. The term ADULTERY bring out the true character of sin, first in. . .

1. Who It Is We Worship (Dt. 31:17). The god of the Canaanite people, worshipped as a local god on every high hill in the land, was called BAAL. The name means “master, possessor or husband” (NBD) and he was the offspring of “El” the most high god and Asherah. He was the god of thunder and rain and represented crops, fertility, prosperity, money and wine. His sister, ASTARTE, who was his wife, was a cruel goddess, who piled up human heads and carried sacks of human hands (Old Testament Times, Harrison), To have crops and wine and plenty, the people carried out all sorts of horrible rituals. They had temple prostitutes and the way to get a good crop was to join yourself to one (Dt. 23:17). To get Baal’s attention, they slashed their bodies with knives (Lev. 19:28; 1 Kn. 18:28). And worst of all, they burned little children, boys and girls, alive as sacrifices (2 Kn. 17:17). They made images of Baal in the form of calves (2 Kn. 17:16) symbolizing fertility. The goddess Asherah often was drawn as naked. No wonder, when God gave Moses the song in Dt. 32, to warn them against Baal worship, He said, “THEY SACRIFICED TO DEMONS” (Dt. 32:17). Satan was the real god in Canaan.

We are mindful of unspeakable things like this going on today in America, in the horrible rituals of Satan worship. But you do not have to go out in a field and slit the throats of cats to have Satan worship. Satan is much too wise to limit himself to such obvious evils. He is called the prince (Jn. 12:31) and god of this world of ours (2 Cor. 4:4). This angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) as Paul calls him, does his worst damage when he uses beautiful words and even church words to get us to worship gods other than the God of the Bible and His Son Jesus and sometimes we call this false god JESUS, as when Paul said the Judaizers preached “ANOTHER” Jesus (2 Cor. 11:4). That’s why Paul told Timothy, “In the last days, some will abandon the faith and follow spirits who deceive and THINGS TAUGHT BY DEMONS” (1 Tim. 4:4). It is demon worship to worship Satan in horrible ways. It is also demon worship to be unreligious and give yourself solely to the things of this world, worshipping it. And it is demon worship to worship your god outside of authoritative truth of God’s word and the atoning blood of God’s Son. Not every JESUS you hear preached from “Christian” pulpits is the Jesus of the Book and the Blood.

Let me tell you about two demon worshippers. A young woman in the New Port Beach Marriott Hotelwoke up alone. Her lover, Dave, was gone and all that was left was a note saying, “It’s been fun! Dave.” She had met Dave at a health club, fell in love and left her job, her husband and her two preschool children to be with him. And this was what she got. She went over to the desk, pulled a gun from her purse and ended her life. The note she left said, “Don’t weep for me. I am no longer human.” She worshipped Satan’s altar of LUST.

Four floors down, while she lay bleeding, others worshipped at Satan’s altar of LIES. While they took her body down on the elevator and passed the rooms four floors below, a well known Hollywood celebrity was conducting a “New Age” seminar. As the participants left, their last exercise was to raise their hands and chant three times, “I am god! I am god! I am god!” How ironic that Satan, with his vast power, could have people a few feet from each other, with one saying, “I am nothing!”, and the others, “I am god.” When we choose to disobey God or to worship Him apart from Who He says He is in the Bible, we worship Satan and fall into His trap.

There was a funeral in our area a while back and it was strange indeed, for it was held by a religious group and the names of God and Jesus were never used. There was a reading from the man’s denomination that was entitled “WE REJOICE!” And these are some of the things listed: the quiet night, rest from toil, the earth with its hills and valleys, the strength to win our daily bread, the love of fathers and mothers, the children who bless our homes, friends, etc. It’s hard to argue with that! You and I rejoice over all these. But we know that they come from the God who wrote the Bible and died on the cross to save us. If we worship these instead of Him and if we see this affirmation of life as enough to atone for our sins - with all its beauty, this is the doctrine of demons. Remember who it is we worship as spiritual adulterers, and. . .

2. Who It Is We Wound (1:2; Ch. 11). The word “adultery” points to broken promises, blasted dreams and aching hearts. It points to someone we hurt. And that’s what we do to God when we turn our backs on Him. Hosea’s heart was broken when Gomer left and God showed him His heart is broken when people leave Him. That’s why in 2:2 God is pictured as a husband pleading with his wife to come back and in Ch. 11 as a Father tortured (11:8) by his son’s leaving. Next week we will see how this suffering God moves out to save. But for now, let’s see sin as Hosea saw it, in what Gomer did to him. Let’s see it as ingratitude and rebellion against a God who loves us and is therefore vulnerable to be hurt by us.

And we who live on this side of the New Testament, who have received the full revelation of God in Jesus, are the worst kind of spiritual adulterers. Why? Because we turn our backs on the cross, where God loves us enough to suffer and die in our place so we might come home. In her book The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom tells of the time she and her sister were forced to remove their clothes and stand naked during a typical Nazi inspection. Miss ten Boom said she stood there feeling defiled and forsaken. Then she remembered something. Jesus hung naked on the cross. Suddenly her emotion turned to wonder and worship when she thought of how He chose to do what they were forced to do. She leaned forward and whispered to her sister, “Betsie, they took His clothes, too.” Betsie gasped and said, “Oh, Corrie, that’s right, and I never thanked Him.” The best way we can thank Him is to love Him and serve Him and trust Him. And when we don’t, when we do that which displeases Him or choose a worship that by-passes Him, what we say is, “I don’t care!” We become spiritual adulterers sinning against love.

Hosea-The Hurt of God Sermon 2

Hos. 1:1-2:1; 3:1-5

WHEN GOD SAVES US FROM GOD

We have looked at the TRAGEDY in the life of Hosea and God, as those they loved went away from them. This is the picture of a suffering God. But today we move on to the TRIUMPH that can be ours, from the God who not only suffers but saves. Hosea never stopped loving Gomer and he went to where she was to get her back. God never stops loving you and me and He comes to where we are to get us back. He could be coming to you today, in this message. Continuing through chapter one we come next to. . .

IV. THE APPOINTED SUFFERING (1:2-9; 3:1-3)

When Gomer went to other lovers and then left home to pursue more, she hurt everybody - her husband, her children and even herself. She paid sin’s bitter price, when in chapter three, we see her as a naked, helpless slave going to the highest bidder. Where there is sin there is always suffering.

People with full bank accounts, healthy bodies and nice houses have a hard time believing God is mad with them, especially if they go to church and halfway worship Him, like Israel did. The prophets went to extreme measures to get their message across. Isaiah walked around “naked” (Isa. 20. I hope that means he had his underwear on), for three years to show the people how they would look going into exile. Jeremiah wore a wooden yoke (Jer. 27-28) and Ezekiel cooked his meals over cow manure (Ezek. 4). What Hosea did was give his three children names that described what God would do. The first child, a boy, he named JEZREEL, and this points to. . .

1. The Dispersion From the Land (Read 1:4-5; See 2 Kn. 10). Jezreel was a town with a beautiful valley, a few miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee. The word means “God scatters” and this pointed Israel to the punishment God decreed as far back as Dt. 4:27, namely “to scatter them among the nations.” Every time they saw this preacher’s son they would be reminded of the upcoming RESULT of their sin. But there was something else God added in this name here, one of the REASONS for punishment. When Jehu, the first King of Jeroboam’s line, seized the throne from Ahab in 842, he enacted the bloodiest days of civil war in Israel’s history, and it took place in beautiful Jezreel. He crushed Jezebel’s body for the dogs to eat (2 Kn. 9:30-37). He had the 70 young sons of Ahab killed, decapitated and then piled their heads by Jezreel’s city gate. Then the next morning he killed every relative Ahab had left. Now it was God’s will for Jehu to take the throne of Ahab, but he gloried in the slaughter and savagery had become a way of life in the North. Hosea said in 4:2, “. . .they break all limits, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.” God says, “I will break Israel’s bow in the valley of Jezreel” (1:5). Jezreel was the site of many battles and no doubt Assyria conquered Northern armies here more than once in taking the land. When you and I hurt others, God gives us time to repent, to make restitution, and to apologize. But if we don’t we will one day answer to Him. They would be dispersed for their cruelty.

2. The Defection From the Love (Read 1:6-7). When Gomer gave birth next to a little girl, it was not said that she bore it to Hosea. The Lord told Hosea to name her LO-RUHAMA, NOT PITIED. The explanation is all negative. God says, “I will not pity . . . I will not show love. . . I will not forgive. . . I will not save them from Assyria like I will save Judah. God spared Judah so His people would know it was not the might of Assyria that brought them down but the absence of His help. In fact, twenty years after Israel fell, in 701, Sennacherib of Assyria sent 185,000 troops against Jerusalem and boasted that he had Judah’s king, Hezekiah, shut up like a bird in a cage. Hezekiah and Isaiah, his pastor, took the problem to God and the angel of the Lord killed all 185,000 Assyrian soldiers in one night. Vance Havner said the only problem Judah had with Assyria’s soldiers was burying them.

3. The Disowning By the Lord (1:8). The shortest and saddest of these verses is 1:8. Right after the second child, to show how soon this would follow the defeat and deportation, we read, “After she had weaned NO PITY, Gomer had another son and the Lord said, ‘Call him LO-AMMI, NOT MY PEOPLE, for you are not my people and I am not your God’” (1:8). This happened HISTORICALLY to the Northern Kingdom as they were soon absorbed into foreign nations and to those who were left behind, as they were absorbed by incoming foreigners, and made up the half-breed Samaritans we find in Jesus’ day, who were neither Jew nor Gentile.

But this happens to people today SPIRITUALLY when they reject God’s New Covenant in Jesus Christ and wind up in hell as the people of Satan. God does for the human race, for you and me, exactly when He did for Israel. He OVERLOOKS OUR SIN for a while as He did the sin of Jehu. Saul had the blood of Christians on his hands as he traveled the road to Damascus. But God put up with him and forgave all his sins and made him into Paul. God LOVES our rebellious world, like He loved Judah and Israel throughout generation after generation of rebellion. The greatest verse in the Bible says of the world that killed God’s Son, “For God so loved the world that He sent His Son. . .” (Jn. 3:16). God also DOES GOOD for us, as times without end, He spared Judah and Israel from their enemies. Paul told his people, “Do you show contempt for His rich kindness. . . Don’t you know God’s kindness is leading you toward repentance?” (Rom. 2:4).

With so much love, forgiveness, and kindness flowing from God, how did Israel miss it? How do we? By sinning so much that God stops loving us? No! We have only to look at chapter three and see God telling Hosea to love Gomer on the slave block like He loves Israel, to disprove that (3:1). We have only to look at the cross and hear Jesus cry, “Father, forgive them!” (Lk. 23:24) to disprove that. No. We miss God’s love because we reject God’s love. And one reason we do this, is a final result of sin found back in verse 3. God said, “The land is guilty of THE VILEST ADULTERY in departing from the Lord” (NIV). Here we have. . .

4. The Depravity Within the Lost (1:2; 2 Kn. 17:15-18). The reason Israel couldn’t last and couldn’t receive love was that she became utterly corrupt and defiled, with no desire at all for the Lord, what the Bible calls the hardened heard (Heb. 3:7). God said judgement was comi8ng because they were guilty of the “vilest adultery” (1:2). In 5:4 he says, “Your deeds won’t permit you to return to God.” And in 9:10 He says, “They became as defiled as the thing they loved.” The writer of 2 Kings pictures the awful depths that caused the fall,

“They followed worthless idols and became worthless themselves. . . they forsook all the commandments of the Lord their God. They made golden calves. . . They worshipped all the host of heaven and served Baal. They burned their sons and their daughters as sacrifices. They used divination and sorcery and sold themselves to do evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking Him to anger. Therefore. . .the Lord removed them out of His sight until nothing was left but the tribe of Judah.” (2 Kings 17:15-18)

Sin, what we become, is its own punishment. See Gomer paying to have men love her (8:10). See her as a naked slave (2:3; 3:1-5). See that young wife and mother I mentioned last week, write “I am nothing!” and end her life. And you will see what the Bible means by “The wages of sin is death!” (Rom. 6:23A). Aren’t you glad the words are followed immediately in the same sentence, by “but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23)? And that is exactly what we find in Hosea. Right after God says, “You are not my people and I am not your God” in 1:9, He does a 180 degree turn in verse 10 and says in 1:10-2:1, He will undo everything He has just done in punishment. Thus we have. . .

V. THE AVAILABLE SALVATION (1:10-2:1; 3:1-5)

Hosea’s name means “salvation” and his is a book of salvation. Before we look at it, however, we need to discuss a problem we find. In 1:9-2:1 and 3:4-5, like many other Old Testament salvation passages, people disagree about whether the reference is to Jews nationally or to the church spiritually. Both views have Biblical support and these passages are a good example. Look at God’s promises here. (1) To keep His promise to Abraham, the Israelites will be gathered and be as numerous as grains of sand on the seashore (1:10). (2) The people called NOT MY PEOPLE will be called “sons of the living God” (1:10) and “my people” (2:1). (3) The people of Judah and Israel will be united and follow one leader (1:11). (4) The people not loved (1:6) and NOT PITIED will be called MY LOVED ONE (2:1). (5) Chapter three gets more specific as Israel lives away from its worship for many days and then returns trembling to the Lord.

The problem with verses like these throughout the prophets is whether or not they apply to NATIONAL ISRAEL and are fulfilled partially when Judah comes out of exile in Babylon in 537 (2 Ch. 36: Ezra 1-10), and ultimately when Christ returns and sets up His millennial kingdom. The matter would be settled except for the fact that New Testament writers often apply the promises SPIRITUALLY to SPIRITUAL ISRAEL, the church, which it called “sons of Abraham” (Gal. 3:7), “Abraham’s seed” (Gal. 3:26-29), “true Jews” (Rom. 2:28-29), “the Israel of God” (Rom. 9:6-8), and “the twelve tribes” (Js. 1:1). An example of this is found right here in our passage. Paul, in Romans 9:25-27 quotes Hosea 2:1 and 2:23 and says God called “Jews and Gentiles” (9:24) into His church and the calling of Gentiles fulfills Hosea. “Those who were NOT MY PEOPLE, I will call MY PEOPLE.” (Rom. 9:25). Well, again, the matter seems settled except for the fact that one cannot read Romans 9-11 without believing that Paul believed and thus taught that Tod has some kind of future blessing for NATIONAL ISRAEL. He says in Romans 11, “Has God rejected His people? By no means! (11:1) . . . If their (the Jews) FAILURE means riches for the Gentiles (they are God’s people now), how much more will their (the Jews) FULL INCLUSION mean (11:12)?” Friends, we could argue until doomsday on this, but the best approach is to say, whoever God forgives and saves and blesses, I want to get in on it and I want to be used of God to get others in on it too. In this sermon and all others, we will not deny that God has something special ahead for the Jews, but we will apply salvation passages like this to our day. And what do they say to us?

1. The Reversal (1:10-2:1; 3:4-5). When we are saved all the effects of sin are reversed. Those who are not His people become children of God (1:10). Those outside the blessings of love come “trembling to the Lord and His blessings.” (3:5). There is A CHANGE OF STANDING. We are called “sons of the living God” (1:10). By whom? By the Father. We are pardoned, justified, cleansed, adopted and made holy the instant we believe. And there is a CHANGE OF STATE. We are changed. We who leave God so proudly come “trembling” (2:5) with His Holy presence. Had Paul been put to death on the Damascus Road by a fellow Pharisee when he yielded to Jesus, he would have gone to heaven as a spotless child of God. All the blood he shed was forgiven by the blood his Lord shed. That was his new standing. But Paul lived to serve His Lord faithfully to the end. That was his new state.

2. The Redemption (3:1-3). How does God do this? 1) Through the Presence of Love (3:1-2). Hosea was told to love this slave who loved the good things like the “raisin cakes” of the devil, and was hurt by it. Isn’t it wonderful, friends, that God doesn’t stop loving us when we put the good things of the world ahead of Him? I have witnessed to many people who were dying after a lifetime of neglecting God. Many are saved, thank God. But many do not come to the Lord because they feel it would be WRONG, it would be UNFAIR, to ask Him for forgiveness this late. Oh, friends, they do not know our God! They do not know our gospel. They do not know what GRACE is. God does not love us because we are lovable or because we deserve it. We are all unlovable and do not deserve Him, but He loves us because He IS love. I think of the Prodigal Son (Lk. 15). That boy still had the smell of the hogs on him when the father ran and threw his arms around him.

2) Through the Purchase of Love (3:2). The presence of love, as great as it is, is not enough to deliver us from our sins. All the love in the world would not have freed Gomer. A price had to be paid. Exodus 21:32 says thirty pieces of silver was the price of a female slave. Being a typical preacher he could only come up with half the money, so he scraped together enough barley to make up the difference. All the love in God’s heart could not save us from sin because His holy, righteous nature CANNOT let even one sin go unpunished. He says, “Bob Marcaurelle, you must die, not once, but twice for your sins. You must be punished in hell. You must answer for each and every time you did what was wrong!” What can I do? What can you do? Nothing! Who can save us from God? No one! No one, that is, but God Himself. Two thousand years ago, God came to this earth in Jesus Christ and paid our sin debt to Himself. God saves us from God in Jesus. And the question of all questions is, how can we receive it. Hosea tells us in his challenge to Gomer, it is through. . .

3. The Repentance (Read 3:3). Salvation is a wonderful gift but it has to be received and we so this by repentance and faith. We believe God and we are willing to turn from our sin to Him. Gomer had a probation time to think about whether she would give up her adulteries. We usually have that, too, when we are under the Holy Spirit’s convicting power. We don’t have to be ABLE to give up sin but we do have to be WILLING. And God gives us a choice. Which one have you made? We are not told here if Gomer went home. I hope she did. But many don’t. Many choose to remain in the filth of sin. There is a price to be paid for salvation and Jesus has paid it.

An angry young teenager told his dad, “I didn’t ask to be born!” “No, you didn’t,” his dad replied, “and if you had, we probably would have said, No!” We often wonder if anyone would CHOOSE to come to this sorrow filled world. In all of history, there was only one who did. His name was Jesus. And why did He come? For the same reason Hosea went to Gomer. The law said he could stone her but he didn’t go to stone her. He did not go to spit upon her or cry out, “I told you this would happen. You made your bed, now lie in it.” He went to love her and win her back.

That’s why Jesus came - not to stone or shame or sneer. A young boy who drives too fast, crashes, and lies bleeding behind the wheel doesn’t need a sermon on fast driving, he needs help. The sermons can come later. When we mess up our lives and stand guilty and shamed like Gomer, we need love and help. And we have it in Jesus. Someone put it this way. If our greatest need had been for INFORMATION, God would have sent us an EDUCATOR. If our greatest need had been for TECHNOLOGY, God would have sent us a SCIENTIST. If our greatest need had been for MONEY, God would have sent us an ECONOMIST. If our greatest need had been for PLEASURE, God would have sent us an ENTERTAINER. But since our greatest need is for FORGIVENESS, God sent us a SAVIOR.

When we look at Gomer we look into a mirror and see ourselves. But we also look through a window into the heart of God and see Christ, naked and bruised on the cross, “being made sin,” Paul says (2 Cor. 5:21), for us. We see God, in Christ, becoming what we are so we might become what He is. We see God’s love saving us from God’s wrath. Dr. Criswell tells of a pastor in a hospital room telling a teenage boy, dying with leukemia, how to be saved. He tells him to take Christ’s forgiveness and to ask and trust Him to make him the right kind of person. The young fellow said, “Pastor, is it really that easy?” The wise pastor answered, “Yes, son, it is.” And then he added, “It is easy for you, but it was not easy for Him. It cost Him His Son.”

Hosea-The Hurt of God Sermon 3

Hosea 2:2-3:5

ONE GOOD THING ABOUT SIN

The old time Methodist evangelist Sam Jones had a hard and holy hatred of sin. He had a strange comment on Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to those who love God. . .” He said, “The one exception to this is SIN! Sin never has and never will work any good to anybody, anytime, anywhere.” Well, old Sam was wrong. Our great God can take even sin and use it to teach us some of life’s most helpful lessons, and bring us back to Him.

Our text is a case in point. Chapter two covers the same ground as chapter one - sin and suffering (2-13) and salvation for those who will accept it (2:14-3:5). But here we see how God works suffering into the heart and life of the sinner to bring him or her back. Look in verse two at THE PUNISHMENT, “I will strip her naked and expose her like the day she was born. I will make her like a wilderness and a desert land. I will slay her with thirst” (2:2). That’s horrible, isn’t it? No, that’s wonderful when we look in verses seven, fourteen and fifteen at THE PURPOSE:

“She will say, I am going back to my first husband, for I was better off then than now. . . (God says). . .I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. . .the valley of TROUBLE (ACHOR) will be a DOOR OR HOPE” (2:7, 14-15).

Gomer is the Old Testament prodigal, the female version of Jesus’ famous parable about every life - the prodigal son in Luke 15. You remember the story. The young son doesn’t hate or attack his father. He is just tired of all the restrictions and responsibilities in the father’s house and wants to be his own person. He wants to be free. So he takes what he calls his, leaves home and enjoys the newfound pleasures of pulling his own strings at last. But life is hard and we are no match for it, so the boy runs on some hard times and the new friends he made run out on him. He winds up on what would be the bottom of all bottoms for a Jew - eating with pigs. It would be like us eating with rats. There on rock bottom he learns some things. He learns that life wasn’t really so bad there in the father’s house and he learns that home is the one place he is loved, not for what he has or does but just for who he is. He returns home, and that father - who Grady Nutt says, looked down that road every day with binoculars - ran to meet him and threw the party of all parties. It is when the world runs out on us, when we are on rock bottom, that we often see our need of God and finally will listen to what He says. Look first at. . .

I. THE APPEAL OF FREEDOM (2:5)

Let’s don’t be hard on Gomer, friends. We have walked the road she walked - maybe not as far and maybe not as dirty, but we have all done our own thing apart from God and have come back to Him and come to love Him more when life kicks us in the teeth. All Gomer and the prodigal son wanted in life was to be happy. To find this, they, like the rest of us, wanted to be free to go and find it. That’s American to the core. In fact, we are guaranteed “life, liberty and the PURSUIT of happiness.” This usually leads us down two paths that Gomer walked, the path of power (I want to pull my strings for a change) and the path of pleasure (I have a right to be happy). We see this in 2:5 where we find her decision to leave Hosea.

“I will go after my lovers, who give me my food, my water, my wool, my oil and my wine (see verse 9).” (2:5)

1. The Path of Power - Humanism (2:5). The first word that jumps out of this is “I.” I will go! I will get my wool, I will get my water, I, I, I. Like the Prodigal Son, she said, “Give me what is mine!” Gomer was tired of everybody pulling her strings but Gomer. She stood up one dreary day and said, “Enough! From now on Gomer is in charge.” Jesus showed us this step toward happiness is the first step toward misery, but most people in the world would applaud her courage. They would get her to sing, “I am woman! Watch me soar!” as she walked through the door. Their parting words would be, “Good for you, girl, go for it!”

Not all of life’s prodigals are pleasure mad playboys and playgirls. Many are fine, decent folk who just don’t have time for or see the need for God. Dr. Ellis Fuller was right when he said the far country “is anywhere that a man tries to live without God.” It doesn’t have to be in some bar. It can be in classrooms where educators build their systems to meet only the needs of the mind. I can be in the moralists and philosophers who see knowledge as a savior for our ills. The Latin poet Ovid, however, said it well, “I see the better course and I approve it, but the worst is the one I follow.” It can be in American business, bowing down to the almighty dollar with the motto, “America’s business is business.” America got madder when a Japanese leader said our workers were lazy than when one of the Beatles said they were more popular than Jesus Christ. This shows where our priorities are. Everywhere we look in American society we see the absence of God and the worshippers of man’s self sufficiency. We see Gomers, doing their own thing and proud of it. If weaklings like Hosea need the crutch of religion, they say, so be it, but all I need is me. That’s the motto of the folk who laugh behind our backs for all we do in church and in the name of Christ. That’s the humanist attitude of superiority and self sufficiency. But there’s another prodigal path. . .

2. The Path of Pleasure - Hedonism (2:5). Gomer said she would go after “food. . .water. . .linen. . .oil and drinks (probably wine which is mentioned in verse 9).” She, like most of us, measured life in terms of the things that bring pleasure. She is what the Greeks called a hedonist - one who sees pleasure as the chief end in life. Hedonists say, “Grab all the gusto you can. . . You only go around once. . . Eat, drink and be merry.” That’s all Gomer wanted, a little pleasure in her drab life. I can hear her saying, “Life has to be more than washing a preacher’s socks and listening to him snore and cooking meals for three kids who never want what I’ve fixed or appreciate what I do.” That’s why Baal worship was so popular. It promised five things - prosperity, sexual pleasures, drunkenness with your friends (2:8, 11), fellowship and even religion. They could enjoy all this under the endorsement and safety of their JEHOVAH. How could they do this? Look at verse 16. When God truly saves His people he says, “You will no longer call Me, ‘my Baal’.” Church members are some of the worst pleasure seekers in the earth and they feel safe because they have created their own Jesus who endorses what they do. How else could an evangelist wear a three thousand dollar watch in a world where children are starving and see his watch as a gift from the Lord. You don’t believe that happens? Then watch religious TV for a week.

A retired couple drove through the North Georgia mountains to find a nice place for a retirement home. They saw a nice little house sitting high on a ridge between two mountains, with a breathtaking view in two directions. They drove up and spoke to the couple who lived there and said, “You have a beautiful location for a home. That’s what we’re looking for.” The man answered, “Thank you. It took us a while to find it. We wanted and found the best spot we could get for TV RECEPTION.” Surrounded by the beauty and bounty of God, what they prized most was what the world had to offer. Now there’s nothing wrong with a little TV to unwind, with ice cream, with ball games, with sex inside of marriage, with social clubs, with hobbies. God is not a kill-joy who wants us to walk around looking like we were born in a briar patch, weaned on a pickle, and baptized in vinegar. Pleasure is all right but when it becomes our god and our goal, that’s when life loses its meaning and worth-while-ness. That’s when the appeal of freedom turns into. . .

II. THE AFTERMATH OF FRUSTRATION (2:2-13)

The sad fact of life is that when we go out on our own to find happiness, we usually find misery. A truly happy person in America is a rarity. People are tired, bored and angry and nobody cares. A teacher, tired of her pupil’s lack of concern, wrote APATHY on the blackboard and stormed out. One kid, mispronouncing it, turned to a buddy and said, “What’s A-PAY-THEE?” The buddy says, “Who cares?” Life is frustrating and this chapter tells us why. When we leave God out we find first. . .

1. Dissatisfied Lusts (2:3, 6). We find hungers that can never be fed and thirsts that can never be quenched. In verse 3 God says, “I will make her like a desert. . . I will slay her with thirst.” In verse 6, “I will hedge her path with thorns and build walls so she can’t find her way.” It is a picture of total frustration, of blasted dreams, of seeking and never finding. This is what always happens when a human being, made in God’s image and made for God, seeks to find true life in the things of this world. And you don’t have to live in the gutter to do this. Lloyd Ogilvie says, “A mother whose children have become her only reason for being is no better than a prostitute whose men without meaning are a way to a meal.” He is right because both are children of a lesser god.

You and I will never serve a more cruel taskmaster than our depraved human nature. We can never give it enough of what it wants. If it takes money to make you happy than you will never have enough because somebody will always have more than you. If you expect your family to be the source of your happiness then get ready for a lot of heartache, because being imperfect like you, they will let you down. This is what the Book of Ecclesiastes means by “Chasing the wind” (Eccl. 2:14), used by Hosea in 12:1 for Israel. Chuck Swindoll calls Ecclesiast4s a sad “manual of horizontal living.” He pictures it for us, “A man never earns enough. A woman is never beautiful enough. Clothes are never fashionable enough. Cars are never nice enough. Food is never fancy enough. Relationships are never romantic enough.” (Living On the Ragged Edge, p. 21). A few years ago a famous writer committed suicide at the age of 62. Shortly before his death he shared his despondency with a friend, “What does a man care about? Staying healthy, Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven’t got any of them. Do you understand? None of them.” This points to the second frustration in the prodigal life. . .

2. Disappearing Loves (2:3, 7-9, 10-12). When we prize the things of this world, life will take them away from us. And when our gods are gone, so is our reason for living. This chapter is filled with disappearing gods or loves. Jesus said the prodigal “wasted his wealth in reckless living: and when all was gone “a mighty famine arose and he found himself in great need” (Lk. 15:13-14). The same thing happened to Gomer and Israel. We see God taking away clothes (v. 3), grain and oil and wine (V. 8) and all the joys of her agricultural celebrations (V. 11-12). And did you notice anything else? The Prodigal lost his friends and Gomer lost her fair weather lovers. Verse 7 says, “She will run after her lovers but will not catch them. She will look for them but not find them. “ Verse 10 tells us why, “I will uncover her lewdness (NIV) in the sight of her lovers.” This Hebrew word translated LEWDNESS or SHAME is full of meaning. Davies says it points to “senseless unruly behavior or any kind” with the contempt from others it leads to. What God says here to every world lover is that one day, when you’re all used up and have nothing left to offer, the world you love will stop loving you. When you can’t cut it any more it will have nothing but contempt.

If you worship possessions, your health care needs or your children will some day take them. If you worship position and pour your life’s blood into a company, they’ll be happy when you die or retire you early and hire younger men and women who are cheaper. If you worship the physical then every day you will watch it slip away. No matter how much makeup you wear or how much you exercise. If you worship pleasure then as you get less and less able to enjoy things you will turn into a miserable old grouch, sour on life, sitting around thinking about how good life used to be. Then the world you loved will no longer love you. Verse 10 says it will see your “lewdness”. Nobody loves a whining loser, not even the devil. But there is someone who does. For Gomer it was Hosea and her children and for Israel and you and me and all the Gomers of this world it is God. That’s why we see finally. . .

III. THE APPRECIATION OF FORGIVENESS (2:2; 14-23)

1. Remembering God’s Goodness (2:7, 2). When we reach rock bottom God wants us to look up and take our stand on the Rock of Ages. He wanted Israel to remember His goodness and say, “I will go back to my first husband” (2:7). He wanted Israel to remember His mercy. Verse two shows us this is a courtroom scene. The word “plead” is a courtroom word which means “rebuke” or “accuse” of “plead my cause” (NEB). It shows Hosea and the children in court with Gomer and shows Israel in court with God. Thus God is the plaintiff (Hosea) the prosecuting attorney and Judge. The crime of adultery was punishable by death (Lev. 19:20) but Hosea didn’t come to stone Gomer and God doesn’t come to stone us. Even in the divorce proceedings, he wanted her back. That’s why the KJV translates the word rebuke as “plead” because it goes with what follows. Hosea says to his three children.

“Plead with your mother, plead with her. For she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Let her take away the adulterous look from her face and the unfaithfulness from between her breasts.” (2:2)

2. Receiving God’s Blessings (2:2; 14-23; 3:1-5). If we will turn from sin God will give us His blessings on earth and in heaven. Verses 14-23 picture again (1:10-2:1) the new universe where God’s people will sing (v. 15) to the true God (v. 16), where men and animals (v. 18) live together in “righteousness, justice, loving kindness and compassion” (v. 19). Compare these verses with Rev. 21 and you’ll see that Hosea promises Gomer and Israel and you and me and everyone who has ever turned their backs on God, a heavenly home in a holy universe, if we will repent.

Preaching on this text, Ed Young of Houston, told of a young girl in England who got tired of home and one day left with a young man her parents did not approve of. Letters never came as the girl fell on hard times and was ashamed. Years went by and the parents, despite many efforts, could not find her. Late one night, after midnight, she made it, with the help of a friend, to the road in front of her house. As she walked closer, she sensed that something was wrong.

Her parents NEVER stayed up that late, they NEVER slept with the light on and they NEVER slept with their door unlocked. Fearing the worst, she hurried in and rushed upstairs only to find her mother and her dad sound asleep. She woke them up and love broke loose in laughter, tears and hugs. Finally the girl said, “Do you know that when you went to bed, you forgot to put out the light and you forgot to lock the door.”

That mother smiled and said, “Honey, we didn’t forget. Every night for the last nine years that light has been burning and the door has been unlocked, ready for the time when you would come home to us.” Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” On the cross, God turned the “come home” light on for you and for me.

Hosea - The Hurt of God Sermon 4

Hosea 4-5

WHAT SIN IS AND DOES

Historian Arnold Toynbee tells us that of the 21 great civilizations that have flourished and died, 19 fell, not because of invasion from without, but corrosion and corruption within. In the days of Jesus, Rome seemed invincible, but three centuries later fell to the Barbarians. Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, tells us it was because of inner weaknesses:

(1) A rise in immorality and divorce leading to the breakup of the home.

(2) The ever-increasing burden of taxation.

(3) A mad desire for excitement and pleasure.

(4) The buildup of national armaments coupled with a blind disregard for destructive forces growing within.

(5) The decline of religion and support for charities.

God has decreed in His divine order of things that a civilization build on filth will not survive, that a nation is no stronger than the people who make it up. That is why Israel fell. They were rotten morally. Look at 4:1-2, “There is no faithfulness or kindness or knowledge of God in the land. There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing, adultery and violence.” They were rotten spiritually in the church. God says to the priests in 4:6, “I reject you . . .because you have forgotten the law of your God.” And they were rotten politically. God says in 4:18, “Their rulers dearly love shameful ways.”

Because of this the judgment of God fell. It came first in the PROCESS OF SLOW DETERIORATION. God says in 5:12, “I am like a MOTH to Ephraim (Hosea uses the name of the largest tribe as a synonym for the nation), and like ROT to Judah.” When Jeroboam died in 742 the downward spiral began. Israel had six ungodly kings in 20 years, four of whom were murdered (2 Kn. 15-17). They deteriorated like a robe eaten by moths or a tree by heart rot. Then came the PUNISHMENT OF SUDDEN DEVASTATION (2 Kn. 17) by the armies of Assyria. God says in 5:10, 14, I will pour out my wrath on them like a FLOOD of water. . . For I will be like a LION to Judah.”

Remember the three themes of Hosea - the presence of sin, the punishment of sorrow and the possibility of salvation. In chapter four we move from the STORY of Hosea and Gomer to the SERMONS of Hosea about Israel and God and you and God. Chapters four and five give us his first message and the theme is SIN, what it is and what it does. But remember this - the possibility of salvation is always in the background. The cross is the hub of the Bible. Genesis points forward to it and Revelation points backward to it. Chapter three, where Gomer is loved and redeemed, is the hub of Hosea. Even when he points out our sins and coming judgement, he points back to chapter three and says, “God loves you like that and God wants you to come home like that.” You don’t have to be condemned, you can be converted. Since Hosea preaches and writes from a broken heart, his book is impossible to outline. One man called it, “A succession of sobs.” We will mainly follow the chapters and today we look at 4 and 5, his first message to the people. First there is. . .

I. THE DIVINE CHARGE (4:1A)

Using the figure of a courtroom, like Micah (Ch. 6) and Isaiah (Ch. 1), he says, Listen to the word of the Lord, you people of Israel, for the Lord as a CHARGE (NIV), a CASE (NASV) to bring against you who live in the land.” (4:1A). Before punishment is handed down the charges are made by God Himself, who in this court is prosecutor, plaintiff, witness, judge and executioner. Modern man hates all authority. He says, “What difference does it make what we do in the privacy of our homes? Well, it makes a great deal of difference because what you do makes you what you are, and when you leave your home you touch and affect me and the people I love. More important, it matters because conduct matters to the holy God who made you. The God who loves kindness hates hate. The God who loves honesty hates lies. And He moves out against what He hates and holds you and I accountable. We are all on trial.

A while back, Rush Limbaugh, a conservative journalist, interviewed Michael Medved. Medved is not a staunch right wing Christian but he is a man trying to get Hollywood, in movies and TV, to get away from perverted violence and sex to the traditional values of most Americans. For this, he is hated by Hollywood, called a Nazi and accused of censorship and opposing freedom of speech. When you even mention to Hollywood the terms “moral standards” or “Christian values,” rage surfaces. When Limbaugh asked him why, Medved had an insightful answer. He says they try to ignore terms like “Christian values” and “moral standards” because if they admit the possibility that GOD EXISTS and judges our behavior, they know they are in deep trouble. The first thing we all need to know is that we are each and every one accountable to God for our behavior. There is the divine charge and there is. . .

II. THE DEPRAVED CHARACTER (4:1, 12, 18; 5:3, 4)

God levels His first charge and it points to their rotten hearts, their corrupt nature, their depraved character. He says, “There is no FAITHFULNESS, no LOVING KINDNESS and no KNOWLEDGE OF GOD in the land.” (4:1B). The Hebrew words for each charge all point to the Sinai Covenant (Ex. 19), which they were breaking. But more important, it pointed to their inner character, to what they were as human beings, to what the Bible means by the “heart” of man. They had religion but they were not born again. Hosea says they are gripped by “a spirit of prostitution” (4:13); are “without understanding” (4:14); they “love shameful ways” (4:18) and are “corrupt, their deeds do not permit them to return to the Lord, a spirit of prostitution is in their hearts (5:3, 4).

If religion doesn’t change us we’d better change our religion. We come to God and to church not to try to do good but to be born again so we can become good and grow in doing good. That’s why Jesus told Nicodemas his religion and morality were not enough. He had to be born again (Jn. 3), and as Peter puts it, “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). This is what Israel lacked, a true surrender to God and we see it in the three charges. There is NO LOYALTY. This word means true, faithful, loyal, trustworthy. The first sign of Godly character is a commitment to the right. The first words of Paul, when he as saved, sum it up, “What would you have me do, Lord” (Acts 22:10). The words of our baptismal hymn sum it up, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.” If we truly do this, God cn trust us to do what is right and that will produce LOVING KINDNESS. This Hebrew word, CHESED, like AGAPE, pictures God’s kind, sacrificial, helpful love, revealed in Jesus. If we are born again and are like God, we will want to help and not hurt or ignore people in need. With these we will have LIFE WITH GOD. We will know Him as Savior, Friend and traveling Companion. Give yourself to God, not just to church activity or trying to be good. Get your heart right and your life will follow, not with perfection but with a striving after perfection. That’s what Israel lacked, a new heart that loved God. And their depraved character led to. . .

III. THE DESPICABLE CATALOG (4:2, 10, 11, 12, 18)

From depraved hearts flow depraved lifestyles. Hosea says, “There is cursing, lying, murder, stealing and adultery. They break all bounds and there is bloodshed on top of bloodshed.” (4:2) He charges them here with breaking five of God’s Ten Commandments (Ex. 20) given at the Sinai Covenant (Ex. 19). He would have named all ten, but thy got the point. In verse 11 he says “wine takes away the understanding of my people.” To the stupidity of getting drunk he adds the stupidity of idiolatry. He says, “They consult a wooden idol and are answered by a stick of wood” (4:12). He depicts their awful sensuality in 4:14 and 13, “Men consult with harlots. . .their daughters turn to prostitution and their daughters-in-law to adultery.” God calls these “shameful ways” (4:18). And look at why they do it in verse 4:10, “They have deserted the Lord (NIV). . .They have stopped giving heed to the Lord (NASV). . .They have forsaken the Lord (Amplified).” They have absolutely no heart for God and their lives reflect it.

Each of these sins deserves a full sermon, but taking them as a whole, four kinds of sins that ruin and rotten any society jump out - CRUELTY (cursing, lying, stealing, killing, adultery - all hurt our fellow human beings); INSOBRIETY (drunkenness); SENSUALITY (unbridled sex) and STUPIDITY (talking to pieces of wood). Is there CRUELTY in America? Go look at abused children, overcrowded jails, abortion clinics and streets filled with the homeless. And what about INSOBRIETY? Our number one social problem - the main cause of crime and homelessness, is drugs and alcohol. And out there in beautiful suburbia whre 90 percent of the people consume alcohol or drugs, one in every twelve will become a problem drinker or a drug user. And SENSUALITY? The norm on TV and in MOVIES is sex immediately following the first kiss. A famous psychologist, speaking on date rape, said, “Thirty years ago, when a girl said, No!, the boy took it to mean she wasn’t that kind of girl. Today, when she says, No!, he takes it to means I don’t want to do it with YOU!” That’s America!

And what about STUPIDITY? Well, all sin is stupidity. Cruelty is stupid. It begats hate and we live with little of what we need the most - love. Insobriety is stupid. Thomas Edison asked, “Why would I put something in my mouth that destroys the brain?” Indiscriminate sex is stupid. In this day of AIDS is there anything dumber? And what about the stupidity of idolatry? At least we don’t talk to and expect answers from sticks. Really? Just this past week, on prime time television, country music singer Lynn Anderson and other celebrities endorsed and demonstrated and enthusiastically recommended calling a “Psychic Hotline” so your psychic, by knowing your birthday can advise you and change your life in a few minutes of conversation. How stupid can you get? God’s despicable catalog is like reading our morning paper. And it is more serious than we imagine, for to it Hosea adds. . .

IV. THE DESTRUCTIVE CONSEQUENCES

(4:3, 17; 5:10, 12, 14)

One thing we cannot do in this life is sin and get by with it. God says in 4:9 of priests and people, “I will punish them for their ways. I will repay them for what they do.” God will let us, like Israel, get by for awhile, but judgment delayed is not judgment cancelled. The fact of judgment is carved into the very foundation of our life. Moses, when god first formed the nation, said, “Be sure of this, your sin will find you out” (Nu. 32:23). Paul said much the same thing in Gal. 6:7, “Don’t be deceived. God cannot be mocked. A man reaps whatever he sows.” Hosea’s first sermon is full of this. God will punish them with SLOW DETERIORATION, like a moth or rust (5:12). And God will one day punish them with SUDDEN DEVASTATION like a flood (5:10) or a lion (5:14). The poetic summary is in 4:2-3, “. . .bloodshed follows blood shed (4:2), therefore the land weeps and all who are in it waste away. The animals of the field, the birds in the air and the fish of the sea are dying” (4:3).

This could point to some severe supernatural drought or plague that had come or was coming. It could picture the devastation left by the invasion of Assyria. Some apply it to the greed of our day as we rape the earth in an ecological holocaust. It is all this and more. Man apart from God spoils everything hi touches. That’s why Michael Medved told Rush Limbaugh how MGM paid $500,000 for a script about the President of the United States having sex with a cow. That’s why polititians who always promise not to raise taxes when elected. Sin is its own worst punishment. All God has to do is ruin you, to ruin me, to ruin your home, to ruin a church or to ruin a nation is leave it alone. Look at 4:17, “Ephraim is joined to idols. LEAVE HIM ALONE!” All God has to do to judge us is to turn us over to the devil we serve. The devil will do the rest. The depraved character of unsaved people produces a despicable catalog of evils that issues in destructive consequences, but saddest of all is. . .

V. THE DECADENT CHURCH (4:5, 8; 5:1, 6)

God doesn’t give people over to the devil without a fight. Like a shoreline against the ocean tides of evil, like a lighthouse for ships in dangerous waters, He places His church. But the church can be and often is part of the problem. He said to the sinful people, “the prophets stumble with you” (4:5). The priests, who were to teach the word of the Lord (Eccl. 12:9) were worse. He said to them, “Because you have rejected knowledge. . . and ignored the law of your God. . . my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (4:5). He said, in the Living Bible, “The priests rejoice in the sins of the people; they lick their lips for more” (4:8). The more the people sinned, the more the sacrifices and thus the more for them. In 5:1 he shows the harm they do, “They have been a SNARE and a NET” to the people who come to them. In other words, they are going to hell and leading those who follow them to hell by their lies (departing from the Word of the Lord) and their lifestyle (departing from the ways of the Lord). Listen to God’s evaluation of their worship, “They will go with their flocks and herds to seek the Lord but they will not find Him. He has turned away from them” (5:6). I never have trouble finding illustrations of a decadent church. Yesterday, in the hospital, I met a new Baptist pastor in our area. He said he was glad to get out of his last church with his life. He told me that when he first got there he said in a sermon, Christ wants us to love all men regardless of who they are.” A deacon took him aside, informed him that their church was where the Ku Klux Klan originated in that county (Something the Pulpit Committee failed to mention) and pointed out that God did not want white people loving negroes. If that isn’t worshiping Baal (the god of one’s culture) in the House of the Lord, I don’t know what is. But aren’t you glad, that’s not ALL we see. Hosea’s first sermon concludes with. . .

VI. THE DIVINE CALL (5:14-15)

God says, “I (the Lion) will tear to pieces and go away. . .I will go away to My own place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek My face. In their misery they will earnestly seek Me” (5:14, 15). Once again we are back at the hog pen with the Prodigal and on the slave block with Gomer where the misery of sin drives people home. But this is more than a call to repentance. It is a promise of and a prediction of repentance by God Himself. When God, like a lion, tore Israel to pieces, He went back to heaven, but He did not slam the door of hope on individuals who would see the light and want to come home.

Praise God, some of them did. Seven centuries later, when Joseph and Mary took little Jesus to the temple to dedicate Him to God, they found two aged saints who loved and served the Heavenly Father. One was Simeon and the other was Anna. Anna lived in the Temple and fasted and prayed and looked to the day of days when God would come and redeem His people (Lk. 2:25-38). And Luke, thank God for theis Gentile historian, who was a stickler for details, sad of Anna, she was of THE TRIBE OF ASHER (Lk. 2:36), one of the ten lost tribes. Where did she come from? Did her roots go back to those who were deported or those who were left in the land? Who know? Who cares? What we do know is that while a nation died in a few years, there were individuals who saw the light, stood up for God, admitted their guilt, sought the face of the Lord, found forgiveness and new birth and refused to die with it. Ant that is the choice for you and for me. Will we follow the crowd and go to destruction or will we follow the few and turn to the God of wrath who loves us and unleashes His wrath to drive us to Him?

A passenger on a ship was roused from his sleep by the turbulence. He rushed up on deck and saw in the distance a furious storm with dark clouds and terrible lightening. He rushed over to a seaman and said frantically, “ Will we be all right when the storm hits?” The sailor smiled and said, “There’s nothing to worry about, sir. THE STORM HAS ALREADY PASSED OVER US!” God’s storms against sin will come. We will all face the coming storms of death and judgement before a holy God who has to punish sin. Will we be safe? Yes! In Jesus we will, for we can see in glory, His scars and know the storm fell on Hi,. It has already passed over us. Jesus is heaven’s LION (Rev. 5), but praise God, He is also heaven’s LAMB who died in our place. Like I told you, all roads in Hosea lead back to chapter three, back to Gomer’s release, back to Calvary. Have you traveled it?

Hosea-The Hurt of God Sermon 5

Hosea 6-7 (Read 6:1-7)

REPENTING OF OUR REPENTANCE

Charlie Brown was heading home from the ball game. His face was down. His shoes dragged through the dirt. He was the picture of dejection. He had dropped the fly ball that cost the game. Lucy, of course, witnessed all this. She walked up to him and said, “Look at it this way, Charlie Brown, you learn from your mistakes and failures.” Charlie Brown answered, “Then that must make me the smartest person on earth.”

It’s wonderful when a preacher finally sees some results from his witness, when he sees people wise up, profit from heir moral and spiritual failures, and come to God. That’s exactly what we see in Hosea’s second message in chapters 6-7. We are probably now in the chaotic ten year period (746-736) following the death of Jeroboam, when a bloody civil war occurred under Menahem where he “ripped open pregnant women” (2 Kn. 15:16), and when Assyria flexed its muscles with some periodic invasions (2 Kn. 15:19). The people suddenlylooked up from their picnic, saw the storm clouds on the horizon and believed Isaiah, Micah and Hosea must be telling the truth. Judgement could be coming. In his first sermon Hosea said God was coming like a flood (5:10) and like a lion (5:14) and He might well be. He said they would ROT on the inside (5:12) and now they were. They remembered the GRACE and GOSPEL in his message. In 5:15 He said God, the Lion, would wait for the people to come out of their misery and seek Him. And so seek Him they did. Listen to the next verses. The people say,

Come let us return to the Lord, He has torn us that He might heal us. He has injured us, that He might bind our wounds. After two days He will revive us. On the third day he will raise us up that we may live before Him. (6:1)

The three days probably refers to the time it would take them all to gather as a nation before the Lord (2 Sam. 20:4)). They said we want “to press on to know the Lord” (6:3) and put their faith in God saying “He will come to us. . .as surely as the spring rains come and water the earth” (6:3).

Repentance and faith! Who could ask for more? This past week at the Crusade when over a hundred came for salvation one night, the meeting was closed in prayer by a black brother. He said, “Brothers and sisters, there was rejoicing in the presence of the angels in heaven this night (Lk.15) over all who came, so we ought to rejoice as well.” How right he was! True repentance brings joy to the sinner, joy to the church, joy to the preacher, joy to the angels in glory, and joy to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

But remember this - walking an aisle, crying on the carpet and saying all the right words, can also be the counterfeit work of Satan. It can be a mimicking and mockery of true repentance. It can be a repentance we need to repent of and that’s exactly what happened here. Listen to God’s response. (Read Hosea 6:4-6)

I. REPENTANCE BASED ONLY ON PAIN (6:1-6)

Friends, they had a revival in Israel. Hosea today would have had to train counselors to handle all the people who came forward. And their words were beautiful -They are in the form of a Psalm. Their words were scriptural. The 60th Psalm talked about God tearing the land and then mending it. But friends, their words were SUPERFICIAL. Their repentance, God says, betrays a love that is like the morning cloud and the dew that vanishes when the sun comes up (6:5). When Desert Storm broke loose and we knew our men and women could spill their blood in the faraway sand, Americans wept and Americans went to church. We filled our balcony for a couple of weeks. Then everything settled back to sub-normal. Health problems, home problems, job problems, world problems rattle our comfortable cages and make us thing of and even turn to God. The question is, is it real? It is if

it lasts, when the problem is gone.

Out in Houston, Texas, a young man was charged with credit card fraud that cheated many needy people out of their money. When he was found guilty and given a word to say, he was a broken, humble, repentant man. With tears on his face he told the people he cheated and the judge how sorry he was. He said he had learned his lesson, that he intended to repay everyone and if the judge would give him a new chance in life, he would spend the rest of his days helping people. The boy’s parents beamed with pride over these beautiful words. And I believe many in the courtroom silently said, “Come on, judge. Give the boy a chance.” The judge said, “Son, I believe you believe you are really and truly sorry. I have been a judge more than 25 years and I’ve heard and seen hundreds of people just like you. When I first began this work I gave many like you their second chance. But son, I discovered something. I discovered that the sorrow and the good intentions lasted until they hit the front porch of this courthouse a free person.” Then he sentenced him to five years in jail. That’s the superficial repentance that grew out of Israel’s pain and God rejected it because it wasn’t heart deep and life long.

II. REPENTANCE BASED ONLY ON PROSPERITY

(Mt. 13:21)

There is another kind of repentance that is insincere and rejected by the Lord. In fact, it is the exact opposite of what we have here. A lot of people came to God because of PROSPERITY. They say, “Lord, you have blessed me and now I want to live for you.” That’s good. That’s why a lot of us are Christians today. Some of us have been driven by burdens and some have been drawn by blessings. But again, the proof is in the staying power. When the blessings depart, will we leave with them? It’s the oldest question of Job. Satan told God, Sure he loves you. You’ve put a hedge of protection around him and filled his life with blessings. Take that away and he’ll curse you to your face (Job 1:9-11). Job didn’t but there are many who do.

They are FAIR WEATHER saints. They love God and serve God when He blesses them with pleasure and prosperity, but when trouble comes they run from the Lord like chickens run from a storm. In His parable of the four soils, the four kinds of people in church, they are represented by the stony soil - the underlying layer of rock covered by a few inches of soil. With no deep roots, the sun burns them up and they die. Applying this spiritually, Jesus says, “This is the person who hears the Word and immediately receives it joyfully. But he has no root so he endures for awhile but when TROUBLE or PERSECUTION because of the WORD arises, immediately he falls away” (Mt. 13:21).

Did you notice this is the exact opposite of what happened in Hosea’s day? During prosperity they turned away from the Lord and when problems came they turned to Him. Yet the folk in the parable during prosperity turned to the Lord and when problems came, turned from Him. You can’t hide a rotten heart forever. The true heart is found in Paul. With the torturous pain of some thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12), writing from a prison cell, he said, “I know what it means to be in need and I know what it means to have more than enough. . .I am content whether I am full or hungry, whether I have too much or too little I have the power to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me” (Phil. 2:11,12,13 TEV). What was he saying? Good times won’t draw me away from my commitment to Christ and bad times won’t drive me away and the reason for this is not that I am strong or good, but because Christ lives in me.

There was a lot of flooding in Texas last year and some tall Texas tales came out of it. One evangelist, staying in the home of a church member, tossed and turned all night because of the incessant downpour. The next morning he looked out the upstairs window and all he saw was water. Looking down at the front yard he saw a hat. It flowed to the left and flowed to the right. Then it flowed to the left and back to the right. It did this over and over. Puzzled, he went downstairs for breakfast and told his hostess that the water in front of her house was flowing back and forth. He told her about the hat. She said, “That’s not the water. It’s my husband. He said that come hell or high water he was going to cut the grass today.” That’s what God wants - FAIR WEATHER SAINTS and STORM WEATHER SAINTS - people who say, “Come hell or high water I’m going to serve the Lord. Blessings won’t draw me away and burdens won’t drive me away.” This brings us to true repentance, to the. . .

III. REPENTANCE BASED ON A PERSON (6:5-7)

Am I saying it is wrong to come to God seeking relief from some awful burden? Of course not! That’s one of the main messages of the Bible and of Hosea. Hosea said God would “make the valley of trouble a door of hoe” (Hos. 2:15). He said God is waiting in heaven for people who “in their misery would earnestly seek” Him (5:15). The Scottish comedian, Harry Lauder, said that when his son died, he had a choice between suicide, alcohol and God, and he chose God. Many of us have a similar testimony. We were driven to God by the crushing burden of life. Neither am I saying it is wrong to come to Christ in gratitude for His blessings.

What I am saying is that we need more than outward reformation which is based on circumstances, good or bad, and is temporary. We need an inner transformation that is based on the power of God and is therefore eternal. god tells us here what we need in 6:5-6:

Therefore (because their love is temporary like the morning cloud), I hewed them in pieces by the prophets. I have slain them by the words of my mouth. My judgements flashed like lightening on you. For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God and not burnt offerings (6:5-6).

1. We Need Regeneration (6:5). Look at verse 5. The word “”hewn”, CHATSEB, was used for stone mason who carved rocks from the mountains (1 Ch. 27:2). The Old Testament prophets saw what Jesus told Nicodemas, “You must be born again” (Jn. 3). We need to be SLAIN to self and our old life by the powerful word of God and given a new inner man, a new heart. This goes all the way back to Moses as he told the new nation before he died, “the Lord thy God will ci4rcumcise your hearts and those of your descendants , so that you may love Him with all your hear and soul and life” (Dt. 30:6). Ezekiel called the old unsaved heart, a heart of STONE (Ez. 36:26).

1) Religion and Reformation Will Not Do (6:6) The prophets saw that burnt offerings and animal sacrifices were all right in their place but when they became substitutes for righteous, holy living produced by regeneration , they were an abomination to God. Being baptized, taking communion, going to church, giving to the Lord’s work are wonderful ways to express loving obedience to the God who saves us. The same is true of holy, moral lives. But when, in our pride, we see them as ways to earn God’s favor, to deserve God’s love or to get us into heaven, they are an abomination to God. Isaiah, preaching at his same time down South put it like this, “We are all unclean. . .all our righteous deeds are like a filthy rag” (Is.64:6). The picture is that of a woman in her menstrual period (Unclean in Lev. 15:25).

2) A Religious Experience Will Not Do (Hos. 6:1-3). Southern Baptists, along with many evangelicals, have made some emotional experience at the front of the church, equal to salvation. It may or may not be. These Israelites, in the trip of some crisis, had an emotional experience with God. They said all the right words. But it wasn’t real. How then do we know when conversion is genuine, when the new birth has taken place, when we have experienced regeneration? Hosea tells us. . .

2. We Need Righteousness (6:6-7; 7:2,13). God says, “I desire CHESED. This great word is translated LOYALTY (NASV); MERCY (NIV); CONSTANT LOVE (TEV); etc. It means God can trust us to do what is right as a way of life. The true believer will always fall short of what he ought to be (Phil. 3:12). He will slip into sin, but when he does he is miserable. When David sinned he lost his joy (Ps. 51:8) and his bones ached day and night (Ps. 32:3). The real problem with Israel was - they had a religious experience - they might even have called it the “new birth” - and they had religion, but they had not broken with sin as a way of life.

Verse seven says, “Like Adam they have broken the covenant and they are unfaithful to me. . .” (6:7). Then, to prove his point, in these two chapters, Hosea lists nine different sins. Murder (6:9); prostitution (6:10); stealing (7:1); thinking God doesn’t take notice of sin (7:2); pleasing the king with wickedness (7:3); getting drunk (7:5); being like the world - a half baked cake (7:8); trusting Assyria more than trusting God (7:8-11), flying to her for help like a silly dove (7:11); and insolent pride (7:10,16). God sums it all up, “Their sins engulf them: they are always before Me (7:2). . .they have strayed from Me. . .they have rebelled against me! I long to redeem them but they speak lies against me” (7:13). The only true evidence of new birth is new life. If we persist in willful disobedience to God’s will and ways, we are more likely than not, people who have not been truly born again. We need a regenerated heart, a righteous lifestyle and finally. . .

3. We Need a Relationship (6:6B). God says, “What I want is people who KNOW me.” When we come to God, not to give Him our goodness as payment for our sins, but to accept the sacrifice of His Son to pardon and change us, Jesus Christ becomes our PERSONAL Savior - He died for ME and our PERSONAL Lord - He controls my life. This is the heart and soul of the religion of the Bible - a personal trust in and walk with God.

I am your Pastor but I am not going to stand up here and tell you the Christian life is easy for me. There are two things (among many others) that are hard as nails for me - one is tithing and the other is staying in the ministry. My wife and I learned years ago, you can’t have kids and extra money. With clothes and college and dentists and doctors, money takes wings. Several years we have not had money to take a vacation and Mary Ann and I do without some things so our kids can have what we feel they need. More than once I’ve thought about how little most people give to the church and I’ve been tempted to hold some tithe money back to buy something I need or want. Then, too, the ministry is very had and stressful for me. Every time someone else gets cancer, it’s like a knife in my soul. I have chronic pain that leaves me whenever I leave the church field for a while. And I’m tempted to start a Service Master business and win people to Christ, one on one. But my wife and I tithe and I believe I will stay a pastor as long as I live and am able to stand behind a pulpit and by your side in times of trouble. And if you asked me, today, “Brother Bob, why do you stay? Why do you tithe when it hurts sometimes? Why do you do other things that are hard and unpleasant?,” I only have one answer - Jesus. The one who died for me wants me to live for Him and I cannot but do otherwise. Because of Him we can have regeneration, righteousness and a relationship that will not let us go.

Hosea-The Hurt of God Sermon 6

Hosea 8:1-9:9

GOD’S DISOBEDIENT CHILDREN

Once we went to interview a prospective deacon, a man who has since that time served his Lord and his church admirably. I remember his response. He said, “Brother Bob, I can’t be a deacon. When I get mad, sometimes I curse and I wouldn’t want to be a bad example for our church.” I asked him how he felt about this. He said he hated it and was ashamed of it. I asked him if he would ask the Lord to help him overcome it. He said he would. We elected him a deacon and years later he told me being elected had helped him overcome not only that sin, but to be a better person in many other areas. This brings up the thorny problem of sin or disobedience in the lives of true believers.

We have seen, in the example of Israel, how the presence of sin or disobedience to the laws of God can mean that a person is lost. They are lost even if they have had a religious experience (6:1-4) and are religious. First John plainly says, “The one who says, I know him, but does not obey His commands is a liar” (1 Jn. 2:4). And that is exactly what we have here in chapters 8-9, disobedient people who say, “I know Him” (8:2).

The crisis from Assyria, late in the reign of Menahem, is getting worse. God tells the prophet to take a trumpet, the instrument used to warn of impending danger (Joel 2:1), and put it to his lips. He says an “eagle” or “vulture” (either the symbol of Assyria [Hab. 1:8] or death) is already over the house of God. But the people are not worried because they have the assurance of being right with God. Look at their response to Hosea’s warning as God sees it, “Israel cries out to Me, My God, we Israel, KNOW (or ACKNOWLEDGE) Thee” (8:2). In other words, we are your special people, Israel, and we know you personally and acknowledge you as the true God. We know that we know that we know.

But once again God declared their words to be empty. Why? Because they were not backed up with obedience. Listen to God in chapters 8-9 describe their conduct:

“(8:1-3) A vulture flies over the house of the Lord BECAUSE THE PEOPLE HAVE BROKEN MY COVENANT and REBELLED AGAINST MY LAW. Israel cries out to me, ‘My God, we Israel know Thee,’ but ISRAEL HAS REJECTED WHAT IS GOOD (That is, all that God stands for, and what His will for us is)

(8:12). “ If I were to write thousands of things in my law they would regard them as something strange.”

(8:13).”They offer sacrifices to me and eat the meat. The Lord is not pleased with them and now He will REMEMBER THEIR WICKEDNESS AND PUNISH THEIR SINS”

(9:7). The prophet is considered to be a fool. They didn’t listen to God, His Word or His preachers.”

Today I want us to look at this disobedience from a different point of view. No doubt some of these disobedient people were true children of God. You say, “How can that be since 1 John 2:4 says, ‘The one who says, I know him, and disobeys His commands is a liar’”? Well, let me ask you a question. Is anybody here totally, completely committed to and obedient to God in every area of life? Before you answer let me quote you another verse from First John, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 Jn. 1:8). This is one of the paradoxes of the Christian life. We all have pockets of rebellion in our walk with God. The question is, what do we do about them? Look first at. . .

I. THE PRACTICE OF DISOBEDIENCE (8:1)

1. Disobedience Is Actual (8:1). The sad fact about God’s children in the Bible and in our day is that we can and do disobey and displease our heavenly Father. Abraham, the friend of God, told Pharaoh Sarah was his sister and let her be taken into his harem because he was afraid Pharaoh would kill him and take her if he knew she was his wife (Gen. 12:13). Noah, the man whose righteousness saved the human race, got drunk and lay naked on the ground. David, the man after God’s own heart, committed adultery with Uriah’s wife and then had Uriah killed to keep him from finding out (2 Sam. 11-12). Peter, the bravest friend Jesus ever had, cursed and denied that he even knew Christ (Lk. 22:54-62).

And our disobedience is far more than occasional slips into sin such as these. Paul, considered by most to be the best Christian who ever lived, in Romans 7, saw the principle of sin and disobedience working in his heart all the time. He said, “I am of the flesh, in bondage to sin and what I do I don’t understand for I am not doing what I want to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:14-15). And when Paul wrote this he was a foreign missionary who had given up most of the comforts of this world to serve Jesus. He had been stoned, hated by his own people and thrown into jail for his Lord. Yet he wrestled day and night with that part of his nature that yielded to Satan and rebelled against his Lord, in certain areas, the Lord whom he would die for if asked. God said to Israel, You have transgressed My covenant” (Hos. 8:1). Our Christian covenant to follow Jesus, made at conversion, is, “I have decided to follow Jesus/No burning back, no burning back/My cross I’ll carry/Till I see Jesus/No turning back, no turning back.” Yet who among us has done this at all times, in all areas? Disobedience is ACTUAL in us all. But. . .

2. Disobedience Is Partial (8:4,9). We must remember there is a difference between a disobedient child of God and a disobedient, lost church member who claims salvation. The course of a saved person’s life is toward self and sin. We might say the true Christian practices PARTIAL disobedience. Here in Chapter 8 two sins stand out and on the surface they don’t seem all that serious. The first is in 8:4, “They made kings, but not through me. They set up princes, but without my knowledge.” Israel had 19 kings in her 200 years and not one of them was a godly man. Their sin was they did not seek God’s will when it came to the MONARCHY. The second sin is in 8:9, and it involves their response to MILITARY CRISIS. God says, “For they have gone up to Assyria, like a wild donkey wandering alone, Ephraim has hired lovers.” They went to Assyria probably to make a peace treaty. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Years later God through Jeremiah told the people to make peace with Babylon. The sin was, they didn’t talk to God about it first. Like they elected kings, they did it without praying and seeking God’s will. The ironic thing is that God might well have told them to make a peace treaty if they had asked Him.

What Christians often do it have some pet sins we hold on to. For the most part we are loyal and obedient and we even make some sacrifices for the Lord. But there are some areas we simply do not hand over to Him. As one who has pastored for 30 years, several pet sins, several pockets of disobedience, stand out.

One is ATTENDING. Half of our members never come to church. Of the half who do, less than half of them come on Sunday night, and less than half of them come on Wednesday night. Now I am not one who believes God is in every meeting the church has. I don’t believe, to be faithful, you always have to find a church to worship in when you are on vacation. But you will never make me believe it is God’s will for a church member to be home watching TV when his or her church is worshipping on Sunday and Wednesday night. Yet many, otherwise fine Christians - and some of them ARE among the best, when it comes to character - have decided NOT to be in church when they know they should.

Another pet sin involves GIVING. If the Bible teaches anything, it teaches that ten percent of what we earn should be given back to the Lord. Three fourths of the people who come regularly to church and give to the church have decided they will not give the tithe. Another pet sin involves WITNESSING. I don’t believe all of God’s people are called to visit door to door and share the gospel with strangers. But all God’s people know they are to be witnesses to the people in their world of relationships - family, friends and neighbors. Yet statistics show that less than one percent of Christians verbally share their faith with others. More than nine out of every ten Christians have said, “Lord, I’ll serve you. I believe in you, but I am not going to share my faith.

3. Disobedience Is Often Cultural (8:4-5). There are some grosser sins mentioned in this chapter. Hosea continues, “With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves to their own destruction. Throw out your calf idol, Samaria” (8:4,5). Reading this, how can we call any of these people children of God? Because many of us are prisoners of our culture. Do you know how and why the Southern Baptist Convention came into being? It was in the 1840’s over the issues of slavery and state’s rights. Many Baptists saw slavery as God’s way of evangelizing the black and fought the nation’s efforts to abolish it because it would wreck Southern economy and do away with the Southern way of life. We look back and say, “How could they have been so blind?” The same way John Calvin and the reformers could put people to death for theological views, and Martin Luther could get drunk to the glory of God. They were blinded by their culture.

Culture, the way of life we are born into, affecting the way we worship and believe, can blind the mind to the truth. The worship of God in the image of a calf was the only worship Israel had ever known for her first king had set it up (1 Kn. 12). Worshipping God with illicit sex for material prosperity through local Baals, was the way Canaan folk had worshipped for centuries and that was all Israel ever knew. There were no doubt many true worshippers at their calf shrines who knew that calf was nothing more than a hunk of metal, but didn’t have the nerve to do or say anything about it. Some may not have seen anything wrong with it as long as they looked beyond it to the true God. As much as we hate to admit it, there is the presence and the problem of disobedience even among true children of God. But, friends, we need to fight it and press on to obedience, because we also have. . .

II. THE PRICE OF DISOBEDIENCE

1. The Punishment (8:3,13). When God tells Israel “an enemy will pursue” them (8:3) and that He will “punish their sins” (8:13), He is talking not just to the lost but to the saved in Israel. God does punish His wayward children, like any good father does. This is what the Bible calls chastisement or discipline. It is not condemnation from a judge, but correction from a heavenly father who wants what is best for us. Hebrews 12:7, 8 says, “What son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined. . .then you are not true sons.”

Let me tell you about two fathers. A young man kept getting into trouble and his father kept on helping him out. A friend said, “If that were my boy, I’d throw him out of the house.” The father replied, “That’s just the point. He is not your boy, he is mine, and I can’t kick him out.” Another young boy was caught stealing in school. When the dad was called, he apologized, made the boy return the property and apologize, and then said, “Young man, when we get home, you are going to get a whipping.” The principal said, “Mr. Brown, I don’t think a whipping is necessary.” “Yes, it is!” he replied, “This is my boy. He carries my blood in his veins and bears our family name and he has to learn that our family will not tolerate conduct like this.” God will not cast us off if we persist in disobedience but He will chastise and correct us.

2. The Punishments (8:2,3,4,7,9, etc.). These chapters are filled with the price tags we true Christians pay for our sins. 1) There Is the Loss of Closeness to God (8:2; 4:1). Israel said we “know” you, but God said in 4:1, “There is no knowledge of God in the land.” You can have a RELATIONSHIP without FELLOWSHIP and FRIENDSHIP. Many husbands and wives, with things between them, can testify to that. I like the church sign, “If God is no longer close to you, who moved?” Many of us are lonely when it comes to God because our unyielded areas have come between us and Him. This leads to many other losses.

2) There Is the Loss of Power in Prayer and Bible Study and Worship (8:4,9,12; 9:4). In chapter 7, God said, “They do not cry to me from the heart, but they wail upon their beds.” What was wrong with selecting kings (8:4) and making treaties with Assyria (8:12) was that they did it without consulting God. They “wailed on their beds” when troubles came but they knew nothing of seeking God’s will on a regular basis. Thus God’s Word, the Bible, God says, was “something alien” or strange (8:12) to them and God’s true preachers were “fools” (9:4). The reason prayer is so hard and frustrating and the reason we get so little from Bible study and sermons is often that we will not deal with the pet sins in our lives. The last thing a disobedient Christian wants to do is to confront God in prayer, Bible study and church because he knows, God knows about his rebellion. We can even throw ourselves into church work so we won’t have to face God in honest prayer.

3) There Is the Loss of Protection (8:3; 8:7)). The enemy that pursued and caught Israel (8:3) was Assyria. God said, “They sowed the wind and they reaped the whirlwind” (8:7). When a church member at Corinth committed a terrible sin like David did, Paul said, “I have decided to deliver someone like this to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Cor. 5:5). Then he spoke to those who sinned even at the Lord’s supper and said, “That’s why many of you are weak and sick and a number of you have died (lit. Sleep).” (1 Cor. 11:30).

Sickness and troubles and disasters and even death, are not necessarily punishment for our sins. The Book of Job teaches that. Some of God’s best people suffer. Right not, Dr. Billy Graham’s mind and body are being horribly affected by Parkinson’s Disease and all who know him, know i5t has nothing to do with sin, and know he will bear it well to the glory of God. Sickness, troubles and disaster do not necessarily mean we are being punished, but do not let this blind us to the fact that sometimes THEY DO MEAN JUST THAT! I believe God’s children go through many terrible, trying situations they could have avoided, had they yielded to God their areas of rebellion. Add all this up and you find. . .

4) There Is the Loss of Joy (9:1-2). God says, “Rejoice not, O Israel! Do not be jubilant like the nations, for you have played the harlot in forsaking God” (9:2). Israel’s joy was removed when Assyria took them into exile (9:4-9), but a true Christian’s joy is removed when he willfully disobeys God and tolerates a pet sin in his life. There is little joy when God does not seem close to us; when our prayers are seldom answered and when we are guilty over our lack of dedication. We say with David, who cried out from his depths of sin and shame, “. . .let the bones you have broken rejoice. . .restore to me THE JOY OF MY SALVATION” (Ps. 51:2,8,12). Did you notice the last part of Hos. 9:2? Do not be jubilant LIKE THE NATIONS.” In other words, lost people who don’t even know the Lord are happier than saved people who know Him but don’t really serve Him. Rev. 3:16 tells us that a half hearted, lukewarm, pet sin holding, Christian makes Christ sick. Well, the rest of the story is that deep down in his heart of hearts, where he or she grieves the Holy Spirit within (Eph. 5:30), he makes himself sick also. There is the loss of joy.

You say, “Brother Bob, how do I know whether I am a lost church member of a disobedient child?” That’s the problem. It’s hard to know. Many would point you back to some religious experience and say, “Have you been born again?” But Israel had a religious experience (6:1-3). Some would point you within and ask if you have assurance of salvation - Do you know that you know that you know you are saved? But Israel had assurance of salvation (8:2). What Israel did not have was a new birth that produced new life, a faith that produced works or a relationship that produced friendship. Let me ask you two questions. Do you love Jesus for dying for you and do you hate the sin in your life and want to overcome it? If you do, you have the marks of a child of God. And holding on to a few pet sins won’t send you to hell, but it might send you to heaven early, and it will make this life hellish and miserable for you. Yield to God! Give up your pet sins and find power, joy and closeness to God. It is your birthright. Don’t miss it.

Hosea - The Hurt of God Sermon 7

Hosea 9:10-10:15

WHAT THE LOST LOSE

A man told the Brooklyn preacher, T. Dewitt Talmadge, he didn’t believe in God. He told how he stood outdoors in a storm, cursed God for half an hour and taunted him to strike him dead if He existed. Talmadge answered, “Young man, only a fool would think he could exhaust the infinite patience of God in thirty minutes.” That’s the message of Hosea here. The terrible judgment coming from the Assyrians, as God’s agents, did not mean that God had suddenly gotten mad. This was a settled, deliberate principle in the heart of a God who had put up with the worst kinds of sin since the day 500 years before when He called them out of Egypt and made them His people. Listen to 9:10-11, “My finding Israel was like finding grapes in the desert. When I saw your ancestors it was like seeing the finest early fruit on the fig tree. But they came to Baal-Peor and dedicated themselves to shame and became as vile as the thing they loved. Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird - no birth, no pregnancy, no conception” (9:10-11).

We ask, “What is this world coming to?” Friends, it is always going back to where it has always been - alienated from God and unbelievably cruel. The honeymoon period for Israel and God was when He delivered them from bondage in Egypt, brought them out in the desert to Sinai and gave them His name as His people. But from the beginning they were vile and wicked. When Moses was with God receiving the holy laws that should characterize the lifestyle of His people, they had Aaron making a golden calf, the symbol of Canaanite gods, and the Bible says, “The People sat down to a feast which turned into an orgy of drunkenness and sex” (Ex. 32:6 TEV).

The next generation was no better. Hosea tells us here how before they came into Canaan they came to Baal-Peor. The prophet Balaam got the Moabite women to entice the men of Israel and they succeeded. The men had sex with them and worshipped their Baal god (Num. 25:1-3). Hosea mentioned two other places in Israel’s past where great sin occurred. In 9:15 God tells him, “Because of all their wickedness in GILGAL, I hated them there” (9:15). It was here that the Jews in Canaan, wanted to be like the Canaanite nations around them, crowned a king, and in so doing, rejected God as their king. God said to Samuel, “The have rejected Me as king over them” (1 Sam. 8:7).

But the worst atrocity in Israel’s history, described in Judges 10-21, came at GIBETH, a town near Jerusalem, in the hill country. When an Israelite man and his concubine spent the night there in a home, the men of the town came and beat on the door. They demanded that the host send him out so they could have sex with him. The host offered them his virgin daughter and the traveler’s concubine but they refused. The traveler put his concubine outside and the bible says, “ They raped her and abused her all night long and didn’t stop until morning” (Jud. 19-25 TEV) The traveler found her dead at the door the next morning. He threw her body across a donkey, took her home, cut her body into twelve pieces, sent one piece to each tribe in Israel and a bloody civil war ensued.

You talk about history repeating itself. The week before I began studying this passage (Feb. 1, 1993), a terrible crime was committed in an American city. A fourteen year old girl was gang raped. But more than this she was also raped with iron rods, beaten to death with iron rods and then set on fire. Sin is the oldest thing in our world. God didn’t “get mad” at Israel in 722, He had been putting up with their sin for centuries and now they had crossed the line and He had done all He was going to do to save them. Listen to 10:9, in the LIVING BIBLE, “O Israel, ever since that awful night in Gibeah, there has been only sin, sin, sin. You have made no progress whatever” (10:9 LB).

Today’s text is different from the last few chapters. There we had Hosea’s PUBLIC WORK as he preached judgment if the people refused to repent. Here we have the tender prophet’s PRIVATE WRESTLINGS with the terrible consequences of the will of God to be expressed through the war with Assyria. In the first verses, 9:10-13, we find the third person used as God talks to Hosea ABOUT Israel. God says, “When THEY came to Baal-Peor. . . THEY became vile, etc.” In verse 14 Hosea responds with what we call an IMPRECATORY PRAYER such as we find in the Psalms (Ps. 49, 109, etc.). He actually prays for judgment and punishment. He says, “Give the, O Lord, what wilt Thou give them? Give them a womb that miscarries and breasts that are dry!” (9:14). This is not an angry preacher lashing out at people who refuse to listen to him. This is an anguished prophet who had questioned God about the WHY of His coming judgment, had received God’s answer and had responded with the verdict that God was justified in His way. Spurgeon told how his mother had told him how terrible it would be for him, her son, to end up in hell. “But,” she said, “when God at the great Judgment tells the universe why He did it, I will say AMEN, because I will see it was right and just.” That is what we have here. The terrible nature of Israel’s sins, through the centuries, left a moral, righteous God nothing else to do but send judgements.

The fact of sin isn’t debatable, the important thing is which side we choose to be on. In this awful war where do you stand? Is it with God and good or with Satan and evil? One word the Bible uses for those on the wrong side is LOST. We get it from Luke 15 where Jesus tells us about the lost coin, the lost sheep and the lost boy. People who do not trust God in Christ to forgive them and who do not love and serve Him are losers! With this theme, look at our text and think first of. . .

I. WHAT THE LORD LOSES (9:10, 15; 10-12)

The first loser when we choose sin is God. Gomer lost her freedom but Hosea lost a wife he loved. The Prodigal Son lost his dignity but the father at home lost his boy. God’s picture in 9:10 of Israel being like grapes in the desert or the sweet, early figs on the tree, picture the joy we bring to Him when we come to Him. But verse 15 speaks not of joy and of love, but of HATE. God tells Hosea, “Because of their wickedness in Gilgal I hated them there” (9:15). Gilgal, between the Jordan and the interior of Canaan, was the holiest of places, much like our Valley Forge. It was Israel’s home base under Joshua when they took the land. It was here that Joshua saw the Lord as the captain of their armies and here that they set up the twelve memorial stones. But it was here too that Israel crowned a king (1 Sam. 8:11) and rejected God, and here where in Hosea’s day that they worshipped the filthy Baal god (Amos 4:4; Hos. 4:15; 9:15; 12:11).

Does this word HATE mean we can destroy God’s love? No! The cross of Jesus, where He stretches out His arms to the world that killed Him and prays for it, thunders a resounding, “No!” In fact, we find proof in Hosea. Look at 10:12 where god says, Sow righteousness in yourself and reap the fruit of mercy. It’s time to break up your unplowed ground and seek the Lord until He comes and rains righteousness down upon you. (10:12). Right up until the day we die and go to hell, God loves us and pleads with us to turn around and go to heaven. God doesn’t stop loving us. We reject that love and choose judgment.

God will let us ruin our lives, become losers and spend all eternity without Him because He is a God of love who gives us the freedom to choose. There is an ancient Jewish legend that when the Egyptian hosts under Pharaoh were drowning in the Red Sea (Ex. 14), the angels burst out in a song of praise, like Moses (Ex. 15). But God held up His hand and told them to stop and said, “How can we rejoice when I am forced to destroy my own?” Those words could be written over the door of every wasted life and over the door of hell itself. Whoever you are and whatever you have done, God created you, Christ died to redeem you, the Holy Spirit has come to plead with you, and if you do not come you are lost - lost not just at a terrible price to yourself, but a terrible price to the Lord. He pays for your freedom and with the loss of YOU.

II. WHAT THE LOST LOSE (10:11).

Lost people are losers. God says, “Ephraim’s glory will fly away like a bird” (10:11). Gomer wound up a slave. The prodigal wound up like a hog and Israel lot her nation and her identity. This passage, like the others is filled with the pictures of warfare, waste and destruction (9:11-13; 15-17; 10:5, 7-8, 13-15). But we don’t have to be invaded militarily to lose what they lost, our glory as human beings made in God’s image.

1. We Lose our Purpose (9:10-11; 10:1). As grapes in the desert we are to be people who bring help, joy and nourishment to weary people traveling through the wilderness of life. And we do this by letting Jesus live and love through us. Jesus says in John 15:5, “I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, will bear much fruit.” But when we live for self, pleasure becomes our god and Hosea says in 10:1, Israel is a luxuriant vine that yields fruit to itself.” We become TAKERS and KEEPERS and not GIVERS and thus lose our reason for being here, to be channels of the love of God.

This past week I watched a touching TV documentary about a surgeon who worked with children with cancer. It showed his close loving relationship with the little boys and girls driven into his life by this terrible disease. It showed some he saved and some he lost. The interviewer, after showing a brave little boy, with a big smile, dying, said, “I don’t see how you do this. It must be terribly hard.” He said, “It is! When I come to work on Monday, after a happy weekend with my family, I see new faces racked with pain and old faces I know I will not see much longer. I get depressed and often want to quit and just enjoy life. I am a Christian and I often asked God ‘Why?’ but I don’t ask anymore.” Television reporters never know what to do with real Christians, so this one sarcastically asked, “Do you feel it’s not right o ask?” He said, “No. I just know this a mystery that is beyond me and I will never get an answer. I only know, my task in life is to help little boys and girls who are hurting.” Folks, that’s your purpose and mine, but when we live for self and not for God, we miss it. We lose our purpose and. . .

2. We Lose our purity (9:10b). God said, “Israel became as vile as the thing they loved” (9:10b). Once we enthrone self and enter Satan’s service there is no stopping place. We can start out moral, tender hearted and helpful but Satan can make us immoral, hard hearted and selfish. We may never become homosexual, abuse women, or defile a body like they did in Gibea, but in our selfish lifestyle where the number one thing is to look out of “number one,” we allow things like it to happen. An exasperated teacher wrote two words on the blackboard and stormed out of the room - IGNORANCE and APATHY. One student asked another - “What’s apathy?” He answered, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” We become as vile as the selfishness we worship.

3. We Lose Our Pride (10:6b). God says that when Assyria carries of their precious golden calf-idol and king like “a twig floating on the water” (10:7), Ephraim will be DISGRACED and Israel will be ASHAMED (10:6b, NIV). Why? Because their gods let them down. What they lived for and worked for laughed at their calamity. There is a good king of pride. It is the pride of a clear conscience, not perfect, but one that tries to please God and gives God the credit for any goodness it has. How terrible it must be to come to the end of life and know - my children learned to curse from me; to depend on drugs (the worst of which is alcohol) from me; to hate from me; to be bitter from me; to covet money from me; to laugh at serious Christians from me; etc. How terrible it must be to face death AFRAID and ASHAMED. Edgar A. Guest has written these beautiful lines, “I have to live with myself and so, I want to be fit for myself to know. I don’t want to come, to the setting sun, and hate myself for the things I’ve done” (Collected vers of Edgar A. Guest, 1934, Reilly & Lee Co., p.724).

4. We Lose Our pleasure (10:1,11). The ironic and tragic fact about leaving God out of our lives or demoting him to “emergency use” only, is that people do it to be happy but happiness is exactly what they lose. Look at 10:1. Israel is a “spreading vine” but God says, “He brought forth fruit for himself” (10:1, NIV). “The more prosperous they were the more altars they built. The more productive their land was the more beautiful they made the stone pillars where they worship” (10:1,TEV). This reminds me of TV preachers who raise millions upon millions of dollars and send a few thousand overseas where it is really needed. It reminds me of ornate churches with one hundred thousand dollar chandeliers in a world where children starve. But it also reminds me of Americans, 95% of whom say they believe in God, yet pour all their fruit of money, time and energy into themselves and their families.

And the tragedy is, selfish America is miserable and turns more and more to drugs and suicide. God’s people are called to work and to serve. We read in 10:11 that “Ephriam is a trained heifer who LOVES TO THRESH and I spared her fair neck. But I will put Ehpraim to the yoke. Judah must plow” (10:11). When threshing out the grain, the cattle could easily eat the grain at their feet. In fact, Moses said they were not to muzzle the animals while it threshed (Dt. 25:4). They worked! Yes! But it was good work. It was like walking knee deep in banana pudding. But when we serve self and the devil, it is pleasant, the Bible says, “for a season or little while” (Heb.11:25), but in the end “the way of the transgressor is hard” (Prov. 13:15). Hosea says work for God is like walking around in banana putting but serving Satan is like plowing hard, rocky soil. That’s why Jesus, perhaps with this very passage in mind, said, “Take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Mt. 11:30).

If they proved tomorrow there was not God, there never had been a man named Jesus and the Bible was the work of man alone, I would still like for me and my family to meet once a week with YOU - the people of Concord Baptist Church. I don’t want my wife and daughters around foul mouthed people, prejudiced hate mongers, money lovers and the immoral! Coming here is my spiritual banana pudding. It is a joy. It is a pleasure. And O how empty life would be without it.

This little tract says it all, “Where Is Happiness? Not in Unbelief - Voltaire was an infidel of the most pronounced type. He wrote: ‘I wish I had never been born.” Not pleasure - Lord Byron lived a life of pleasure if anyone did. He wrote: ‘The worm, the canker, and grief are mine alone.’ Not in Money - Jay Gould, the American millionaire, had plenty of that. When dying, he said: ‘I suppose I am the most miserable man on earth.; Not in Position and Fame - Lord Beaconsfield enjoyed more than his share of both. He wrote: ‘Youth is a mistake; manhood a struggle; old age is a regret.’ Not in Military Glory - Alexander the Great conquered the known world in his day. Having done so, he wept in his tent, because he said, ‘There are no more worlds to conquer.’ Where then is happiness found? - the answer is simple, in Christ alone.”

Contrast that with some of the last words E Stanley Jones ever wrote, words written after a massive stroke, in his eighties had rendered him almost helpless. “When I came into the Way of the Kingdom, my first feeling was to hug myself that I had sense enough to do it. I still feel that way at the age of eighty-eight and sitting in a rehabilitation hospital recovering from a stroke. My eyesight is cut in half, my speech is barely intelligible. My locomotive powers are almost nil. I am having to learn to walk again like a baby. But am I unhappy? If so, I haven’t discovered it. I belong to an unshakable Kingdom and an unchanging Person. My feet are on the Way. Jesus is the Divine Yes when there isn’t much yes in my surroundings to rejoice in, except in him. (The Divine Yes, 1975, Abingdon Press, p. 53).

This is true joy and this is what the lost lose in their misguided search for joy, misguided because they go away from God to fine it.

Hosea - The Hurt of God Sermon 8

Hosea 11:1-11

THE STRANGE LOVE OF GOD

One of the most beautiful poems ever written was written anonymously and found on the wall of an insane asylum. We call it, THE LOVE OF GOD. It says,

Could we with ink the ocean fill / And were the skies of parchment made

Were every stalk on earth a quill / And every man a scribe by trade

To write the love of God above / Would drain the ocean dry

Nor would the scroll contain the whole/ Though stretched from sky to sky.

(Author Unknown- Tradition says it was found written on the wall of a mental hospital)

Hosea, the prophet of God’s love, now turns to the subject of that love in chapter 11, which has to be included in the great chapters of the Bible.

I. A STRANGE LOVE (11:1)

In verse one God is pictured loving and calling Israel, His “son” out of Egypt at the Exodus. God chose Israel to be His special nation and He let them know from day one that He loved them not because of any GOODNESS in them, but all because and only because of the GRACE in Him. He said to them in Deut. 8, “It is not because you are good and do what is right that the Lord is letting you take their land. . .You can be sure the Lord is not giving you the land because you deserve it. No. You are a stubborn people.” (Deut. 9:5, 6 TEV).

God’s love is special or even strange to us because it is absolutely UNCONDITIONAL. Stephen Brown gives the best explanation I ever heard of what this means. If we shake our fist at God, curse Him and then kill his Son, He does not love us any less. If we lift our hands to Him in praise, tell Him how much we love him and spend our lives helping others, He does not love us any more. His love is His nature. The Bible says, “God is love.” It is unconditional. The nearest thing to it on earth is a mother’s love but the best love of the best mother who ever lived doesn’t come close to the love God has for each one of us.

II. A SORROWFUL LOVE (11:2-4)

When we truly love someone we give them the power to hurt us. Maybe it was because of how much Gomer, with her adultery, had hurt Hosea, that God could show him His own hurt. We can feel the pain in God’s heart as He says, “The more I call Israel, the more they turn from me. They sacrificed to Baal. . .Yet it was I who taught Israel to walk. It was I who took them in my arms 9or by the arms, NIV). But they did not acknowledge that it was I who cared from them. I drew them to Me with the cords of affection and love” (11:2-4A). Then, we aren’t sure of what He said next. It was either, “I picked them up and held them to my cheek, I bent down to them to feed them” (11:4B TEV), or “ I lifted the yoke from their neck and bent down to feed them” (NIV).

Either way we get the beautiful picture of a father, or more likely, a mother, and her baby- holding his or her arms, teaching them to walk; taking them to her cheek and feeding them. It is the picture of pure, sweet, beautiful love. But is can become the picture of great hurt. A fine Christian lady in one of my early churches watched her daughter go down the ugly path of drugs and living with a string of dirty men, said to me with tears in her eyes, “Brother Bob, I would rather see my daughter dead and in her grave than where she is now.” “But,” she added, “I’m not sure she would go to heaven and the thoughts of her going to hell are more than I can bear.” Only you who have been or are now going through something like this know the hell that mother and father went through as day after day that girl killed them one blow at a time. That’s what Hosea says God goes through as we walk away from Him. When we break His laws we break His heart. Wen we die in our sins, He dies a little with us. When we go to hell, a part of Him goes with us. The reason is because of His love. Love hurts or it is not love.

III. A SEEKING LOVE (11:2)

Love doesn’t give up easily. In verse two we see God calling over and over. God said it well through Isaiah, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people” (Is. 65:2; Rom. 10:21). The old time preachers used to speak of “God’s Blockades On the Road to Hell.” How right they were. I think of the BLOCKADE OF THE BIBLE, God’s holy Book. Gideon Bibles by the hundreds of thousands fill motel rooms all over our land calling men and women to stop doing what they do in those rooms. I think of the blockade of CHURCHES, each one, whose steeple says, HE’S ALIVE. I think of CHRISTMAS and EASTER and SUNDAYS. A 70 year old has had 3,640 Sundays to remind him there is a God how made him. I think of Christians lost people know, all saying, “Come to God!” I’ll tell you when God will stop calling you. It will be when we roll you down one aisle of this church, say a few words over you, roll you out the other aisle and take you to the graveyard. God won’t be calling you then, He will be confronting your spirit with the fact of your rejection. There’s an old hymn about the Judgment Day but it applies to the lost one minute after death. It says,

“And oh what a weeping and wailing / When the lost were told of their fate /

They prayed for the rocks and the mountains /

They cried but their prayers were to late.”

IV. A STERN LOVE (11:5-7)

The awful judgment the lost experience in eternity and the awful judgment when Assyria took Israel points out the severity of God’s love. In Assyria, God says, they will be in bondage like their forefathers were in Egypt. God said, “Swords will flash in their cities.” Verse seven is unclear, but the meaning is that Israel will cry out but no one will be there to listen.

There are natural and personal consequences of sin. If a little boy eats the banana pudding his mother made for the family, the stomachache he gets I the natural consequence and the spanking is the personal consequence. The abusive man who destroys his family will pay the natural consequences of loneliness when he is old, but he will also answer to God for every hurt he has inflicted upon other and upon himself. The God who loves kindness in husbands and fathers, because he does so, must hate abuse. His love and hate go together like fire and heat. And if he let one act of abuse go unpunished He would violate His on holy, moral, just nature. From the human point of view this creates a problem for God. How can He pardon us and set us free from the sentence He Himself decrees? People don’t like this idea of conflict in God. The great A.W. Tozer didn’t. He said to view God as a kindly Judge who sentences a man to death with tears is “unworthy of the true God.” (THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE HOLY, pg. 94). My friends, he is dead wrong, for that is exactly what we see in Jesus weeping over doomed Jerusalem (Lk. 19:41) and what we see in God in the next verses, with. . .

V. A SAVING LOVE (11:8-11)

Read 11:8-11. Suddenly God wrestles within Himself (8:9) and then watches salvation. He looks beyond the Assyrian invasion to His own invasion in Jesus and the Holy Spirit by which He will call sinners out of the Assyrian and Egyptian bondage of sin. And those who come ‘trembling” (10, 11) are His “children” (10). Some see this as God’s calling national Israel to Himself, saved in the millennium. Others see it as the gospel call to spiritual Israel, all peoples. Either way, they will b “those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14). The will come from the foot of the cross where God solved all the problems in setting sinners free.

Go back to verse 9 where God WORKS SALVATION OUT (11:9). In verse 8 He suddenly reveals the struggle in His own heart. He questions Himself and asks how he can give Israel up and destroy them like the cities He destroyed with Sodom (Dt. 29:23). He reveals Himself and says, My heart is turned over in Me. All my compassions are kindled” (11:8B) NASV). Then He commits Himself and says, He will not execute His wrath because He is God and not man, He is the “Holy One” in their midst. He has worked salvation out in a way He can pardon sin and still be the HOLY ONE IN OUR MIDST.

Friends, right here God gives us a glimpse into the deep reservoirs of His attributes where He solves the problem our sin poses to Him. That problem is how he can be just and righteous and let us off without punishment as thou we had not sinned. In Prov. 17:5, God says, “He who justifies (declares innocent, lets go unpunished) the wicked. . . is an abomination to the Lord.” Yet Paul, in Romans 4, says this is exactly what God Himself does. He says, “The one who. . . believes in Him WHO JUSTIFIES THE UNGODLY, his faith is counted as righteousness (justification)” (Rom 4:5), How can God do that which He calls abominable and wrong among men? He Himself tells us here. It is because He is God and not man. But this doesn’t mean His rules don’t apply to Him. It means that He can come to this earth, virgin born and free from sin, as a human being. He can defeat Satan by never sinning and offer to Himself the perfect sacrifice of a holy life. He can, in Jesus, make Himself to be sin (2 cor. 5:21) and on the cross take the punishment of any man or woman who turns to Him for changing (repentance) and trusts in Him for cleansing (faith). Only at the old rugged cross can God be just and still let us off without punishing us. Only there can his love and justice satisfy each other. That’s why He says in 12:6, “Return to your God and keep hold of MERCY and JUSTICE” (12:6). Only at the cross can God be both Father and Judge.

1. The Cross Is a SUBSTITUTION. God, in Jesus, did what it took to bring us forgiveness, we may never understand the WHY but we can rejoice in the fact. A young man died and went to hell. His dad knocked on hell’s door, looked Satan in the face, and demanded, LET MY BOY OUT! Satan slammed the door. The boy’s sister went and pleaded, PLEASE LET MY BROTHER OUT. Satan slammed the door. Finally, the old, white-haired mother went and when Satan stood before her, she said, LET ME IN SO I CAN BE WITH MY BOY IN HIS PAIN. That’s not all there is to the cross but that’s part of it. Jesus came to this sin torn world to suffer and die for you and me. He said LET ME IN.

2. The Cross is A SUBSTITUTION. He took our POLLUTION. Paul said, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin, so we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). He took our PUNISHMENT. Isaiah said, “It was the will of the Lord to bruise Him. . .the Lord has laid on Him the sins of us all” (Isa. 53:10,6). But remember this, God did not so much punish Christ instead of us, as He punished HIMSELF instead of us. Paul said, “God was in Christ, reconciling the world back to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). If we commit a terrible crime, a just Judge would have to have us punished. But if our crime was against the Judge and if the judge was our father, he could hand down the sentence, take off his robes, stand beside us, serve our sentence for us, and still be just. That is exactly what God had done in Christ.

3. The Cross Is A SUMMONS. This is the love Christ offers but we must accept it. Jesus said, “If I be lifted up I will draw all men to myself.” Is the cross drawing you? The way is open. Have you taken it? Have you come in repentance, asking God to change you? Have you come in faith, asking God to cleanse and forgive you? If not, then God stretching out His arms to you from Calvary, for you, is all in vain. We hope Gomer went back to Hosea but we don’t know it. He said the price (Ch. 3) but she didn’t have to accept it or him. The same is true of us and God.

Hosea - The Hurt of God Sermon 9

Hosea 11:12-12:24

WHO LOVES A CHEATER?

Read 11:12-12:6. A real problem in our world is anti-Semitism. And I’m not talking just about the Neo-Nazis who wallow in Hitler’s hate, but about you and me. Most people find it hard to like a Jewish person. Even the word “Jew” has the harsh note of contempt in its pronunciation. Jews are seen as schemers who look out for number one. This all goes back to their forefather Jacob, whose story is told in Gen. 25:35. He is one of the most UNLIKEABLE people in the Bible. His name means “supplanter” or “usurper” (one who takes what is not his), for at birth he grabbed the heel of Esau, his twin, as he went out of the womb ahead of him. Why? Because the firstborn got most of the honor and the inheritance and Jacob grabbed for it. His whole life was spent scheming and grabbing. He caught Esau in a weak moment and traded him a bowl of stew for his rights as the firstborn. He covered his body with hair, went in to his blind father Isaac, pretended to be hairy Esau and got Isaac to bless him. Nobody likes a liar and a cheat and a sneak and Jacob was just that.

And here Hosea, continuing his trip down memory lane, showing Israel how she has sinned from day one, goes back to Jacob and tells Israel she is dishonest and deceitful anc crooked, just like him. He says in 11:12, “Ephraim has surrounded me with LIES and the house of Israel with DECEIT.” In 12:1, Ephraim. . .daily increases LIES.” In 12:7, The merchant loves DISHONEST scales and loves to DEFRAUD.” In 12:2 he makes the historical connection, “The Lord will punish JACOB in accordance to his ways, according to what he has done, He will repay him.” (12:2)

One of my favorite Norman Rockwell painting depicts an old time family grocery store. On one side of the counter is a sweet looking elderly lady. On the other side is the friendly, smiling butcher. Between them is the scale holding a plump, juicy hen. The lady is looking intently at the poundage on the scale while gently pushing up on it with her finger where her friend the butcher can’t see. He, too, is looking at the poundage, while gently pulling DOWN with his thumb where his friend the lady can’t see. That’s Jacob! That’s Israel! That’s America! God help us, that’s most of our churches. Lying is a way of life and God hates it. Proverbs 11:1 says, “God hates dishonest scales.” Proverbs 6 tells us seven things the Lord hates and mentions lying TWICE. Let’s look tonight at this serious problem of dishonesty and its cure.

I. THE SIN OF DECEIT

1. Their Dishonest Actions (12:1, 7). We have already mentioned Israel’s lies (11:12), deceit (11:120, dishonest scales (12:7) and Jacob-like character (12:2). In doing this they broke two of the Lord’s basic Ten Commandments: Number 8, “thou shalt not steal” and Number 9, “Thou shalt not bear false witness.: I want you to look at verse seven, “The MERCHANT loves dishonest scales (12:7). The word MERCHANT is literally CANAANITE which means trader or merchant. With this play on words Hosea says to the church, you are as crooked as the people of the world all around you.

Dishonesty is a way of life in the world. We all pay higher prices to compensate for the billions of dollars shoplifters steal. Check your products, very rarely will you receive the number or weight the container promises. And we expect politicians to lie. They stand for whatever we will fall for. One grave was marked, “Here lies an honest man and politician.” A little boy said, “Look, daddy, they buried two men in one grave.” It’s hard to know who lies more on TV, politicians or sponsors.

The sad thing is how this fills our churches. I have heard lies FROM THE PULPIT as men preach verbatim other men’s sermons and claim their personal experiences ad their own. I heard on tape, a past president of our denomination say to his congregation that anyone who believes the “Woman” of Rev. 12 represents the church is a “Liberal.” Many staunch conservatives do believe that, including some who held this preacher’s view of the end of time (J.S. Seiss, etc.). He is making all non-premillennials out to be liberals. The sad thing is I know he knew better. He was being dishonest. I watched a famous evangelist say over and over each night, “If you don’t know for sure that you are saved, you are probably lost.” I’ve never heard Billy Graham or the finest conservative preachers of our day make such an absurd statement. The bright young preacher might really believe this, but most likely he was trying to get people down the aisles so his meeting would look good.

I have heard lies FROM THE PEWS, LIKE Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5, who lied about the amount they gave the Lord and were struck dead. Vance Havner said if God still struck dead all who lie in our churches, we would have to put a cemetery in the basement of the church. People tell how the Holy Spirit’s filling has changed their lives while they know they are as mean as junk yard dogs at home. People sing, “Take my silver and my gold/Not a mite would I withhold,” yet they steal God’s tithe every week. God only knows how many preachers and parishioners say they feel something when they don’t; say they believe something when they don’t and say they will do something when they know they won’t. One fellow said that if most church members sang the truth they would sing: “amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like YOU”. . . “My heart awakening cries, OH NO ANOTHER DAY”. . .”The strife is o’er, the battle won/ OUR CHURCH HAS SPLIT AND MY SIDE WON”. . . “MY HOPE IS BUILT ON NOTHING.”

2. Their Despicable Altars (12:8, 10:11, 14). The worst thing about Israel was how, in their dishonesty, they kept on coming to church, worshipping a holy God and seeing nothing wrong with lying and cheating. The folk who watched them go to church could sing behind their backs: “They go to church on Sunday/They’ll be alright on Monday/It’s just a little habit they’ve acquired.” Listen to what God says: “I have spoken by the prophets. I have given them many visions and used parables through them. Is there iniquity in Gilead? It’s people are worthless. They sacrifice bulls in Gilgal and their altars are like piles of rocks on the furrows of the fields (12:10-11). We see here first:

1) The Defiant Lifestyle (11:12). Including Judah in his charges, he says, Judah is unruly (rebellious) against God” (11:12). Altars, or what we would call churches, where God and Baal were worshipped together, were scattered all over Israel, but the worship at them was “worthless or vain or empty” (12:11). Why? Because of their DEFIANT LIFESTYLE. From the very beginning, God through Moses, His prophet, had prohibited dishonesty and lying. In addition to the commandments not to steal and not to lie carved in stone (ex. 20), there were verses like Deut. 25:13, “Do not defraud with your weights and measures. Use honest scales.” People say, “Our church teaches the Bible!” So what! The prophets of old taught the Bible but if we don’t live by the Bible and apply it to our lives starting the minute we walk out the door, our worship is worthless and our pretty buildings are just a pile of bricks and mortar - buildings filled with empty people.

2) The Deceiving Lie (12:7). Why did they feel safe in disobeying the God they worshipped? It was because of a DECEIVING LIE. Listen to 12:7 in the NIV, “Ephraim boasts, I am very rich; I have become wealthy. With all my wealth they will not find m in me any iniquity or sin.” The Israelites, like people today, set up their own standards of what it means to be right with God. The Old Testament people’s false standard was if you were blessed with wealth and health and children, they you were right with God but if you weren’t so blessed, you were wrong with God. That’s why, when Job lost all three of these, his so-called friends said it had to be due to his sin. Eliphaz said, “Think back. Name one single case where a righteous man met with calamity” (4:7, etc.).

The only evidence that we are right with God is that we love and obey Him and anyone, for any reason, who feels safe in sin, is leaning on a rotten crutch. Some lean on baptism or church membership. Some lean on a past experience where they were “saved.” Some lean on the doctrine of eternal security. Spurgeon said any belief in eternal security which makes us feel save in sin is carnal security, it is the doctrine of demons. The only leaning post for lost sinners is a person - Jesus Christ our Savior who has cleansed us and our Lord who is changing us.

God’s people have always deluded themselves into believing it is a virtue to come to church and hear the word of God even if they don’t do what it teaches. That’s why James 1:22 says, “Be ye doers of the Word and not hearers only -DECEIVING YOUR OWN SELVES.” A woman who suspected her husband of being unfaithful watched him pull something out of a barrel of rain, look at it and then put it back. She figured it was a picture of his girl friend but really it was a mirror. She went over, pulled it out, looked at it and said, “So! That’s the ugly old hag he’s going out with.” Unless we look into the mirror of God’s Word honestly and compare ourselves with Jesus, we will never see our spiritual ugliness and we won’t do anything about it. And James says what Hosea says, “Such a man’s religion is vain (empty, worthless).” (1:26)

3) The damaged Lives (12:1, 14). Why does God take disobedience so seriously? It is because of THE DAMAGE we do to others. When we disobey we hurt and cheat our fellow man. That’s why 12:1 said they “increase lies and VIOLENCE” and verse 14 says, “the Lord will leave his BLOOD GUILT upon him and repay him for his CONTEMPT.” Every sin does harm to someone including the sinner himself. Gomer hurt herself, her children, her lover’s wives and Hosea. And one of the worst things it does, when done by a church member, is come between lost people and God and thus we see the final reason God takes disobedience seriously. . .

4) The Dishonored Lord (12:14). Hosea says God will repay Israel for its CONTEMPT (12:14). Pusey sees this as the contempt people have for God when His so-called people cheat and lie their way through life. He quoted Nathan’s words to David while he kept his adultery and murder a secret. He said, “Thou hast given much occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme” (2 Sam. 12:14). This is perhaps the worst thing we do when we sin. We keep people from coming to God. They see us as phonies and the whole Christian faith as a farce.

In this world we are to be lights in the darkness which point people to God, not stumbling blocks in the darkness who cause weary souls to fall. We are to be like the good priest in Hugo’s LES MISERABLES. Jean Valjean, the escaped convict, found shelter in the home of a kind priest. It was an humble home with only two things of value - two golden candlesticks. Valjean repaid the priest’s kindness by stealing the candlesticks. He was later caught with them by the police. The priest comes and to Valjean’s amazement tells them to let him go for the candlesticks had been given to him. The left, the priest handed Valjean the candlesticks and said, “I give your life back to God.”

II. THE SALVATION FROM DECEIT (12:6)

1. The Invitation (12:2-6). My friends, God hates lying but He doesn’t hate liars. God detests dishonest scales but He does not hate the person who uses them. He hates the sin and loves the sinner. He reaches out to us and calls us to turn from dishonesty and all other sins that come between us and Him. God never gave up on Jacob. J. Oswald Sanders says his life illustrates God’s “undiscouraged perseverance with an unlovely character.” And God never gave up on the Northern Kingdom until it died at the hands of Assyria. The last sound it heard was the voice of Hosea saying, Come back to God. Listen to verse six. Because God took crooked Jacob back (12:3-5), “Therefore you must return to thy God and keep hold of MERCY and JUDGEMENT and wait always for thy God” (12:6).

When Jacob ran from Esau after he cheated him, he spent his first night alone in a mountain spot called Bethel. There God appeared to him as a ladder into heaven on which angels walked (Gen. 28). Twenty years later when he and his family returned home he heard Esau was coming to meet him. Frightened over his old sin he sent everyone out to meet his brother. While he waited alone, the angel of the Lord wrestled with him, crippled him in the hip and defeated him. Then and there, God changed his name from Jacob to Israel, which means “to strive with God” (Gen. 32).

What this means is that you who have wrestled and struggled and resisted God, like Israel and Jacob, can always come home. The war is over when you want it to be. When Thoreau lay dying someone asked him, “Have you made your peace with God?” His answer? “I do not know that we ever quarreled.” O friends, how ignorant he was of the hidden evils in his heart and the need for peace with God. We won’t come home unless we know we’ve left home.

2. The Incentives (12:1-6). God not only invites us to Him, He works in our lives and gives us incentives to come. Hosea mentions first: 1) The Fear of God (12:2,6,9,14). Hosea says, “The Lord has a charge to make against Judah, He will punish Jacob according to his ways” (12:2). And in the invitation he says, Keep hold of love and JUSTICE” (12:6). This is followed once again by the thunder of impending judgement under the hoofs of Assyria as God says they will live in tents (in Assyrian bondage) as their ancestors did in the desert (12:9). Judgement is God’s call to each of us.

It was the thunder of Easu’s approaching horses that drove struggling Jacob into the arm of God. And God hopes the same thing will happen to us. The trouble is, people don’t hear the thunder any more. People on the streets of America have no concept of a god who will punish sin. Eighty percent of Americans believe they are all right with God and are not worried about eternity. Churches are being told, “Meet needs! Meet needs! Meet needs!: and our gospel is getting more and more pragmatic and worldly. Churches will have Sunday School classes for “children fo divorced alcoholics who have acne.” Not only do we never hear sermons on hell anymore, we don’t even hear the word HELL, except when preachers talk about the hell we make on this earth. If America needs anything, it needs a healthy fear of a holy God who is going to “punish Jacob and John Doe according to his ways.”

2) The Fellowship of God (12:3-6). We are drawn not only by fear but by love -His unending love for us. When Hosea says, “Keep hold of LOVE (MERCY) and justice” (12:6), the word for love is almost untranslatable in English (Fred Wood). It carries the idea of kindness and concern that flows out of a relationship. One of the amazing things about God is that He doesn’t save us impersonally and at a distance. He is not like a doctor we don’t know who sends us medicine through the mail. The church is called His “bride” (Jn. 3:29). God is like a man who comes and says, “I want to marry you.” The church is made up of His children (1 Jn. 3:1). He is like a man and wife coming to the orphanage and choosing us to live in their home as His child. That’s why God repeatedly calls Himself “the God of JACOB.” Martin Luther said, “God is not God to you until He is YOUR God.” It’s not hard for me to believe God loves the world but it is almost impossible for me to believe He loves Bob Marcaurelle. I see Jacob in me all the time. I don’t like “me” most of the time. How then can He love me all the time? It’s the mystery of the universe but it’s also the hope of every struggling soul making his or her way through it.

3) The Frustration of the Godless (12:1). Hosea says, Ephriam pastures the wind; he chases the East wind all day long” (12:1). This is a picture of the sheer absurdity, utter futility and downright stupidity of life without God at the center. As people are put on the shelf by companies they sweat blood for; as they are neglected or mistreated by the children they sacrificed for; and as they are increasingly robbed by the physical and mental powers they have always lived for; they see life as “chasing the wind.” That’s what Ecclesiastes says (1:14, etc.) And that’s what Hosea says of his day, and that’s what people today say. William March in his UNKNOWN SOLDIER, pictures a wounded soldier dying on barbed wire. As he dies he says, “I have broken the chain. . .I have defeated the inherent stupidity of life.” One wonderful thing about God is that He doesn’t mind playing second fiddle as we turn to Him only after all our earthly gods have failed us. As the great gospel song says, “He was there all the time/WAITING PATIENTLY IN LINE.” He’s there for you today. Don’t miss Him. Amen.

Hosea - The Hurt of God Sermon 10 Hosea 13-14

THE BACKSLIDER’S WAY HOME

The last two chapters of Hosea are like daylight and darkness. Chapter 13 if full of horrors as Hosea pictures the doom coming at the hands of Assyria. But chapter 14 is a picture of hope and the joys that can come if the people will only repent. Look first at the HORRORS of chapter 13. It was a terrible day in 722 when God destroyed His own people by letting them be captured and carried into exile by Assyria. God’s word for this was “death.” Chapter 13 begins, “When Ephraim spoke there was trembling. He exalted himself in Israel” (13:1). (In other words, the southernmost tribe had once stood tall and strong and influential among the tribes of Israel and the nations of the world.) But listen to the rest of the verse, “But through Baal he did wrong and DIED” (13:1). In this, his last recorded message, Hosea pictures the horror of that day. He says they will disappear like the DEW or the SMOKE from a chimney (13:3). The will be like helpless victims of a wild animal with their CHESTS RIPPED OPEN (13:7-8). Assyria will blow in like a hot, desert wind and rob their treasury of “every precious article” (13:15). He gathers all the horror up in one final, brutal statement, “Samaria will be held guilty, for she has rebelled against her God. The will fall by the sword. Their little ones will be dashed in pieces and their pregnant women will be ripped open.” (13:16).

Three kinds of Israelites went through this horror and they are the three kinds of people we find in our churches today. There were the BORN AGAIN, the true and faithful believers like Hosea and Amos and Isaiah, who waw the corruption in the church, but praise God, weren’t a part of it. There are times when true Christians must suffer because they are part of a nation or a church which experiences the judgement of God.

Second, there were the truly BAD - bad because their hearts had never been changed; bad because they had religion but didn’t have God; bad because they were lost, lovers of self and, ad Jesus said, children of the devil (Jn. 8:44). Oh, they went to church alright, like more than sixty percent of Americans, but they worshipped and served the Baal god of their culture and not the bible God of the Old and Net Testament. They did what they wanted and not what He in His Word told them He wanted. The Assyrian sword came down upon the lost.

But third, there were in Hosea’s day, as there are in the Christian church today, THE BACKSLIDDEN.

And who are they? They are children of God who drifted or disobey and begin to act more like children of the devil. They hate sin because their new nature won’t let them love it, but they practice sin and thus spend their lives ashamed and afraid and miserable. I believe they are among the unhappiest people on earth - more unhappy even than the lost. Why? Because a lost person, even if he is a hypocrite who goes to church, is BLIND and BLIND TO THE FACT THAT HE IS BLIND. He is DEAD AND DEAD TO THE FACT THAT HE IS DEAD. He usually doesn’t doubt his salvation. He may be as mean as a snake, but he will tell you in a heartbeat he is saved. Why? Because he is dead and blind. The backslider is not blind and sees the sin and shame and failure in his life. He often doubts his salvation (2 Pet. 1:9). The backslider is not dead and therefore he knows the awful spiritual state he is in. He doesn’t serve God with gusto and he can’t sin with gusto so he doesn’t fit in anywhere. Chapter 13 with its horrors is followed by chapter 14 with its HOPE. God makes a special appeal to the backslidden saints. God asks them to return to Him in 14:1-3 and then the King James translation verse 4, as god says, “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely, for mine anger is turned away” (14:4, KJV). Look first at. . .

I. THE BACKSLIDER’S ROUTE (13:4-7)

“I have been the Lord your God since you left the land of Egypt. . .I cared for you in the desert in the land that was like an oven. As they were fed there and became full their hearts grew proud and they forgot Me” (13:4-7).

Backsliders take one of two routes away from the Lord. Like, Lot, who inched his way toward Sodom until Sodom got into him, some take the path of SLOW DETERIORATION. They slowly become more and more like the world and less and less like God. Verse 2 says, “They sin more and more.” And the sad thing is many Christians are so calloused by evil they don’t even realize it. Some, however, like David, out of lust, or like Simon Peter, out of fear, take the path of SUDDEN DEFECTION. Some great temptation comes along and sweeps you off your feet and before you know it you are walking the road of shame.

But either way, the real problem lies in the fact that we, as Hosea says, forget God. We take Him and His blessings for granted. In the pastures of ease and prosperity, like Israel, we grow spiritually forgetful. As terrible things happen in our church family, I am always afraid some of you will lash out in anger at God and turn your back on Him. I don’t know what I would say because I have the same fear about myself. But it just doesn’t happen. But it does happen all the time in un-dramatic ways with blessings. The worst thing that can happen to many people is to get a better job, find a husband or wife, have a baby, be healthy, etc. Why? Because they turn to these as gods and turn their backs on the God of their salvation.

When we let God’s blessings hide God we become just like the godless people all around us. We commit the terrible sin of INGRATITUDE. Men and women, made in God’s image, see His beautiful sunsets, breath His fine air, live in the marvelous body He made and receive beautiful children He creates. Yet most of them give no more thought to loving and serving Him than does a fat cow grazing in knee deep clover. How shameful when a child of God does the same.

II. THE BACKSLIDER’S RUIN (Ch. 13)

Certainly these closing chapters have a message for all kinds of church members. We who are born again and honestly trying to serve the Lord are never completely innocent and one hundred percent in the will of God, so we need to heed the warnings of chapter 13 and the wooings of chapter 14. Those inside and outside the church who are lost, come to God for salvation just like Christians come back to God for sanctification - by repentance. But I have to issue a call today to true believers, who, for one reason or another, have adopted a second class, low level, powerless and joyless lifestyle. You won’t go to hell when you die but you will go through a lot of unnecessary hell her on earth before you die.

1. You May Go Through Disasters like the fall of Israel, you were never intended to endure. When David committed adultery and murder, he didn’t lose his salvation. But in Psalm 51 he tells us he lost the joy of salvation. And one reason he did was that he never experienced a minute’s peace while he was in sin and even after he was forgiven, the foul influence of what he did remained and the sword of trouble never left his home. The baby born of that unholy union died (2 Sam. 12). His son Amnon raped Tamar, David’s daughter and his half-sister. Tamar’s brother Absalom, David’s son, killed Amnon two years later, then he was killed by David’s soldiers when he tried to dethrone David. Disobedience in the life of a Christian leads to disaster.

Now, folks, we travel a dangerous highway. We never know what a day will bring. Walking daily in His will we can hear things like this. . . “Mr. Marcaurelle, your cancer report is not good. . .John, I’ve found someone else. . .Yes, Mom and Dad, I do drugs, what’s the big deal?. . .” Dedication to the will of God does not grant immunity from the terrible disasters that can befall us. And I’m not sure we need to ask WHY or look for reason all the time. The older I get the more I see that some things just happen, most because we are getting older. But friends, with all the things that just happen and all the things Godsends to make us better, I don’t want to add any AVOIDABLE problems into my life, do you? But that’s exactly what a lot of Christians do. The sword of trouble comes to your body, to your mind, to your family and to your business because you have chosen in many areas to walk contrary to the will of God.

2. You May Go Through Death (13:1). The word death here can mean physical death. God won’t send one of His children to hell but the Bible teaches He will send us to heaven early sometimes. In the church at Corinth the people went from bad to worse and got so bad that they got drunk at the Lord’s Supper. Pauls said God sent the judgements of disease and death because of this. He said, “This is why so many of you are weak and sick and many of you SLEEP” (1 Cor. 11:30). And he wasn’t talking about sleeping in a bed, but about sleeping in a coffin.

Let me tell you something about sin in a Christian’s life. Satan is never satisfied with a little dab. He wants to cover us from head to toe and drag us down, down, down to horrible depths. We read in chapter 13 of some horrible sins. Listen to13:2, “And now they sin more and more. . .They offer human sacrifice and kiss the calf idol. . .” (Probably some stupid ritual in Baal worship) (13:2). You say, “Brother Bob, there’s no way a true Christian would practice child sacrifice and kiss some stupid idol.” Don’t be too sure - Abraham sent his wife to Pharaoh’s bed by being too scared to say she was his wife (Gen. 12) Lot commit4ted incest (Gen. 19). David had Bathsheba’s husband Uriah killed, to hide his sin (2 Sam. 11:15). Simon Peter not only denied Christ, but punctuated his denial with cursing (Lk. 22:60). Once Satan has us in his power, God alone knows how far down he can drag us, and that’s when God sometimes steps in, after we refuse to repent, and takes our life. Not everyone who dies young, does so because he is outside the will of God. God’s own Son who died around age 32 and Stephen, the young martyr in the Book of Acts (Acts 6-7) prove that. But I wonder of the nearly five hundred funerals I have conducted, how many did God take early to keep them from dragging His name through the dirt.

3. You May Go Through Spiritual Death. Now I certainly do not mean you can die spiritually and be lost. Jesus said the new life He gives us is eternal and, brother, if it can ever end it isn’t eternal. But we can watch our children live physically and be dead spiritually and never accept Christ because they got no spiritual influence from us. Now, friends, the best of Christians can have children who turn from the things of God and live and die unsaved. I’m so glad the Bible says God will wipe every tear from our eyes in heaven (Rev. 21:4) for unless He did we could not enjoy heaven with a son or daughter, or mom or dad, or brother or sister not there. I don’t know how God will do this but, praise God, I know that He will. But oh, friend, you will truly know hell on earth when you watch someone you love walk away from God, and you know you were one of the reasons why! This is the backslider’s ruin - the Assyrian soldier of disaster or death or the spiritual death of those we love can come knocking on our door. But aren’t you glad Hosea doesn’t end with chapter 13, the horror chapter, but with chapter 14, the hops chapter? Not with the backslider’s RUIN but with his RETURN and RESTORATION?

III. THE BACKSLIDER’S RETURN (Ch. 14)

“Return O Israel to the Lord your God. Your downfall has come because of your sins. Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him: ‘Forgive all our wickedness and graciously receive us that we may offer the sacrifice (literally: BULLS) of our lips’ (14:1-2). (AND WHAT DOES GOD DO? HE TELLS US) “I will heal their backsliding and love them freely, for my anger is now turned away” (14:3).

1. Responsibility (14:1). These are among the last recorded words Israel heard before she died and what words they were! Hosea made one more cast of the gospel net telling lost sinners and backslidden Christians that God is only a prayer away. External religion is not the way back to God. Hosea says, “Take words with you.” What words? Words first of RESPONSIBILITY (14:1). The NIV says, “Your sins have been your downfall” (14:2). The word CONFESS in the Greek means to SAY THE SAME THING and when we come back to God we agree with God that we are the reason for the messes we find in our life. We may not be adulterers. We may not steal company funds. But we neglect prayer and worship and holiness and live outside the will of God in many, many areas. Because of this we can’t pray with power, we can’t claim God’s protection and Satan tears us like a wild animal.” Listen to 13:9, “Israel, you are destroyed because you are against Me, your Helper.”

2. Repentance (14:2). When a lost person comes to God for salvation God puts two desires in his soul - the desire to be forgiven and the desire to be changed and made into a better person. Those same two desires mark the return of the child of God. We want forgiveness in a family way - to be restored to sweet fellowship with God our Father and Jesus our Brother. Listen to Hosea, “Take words with you and return to the Lord. Say to Him, Take away all iniquity. . .that we may present the fruit of our lips” (14:2, NASV). Our first cry is for forgiveness but our second is for faithfulness. We want to be and do good and offer ourselves and our lips as a sacrifice to God. A lot of people want to go to heaven but they don’t want God to take the hell out of them, but it doesn’t work that way. A lot of God’s people want closeness to and power with God, but won’t give up those things that keep them from having them, and it doesn’t work that way.

3. Reception (14:2). Hosea says we need words of RECEPTION. He tells us to pray, “Receive us graciously” (14:2). More than ever we need the unmerited grace of God. Why? Because it is far worse for a child of God to sin than for a lost person. The lost person is blind and cannot see the full import of what he or she does. Paul says they are “dead” in sin (Eph. 2). God told Jonah the pagans of Nineveh didn’t know their right hand from their left (Jon. 4:11). Jesus said of His murderers, “They know not what they do” (Lk. 23:24).

But, oh, my fellow believers, it is different with us. The lost sin against LAW but we sin against LOVE. We are not blind - we see the shame of our ways. We are not dead - we know we are trampling underfoot the blood of the Son of God who died for us. And that is why it is so hard sometimes for a child of God to really relieve God still loves him and stands ready with grace, just as He did when we were saved. Hosea, taking Gomer back, is a marvelous message of hope for the lost person, but it is equally so for the wayward child of God who wants to come home.

When Elizabeth Barrett married Robert Browning, she did so over the objections of her parents. She broke their hearts and they responded by disowning her. Her tender heart was broken and she never gave up loving her mom and dad and never gave up trying to be reconciled with them. Every week Elizabeth sat down and poured out her heart in a letter, telling them how much she loved them and wanted to see them. This went on for ten years and all she got was ten years of silence. Then one day she received a large box in the mail from her parents. Thrilled beyond words, she opened it. Inside were all her letters STILL UNOPENED. These “love letters” of Elizabeth Barrett Browning are now part of classic English literature, mute testimony of a girl who couldn’t go home.

The sad thing is that much of our praying is just like this. Because of the misery sin brings, we leave Satan’s service but we never make it all the way home because we just can’t believe God really wants us back. Our prayers, to us, not to God, are like those unopened love letters. Many years ago a lady from another denomination called me after the death of her son. She said she wanted to talk about something she didn’t feel comfortable discussing with her pastor. She told me that during the first years of her marriage she had an affair and since then had known no peace. She worked tirelessly in her church and home and community. She had all kinds of physical and emotional problems, all stemming from guilt and shame. Now she was about to lose her mind wondering if her son had died because of what she had done years before. (I assured her that I didn’t believe that for one minute.).

She had repented. She was sorry. She was working her fingers to the bone, doing Good. She was, to me, a child of God, but she was miserable and sick because she had not accepted God’s forgiveness. I said, “Ma’am, you need to pray and ask God to forgive you.” “Brother Bob,” she said, “I do that every day. I’ve done it a thousand times.” I said, “Mrs. _____, that’s 999 times too many. God forgave you and welcomed you back the first time you prayed. You just haven’t accepted it and every time you’ve prayed about it since then you’ve broken His heart as much as you did when you committed adultery long ago.” The Book of Hosea tells us God will receive lost sinners who come to Him no matter how far down they have gone into sin. But it also teaches the same thing for those of us who are His children. Come home, child of God. The Father wants you back. It’s hurting you to stay away and it’s hurting Him.

Hosea-The Hurt of God Sermon 11

Hosea 13-14

AMERICA ON ISRAEL’S ROAD

We have applied Hosea to the lost who live in a land of churches and to the saved who are backslidden because of the corrupting influence of their culture. Today we will apply it to nations, especially our own. God has made this universe in such a way that individuals cannot get by with sin, and the same is true of nations. Historians tell us the average time a nation stands powerful is around 200 years. Nations pass through a cycle - there is birth usually out of conflict, struggle that brings strength and national pride, power and prosperity which corrupt, decline and then death. This is exactly what we see in Israel and, God help us, what we may be seeing in America today. Listen to Hosea, “When Ephraim spoke, men trembled. He was exalted in Israel, but he became guilty of Baal worship and died” (13:1). Looking at this as a mirror to the soul of our nation, think first of...

I. THE CORRUPTION OF AMERICA (13:1)

The Northern Kingdom Israel, sometimes called by the name of its strongest tribe, Ephraim, lived 200 years. Born in 922 B.C., it died in 722. How did it die? By the hands of the powerful storm troopers of Assyria? Yes and no! Assyria did come in as the agent of destruction but Israel died at her own hands. She committed moral and ethical suicide by turning from God and His laws to a life of sin. In 13:9 God says, “You are destroyed, O Israel, because you are against Me the One who helps you.” In 14:1 God says, “Your sins have been your downfall.”

This strong nation before whom “men trembled” (13:1) grew sick and died. And this has been the story of one civilization after another. They are born, they struggle to survive, they grow strong, they rule, they decline and they die. And the reason they decline and die is within the soul of their people. As it becomes corrupt, the church, the family and the government, become corrupt and it dies.

Arnold Toynbee, the celebrated historian, said, “Nineteen of the last twenty-one civilizations have destroyed themselves. . . They have not been murdered from without, they have been destroyed from within.” Jenkin Lloyd-Jones says of these fallen nations, “Most of them had rotted out before the barbarians had battered the gates.”

We find this same thing in the Word of God, namely that a nation’s sins will lead to a nation’s decline and death. In Abraham’s day the two cities of the fertile plain were the jewels of the land. Their names were Sodom and Gomorrah. But they fell and lie buried to this very day beneath the salt and sand of the desert. Why? God tells us in 2 Peter 2:6 For “condemned to ruin and extinction the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, reducing them to ashes and set them forth as an example to those who would be ungodly.” Psalm 9:17 says, “The wicked will return to the grave (and) all the nations that forget God.” The mightiest nation in the Old Testament was Babylon but it fell in one night. And the night before it fell, God’s hand appeared at the King’s drunken party and wrote on the wall, “You are weighed in the balances and found wanting” (Dan. 5:25).

America is now 217 years old and the question we must ask ourselves is, where are we headed? Are we, like most of the nations before us who rose to great heights, committing national suicide? Are we headed toward the graveyard? To help answer the question we might take a look at ancient Rome. Of all the civilizations that ever rose to power, she was the wisest and strongest. Her soul grew strong like tempered steel as she not only fought off fierce barbarians from the North, but took them over in the Fourth Century. In 146 B.C. she conquered Hannibal and became the dominant power in the West. In 63 B.C. she took over Asia. In Jesus’ day she ruled the known world. Her roads tied her world together, her soldiers kept the peace, her scholars and statesmen fashioned wise policies, second to none in the history of mankind.

In Jesus’ day Rome seemed invincible but she wasn’t. In the Second Century A.D. she began to decline and in the middle of the Third Century she was overrun by barbarians who then occupied her land. Why? Because she died from within. She committed moral suicide. Edward Gibbon gave much of his life to a study of Rome and in his classic work, THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, he listed the five causes of Rome’s death. The frightening thing is when we look at these we see ourselves. What were they?

(1) There was an increase in sexual immorality and

divorce leading to the breakdown of the family.

(2) Higher and higher taxes until the load became unbearable, while officials of the Empire continued to spend public funds with reckless indifference.

(3) A mad desire for excitement leading to all kinds of moral extravagances which finally engulfed the Empire and destroyed it.

(4) An increased political pressure for armaments with blind disregard for the destructive element building up inside the Empire.

(5) A decline in religion and withholding of support from character-building institutions.

Now we could easily spend a whole sermon on these five, but all of us can see them as a mirror in which we can see ourselves and a window through which we can see Israel. One in every 2.6 marriages in America ends up in divorce. A recent Home Life Magazine study reveals some frightening figures. Since 1960 violent crime has increased 560 percent; illegitimate births, 400 percent; and the divorce rate has quadrupled. The home where dad goes to work and mom takes care of the home and kids - which is a full time job - is found in only 15 percent of American families. Half of the children now living will not live with both of their parents in their teenage years. TV and movies carry us deeper and deeper into perverted forms of violence and sex. Taxes are headed higher and higher along with spending, no matter who goes to the White House. (Ray Stevens’ new song says it well - IF TEN PERCENT IS ENOUGH FOR JESUS, IT OUGHT TO BE ENOUGH FOR UNCLE SAM.) In America we spend more on dog food than gifts to all churches and charities combined. We are on the Roman Road and the Israel Road! Thank God, Hosea has more to say, for in chapter 13 we have. . .

II. THE CURE FOR AMERICA (14:1-5)

1. We Must Pray. Jesus calls His church “the salt of the earth” (Mt. 5). It is the salt that preserves the meat from decay and it is the church that can keep our nation from becoming so rotten that it must be discarded. Our first duty is to pray for our nation. Hosea tells us to “take words” with us and go to God. In other words - PRAY! The great promise about this is 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If My people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and HEAL THEIR LAND.”

The only hope America has for survival is God. Only He who rules all nations can keep us safe. When Assyria took over Israel, she stood with her heel poised over tiny little Judah to the south. All she had to do with put her heel down and Judah would be no more. But she didn’t do it. Like a lion, she went away satisfied with dead Israel between her teeth. I’m sure she had her reasons but behind them was the real REASON. In chapter one God told Israel of her coming doom and then said, “I will have pity on the house of Judah and I will deliver them by the Lord their God. I will not deliver them by bow, not by sword, nor by war, nor by horses, nor by horsemen” (Hos. 1:7).

Twenty-two years later, around 701, we see this promise fulfilled. Assyria changed her godless mind and King Sennacherib came against Judah with 185,000 soldiers. In the records of Assyria you can find a letter in which he says he shut up King Hezekiah of Judah “like a bird in a cage.” He also wrote Hezekiah a letter with these words:

“Do not let the God you trust deceive you when He says Jerusalem will not be handed over to the King of Assyria. Surely you have heard what the kings of Assyria have done to all other nations and how they have been completely destroyed! Did the gods of the nations destroyed by my ancestors deliver them?” (Isa. 37:9-13).

What did Hezekiah do? He did what you and I ought to do with every problem that comes our way. We read, “Hezekiah received the letter from the messengers and read it. Then he went up to the temple of the Lord and spread it out before the Lord” (Isa. 37:14). He prayed and all heaven broke loose and in one night 185,000 Assyrian soldiers were put to death by the angel of the Lord. Sennacherib ran home like a whipped dog and was murdered by his own sons (Isa. 37:36-38). Vance Havner said the only trouble God’s people had with that crowd was burying the bodies. We need to pray. The only thing standing between America and destruction is a praying church.

2. We Must Participate. God’s people need to put feet to the r prayers and get involved in several ways. (1) In the Political Arena (7:3-7). In her 200 years Israel had 19 kings and there was not one godly man among them. Hosea says the people “delight the kings with their wickedness and delight princes with their lies. . .the princes become inflamed with wine” (7:3,5). With our voice and vote we must strive to elect men and women who will stand up for moral and ethical values. I am not talking about cramming Christianity into our schools and government. In Utah and Hawaii it would be Mormon. In most Northern states it would be Roman Catholic. As Baptists we have always and should continue to be opposed to any kind of enforced religion. But basic, decent morality written into the consciences of most men - honesty, fairness, kindness and the right to pray and live free from oppression, must be held up. One historian commented that people eventually wind up with the leader they deserve. We must also participate. . .

(2) In the Financial Arena. One of the strongest weapons we have is the boycott. As you and I learn of companies which sponsor pornography and violence on TV we can stop buying their products and write them letters telling them what we are doing. We can stop the production of filthy moves simply by refusing to buy tickets.

(3) In the Educational Arena. The Satanic inspired ignorance of America is revealed in his hour in the homosexual holocaust we are about to face. With AIDS about to break loose in epidemic proportions, the school systems are about to teach, starting in first grade, that homosexuality is an acceptable, normal lifestyle. For years, evolution has been taught as fact and creationism not even considered. On the high school level, students are to be given condoms and counsel to have abortions. On top of this, they are pushing for an eleven or twelve month school session. It may be time now for churches to ban together, get in the school business and teach children moral values. We won’t save the minds and souls of millions of American children, but we just might save the minds and souls of our children and grandchildren.

3. We Must preach (Mt. 28:18-20). God spared Judah because He chose to give His Son to the world through her. I believe God put all the bountiful, natural resources of America here so her churches could use them to send the Word “Jesus Saves!” to the whole world. I believe world missions can be our salvation, but we are rapidly departing from that in our churches. If we build multi-million dollar buildings at the expense of missions and if we minister only to Americans, we might well be sealing the doom of our beloved country.

4. We Must Practice (Read 14:3). The Apostle Paul, when he called the church to prayer for kings and world leaders, added these words, “I want men everywhere to lift up HOLY HANDS in prayer” (1 Tim. 2:1-2; 8). Hosea says here that the hands we lift up must be hands that have thrown down the idols of this world. Second Chronicles 7:14 says we must seek God and turn from our wicked ways and then God will head our land. There is one other quote from Gibbon that I want to close with. He was not a friend to Christianity. In fact, he blamed it, with its “turn the cheek” ethic, for the weakening of the Empire. But one thing he had to admit was that the early church grew like wildfire in the inhospitable soil of the Roman Empire. And he gave this as the reason, “It became the most sacred duty of a new convert to diffuse among his friends and relations the inestimable blessing which he had received” (Vol. 11, p. 7). In other words they told everyone they knew about Jesus and to do that with power we need a changed life that makes it believable. The church should get involved socially and politically but our main mission is to live like our Lord and tell others about Him. Let’s do it for our sake, for our children’s sake and for the sake of this land we love. Then when America and all earthly lands burn up in a blaze of glory, when Jesus returns (2 Pet. 3:10 ff), we will be part of that holy kingdom that will never be destroyed. Amen!

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