All of God's Compassion: Hosea 11-12:1

Please turn in your Bibles to the book of Hosea, chapter 11.

Hosea 11 · chapter mention

You'll find it printed in your bulletin as well if you'd like to follow along there.

We have been in the series of the Old Testament prophet Hosea for the last few months.

We're nearing the end.

And we we do note some shifts within the prophecy, within the book, and we certainly are going to notice that this morning.

Reading Hosea chapter 11 through chapter 12, verse 1.

Hosea 11 · chapter mention

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

The more they were called, the more they went away.

They kept sacrificing to the bales and burning offerings to idols.

Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk.

I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them.

I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.

They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they refuse to return to me.

The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels.

My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.

How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

How can I make you like Adma?

How can I treat you like Zeboyam?

My heart recoils within me.

My compassion grows warm and tender.

I will not execute my burning anger.

I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the holy one in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

They shall go after the Lord, he will roar like a lion.

When he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west, they shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria, and I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord.

Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, and the house of Jacob with deceit.

But Judah still walks with God and is faithful to the Holy One.

Ephraim feeds on the wind and pursues the east wind all day long.

They multiply falsehood and violence.

They make a covenant with Assyria, and oil is covered to Egypt.

This is the reading of God's infallible, inerrant word of God.

This is his precious word to his precious people.

This as for the Spirit's work.

Father, thank you.

We thank you for this story, a difficult story to understand.

How much more so for your prophet Hosea?

But Lord, you gave your spirit to him and you've given your spirit to us.

So that we might not only understand these truths, but Lord, we might actually embrace them and be changed by your character.

So, Lord, we thank you for your presence with us this morning.

Spirit, we thank you for what you're about to do.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

As I said, we do come to a bit of a transition point.

If you've been with us through this series, Old Testament scholar Alec Motaire says this chapter is one of the boldest in the Old Testament.

Indeed, the whole Bible in explaining to us the mind and the heart of God in human terms.

We may hesitate to compare ourselves to God.

Excuse me, we may hesitate to compare God to our earthly fathers.

And a lot of us have done that in one way or another, and we know what that can be like.

Yet here, Hosea would say that we don't go far enough.

I wonder if you've ever thought about that.

Here we have not gone far enough.

By contrast, we see this title Father in terms of accepted cost and anguish.

God is a father rebuffed, torn between agonizing alternatives, may seem too human altogether for our eyes.

But this is the price of bringing home to us that divine love is more, not less, ardent and vulnerable than ours.

The rest of the sermon is just trying to unpack that.

We have a hard time comprehending the heart of God, don't we?

Yet this is what Hosea is doing.

After a heavy emphasis from chapters 4 through 10 in this book on judgment, and we've heard the judgment of God.

We've heard the roaring lion of judgment.

After those chapters where the focus was primarily on God's wayward wife, the church, Hosea's wayward wife, Gomer, now the focus is not on the wayward wife, but on the wayward child.

Beginning here, we see a new emphasis on the sovereign and the triumphant love of God that is just astounding.

Two very simple points this morning.

Our need for compassion.

Compassion has been defined as sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or the misfortunes of others.

We see that in the heart of a God.

There was much suffering, as we've seen in the series, in the life and the marriage of Hosea and Gomer.

In a marriage where there are many betrayals, there is much suffering, and there is much misfortune in such a marriage.

But we've also seen that there was much suffering for Israel.

It's hard to believe that when things are going well, that we're going to need God like that.

Many in this country are probably still in that place.

Many in our country, I suppose, are still like, boy, we don't like the direction this country's going.

But things are still pretty good relative to the rest of the world.

We don't like the signs of things going on in the church, some of us would say.

But things are still pretty good.

That's sort of the spirit it was from 750 BC to 730, 725 BC.

And yet that was about to change.

And Hosea's telling about the upcoming change.

Until the new neighbor to the north, Assyria, would come knocking on their door, would break that door down, would destroy their nation, would deport their people to a faraway country, and they would suffer greatly.

That was going to happen sooner than they thought.

And then they went into scramble mode once they realized that impending danger was coming.

And so we saw in chapter 7 of Hosea, like a like a flitting bird, he says.

A bird that just flies here and flies there looking for a different nest, doesn't know where they want to land.

To describe Israel.

You see, at that point they started to get scared, and at that point they know they needed to buy some protection.

They just didn't know.

Do we go to Egypt for protection?

Or do we try to go to Assyria and head them off at the pass?

They would suffer greatly for their sins.

They would experience much misery and misfortune.

What about us?

We are hardly exempt from suffering.

I think you know that.

We are hardly exempt from misfortune, from suffering.

You may be in a season of that right now.

You may not be, but surely we all understand it.

The need for compassion.

Most of the sermon is going to finish on the God of compassion.

Verse 1.

When Israel was a child, I loved him.

Verse 3, yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk.

I took them up by their arms, but they didn't know how much I did for them, how I healed them.

I led them with cords of kindness and with bands of love.

Fatherly love is now portrayed in a scene that any family will recognize, I think.

A doting father teaching his little child to walk.

There's a lot of that going around here.

A lot of babies.

There's a lot of dads in this congregation, a lot of moms in this congregation.

That's kind of right where you are right now.

Just kind of bending over.

You've got to bend over, right?

You got to get down their level, hold their arms, and just kind of persuade them, coax them that they can walk.

Somebody was just telling me.

Who was uh Lee, yeah, 10 months old.

Walking.

This is the picture.

This is the word picture that God gives us.

Holding them by their arms.

Pastor Josh and I were talking about this with Ben, and we were talking about the series Hosea.

We're talking about this in particular, and Pastor Josh said it's it's like a family photo reel.

Yeah.

It's like social media, it's gotten to that point now for so many of us.

On social media, all those memories that get captured, and sometimes you know they just pop up on your screen and like, oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Boy, they take you back to the birth of your child, they take you back to the days where the child was learning how to walk, learning how to ride a bike.

They take you back to those great celebrations as a family.

All those memories.

That's what is going on here.

You know, God has a memory too.

He doesn't need a social media to pop up.

He has a memory.

He remembers, he says, I remember when my people were birthed.

Because I birthed them.

I remember when my people loved me.

They adored me.

They couldn't wait to come in.

They couldn't wait till I came home from work and they would run and jump into my arms.

Dads, you remember that, right?

Moms?

God says, I remember those days.

I'm so fond of those days.

And then my child grew up.

And my child decided that they had other interests and other passions.

My child grew up and decided that there were other ways that they wanted to go.

And it was a wayward way to go.

And my heart broke.

Just like some of our parents.

Do you know God's heart breaks at scenes like this, just like ours?

Social media can do it in one way, memories pull out, scroll back over the years, yes.

But now, grown up, determined to go off their own way, to walk away from the loving, devoted parent, walking away from their values, walking away from their God at times they didn't even realize that they were doing.

The father is torn in this chapter.

How does he respond to his wayward son?

His wayward son deserves to be punished.

We've seen that in the book.

We see that throughout the scriptures.

The wages of sin is death.

The wayward son.

Jim Boy says, I confess, and I read this this week, and I thought, boy, I so relate to this.

I confess that I hardly know how to treat this section of scripture.

For in a chapter full of tenderness, pathos, and surprises, this is undoubtedly the most amazing part of this story.

I read that early this week, and I thought, oh, I've got to preach on this.

How do you preach on this?

How do you take this in?

How do we get out of our intellectualized view, worldview, where we just live so much of our lives from the neck up, don't we?

We Presbyterians.

We're just so full of this head knowledge, and we we know these truths, we believe these truths, we affirm these truths, but do we?

Sometimes we forget that the real God has a real heart.

He's not just in his head.

And that's why this passage is so hard to get our arms around.

Surely God does not have the emotions of a human father for his rebellious son.

Or does he?

Yet that is what God is saying in verses 8 and 9.

He is inwardly torn and divided, uncertain what to do.

And some of our theologians in our denomination would jump up and say, Well, that's not true.

We know God, his will is immutable.

I would say to that friend, you don't even understand what's going on here.

Of course, his will is immutable.

And yes, of course, he doesn't repent of what he's done.

But don't miss what's really going on.

It's not only here in the Bible.

How deeply the heart of God feels is torn.

This is the Hebrew word that's used.

My heart is changed within me.

Literally, that Hebrew word means my heart is turned.

Wow.

All of my compassion within me is aroused.

I'll tell you this, in the heart of God, that's a lot of compassion.

We know what it feels like to have some compassion for people, don't we, sometimes?

We know what it is to have some compassion.

But what would it be like for God Almighty to say that all of his compassion is aroused?

I think we hardly know.

But it's true.

And God wants me and God wants you to think hard about that.

That's why it's here.

His wrath against our sin and his love for his people who will walk away from him and they collide.

His threatenings of punishment and discipline for wandering hearts.

He's not going to apologize for.

He doesn't apologize.

He does never apologize for his justice.

His justice is built not only into his heart but into the universe.

We don't take his justice lightly.

But it we see behind the veil.

It's almost like we got through the bedroom door.

It's almost like we got behind beyond the holy of holies, into the holy of holies, to hear this very personal conversation that the Father is having with himself.

And we get to eavesdrop.

It's anthropomorphic language, described something described as having human attributes.

God.

God here is once again in the scriptures is described as though he were a man or a woman like us who feels, who thinks, who acts.

He understands everything that you've suffered.

He understands your wayward life.

He understands our hearts that are prone to wander.

He understands.

His heart is connected.

Judgment will come to Israel within a few short years of him writing this.

Assyria will come.

They will devastate.

They will destroy because they were threatened and they did not listen.

They were warned and they just blew it off.

Like people still do today.

And yet all is not lost.

God is going to protect a remnant of those people.

The people who will turn their hearts to God.

God says, I will protect you.

I will hold you fast.

I won't let them get you.

Who's the them in your life?

I won't let them get you.

What God but ours makes such promises?

We are never, excuse me, we are nearer, this is a quote from Alec Moter again, we are nearer a true knowledge of God in these terms than in the bloodless definitions of theological philosophy.

Okay?

The sterile theology that so many Christians just seem to settle for.

We are nearer a true knowledge of God in these terms than in the bloodless definitions of theological philosophy.

Elsewhere, Scripture takes ample care of what safeguards he puts in place, but it never takes the warmth out of his love.

It never takes the fire out of his anger, and it never takes the audacity out of his grace.

Boy, that's a truth to think about.

This God, the true God.

He doesn't go soft on sin.

He never goes soft on sin.

You know what he goes soft on.

His children.

He goes soft on his children.

His kids.

The ones he taught how to walk.

The ones that he has shared those memories with.

What kind of God is this?

He says in verse 9, I will not come in wrath for my people.

I will not come in wrath.

Wrath does not have the final word for my people.

But how can he do this?

These two things that are colliding, God's justice and his mercy, and they could, there's this violent collision.

How can I say that?

What happened on Calvary?

Calvary was the violent collision of the justice of God and the punishment of God over it for his children.

And the love and the mercy of God.

I've been singing to myself all week this hymn that we sang earlier Thy mercy, my God.

Boy, I love those lines.

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart, which wonders to feel its own hardness depart.

Dissolved by thy goodness.

I fall to the ground and weep to the praise of the mercy I have found.

Man, I love those words.

The author of this hymn understood the God of compassion.

To you?

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart.

Have you been discovering your heart in this series at Hosea?

This is what I told the elders yesterday in the session meeting.

I've never seen and witnessed in my ministry.

I've never witnessed so many people repent as in the last few months in this church.

I've never seen so many people come to me for forgiveness.

I've never seen so many people come to the elders for forgiveness as I've seen since the beginning of this new year.

God, what are you up to?

What are you doing?

You're stirring the hearts of your people.

That's what you're doing.

And when God does that, we don't sit around and point at other people.

When God does that, we look and say, God, what's in my heart?

Like we looked at last Sunday.

Does the hard ground of your heart need to be plowed up?

Does it need a deeper plowing?

That's a gift of God.

Accept the work of the farmer in your life.

Accept the plowing.

We confess our sins.

We confess our unrighteousness.

The elders yesterday were studying, and we were just studying these topics, and we're thinking about this, and we all acknowledge that the deepest sin is unbelief, isn't it?

Our deepest problem is unbelief.

We believe.

But what are we not believing?

What are we not believing that sends us back down the wrong path into the arms of false lovers?

God is at work in this congregation.

I believe that.

May He be at work in your heart.

This is what's going on.

Romans 3 is really as good an answer to that as I know in Scripture.

How did God work through, solve this dilemma?

His justice and his mercy.

Romans 3.

But now the verse 21, but now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law.

Although the law and the prophets bear witness to us, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

For there is no distinction.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Listen to this next phrase.

Whom God put forward as a propitiation.

Let's just hang out on that phrase for a moment.

You know what he's saying?

God saw the dilemma.

These people deserve to be punished.

I can't duck that.

But these are my kids.

These are my kids.

These are my children.

Did you hear what he said?

Put forth his own son as a propitiation.

You know what that word means, right?

Propitiation.

God poured out all of his wrath for his wayward kids, not on them, but on his own son.

He put forth Jesus Christ as the propitiation.

He said, in order to get my kids back, I will give up my own son.

This is the gospel.

How can you not serve a God like that?

How can you not surrender to a God like that?

How can you not run into his arms like that parable, the prodigal son?

The words of the story, the day came where the son said, I will.

He came to his senses.

He says, I will arise and go to my father and say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I say today, in the name of Jesus, arise and go back to your Father.

Go to your Father.

Tell him where you've been.

Tell him what you've done.

He'll take you back.

He'll take you back.

Whether you've sinned like the older son in his pride and his arrogance and his judgment, and there's a lot of that in Washington.

Or whether you've sinned like the younger son through your addictions, through your just waving him off.

I don't need you in my life.

He'll take you back.

Arise and go to your Father.

He says that word, my heart, my heart is changed, overturned.

This is the same word used to describe the overthrow of the cities in Genesis 19 of Sodom and Gomorrah.

That is a powerful construct to take in.

We know what he did to Sodom and Gomorrah.

He just leveled it.

His heart was overturned in wrath toward them.

His heart is overturned in mercy to you.

This is the gospel.

See why I had a hard time preaching this sermon.

How do I take this in?

Let alone teach you.

I still have so much more to understand about this.

Don't you?

And the power of the gospel is when our hearts are more inclined to understand and hear this message.

The power of the gospel flows in and sends us out.

This is the gospel.

Not a pity or a compassion that agrees to overlook our sins, but a power that takes on our sin, on his own son.

Without this kind of heart change, we will only repeat our wanderings on and on.

We've had enough of that, right?

Once again, he says as we close in verse 10, we're not ready for this.

The roar of the lion, but this time it's good.

Okay, if you were with us a few weeks ago, that was not good.

He says, I'm going to send judgment like the roar of a lion.

And that lion, because my people have ignored the moth I sent.

Remember that?

I sent the moth, but that didn't get your attention, so I'm going to send a lion.

And when the lion comes, he's going to devour, he's going to destroy.

Listen to this time.

Listen to this time.

They shall go after the Lord.

And he will roar like a lion.

And when he roars, his children will come trembling from the west.

And they will come trembling like birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Assyria.

And I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord.

Wow.

This time the lion roars.

Come home.

Come back.

All is forgiven.

But you must come back.

The Father will call his children to himself.

This time the lion will not destroy.

No, this time the voice of the lion will be the voice to call us back.

Is he calling you back?

Are you hearing his voice?

Arise and go to your father.

He's waiting.

Remembering the story?

The father's heart was so grieved at not having his son with him, he went to the door every day and just watched.

Some of you know what that's like with your kids.

You go to the door and you just watch and you wait.

Have you left home?

Have you left home?

Have you walked away from your father?

Arise and go to your father.

He's looking, he's waiting for you.

Thy mercy is more than a match for my heart.

Hallelujah.

Would you pray with me?

Father, right now, would you please hear the prayers of your people?

Right now, not my voice.

Right now, I ask, would you hear the voice of every person in this room as we speak to you?

Father, by the work of your spirit, today, here, and now, we will arise and we will come back to you.

We will come back for cleansing, for forgiveness, for hugs and kisses and compassion.

We come back.

Where else would we go?

But to your arms because of Jesus.

Thank you, Jesus, for bearing the wrath so that we would be embraced by the Father this morning.

Amen.