The Roaring Lion: Hosea 5

This morning we're looking at Hosea chapter five in the sermon series.

Hear the reading of God's word.

Hear this, O priest.

Pay attention, O house of Israel.

Give ear, O house of the king, for the judgment is for you.

For you have been a snare at Mizpah and a net spread upon Tabor.

And the revolters have gone deep into slaughter, but I will discipline all of them.

I know Ephraim, and Israel is not hidden from me.

For now, O Ephraim, you have played the whore.

Israel is defiled.

Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for the spirit of whoredom is within them, and they know not the Lord.

The pride of Israel testifies to his face.

Israel and Ephraim shall stumble in his guilt.

Judah also shall stumble with them.

With their flocks and herds they go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him.

He is withdrawn from them.

They have dealt faithlessly with the Lord, for they have borne alien children.

Now the new moon shall devour them with their fields.

Blow the horn in Gibeah and the trumpet in Ramah.

Sound the alarm at Beth Aven.

We follow you, O Benjamin.

Ephraim shall become a desolation in the day of punishment.

Among the tribes of Israel I would make known what is sure.

The princes of Judah have become like those who move the landmark.

Upon them I will pour out my wrath like water.

Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because he was determined to go after filth.

But I am like a moth to Ephraim, and like dry rot to the house of Judah.

When Ephraim saw his sickness and Judah his wound, then Ephraim went to Assyria and sent to the great king.

But he is not able to cure you or heal your wound, for I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah.

I, even I, will tear and go away.

I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

I will return again to my place until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face, and in their distress earnestly seek me.

This is the reading of God's holy, perfect word.

Oh, how we need the Spirit to teach us this morning.

Let's ask him.

Father, this word inspired by your Spirit, we need to be illumined by your Spirit this morning.

So, Holy Spirit, would you please get our attention?

Give us understanding.

But Lord, that we might not only understand the text, but Lord, that we might desire to live out of this text.

This we pray.

In the name of Christ.

Amen.

As Pastor Mike said last week, Hosea has moved from the home to the courtroom.

God now working through this powerful image of this marriage between Hosea and Gomer.

God is continuing to teach his people centuries ago, but he continues to teach his people today as well.

God's stories never get old.

God's stories are true.

God's stories are poignant.

They have a way of getting in our defenses.

Hosea, the prophet of Israel, commanded by God to take Gomer as his wife.

Gomer, who would prove to be unfaithful to him many times over in their marriage.

Hosea would experience firsthand the deep pain of being married to an unfaithful wife.

Gomer was married to Hosea, but as we've seen, she had a wandering eye.

Married, but that didn't stop her from dating around, like we have all done.

When we settle for false intimacy in our lives, whether it's on a screen or a career or an affair or control, there's hundreds of ways that we manifest our restless hearts.

So as we saw earlier, God knows how to get our attention.

Chapter 2, verse 14.

I could not get your attention, children, so I allured you into the desert.

I took you away from all the noise.

I took you away from the distractions.

So it could just be me and you.

You know, God knows how to do that.

So that why?

Do you remember why he said he did this?

So that I might speak tenderly to your heart.

There are, I don't know of many more precious words in the Bible.

There are times when I want to get you alone.

I need to get you alone.

Because I have something to say to you that you just have not been listening to, you haven't been hearing.

Then we saw the beauty of the gospel in chapter 3.

After Gomer was sold into slavery, literally, she finally met up with a man who didn't want her anymore.

He said, You'll be more useful to me if I sell you and get some money in return for you than living with you.

So he sold her.

And you remember the story?

Hosea, prompted by the love of God, knew that she was up for auction and went to the auction block and bought her back.

And that kind of really stymies us, doesn't it?

Well, why?

Why would a man have to buy back?

Why would a husband have to buy back his wife?

What a story.

Isn't that what God did with us?

He made us.

He created us.

We should have been his forever.

We moved away, we wandered away.

And so we've seen in this story that every one of us has been on that auction block.

Would our husband come?

Would our husband come find us?

Would our husband, and you know who that is, it's the Lord Jesus Christ, Christian.

Would our husband come?

Would he say, I want you so much that I'm gonna pay the price?

But in our case, it wasn't 15 shekels.

Peter tells us it wasn't with gold or silver, but with the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ he purchased us.

That's why we sing the gospel.

If you're new with us, if you're a visitor, if this is all kind of shocking, and it is shocking, and you're wondering what this is all about, that's why we sing the gospel.

It's a message that needs to be sung once it's understood.

Because we have been bought back by Jesus.

We've seen all that, and yet God continues to give more and more examples and teaching because He says there's more I need to teach you about this whole thing.

Jesus has a message for his people.

I made you, I love you, I married you, and I can't bear to see you in the arms of another lover.

That's the message of this book.

Jesus says, I can't stand to see you get caught up with a false intimacy where you're not looking to me, you're not feeling my embrace, you're not feeling my hug, you're not getting one of my many kisses from the prodigal, the prodigal parable of the prodigal son as we read.

You know what the message of this book is?

Come home.

Come back.

This is the gospel in the book of Isaiah.

Come home.

The Father's waiting.

The son has prepared a feast.

Why would you stay away from this?

Yet God has more to say to his people.

He's not done.

So this morning we're going to see what God sees, we're going to see when God comes, and we're going to see when God leaves.

What God sees, first of all, he's still trying to get the attention of his people Israel.

If you don't know the story in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel at this point were still practicing their religion, religiously, but their hearts were very far from God.

They were outwardly doing all the right things, but it's clear they weren't close to God.

Three times he says in the first verse, hear this.

Okay, as if that wasn't enough.

Pay attention.

Give ear.

And he knows how to do it.

Then he says, This I know all about Ephraim.

I know all about Ephraim, and that would cause them to shudder.

His omniscience.

God, excuse me, Israel has not come back to the Lord.

Verse 4, their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for the spirit of unfaithfulness is within them, and they don't know.

They don't truly know the Lord.

They still don't even really know their own hearts.

That's true.

Bible scholar A.W.

Tozer said the omniscience of God shakes all of us at some point in our lives.

For the person who has something to hide, we are ambivalent, aren't we?

On the one hand, we want to be known by God, and on another hand, we don't want to be known to the depths by God.

Because we know that there's stuff in our hearts that we haven't dealt with.

And what if God sees that?

I mean, if he really sees what's going on in my heart, if he really sees what's going on in my life, he may just walk off.

No.

But he does know our hearts.

I know all about you.

It's time to come out of hiding.

Hiding from ourselves.

Hiding from others.

Hiding from God.

The Israelites were still in hiding.

They were deceived.

I like the way that Lewis Meads puts it.

Self-deception is corrupted consciousness.

First we deceive ourselves, and then we convince ourselves that we're not deceiving ourselves.

You see how that works?

It's true.

Martin Buber said, nothing hides the face of God more than religion.

Nothing hides the face of God more than religion.

That was certainly true in the history of Israel.

We make ourselves strangers to ourselves.

When we don't know what's going on in our own hearts, we won't really know what's going on in God's heart.

They just are inseparable.

And that's why the Holy Spirit is here this morning to help us.

To show us what's going on in our own hearts.

So that we would really open up to and accept and receive and rest in what's in God's heart.

That's what this is about.

Verse 4.

They can't see what's in their hearts because of their pride.

God uses our longings to expose who or what we truly worship.

That's what this sermon is about, this first point.

Whatever satisfies our longings most deeply is our God, is our Baal, is our master.

If you've been with us in this series, you see that.

Whatever touches us most deeply, what touches you most deeply?

We are tempted to look to be filled with something other than God, aren't we?

The moment that you are aware of what you long for and don't have, you are in pain.

I'm in pain.

That's why so many people never take this journey.

They don't want to have to deal with the pain deep in their hearts that they've been trying to satisfy with anything but God.

This is the temptation.

What do we do with our pain?

What do we do with our unfulfilled longings?

That's a question not just for 8th century Israel BC.

That's a question for everyone here in this room today.

What are you doing with your pain?

What are you doing with your unfulfilled longings?

The things that you say, I feel like I have to have this.

Or life isn't worth living.

What is it?

That's why we invite the Holy Spirit in.

He knows.

He wants us to know.

The Israelites had a plan for dealing with all this.

Two things.

First of all, find a place in their life for God.

And that's what many people still do today.

Find a place in your life for God, but keep him in his place.

Okay?

Find a place.

Don't abandon religion.

Don't abandon God.

Find a place for God, but keep him in his place.

That's not what you were built for.

That's not.

That is settling in the most unsatisfying way.

So they were still, look at verse 6.

They were still bringing their sacrifices.

They're going to church.

With their flocks and their herds, they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him.

Why?

Because their heart wasn't in it.

Where you get your deepest needs met.

Success?

For us Washingtonians.

We love success, don't we?

Success can be intoxicating.

Career advancement.

Heady stuff.

The corner office.

Relationships that we try to control.

Self-righteousness.

It comes in so many ways.

Dick Keys talked about this and talking about how quickly we can be tempted by not understanding our religious side and our irreligious side.

He said, first of all, God does not distinguish between respectable and unrespectable sins.

For God's sin is sin.

Any perimeter dividing them is only in our minds.

This sort of experience shows us that we're not so much bothered by breaking God's laws as we are by breaking our little China models of ourselves.

We're not terribly bothered by being guilty.

We say to ourselves, after all, nobody's perfect.

But when faced with having acted unheroically, the end of the world seems upon us.

This suffering of shame, therefore, is more a fall from ourselves, a blow to our own pride and our own heroism, than it is a fall from the obedience to God.

In this situation, we need to talk very straight with ourselves.

God has forgiven and accepted us in our shame and sin through Christ, if in fact he has.

To say I cannot forgive myself, however, is not true.

What it usually means is I am so ashamed of myself, I have violated my models, I have acted unheroically, therefore I can't forgive myself.

Does that ring true?

Anybody here struggle with forgiving yourself when God offers forgiveness?

We need to admit that we have all done this when we feel this way, and it hurts our own pride.

We are sinners, not respectable sinners, however, but real sinners.

We always were and we will always be until the day we die.

But there are no respectable sinners in the sight of God.

There are only shameful sinners who are accepted and forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ as we come to Him.

This is true.

This is true.

A superficial seeking after God.

They came with all their offerings, they came with all their sacrifices, yet they did not bring the most important thing of all, which was what?

A broken and contrite heart.

That's what God wants from your preacher.

That's what God wants from you.

And he won't accept anything less.

I need your heart.

I want your heart.

Israel struggled with that.

They looked to other nations to make alliances.

Verse 13, they saw their sickness, their wound, and then they started trying to scramble.

They went to Assyria.

Then they went to Egypt.

They were trying to buy off some nation to protect them, to be their big brother, instead of going to God.

When we look for what only Jesus can give us, the more you get it, the more you need it, the less satisfying it is.

The human heart is shriveling up when we go to anyone else, anything else than Jesus.

The human heart shrivels up.

Jonathan Edwards used to talk about this.

Sin is like a fire.

Sin turns the heart into a fire, and then there's tolerance, right?

Tolerance with any addiction requires more.

Success?

Alcohol?

Sex?

Reputation?

You see, the devil really doesn't care so much what drug of choice you use.

He just wants you to go to anyone else but Jesus.

He just wants you to go to anything else but Jesus.

And he's okay with that.

Sin is like a fire.

It turns the heart into a fire that needs more and more and more.

The things that we crave become our slave master.

Is there anything that you're running to this morning?

Is there anyone that you're running to this morning other than Jesus?

Jesus says, Come to me.

Jesus says, You come to me.

Just as you are this morning.

I know what to do with your shame.

I know what to do with your sin.

I've done something about it.

Secondly, when God comes, though they did not pursue God from their heart, yet He is pursuing them with His heart.

And then He gives Hosea two different images, two very different images to get our attention, to teach us.

The first image is a moth.

What?

God would use a moth?

A moth.

Moths, although they look quite harmless.

Anybody ever had some nice clothes eaten up in the closet?

I see those hands.

The moth can distract.

You know, if you're just sitting there or you're reading a book or something and the moth is just fluttering around.

I mean, it they can be very distracting, but more than that, they can be quite destructive.

Eating away silently, quietly, they can do a lot of damage.

And we don't even seem to notice.

The silent process of decay.

Has God sent a moth into your life lately?

It's a moth of mercy.

If he sends a moth, it's a moth of mercy.

It's not to harm you, it's to get your attention that something's out of accord, something's out of line, and it's going to hurt you.

It's going to destroy you if you don't deal with it.

But then in contrast to the harmless, seemingly harmless moth, what does he talk about?

Well, something quite different.

A roaring lion.

He talks about that.

For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, verse 14, and like a young lion to the house of Judah, I even I will tear and go away.

I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

It's almost like this double entendre message with what lions do.

Lions capture their prey, they tear their prey, and they take it off.

Well, that's not exactly what Hosea is getting at.

That's not the main point here, but there is certainly a message here he has for us.

Sometimes God must send the lion.

What does it look like when God sends the lion?

Let me read something from Jim Boyce.

But suppose we do not turn to God when he sends moths.

Suppose we resist these warnings.

These verses, further on, we find in them a word that is much more terrible, for I will be like a lion to Ephraim.

I will tear them to pieces and go away.

I will carry them off with no one to rescue them.

This is the progress of God's love.

What?

This is the progress of God's love when he goes from a moth to a lion?

The moth may have eaten valuable possessions, but we can turn the rug around.

We can put the couch against a wall where the ravages cannot be seen.

We can move a lamp so that the light will not shine upon the destruction.

But then he's forced to send the lion.

With no warning at all, great trouble springs up upon us like a beast of prey.

Fear grips us.

Our blood runs cold.

Happy are we if we realize that this is the Lord of love who calls us to turn from the path where lions lurk and to run to the path where He will protect us like no one else.

Oh, I tell you, this book of Hosea is a powerful story.

It points to the real God, the real Savior.

It's a message for real sinners like you and me.

Oh, if we could see what God has to say to us this morning.

How different our lives might be.

Sometimes it seems as if our lives are mangled to death more than just the work of a moth.

That's why he uses this image, this metaphor.

Sometimes when we don't listen, when we continue to go in our own direction, we continue to go in our own way, he sends the roaring lion, and things do get destroyed in a way that is most unsettling.

But did you hear what Boy said?

It's not to harm you, it's another progression of his love for you.

He wants you.

He wants your soul more than anything else.

And so he's not afraid to send the moth.

He's not afraid to send the lion.

God will send Assyria.

You see the references to the trumpets, the blowing of the trumpets in this text.

There's warfare that's coming.

Israel will be taken captive by Assyria soon.

The trumpet is blowing.

Israel, you're asleep.

You need to wake up.

You need to see how desperately you need to seek me.

They would be captured.

And it was a horrible thing that they went through.

Not too much longer after that, Judah would be captured by Babylon.

God will send the lion when he needs to.

That's what this is about.

When God comes.

But there's the last point.

When God leaves.

I said, God knows how to get his people's attention.

Sometimes he comes like a moth, sometimes he comes like a roaring lion, but look at verse 14, verse 15.

I even I will tear and go away.

I will carry off, and no one shall rescue.

What he's saying is, you're not going to be able to dig yourself out of this.

You're not going to be able to buy your way out.

You're not going to be able to think your way through this.

You need to cry out to the Lord.

Verse 15, I will return again to my place.

This is not a good thing, friends.

This is not a good thing.

I'm leaving.

I'm walking away.

Did you know that God does that?

For a purpose.

Because he knows how to get our attention.

I will return again to my place until what?

What does it say?

Until they acknowledge their guilt and seek my face.

And in their misery, in their distress, earnestly seek me.

That's what this is all about.

Does God really leave his people?

Does God really leave his people?

No.

But sometimes it feels like it.

God doesn't leave his people.

He's always with his people.

He's always for his people.

But we can lose his comfort, can't we?

We can lose his peace.

We can lose his power.

We can lose his leading in our lives.

When we shut down our own hearts, when we close off our hearts to him, it feels as though he's left.

We're going to see through Hosea.

There's two kinds of misery.

He's going to tell us just a little while later.

There's a wailing from our beds, and then there's the crying out from our hearts.

There's two kinds of wailing.

There's two kinds of crying out to God.

There's a wailing from your bed when it's all about your pain.

When it's all about your problems.

When it's all about you trying to figure out why God's not doing a better job of taking care of you.

And you shake your fist at Him.

There's that kind of crying out, but that's not real, that's not repentance.

That's just frustrated people who don't know what to do with their frustration.

They don't know what to do with their problems in their life.

And they're wailing from their bed.

That's what Israel was doing at this point.

But then there's the other one we're going to talk about more in this series: crying out from our hearts.

That's what God wants.

A good cry from your heart to God.

Have you ever done that?

Have you ever literally cried out from your heart?

Said, God, would you please rescue me?

Would you rescue me from myself?

Would you rescue me from temptation?

Would you rescue me from my own plan I have on the side?

He'll hear that cry, I promise you.

He finds that kind of cry irresistible.

That's what he's waiting to hear from us.

When God leaves, he's still listening.

You know, God can go far, it can seem like God has gone very far away from you, but he's got perfect hearing.

When he gets your heart and you start to cry out, he hears you and he responds to you.

And it's almost as if he says, I'm back.

Did he ever really leave?

No.

But it sure felt like it.

He says, I'm back.

You don't want God's hardening of your heart.

You don't want to be a part of that.

When God hardens his heart to the sinner, all he does is take his hands off and let you go the way you think you want to go.

You don't want that.

What does the book of Romans tell us?

God's kindness leads us to repentance.

We, you've heard the gospel this morning.

I know you've heard the gospel.

What are you going to do with this?

What are you going to do with this message that you've heard this morning?

That you've heard sung?

That Jesus Christ put himself in our place.

Jesus went to the cross so that you don't go to the cross.

What are you going to do with this plea for mercy?

Come home.

Come home.

He's waiting for you.

He's waiting.

For some, this season is a warning for some, for some who never come to Jesus.

This is a final judgment.

Let that not be you.

Let this not be a final judgment on you.

That you don't return.

Only God knows your heart, but God does know your heart.

God knows if your heart is softening this morning.

God knows if your heart is crying out to him.

God knows if you're coming home.

He not only knows it, his arms are open.

Come back.

I want you.

Come back.

No matter how many times we leave, his arms are always open to take you back.

Come to him for pardon.

He will forgive all of your sin if you come to him for forgiveness.

He will forgive all of your sin.

He will give you nothing but mercy if you look to Jesus Christ as your Savior.

This is the kind of God we serve.

But sometimes he has to send a moth, sometimes he has to send a lion to see, let us see his heart.

There's nobody's heart like his heart.

We're going to take a moment for silent confession.

I can't confess your sin.

You can't confess my sin.

We're going to ask the Holy Spirit to show us.

Where have we gone our own way?

Have we made, have we found a place for religion to keep up appearances?

Are we trying to keep God in his place?

Are we crying out, wailing from our beds?

Because we just don't believe that God's doing a very good job of taking care of us.

May the Holy Spirit show you.

May the Holy Spirit show me where we're looking for deliverance.

To whom we're looking.

To what?

May the Holy Spirit show us.

May the Holy Spirit lead us to the throne of grace so that we would find mercy and help in our time of need.

Go to the Lord now.

Hear us, Father.

If you did not promise a solution to our problems, we would not come, we could not come.

But you have.

Holy Spirit, search us.

May we open up to your searching.

Show us.

Jesus, thank you.

Thank you for how you do that.

Like no one else.

And so this morning we ask that you not only show us our sin, but this morning we ask you to show us the grace of God.

Show us your grace, oh Lord, that we would run to you.

Away.

Away from the enemy that we would run to you.

This we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Would you please stand?

And this is these are words that we speak not only now, but you may find this useful to speak these words to yourself sometime this week.

Because there really is assurance of pardon for all who come to Christ.

Let's read this together, Micah chapter 7, verse 18.

Micah 7:18

Who is a God like you?

Pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression.

For the remnant of his inheritance, he does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love.