Hosea: The Certain Harvest of Sowing to the flesh

Set the trumpet to your lips.

One like a vulture is over the house of the Lord, because they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.

To me they cry, My God, we Israel know you.

Israel has spurned the good, the enemy shall pursue him.

They made kings, but not through me.

They set up princes, but I knew it not.

With their silver and gold, they made idols for their own destruction.

I have spurned your calf, O Samaria.

My anger burns against them.

How long will they be incapable of innocence?

For it is from Israel, a craftsman made it.

It is not God.

The calf of Samaria shall be broken to pieces, for they sow the wind and they shall reap the whole wind.

The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no flower.

If it were to yield, strangers would devour it.

Israel is swallowed up.

Already they are among the nations as a useless vessel.

For they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey wandering alone.

Ephraim has hired lovers.

Though they hire allies among the nations, I will soon gather them up.

And the king and princes shall soon writhe because of the tribute.

Because Ephraim has multiplied altars for sinning, they have become to him altars for sinning.

Were I to write for him my laws by ten thousand, they would be regarded as a strange thing.

As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them.

Now he will remember the iniquity and punish their sins.

They shall return to Egypt.

For Israel has forgotten his maker and built palaces, and Judah has multiplied fortified cities.

So I will send a fire upon his cities, and it shall devour her stronghold.

This is God's word.

Let me ask a question this morning.

Are you enjoying the prophet so far?

I hope so.

I'm enjoying it.

Yeah, and yeah, it's under Ihozeah, I like it, but let me ask, you know, uh, on the one hand, I think about it, I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

Thoroughly enjoying it.

Uh, because the prophet is, I'm learning so much about Israel, learning so much about her history and where she is in God's plan for her in redemptive history.

But on the other hand, I'm so convicted.

My heart is heavy because I realize I'm more like Israel than I care to admit.

Israel in its faltering, in its failing, in its faithlessness.

And so I asked that of you this morning.

How about you?

How is it doing?

Uh, it's knocking me, you know, to use a cricket analogy, it's knocking me for sex.

It really is, because it's painful.

Um, I'm also pretty sorry for the for Hosea himself, the prophet.

You know, here is this pre-exile into Assyria prophet who is tasked with convincing an unfaithful people that they will be destroyed if they continue in their prostitution against their maker.

And this required Hosea to literally exhibit God's relationship with Israel by marrying unfaithful Gomer, an unfaithful wife.

We've already seen that in chapters one through three.

And yet, despite this difficult task, we see that the prophecies in Hosea ring with hope.

Hope not because he thought that Israel and Judah are magically going to shape up, live according to God's law revealed to Moses, his good law.

No, no, that's not the hope.

It's hope because they understood the Lord's covenant mercy, his loyal love.

And friends, this morning I pray that you and I would grasp either something for the first time or something more of just what kind of God we serve.

Who is this Yahweh that we serve?

The I am that I am.

You see, the fall of Israel is directly connected to her inability to grasp her covenant mandate, her obligations in view of God's covenant love.

Ever since the northern kingdom of Israel formed from the split of the United Kingdom, it's important for us to understand after the reign of Solomon in 931 BC, Israel has been run as a merely political state.

In other words, her kings and her leaders ignored the commitment they made at Sinai, by which Yahweh's ultimate kingship was recognized.

And in fact, the role of prophecy at this time is simply to point her back to her covenant obligations.

That's all it is.

All of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah to the south, Hosea, Amos, Micah to the north, all of them to point them back to their only source of life.

Oh, return to the unending well is the message.

Hosea brings no new demands, he just says, be faithful to your source.

The well waters by which your national life in the promised land will be fulfilled and secured.

And that's Yahweh himself.

Instead, a Jeroboam II, a strong but a godless leader, has left the scene in the middle of the 700s BC and been followed by six different monarchs in the space of just 30 years.

Friends, this is a time of political intrigue.

It's a time of instability.

Just briefly, before I pray for us to help us historically, the chapter last week, Hosea 7, is likely set around the time of what is known as the Syro-Ephramite War, 734 BC.

This war happened when Aram, or also known as Syria and Israel, that is Ephraim, they joined forces against the southern kingdom of Judah.

All because Judah refused to join their coalition against the growing and brutal Assyrian Empire to the north.

Assyria was extracting heavy tribute as it expanded, as it annexed different lands we want.

Okay?

Whatever they could get their hands on.

And so Syria and Ephraim have joined together.

They've wanted this coalition so that they can rebel in a strong way against Assyria.

All of that said, what was just read for us in those uh poetic oracles, I hope you you feel the poetry, Hebrew poetry.

It's really beautiful read for us from Hosea 8.

This is in the aftermath of that Syro Ephraimite war.

And you know what?

Israel's heartbreaking rejection of her redeemer that we saw last week in chapter 7, it only persists in our chapter today.

And hence the title for us this morning, The Certain Harvest of Sowing to the Flesh.

The Certain Harvest of Sowing to the Flesh.

This will be the foundation for our three key observations today.

If you have Hosea 8 open, please do follow along as we as we come under God's word.

But first, uh let me pray for us.

Lord, we've been uh so far in this book of Hosea, been seeing how you have called your people to repent.

You've urged them to know the Lord by living in accord with your good law given to Moses.

Today, as we continue to unpack these oracles of condemnation against Israel for her lack of reliance on you, give us ears to hear what you would say to each one of us seated here today.

For we are just as prone, just as prone to sow to the flesh, to sow to our sinful nature as the ancient people of God were.

Indeed, the Apostle Paul would remind the church of Galatia that the one who sows to the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption.

But the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit receive eternal life.

By the power of Holy Spirit Himself, won't you soften our hearts to receive your word as suckling infants today, Lord, because that's what we are.

We're children.

Show us King Jesus.

The only good news in the midst of really insufferable disobedience and certain exile.

Lord, whether we're following you today, whether we're doubting, whether we're a skeptic here today, or whether we're following you wholeheartedly today, speak to us, Lord Jesus, in your name.

I ask all these things.

Amen.

The year is 1856.

In April of that year, a 15-year-old Cossa girl, uh, non Kawuse, probably butchered that, but she received visions from ancestral spirits near a particular river, which I won't attempt to say its name, but it's on the wild coast of the Eastern Cape.

In these visions, the spirits promised that if the Khossa people stopped cultivating, if they destroyed their crops, if they slaughtered all their cattle, the ancestors would rise from the dead.

Not only this, but new and pristine cattle would appear and the European settlers would be swept into the sea.

And a golden era of prosperity would begin.

And many of the Klossa people embraced this prophecy as a way to clean up their society, to restore their nation and their national pride.

They were likely desperate to bring an end to decades of continual British colonial advancement, land being taken away.

And of course, they'd had this epidemic, a dreadful lung sickness among their herds.

As a result, based on this prophecy, for months the people sowed by carrying out the Spirit's demands.

In other words, they systematically destroyed their only means of survival in the hopes of reaping a time of abundance.

Well, when the day of prophetic fulfillment was to come in 1857, the sun rose and the sun set.

Like any other day, nothing changed.

Instead of reaping the promised harvest and the renewed herds, the Kosa people there inherited or reaped mass starvation.

Widespread famine swept the land.

Why?

Well, they'd slaughtered approximately 400,000 head of cattle and left the earth unplanted.

Friends, tragic, tragic.

Approximately 40,000 Cossa people died of starvation and disease.

The social fabric of their society was torn apart.

And on top of this, they were left weak, defenseless against their enemies.

And the British took advantage of this disaster, forced tens of thousands of them to move to the Cape Colony, to the west and to the south, and to work for European farmers as cheap laborers just for them to survive.

I believe this profound true story of sowing and reaping in Corsa history is really has parallels.

It's known as the Great Corsa cattle killing of 1856 and 57.

It's not a great time.

I say it's it's called great, but not great in the good sense, but it has parallels with what's happening in Israel at this present time in the 8th century BC.

Their literal destruction of their harvest and their livestock, it leads, as I said, to massive mass starvation and to a whole ripple effect of negative consequences for the whole nation.

And so, as I said, these parallels between one historic event and another recorded for us in Holy Scripture, you see, Israel is sowing to the flesh.

Israel is sowing to what she perceives to be true, the apparent reality of her situation.

This morning, what was read for us in Hosea 8 is a theological indictment.

That's courtroom language.

Their true king's perspective on the actual reality.

A reality involving these announcements of impending invasion, of condemnations of political and religious apostasy, and the inevitable consequences.

That is the certain harvest of their rebellion.

And so this morning I put to you today that the passage shows the certain harvest of sowing to the flesh in three key ways.

The first is a spurned identity, a spurned identity.

Secondly, judgment with the world.

And thirdly, unforgiven sin.

So let us begin by exploring the first, a spurned identity.

If you're following along, I'll be in verses one through six.

That's my key observation for us from this section.

Notice the imperative of verse one: set the trumpet to your lips.

This is basically a call to sound the alarm.

A trumpet is a ram's horn, uh, the Jewish word shofar.

It's typically called the people to worship the Lord, just as we were called to worship today.

Psalm 98, verse 6 talks about this coming into his presence, being called by this horn.

Psalms 98:6

But here, just as with when this wicked man, Sheba, announced evil against King David in 2 Samuel 20, the trumpet could also be used as an announcement or a signal for battle.

A battle against whom, you ask?

Well, against one like a vulture.

Some of your versions, if you don't have the ESV, may say eagle.

One like a vulture over the house of the Lord.

House of the Lord, often the temple of God, but here broadly more the people of God, Israel.

And friends, just catch that irony.

Do you see the irony there?

What's happening?

Instead of a call to worship the Lord, this was a call to war.

A war against the Lord, Yahweh, the ultimate enemy.

He's the one sending an earthly enemy, the Assyrians, to execute his judgment on his people.

So I want you to picture for a moment in your in your mind's eye this vulture, this bird of prey swooping in to seize its prey.

The prey being the land promised to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Verses 1 through 3 make it clear.

Yahweh has declared war because of a breach of what?

A breach of covenant.

Again, verse 1.

They have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.

The curses for disobedience in Deuteronomy chapter 28, the series of sermons that Moses gave before he died on the plains of Moab, just east of the Jordan River, they provide the backdrop for what is and has been and is about to happen here.

Deuteronomy 28 · chapter mention

I want you to just listen to Deuteronomy 28, 49.

Hear these words.

Again, there can be no doubt this is God's doing.

This is the Lord's doing.

And we need to appreciate something here that God's covenant law, his Torah to use the Jewish word, is so much more than just the sum of all of the individual laws that we find in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament.

It represents the totality of God's instruction to his people, to his children, both through his words and his actions.

Both of those together form Torah.

It's as if God is saying, I have freely saved you from slavery to Egypt, which will become later a symbol of sin and death, Egypt.

I've given you my good law by which you are to flourish as my people.

God wanted his people to flourish, not to be oppressed.

Now lovingly fulfill Torah, your part of the covenant, Israel.

You see there, God's law always follows from God's grace.

Grace, then law.

Switch those two, you switch the gospel, you switch the central message of Scripture.

The people's perpetual breaking of God's commandments is merely a symptom of a much deeper disease.

They have turned aside from their covenant relationship.

That yada, that knowing, that intimate knowing of the Lord.

So how does Israel respond to the indictment of verse 1?

Well, notice verse 2 and 3.

They attempt to offset their disobedience, to mitigate it.

Not that bad.

How?

By intensifying their worship.

Here it is.

To me they cry, my God, we Israel know you.

Verse 3 speaks the truth.

Israel has actually spurned the good.

The enemy shall pursue them.

This this Hebrew verb for cry uh is fascinating.

It carries the connotation of calling out for help.

And after, let me just say, after the disastrous events of 733 BC, when Tiglath Pellaser III of Assyria invades the northern kingdom and he begins slowly the process of deporting the people of Israel to different parts of Mesopotamia to be under forced labor.

Friends, Israel has every reason to cry out.

They need food and security.

They're like naked and lost children.

But you see, this is only a formal cry.

And though they formally appeal to their national god, they're still flirting with the not good gods, which is what verse 3 implies.

The not good, the opposite of good.

This will be unpacked for us in detail in verses 4 through 6.

And not only this, she practices her religion in a distorted way, as we'll see when we get to verse 11.

It's graphically portrayed there.

And so you have, I don't know, you've been on a merry-go-round before?

This is deja vu, friends, going around and around.

Israel's crying only recalls their wailing appeals to Yahweh back in 7 verse 14.

You don't have to turn there, but there we learn it's not from the heart.

They want God's gifts, not Him.

They cut themselves to manipulate God to act.

Lord, if we do this, you do this.

They remain rebels at heart.

In other words, friends, they have spurned the good God of their identity.

Just as you and I might kick a cat, you know, an unwanted cat that's by your feet bothering you, just kick it away.

And so Israel treats God with contempt.

You might remember from Jesus' interaction with the rich young man in the Gospels.

Mark actually records that Jesus says in that passage, no one is good except God alone.

God is the source of every good thing, and yet Israel rejects.

Israel spurns him.

And you might ask, Sean, how can you be so sure of this?

Aren't they being genuine?

Well, in general terms, I'm sure because the cry, we Israel, know you, is firstly presumptuous.

Yeah, it may sound baffled, confused, but it's presumptuous.

It's a call that assumes the connection between Yahweh and national Israel is irrevocable, that it cannot be broken.

That's number one.

Secondly, it's hypocritical.

It's undercut by their syncretistic deeds of disloyalty, their idolatry, mixing God with whatever appears to work.

You know what you call that when you do something just because it works?

Pragmatism.

Pragmatism.

Israel simply going through the motions of outward legalistic ritual, all the while they're concealing their hearts.

Hearts that say, My will be done.

Have we not seen this before?

Well, back in chapter six, you know, that classic verse six, verse six, for I desire steadfast, that is loyal love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God and not burnt offerings rather than burnt offerings.

Let me remind us this morning, friends.

Religious performance does not equal relationship, it doesn't ground identity.

Verses four through six simply drill into the details of this reality.

Let me read verses four and five again.

They made kings, but not through me.

They set up princes, but I knew it not.

With their silver and gold, they made idols for their own destruction.

I have spurned your calf, O Samaria.

My anger burns against them.

How long will they be incapable of innocence?

Friends, this isn't just a won't do, this is a cannot do.

They won't.

They're incapable of it.

They're so entrenched in their ways.

Do you notice how the prophet moves from the general to the specific now?

He he mentions here both politics and religion and he criticizes both.

In the political arena, God alone expected to choose Israel's kings.

Kings obedient to the covenant.

If you like a little bit of afternoon homework, I always like to give a little bit of reading just to give us, you know, something to do in the afternoon.

Deuteronomy 17, 14 through 20.

You can read that.

Deuteronomy 17, 14 through 20 about how the king was to relate to his people under the great king, Yahweh.

But the last six kings of the northern kingdom had been chosen by political intrigue.

That is a soft euphemism.

That's a term for mostly assassination.

Okay, these guys have been assassinated.

Pow.

Next guy on, please.

Let's see if he works.

No concern for God's covenant requirements, just appoint who next might save their nation.

No consultation of their true king needed.

Thank you very much.

Pragmatism.

Pragmatism.

And so we have Hosea's words from two weeks ago that we read in chapter 7.

All of them are hot as an oven and they devour.

They eat up their rulers.

All their kings have fallen and none of them calls upon me.

Friends, this is bad.

This is bad.

The closely tied religious arena is also much the same.

You see, almost 200 years prior to this, Jeroboam I, who was the first king of the northern kingdom of Israel, he'd set up places of worship in the cities of Dan and Bethel.

Dan to the north and Bethel, literally Bait El, the house of God in the south.

Why had he done this?

Well, so that the people wouldn't be tempted, was his reasoning.

The people wouldn't be tempted to go south to God's temple in Jerusalem to worship him as prescribed.

We don't want to make them travel.

Why should they go that far?

They can worship here and I'll set up my place of worship.

Well, the golden calves he erected at each site still stood 200 years later.

That is, Israel has spurned the good.

They've spurned their identity in God.

And God will now spurn the calf of Samaria, that is Israel's capital.

He will spurn it, he will break it in pieces.

For us today, living in a in what we think of as relatively modern, you know, democracy, constitution, it's actually hard for us to fathom uniting politics and religion, being entangled.

But you see, Israel's life was far more holistic.

Many traditional societies, even today, uh you have political and religious institutions actually supporting one another.

And I think there's there's there's good to that if both remain good, but there's a danger.

You see, if they both become corrupt, if they both become authoritarian, dictatorial, you have danger.

And this seems to be the case in Israel.

If you want to read about this, just go two books over from Hosea, Hosea Joel to little Amos, the sycamore farmer, the herdsman from the south, who God says, go north, tell them time's almost up.

Amos chapter 7, 10 through 17.

Amos 7 · chapter mention

You can read about that, this entangling of politics and religion.

The point is the combine the the combined forces of both politics and religion is Israel spurning their identity as God's people.

Now, I don't think I'm off the mark to think that many people in Johannesburg would say, I'm a Christian.

I'm a Christian.

In other words, they would claim to live under the rule of King Jesus, the one to whom all authority in heaven and on earth, that is political and religious, has been given.

And yet these same people actually live for self-reliant hustle, for status and for what we might call the Santin or the Rosebank lifestyle.

My God, I, your child, know you.

But friends, there is no trajectory of obedience, there is no consideration for the words of our Lord.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Do we pay attention to God's warning signs?

Perhaps, I say perhaps, I'm not a prophet in the in the Old Testament sense.

I can only forthclaim what God has said.

But perhaps water shortages, crime, unemployment, perhaps these are a trumpet.

Maybe not direct judgment, but crises that that God is using to wake us up.

You know, like the car alarm going off.

The point is not the noise, but the alert that someone's breaking into your car.

God's warnings and friends are actually gracious.

They're loving, they're not cruel.

One certain harvest of sowing to the flesh is a spurned identity, a wasted identity.

Uh, treating God with practical contempt.

I'll need you when I need you.

Thank you very much.

Divine Butler, you be on call when I need you, but until then, I can go where I please.

Number two, judgment with the world.

Judgment with the world, verses seven through ten.

Now I've I've always been fascinated with uh violent weathering.

In fact, while uh during my undergraduate studies at the University of Cape Town, I wanted to become for a time a meteorologist.

I realized you'd have to take too much physics and that sort of yeah.

I like physics, but only in small doses.

And so I can remember watching uh the first of the Twister movies.

If you remember the Twister movie about tornadoes, and I could imagine myself as one of these storm chasers in Middle America going down the tornado alley that they call it, up through those sorts sort of central states, you know, chasing storms.

What a load of fun that would be.

Well, it was only in 2011 that I came to really appreciate firsthand the sheer power of a tornado, and this was not an F5 tornado like the finger of God.

This was something quite a bit smaller but powerful.

My mother had come to live, she's here by the way, my mother.

Thank you for coming, mom.

Uh, she came to live with us for an extended period in North Carolina back in 2011.

And so I was at home one afternoon and she was with me, and Becky had gone out just to the to the shop to buy some things, uh, and there had been some local tornado watches in the area.

So we had our, you know, our hearing up, something's happening, conditions are potentially ripe for a tornado.

But suddenly, just sort of out of the blue, it changed from tornado watch to tornado warning.

There has been an observed tornado on the ground in your area.

You know, watch out.

Now, I basically had a plan.

My mom and I were just getting ourselves ready, the three kids that we had at the time ready to get into the crawl space under our house.

It was really the only sort of properly bricked area.

It was the safest space.

And I also called Becky at the shop at the time, and I said, Becky, please stay there.

And she was happy to stay there for safety.

It was not, I, you know, barely hung up the phone, and after that, behind the house, we heard my mom and I the sound of what sounded like a freight train.

A freight train passing in the field behind our house.

And it was hard to see clear.

The rain had begun bucketing now, so we couldn't exactly see the shape.

But boy, did we hear it.

You had the sudden pressure drop, you had wind gusts that Becky remembers feeling in the shop herself, and then the noise that we heard and this dense blackness, we concluded a tornado must have indeed passed by.

And this was confirmed a little bit later on.

Uh, local damage to building some quite a lot of trees down.

Friends, this was a whirlwind of note.

This was a big boy from our perspective.

For the record, I'm still fascinated with violent weather, but I just don't think that chasing them, you know, and chasing the weather uh is as joyful as it would have maybe been in my younger days, pre-kids, pre-wife, etc.

Basically, Becky says, no.

Okay, so verse 7 and 8 again.

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no flower.

If it were to yield, strangers would devour it.

Israel is swallowed up already, they are among the nations as a useless vessel.

That's crazy.

The judgment hasn't even fully come, and yet it's as though they are already mixed up.

The rising uselessness of all of Israel's false religion and particularly the worship of Baal, this God of fertility.

They sow the wind, that is futility, and they shall reap the whirlwind, calamity.

This actually became a proverbial saying among many of the prophetic schools at the time, but it reinforces Hosea's uh sombre warning of invasion, of the pillage that would come when the Assyrians came.

And like a stack of flapjacks, picture is piled upon picture.

The fields will not yield their fruit, and even if they did, strangers.

Foreigners would swallow up the grain.

More than this, Israel is swallowed up by the nations.

This this word, this verb swallowing up is fascinating.

I looked at it, it was also in um Proverbs chapter 1, the opening wisdom of Proverbs.

Proverbs 1 · chapter mention

The swallowed up is used of Sheol, the place of the dead, swallowing up prey.

And so it's fitting to be used here.

But the the Prophet doesn't just stick with one picture, he actually mixes his metaphors graphically so to describe this just around the corner reality that's about to come.

And so the image changes again, verse 7 for they have gone up to Assyria, a wild donkey wandering alone.

Ephraim has hired lovers.

Their worship of Canaanite fertility gods to bring them what they desired.

To an animal that is basically looking for a mate, you know, like a donkey or an animal in heat that's looking for a mate, desperate to find a mate.

But here Ephraim is urgently looking for hired lovers for foreign allies.

Again, uh Assyria in this context.

Hosea piles on more animal imagery, leaves little to the imagination.

Verse 10 I will soon gather them up.

This is Yahweh rounding Israel up like cattle for the slaughter, cattle for judgment.

The bargaining for different lovers becomes paying tribute to kings and princes.

If you have the ESV, some of you do, that's it says kings and princes.

If you have the New American Standard or the NIV, it'll say something like the king of princes or the mighty king.

This is a reference to the Assyrian overlord.

Brothers and sisters, Israel paying tribute to Assyria was only a temporary fix, only a short-term bandage.

Assyria was momentarily bought off in 732 BC from taking over all of Israel's territory at that time.

But it was only for a time, you see, the northern kingdom would run out of money, run out of tribute, and they would become more useful to Assyria as part of their empire instead of being this independent country or nation.

And so by 722 BC, it was swallowed up among the nations.

Just became one among the many.

After this, each successive king of Assyria, starting with Shalmanasseh, rules Israel.

You can read about it.

Very, very sad.

2 Kings chapter 17.

2 Kings 17 · chapter mention

Just read that litany of kings trying to do all they can pragmatically to save themselves, but they cannot.

Now, let me remind us here.

God is gonna judge Israel.

Don't worry about that.

Sorry, papers flying.

God is going to judge Assyria, excuse me.

He's going to judge Assyria.

They're going to get their comeuppance.

You want more scripture?

Isaiah chapter 10 from verse 5.

Isaiah 10 · chapter mention

You can read about it there.

For though God used them as a tool to discipline Israel, Assyria acted out of arrogance.

They became extremely cruel.

They wanted to wipe Israel and every other nation off the face of the earth.

You have that language of cutting off.

All of it for their own glory, none for God's.

They're like an axe.

An axe boasting against a lumberjack for cutting down a tree.

Think about that.

The tool saying to its user, hmm, look at me.

Okay.

In one sense, I think it's comforting to know that God holds empires accountable for their malicious intent, for their for their heart motives.

I think you'd agree with that, but even when their actions are actually fulfilling God's sovereign purposes, so evil being used by God to carry out his good purposes.

But we need to remember something.

God never shows favoritism.

God shows no partiality.

And so I ask this morning, what might judgment with the world look like for us?

What might judgment for the world look like for us?

Those who profess to be his people.

On a personal level, it could be burnout, it could be heavy debt, it could be chaotic or broken family life.

You may be sowing the wind of chasing after mere clout and influence, having no boundaries at home with your children if you have children, being so busy with the week's activities that you sort of need a weekend binge on something just to numb the rat race.

And Sunday worship becomes just sort of a ritual add-on.

Just an add-on, something that I do.

I don't know, friends.

I think most of us would agree that corruption, that infrastructure collapse, that violence of various kinds are what we might call citywide or corporate whirlwinds.

Building without God's justice leads to system failure, does it not?

They labor in vain, who build God's house without acknowledging Him.

So is there hope?

Is there hope amid the certain harvest of sowing to the flesh?

Well, yes, you see, reaping is not God's last word, or reaping disaster is not his last word.

This law of sowing and reaping means that repentance and new sowing leads to new harvest.

And so you have Paul's encouragement to the church in Galatia at the end of really one of his earliest books, the book of Galatians.

It's one where he actually starts with little greeting, he just jumps in, you know, who has bewitched you?

You've turned to another gospel.

Right at the end of it, he says these words to this, to the churches in Galatia, to the region of Galatia in modern-day Turkey.

He says this do not be deceived.

God is not mocked.

For whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.

And then verse 9, this is where the encouragement is.

And let us not grow weary.

Don't grow weary, don't give up from doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.

Hope that's an encouragement to you this morning.

Keep on, keeping on in your faith, even if it's this size this morning.

By God's grace, Johannesburg, I believe, can change if we will sow godly justice as a city.

And it's exciting as I think about this question: what part does Mklengi City Church have to play in sowing godly justice?

Of showing and telling the good news of Jesus.

And it's perhaps the worst.

Third and final observation: unforgiven sin.

Verses 11 through 14.

Unforgiven sin.

Our chapter now closes with yet another look at the whole area of corrupt worship.

The prophet sees a huge difference between religious activity and genuine worship.

And verse 11 makes it clear that the number of places of worship has what?

Decreased?

No, increased, multiplied.

But like a tree that is bent over by the wind in Cape Town.

And I've been there.

If you've ever been to Cape Town and the wind's blowing, it bends you, man.

And these trees, they can get bent and knotted.

Well, just like that, the purpose has become twisted, has become distorted.

Rather than being places for devotion and forgiveness, they've become places for sinning.

And even though we're not told here the precise nature of the sinful religious practices, here, what is clear is that they're not based on any understanding, of any reverence for God's law.

Verse 12 the law appears to be a strange thing, a foreign thing to the people.

Again, Israel, this is God's chosen people.

They have become xenophobic to lawful, to true worship.

They're fearful of it because they don't know it, they don't understand it, they do not submit to it.

Is there such a thing as a church without obedience?

I venture to say that around us, even here in Ghao Teng, there are many packed Sunday services held in big, seemingly prosperous buildings, and yet come Monday, many of these people are either the perpetrators or the victims, or both, of corrupt deals, of bribery, of worker exploitation, even of racism.

God says, I wrote my laws by the ten thousands, that is in great detail for you, my people, but they regard it as strange.

Wow.

That speaks to us.

We can be guilty of loving worship playlists more than we love the words of the prophet Micah 6.8.

Hopefully, this is one you've memorized.

Where God talks about through the prophet doing justly, of loving mercy, of walking humbly before our God.

Friends, may this not be us as a church, may this not be us as a local body.

Again, by grace, not by just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, by grace.

That's the power of grace, the ability to change hearts.

And so, verse 13.

As for my sacrificial offerings, they sacrifice meat and eat it, but the Lord does not accept them.

Now he will remember their iniquity and punish their sins.

This is not God forgetting, this is him saying, I'm about to act.

They shall return to, you see it in the passage?

Egypt.

Yep.

By the Spirit here, Hosea is skillfully playing on two meanings of a single verb in verse 11 and now in verse 13 that I just read.

To sin or sinning, and to make sacrificial or sin offerings.

He's using both the same verbs there, but with a different connotation.

Israel's offerings that are destined for sin offerings have become altars for sinning.

And we've already seen the reason in verse 12.

God's laws are alien, they're irrelevant to Israel.

But notice the disastrous result.

A reversal, if you like, of the Exodus account, a return to Egypt, the house of slavery.

Tragic, friends.

Tragic.

And verse 14 only adds to this unredemption, this utter devastation.

First for the northern kingdom.

It would come 722 BC, and it would be about 150 years later, it would finally come for the southern kingdom under Babylon.

This theme of remembering and forgetting, we've already seen this in chapter 4.

Remember Hosea chapter 4, 6.

Hosea 4 · chapter mention

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, of understanding.

And he talks there about remembering and forgetting as you go on there.

But here, this remembering and forgetting has a twist.

Israel has forgotten her maker, but the Lord will remember her sin.

Sin remains unforgiven because Yahweh cannot be bought off by Israel's ritual acts.

Sacrificial offerings cannot save, nor can fortified cities mere human strongholds.

I asked this morning, do you trust your walls?

Do you trust your gated communities?

Do you trust electric fences?

Do you trust security companies?

When I first moved to Joburg, it was like you've got to get a security company.

If you get a don't get a security company, don't worry, we won't charge you for the first three months.

Just get us, get give us your name on the list, and then we'll start charging you once you like us.

But if you don't get a security company, you're gonna be robbed tomorrow.

You know, it's a fear factor.

It's easy to trust in modern fortified cities, friends, if you will.

Now, this can be good stewardship.

I'm not knocking it completely, hear me.

But is it your ultimate security?

Is it your ultimate security when we're told in places like Psalm 46 that God is our only refuge?

Judgment must fall on Israel for her unacceptable worship.

Indeed, judgment will fall on any people that rejects him.

But those who look to Yahweh in the flesh, we just sang about him this morning.

The beautiful Jesus, Yahweh in the flesh.

If they look to him in true sorrow, in simple trust, they find the cross of Calvary to be the place of their judgment.

This is what the apostle Peter came to understand.

The one who denied Jesus, who said, I don't know him, who Jesus wonderfully restored and said, I prayed for you, Peter.

Satan's going to want to sift you like wheat.

He prays for him and he comes through and he's restored.

Listen to what Peter says, 1 Peter 3.

For Christ also suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God.

You see, what you and I deserve at the end of history, every single one of us, can actually fall on Christ in the middle of history.

That's the wonder of the gospel.

I hope that's good news for you today, friends.

Because the great Cossa battle, uh, excuse me, the killing, the great cause of killing, it was tragic.

It was tragic.

Israel's exile into Assyria was tragic too, but the tragedy of continually sowing to the flesh for every human being will be infinitely more tragic.

On the last day, they'll experience an eternity-spurned identity, an eternally spurned identity.

That'll never, they'll never get that identity back, made in the image of God and yet ruined before them.

There will be a judgment amidst and among this present world and with the world, which is, by the way, passing away.

What we see here today, friends, in from God's perspective, is gone tomorrow.

It's transitory.

Judgment with the world, and here's the worst of it forgiver, forever unforgiven sin.

Can you even imagine that?

And so this morning I ask you, won't you turn to the Lord Jesus Christ today?

Turn to him today, whether for the first time or for the 1,000th time.

Turn to Jesus, friends.

And you can speak to me afterwards, you can speak to Neo, you can speak to Tseppo, any other nice friendly face you see around here.

Speak to them.

Don't let today pass you by, friends, because tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Promise you, it's not guaranteed.

Pray with me.

Living God.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this is your world.

What a person sows in your world, they will surely reap.

But I thank you for the powerful gospel that transforms that immutable law for those who trust, who follow Jesus.

The gospel transforms.

Why?

Because He has lived the perfect life that they cannot.

He has endured the whirlwind.

He has taken the harvest of judgment, the fullness of it, hell on the cross for us.

The judgment, Lord, each one of us deserves.

That's amazing grace.

And Lord, I pray that amazing grace would be the tune to which Mtangi City Church always dances.

The free, unmerited favor of God, in fact, demerited.

We don't not only not deserve it, but we we did things to deserve the very opposite.

Lord, that's amazing, profound grace that tells us so much more about the giver than the receiver.

That's what you're like.

Merciful, slow to anger, rich in love to the thousandth generation of those who love you.

Covenant, faithful, loyal God.

That's what you are.

That's in whom we rest today.