Hosea #4

Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or steadfast love and no knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery. They break all bonds and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Therefore, the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and the beast of the fields, the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.

Let no one contend, let no one accuse, for with you is my contention, O priests.

you shall stumble by day. The prophet also shall stumble with you by night, and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because they have rejected knowledge. I rejected you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

The more they increased, the more they sinned against me.

I will change their glory into shame.

They feed on the sins of my people.

They are greedy for iniquity, and it shall be like people, like priests.

I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.

They shall eat but not be satisfied.

They shall play the whore but not multiply because they have forsaken the Lord to cherish.

They have forsaken the Lord to cherish hordom, to cherish wine, to cherish new wine, which take away their understanding.

My people inquire of a piece of wood, and their walking staff gives them oracles.

For a spirit of hortom has led them astray, and they have left their god to play the whore.

They sacrifice on the tops of mountains and burnt offerings on the hills, under oak, poplar, and tarrabenth, because their shade is good.

Therefore you daughters, play the whore; therefore your daughters play the whore; your brides commit adultery.

I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, or your brides when they commit adultery.

For the men themselves go astray with prostitutes and sacrifice with cult prostitutes, and the people without understanding shall come to ruin.

you play the whore, O Israel. Let not Judah become guilty. Enter not into Gilgal, nor go up to Beth-Avon, and swear not as the Lord lives. Like a stubborn heifer. Like a stubborn heifer, Israel is stubborn. Can the Lord now feed them like a lamb and broad pasture? Ephraim is joined to idols. Let him alone. When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring. Their rulers dearly love shame. The wind has wrapped them in its wings, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices." Well, that's a judgment oracle.

That's pretty severe, isn't it? And some of you guys are wondering, so how does this fit in to our understanding of the Bible? Well, everything is written in a context.

And here's the context. God has a covenant people.

And, covenants have many components to it. There is a preamble which identifies the sovereign.

God, the Lord is their sovereign. There's a historical prologue that rehearses their history and relationship. Do you remember this in Exodus 19 and also the beginning of Exodus 20 where it says, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the bonds of slavery. There are stipulations that outline the terms of that covenant where there are oaths and vows where the parties promise to do things. You remember how the children of Israel said, "All that the Lord has commanded we will do." And then there are sanctions. Blessings for those that keep the terms of the Covenant and then there is curse when it is broken and all Covenants are then ratified even by blood. That is the context that we're in. Who is Hosea preaching to? The Northern Kingdom. If you would have done a poll in that day, if Barnum was there. All of them would have believed in the one true God. Do you believe in God? Oh yes, we do that. Do you go to religious services on a weekly, monthly basis? Check mark right there. But let's turn our gaze to the first commandment or the second commandment or the third commandment. Are you worshiping the one true God in the one true way that he has prescribed? What is Israel done? They have their own king, not of the Davidic line. Do they come down to Jerusalem and worship in the prescribed way that God has said? Are there priests Levitical? No. And Hosea is the death prophet, if you will, the last one, the last straw of telling them, "Here's the covenant. These are the terms. Repent." Justice. You know that God is a God of justice. How is it said in Genesis, when and Abraham is pleading for that wayward city?

Shall the judge of all the earth not do right?

Of course, that's true.

Jerry Bridges says, "God does not exalt his mercy"at the expense of his justice.

"And in order to maintain justice,"all sin without exception must be punished.

Contrary to popular opinion with God, there is no such thing as mere forgiveness. There is only justice.

Justice. The judge of all the earth shall do what's right.

And that's what we're seeing in this passage.

For those of you that want to outline this text, here we can see that the main theme is that the Lord Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, accuses Israel.

Why?

Why does he accuse them?

In verses 1 through 5, there are covenantal charges against the nation.

And then, in verses 6 through 19, we see the deserved destruction of the nation.

Now, some of you guys know this one verse out of Leviticus 24, verse 20, "an eye for an eye." And maybe some of you guys have heard that that is barbaric, that that is, well, it's beneath us.

Leviticus 24:20

But I want you guys to have a different view of that verse.

I want you to see that it is exactly justice.

When someone has wronged you, the justice is that it is made right in proportion to wrong that was committed no more no less. That eliminates revenge doesn't it? You want justice we have a sense of justice in this text we will see that the Lord punishes in correspondence, in proportionality to the offense. What are the covenantal charges? Look at it once again in verse 1. Hear the word of the Lord. The prophet is a, the prophet is a lawyer wielding his case against God's covenantal people. We have walked into the courtroom as it were. Here, O Israel, the Lord has a controversy. This is judicial language. This is an indictment.

The Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. God takes note of our sin. It doesn't slip his mind. He knows everything that has taken place.

Whether we have thought it, whether we have said it, or whether we have committed it. But if you were a lawyer and you were prosecuting somebody that was guilty, what would be the first thing that you would put on your charge? You would look at what the defendant, what the accused had done, correct? Notice that's not the way this lawyer works. He doesn't talk about what they have committed, rather he talks about their sins of omission, what they haven't done but they should have done. Do you see it in the scripture there? Why do you have this controversy? Why do you have this judicial indictment? Because there is no faithfulness. There's no faithfulness in the land. There's no steadfast love. That great Hebrew word that talks about how God has a commitment for His people. And in return it should be reciprocated. There's no faithfulness, there's no covenantal love, there's no knowledge of God in the land. No knowledge. This idea of knowledge should maybe take us back to Romans chapter 1 where people suppress the knowledge of God. They're as it were, jumping on a box that has full of springs and they're trying to keep it all down. Israel's just like that. This knowledge should be knowledge of talking about a covenant relationship, an intimate relationship. It is talked about many times in this book.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

many times. If we were to look at just a few of them, you could see it in Hosea chapter 6 verse 4. "What shall I do with you, Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? Your love is like a morning cloud, like the dew that goes away. Therefore, I have hewn them out by the prophets. I have slain them by the words of my mouth.

Hosea 6:4

my judgment goes forth as the light. I desire steadfast love, not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings." You know that Christianity is a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, where you know Him, He knows you. Here in this text, Hosea is saying this people lack faithfulness, lack covenantal love, and they don't even have an intimate knowledge of who the creator and Redeemer is. No wonder they're being accused. No wonder. But if that weren't bad enough, the sins that they did not, pardon me, the sins of omission, the things that they didn't do, well now let's turn to verse 2 where we can see what they actually committed, sins of commission. There is swearing, there's lying, there's murder, there's stealing, there's committing adultery, and each one of these can find its correspondent in the Ten Commandments. Swearing violates the Second Commandment. Lying violates the Ninth Commandment. Murder violates the Sixth Commandment. Stealing the Eighth. Adultery the Seventh. How does James say that if you've broken the law in one spot you're guilty of just a little bit of it, that portion, that wedge? No, you know better than that. You're guilty of all of it. They're guilty on the account of what they haven't done and by what they have done. And maybe you just want to summarize all of that at the end of verse 2, "They break all bounds." They've pushed up to the edge to the border and they have just fallen over the edge. You've seen it where you've told kids don't go over there, you can play up to this point. Any of you guys in elementary school and there was that chain link fence and you know you You younger kids had to stay in that side, but the big kids were on the other side and all of you guys had your fingers through the chain link fence just longing to be over there with them.

Why?

Because you didn't have it.

You found finally a way to climb over, to get under, or to go through.

That's them.

even more. It says bloodshed follows bloodshed. They break all the bonds. They're having sin that produces more sin. So if that's the case and God takes note of our sin, we also need to know that God takes action of sin.

Therefore, do you see it in verse 3? Therefore? Look at it. Therefore, the land mourns. The land mourns. There's depression here. There's consequences to sin. Not Not only does the land mourn, but all who dwell in it languish.

You know, it's not just that the wages of sin is death, it is, but it also has ravishing consequences temporally and eternally.

It's not just that it provides depression where the land mourns and they languish, but but also the beast of the fields and the birds of the air and the fish of the sea are taken away.

There are things that you're deprived of because sin has its consequences.

You know this, don't you?

There's natural consequences, there's spiritual consequences, and it deprives us.

It deprives the land, even there, a blessing.

Verse 4, "Let no one contend and let no one accuse." Do you hear the covenantal language of litigation going on again?

First, there was a controversy that the Lord had, a judicial indictment, and now here we have something that's saying, "But don't blame the person next to you." Look at the end of verse 4, "For with you is my contention, with you is my case." With who? The leaders of the land. Oh, priests. The priests should have been teaching the right way, instructing us in what we should do and yet that didn't happen. Verse 5, "You shall stumble by day." I can understand stumbling by night but now here we see stumbling by day. The prophets also stumble, oh so it's not just the priest it's also the prophets, "they shall also stumble with you by night and I will destroy your mother." Individually the leaders will be held accountable and it has ramifications on the mother nation. There's individual judgment and there's corporate judgment. Bridges goes on and he says this, "God's justice is inflexible.

Justice may be defined as rendering to everyone according to one's due. Justice means we get exactly what we deserve. Nothing more, nothing less in our human system of justice. A tension often exists between justice and mercy. Sometimes one prevails at the expense of the other, but there is no tension with God. Justice always prevails. God's justice must be satisfied, otherwise his moral government would be undermined. But Hosea, he's a preacher of the gospel and he took sin head-on. Preaching the gospel always entails preaching against sin, warning of sins consequences, and announcing sin's remedy. The word most often translated as sin occurs in either the verb or the noun form at least 11 times. And this word that provides the imagery of missing the target, it vividly pictures sin as a failure to conform to the standard of God's righteous and inflexible law.

The noun, usually translated "iniquity," occurs at least as frequently.

This word pictures sin as twisted behavior, perverted behavior, and deviant behavior.

Significantly, this principle word that the Old Testament uses to designate the guilt of sin.

Not only that, another commonly used word for sin is usually translated as evil or as wickedness occurs eight times.

word picture. This word pictures sin as disastrous behavior or clamorous behavior, and it tells us that sin is destructive. Destructive. Other key words such as to rebel occur less frequently.

Some contextual specific words such as to play the harlot or to commit adultery occur more frequently in the book of Hosea, but all are instructive. Whether picturing sin as corruption or a reproach or shameful behavior or lewdness or deceit or stubbornness, it tells us what we shouldn't be doing. But the preacher of the Gospel like Hosea must talk about it. He must preach against it. He must warn about it and also tell us that there is a remedy. Bunyan helps us by saying sin is a dare of God's justice.

The rape of his mercy, the jeer of his patience, the slight of his power, and the contempt of His love." So says Bonya. Well, getting back to the text, the second half of this chapter deals with the leaders and then looks at the individuals. Looking at verse 6, it says, "My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge because they have rejected knowledge. In principle you could say it this way, rejected responsibility means rejected opportunity. I reject you from being a priest to me and since you have forgotten the law of God I will also forget your children. In other words willful forgetfulness means being forgotten. Do you see how one matches the other? Verse 7, "The more they increase, the more they send against me. I will change their glory to shame. They feed on the sins of my people. They are greedy for iniquity. It shall be like people, like priest. I will punish them for their ways and repay them for their deeds.

Wasted influence, oh leaders, means a loss of influence. An eye for an eye. Do you see it? They have sinned in one way and their punishment is justly meted out.

Look at verse 10, "They shall eat but not be satisfied; they shall play the whore but not multiply, because they have forgotten the Lord to cherish horedom, wine, and new wine, which takes away understanding." What do you find your joy It should be ultimately in God and here people were looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places and rejoicing in sin will only lead to misery. Well that happens to the leaders. But then going on to the individuals, we read, "They inquire of a piece of wood. Their walking staff gives them oracles, for the spirit of Hordom has led them astray. They have left their God to play the whore." They're involved in sorcery. Verse 13, "They sacrifice on the tops of mountains and they burn offerings on the hills underneath the oak, the poplar, and the tarrabant because their shade is good. And now here it's not just sorcery but now they have sacrifices which God did not command. And sin has its consequences and its pervasive and influences and impacts others. Notice the end of verse Verse 13, "Therefore your daughters play the whore, and your brides commit adultery." The sin became learned, generational.

I will not punish your daughters when they play the whore, nor your brides when they commit adultery.

There is mercy.

Aren't you glad?

Who's at fault?

The middle of verse 14, "For the men themselves go astray." Back to leadership.

Anybody here in leadership?

Heads of houses?

Pay attention.

And now a transition happens.

It's almost like he says, "I'm done talking to the northern tribes.

They're too far gone.

Let me talk to those that remain." Look at verse 15.

No, I was just kidding.

No, it was 15.

I wasn't kidding after all.

I was serious.

"Though you play the whore, O Israel, let not Judah become guilty." He left Israel alone, and now he's wanting to warn the nation that maybe has hope.

Let not Judah become guilty. Enter not to Gilgal, nor go up to Beth-Avon.

Swear not as the Lord lives. At least maybe they all have some hope. Why? He paints a word picture like a stubborn heifer. Israel is stubborn. Can the Lord can the Lord now feed them like a lamb in a broad pasture? Of course not. Of Of course not. Judgment is coming upon them. Why? Because they have covenantally violated the agreement of their terms.

And this is the case and the charge that's laid before them. Destruction is inevitable.

Bridges says, "God's wrath arises from his intense settled hatred of all sin and is the tangible expression of his inflexible determination to punish it." We might say God's wrath is his justice in action, rendering to everyone his just due, which because of our sin is always judgment.

I have told you that Hosea is a gospel preacher.

He has told us that there is sin and we need to be against sin and we need to warn of the consequences of sin.

But friends, if I stopped there, we would miss the great hope is that there was someone that came and covenantally kept every aspect of it for those of us who violated it.

It is the Lord Jesus Christ.

You may be here today and said, I am a covenant breaker.

You feel guilty and you are guilty, but confess your sin and you will be forgiven.

Trust on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be delivered from the wrath to come.

Let's pray to this Christ.

Oh Lord, we do thank you that with you there is great mercy.

Yes, there is an eye for an eye.

But Lord, you are the judge of heaven and earth and you shall do right even, even by us being clothed, covered by the righteousness of Christ.

We thank you for Him, and it's in His name we do pray.

Amen.

Thank you.