“Is God’s Law Good?” Hosea 8: Pastor Scott Pearson

We're in Hosea chapter 8.

Hosea 8 · chapter mention

A father was explaining to his children the meaning of Lent and

how to prepare for Easter and

he suggested that he and his wife would be

abstaining from all desserts until Easter and

he had three daughters and ages six, eight and eleven and the oldest two daughters said,

yeah, we're on board with that. We also are going to abstain from all sweets until Easter. The youngest daughter who is six

She thought about this for a while and then she said confidently

What I want to give up, I want to give up consequences

But life doesn't really work that way, does it?

We're not free to do that. You are free to choose

But you are not free from the consequences of your choice and one of the most elementary and important lessons in life is to learn the

connection between choices and actions and consequences. While we are free to choose our actions,

we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions and lives have been ruined or at least

damaged long term by failing to understand this basic life principle.

You are in control of your actions, but you cannot control the consequences of your actions.

And when the consequences begin to spin out of control, we protest. That's not fair.

Yeah, I did something wrong, but I don't deserve that.

And we begin to think of ourselves as the

aggrieved victims of injustice rather than the responsible party who has sinned and

sometimes we get angry at God.

When a man's folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord.

Many of us have had to learn this lesson the hard way, myself included, that sin will take you farther than you want to go,

keep you there longer than you want to stay and cost more than you want to pay.

Believe me, it's a painful lesson to learn and not one that you want to repeat.

Hosea puts it this way, for they sow the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.

So what were the choices and actions of Israel that led to them reaping the whirlwinds?

We're in Hosea chapter 8 today and the first was rebelling against God's law, verses 1 through 3.

Hosea 8 · chapter mention

Set the trumpet to your lips, one like a vulture is over the house of the Lord because they have transgressed my covenants 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.

Now the house of the Lord in this context refers not to the temple in Jerusalem,

but rather to the land of Israel that is about to be ravaged by the vulture Assyria.

And so Israel objects and protests against this idea.

Surely this can never happen to us because we know the Lord, we know Yahweh, we believe in Yahweh, we worship Yahweh,

and Baal and Astorith and Kimash and Moloch and the Golden Calf.

We are God's people, this is His land, surely we are saved from all harm in His lands.

Please God, remember us, we know you, we are your people.

Did Israel know God?

To know God in the biblical sense requires living in a covenant relationship with Him which requires following His law and obeying His commands.

To say I know God or I believe in God or I worship God while rebelling against His commands is blatant hypocrisy.

Was Israel living as God's obedient and faithful covenant people?

God's verdict is this, they have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.

The Hebrew word for rebelled, some versions have transgressed, is a strong word, pesha.

It means not only breaking a rule or disobeying a command, but it also includes the idea of breaking a relationship that is based on mutual trust.

So, pesha is an act of betrayal against a person, not just breaking a rule.

Following God's deliverance of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, God invited Israel into a conditional covenant relationship, conditional upon their obedience to His commands.

If Israel is obedient, then Yahweh will be their God and dwell with them and bless them and provide for them and protect them and make them a holy nation and a blessing and a light to all the other peoples of the earth.

But if they disobey, God will punish them.

All that the Lord has spoken, we will do, the people promised.

But did they?

They have transgressed my covenant and rebelled against my law.

And Israel's rebellion was a violation of trust, an act of betrayal, an act of pesha, resulting in a broken relationship.

If an Israelite went away on a trip and while he was gone, a stranger broke into the house and stole some items, that would be called robbery.

But if it were a neighbor or a friend who broke into the house and stole some items, that would be called pesha, a violation of trust.

If an unmarried man sleeps with a prostitute, that would be a sin.

But if a married man sleeps with his best friend's wife, that would be pesha.

Israel's idolatry and covenant breaking was an act of pesha.

Act of rebellion, treacherous rebellion against God and His moral authority, thereby breaking a personal covenant relationship with God.

Israel has spurned the good, the text says.

So what is the good?

Well, supremely, it's a covenant relationship with God, but along with that, His law is the good.

God's law is good because God is good.

And spurned is also a strong word. It means rejecting, expelling, excluding.

It's a forceful rejection of God's law.

It's not just trying hard and failing to live up to it.

No, it's a defiant denial that God's law is even good.

Do you see the hypocrisy, the contradiction here?

We know the Lord.

We worship the Lord, but we reject His law as something bad.

Suppose you have a physical exam with your doctor and I ask you about it.

How do you like your doctor?

Oh, he's a great guy, a great doctor.

He's smart and personable and knowledgeable and caring.

He's great.

How was your exam?

Well, my doctor is concerned about a couple of things, so he wrote a couple of prescriptions for me and advised me to make some lifestyle changes.

But I'm not going to do it.

I don't trust his advice.

I don't think he knows what he's talking about.

I read a blog online that has a much better approach.

So I'm not going to do anything my doctor prescribed or advised, but he's a great guy.

He's a great doctor, smart and knowledgeable and skilled and capable and caring,

and I love going to him for exams.

Or how about this scenario?

You ask a baseball player how he likes his coach.

Oh, he's the best.

He really knows the game.

He has a winsome personality.

He really knows how to bring out the best in his players.

So he must really enjoy his practices.

No, complete waste of time.

I could run a much better practice.

He has us doing all these stupid drills that make no sense whatsoever.

Well, then his team rules must really be helpful for team morale and unity.

Are you kidding?

His team rules are from the 1950s.

They're stupid.

They take all the fun out of you and being on the team.

But he's a really great guy and a really great coach.

He knows his stuff and how to bring out their best in his players.

Do you see the disconnect?

And do you see the application for us today?

If you profess to know God and love him,

do you love his law and do you obey his commands?

Can you say with the psalmist,

the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul,

the testimony of the Lord is perfect,

reviving the soul, the testimony of the Lord is sure,

making wise is simple, the precepts of the Lord are right,

rejoicing the heart, the commandment of the Lord is pure,

enlightening the eyes, the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever,

the rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold,

sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

Moreover, by them is your servant warned in keeping them,

there is great reward.

Well, I agree with most of his commands and try to follow them,

but clearly some of his commands are not for today.

I mean, does God really expect people to save sex for marriage?

Does he really expect couples who love each other to wait until they get married

to live together and sleep together?

And does God really expect couples to stay married until death?

And surely if the Bible were written today,

God would not still call homosexuality sinful, would he?

I mean, that was just for Bible times, right?

Surely God understands now that love is love,

and two men or two women who want to get married should have the same right

to get married as a man and a woman.

And surely God understands now that gender is fluid

and has nothing to do with biological reality

and people can be born in the wrong body.

And if they are, they should do something to their body

to make it look more like how they feel on the inside, right?

Surely God wants people to be true to their authentic self.

I mean, surely God can see how the world is changing.

And so his rules and commands need to change too, right?

The Bible was written 2,000 years ago.

We can't blame God for not knowing how outdated

and hateful and unfair some of his laws would appear to people today.

So yes, I believe God is good, but some of his laws are bad.

Why does God equate rebelling against his law with spurting the good?

Because God's laws and commandments are expressions of who God is.

A great doctor does not give harmful prescriptions or bad advice.

A great coach does not run lousy practices or give bad team rules.

And a good God does not issue bad laws.

If his rules and commands are defective, it means his character is defective.

So you can reject God and his law, but you cannot love God and hate his law.

Verse 12, God says,

Were I to write for him, Ephraim, Israel, were I to write for him my laws by the 10,000s?

They would be regarded as a strange thing.

A strange thing here, meaning alien, illicit, even prohibited.

You see, Israel's culture was so dominated by idolatry and sexual immorality and social injustice

that the law of God was regarded as something strange, foreign,

alien, belonging to another time and place, even as something to be prohibited.

There was a time when I was growing up, and even when our daughters were growing up,

when God's laws and commandments and rules were held in high regard in American society.

Now, people have always been sinners, so of course people sinned,

of course people broke those commandments, but there was a cultural consensus

that God's commandments were good rules to live by, no longer.

Our culture is now so strongly dominated by beliefs and ideologies,

which are antithetical to biblical sexual morality,

that God's moral laws now regarded as something strange, weird, alien, belonging to another time and place,

and even as something bad and hateful that should be rejected and prohibited and canceled.

You see, it's one thing to affirm that God's law is good,

but then we fail to live up to it in our fallenness.

It's quite another to reject God's law as something bad,

and to regard it as morally virtuous to treat God's law with contempt.

But that's where we are today in our culture.

May God have mercy on us.

The second reason why Israel would be reaping the whirlwind is they were trusting lesser rulers.

No sooner had Israel received the Ten Commandments and promised to obey them

that the people rebelled and made a golden calf and worshiped it and sacrificed to it.

And many years later, after God brought them into the promised land, after Joshua's death,

the people rebelled over God's kingship over them.

And in the days of Samuel, the people insisted on having a king just like all the other nations.

So they rejected God as their king and insisted on having a human king to reign over them and protect them.

God granted their request and gave them Saul, who proved to be unfaithful.

So God replaced Saul with David and then made this covenant with David.

Furthermore, the Lord declares that he will make a house for you, a dynasty of kings.

Your house and your kingdom will continue before me for all time and your throne will be secure forever.

And thus one of David's sons Solomon became king and he built the temple in Jerusalem

and he became great in wisdom and power and wealth.

Upon his death, his son Rehoboam became king.

But the people of Israel and all of the northern territories, all the people except the southern tribe, Judah

and probably also Benjamin and some of Levi,

all of the northern tribes rebelled against Rehoboam and rebelled against the house of David,

basically cutting themselves off from the line of the Messiah.

And the northern kingdom of Israel chose Jeroboam as their king.

And what was the first thing Jeroboam did as king?

He made two golden calves.

And he sent one in the north and Dan and one in the southern part of Israel in Bethel.

Yahweh had commanded his people that they must offer sacrifices to him only in the temple in Jerusalem.

But Jeroboam and his successors including Jeroboam II and Hosea's time made many altars throughout the land of Israel

and appointed many priests who were not Levites.

And these altars were used to worship other gods in addition to Yahweh, false gods such as Baal.

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

These altars that were built throughout the land of Israel became altars for idolatry, altars for the worship of Baal.

Now Baal was a fertility god and the worship of Baal was often accompanied by the worshipers engaging in sex with cult prostitutes

as a way of gaining the favor of Baal to send rain for a good crop.

The northern kingdom of Israel with its capital in Samaria existed for 208 years from 930 BC

when they rebelled against the house of David until 722 BC when they were conquered by Assyria.

During that time there were 19 kings from 9 different dynasties

and guess how many of those kings were faithful to Yahweh and his law?

None. Zero. Nada.

They were all losers, every single one of them.

Once Israel rejected the line of David and of the Messiah, their entire history as a nation was marked by wicked kings leading them into idolatry.

And so the Lord says, 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.

At the time of Hosea, Israel was within about 30 years of being destroyed by Assyria.

Even before the final conquest in 722 BC, the Assyrian army invaded parts of Israel several times.

So how did Israel respond to this grave danger by turning to Yahweh for help and protection? No.

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 Tribune.

Israel turned to other nations for security and protection.

So if Egypt was threatening, they turned to Assyria for help.

If Assyria was threatening, they turned to Egypt for help.

If Judah was threatening, they turned to Damascus for help and vice versa.

And when it became clear that Assyria was the greatest threat and no other nation could protect them,

then they gave heavy tribute to Assyria, kind of like businesses giving money to the mob to protect them from the mob.

And rather than turning to Yahweh in repentance and trust, they turned to other kings and nations and other gods.

Were these other nations loyal allies? Of course not.

Not only did Assyria not protect them, Assyria took all their tribute money and then ended up destroying and putting an end to the northern kingdom of Israel anyway.

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

There's only one true and living God, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And God has revealed Himself in His creation more fully in His Word, both Old and New Testament and supremely in the Word made flesh Jesus.

The God of the Old Testament is the very same as the God of the New Testament.

There's no difference as the worship song says that we sing, He is the same God.

And the God of the Bible is not only a loving and merciful God, but also a perfectly just God who punishes sin and rebellion.

Israel rejected God's law, spurned what was good.

Israel rejected God's reign as king over them.

And then they rejected God's chosen Davidic line of kings and then they turned to foreign kings and foreign gods rather than Yahweh.

They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.

Assyria utterly destroyed Israel.

The people lost everything and the northern kingdom of Israel ceased to exist.

While we are free to choose our actions, we are not free to choose the consequences of our actions.

Well, what are some takeaways and responses from this text?

First, we reap what we sow.

That's New Testament also.

Do not be deceived. God is not mocked.

For whatever one sows, that will he also reap.

And sometimes we reap the whirlwind more than we think fair because we tend to underestimate the gravity of our sin.

Sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay and cost you more than you want to pay.

And since we have all spurned God's love and broken his law many times, we all stand condemned before a perfectly just God who must punish sin,

which brings us to the good news of the gospel.

The cross, plus God's justice, equals no condemnation.

Listen carefully.

Those who put their hope for salvation and eternal life in a non-judgmental God of love are in serious peril.

Yes, God is love, truth, but he's also just.

And there's no contradiction in that.

Anyone who thinks the God of the New Testament is not judgmental has never paid close attention to the teachings of Jesus

and has never read the last book of the New Testament, which is full of God's judgments.

Our hope of eternal life in heaven has nothing to do with the non-existent, non-judgmental God.

Our hope is in Jesus.

Our hope is in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Our only hope of eternal salvation is in the cross of Jesus Christ and only in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Our hope is in him.

Sin must be punished.

And at the cross, Jesus bore all of our sins and suffered the full and just punishment for all of our sin and rebellion, all of our pesh.

And therefore, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

We often think that our forgiveness and salvation are due to the love and mercy and grace of God, which they are.

That is true.

The cross of Jesus Christ is the greatest demonstration of how much God loves you, even in your sin, even in your rebellion.

God loves you.

But it's just as true that our forgiveness and salvation are due to the justice of God.

If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Faithful and just to forgive us.

Why just?

Because our sins were fully and justly punished at the cross.

And it would be unjust for God to punish believers for sins that have already been fully punished.

And God demonstrated that he had accepted Jesus' death as full payment for all of our sins by raising Jesus from the dead.

Listen carefully.

If you have put your trust in the truth that Christ died for your sins and was raised from the dead, then you have absolutely nothing to fear from the justice of God.

Nothing.

No condemnation means no condemnation.

No matter what you have done, no matter how much you rebelled against God, no matter how far you have strayed from his path,

no matter how convicted you are of your sins,

no condemnation means no condemnation.

He no longer counts your sins against you because Jesus took all of your sin and all of your punishment upon himself on the cross.

But, and I need to say this also, if you have not received by faith the gift of salvation and eternal life in Jesus Christ,

then you have everything to fear from the righteous judgment of God.

But God loves you and he is eager to forgive you.

He is eager to bring you into his family.

He is eager to give you eternal life.

He is eager to love and accept and forgive you if you will trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.

Next, God is good and therefore his will is good and therefore his law is good and good for us.

God's law is an expression of his character and his will.

All of God's rules and commandments proceed from his wisdom and love and righteousness and goodness and knowledge of what is best for us.

So as you trust his character and his will, so also trust his moral law and rules.

Oh, how I love your law.

It is my meditation all the day.

Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies for it is ever with me.

I have more understanding than all my teachers for your testimonies are my meditation.

I understand more than the agent for I keep your precepts.

I hold back my feet from every evil way in order to keep your word.

I do not turn aside from your rules for you have taught me how sweet are your words to my taste sweeter than honey to my mouth.

A love relationship with God is maintained by following his rules.

You may have heard it said Christianity is about a personal relationship with Jesus, not about following a bunch of religious rules.

Yes, the personal relationship part is true.

And no, following a bunch of religious rules will not get you into heaven.

God accepts us as righteous in his sight on the basis of our faith in Jesus, not on the basis of our rulekeeping.

But that doesn't mean that obedience is optional in the Christian life.

Jesus said, whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me.

And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and manifest myself to him.

Think about it.

What do sinful, finite creatures like us really know about what it takes to abide in a love relationship

with a holy God who is the creator of the universe?

What do we know?

So God tells us in his word, in his law, in the commandments of Jesus,

he tells us what it takes to please him and live according to his will.

God's law keeps us from getting disoriented.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

When Beth and I were in Italy in Tuscany a couple of months ago,

one of the days that we were there, we went for a hike in some beautiful woods.

And we were following a path, not a big broad path, but a bigger than a deer path.

It was a clear path.

We were following this path that went over a brook and went into the woods a ways and it stopped.

It just stopped.

But it was a beautiful woods area and we thought, you know, we've only been lost once or twice on this trip.

We need some more adventures, so let's keep going.

And I mentioned the fact that once you get off a path in the woods, it's easy to get disoriented,

but we kept going.

So we walked some farther and then we decided it's probably time we should get back to the path.

So we turned around and went back to the path except we couldn't find the path.

And we looked all around and we couldn't find the path.

So we thought the road was in that general direction, so we headed off toward the road.

We kind of heard some traffic over there, so we headed off in that direction and we crossed a brook.

Not the same place that we crossed before, but we did.

I thought, what's probably a good sign that we at least have crossed this brook again?

And we kept going and we were listening for the traffic and then we saw some cars.

So we headed toward the road confident that once we got to the road, we would get to our car.

We got to the road and there was no car.

And we went to the left for a while and no car.

So we thought, well, let's try going right.

So we went to the right, no car. Around a curve, no car.

Around another curve, no car.

Around another curve, no car.

We finally found the car.

We're here. We finally found the car.

But we are probably off by half a mile.

And we thought, how could we have gotten that far off track in that short of a time?

That takes some talent actually.

But it would have been better if we had stayed on the path.

Some people might say that following a path is restrictive and diminishes our freedom to forge our own way.

But what actually happens when we stray off the path of God's truth?

Thinking we are free, we end up enslaved to the surrounding cultures, falsehoods and deceptions and delusions.

We end up lost and disoriented.

Like many people today who cannot even answer the question, what is a woman?

And who think that men can have periods and get pregnant and nurse babies.

If you want to wander around in the woods lost and disoriented along with many others in our society who've rejected God's law,

you're free to do so.

But you're not free from the consequences of doing so.

Namely separation from God.

But God loves you too much to let you stay lost.

And you're here today because God is pursuing you and calling you to himself.

And whatever you have done before can be forgiven.

And however far you have strayed from him, the good shepherd can find you and bring you back home to God and to paths of righteousness.

The law as taught by Jesus reveals the narrow path to Christ's likeness empowered by the Holy Spirit.

How did Jesus develop Godly character?

He said, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

You see, the character of Christ was formed as he lived closely connected to the Father and his love and kept his Father's commandments.

What is God's ultimate will for us?

To become like Jesus.

And how do we know what that looks like?

Different people have different ideas of what Jesus was like and what it means to be like him.

So is this just a matter of subjective opinion?

We each create our own reality in our own minds as to what it means to become like Jesus?

No.

Jesus gives us his commandments as a light to the path that leads to Christ's likeness.

That's why making disciples involves teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you, Jesus said.

As we obey his commandments, which are consistent with the Father's commandments in the Bible,

then we abide in his love and we grow in Christ's like character.

You see, the law shows us what Godly character looks like.

And the Holy Spirit within us empowers us to live in obedience to God's laws.

And as we do so, we become more like Jesus who lived a life of perfect obedience.

The law gives us a vision of who we are becoming and are destined to be as new creations in Christ.

Pastor Stefan reminded us of this truth a couple of weeks ago in a Wednesday night Bible study.

If God's laws are an expression of God's character, then obeying God's law is how we grow in Godly character in Christ's likeness.

And disobeying his commandments is a betrayal of our true self, a betrayal of our authentic self of who we are in Christ.

We are all in Christ's new creations on our way to becoming like Jesus.

And one day we will be like Jesus when he returns.

And the law shows us how we can live authentic to our true self and our true identity in Christ.

When we are following the path of obedience, we are being true to who we are.

We are being true to our identity as new creations.

When we go off the path in disobedience, we are being false to our true self.

To follow and obey Jesus is to become who God made us and redeemed us to be, transformed into a new creation in Christ.

That's our true self. That's our true identity. That's who we really are.

And every step of obedience we take is progress toward becoming more like Jesus.

So here's the crucial question, especially for those of you who are 30 and under, because you're growing up in a culture that is hostile to God's moral law.

Here's the question, is God's law good? Is God's law good?

How about you? Will you affirm today that God is good and therefore His will is good and therefore His law is good?

Do you affirm that God's moral law proceeds from His wisdom and love and righteousness and therefore it is in your best interests to seek to obey God's commandments?

For all of us, do you confess that we have broken God's laws and commandments and therefore are in need of a Savior?

Have you received Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord? I'm going to lead you in a prayer in a moment that you can do that.

And then for those of you who have, are you willing to follow Jesus on the narrow path of obedience to God's commandments, even in the midst of a culture that is hostile to that law? Let's pray.

Father, we acknowledge that you are good, that your will is good, acceptable, perfect, that your law and commandments therefore are good and good for us.

But we also acknowledge that we've broken your laws and commandments and we need a Savior.

And I pray for anybody here today that has not yet accepted Jesus as their Savior, that right now they would simply confess, yes, Lord, I have sinned.

I've broken your laws. I've disobeyed your commandments. I stand condemned.

But I believe that Jesus took all of my sin and punishment upon Himself at the cross and I put my trust in that.

And I believe you raised Him from the dead, that He's alive today and I ask Him to come into my life and reign in my heart as Lord.

And for all of us, will we affirm that the law of God is good and is in fact the path toward becoming more like Jesus?

And that we will seek with our whole heart in the power of the Holy Spirit to follow and live according to the path of obedience so that we might fulfill our destiny and be true to our identity as new creations in Christ.

As we sing our closing song, I'm going to ask some of you perhaps have been struggling with really, is God's law good or not?

And if you are willing to affirm today, yes, God's law is good. You want to affirm that before here at the altar, we encourage you to come to the altar and just make that affirmation.

Others of you perhaps need to really believe the good news. There's no condemnation if you're in Christ.

And you might be here today and you realize that I've broken God's laws. I have.

But I want you to come to the cross and affirm. No, there's no condemnation for me. God does not count my sins against me because all my sin was on Jesus at the cross.

And then there are others of you who perhaps just want to affirm that you want to follow the path of obedience because you want to be more like Jesus.

And you want God's help in helping you to become more like Jesus. Let's stand as we close with our last song.